A Hero To Hold

Buzz swung an incredulous stare at him. “What?”

“I said she had a gun—”

“I heard you the first time.” Buzz looked down at the woman, his expression incredulous. “Where is it?”

“She dropped it.”

“Did she threaten you with it?”

John had debated telling him the part where she’d pointed it at him. But Buzz was an ex-cop. John trusted his judgment. “She was terrified. Confused.”

“Holy hell. She did, didn’t she?”

“She thought I was someone else,” he said, hating it that he felt as if he’d somehow betrayed her. He didn’t owe her anything. For all he knew, she could be a criminal.

“Who was she expecting, Jack the Ripper?”

“She was scared out of her mind.”

“Scared enough to pull a gun on a man trying to save her life?”

John looked down at the pale woman lying on the litter. “I don’t think she planned to use it.”

Buzz cursed, his face set and angry. “Open a line for me, Scully,” he snapped. “Let’s get some fluids into her.”

Using the shears from the med kit, Buzz began cutting away her sweater and jeans. He hesitated an instant when the purple bruises on her arms and throat came into view. “Bloody hell.”

“Criminy.” Scully’s jaw tightened, his gaze sweeping from the woman’s bruised body up to Buzz.

John stared at the dark bruises marring the flesh of her throat. Bruises that were the perfect imprint of a man’s fingers. Outrage burgeoned in his chest. Nausea seesawed in his gut as the memory of another woman taunted him. A woman with fear in her eyes and bruises on her body. The burn of shame sizzled through him followed by the sting of regret so sharp he winced.

“Looks like maybe she was trying to protect herself,” Scully offered.

The woman tried to sit up, her eyes glued to the scissors. “Please…don’t….”

John knew Buzz had seen too much in his years as a cop and then as a medic to let the sight of her bruises faze him. “Try to relax, honey,” the team leader soothed. “We’re going to treat you for hypothermia. I’ve got to get these wet clothes off you. Hold still for me, now, all right?”

Shivering uncontrollably, she lay back on the litter and squeezed her eyes shut. But John could clearly see that she wasn’t relaxed. Her hands were clenched into fists, her jaws clamped tight. Her entire body trembled violently. He wondered if it was from the cold—or the terror she’d suffered at the hands of whomever had put those bruises on her. The thought sickened him.

As the beauty of her flesh came into view, John averted his gaze. He’d seen plenty of victims prepped for the emergency room over the years. Most times, that included cutting away the impediment of clothing so the team could assess whatever trauma they’d sustained. In this case, removing her wet clothes was imperative in treating hypothermia. Male or female, in all the years he’d been a medic, the procedure had never bothered him. The fact that it did with this rescue—and this particular woman—left him feeling acutely uneasy. A hell of a reaction for a man who’d devoted his life to the art of never getting involved.

John had one staunch rule that he’d lived by since the day he walked out of the Philadelphia tenement at the age of seventeen and never looked back: Never get involved. Not with the people around him. Not with his patients. And never, ever with women. He’d broken that rule only once in the last thirteen years—and paid a terrible price. He wouldn’t do it again. So why was his heart pounding like a drum as he watched the tears well in her eyes and spill down her wind-burned cheeks?

Reaching into the med kit, John withdrew an insulated blanket and snapped it open. Stepping over to the litter, he pulled the blanket up to her chin. “What’s with the tears, gorgeous?”

Her eyes latched on to his, heavy-lidded with the effects of hypothermia. “I thought…I was…going to die.”

“I forgot to mention this to you, but that wasn’t an option,” he said easily.

She closed her eyes, but a smile played at the corners of her mouth. “You’re…bossy.”

“It’s an ego thing, actually. I’m a hopeless egomaniac.”

“I’m willing to overlook… You saved…my life.”

A quick jab of alarm stabbed through John when she slurred the words. Reaching into the cabinet overhead, he broke open a radiant heat pack, gave it a quick twist and pressed it to her abdomen. “I don’t know if you realized this, Red, but I’m damn good at what I do.”

“Modest…too. I should have…known.”

Her voice was so low, John had to lean close to hear her.

Buzz grimaced. “Her respiration is slow. She’s stopped shivering. Body temp’s at ninety-four. No pupil dilation yet, but I don’t want to risk cardial arrhythmia. Let’s go to active rewarming. Pete, get some oxygen going, will you?”

Before realizing he was going to touch her, John pressed the backs of his fingers to her cheek to find her flesh cold to the touch. “Stay with me, Red. Come on. Keep your eyes open.”

Pete peeled the wrap from another IV needle while Buzz swabbed the top of her hand with alcohol. She didn’t so much as wince when the needle slipped into her vein. Realizing both Buzz and Pete had the situation under control, John rose. He knew it was stupid, but he didn’t want to leave her.

Shaking off the sentiment, he started for the VHF console to radio the hospital, but the sound of her voice stopped him cold. He turned back to her, found her eyes open and focused on him.

“Thank you…for saving…my life,” she whispered.

Feeling the back of his neck heat, he unfastened the top button of his flight suit. “You just hold up your end of the deal, Red.”

“What’s…my end of the deal?”

“I’ll settle for you staying awake until we get to County. Think you can handle that?”

“You gonna sit there and make cow eyes at her all day, Maitland, or call County with our E.T.A.?”

John frowned at his team leader, but for the second time that day, realized he didn’t have a comeback, witty or otherwise. He was going to hear about this later, he knew. John the Untouchable, going mush-brained over a female patient with a pretty face, tons of red hair—and trouble written all over her shapely body.

Cursing under his breath, he moved over to the VHF radio, snatched up the mike and summoned Lake County Hospital. “This is RMSAR Eagle two niner. We’ve got a Jane Doe en route. Approximately twenty-seven years old. Possible closed head wound. Moderate hypothermia. Respiration slow. Body temp at ninety-four. No sign of cardial arrhythmia. Probable extremity frostbite with tissue damage. Numerous superficial injuries. We’ll need a CT.E.T.A. twelve minutes.”

As dispatch radioed their reply and cleared them for landing, John risked a look at the auburn-haired beauty lying on the litter. He wasn’t sure why he was feeling so protective of her. She was going to be all right. Her confusion would ease as soon as they got her body temperature back to normal. Her fingers and toes might be frostbitten, but none of her injuries appeared to be life-threatening. Well, if you didn’t count the bruises on her throat.

He’d get over this protective male nonsense by the time they reached the hospital. He looked at his watch. Eleven minutes and counting.

Yeah, he’d be just fine in about eleven minutes.

Chapter 2

Glorious heat wrapped around her as if she’d been immersed in a warm bath. Relaxation spread through her body, rippling through muscle and tendon and radiating all the way to her bones. The lavender haze surrounding her brain cushioned the pain in her head and eased the throbbing ache in her hands and feet.

She’d never floated before, but this wasn’t at all unpleasant. She was especially enjoying the dream about the man in the orange flight suit. The man with black, short-cropped hair, electric blue eyes and that devil-be-damned grin. The man who’d swooped down out of the sky and rescued her from…

From what?

Alarm quivered through her. The warmth she’d been feeling fled. In its place, something dark and menacing gripped her. A vague sense of terror crept over her like the shadow of some huge predator about to attack. She felt threatened, pursued, but her mind couldn’t seem to pinpoint by what—or whom.