Breaking The Playboy's Rules

His clear blue eyes were fixed on hers, drawing her in, relaxing her.

The chaos, the noise and the crowd of people around them seemed to disappear into the red dust, leaving the two of them alone on the airstrip. The experience was slightly hypnotic, and Emma found herself nodding automatically in reaction to his calming blue gaze. But when he reached out and cupped her chin with his hand her response was definitely not calm and relaxed. It was something completely different altogether. Her skin tingled under his touch as his fingertips grazed her lip, leaving a trail of heat behind as he wiped the blood from her face.

Why was she letting a complete stranger hold her face in his hands?

Because his touch had rendered her incapable of moving, that was why.

She couldn’t speak. She couldn’t move. She could barely breathe. Her breaths were shallow—it was the best she could manage—and she could feel her heart pulsing in her chest. She told herself it wasn’t him, it was the adrenalin that had heightened her senses. What other possible reason could there be?

She needed to sit down and catch her breath. She needed to get some perspective. She just needed a moment to collect herself and then everything would be back to normal.

Dear Reader

The flying doctor service of Australia fascinates me, and I think if I could stomach small planes I would have quite liked to work for the service—but I’ll have to be content to set my stories in their world instead.

This story evolved from a trip my husband and I went on last year, when we took our two boys to visit our godson who lives on a remote cattle station in south-west Queensland. The drive from Adelaide, the closest capital city, took us eighteen hours—although it takes the locals a lot less! For part of the trip there is no road to follow, just stony paddocks and the odd creek bed to bump across, and I still don’t quite know how we didn’t get completely lost.

His driveway is forty-five kilometres long, the next-door neighbour is a day’s drive away, and he uses a plane to check the cattle as the station covers one million square kilometres of Outback Australia! Food is delivered by truck four times a year, the mail plane visits once or twice a week, the children are schooled by School of the Air and the flying doctor is a regular visitor both for clinics and for emergencies. For city-dwellers it really is an amazing experience, and I hope I’ve managed to capture some of that world in Harry and Emma’s story.

While the story has come from my imagination it was born out of the places we visited on that trip. The locations are real—Broken Hill, White Cliffs, Innamincka and Thargomindah are all Outback towns—and the Cooper Creek exists, but I named the cattle stations and made up the medical emergencies.

While Harry and Emma’s story shows only a snippet of Outback life, which might be less frantic than living in the city but never dull, I enjoyed giving Harry the chance to introduce Emma to the country he loves while their relationship developed. I hope you enjoy their story.

Emily

EMILY FORBES began her writing life as a partnership between two sisters who are both passionate bibliophiles. As a team Emily had ten books published, and one of her proudest moments was when her tenth book was nominated for the 2010 Australian Romantic Book of the Year Award.

While Emily’s love of writing remains as strong as ever, the demands of life with young families has recently made it difficult to work on stories together. But rather than give up her dream Emily now writes solo. The challenges may be different, but the reward of having a book published is still as sweet as ever.

Whether as a team or as an individual Emily hopes to keep bringing stories to her readers. Her inspiration comes from everywhere, and stories she hears while travelling, at mothers’ lunches, in the media and in her other career as a physiotherapist all get embellished with a large dose of imagination until they develop a life of their own.

If you would like to get in touch with Emily you can e-mail her at emilyforbes@internode.on.net

Recent titles by the same author:

SYDNEY HARBOUR HOSPITAL: BELLA’S WISHLIST*

GEORGIE’S BIG GREEK WEDDING?

BREAKING HER NO-DATES RULE

NAVY OFFICER TO FAMILY MAN

DR DROP-DEAD-GORGEOUS

THE PLAYBOY FIREFIGHTER’S PROPOSAL

* Sydney Harbour Hospital

These books are also available in eBook format from www.millsandboon.co.uk

Breaking The

Playboy’s

Rules

Emily Forbes

MILLS & BOON

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For my Mum, Barbara, and my mother-in-law, Tess,

both of whom dreamt of working

on Outback stations—it’s not too late!

And for Michelle, an English ex-pat

who came to Australia on a working visa, fell in love,

and now lives on a cattle station on the Cooper Creek

in Outback Queensland with Jon and their four boys—

including my godson Keegan.

CHAPTER ONE

Emma!

When are you coming to visit? You know I’m serious—I’m actually taking time to sit down and write!!!

Use some of your inheritance and get your butt on a plane. You can hang in Sydney with the olds until you get over your jet lag and then fly out to me. You’ll love it out here—remember when we were teenagers and you loved everything Australian? Do you remember watching that television series about the flying doctors? (How could you forget—you took all the videos back to England with you

I promise you, the minute you see the Outback and I introduce you to some real Aussie men you’ll forget all your worries. It’ll give you a chance to get some distance and perspective and get what’s-his-name OUT OF YOUR SYSTEM!!!!

Don’t think about it, Em, just do it!

See you soon,

Love, Soph xx

SOPHIE’S letter read exactly the way she talked and lived. Her words, like her speech, were peppered with exclamation marks. Everything she did she did quickly and with passion. She never seemed to stop and her enthusiasm had been the prompt that had got Emma on this plane. Without Sophie’s cajoling Emma knew she’d still be sitting in England, feeling depressed and wondering if she could really make this trip on her own. Without Sophie’s insistence she might not have booked her ticket. But now she was almost there.

Emma folded the letter and slid it back into its envelope, taking care not to tear the paper. She’d read it every day for the past month and it was beginning to show signs of wear but even though she knew the words verbatim she couldn’t bring herself to put it away permanently.

Sophie’s letter wasn’t the reason she’d packed her bags and said farewell to her stepmother and half-sisters in order to fly halfway around the world but it had been the catalyst. Emma needed the letter. It was her anchor. It kept her tethered to reality. It helped to make this whole adventure seem real—even when she could scarcely believe she had actually made it Down Under.

Thinking back to the events that had led her here was upsetting so she focussed again on the landscape beneath her as she tried to think of happier, more positive things. But as she looked out the window at this strange land she felt a trace of unease. She’d had a few moments of trepidation over the past month, although not as many as most people seemed to expect her to have, but looking at the vast, dry, red land beneath the plane’s wings she questioned the wisdom of leaving the familiarity of England to fly to the middle of nowhere.

But you were miserable in England, she reminded herself.

Yes, but you might still be miserable here.

At this point she wasn’t sure which was preferable—being miserable in familiar surroundings or being miserable in a strange, new world. She hoped Sophie was right and a change of scenery would keep her too occupied to notice she was miserable. Sophie had promised her that it was hard to be depressed in a place where the sun was almost always shining, and because Emma had long wanted to come back to Australia she chose to believe her. And now she was here. Almost.

As Emma felt the plane start to descend she slipped the envelope between the pages of the novel she was reading and stowed it in her handbag. She took a deep breath. It was too late to turn back now. She let her breath out with a long sigh.

‘Are you okay?’

It took Emma a moment to realise the girl in the seat beside her was talking to her. And another moment to realise she was asking because she’d sighed out loud.

She turned to face her. They hadn’t spoken to each other during the flight; they’d smiled a greeting when they’d first sat down but then Emma had pulled her book from her bag and started reading. She didn’t like striking up conversations with fellow travellers as there was always the danger that they’d talk non-stop for the entire trip and Emma then found it difficult to politely excuse herself from the contact. But looking at her now she wondered if she’d seemed rude. The girl was about the same age as her, in her mid-twenties, and she did look genuinely concerned.

‘Yes, I’m fine, thanks,’ she replied. ‘Just thinking.’

‘You’re English?’

Emma nodded.

‘Are you here on holiday or for work?’

Emma wasn’t really sure how to describe her visit. She wanted to make herself believe it was a holiday, although it felt more like an escape. She knew she was running away from her old life, just temporarily, but she didn’t want to admit that out loud. Not to a stranger, not even to herself. ‘I’m visiting family,’ she said. That was the truth, even if it wasn’t the whole truth.

‘Are you staying long?’

‘I’m not sure yet,’ she replied. She hadn’t planned any further ahead than getting to Broken Hill. Her life tended to move in cycles and she’d found, on more than one occasion, that things seemed to happen without her input. Sometimes she was happy with the way events unfolded, sometimes not, but she had always had a sense that there were some things she couldn’t control so sometimes she didn’t bother trying. More often than not, too, her plans, when she did make them, went awry so she avoided making them whenever she could. Right now her only goal was to get to Broken Hill. Once she was there there’d be time enough to work out what she was going to do next.

Emma was certain the girl beside her was going to continue the conversation but she was too caught up in her own thoughts to find the energy to chat to a complete stranger. She turned back to look out of the window as the noise of the plane’s engines changed. She searched for signs of life beneath the wings in the red dirt.

Where was the town? The pilot was obviously planning to land somewhere but as far as she could tell only miles and miles of nothing lay beyond the windows. When she’d visited Australia before she’d never travelled away from the coast and the landscape beyond the plane window looked so alien.

The country wasn’t completely flat. She could see undulations in the earth, but from this height she only got a sense of their size from the shadows they cast onto the red dirt. There wasn’t a speck of green to be seen—even the trees and bushes looked faded and grey. They’d long since left the ocean and the mountains west of Sydney behind and the world she was entering now looked untamed and hostile.

The land was vast and barren and it looked as though it could swallow people. It was no stretch of the imagination to think of people disappearing out here in the back of beyond, never to be seen again. Was she going to survive this?

A sudden wave of homesickness swept through her and the feeling took her by surprise. Although she’d been born and bred in England she’d always longed to really experience the Australian way of life. After all, she was half-Australian, and this was her chance to really immerse herself in the culture, her chance to experience life here as an adult as opposed to the self-absorbed teenager she’d been when she’d last visited.

As a teenager she’d existed on a diet of Australian television, everything from suburban settings to beachside settings to the Outback, but now it seemed that fantasising about the Australian Outback was one thing; actually experiencing it might be something else entirely.

She hoped this trip would give her a chance to heal, a chance to recover from what had been a terrible twelve months and a chance to work out what made her happy, but looking at this foreign landscape she was beginning to think that she might not find the answers here at all. It might take all her strength just to survive. She hoped coming here wasn’t going to turn out to be a mistake.

The plane continued to drop lower in the sky and Emma felt the undercarriage of the plane open as the pilot prepared to lower the wheels, but a minute later the plane was levelling out and she heard the flaps close again. She looked out of the window at the red dirt and the greenish-grey, almost leafless trees and stunted bushes. They weren’t getting any closer.

The plane’s undercarriage opened a second time, before closing again just as rapidly. Emma frowned and watched as the plane began to circle. As the plane turned she could see the airport buildings below them. At least she knew now that there was civilisation out here. That was comforting. But the next words she heard, however, were not.

‘Ladies and gentlemen …’ The pilot’s voice came through the plane’s audio system. ‘Due to an unforeseen technical problem with the landing gear, I would like to inform you that we will be carrying out an emergency landing.’ He paused momentarily and there was complete silence in the plane as every passenger waited to hear what he had to say next.

‘However, there is no need to be alarmed. Please remain in your seats with your seat belts tightly fastened. Your cabin crew will pass through the cabin, demonstrating the brace position and landing procedures.’

His tone suggested this was more of an inconvenience than a problem but Emma did wonder how he intended to land the plane. She could only assume he’d been trained for this sort of thing. In her experience pilots were trained for all sorts of emergencies but the pilots she knew flew for the air force, and she had no idea what experience pilots in Outback Australia had. Surely they’d have to return to Sydney? But even as she waited for the pilot to make that announcement she realised it was ridiculous.

Returning to Sydney wouldn’t miraculously resolve the problem. The landing gear would still be stuck. It couldn’t be fixed in mid-air. So what was he going to do? They couldn’t fly around indefinitely. At some stage they’d run out of fuel and then they’d drop out of the sky.

As her fellow passengers also put two and two together she could feel fear building up around her. Like a living breathing presence in the air it moved from one person to the next, wrapping its icy tentacles around each and every one of them, binding them together in a potential tragedy.

Everyone was silent. Were they thinking about crashing or were they too terrified to utter a sound? Whatever the reason for the silence it was there and it was complete and there was nothing to distract anyone from the pilot’s next words.

‘This is going to make landing difficult but not impossible. The airport has a dirt landing strip, which we can use in this situation, but I ask you all to assume the crash position as directed by our cabin crew.’

His last sentence succeeded in breaking the silence. There was yelling, there were tears and there was screaming. It seemed as though everyone had found their voices at once and the cabin reverberated with noise. Emma’s heart leapt in her chest and she felt it seem to lodge at the base of her throat. Nausea filled the empty space in her ribcage where moments before her heart had been.

In the commotion the crew moved calmly through the cabin. They opened the window shades and instructed the passengers to put their heads into their laps or brace themselves on the seat in front of them. Surely they couldn’t be as calm as they sounded?

But gradually, as the plane continued to circle, the cabin crew managed to quieten the passengers and the noise was reduced to a less frightening level.

Emma put her head in her lap. She knew the plane was circling in order to give the emergency crews on the ground time to get into position. She could picture the fire engines and ambulances racing to the edge of the runway and she wondered whose services would be required most.

This was crazy, she thought as she hugged her knees. She’d flown halfway around the world searching for peace but she hadn’t expected it to come in the form of mortality. This was why she should never make plans. They always went wrong. She was going to die at twenty-seven years of age. Just like her mother had.

No. Thinking like that wasn’t helpful. She had to believe that the pilot was as confident as he sounded. She took a deep breath and crossed her fingers as the overhead lights were switched off and the cabin was plunged into semi-darkness. The afternoon light bouncing off the desert and coming through the windows was only just bright enough to take the edge off the gloom.

Emma closed her eyes and waited for the moment that everyone talked about. She wasn’t waiting for her life to flash before her eyes but for the moment of regret for things she hadn’t yet done. But it wasn’t things left undone that sprang to mind. It was things she’d lost. Her mother had died when Emma had been a toddler and she barely remembered her, but her father had died recently and Emma felt his loss keenly. She and her father had shared a close bond. For many years it had been just the two of them, and she wished more than anything that he was still part of her life.

She’d tried to fill the void left by her father’s death with other relationships but her choice of Jeremy, her last boyfriend, had been disastrous costing her both a place to live and her job.

That was something else she missed, she realised. Her job as a nurse, which she loved. But maybe it was time to put that behind her. Jeremy had said and done some cruel things that had made her question her nursing skills but she shouldn’t let him dictate her path. Not any more. She wasn’t about to ask for her old job back, she knew she’d never want to work with Jeremy again, but that didn’t prevent her from nursing altogether. There were plenty of other hospitals that would love to have her.

Her career was something worth living for and she promised herself that if she survived this landing she would set about returning to nursing.

She had just started running through a mental list of which hospitals she should apply to when her head bounced and her chin slammed against her knees, jarring her teeth as the plane hit the ground and slid on its belly. The collision with the earth took her by surprise as she hadn’t realised they were that close.

She could hear the screech of metal as the fuselage complained about being thrown at the ground and she waited for the sound of metal tearing as the plane was ripped apart, waited for the smell of fuel, the roaring heat of flames.

Around her people were screaming, including the girl beside her. Emma opened her eyes. The girl was cradling her left arm and her hand was twisted and lying at an unnatural angle relative to her forearm. She couldn’t have been in the brace position properly and she must have slammed into the back of the seat in front of her on impact and fractured her wrist. The break looked painful and, considering their circumstances, there was every chance she’d go into shock. But what could Emma do?

She could feel the plane sliding sideways before it came to a halt. She looked along the aisle. Some of the overhead lockers had sprung open with the impact and contents had fallen out, but incredibly the plane appeared to be in one piece. There were no explosions, no gaping holes, no fires. People were crying but she couldn’t see any movement, not from either the crew or the passengers. There was no one to assist them, not yet. What could she do?

Over the sound of crying passengers Emma could hear the sirens of the emergency vehicles. She looked out the window but the view was completely obscured by a curtain of red dust that billowed around them. The red haze swirled as the emergency vehicles raced through it and the cloud pulsed as the emergency lights bounced off the dust particles. Help was on the way but she couldn’t tell how long it would be before they’d be reached.

The girl had stopped screaming but was still cradling her left arm protectively and sobbing. Emma touched the girl lightly on the shoulder, needing to get her attention. ‘I think you’ve broken your wrist,’ she said, stating the obvious. ‘I’m a nurse. Do you want me to help you?’

The girl looked at Emma. Her face was pale, completely drained of colour, and her eyes were wide. ‘I’m a nurse too,’ she said, ‘but I can’t think of what to do.’

Emma understood exactly what the girl meant. Administering treatment to others was vastly different from working out how to self-treat. And even though Emma wasn’t used to giving treatment in quite this situation—state-of-the-art emergency departments were more her scene—she knew that any assistance she could give would be beneficial.

She dragged her handbag from under her seat. She knew she probably wasn’t supposed to remove it but she needed to do something while they waited. Rummaging through it, she found a packet of painkillers but left them alone. The paramedics would want to be in charge of that.

She dug deeper into her bag and found a large cotton scarf that she carried in case the air-conditioning on the plane was too cold. She gave a wry smile as she pulled it out. Efficient air-conditioning was the least of their problems.

However, she could use the scarf to stabilise the girl’s arm because somehow they still had to get out of the plane. Emma assumed they’d have to exit through the emergency doors, which would mean sliding down the inflatable chutes. That wasn’t going to be good. But if she could make the girl more comfortable it might help.

‘Would you like me to support your arm with this?’ Emma asked, showing her the scarf.

She received a nod and she quickly fashioned a sling, holding the arm close against the girl’s body. By the time she’d finished, the cabin crew had got the emergency exits open and were moving through the aircraft, organising the evacuation process. Any injured passengers and those travelling with young children were directed to evacuate first.