From Bachelor To Daddy

Sensible woman, he decided. No fuss, no drama, she’ll be good to work with.

He settled the asthmatic girl in the front seat and strapped in those he could, letting the rest sit cross-legged on the floor.

He ran his eyes over them, again mentally tallying their combined weight, adding it to the aircraft weight so he was sure it was below take-off weight. The next trip would be tighter.

They were off, the children sitting as still as they’d been told to, although the urge to get up and run around looking out of windows must have been strong. The teacher he’d brought along would have sorted out those who were strapped in seats, he realised when the excited cries of one child suggested he had at least one hyperactive passenger.

‘Can you manage?’ he asked the teacher, who was in the paramedic’s seat behind the little girl, and had put another dose of salbutamol into the spacer and passed it to his front seat passenger.

‘Just fine,’ the sensible woman assured him. ‘You fly the thing and I’ll look after Gracie. Deep breath now, pet, and try to hold it.’

The school mini-bus was waiting behind the hospital as he landed, and the aide helped the children into it while the teacher took Gracie into Emergency.

‘Most of the parents are at the school,’ the bus driver told him. ‘I’ll take this lot there, then come back.’

Marty nodded, hoping he hadn’t misjudged the tide and that he would be bringing back the other children, the teacher and the unknown Emma Crawford.

As yet unknown? he wondered, then shook his head. Hospital staff were off limits as far as he was concerned.

Besides which, she was short and dark-haired, not tall and blonde like most of his women.

Most of his women! That sounded—what? Izzy would say conceited—as if he thought himself a great Lothario who could have whatever woman he liked, but it really wasn’t like that. He just enjoyed the company of women, enjoyed how they thought, and, to be honest, how they felt in his arms, although many of his relationships had never developed to sexual intimacy.

What colour were her eyes?

Not Izzy’s eyes, obviously, but the short, dark-haired woman’s eyes—the short, dark-haired woman who wasn’t at all his type.

The switch in his thoughts from sexual intimacy to the colour of Emma Crawford’s eyes startled him as he flew back towards the beach.

Meanwhile, the woman who wasn’t at all his type was attempting to calm the children left on the beach. Three were in tears, one was refusing to go in the helicopter, and the others were upset about not being in the first lift. The teacher was doing her best, but they were upsetting each other, vying to see who could be the most hysterical.

‘Come on,’ Emma said, gathering one of the most distressed, a large boy with Down’s syndrome, by the hand, ‘let’s go and jump the little waves as they come up the beach.’

Without waiting for a response, she steered the still-sobbing child towards the water’s edge, and began to jump the waves herself. A few others followed and once they were jumping, the one who still clung to Emma’s hand joined in, eventually freeing her hand and going further into the water to jump bigger waves.

‘Now they’ll probably all compete to go the deepest and we’ll be saving them from drowning,’ Emma said wryly to the teacher, who had joined her at the edge of the water.

‘At least they’ve stopped the hysteria nonsense,’ the teacher said. ‘They work each other up and really...’ She hesitated before admitting, ‘I was shaken by it all myself, so couldn’t calm them down all that well.’

‘No worries,’ Emma told her. ‘They’re all happy now.’

Which was precisely when one of them started to scream and soon the whole lot were screaming.

And pointing.

Emma turned to see a man race down the beach and dive into the water, her fleeting impression one of blackness.

‘He was on fire,’ one of the children said, as they left the water and clustered around their teacher, too diverted by the man to be bothered with screams any more.

Emma waded in to where the man was squatting in the water, letting waves wash over his head, her head buzzing with questions. How cold was the water? How severe his burns? Think shock, she told herself. And covering them...

‘Can you talk to me?’ she asked, and he looked blankly at her.

Shock already?

‘I’m a doctor, I’d like to look at your burns. I’ve got pain relief in my bag on the beach.’

She touched his arm and beckoned towards the beach but he shook his head and ducked under the water again.

Time to take stock.

He was young, possibly in his twenties, and very fair. His hair was cut short, singed on one side and blackened on the other. The skin on his face on the singed side was also reddened, but not worse, Emma decided, than a bad sunburn.

If the rest of his body was only lightly burned then maybe waiting in the water for the helicopter was the best thing for him. She tried to see what she could of his clothes—now mostly burnt tatters of cloth. At least in the water they’d have lost any heat they’d held and not be worsening his injuries.

But shock remained an issue...

‘Can I do anything?’ the teacher called from the beach.

‘If you’ve got towels you could spread a couple on the beach—just shake any sand off them first.’

Not that shaking would remove all the sand, but if she could get him out, lay him down and cover him loosely with more towels, she could take a better look at him and position him to help with possible shock.

The low rumble of the helicopter returning made them all look upward, and Emma was pleased to see the children running back to the rocks.

Pleased to think she could avoid the difficulty of examining him here on the beach, she was also relieved to have help getting the man out of the water.

‘Rescue helicopter,’ she told him, hoping the words might mean something. ‘It will fly you to hospital.’

This time she got a nod, but as she reached out to take his arm and help him to stand upright, he pulled back again.

She didn’t argue—he was probably better staying where he was rather than risk getting sand on his burnt skin.

Marty saw the two heads bobbing in the water below him and wondered what was happening. At least the kids were all over in the rocks.

He hovered for a minute before touching down, checking the seemingly minute area of sand that was still above the incoming tide. It would have to be a really quick in and out.

As soon as he jumped down, the children hurtled towards him, all talking at once. Jumping waves, man on fire, doctor might drown...

He thought the last unlikely but had pieced together the information by the time the teacher arrived to explain.

‘He won’t come out,’ the teacher told him. ‘And every time Emma tries to take his arm, he dives away from her. He might be a foreign backpacker and not understand she’s trying to help him.’

Marty nodded.

Most of the backpackers roaming Australia had some knowledge of English, but the shock of being caught in the fire could have been enough for this poor bloke to lose it. He pulled a couple of space blankets out of the helicopter and gave them to the teacher to hold.

He turned to the kids.

‘Now, all of you sit down on the sand, and the one sitting the stillest gets to fly up front with me, okay?’

The children dropped as if they’d been shot and although Marty doubted they’d stay still long, it should be long enough to get Emma and the man out of the water.

And work out what he was going to do next.

Maybe the man was very small...

Emma had apparently finally persuaded her patient to move towards the shore so Marty had only to go into knee-deep water to reach the six-foot-plus young man.

‘I haven’t been able to get a good look at his burns but I’d say some of them are serious,’ Emma told him, her face pale with worry about this new patient.

She took one of the space blankets from the teacher, who had unfolded the silver material, and wrapped it around the man’s shoulders, looking across him so Marty saw the worry in her serious grey eyes.

Grey, huh?

‘I’ll give him some morphine for the pain, and start a drip.’ She turned to the teacher. ‘Could you manage the fluid bag on the trip back to the hospital? It’s just a matter of holding it above his body and making sure the tube doesn’t kink.’

‘And just why are you asking that?’ Marty demanded as they both helped the man into the chopper and settled him on the stretcher.

She turned and touched his arm, just above the wrist—a simple touch—getting his attention before saying very quietly, ‘Because there’s no way you can take him and me, given how tight your take-off load was already. I’ll just wait until the tide goes down and someone can come for me. I’ll be all right, although you’ll have to phone my dad and let him know what’s happening.’

Marty stared at the small hand, still resting on his arm, then studied the face of this woman whose touch had startled him. She met his gaze unflinchingly.

‘Well?’ she said, removing her hand and concentrating again on their patient.

He shook his head, unable to believe that she’d figured all this out and delivered it to him as naturally as she might tell someone she was ducking out to the shops.

‘That’s right, isn’t it?’ she continued, as she calmly inserted a cannula into the man’s undamaged hand and attached a line for the fluid. ‘The children are upset already, so the teacher has to go back with them. I’m the obvious choice to give up a place.’

‘And you’re happy to stay alone on the beach?’

Grey eyes could flash fire, he discovered.

‘I didn’t say I was happy about it, but as I can’t fly the helicopter I can’t see any other solution. You’ll have some chocolate bars in the helicopter—I’ve never been on one that didn’t—so you can leave me a couple, and some water. I’ll be fine as long as you phone my dad.’

Much as he wanted to argue, there was little point. He couldn’t take off with both of them on board—not safely...

He went with practical.

‘There’s a cellphone signal here, you can phone your father yourself.’

It seemed a heartless thing to say to a small woman he was about to leave on a deserted beach with bushfires raging all around her, but his mind wasn’t working too well.

Something to do with grey eyes flashing fire?

Impossible...

She half smiled as she drew up a calibrated dose of morphine and added it to the drip.

‘I could if my phone hadn’t been in my pocket when I went into the water.’

‘Well, of all the—’

He stopped. Of course, she wouldn’t have considered her phone when there was a man in the water who needed her help.

Realising she was so far ahead of him he should stop talking and just do something, he wetted some cloth with sterile water and laid it over the man’s legs where the stretcher straps would go, so the burns wouldn’t be aggravated.

Or too aggravated.

He tilted the stretcher to raise the patient’s legs, then checked on the children—all of whom were still sitting remarkably motionless on the sand near the door.

‘Okay, you stay,’ he said to Emma, ‘but I’ll be back for you just as soon as I can. Are you winch trained?’

‘I am, but I don’t think that’ll be possible tonight. Even if you’re still on duty, the chopper will be needed to get the young man to a burns unit,’ she told him. ‘I’ll be fine. It’s warm and there’s enough soft sand on the top of the dune that will stay dry so I can sleep on that until someone can get back here. Or if the fire dies down, I can walk out.’

Could he read the nonchalant lie on her face? Emma wondered as she satisfied herself that their patient would make it safely to Braxton Hospital, where he’d be stabilised enough for a flight to the nearest burns unit.

But it wasn’t really a lie. The twins would be fine with her father, they were used to her coming and going, but—

Damn her phone!

Damn not thinking of it!

‘Here’s a spare phone and an emergency kit. Chocolate bars and even more substantial stuff, water, space blanket, torch.’

She spun towards Marty and read the worry in his face as he handed her the phone and backpack. He was hating doing this, leaving her on her own on the beach, but he was a professional and knew it was the only answer.

‘I’ll be back for you,’ he said, touching her lightly on the shoulder, and this time she didn’t argue, backing away towards the rocks to avoid the rotor-generated sandstorm.

CHAPTER TWO

AS THE LITTLE aircraft lifted into the air, she watched it until the noise abated, aware all the time of the part of her body his hand had touched.

It had to be caused by comfort for some kind of atavistic fear, she decided. A reaction to being left so completely alone in a place she didn’t know at all.

* * *

Ring Dad.

Speaking to her father calmed her down. As ever he was his wonderful, patient self, assuring her the boys were already eating their dinner, having had a busy day helping him in the garden.

Emma laughed.

‘I can just imagine their idea of helping!’

‘No,’ her father said, quite seriously. ‘Once I’d explained which were weeds to be pulled out and which were plants to be left behind, they only removed about half a dozen chrysanthemums that needed thinning anyway, and one rather tatty-looking rosemary that looked as if it was happy to give up the struggle to live.’

There was a pause before her father added, ‘But more importantly, what about you? You’re out near the coast path? I saw on TV that the fire had swung that way.’

‘I’m on a beach, and quite safe. I’ve even had a swim.’

She told him about the man in the water and made light of being left behind, doing her best to give the impression she wasn’t alone.

‘I’m just not sure what time the chopper will be able to get back,’ she told him, ‘so I may not be home before morning.’

For all Marty’s ‘I’ll be back’ she just couldn’t see it happening. The dune at the top of the beach might still be dry, but it would be impossible to land anything bigger than a drone on it.

She spoke to both the boys, who were full of their gardening exploits, then said goodbye.

An emergency telephone would be kept fully charged, but it was not for idle chatter. Who knew when she might need it again?

* * *

Marty delivered his passengers to the hospital, following the stretcher with the burns victim into Emergency. He’d radioed ahead to make sure there was a senior doctor on duty, and was relieved to see Matt, another of the chopper pilots also there on standby.

‘I’ll do the major hospital run,’ he told Marty. ‘You’ve had enough fun for one day.’

As he’d spent hours this morning helping out with water bombing the fire, Marty knew his official flying hours were just about up. But his day was far from finished. He left the hospital, getting a cab back to the rescue service base where his pride and joy was kept—his own, smaller, private helicopter.

A quick but thorough check and he was in the air again, this time heading for the seaside town of Wetherby. The man he and all his foster siblings called Pop had levelled a safe landing area for him behind the old nunnery that had housed his foster family, and within ten minutes he was home.

Home. Funny word, that—four small letters but, oh, the massive meaning of it, the security it held, the memories...

Hallie was first out through the back garden to meet him, Pop emerging more slowly from his big shed. Both of them were older now, well into their seventies, but still fit and healthy, always ready with help or advice, or even just a cup of tea. They had been the first people in the world to offer him love—unconditional and all-encompassing love—and were still the most important people in his life.

He lifted Hallie in the air and swung her around, explaining as he swung that he couldn’t stay. He’d left a woman on Izzy’s porpoise beach and had to get her off while the tide was still high enough to take the jet ski in.

‘What jet ski?’ Hallie demanded. ‘You boys took all your fast, noisy toys when you left here.’

He grinned at her.

‘The jet skis at the surf club are bigger, stronger, and faster than any we ever had, poor orphans that we were!’ he said, unable to resist teasing her. ‘I’ve phoned a mate to have one fuelled up for me.’

‘You’re going around there on a jet ski in the middle of the night.’

He had to laugh.

‘Hallie, it’s barely seven o’clock. We’ll be back before you know it. I’ll take her straight to Izzy and Mac’s as she’ll need a shower and some dry clothes. Something of Nikki’s will probably fit her. There’s not much of her.’

‘Then bring her here for dinner when she’s dry,’ Hallie insisted, but he shook his head.

‘She has her own family to get back to,’ he said, ‘but we have to come back here to get the chopper so I’ll introduce you then.’

He turned to Pop.

‘Okay if I take your ute down to the club?’

‘Just don’t run into anything,’ Pop growled, and they all laughed as the ute was ancient and, having survived numerous teenagers learning to drive in it, was a mass of dents and scratches.

Down at the club, while his mate checked the fuel on the jet-ski, he called the emergency phone, and knew from Emma’s voice when she answered that he’d startled her.

‘It’s okay, it’s only me, Marty. I’m coming to get you and want you to stand in the middle of the beach and point the torch that’s in the emergency kit straight out to sea so I don’t run aground on the rocks.’

Silence on the other end told him she didn’t know what to make of these instructions, but the jet ski motor was on and he had to get going, this time while the tide was high, not low.

‘See you soon, don’t forget the light,’ he said, and disconnected.

Fortunately, the sea was calm, as it often was when a westerly had been blowing across the land. But his heart raced as he thought of the woman he’d left on the beach—standing there in the darkness, the world behind her ringed with fire. Surely she’d be...

Frightened?

The thought made him smile. He might not know Emma Crawford very well—not at all, in fact—but he doubted fear would be upmost in her mind.

Apprehension, yes, but fear?

He revved the engine, anxious to get to her—frightened or not, it must be an unnerving experience for her, especially on her first day at work!

* * *

Emma stared at the phone in her hand.

Had it really rung?

Was Marty serious about coming in by water to get her off the beach—what little of it was left?

Presumably...

She lifted the emergency backpack he’d left with her, took out the torch, and slipped the pack onto her shoulders. She then paced the beach and decided where the centre of it was, waded in knee deep then turned on the torch as instructed, pointing its beam out to sea.

She was just beginning to feel a little foolish when she heard the loud roar of an engine, definitely somewhere in the darkness of the ocean, then light appeared, at first shining across the width of the bay, the motor throttling back but still very loud in the otherwise silent night.

Now the light turned towards her and, as if drawn along the path of torchlight, a large jet ski rumbled her way, the noise cutting as it approached so it drifted right up to where she stood.

Marty was off in an instant.

‘On you hop,’ he said cheerfully, while she was still considering what seemed like a miracle night rescue.

‘Quickly—we need the tide high now,’ he added, holding the craft steady in the small waves while she clambered on board.

‘Now shove back to make room for me, then hang on tight,’ he said, and before she could say thank you, or marvel at the fact that he had come for her, he had the craft moving again and they were off, the roaring motor preventing even the most basic of conversations.

But she did hang on tight, very tightly indeed, for they were travelling at what seemed a ridiculous pace, bouncing over waves as they sped back to wherever he’d come from.

Wetherby?

The beach town she and the twins had visited last week?

Was that the closest place?

And was she thinking these thoughts to keep from considering the strange reaction she was experiencing with her arms around a man’s body, her breasts pressed against his back—the solidity of it, the different feel...

The maleness...

Not that she’d been clasping a woman’s back recently, but there was something decidedly odd going on within her body.

Decidedly odd and totally unnecessary, but just as she considered not holding on quite as tightly, they leapt another wave and her arms tightened around him even more.

Maybe as well as needing a father for the boys, she needed a man.

Although friends and relations had been suggesting such a thing for some years now, she’d never given it a thought, probably because she’d never experienced a physical...

What?

She didn’t want to call it need, but it was certainly a male-female kind of thing she was feeling right now.

Though this particular man—a commitment-shy lover boy—was definitely not for her.

There was no way she could tarnish the memory of the intense and beautiful love she and Simon had shared with a quick affair to satisfy a...

‘Need’ did seem to be the word...

Consumed by her thoughts, she was unaware of the silence that had fallen, but the jolt as the jet ski glided up a ramp onto the deck outside the surf lifesaving clubhouse told her the journey was over.

She let go of the body that had started such bizarre thoughts in her head, and dismounted as quickly as she could, although the wet clothes she was wearing made that difficult, sticking to the plastic seat and tangling around her legs.

‘Thank you,’ she said, as Marty put out his hand to steady her. ‘And for rescuing me as well. I’d have been okay staying there till morning, but Dad would have worried.’

‘Only Dad?’ Marty queried, and it must have been the tiredness that was creeping over her that stopped her thinking the question at all odd.

‘Well, the boys as well, but they’ve grown up with my erratic hours of work, and my coming and going, and they don’t seem to mind. Dad’s been there for them far more than I have.’

She’d smiled at him as she’d explained, this small, wet, matter-of-fact woman, and Marty didn’t know if it had been the smile or the love she somehow invested in the word ‘Dad’ that caused an uneasy lurch in his usually reliable stomach.

‘This way,’ he said, and although he would normally have slung an arm around a woman’s shoulders to lead her to the car, tonight he couldn’t do it, so he stomped ahead, slightly perturbed, although he didn’t do perturbed any more than he did stomach lurches. For most of his life he’d kept his demons at bay by being the joker, the light-hearted mate, just a ‘good bloke’ in the Australian vernacular...

He grabbed a couple of towels Hallie had thrown into the ute, and handed one to Emma, using the other to dab himself dry before tying it around his waist. Woman-like, she wound hers around above her breasts, though not before he’d noticed the way her wet clothing clung to a very curvy figure.

You like tall, slim, blonde women, don’t date hospital staff, and don’t do commitment, he reminded himself. And a woman with ‘boys’ would be looking for commitment. Would need commitment...

‘We’re both wet through and will be chilled to the bone by the time we get home so I’m taking you to Izzy and Mac’s,’ he told his passenger. ‘Izzy’s one of my foster sisters, and Mac, her husband, is the local doctor here in Wetherby. They actually met at the little cove where we rescued the kids, only they were rescuing a porpoise. Their daughter Nikki is about your size, and should be able to provide some dry clothes.’