His Cinderella Houseguest
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Charlotte Hawkes
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CHAPTER ONE
THE MUSCULAR MOTORBIKE hugged the bend tightly and skilfully hurtled along the quiet A roads as Dr Lincoln Oakes—Lord Oakes to those who knew his family—raced to work on time.
He was never late. Never.
Strictly speaking, he supposed he wasn’t late now. The crew weren’t due on the air ambulance base until seven o’clock and it was still only six-forty. But that didn’t make him feel any less agitated; it was a full ten minutes past the time he usually liked to be in work—always the first one in.
As if timings—not never-ending nightmares of that hellish night in the last war zone he’d been in—were the sole cause of his agitation.
Shifting on his motorbike, Linc accelerated harder and drew down from the sense of satisfaction that slid through him as the sleek machine emitted another throaty roar as it surged smoothly along the road.
As if that would change anything.
As though tearing along these country lanes meant he could somehow outpace the ghosts that haunted him, or silence the voices that whispered their accusations to him in the witching hours. The nightmares were turning his head into a battle zone so that every time he jerked awake he could practically hear the gunfire, smell the acrid smoke, and feel the scorching Afghanistan sun.
Anniversaries of that terrible night were always painful, but this one—the fifth one—was hitting him harder than usual. No doubt because it had only been a month since the funeral of the old Duke of Stoneywell—the man who had been not only his father but his guide for the first two decades of Linc’s life, but who had been more like a stranger these latter fifteen years, and not just because of the cruel disease that was Alzheimer’s.
Without warning, memories closed in on Linc, making the scraping inside him all the more intense, and raw. He pushed them forcefully away; the last thing he needed was to be late for his job as an air ambulance doctor and miss a shout. How many more people could he fail to help?
Rolling the throttle as he leaned his bike, Linc powered around another tight bend—as if he could somehow escape his demons. As if he didn’t know by now that it was impossible. But if he could just get through the next few days, after that they would grow weaker, and he’d be able to stuff them down for another year.
Finally, the roof of the Helimed hangar pulled into view. The glint of the morning sun off the harsh metal coverings. Down this straight, and a left into the entrance road, and he’d be there—into yet another shift that could mercifully occupy his thoughts for the next twelve hours.
Skidding his rear tyre as he drew to an abrupt halt, Linc threw his leg over the seat and yanked his helmet off as he moved. Another few strides and he was hurrying into the building where the close-knit team relaxed in between shouts, and he waited for familiar sounds to chase his ghosts away; letting them slink off at the door the way they always did when he was around his crew.
But today, instead of everyone being gathered in the kitchen, the usual mouth-watering breakfast cooking smells filling the air, his attention was drawn to the rec room—their recreation space—where there seemed to be something of a meeting going on.
Spinning sharply, he strode down the corridor and slipped into the room alongside Tom, one of the two paramedics on his crew.
‘What’s the story?’ he asked, jerking his head towards the air ambulance charity’s regional coordinator. ‘What’s he doing here?’
‘You just got here?’ Tom craned his neck around in surprise. ‘You’re always the first one in.’
‘First time for everything.’ Linc tried to shrug it off, even as he hated to do so. ‘So, what’s going on?’
‘It seems Albert and Jenny were in a car accident on their way home last night.’
‘Hell.’ Something walloped into Linc, hard and low. ‘What happened?’
Albert had been their Helimed crew’s pilot for as long as anyone could remember and was like a father figure to the rest of them. They had a standing joke that the older guy had been installed along with the oldest parts of the rec room’s ratty furniture.
Even Jenny, Albert’s real-life daughter, had started as second paramedic on the team on the very same day that Linc himself had begun, four years ago. So, in a tight crew like this they weren’t just colleagues, they were also like family.
‘Not sure exactly what happened.’ Tom shook his head. ‘But apparently it’s serious but not life threatening.’
‘Well, that’s something at least.’ Linc blew out a deep breath.
‘Yeah. We’re just waiting on more news.’
‘And that’s what the chief came to say?’
‘That and the fact that he’s managed to get hold of an outside pilot for today’s shift.’
‘Why an outside pilot?’ Linc frowned. ‘Echo team’s pilot is our go-to standby. What about a second paramedic?’
‘We haven’t got echo team’s pilot—not unless he’s turned into one of the hottest females I reckon I’ve ever seen.’
Linc snorted. ‘Playboy Paramedic Tom’s on heat again.’
Though to be fair, Tom’s flirting always came second when he was a shout. Playboy or not, Tom was a damned good paramedic.
‘Yeah, yeah.’ The other man laughed now. ‘I can’t help it if women love me. They love you too, only you’re too damned prickly to ever notice. As for our second paramedic, it’s Probie.’
Linc eyed the lad across the room. In an air ambulance unit like theirs, they almost always had a trainee with them, whether it was a trainee doctor, or a trainee paramedic, and they almost always got the nickname Probie. This particular lad had been a land ambulance paramedic for years before he’d joined their Helimed crew. Making him up to a full-blown second paramedic to cover Jenny seemed like the good decision.
The new pilot, on the other hand, was a different matter.
‘Fair enough re Probie,’ Linc muttered. ‘But I still don’t see why they don’t just bring in echo team’s pilot. At least we’d all know how this particular crew works.’
‘You know that Albert had started to talk to the powers that be about retirement, right?’
‘Damn, I knew he was thinking about it,’ Linc conceded. ‘I didn’t realise he’d actually spoken to anyone outside our team, though.’
‘Apparently HQ already had feelers out for a new permanent pilot.’
‘Yeah, well, they’ve got big shoes to fill replacing Albert. He was a top-notch RAF pilot with countless missions under his belt.’
‘And apparently this new pilot is Army Air Corps. Plus she has over a decade’s experience.’
Something slammed into Linc before he had time to think. A memory that punctured his chest and then bounced around, rattling at his ribcage, and evading his attempts to capture it.
‘Army Air Corps?’ he echoed, more sharply than he’d intended.
‘Yeah. HQ were desperate when the call came in about Albert so they ended up phoning the regiment up the road to see if the military could lend us a pilot even for the day.’
‘It’s about eighty miles away,’ Linc pointed out jerkily. ‘Hardly up the road.’
‘You know what I mean.’ Tom brushed it off. ‘Anyway, from what I can gather, the AAC told HQ that they could lend us a pilot, and that she’s even getting ready to leave the military for Civvy Street. Regional have been falling over themselves all morning at the idea of securing her as a permanent replacement for Albert.’
The memory rattled harder in Linc’s chest. There was no rational explanation for it, yet it was there all the same.
A feeling.
An image.
Piper.
He hadn’t thought of her in years. No, scratch that—he hadn’t allowed himself to think of her in years. Which was a slightly different thing.
An Apache pilot within the Army Air Corps, Piper had served on several tours of duty with him—including that last one. Her skill and passion for her career had made her a guardian angel of the skies, and a glorious light illuminating the darkness of that hellhole.
And if it hadn’t been for Piper’s fast thinking and even faster flying, then those enemy leakers would have slipped the lines and managed to get into the hospital where he and his team had been holed up with the civilian patients. Which would have simply meant more numbers added to the body count that final hellish day.
But more than her skill and dedication to her career, the two of them had grown close on that tour, seeking each other out during downtime, sharing war stories, or simply trying to make sense of the events of a particular day or week.
Not to mention the almost-kiss the two of them hadn’t quite shared.
If his responsibilities to his brother—the acting Duke of Stoneywell—hadn’t left him no choice but to leave his beloved army a matter of weeks later, Linc had often wondered what might have happened between him and Piper.
Linc shoved the memories away, the way he had on those few occasions when she’d sprung, unbidden, to mind over the past few years. Whoever the new female pilot was, it wouldn’t be Piper. The woman had always been married to her career above all else—there’d be no way Piper would be leaving the AAC for Civvy Street. She’d always joked that they’d probably have to carry her out of that job in a wooden box.
‘Linc?’ Tom’s voice dragged him back to the present and he forced himself to focus on his colleague.
The last thing he needed was another haunting by his past right now.
‘Yeah? Oh, right?’ His voice sounded scratchy, but that couldn’t be helped. ‘Well, I guess an ex-AAC pilot wouldn’t be a bad stand-in for the crew.’
‘And if Albert’s finally ready to enjoy a bit of retirement, then we can’t exactly begrudge him that, can we?’
‘Right,’ Linc grated, his mind still racing despite his attempts to calm it.
It was almost a small mercy when a flurry of movement in the corridor negated the need for him to add more, as the charity’s regional co-ordinator bustled cheerfully back in, a figure at his back.
‘Okay, team, I’m delighted to introduce you to your new pilot. This is Piper Green.’
Linc’s entire world—his entire being—went suddenly, somehow...liquid, and yet granite hard, all at the same time. It was a miracle his diaphragm could even move enough to allow him to keep breathing.
For a moment, he had to wonder if he was seeing things...if she’d been conjured up by the fact that he’d just been thinking about her. And the morning sun shining at her back like some kind of prophetic halo only made it seem all the more as though the image from his head had somehow slid out into the real world.
But slowly, slowly, his brain began to process what his eyes were seeing.
‘Legs?’
Linc was hardly aware of uttering her name—well, nickname, anyway. He certainly didn’t recognise his own voice, and the fact that he hadn’t uttered it loudly meant that she oughtn’t to have heard him from her position across the room. But he didn’t think it was his imagination that she turned her head slowly and she looked straight at him, those familiar, all too expressive rich amber depths seeming to pierce right through him.
The five years fell away in an instant. It might as well have been yesterday that they’d last seen each other. There was no denying that...thing that still coursed between them, as powerful, and greedy, and urgent, as it had once been. For several long moments, Linc simply drank her in. As if he were back in that parched, bone-brittle desert, and she were his only source of crystal-clear water. He might have known it couldn’t last long.
Abruptly, something followed the attraction; something that was far more potent—and unwelcome—than mere chemistry. It punched through Linc in that split second before he quashed it, and it was all he could do to stay standing in the doorway—affecting a casual air—as he folded his arms across his chest. As though that could somehow protect him from the emotions charging through him.
Attraction. History. But worst of all, guilt. For leaving at the end of that last tour without even a word. Because he didn’t let people get close and he didn’t get attached.
And Piper had threatened to do both.
Dimly, Linc became aware of his crewmate talking, but it was impossible to process anything over the roar in his head.
‘Say again?’ he murmured.
He wasn’t sure he could have dragged his gaze from Piper, even if he’d tried. And by the way she was staring back at him—slightly wide-eyed and just as dazed—he thought perhaps she was finding it just as surreal. But if he didn’t get a grip quickly, the entire crew was going to know that something was up and that might lead to questions he wasn’t prepared to answer.
Even to himself.
With a concerted effort, Linc forced a more neutral expression onto his face, and lifted his voice to something approaching a normal tone.
‘Hello, Piper, it’s been a long time. Welcome to Heathston Helimed, otherwise known as Helimed hotel one-niner.’
Linc was here?
Somehow Piper resisted the compulsion to shake her head. As if that could somehow dislodge the apparition that stood in front of her.
‘Doc? Major Lincoln Oakes?’ she heard herself say. Casually. Teasingly. Somehow conveying the impression that she was in total control, when the reality was that her legs thought they might buckle under her at any moment. ‘It can’t be.’
This was the man who had haunted her across time, and the planet, for the past five years? Even as she eyed him, it felt as though their history was unrolling between them—as rich as any eleventh-century tapestry—for the entire Helimed base to see, if she wasn’t careful.
For the better part of six months, on the worst tour of duty she’d ever been on, he’d been her go-to. The person she’d most looked forward to seeing—in the mess hall, in the officers’ tent, or even just on the sandy perimeter line that made for a makeshift running track in that godforsaken camp—to offload the events of the day.
In an environment like a theatre of war, bonds could be forged quickly. Tightly. It was entirely possible for a colleague to know and understand you better than your own family. And it had been like that with Linc. They’d somehow...clicked.
Until their almost-kiss had nearly ruined it all.
They’d agreed it was a mistake—a line they would never again risk crossing—and still, a month later he’d left the armed services altogether, leaving her feeling vulnerable, and foolish.
If she’d known he was part of this crew, she would never have taken the post—emergency or not.
Okay, that wasn’t precisely true. But she would surely have been better prepared for the inevitable encounter. A strong pep talk maybe—that reminded her just how she could resist Lincoln Oakes’s particular brand of all things male. Thank goodness she’d already changed into the armour of her heavy-duty flight suit.
Not that it seemed to matter. Somehow, she still felt half naked and completely exposed in front of him.
‘You two know each other?’
Piper blinked, startled. She turned her attention to the paramedic standing next to Linc, with his practised smile and easy charm. The guy was clearly accustomed to women falling at his feet, and he was certainly good-looking. But she hadn’t even noticed him, standing next to Linc. From the instant that Linc had spoken, her entire world had zoomed in on just the two of them—like the narrow shot of one of those photographs she’d taken out in that bleak war zone.
She didn’t care to analyse what that said about her. Or her unresolved feelings for a man she hadn’t seen in half a decade, and hadn’t really expected to ever see again. No matter what little fantasies her subconscious had conjured up sometimes, in the dead of night.
But now wasn’t the time to dwell on that. Piper dredged up a bright smile and tried to remember what the guy had even said. Nothing came to mind, and it was a relief when Linc’s rich, steady voice answered instead.
‘Piper was an Apache pilot back when I served. We did a couple of tours together.’
‘Apaches?’ The other guy nodded with another practised grin. ‘Sweet.’
And Piper couldn’t help noticing the way Linc’s jaw tightened. Was he remembering the undeniable chemistry that they’d once shared? Even if they’d deemed it too inappropriate for their respective military roles? Or was that purely in her own head?
Even now, as she watched him smooth his chin with his forefinger and thumb, a delicious shiver rippled over her back. How insane was it that she could still recall precisely how it had felt when that calloused thumb had once skated over her cheek to brush away the desert dust that seemed to get into absolutely everything? The way her breath had caught as his head had dipped, ever so slightly, towards hers.
And then the camp’s shrill sniper alarm that had ripped them apart.
Piper tried telling herself that it was that particular all too vivid, adrenalin-pumping memory that made her blood pound through her body right now. A physiological reaction to that alarm call, rather than to the man standing right in front of her.
Maybe she would have believed the lie, had regret not still rippled through those nights when the ghosts of that almost-kiss would tiptoe through her dreams. A muted sorrow that the single moment five years ago had been shattered, their one chance gone.
No, she’d certainly never expected to see Linc again. Yet suddenly, here he was. Here she was.
It didn’t matter how hard the logical, practical side of her brain told her that it was merely coincidence, it didn’t silence the low, deep hum inside her. A hum that told her it wasn’t just chance—it was something more. Something she didn’t dare put a name to, but if she had dared, she might have called it...fate.
‘So she’s a good pilot, then?’
The colleague’s question brought her crashing back to reality—to the here and now. She watched as Linc did that thing with his head that wasn’t a shrug, precisely, but was just as non-committal. Standard, unreadable Major Lincoln Oakes.
‘Yeah, Piper’s a good pilot, and what we called army barmy,’ he confirmed evenly to his colleague before turning back to her. ‘So you can’t seriously be thinking of jacking it in and heading to Civvy Street?’
There was something strangely comforting in his words, although his question set off the pounding in her chest again. Though this time for a different reason. He was right, the Army Air Corps had been her life—flying had been her life—but the army had its own drum beat, and it was her time to move on from Captain and get her Majority. But a Captain flying helis was appropriate—a Major flying them was not. And you couldn’t exactly tell the Army that you didn’t want a promotion.
Besides, running a flight-training wing would have taken her further from her mother and brother, for longer. And they both needed her; now as much as ever.
Still, Linc didn’t need to know any of this.
‘Not thinking of.’ She wasn’t sure where the nonchalant laugh came from, but at least it sounded a lot more natural than it felt. ‘Already done. Paperwork went in three months ago and I’m officially out the door within this next month, hence why they were happy to loan me out to your air ambulance when they got the emergency call this morning.’
‘You drove down this morning? It’s a ninety-minute drive.’
‘One of my colleagues flew me in,’ she explained, awkwardly. Though she couldn’t have said why.
It was almost a relief when the paramedic inadvertently rescued her.
‘Who cares whether she drove, or flew in?’ he clucked, making her smile despite everything. ‘Allow me to be more welcoming than my colleague here. I’m Tom, Heathston Helimed’s most eligible bachelor—August edition. It’s great to meet you, Piper.’
There was such an easy likeability to the guy that she couldn’t help grinning. At least it was easier than all the sizzling tension between her and Linc.
‘Hi, Tom. Nice to meet you.’ She grinned, shaking the paramedic’s outstretched hand. ‘Sorry about your crewmate, Albert. I hope he makes a speedy recovery.’
‘We all do,’ Tom agreed. ‘Though, in the meantime, it looks as though you’re the newest member of Helimed hotel one-niner—Legs, was it?’
‘Old army nicknames,’ Linc dismissed smoothly. ‘Shared tours of duty. That’s it.’
Tom looked greedily from one to the other. ‘Nah, there’s a story here, right? I can feel it in my bones.’
‘Your bones are just going to have to wait, then.’
Piper whirled around as another crewman, who she’d seen manning the air desk in the room across the hall, now stepped through the doorway. ‘Nine-nine-nine call just came in; not a lot of info, just that there’s a kid on a bike somewhere near Roughston Lake. He’s gone over and it sounds like there’s an arterial injury; he’s bleeding from his groin.’
‘Piper,’ the regional coordinator followed the crewman. ‘I appreciate we haven’t finished your briefing yet but...’
‘No problem, I’ll get the heli started.’ Piper nodded grimly, heading rapidly out of the room and to the hangar. At least she’d already prepped the bird earlier that morning, and taken it out to the tarmac.
She didn’t need to wait for anyone to tell her that they needed to get up into the air. She could practically hear Linc’s voice in her head, reminding her that every second mattered. Here, as much as on the battlefield.
Which was exactly what she needed to also remind her of the other rules they’d had out there, in that war zone. Namely, steering clear of whatever it was that still arced between them. Because the truth was that they would never act on it.
They couldn’t.
It wouldn’t be professional. Which was why nothing had ever really been going to happen whilst they served together, and nothing would happen now. Better to eject all unsolicited thoughts about Lincoln Oakes out of her head, and try instead to reinstate the banter, and the old rapport they’d once shared.
Anything to protect her mother and brother and stop questions about why she’d turned her back on her army career—the career that had always meant so very much to her.
