Nurse's Outback Temptation
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Amy Andrews
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10
CHAPTER ONE
CHELSEA TANNER WAS a puddle of sweat. Already. After three steps. The sun scorched like a blast furnace overhead and the heat danced in visible waves from the black tar of the runway. Of course, she knew that Australia was hot in November—Outback Australia even more so. And, yes, she’d checked the temperature this morning and knew it was going to be forty-one degrees when she landed in Balanora.
But knowing it and being plunged into the scalding reality of it were clearly two very different things. Because this was ridiculously hot.
Welcome to hell, hot.
Her pale skin already crackling beneath the UV, she scurried across to the modest terminal, a familiar mantra playing on repeat through her head. It’s for the best. It’s for the best. Because Christmas in England would be worse. Blessedly cool, sure, but ninth circle of hell worse, and Outback Australia was the furthest point she could travel—physically and metaphorically—from home.
So, there was no turning back and, as she stepped through the sliding doors into the frigid blast of air-conditioning, she was grateful for the lifeline, no matter the temperature.
She just needed to...acclimatise.
Expecting to find as per the email, someone waiting for her after she’d grabbed her luggage from the carousel, Chelsea glanced around. People milled and greeted, hugging and laughing as pick-ups were made, but no one appeared to be there for her.
Maybe they were just running late.
She checked her phone—no messages. Finding a set of chairs nearby, she situated herself in view of the entrance to wait. No way in hell was she doing it outside the terminal. After fifteen minutes had passed, however, Chelsea grabbed her phone to call the number she’d been given.
‘Good afternoon, Outback Aeromedical, this is Meg, how may I help you?’
Meg sounded as peppy in real life as she had in her emails. ‘Hi, Meg, this is Chelsea Tanner. I’m terribly sorry to be a bother, but I’m at the Balanora airport and I thought someone was picking me up? I can get a taxi. I just don’t want to jump in one and maybe miss my lift if they’re just running late.’
‘What? But...you’re not supposed to be here until Thursday.’
Chelsea frowned. ‘The plane ticket you sent was for Tuesday. So...here I am.’
‘Oh dear, I have it marked on the calendar as Thursday.’ There was the tapping of computer keys and a clicking of a mouse in Chelsea’s ear. ‘I am so terribly sorry. I must have got my “T” days mixed up when I was inputting it to the calendar. It’s absolutely no excuse, but it can get super-busy here some days and I must have been distracted. Also that whole “pregnancy brain fog” thing turns out to be very real.’
The usual tangle of emotions around pregnancy rose up but Chelsea quashed them. She was thousands of miles away from the convoluted complications of her past and Meg had already moved on.
‘Gosh, this is terribly unforgiveable of me, especially after all the flight hassles you’ve already been through.’
Hassles was an understatement. Between the UK snap freeze, mechanical issues forcing an unscheduled landing and then, of all things, a volcanic eruption in Asia, Chelsea could have been forgiven for thinking this venture was cursed before it had even begun. And, some time during her fortieth travel hour, spent not in the air but in a crowded airport terminal, she had pondered whether the universe was trying to tell her something.
‘You must be exhausted.’
Actually she hadn’t felt too bad when she’d landed in Brisbane thirty-six hours after she was supposed to, despite not having had much sleep. Two further nights of jet-lag-interrupted sleep later, however, had not been kind. And then, with her time in Brisbane cut short thanks to her travel debacle, she’d hopped her flight to Balanora, arriving into the oven of the Outback.
As if, by just mentioning the word exhausted, Meg had made it so, Chelsea’s last spark of life leached away. She certainly felt every one of her thirty-two years. ‘I could sleep for a week,’ Chelsea admitted.
‘I bet you could!’ There was more key tapping. ‘Okay, stay there. I’ll be right out to pick you up. Unfortunately, there’s a small issue with your house. Aaron is currently staying there due to the air con in his breaking down.’
That would be Dr Aaron Vincent, Chelsea presumed, one of the senior flight doctors on the staff.
‘Which is fine, it’ll be fixed tomorrow, but Aaron has gone camping with some mates and won’t be back until this evening. And, as he’s out of mobile range, I can’t call him to come and get his stuff out of your house. I mean, it’s not much, but still, we like to have our houses spic and span before we hand them over, so we’ll put you up in the OA room at the pub. It’s permanently reserved for us in case we ever need it for stranded staff or visiting head honchos.’
Chelsea was fading fast. She didn’t mind where she slept. As long as there was air-conditioning. ‘Oh, thank you. That sounds great.’ Once again, not the most auspicious start to her new life, but she was far too tired to care right now.
‘Well, it’s not the Ritz, but it’s clean, safe, friendly, the water pressure is great, they serve good, hearty meals and it’s air-conditioned.’
Chelsea sighed. ‘You just said the magic words.’
Meg laughed. ‘Hold tight, I’ll be ten minutes.’
Twenty-five minutes later, Chelsea was saying goodbye to Meg as she followed a guy called Ray, who’d been serving behind the bar at the Crown hotel, up the internal stairs to the first floor. He carried her bag to the door then handed over her key.
A proper, old-fashioned key. That slid into a lock.
‘Thank you,’ she said.
He nodded and Chelsea opened the door to the massive room. Not that she noticed any of the detail. All she noticed was the general stuffiness and the giant air-conditioning unit on the wall above the bed.
Leaving her bag at the door, she crossed to the remote sitting on top of one of the bedside tables. With desperate, shaking hands, she pointed it at the unit and pressed the button labelled ‘on’. For a terrible few seconds, it stuttered, whined and didn’t do anything, and Chelsea thought, Dear God, what fresh hell is this? Then it powered to life, delivering a wave of cool air across her shoulders.
She almost collapsed on the bed in joy and relief. But not yet. Chelsea knew if she got horizontal it’d be all over, and she needed a shower. A nice, cool shower. Then she could crawl onto the bed—no, she didn’t care that it was only three in the afternoon—and sleep for the next twenty-four hours.
There was nowhere to be until this time tomorrow, when Meg was picking her up to take her to her new place, so hibernating until then seemed like a good plan.
Adjusting the temperature on the control to the lowest possible, Chelsea snapped the heavy curtains closed over a set of French doors that opened out onto a veranda, immediately plunging the room into semi-darkness. Dragging her suitcase to the end of her bed, she grabbed clean underwear and a tank top, along with some toiletries, and headed for the shower, lingering under the spray and hoping the room would be a thousand degrees cooler when she was done.
It was, and Chelsea almost cried as she lay on the crisp, white sheet that smelled of sunshine. Her skin was cool from the shower, her hair was damp and she knew it would be ten kinds of fluff ball in the morning, but she didn’t care. Right now this bed felt better than any other surface she’d ever lain on and she shut her eyes, falling head-first into the deep slumber of a person who has finally found her way through the double whammy of world time zones and militant body clocks to the deep, dark relief of unconsciousness.
Aaron Vincent was getting way too old to be drinking several nights in a row and roughing it in a swag on the hard tray of his ute, even if he’d been in the company of guys he’d known since he was a kid. Their annual camping trip out by the river that ran through Curran Downs, his family’s sheep station, had been a tradition ever since they’d left school. It had survived, despite three out of the six of them not living in the area any more, and five out of the six of them being married with children.
He being the odd one out.
Luckily their wives, all women of the Outback, were understanding about this sacred time every year. Kath, Dammo’s wife, who was five-and-a-half months’ pregnant with their third child, called it their knitting circle, which they all delighted in giving him shit about.
Aaron found her affectionate description hysterical. In an area known for blokey blokes, all six of them easily fit the mould, although him probably the least. Dammo and the others were still working on the land in one form or another, whereas he’d left over a decade ago to become a doctor before finally returning, three years ago, to work with the OA.
They loved taking the piss about soft hands and Aaron laughed along at the jokes, but he—and they—knew he could still shear a sheep, mend a fence and gets his hands dirty as well as he ever could. And did, whenever his sister, who had largely taken over the running of the property from their father now, needed some extra help.
But he’d be lying if he didn’t admit to relief as he passed the Welcome to Balanora sign on the way back in to town. He was looking forward to an actual mattress to cushion the twinge in his lower back. Except he stopped into the pub on his way through for a bite to eat, because he couldn’t be bothered to cook anything, and Tuesdays were always roast night.
Then he got talking to three women—nurses from Adelaide—who were passing through town on an Outback road trip. They were interested in the OA, and they chatted and laughed, and it felt good to feel thirty-five instead of the seventy-five his lumbar spine currently felt. Not a bad way to spend an evening. Better than five other blokes, who hadn’t showered in three days, and Dammo’s farting dog, Kenny.
Aaron left soon after the nurses departed, only to discover his ute had a flat tyre. Too tired to do something about it or even call a cab, he turned back to the pub to enquire if the OA room was empty. When Lyle, the publican, handed over the key, Aaron decided it was a definite sign from the universe to go to bed and fix the damn tyre in the morning.
Heading up the stairs, he let himself into number seven, the blessed cool of the room only registering at the same time he yanked his shirt over his head. Frowning, he flipped on the light switch to discover he was not alone. There was a barely covered woman he didn’t know in the middle of the bed, staring at him wild-eyed.
And then she screamed.
Aaron winced as she sat bolt-upright, her sandy-blonde hair in complete disarray, and dragged the sheet up to cover herself. ‘Get out! Get out right now!’ she screeched, blinking against the flood of light. ‘You come any closer and I will scream blue murder.’
If he hadn’t been distracted by her cut-glass English accent, he’d be keen to know what colour it was she had screamed. ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry!’ he apologised, holding out both of his hands, his T-shirt still clutched in his left hand as he backed up until his shoulder-blades hit the door.
‘I didn’t know anyone was in here,’ he continued, keeping his voice even and low and, he hoped, reassuring. ‘Lyle gave me the key. See?’ He held it up. ‘It’s just been a terrible misunderstanding.’
She didn’t say anything as she sucked in air noisily through her flared nostrils and glared. Someone pounded on the door behind him.
‘What the hell is going on in there, doc? Open up or I’ll kick the bloody thing in.’
Reaching behind him slowly so as not to panic the woman with any sudden moves, he turned the door handle, stepping aside to admit Lyle. Aaron greeted the publican with a what the hell? expression on his face. ‘You said the room was empty.’
The older man scowled at him. ‘What? There’s nobody in the book.’
He glanced across the room at Exhibit A, who was on her feet now and watching them both warily, the sheet wrapped tight around her, one hand clutching it close to her breast.
‘Oh.’ Lyle stared at her as if she’d arrived from a spaceship...because how else would anyone have got past the high-tech, triple-encrypted reservation system known as ‘the book’.
Cursing under his breath, something about bloody Ray and his testicles, Lyle addressed her. ‘I’m so sorry, m...miss.’ He advanced into the room, his hands extended in some kind of apology, but her eyes grew bigger and she took a step back. Lyle halted. ‘I didn’t know you were here.’ He looked at Aaron. ‘Somebody hasn’t put her in the book.’
Aaron bugged his eyes. ‘Clearly.’
Lyle returned his attention to the woman who somehow managed to look haughty despite her obvious discomfort and electric-socket hair. ‘Ray shouldn’t have rented out this room. It’s for Outback Aeromedical use only.’
‘I know.’ She glared, taking the haughtiness up another notch. ‘I’m starting there on Friday.’
‘Oh.’ Aaron smiled. Now it made sense. ‘You’re the new nurse? Chelsea Tanner?’
‘Yes.’
The team had been looking forward to her arrival this past couple of months. Having someone permanent—even if just for the year of her contract—would give some certainty and stability to the team.
If this very English miss didn’t baulk at the first spider and head for home, of course.
Aaron almost walked forward to introduce himself but quashed the impulse. Not the right time, dude. Not the right place. She looked as if she’d been roused from a very heavy sleep, and she was a lone female, in not many clothes, confronting two strange men.
‘I’m Aaron,’ he said, keeping his feet firmly planted on the floor and his eyes firmly trained on her face. ‘Vincent. One of the flight doctors. We...ah...weren’t expecting you until Thursday?’
She huffed out an impatient breath, neither acknowledging his introduction nor answering his query. ‘Yes, I know, there was a mix up with Meg, but do you think we could possibly do this introduction at a later date? Perhaps when we’re both more...’ She glanced pointedly at the shirt in his hand. ‘Clothed.’
Damn it! He’d forgotten he’d taken it off. Hastily, Aaron threw it back over his head. ‘Of course,’ he said, emerging from the neck hole and pulling the hem down. ‘We’ll leave you to get back to sleep.’ He started to back out, elbowing Lyle, who looked as if he was still trying to fathom how his system had failed. ‘Apologies again.’
‘Yes,’ Lyle agreed, jumping in quickly, in response to the elbow. ‘Huge apologies. I’ll be talking to Ray in the morning.’
She just eyed them warily as they backed out, her hand still clutching the sheet tight to her front. Easing the door gently closed, Aaron glanced at Lyle.
‘I’m going to kill Ray,’ he said.
Aaron might just help. ‘You got another room?’
‘Nope.’
Aaron sighed. Of course not. Resigned, he went and changed his tyre.
After the night’s interruption had dragged Chelsea out of the deepest darkest sleep of her life she feared she wouldn’t be able to get back to that place again but her fears were unfounded. It took less than a minute to slide back into that cool oblivion, ably aided by the vision of a shirtless Aaron Vincent, all six-foot-odd of broad, smooth chest, solid abs and delightfully scruffy hair.
He’d oozed male right across the room at her but, despite the potential threat in the situation, she hadn’t felt frightened. Sure, she’d been taken by surprise and had reacted as any woman would have at finding a shirtless stranger in her room in the middle of the night, but she hadn’t felt he’d had any ill intent.
On the contrary, she’d felt...attraction.
Maybe it was just some weird jet-lag or body clock thing. Maybe her foggy brain had been in a highly suggestible state. But, for the first time since her husband’s death three years ago, things actually stirred. She’d been aware of him as a man. Not an intruder, not a threat.
A man.
And that hadn’t happened for the longest time.
To make things worse, he was also the first thing she thought about when she finally awoke at two in the afternoon, which was exceedingly disconcerting. She hadn’t come to Australia to meet someone, to get involved or put her heart on the line again. She’d come to start anew—by herself. To escape the cloying clutches of family.
Stand on her own two feet.
She’d been stuck in a rut, her wheels spinning, and it was time—past time—to start moving forward again. But to do that she’d had to leave London because to stay would have meant continuing to live a lie. Minding her words and grinding her teeth, holding back the torrent of fury that bubbled beneath the surface, until her heart had become a locked box of resentment surrounded by the brittle shell of the woman everyone wanted her to be.
The woman she used to be.
Okay, maybe flying to the other side of the world was extreme, but she knew if she was too close to call on she’d keep being sucked back.
She needed to be out of reach.
She needed to be herself again, not just Dom’s poor widow. Poor Chelsea. And she wasn’t going to achieve that by mooning over some other guy. No matter how good he looked with his shirt off.
Rolling out of bed, she picked up her phone as she walked to the doors and drew back the curtains, a blast of light assaulting her eyeballs. Turning back, she grabbed a pair of shorts to go with her tank and stepped into them before scooping up her phone and heading out the glass doors.
Heat enveloped her as she stepped out onto the decking, the floorboards aged and worn beneath her feet. Placing her phone on the small round table situated not far from the doors, she continued several more feet to the gorgeous wrought-iron lace work of the railing, pleased at the full protection of the roof overhead. Squinting against the sun reflecting off metallic awnings and car roofs, she looked up and down the main street of Balanora.
It was wide, two lanes each side, with a generous section of central parking between. The cars were mostly shaded by the huge trees planted at regular intervals down the middle. Shops lined the street on both sides, cars pulling in regularly to angle-park at the kerbs. It seemed busy, with plenty of people coming and going, and more traffic than she’d imagined.
It didn’t take long for the beat of the sun to drive her back and she sat at the table, the only occupant on the long veranda as she checked her texts and emails. There were several from friends, checking she’d arrived okay, and several more had come in overnight from her mother-in-law. Chelsea had texted Francesca when she’d landed in Brisbane to let her know she’d arrived safely but hadn’t responded to any of the others.
The older woman hadn’t wanted her to go, had fretted that she’d be too far away from the people who loved her, but she’d eventually understood Chelsea’s need to get away. Still, she wasn’t above turning the screws, as the video she’d sent two hours ago of three-year-old Alfie—Dom’s son—testified.
Chelsea’s finger hovered over the play button. That familiar chin cleft and expression was so like his father’s. She wanted to listen to that sweet voice but was tired of the emotional wrench the mere existence of Alfie always caused. Through no fault of his own, Alfie was a living embodiment of her husband’s infidelity, and she was tired of pretending she was okay.
Thankfully, a text popped up on the screen, putting off the dilemma.
Hi, Chelsea, it’s Charmaine.
Charmaine White was the OA director. She had interviewed Chelsea via Zoom two months ago.
Sorry about the mix-up yesterday. Meg feels awful. I’ll be in the bar in an hour if you’re awake. If not just call on this number when you are and I can take you over to your new place.
New place. Sounded like heaven. Chelsea hit delete on the video and walked inside.
An hour later, Chelsea was ensconced in Charmaine’s Outback Aeromedical badged SUV, driving around the airport perimeter. Charmaine had suggested a tour of the base first, to which Chelsea had enthusiastically agreed. Several aged hangar buildings, languishing in the sunlight, passed by. The largest of them loomed just ahead, gleaming white, with Outback Aeromedical painted on the side along with the logo of a red plane in the middle of a giant yellow sun.
Charmaine parked in a small car park and ushered Chelsea in the front door with a swipe card. Several offices and storage rooms occupied this area and Charmaine whisked Chelsea through, introducing her to anyone she came across, before opening a door that led out to the cavernous space of the hangar proper. Chelsea looked up. The exposed internal roof struts spanned the curve of the roof almost to the ground on both sides, giving the impression of ribs caging them inside the belly of a giant beast.
Two planes sat idle, one larger than the other, both somehow managing to look small in the great yawning space.
‘That’s the King Air,’ Charmaine said, pointing to the smaller one. ‘It’s a twin turbo prop. We have two in our fleet here. This one did an immunisation clinic at one of the remote communities this morning.’
Chelsea knew from the interview with Charmaine that, as well as assistance in emergency situations, the OA also offered primary care in the form of remote clinics, dealing with things such as women’s health, mental health and preventative medicine, as well as routine blood tests and screening.
‘The other King Air is out on a job right now but should be touching down soon. They have a range of two thousand seven hundred kilometres. They take two stretchers and three seats.’
Charmaine walked towards the larger one and Chelsea followed. ‘This is the Pilatus PC-24.’ The door was closed but Charmaine stroked its gleaming white flank as if it was a favoured pet. ‘Isn’t she beautiful?’
‘She is.’
‘It’s only been with us for six months but already saved five lives in three separate road accidents. It can fly faster and longer, and can use a runway as short as eight hundred metres, which is a godsend out here. It takes three stretchered patients and up to two medical teams. It’s like an intensive care in the air.’
Chelsea smiled at Charmaine still petting the plane. ‘I imagine these are few and far between?’
‘They are,’ she confirmed. ‘I had to lobby hard for it to be based here. But, because we’re situated ideally as far as distance goes between Darwin, Adelaide and Brisbane, and we have a proportionally large amount of accidents, both car and farm, it was a no-brainer.’ She sighed. ‘Flies like a dream.’
‘Well, in that case, I can’t wait to go up in it.’
Just then an ambulance pulled into the area in front of the hangar which was now in shadow. Several people whom she’d met earlier came out from the door behind.
‘ETA?’ Charmaine asked a guy in maintenance overalls—Brett, maybe?—who was heading for a tractor parked just to the left on the inside wall of the hangar.
‘Five.’
‘C’mon, I’ll introduce you to the ambos.’
Charmaine introduced her to Kaylee and Robbo, who were friendly and personable, as they discussed the details of the traumatic amputation of several fingers and partial degloving of the hand that was currently on board the King Air. The plane came into sight and a tiny trill of excitement rumbled through Chelsea’s chest. Soon that would be her, flying all over the Outback, bringing help and hope to people who might otherwise find themselves in some dire situations where distance could make outcomes bleak.
This was what she’d come here for and she couldn’t freaking wait.
Chelsea watched the plane grow larger and larger, the wheels unfolding from the undercarriage as it descended and landed smoothly on the shimmering tarmac with barely a screeching of the tyres.
‘Perfect,’ Charmaine murmured.
The plane taxied toward the hangar as Robbo got the stretcher out of the back of the ambulance. The moment the plane’s props stopped spinning, the paramedics started towards it. ‘C’mon,’ Charmaine said with a grin. ‘I’ll introduce you to the crew.’
The heat was still intense but Chelsea followed her eagerly across the hot bitumen, squinting as the sun dazzled off the metallic fuselage of the plane. She made a note to hit the town tomorrow and buy the best damn pair of sunglasses Balanora had to offer.
It was that or end up with crow’s feet ten-feet deep by the end of her year.
The door opened, lowering as they approached to form stairs. A woman, who looked about forty, in navy trousers and a navy polo shirt with the OA logo on the collar and pilot stamped in large red letters across the front, greeted them. ‘Hey,’ she said. ‘Looks like we got us a welcoming party.’
‘Hey, Hattie,’ Charmaine greeted her. ‘Textbook landing as per usual.’
‘That’s why you pay me the big bucks,’ Hattie quipped as she descended the stairs and moved out of the way for the paramedics to move the stretcher in for the patient transfer.
‘Hattie, meet Chelsea. She starts officially on Friday but I’m giving her the quickie tour today.’
The older woman held out her hand, saying, ‘Pleased to meet you.’
Chelsea shook the offered hand and said, ‘Likewise.’
‘Ready to go?’
Glancing back to the plane at the familiar voice, Chelsea’s eyes met Aaron’s. Standing on the top step, framed by the door of the plane behind, in navy trousers and shirt with Flight Doctor emblazoned on the front in block letters, a stethoscope slung casually around his neck, he looked calm and confident. His hair ruffled in the slight hot breeze as a surge of...something flooded her system.
Desire, she supposed. But there was something else too. A tug that didn’t feel sexual, an attraction that wasn’t sexual.
A feeling of...yearning?
‘Ready when you are,’ Kaylee said.
His eyes broke contact then and a pent-up breath escaped Chelsea’s lungs in a rush, her body practically sagging. Holy freaking moly. She hoped this was just the jet-lag because this whatever it was was seriously inconvenient.
Maybe it was just that she went for a particular sort of man and Aaron had pinged her radar after three years of not noticing any man. Dom had been a combat medic, after all. Good-looking, though in a very different way from Aaron. More pretty-boy beautiful—high cheekbones, amazing eyebrows and long eyelashes that had been his mamma’s pride and joy. He hadn’t been as tall or as broad, and his hair had been jet-black and shiny, his skin bronzed, hinting at his Sicilian heritage.
Hattie excused herself, breaking into Chelsea’s thoughts, and she forced herself to concentrate on the activity at the plane door as they unloaded the patient. It took a few minutes, the team all working as one, but the patient was soon out and on the stretcher.
He appeared to be in his fifties, one arm heavily bandaged and elevated in a sling hanging from a pole off the stretcher, the other arm sporting two IV sites. A bag of fluid was running through the cubital fossa site in the crook of his elbow and an infusion of what she assumed to be some kind of narcotic, given he didn’t appear to be in any overt pain, was hooked up to the one in the back of his hand.
He was shirtless with three cardiac dots stuck to his chest and his jeans and work boots were well-worn and dust-streaked with some darker patches of blood. A woman about the same age—his wife?—her face creased with worry, stood at the head of the stretcher, her clothes and sturdy work boots also streaked in caked-on dirt, dust and some blood.
Chelsea listened with half an ear as Aaron ran through the details for the paramedics, focused more on the deep resonance of his voice, his accent, than the content of the verbal hand over. Words such as ‘mangled’, ‘traumatic amputation’ and ‘morphine’ registered only on a superficial level until she heard, ‘Two fingers on ice in the Esky.’
Esky? Glancing across, she saw a male flight nurse hand over a small Styrofoam container she assumed was a cool box.
The report ended and Kaylee and Robbo departed with the stretcher, the patient’s wife following close behind. Aaron turned back for the plane and Chelsea wondered if he was avoiding her after what had happened last night.
‘Chelsea,’ Charmaine said. ‘This is Trent Connor, he’s one of our lifers.’
Dragging her attention off Aaron, Chelsea smiled at the statuesque indigenous man in the flight-nurse shirt. He had salt-and-pepper hair, salt-and-pepper whiskers and an easy grin. Trent’s level of experience had been evident from his pertinent additions to the hand over process, his quick efficiency with the equipment and procedures and his rapport with the patient and his wife. Then there’d been the synergy between him, Aaron and the paramedics which spoke of a well-oiled team and mutual respect.
‘Born and raised right here on Iningai country,’ he said, offering his hand. ‘Thirteen years with the service next month.’
‘Hi, it’s lovely to meet you.’ They shook hands. ‘I’ll be counting on you to show me the ropes.’
‘Most important thing to remember is not to eat anything in the fridge labelled “Brett” if you want to live.’
‘I heard that.’ A voice drifted round to them from the other side of the plane.
Trent grinned. ‘He puts triple chilli on everything.’
‘He does.’ Charmaine shuddered. ‘God alone knows what the inside of his gut must look like.’
‘Still hearing you.’
Chelsea laughed. ‘Duly noted.’ Although she liked her food spicy too.
‘When you get settled in, you should come round for dinner one night. The missus makes a deadly risotto.’
Chelsea assumed that deadly in this instance was a compliment and not meant in the literal sense. ‘I’d love to.’
‘How come I never get an invite to dinner?’
Every sense going on high alert, Chelsea glanced behind Trent to find Aaron striding across to their group, his mop of dark-brown hair blowing all around in the light breeze, the sun picking out bronzed highlights. His strong legs ate up the distance, his gait oozing self-possession.
‘Because you flirt with my wife.’
‘Ha,’ Aaron said as he halted opposite Trent and next to Charmaine, his hand pushing his hair back off his forehead, where it had settled in haphazard disarray. ‘Your wife flirts with me, buddy.’
Trent rolled his eyes. ‘My wife is Irish. She flirts with everyone.’
Aaron laughed and Chelsea’s insides gave a funny kind of clench at the deep, rich tone. ‘True. Very true.’
‘And of course,’ Charmaine said as Trent excused himself and headed back to the plane, ‘you’ve already met Aaron Vincent, one of our four flight doctors on staff.’
Steeling herself to address him directly, Chelsea schooled her features. ‘Yeah, we did.’
He grimaced but a smile played on a mouth that dipped on the right. Up this close, and not in a fog of panic and jet-lag, she could see more detail than last night. Such as his eyes, that were a calm kind of grey but nevertheless seemed to penetrate right to her soul.
Thrusting his hand out, he said, ‘Nice to meet you properly, Chelsea, and apologies again about last night.’
Keeping her smile fixed, Chelsea pushed the awkwardness from last night aside and took his hand. ‘It’s fine,’ she said dismissively as a pulse of awareness flashed up her arm and their gazes locked. Those grey eyes were no longer laughing but intense, as if he could feel it too. ‘These things happen.’
Aaron’s features were more...spare than Dom’s, she realised. Up this close, it was impossible not to compare him with the only other man who’d ever caused such a visceral reaction. Dom’s face had been all smooth and perfectly proportioned, where Aaron’s was kind of...battered. Like a thin piece of sheet metal that had been hammered over a mould, the indents still visible as it pleated sharply over the blade of his jaw and curved over the somewhat crooked line of his nose.
There was a slight asymmetry to his face too, the right cheekbone a little lower than the left, making his right eyebrow and eye slightly out of line with their left-sided counterparts, and causing a crookedness to the right side of his mouth, giving him that lopsided smile. A tiny white vertical scar bisected his chin at the jawline.
Once again, she was overwhelmed by the pure masculine aura of him. By a tug that was almost feral in its insistence that she move closer. Panicked that she might actually act on the impulse, she dropped her hand from his grasp, only just quelling the urge to wipe her palm on her shorts to rid it of the strange pulsing sensation.
‘Will the patient be transferred to a primary healthcare facility soon?’ Chelsea asked him, grabbing desperately for normality.
Just two professionals talking shop. Nothing to see here.
‘Yeah,’ Aaron confirmed. ‘Balanora hospital isn’t equipped for major micro-surgery but he’ll get X-rays and have his condition assessed properly here first. Brisbane already knows about him. They’ll be sending out a retrieval team, probably in the next couple of hours. His injury is stable but the viability of the fingers makes his transfer time critical.’
‘He was lucky,’ she said.
‘Yep. There was a fencing accident out on one of the properties around here about five years ago that severed an arm and resulted in a fatality when the guy bled out.’ He shook his head. ‘It was awful. Trent was on the flight and it was an old friend of his. Rocked the community.’
‘Does that happen often? Treating people you know?’
‘Reasonably often, yes. Balanora might only have a population of three thousand but we’re the major centre for the surrounding districts. People from all around shop here or see a doctor here or send their kids to school here. People with kidney disease come to the hospital for dialysis, babies are born here. There are a few restaurants and a couple of churches, and popular social events are run at the town hall every month. Not to mention the OA’s regular district clinics. So, yeah, pretty much everyone knows everyone.’
Chelsea nodded slowly. Aaron’s voice was rich with pride and empathy, as if he understood all too well the double-edged sword of living in and serving the health needs of a small community. That wasn’t something Chelsea had ever had to worry about when she’d been flying all over the UK for the last decade on medical retrievals, mostly via chopper. The area was a similar size to the one she would be covering out here but the population differential had made the possibility of actually treating someone she knew remote.
Unlike Aaron, obviously. His steady grey gaze communicated both the privilege and the burden of such situations and, for a ridiculous second, Chelsea wanted to reach over, slide a hand onto his arm and give it a squeeze.
She didn’t. But it was a close call.
After what felt like a very long pause, during which no one said anything, Charmaine broke the silence. ‘You ready to check out your new digs? Your boxes arrived this morning and are in the garage. Or do you want to explore some more around here?’
Chelsea jumped at the lifeline, finally breaking the sudden intensity between her and Aaron Vincent. She did not want to explore more—she didn’t want to be anywhere near this man and his curious ability to stir her in ways she hadn’t been prepared for. She was obviously going to have to deal with this soon, but for now she was happy to pretend it was a combination of jet-lag, unresolved emotional baggage and stepping outside her comfort zone. And would pray that it was a temporary aberration.
‘New digs would be good. Might as well get a start on unpacking.’
‘Right.’ Charmaine nodded. ‘Let’s go.’
