Mr Right at the Wrong Time

She frowned. Absolutely not Wayne. They were well and truly over. And she’d prefer to call her parents from the safety of terra-firma, when they wouldn’t have to see the immediate evidence of what heading off alone into the wilds had done to her and when they’d have less reason to tear each other to pieces. Work wouldn’t miss her for days yet—they knew how she got when she got to the transcribing stage of a project. ‘No. Not if you truly believe we’ll make it.’

‘We’ll make it.’ His certainty soaked through her just like his body heat. ‘But is there someone you’d call if you thought you weren’t going to make it?’

‘Hedging your bets, Sam?’ Maybe that was wise. She still had to get hauled out of here successfully.

His lips twisted. ‘It would be wrong of me not to ask.’

Danielle? That would get a tick in the friend box and the work box at the same time. She folded her brows and tried to make her foggy brain focus …

‘It’s not like prison, Aimee. You can have more than one phone call.’ Then he looked closer. ‘Or none at all. It’s not compulsory.’

How pathetic if she couldn’t even identify one ‘in case of emergency’ person. And how ridiculous. She sighed. ‘My parents, probably.’

He pulled a small notepad from his top pocket. ‘Want to give me a number?’

She stared at him, and then to the floor of the passenger seat. ‘Their numbers are in my phone.’

He blinked at that. ‘You don’t know your parents’ phone numbers?’

‘I have them on speed dial.’ There was no way that didn’t sound defensive. Not when she knew how little wear those two buttons actually got.

‘How about a name and address, then?’

There was no judgement there, yet his words somehow reeked of it. She glared and provided the information; he jotted it down, then called it up to all those people waiting up top. Waiting for sunrise. They confirmed, and promised to make contact with her parents. She wanted to shout out so they’d hear her: Wait until seven. Dad hates being woken. Sam held the earpiece out so she could hear their acknowledgement.

Then they both fell into uncomfortable silence. It stretched out endlessly and echoed with what he wasn’t saying.

She pressed back against her seat. ‘Go ahead, Sam. Just say it. We can’t sit here in silence.’

‘Say what?’

‘Whatever’s making you twitch.’

Even with full permission, and all the time in the world to tell her what he thought, Sam refrained. It was sad how surprised she was about that. Men in her life didn’t usually withhold their opinions. Or their judgement. Not even for a moment.

‘I watched my parents raise my brothers and sisters. Eighty percent of it was guesswork, I reckon. Parents don’t get a manual.’

She shook her head. ‘You’re from a big family?’

He nodded. ‘And my folks got a whole lot more right with my younger brothers than with me, so maybe practice makes perfect?’

‘What did they get wrong with you, Search-and-Rescue-Sam?’ He seemed pretty perfect to her. Heroic, a good listener, smart, gentle fingers, and live electricity zinging through his bloodstream …

‘Oh-ho … Plenty. I made their lives hell once I hit puberty.’

She studied him. ‘I can see you as a heart-breaker with the girls.’

He smiled. ‘No more than your average teen. But I was a handful, and I ran with some wild mates.’

‘Another thing I don’t have trouble seeing.’ Maybe it was the uniform. Maybe it was the torn-out-of-bed-at-midnight stubble. Maybe it was the glint in those blue eyes. He had the bad-boy gene for sure. Just a small one. Not big enough to be the slightest bit off-putting but just big enough to be appealing. Dangerously appealing.

‘Fortunately my older brother intervened, and turned me into the fine, upstanding citizen you see before you.’

She laughed, and her spirits lifted a hint more. Insane and impossible, but true enough. She shifted in her seat to remind herself of where they were and how much danger they were still in. ‘Tell me about him. I’m sick of talking about me.’

And of thinking about the wrong turns she’d made in her life.

‘Tony’s two years older than me. The first. The best.’

‘Is that your parents’ estimation or yours?’

He looked at her. ‘Definitely mine. He was everything I wanted to be growing up. The full hero-worship catastrophe.’

She smiled. ‘I can’t imagine having siblings.’

‘I can’t imagine not.’

‘You want kids? In the future?’ she added, in case her breathless question sounded too much like an offer.

He shrugged. ‘Isn’t that why we’re here? As a species, I mean? I like my genes, I’d like to see what else could be done with them.’

She was starting to like his genes, too. Very much. He had a whole swag of good-guy genes to go with the bad-boy one. And the dreamy eyes. Silence fell, and she realised into what personal territory they’d strayed. She was practically interviewing him for the job of future husband. ‘Sorry. Occupational hazard. I get way too interested in people’s lives.’

‘Why? What do you do?’

‘I’m a historian. Oral History. For the Department of Heritage.’

‘You talk to people for a living?’

‘I swing between talking endlessly to people and then spending weeks alone pulling their stories into shape.’

‘What for?’

‘So they’re not lost.’

‘I mean what happens with them?’

She shrugged. ‘They get archived. Locked away somewhere safe.’

‘No one ever hears them?’

‘Sure they do. Every story is catalogued by topic and theme and subject, so they can be accessed by researchers into just about anything anywhere in the world.’

‘Do you get to see the end results?’ he asked.

‘Not usually. Just my own research.’

‘So your work just goes on file somewhere? To gather dust, potentially, if no one ever looks for it?’ he mused.

‘Potentially.’ She shrugged. ‘You think something’s missing from that equation?’

‘Isn’t it a bit … thankless?’

She stared at him, wondering if he realised what he’d just revealed. Search-and-Rescue-Sam liked to be appreciated. This was exactly why she loved to do what she did. For the moments a person let a bit of his true self slip.

She smiled. ‘Not at all. Our jobs aren’t too dissimilar.’

He frowned at her.

‘We both save lives. You preserve their flesh for another few decades,’ she said. ‘I preserve their stories for ever. For their family. For perpetuity. There’s more to people’s time on earth than genetics.’

Which was why it was such a crime that her life was only just beginning at the ripe old age of twenty-five. She’d wasted so much time.

He considered her. ‘So what’s your story, Aimee Leigh? What are you doing up here in the highlands?’

‘Working. I’ve just finished a history, and the next few weeks I’ll be pulling it all together.’ She glanced around. ‘Or I would have been.’

‘You always do that in remote parts of the state?’

‘I wanted some time alone. I rented a house at Brady’s Lake.’

His eyebrows lifted. ‘How’s that time alone working out for you?’

Laughing felt too good. She went on longer than was probably necessary, and ended in a hacking cough. Sam reached out and slid his warm fingers to her pulse again, counting, then saying, ‘Nothing makes you reassess your life quite like nearly losing it.’

True enough. She’d planned on doing some serious soul-searching while up in the highlands and really getting to grips with how she’d let others run her life for so long. She refused to think it was because she wasn’t capable.

Well, she’d wanted space to think and she’d got it. Above, below and on both sides.

The pause fell again. But then she had a thought. ‘Can you see my handbag, Sam?’

He looked around. ‘Where is it?’

‘It was on the passenger seat.’ Not any more.

‘What do you need? Your wallet?’

‘That’s all replaceable. But I have someone’s life in there.’

‘The person whose history you were about to start working on?’

She nodded. ‘All my notes on a thumb drive.’

‘I’ll have a look,’ he said. ‘Not like I have somewhere else to be.’

He wedged himself between the seats again, but twisted away from her this time, bracing his spread knees on the seat backs and reaching out for the glow-stick. The yellow light moved with him as he stretched down towards the floor of the passenger seat.

But as he did so the car lurched.

‘Sam!’ Aimee screamed, just as his two-way radio burst into a flurry of activity. But the sudden splintering pain from her chest crippled her voice.

He froze in position and then slowly retreated, his strong muscles pulling him back up, bringing the light with him. He spoke confidently into the transmitter at his collar, but his words were three-parts buzz to Aimee. Her heart hammered so hard against her chest wall she was sure it might just split open.

She might have caused them to go crashing to the ground—who knew how far below? For a handbag! For a story! Tears filled her eyes.

‘Sorry, Aimee,’ he said, breathing heavily and righting himself more fully. ‘I’ll get it when the car’s hauled up.’

She shook her head, unable to speak, unable to forgive herself for putting them both at such risk.

He looked more closely at her. ‘Aimee? Were you hurt? Is the pain back?’

She shook her head—too frightened to speak—though her burst of activity had definitely got her pain receptors shrieking.

‘I wouldn’t have tried that if I’d thought it would actually dislodge us. That was just a settle. It will probably happen again whether we move or not. It doesn’t mean we’re going to fall.’

Tell her clenched bladder that. She nodded quickly. Still too scared to move more than a centimetre.

He found her eyes in the mirror. ‘Aimee, look at me.’

She avoided his eyes, knowing what she’d just done. Get my handbag, Sam … As though they were just sitting here waiting for a bus. Maybe her parents were right not to trust her with important decisions.

‘At me, Aimee.’

Finally she forced her focus to the mirror, to the blue, blue eyes waiting for her there. They were steady and serious, and just so reliable it was hard not to believe him when he spoke. ‘We’re thoroughly wedged between the tree and the rockface, and tethered to a three-tonne truck up top. We won’t be square-dancing any time soon, but you don’t need to fear moving. We are not going to fall.’

She looked at the rugged cut of his jaw and followed it down to the full slash of his lips, then up to his strong, straight nose and back to his eyes. Every part of him said reliable. Capable. Experienced. And a big part of her responded to the innate certainty in his manner. But an even bigger part of her was responding to something else. Something more fundamental. The something that would never have let him get this close, this quickly under her skin, if not for the fact that the fates had thrown them together like this. She would have followed him out onto the bonnet of her car with no safety harness if he’d asked her to with the kind of sincerity and promise that he was throwing at her right now in the mirror.

And extraordinary as it was, given how slow she was to trust strangers, she realised why.

She believed in him.

‘We are not going to fall,’ he’d said. She nodded, letting her breath out on a long, controlled hiss.

But deep down she feared that while that might be true literally, she could see herself falling very easily for a man like Sam. And just as hard.

Under these circumstances, that was a very, very bad idea.

CHAPTER THREE

‘SO who’s Wayne?’

Aimee’s head came up with a snap as Sam shifted again behind her. He was a big guy, and he had squeezed himself into the small space left vacant by the tree branches in the back of her little car and been settled there for over an hour.

‘Wayne?’

‘You mentioned his name earlier. Boyfriend? Brother?’

Was this conversation or curiosity? ‘Ex.’

‘Recent ex?’

‘Recent enough. Why?’

‘There was a … certain tone in your voice when you mentioned him.’

‘A certain sarcastic tone?’

She heard the smile in his voice. ‘Possibly.’

Aimee shifted back in her seat. Wayne was not someone she usually liked to talk about, liked even to think about, but all bets were off in this surreal setting. Their physical proximity demanded it. ‘Wayne and I turned out not to be a good fit.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Don’t be. I’m not. I’d rather have found out now than later.’ And it was true—no matter how challenging she’d found it to walk away. Even though he’d been giving her clear signals that she was somehow deficient in his eyes. Even though she knew he wasn’t good for her. She’d wriggled out from under the controlling thumbs of her parents only to fall prey to a man just like them at a time when she was most susceptible to him. ‘If I’d put any longer into the relationship I might have been more reluctant to end it.’

Another long pause. Funny how she’d only known Sam a handful of minutes but she already knew how to tell a thinking pause from an awkward one. This was thinking.

‘Not everyone finds that strength,’ he finally said.

‘You learn a thing or two recording life histories for a living. About achievements. About regrets. I don’t want any regrets in my life.’

She’d lost him again. His eyes stared out into the darkness.

What was his story?

‘Sam,’ she risked, after a comfortable silence had stretched out, ‘any chance you can lower the back of my seat a bit? Safely?’ She didn’t want a repeat of what happened before.

He studied the angle of the car and her position in it. His answer was reluctant. ‘The seatbelt is working well right now specifically because it’s nearly at ninety degrees.’

‘Even just a little bit? It’s doing my head in, looking straight down, wondering what’s down there, knowing that I’d crash straight through if the seatbelt gave.’

His hand slipped onto her shoulder through the gap between the seats. ‘The seatbelt is what’s keeping your body from putting too much weight on your bad leg.’

Oh.

Her disappointment must have reached him, though, because he said a moment later, ‘Let me just try something.’ He rummaged in his kit again, and then emerged with a set of flex-straps.

Aimee chuckled tightly. ‘You got a decaf latte in that Tardis, Doctor?’

He smiled as he wrapped one strap carefully around her waist and fixed it behind the seat, then the other under her good shoulder and hooked it on the headrest. ‘These aren’t generally for people, but I’ll be gentle with them.’

He pulled the two together and clipped one end of a climbing tether onto it, then fixed the other end to his own harness. If she fell she’d snag on his safety rope. Or pull him down with her.

That was a cheery thought!

‘Ready?’

So ready. So very ready not to be facing death literally head-on for every minute of this ordeal. She felt him fumbling along the edge of her seat for the recline lever and then suddenly the back of the seat gave slightly—just slightly—and he lowered it halfway to a fully reclined position. She hung on to her seatbelt lifeline and prepared for the pain of more of her body weight hitting her leg, but the flexi-straps did their job and held her fast to the seat-back. It really wasn’t too bad.

‘Oh, thank you.’ Her view was now the buckled roof of the car. A thousand times better than hanging out over who knew what. ‘Thank you, Sam.’

With her seat now reclined into the limited free space in the back of the car, there was nowhere for him to go but into the expanded gap between the front seats. He wedged himself there, with his spine to the passenger seat back, his shoulder pressing against the branch, facing her across the tiny gulf he’d opened up.

Unexpected bonus. She could talk to him front on.

‘You look funny,’ she said softly. Though still gorgeous. ‘Your face is back to front without the mirror.’

‘You look good.’ He smiled, then flushed as she dropped her eyes briefly. ‘I just meant that pretty much everything on you is intact. I can’t tell you what a relief it was to find that. Just to hear you honk that damned horn.’

Aimee sobered. He must hold some truly terrible images in his head.

‘It’s always the calmest most compliant people that have the worst injuries. They’re the ones I dream about later.’ He tucked her foil covering back in, keeping up his part of the conversation. She let his deep, rich voice wash over her. ‘It’s the guy with a twisted ankle and a golf tournament to get to that makes life hell. We’ve had hikers activate their EPIRB halfway up a mountain because they’re tired and want a lift back down.’ He shook his head.

‘Where do I fall on that scale?’ Was she being too high maintenance? Get my handbag, Sam. Lower my seat, Sam …

‘You have a scale all your own. All the reason in the world to be losing it, but holding up pretty well all things considered.’

She was—and that was really saying something, given her upbringing. Where the heck would she have learned resilience from in her bubblewrap childhood? But honour made her confess. ‘I was sobbing my heart out before I heard you calling.’

That seemed to genuinely pain him. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t get to you quicker. We had to assess the safety.’

She pinned him with her gaze. ‘I’m so glad you found me at all. Imagine if you hadn’t.’ It hit her then, for the first time, how long, slow and awful her death would have been. She swallowed back a gnarled lump and just stared, watching the play of emotion running over his features. Sadness. Regret. Confusion. But then his eyes lifted and it was just … light. And it changed him.

‘How old are you, Sam?’

‘Thirty-one.’

‘How is it that a man like you who wants children doesn’t yet have any?’ That was the closest she’d come to asking him outright: Why are you still single?

His eyes grew wary, but he finally answered. ‘It takes one to want it but two to make it a reality.’

‘You don’t have women knocking down your door to help you along with that reality? You’re gorgeous.’

His eyes grew cautious. But they didn’t dull. On the contrary, they filled with a rich sparkle. ‘Are you offering?’

She held her breath. Tilted her head. ‘Are you flirting?’

The bright sparkle in his eyes immediately dimmed. The smile straightened out into a half-frown.

Her breath caught. ‘You are.’

‘Sorry. Really inappropriate. Just playing to my strengths.’

His confusion touched her. ‘Don’t apologise. I’m battered and broken and feeling pretty average. It made me smile.’

‘I’m glad I could make you smile, then.’

‘Do they train you for that?’ she asked pertly.

‘For what?’

‘Keeping up people’s spirits with a sexy smile.’

The hint of colour high in his jaw brought her back to her senses. The man was just trying to keep her alive. He would say just about anything. Flirting included. It probably was in his training manual. Which meant it had to end. One of them had to put things back on a more real footing.

She took a deep breath. ‘Sorry, Sam. I think that was the ant juice talking. I apologise.’

He brushed it off with a shake of his head. ‘It’s not generally known for its truth serum properties.’

A blush stole up her cheeks, but this time he was staring straight at her. There was no hiding it. ‘A crazy side-effect?’

‘It’s probably written on the bottle somewhere. “May cause outbursts of inappropriate confession.”’

A gentleman, too. Handing her as dignified an exit as she was going to get. ‘Thank you. For keeping me sane.’ For keeping things light.

‘That’s how this works. You’re the victim. Whatever you need …’

Victim. The word put an early end to the golden glow of promise that had filled her from the inside out at his gentle teasing. Wasn’t that exactly what Danielle had accused her of being? By letting her father and Wayne run her life and others control her career? That hadn’t been a fun conversation. But it had been necessary. It had triggered the rapid departure of Wayne from her life and this journey of self-discovery. ‘Is that what I am?’

He stared at her—hard. ‘No. You’re brave and open and the least victim-like victim I’ve ever met.’

‘It’s because you’re with me. I’d be a basket case without you here.’

Two tiny lines appeared between his brows. ‘Sometimes we only find out what we’re capable of when we’re tested.’

‘Well, I think I’ve failed this test. Maybe I’ll do better next time.’

‘No.’ Immediate and fervent. ‘No next times. You don’t get this kind of luck twice.’

‘Luck?’ Was he crazy?

His face grew serious. He glanced at his watch. ‘You’ll see in a couple of hours. But I’ll be right here with you.’

A couple of hours felt like for ever. ‘Will the … what do you call it … getting me out …?’

‘Extraction.’

‘Will the extraction start as soon as the sun comes up?’

‘As soon as the sun crests the mountaintops, and assuming there’s no fog, yes.’

‘How long will it take?’

‘Hard to know. We have to stabilise your leg properly and make sure your shoulder is back in its socket before we shift you.’

She swallowed. Both those things sounded very unpleasant.

‘And then we’ll be pulling you out the back of the car.’

Her face must have paled, because he leaned forward and took her hand. ‘I’ll be with you every step of the way, Aimee. We’ll be tethered to each other at all times.’

‘The whole way?’

‘Until the top. Until the ambulance.’

She frowned at the finality of that statement. ‘Then what?’

He frowned. ‘Then that’s it. You go to hospital, then home where you belong.’

What if she didn’t belong anywhere? And why did she suddenly have the urge never to leave this shattered vehicle and the foil blanket and Sam’s gentle touch. ‘That’s it? I won’t see you again?’

He stared at her long and hard. ‘I’ll see how I go. Maybe I’ll drop your luggage back to you when the car’s towed up. You’ll have plenty to keep you busy before then.’

It was utterly insane how anxious she felt at the thought of that. A man she’d known less than a day. ‘I’d like to speak to you again. Under less extraordinary circumstances.’ When I’m showered and groomed and looking pretty. ‘To thank you.’

He nodded even more cautiously. ‘I’ll see how we go.’

That sounded very much like Wayne’s kind of I’ll see. Her father’s kind.

Translation: no.

CHAPTER FOUR

‘HOW many siblings do you have in total?’ Aimee asked after a while, when her inexplicable and irrational umbrage at his apparent brush off had subsided sufficiently. It wouldn’t hurt her to remember that this was business to Sam, no matter how chatty they got waiting for the sun to rise. Maybe rapport development was a whole semester unit over at Search and Rescue School. And maybe the two of them just had more rapport than most.

But it didn’t mean he’d want to take his work home with him—even metaphorically.

It just meant he was good at his job.

‘Seven,’ he murmured, leaning forward and blowing hot air into the cupped circle of her hand, still inside his. He pressed his lips against her fingertips for a tantalising, accidental moment. They were as soft and full as they looked. But warmer. And the sensation branded itself inside her sad, deluded mind.

Wayne had kissed her fingers many a time—and lots of other places besides—but while his lips had felt pleasant, even lovely at the beginning, they’d never snared her focus and dragged it by the throat the way the slightest touch from Sam did. She’d even started to wonder whether she was physically capable of a teeth-gnashing level of arousal, or whether ‘lovely’ was going to be her life-long personal best.