Doctor's Mile-High Fling

CHAPTER ONE

A FINE line existed between taking a dare and actually going through with it.

Molly McKinna was about to cross that line. Belted in and ready to take off, she glanced out of the window at her partner in crime, who simply made a rolling motion with his hand: get on with it.

Easy for Doug to say. His clammy fingers weren’t the ones glued to the sides of the copilot seat of the small Cessna.

Flying. Why did it have to involve flying?

“Are you ready?” The flash of a hard dimple signaled the rescue pilot’s amusement, but he could laugh his head off for all she cared. As long as he brought her back from Dutch Harbor alive.

She agreed with Doug, really she did. She had to decide if she could hack the flight from Anchorage to the Aleutian islands before accepting the job. But why did she have to choose a location where the only mode of transportation involved whizzing across the ocean as if shot from a giant slingshot?

You’d think being born to a bush pilot would give her an innate love for flying. But since her father, a man with thirty years of experience, had died in a plane crash on this very same route while she’d been in medical school, she no longer had much confidence in the whole flying scene. In fact, she’d avoided it ever since.

And yet here she was. Desperation sometimes bred stupidity.

Realizing the man at the controls was awaiting her reply, she mumbled, “Do I look ready?”

Either he didn’t hear her, or figured that was as close to an affirmative answer as he was likely to get, because his mouth quirked once again before he revved the engines to a howling fury and raced toward the end of the tarmac.

Oh, God, oh, God, oh, God…

Then they were off the ground and climbing fast.

She only realized her eyes were screwed shut when her traveling companion’s deep voice broke through the whine of the engine. “You can let go now.”

Cracking open one eyelid, she glanced sideways and encountered the pilot’s strong tanned jaw, the lightest dusting of dark stubble making him look more human somehow. When she’d first arrived at the airport, he’d seemed a little annoyed at being recruited to fly her to check out the medical facilities on the islands. Moments later, she’d decided she’d either imagined his reaction or he hid his emotions all too well.

Even so, she couldn’t blame him for being irritated, since he’d wound up having to watch and wait while Doug had given her a pep talk about cars being more dangerous than planes. Not that his speech had helped calm her racing heart!

No way could she run now, though. She was strapped in and hanging high above the sea. And she still had the return trip to look forward to.

“So the flight takes three hours?” Molly forced her hands off the seat and into her lap, linking her fingers in what she hoped was a reasonable facsimile of casual indifference.

“Depending on weather conditions, yes.”

“And today’s conditions are…?”

“For this time of year?” He slid a sideway glance at her and raised his brows. “About normal.”

Normal.

Molly gave an inward eye roll. Well, that certainly gave her a lot to go on. Why did every pilot she’d ever met speak in that deep soothing baritone that only made her want to scramble for the nearest life vest? Did their final exam include an “octave” test or something? Were the pilots with high squeaky voices ejected in mid-flight?

Her teeth came down on her lip. Okay, the words ejected and mid-flight were officially banned from her vocabulary.

“I’m sorry about your father.” He looked straight ahead. “He was a good man.”

“You knew him?” That surprised her—enough to let her push aside some of her fear. She’d seen the hunky pilot around the hospital from time to time. She even knew his name was Blake Taylor, but her father had never mentioned him when he’d been alive.

Maybe someone had seen fit to enlighten him. The accident had happened four years ago, but the people in charge had laid the blame squarely in her dad’s lap. They felt he’d been reckless to attempt to fly during that storm. As did her mother. It infuriated her to no end. Most of her friends knew better than to bring up his name in her company. Then again, this man wasn’t a friend, neither was he likely to become one. And if he said one ugly word about her father, she was going to—

“Wayne helped train me. In my opinion.” His voice trailed off.

Molly’s backbone stiffened further. Was Blake aware of the circumstances of the accident?

A hand came off the yoke—how had she even remembered that word?—and touched her arm. “I think he made the right call to fly that day, for the record.”

“Y-you do?” It was chilly inside the cockpit, and the heater struggled to keep up, kicking out a lukewarm stream of air. But the touch of the pilot’s hand heated her instantly. “That’s not the prevailing opinion, from what I’ve heard.”

Not even her mother had cut her dad any slack, nagging him relentlessly to give up flying—to get a job closer to home. Her bitterness at his refusal had aged her, tilting her mouth permanently down at the corners. Once Molly had returned from medical school, her mom had focused that vast reservoir of neediness on her only daughter, urging her to live at home. Between her mother and her ex-boyfriend, those two years in Anchorage had sucked the life from her, left her feeling suffocated and alone.

Then a job had opened up in the Aleutians, and she’d leapt at it, flying or no flying. Her mother’s reaction to the news still rang in her ears: Go on and get yourself killed. Leave me all alone. You’re just like your father!

Was she?

Heavens, she hoped so. Maybe that was another reason she’d needed this job so very badly. It was not only a means of escape but a way to hang on to a little piece of her father.

She glanced out the window. The more altitude they gained, though, the more she rued her decision as an impulsive lapse in judgment. But the alternative was untenable. Staying at the hospital had been awkward at best, disastrous at worst. Besides, her father had loved his job, had said he couldn’t imagine doing anything else. Maybe she just needed to make peace with that—to try to understand what had motivated him to keep making these trips.

Blake smiled at her, breaking into her thoughts. “Don’t listen to them. They’re all too happy to shift the blame to someone other than themselves.”

She had to blink a few times to realize he wasn’t talking about her mother but about those who blamed her father for the accident. “So not everyone thought my father was at fault?”

“Ask a few of the local pilots. I think you’ll be surprised at their answers.” He paused. “The weather over the islands can be unpredictable even during the summer. One minute it’s clear blue skies, and the next…”

“So why do it?” Maybe she should be asking herself that very same question. “Surely you could have been an EMT or chosen something safer than this? Alaska Regional could always use a few more paramedics.”

And not one of the single nurses—or any of the married ones, for that matter—would complain if he hung around the hospital a little more. Blake was something of a legend around that place. But from the whispered comments she’d overheard, none of the women in question had managed to worm their way past that charming smile and into his bed.

He shrugged. “As a kid, I loved watching old videos of Evel Knievel. Since I can’t rocket across Snake River Canyon, I figure I can fly from Anchorage to Dutch Harbor. All I lack is the cool jumpsuit.”

“Evel Knievel never successfully jumped that river.”

“But he tried.”

Molly shuddered. She hoped he wasn’t drawing an analogy between the famous daredevil’s doomed flight and the one she was now on. Did she really want to work with a man who seemed to be hooked on adrenaline? She didn’t have a choice, since he was considered the best of the best now that her father was gone. Accepting this position meant she’d fly with him from time to time as they medevaced patients from the islands to the hospital in Anchorage.

If she took the job.

Nothing was set in stone. In fact, she couldn’t risk jeopardizing the project, if she couldn’t get past her fear. She’d have to let someone else take her place. Except none of the other doctors had stepped up and volunteered—they all had families, and no one was anxious to leave a thriving hospital to work in a government-funded clinic.

And part of her father’s heart was still on those islands. A part she wanted desperately to understand.

She blinked, realizing the stabbing terror that had frozen her on takeoff was trickling away. She was still afraid, but the more Blake talked the more her nerves settled.

It had to be his voice. Maybe flight instructors gave lessons in hypnotism as well as voice modulation.