At His Service: Her Boss the Hero: One Night With Her Boss / Her Very Special Boss / The Surgeon's Marriage Proposal

CHAPTER SEVEN

SHE could share this with everybody.

If she could find the right words.

Words that could convey the sense of desolation she felt seeing Steve taking the helicopter back to base, leaving Tama and herself standing on a snow-covered slope.

The tiny dot of the aircraft faded into the endless blue sky and Mikki had the weird sensation of looking down from even higher than the helicopter had been. Seeing herself and her sole companion fading to black dots on a pristine white background. Insignificant and then invisible as her mind’s eye saw the towering peaks of the mountains behind them, the tussock-covered high country below and then mile after mile—as far as the eye could see—of bush-covered land.

Wilderness. The blanket of greenery might give the impression of soft lines but beneath that canopy was a harsh landscape of steep slopes punctuated by baby rivers that tumbled into ravines. Dense bush that would be impenetrable in many places. Slippery tussock sprouting through puddles of icy snow, and where they were right now knee-deep snow, the chill of which Mikki could feel pressing on her leather boots like a solid weight.

The silence, when the final chop of the helicopter’s rotors had faded to nothing, was as awe-inspiring as the scenery. So deep it seemed almost sacrilege to break it. Not that Tama was sharing Mikki’s reverence.

‘Nice, huh?’ He took a deep breath of the cold air. ‘You don’t get a view like this every day.’

‘No.’ Mikki was still trying to take it in. To push back a fear she hadn’t expected to be so strong.

‘You OK?’

‘Yes.’ No. What did they think they were doing, putting themselves into such a hostile environment voluntarily? This was crazy!

Mikki finally dragged her gaze from the mind-boggling vastness around them. She turned and found it a comfort to see the figure of another human body, especially one as big and solid as Tama. She raised her gaze and there was a pair of dark eyes behind ski goggles staring back. Lips that showed above the black wool of a balaclava were curved into a smile.

‘You just need to trust me, princess,’ he said. ‘Can you do that?’

She had no choice.

They may have spent yesterday evening sorting supplies and clothing and going over basic survival techniques, but there was no way Mikki could be doing this on her own.

She had to trust Tama.

With her life.

Strangely, it was easy to take that step. The fear she had been so aware of ebbed sharply because the trust was genuine. A part of that connection that was so much stronger than simply attraction.

She didn’t even mind him calling her ‘princess’ because she knew there was respect in their bond. Instead of being demeaning, the title was more like an endearment and that notion reminded Mikki that there was more on the agenda here than just her survival training.

Excitement replaced fear. A delicious tingle of anticipation.

‘Of course I can,’ she told Tama. ‘I’m assuming you’re keen to get off this mountain alive.’

‘You bet.’

‘And I’m guessing you’ve done this before.’

‘Once or twice.’

‘In this particular location?’

‘Absolutely.’ Tama looked around them, taking a long moment to stare at the mountain peaks. ‘I love it up here,’ he added. ‘We’re on top the world. Free.’

Mikki was looking at him rather than the mountains. Listening to a note in his voice she hadn’t heard before. A tone that reverberated and gave her the odd urge to touch him. A moment later she realised why. It had been a piece of personal information, hadn’t it?

In all the interaction she’d had so far with this man, nothing as personal as a passion for anything other than his work had been apparent. It was like having a drink offered when she hadn’t realised how thirsty she was. A tiny taste and Mikki wanted more. A lot more. She wanted to know what else he loved. Who he loved. What did he need to feel ‘free’ from?

‘You’re staring at me again.’

‘Again?’

‘You do it a lot.’

‘Do I?’ It was time to change the subject. ‘I’m just waiting for words of wisdom to spill from your lips, that’s all. What’s first? Do we get to build a snow cave?’

‘No.’ Tama seemed to be collecting himself. Focussing on what they were there to do. ‘We’re going to make a mound rather than a cave. Caves are best for a larger group. A mound is all two of us will need for a night.’

Just the two of them. In close quarters. All night. Was it just a lower level of oxygen at this high altitude that was making Mikki notice a slight dizziness?

‘The first thing we do is STOP,’ Tama said firmly.

‘Stop what?’ Mikki asked nervously. Her wayward thoughts, maybe?

‘S.T.O.P.,’ he spelt out. ‘It stands for Stop, Think, Observe and Plan. What if Steve hadn’t just flown off into the sunset? What if he was lying dead in the mangled helicopter we just crawled out of? And what did we wait for before escaping the wreckage?’

They had been over important considerations of surviving a crash last night.

‘We waited until all movement had stopped,’ Mikki responded obediently. ‘We didn’t want to get sliced to bits by rotors that were still in the process of shearing off.’

‘Good. What should we do now?’

‘Wait until the risk of fire has gone and go back to check that the emergency locator beacon is activated and see if the radio works.’

‘And?’

‘And we try and retrieve the survival pack, if we didn’t already bring it out with us.’

‘Right.’ Tama was well into teaching mode now. ‘Our ELB isn’t working for whatever reason and neither is the radio. What now?’

‘We try our cellphones.’

‘No coverage here.’

‘We should stay close to the wreck, which is going to be a lot more visible than we are. We could try and signal a passing aircraft by using mirrors or flares or making a fire.’

‘You were paying attention.’ Tama nodded approvingly, which sent a ridiculously warm glow through Mikki. ‘What else should you be thinking about?’

‘Any immediate threats to our safety. The dangers of hypothermia and dehydration.’

‘What do we need?’

‘Shelter. Water. Fire, if possible.’ Mikki was enjoying the challenge. ‘I think we need to build a shelter close to the wreck, try and keep warm and conserve energy. And if we’re not found by morning, we should try and walk out.’

‘Sounds like a plan.’ Tama raised an eyebrow. ‘What have you left out?’

‘The patient? If we’d had a patient on board and got them out we wouldn’t be able to go anywhere.’

Tama shook his head. ‘Keep thinking. Remember STOP.’

‘I’m up to P. Oh-h.’ Mikki rolled her eyes. ‘I haven’t observed much, have I?’

‘What should we look at?’

‘The weather. Terrain. Materials that might be useful.’

‘Cool. We know the weather’s OK but if this was for real, what might we be looking for?’

‘Wind direction and speed. Say, a nor’westerly that means bad weather’s on the way. Strong winds and rain could increase avalanche risk.’ Mikki had begun moving her feet without realising it because they were getting cold enough to be painful.

Tama noticed. ‘We’ll start moving,’ he decided. ‘You can tell me about the terrain and where any danger areas for avalanche might be if you spot them.’

‘Don’t we need to plan our route first?’

‘We’ll talk about that, too.’ Tama picked up the small backpack that contained their survival kit. ‘I’ve done this before and our route is carefully planned to give us practice in the skills we need. Follow my steps to start with and watch how I’m kicking the snow to pack it down and then testing it before I put any weight down.’ He grinned. ‘Should keep us from falling into a crevasse, hopefully. You’ll get a turn at keeping us alive later.’

Mikki picked up her pack that held water and dehydrated food and followed Tama. Yes, they would talk about what she was here to learn but it was inevitable that they would talk about other things, wasn’t it?

Personal things that might allow her an insight into this intriguing man.

For the next two hours, anyone observing them would have considered themselves simply watching an intense teaching session. Mikki learned how to walk safely on a snow-covered slope. How to examine the terrain around, above and below them and how to describe a col and a gully and a buttress.

She learned how to spot changes in the snow that might indicate a hazard and how to estimate distances and plan a route that might eventually lead to safety. She spent some time choosing the place to build their shelter for the night and then they started the task that Tama said would take them another couple of hours.

The undercurrent—of being completely isolated with that simmering, as yet unexplored, physical attraction between her and Tama was just that. An unacknowledged undercurrent that was there with every burst of conversation and every shared glance. A pleasant sensation that suggested they were both going with the flow rather than fighting it.

A new depth was being added to their relationship, Mikki realised. Amidst the energy that came from a skilled teacher interacting with a willing student she could sense more than Tama’s passion for his subject. There was a palpable pride in what he did. Who he was. Real patience in leading her to teach herself what she needed to know and a genuine interest in her success.

In her?

They took turns with the small shovel from Tama’s pack to heap snow into a large mound. Tama took over when the height was above Mikki’s head level. He made the task look easy and didn’t even get particularly out of breath while he talked at the same time. He told her the story of a plane-crash victim who survived against huge odds and walked out of the bush a week later, mid-winter, in nothing more than a pair of shorts and a T-shirt.

‘Sometimes,’ he concluded, ‘I think survival is more about sheer bloody-mindedness and refusing to give up than all the fancy stuff we can teach. Have you got that kind of determination, Mikki?’

He’d called her ‘Mikki’. Not ‘princess’ or ‘Mouse’. This was new. And it was a personal question. Was Tama feeling the same kind of curiosity about her that she was about him?

‘I guess,’ she responded carefully. ‘I’m here, aren’t I? Given how over-protective my dad is, it’s taken a fair bit of determination to get this far.’

Tama seemed to be shovelling harder. ‘We need to get a good dome shape to this,’ he said. ‘That way we can maintain an arch shape when we hollow it out. That makes the roof self-supporting and it won’t drip on us.’ He threw another shovelful of snow upwards. ‘Why is your father so over-protective?’

‘My mother died just before my tenth birthday. Dad absolutely adored her and her death very nearly destroyed him. For a while, he pushed me away totally but … when he found he was able to love again, he went a bit too far the other way. Wanted to wrap me up in cotton wool and make sure he didn’t lose someone else, I suppose.’

‘You’re an only child?’

‘Yes. Mum was diagnosed with breast cancer at the same appointment she found out she was pregnant with me.’

The movement of the shovel ceased. ‘Wow. That must have been tough. Did she put off treatment?’

‘Yes.’ Mikki had to turn and pretend she was admiring the scenery again. Boy, Tama knew how to get straight to the heart of a painful subject, didn’t he? Had she really wanted to start treading on personal ground like this?

The silence continued. Respectful. Waiting.

‘I didn’t know that until after she died,’ Mikki said finally. ‘Some well-meaning friend was trying to find a way to help Dad with his depression and I overheard her talking to another friend. She thought he might be blaming himself because he allowed her to continue with the pregnancy instead of starting chemo.’

Another silence fell in which Mikki could feel Tama staring at her.

‘So you blamed yourself instead.’

Mikki turned swiftly. ‘Why did you say that?’

‘It’s what kids do.’ It was too hard to see Tama’s eyes behind the ski goggles from this distance but she could see sympathy in every line of his face. ‘Their world gets tipped upside down and someone they love gets ripped away from them. We’re egocentric creatures at the best of times and when you’re too young to know any better, or there’s no one around who knows or cares how you feel and you don’t get told it’s not true, it’s inevitable you end up thinking it’s your fault.’

The words were heartfelt. So heartfelt it was Mikki’s turn to stare intently at Tama.

She had to clear her throat to break the new silence. ‘What did you blame yourself for, Tama?’

Tama dug the shovel into the snow forcefully and heaved the load upwards, grateful for a physically demanding task.

Dammit. That had been unbelievably careless. But how had Mikki picked up that he was talking about himself so easily? It was like she could see the part of him he’d been able to keep so well hidden for so many years.

‘I’m just saying,’ he muttered. ‘That’s what kids are like.’

He needed to direct the conversation back to safe ground. Why had he asked such a personal question in the first place? He knew perfectly well what level of determination this pint-sized woman possessed.

This had been a mistake. He’d got carried away back there when they’d been visiting Josh. Pushed the boundaries of the game thanks to the temptation that nurse’s comment had provoked. A threesome? No way. But the idea of being alone—just him and Mikki—had been irresistible. And so easy to arrange with no suspicions being raised.

But it had been a mistake. He needed to back off and get this excursion onto purely professional grounds.

‘We can start digging the tunnel now.’ Tama stepped away from the impressively large mound of snow. ‘We start out here and go down about a metre. We won’t come up until we’re well under the edge of the mound and then we’ll start hollowing out from the middle. I’ll shovel it behind me and you can scoop it up and get rid of it.’

The task was not difficult but it was time-consuming and they had to rest at intervals to conserve energy.

Verbal interaction was minimal because Mikki was out of sight and busy behind him. When there was an opportunity to say something, Tama kept right away from anything personal. He had a wealth of stories he could tell about how people dealt with survival in the wilderness. Plus any number of useful tips.

‘Don’t ever carry a butane lighter with your survival kit,’ he warned Mikki. ‘Too damn dangerous. Have an airtight, melt-proof container and keep waterproof matches or magnesium fire-starters in it.

‘Use your watch for a compass. Keep it flat and point the hour hand at the sun. Half the distance between the hour hand and twelve o’clock is due south.

‘You can make a decent fishing hook by bending a syringe needle. I’ll show you tomorrow when we get near the river.’

It worked for a while, even though it felt forced at best and a bit ridiculous at times. It wasn’t so easy to control his thoughts while he was alone in the centre of the mound, carving out the space they would share for the night. He kept thinking about the kind of darkness her words had skimmed. A darkness he could understand only too well.

Was that where her astonishing strength of character came from? That period of heading into adolescence, not only missing the person she needed most. But carrying the burden of guilt that her very existence might have contributed to her mother’s death?

He gave up trying to squash his curiosity when he emerged to share a drink of water and a muesli bar from Mikki’s pack.

‘At least your dad didn’t blame you,’ he found himself saying out of the blue. ‘Or he wouldn’t have been so over-protective.’

‘That came later,’ Mikki said. ‘After the car accident when I was sixteen.’

Ah, yes. That accident. He’d been curious about that when she’d mentioned it the day of that physical assessment. It had been so easy to stay away from stepping onto personal ground back then. Not so easy now.

‘You were hurt?’ The mental image of Mikki lying badly injured in the kind of scenes he often attended was disturbing enough to give him a kick in the gut.

‘Amazingly, no, but the other three teenagers in the car were hurt. One of them died. I was the front-seat passenger and … I got lucky, I guess.’

‘They were your friends?’

‘Yeah …’ She didn’t sound sure.

‘A boyfriend was one of them?’

‘No.’ Mikki’s tone told him it was time to stop prying. Clearly, she didn’t want to talk about it.

That was fine. Good, even. They could really get away from this personal stuff. He could dismiss his curiosity about those intervening years. The ones between her mother’s death and the accident that had made her father so over-protective. Had he not cared much until then? Been so focussed on a sick wife and then too broken-hearted to really notice his kid? She must have been incredibly lonely if that had been the case. Not that he was going to ask but he didn’t like the idea of her being a lonely child any more than being injured.

Mikki broke into his thoughts. ‘What about you?’ she asked. ‘Were you an only child?’

Maybe they couldn’t stay away from this personal stuff after all. He’d brought this on himself, though, hadn’t he?

‘Yes and no,’ Tama answered reluctantly. He pushed the top of his water bottle shut with a snap, shoved it back into the pack and turned to climb back into the tunnel. Then he caught Mikki watching him and sighed inwardly.

‘Yeah, OK. It’s just not something I tell people.’ Ever. So why did it feel like the time to break that ironclad rule? Because Mikki had experienced something that might give her insight into how it had really been? There was something there. A connection. A kind of force that pulled the words from his mouth. ‘Yes, I was an only child. I didn’t have a dad that I knew about. I got sent to live with my uncle and aunt and eleven cousins.’

Tama ducked his head into the tunnel. He’d said enough. Too much.

Mikki’s voice floated into the tunnel with him. ‘How old were you?’

‘About six,’ Tama growled. He wriggled further into the mound. This conversation was over.

Mikki crouched at the neck of the tunnel, ready to scoop the snow that came towards her and spread it away from the opening.

She had barely heard Tama’s muttered response to her question but it resonated in her head as loudly as if he’d shouted it.

He’d been six. A small child.

For whatever reason, his mother had given him up and sent him to live with relatives. To be one of a huge family where one more mouth to feed probably hadn’t been noticed. He might not have been noticed.

Just like her, he’d lost his mother.

And he’d blamed himself, hadn’t he? That was why those words had been so heartfelt.

As a little boy, Tama had felt unloved and possibly very lonely, and he’d believed it was his own fault. That somehow, unknowingly, he’d done something so wrong he’d had to be severely punished.

Mikki’s heart ached. For Tama. For herself. For the children they had been and for what had been taken from them. No wonder she felt so drawn to this man. Was it the similarity of their pasts that attracted them both to this kind of work? This unique combination of risking yourself to care for others?

Was the reason she felt Tama was a soulmate as simple as that?

Maybe.

Except that there was another factor in this attraction.

A very physical one.

The inside of the snow mound had a wide platform against one side and a narrower one against the other.

‘We sleep there,’ Tama explained, pointing to the wider platform. ‘And we cook on this one.’

‘Cook?’

‘Didn’t I tell you I can cook?’ Tama was using a tiny bright light that was remarkably effective in the confines of this small space. ‘Watch this.’

He produced a tiny primus stove from his pack and a small, lightweight, aluminium pan. Mikki found the water and the packages of dehydrated food he requested and then did as instructed and watched, increasingly aware of how intimate this situation was.

Here they were, in a tiny cocoon, so isolated that the rest of the world might as well have ceased to exist.

Just herself and Tama. In a space small enough to be warmed by the combination of their body heat and the small stove. When an absolutely delicious smell began to emanate from the pan, it felt—ridiculously—like home.

Mikki cast an anxious glance upwards a moment later, however.

‘Won’t the heat from the flames melt the roof?’

‘A bit, but it won’t drip on us. That’s the beauty of making a good arch shape. It won’t cave in either, so don’t worry.’

Mikki smiled. ‘I’m so hungry I don’t care. It would be worth it.’

They both had a spoon and they took turns eating the hot mixture of pasta, meat and vegetables. A muesli bar stuffed with chocolate chips was dessert.

‘Still hungry?’ Tama asked as Mikki washed down her last mouthful with a swig of water.

‘No. And I’m heaps warmer. I feel great.’

The warmth from Tama’s approving gaze made her feel even better. Mikki liked it that they didn’t need to wear the goggles in here. She loved being able to see Tama’s eyes. To try and read his expressions. She just wished she knew more of what was going on behind those dark eyes. Maybe she was still hungry. Just not for food.

‘I’m warm, too,’ Tama said. ‘Amazingly effective shelter, isn’t it? Put your gloves back on, though. We don’t want to risk frostbite while we sleep.’

Mikki pulled on woollen gloves and then her waterproof, thermal mittens as Tama opened a small package that contained a foil sheet. He spread it on the sleeping platform as she pulled her woollen hat on more securely and made sure her anorak was zipped up. She stepped into the sleeping bag Tama handed her from the pack and pulled it up to her waist.