A Hero To Hold

He knew hypothermia could cause mental confusion. One of his Coast Guard buddies had told him about a water extraction off the Alaskan Coast during which the subject had fought so hard, they hadn’t been able to get him in the cage. The subject had ended up drowning.

What in God’s name was she doing with a gun?

John knew he could handle her if it came down to a physical confrontation. She was small and fatigued and severely hypothermic. All he had to do was get the gun away from her. Considering she could barely hold the damn thing upright told him that wasn’t going to be too difficult. But he wasn’t a big enough fool not to take the situation seriously.

“Easy, Red. You’re hurt and confused. Put the gun down, and let me help you.”

She swayed. “Stay away. Just…stay—”

He rushed her. She yelped and swung at him, but was so weakened, John easily dodged the blow. He grabbed for the gun, but before he could get his fingers around it, she lost her grip. He watched it tumble down the ravine and disappear into a stand of juniper twenty feet below.

“What the hell were you doing with a gun?” he snapped, giving her a small shake.

She blinked at him as if seeing him for the first time. “I thought—I thought…Richard…”

His concentration wavered as a wave of damp, cinnamon-colored hair washed over his arm. Simultaneously the sweet scent of columbine in spring titillated his senses. Turning her toward him, he got his first up-close look at her face. Her alabaster skin was as flawless as virgin snowfall. He winced at the purple bruise above her left temple and the cut on her chin. Even her nose was skinned. But the underlying beauty struck him, and John felt the impact of her all the way through his flight suit and into his bones.

He stared at her, realizing with a stark sense of dismay that she had the most incredible brown eyes he’d ever seen. “What’s your name?” he shouted above the roar of wind and engines, watching her carefully to gauge her lucidity.

“I…” Her brows furrowed, then she blinked at him. “I—I’m…”

She was pale and confused; both were symptoms of hypothermia. The condition was assumed in all cold-weather situations. Judging from her state of mind, he suspected she’d been hypothermic for quite some time. Snow-damp jeans and a sweater were no protection against subfreezing temperatures and windchills hovering around zero. Her hair was damp. He looked down at her feet and cursed. She wasn’t even wearing shoes. Frostbite would be an issue, as well, he realized, and another wave of urgency surged through him.

“Is anyone with you?” he asked.

Her body jolted, and he saw fresh terror leap into her eyes. “I…I don’t know.”

“Come on, sweetheart, stay with me.” Holding her face between his hands, he made eye contact. “Are you alone?” he pressed. “I need to know if there’s anyone else down here. I’ll need to get them in the chopper.”

“I’m…not sure.” She looked over her shoulder uneasily. “I think I’m alone.”

“Good girl.” Using his left arm to steady her, he quickly secured the patient’s harness around her, trying not to notice the way that sweater clung to curves he had no business noticing at a moment like this. “How did you get here?”

“He was…chasing me.” Her gaze snapped to his, her eyes widened with what might have been recognition. “Oh, no. Oh, God! Richard, please, don’t—”

“Calm down,” he said firmly. “Just stay calm—”

“I won’t let you—”

“Stop it!” An alarm trilled in John’s head, and he gave her a little shake. The last thing he needed was for her to go ballistic on him while they dangled seventy-five feet over terrain not fit for a mountain goat. “Look at me.”

When her gaze met his, he saw vividly the terror in her eyes and felt the hairs at his nape stand on end. Something—or someone—had this woman spooked in a major way. “My name is John. I’m not going to hurt you. No one’s going to hurt you. You’re safe. Do you understand?”

Her lids fluttered, her eyes rolling back. Simultaneously her knees buckled. John caught her an instant before she fell.

“Terrific,” he muttered. Easing her to arm’s length, he drew her harness tight and clipped it to his, so that her limp body was flush against him. “We’re going up, sweetheart. Just relax and enjoy the ride.”

She stirred. “I can’t…feel my hands,” she whispered. “They’re numb. I can’t hold on.”

“You don’t have to hold on. I’ve got you.” He took her hands in his. Even through his thick gloves, he could feel the tremors wracking her body.

“Don’t…let me go,” she said.

Setting her palms against his chest, he put his arms around her shoulders. “I’m not going to let you go. I promise.”

Dark, shimmering eyes met his. He’d intended to give her a reassuring smile to keep her calm, like he had with a hundred other subjects during a hundred other rescues. But the power behind her gaze stopped him cold. For a split second the flying snow and the roar of the wind faded until his focus narrowed to the feel of her against him, the smell of her hair and the frightened, striking eyes staring back at him.

“Come on, Maitland, what are you doing? Picnicking down there?” Buzz’s voice crackled through his helmet communication gear with all the finesse of a chain saw. “Get it in gear!”

Shaking off his reaction to the woman, John forced himself to take a mental step back and signaled for the other man to winch them up. An instant later, the rope drew taut. She gasped as they were jerked off their feet.

“Damn winch operator has the mentality of a gorilla,” he grumbled, more to calm her than to complain because he knew there wasn’t a man alive who could operate a winch better than Buzz Malone.

In only a few seconds, John’s thoughts strayed from the operation at hand to the woman pressed against him—and how that closeness was affecting his body. He tried to keep his thoughts on IV fluids, the possibility of frostbite and the radio call he would be making to Lake County Hospital, but the fact that this beautiful, frightened woman was pressed flush against him with her head on his chest was doing a number on his concentration. Her arms were around his waist, and she clung to him as if he were her lifeline. Even through the bulk of his flight suit, he was aware of her body. Small-boned. Soft. Curvy as a mountain back road—and undoubtedly just as dangerous. Her fragrant hair was loose and blowing in his face.

He shouldn’t have acknowledged, even to himself, how good she felt wrapped around him like that—she was a trauma patient. He was an in-flight medic. She’d shoved a gun in his face just two minutes earlier, for crying out loud! God only knew what kind of a person she was.

All that aside, even under the best of circumstances, John figured he was the last man on earth who had the right to indulge in this woman’s vulnerability.

Steeling himself against his uncharacteristic reaction to her and physical sensations he knew better than to acknowledge, he forced his thoughts back to the operation and prepared to board the chopper. The ride up was swift and turbulent. The winds spun them like a top, but the woman didn’t make a sound. When a particularly strong gust sent them careening toward the chopper’s skid, he swiveled in midair and took the impact in the small of his back, determined to keep her from getting any more bruises.

“About time you showed up.” Buzz Malone’s voice reached him over the roar of the chopper’s engines and rush of wind. “What do we have?”

“Hypothermia. Possible frostbite.” Strong hands pulled them into the chopper. John looked down at the woman in his arms and felt a flutter of low-grade lust in his belly. Terrific. “You handled that like a pro,” he told her.

Her gaze met his. Despite her earlier terror and the fact that she was seriously hypothermic and shivering uncontrollably, a smile touched the corners of her mouth. The smile reached him as no words could have. For a moment he couldn’t look away. Simultaneously something shifted deep in his chest, something new and uncomfortable—and uncharacteristic as hell. He wanted to say something cocky, something to let his teammates know he wasn’t the least bit affected by all that red hair and her pretty eyes, but for the first time in his life, his wit failed him. He felt like he’d just been punched right between the eyes. All he could do was stare back at her and pray his team members weren’t aware that he’d suddenly lost his power of speech.

“Are you going to stand there all day, or are you going to let me unfasten her, so we can get an IV started?”

John jerked at the tone of Buzz’s voice. Realizing belatedly that the woman was no longer supporting herself, that he was just standing there holding her, he unclipped her harness and relinquished her to the two waiting men.

“What the hell, John? Did you get struck by lightning out there, or what?” Buzz asked.

“Must have been that boulder Flyboy slammed me into,” John muttered. Not sure why he’d reacted so strongly to her, ready to write it off to his long-neglected male libido, he stepped back, determined to walk away and forget it.

But John couldn’t make himself turn away. He damn well couldn’t shake the feeling that he’d just stepped out onto thin ice and was about to plunge headlong into something that promised to take a lot more than just his breath.

Her gaze never left him as Buzz and junior medic Pete Scully lifted her on the count of three and eased her onto the litter. Armed or not, she still had the most incredible eyes he’d ever seen. They were soft, expressive pools the color of expensive cognac. Rich with intelligence, they stared back at him with a moving mix of relief and gratitude—and the unmistakable realization that he’d saved her life.

So what if that fed his ego? There wasn’t a search-and-rescue professional alive that didn’t like having it stoked. So he’d reacted to her. It had been a while since he’d been with a woman. John wasn’t any Romeo—not by a long shot. He knew all too well the dangers of getting involved and he wasn’t going to go off the deep end over a pair of incredible eyes and handfuls of silky red hair.

Still, his reaction to her disturbed him—almost as much as the fact that she could very well have blown his head off.

“Buzz.”

Buzz tore the wrap from an IV needle. “What is it, Maitland?” the older man asked, never looking away from his work.

“Uh…she had a gun.”