LITMIR.BIZ

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to her—a role he’d first taken on when she’d been four and her mother had walked out on the pair of them.

      A pang of guilt—one she knew only too well—shafted through her. Dad really should have a life of his own...

      Perhaps here...

      Soon...

      But the conversation was continuing around her and she tuned back into it to find the women discussing unmarried men around town who might suit her.

      She shouldn’t have been surprised. The remark earlier about her being a possible candidate for the unknown Marty’s new woman told her they already knew she was a single mother—single being the operative word.

      Small town, indeed.

      But before she could protest that she didn’t want to go out with anyone, the chat swerved off to the fire. Joss lived out of town on a cattle property and although they were always prepared, she thought this time they’d be safe. She was explaining how they kept the paddocks close to the house free of trees or tall grass when Sylvie came to the door.

      ‘Emma, you’re needed on the chopper. It’ll put down here to collect you. You have about ten minutes. You know where the landing pad is?’

      Emma nodded confidently in answer to Sylvie’s question but inside she felt a little nervous. Although, as an emergency department doctor in a small town, she knew she’d be on call for the search and rescue helicopter, and she’d been shown over it by one of the paramedics, she hadn’t had much time to take it all in.

      By which she really meant she’d refused to think about it. She’d done the training originally to help her overcome her fear of heights, and although she knew most rescue crews got an adrenaline rush at the thought of a mission, her rush was more one of trepidation than anticipation. Yes, she could do her job and do it well, but no amount of training or practice would ever stop the butterflies in her stomach as she waited to hang in mid-air, suspended from a winch.

      ‘—party of older children with special needs from the unit at the high school,’ Sylvie was explaining as they left the room together. ‘They were walking the coastal path, just this end of it. Apparently, the wind turned suddenly and the fire came towards them, so you can imagine the panic. We know one child with asthma is having breathing difficulties. No idea about the others but they’re stuck where they are and will have to be evacuated.’

      Beach rescue, no winch!

      Her tension eased immediately...

      Even inside the hospital Emma could hear the helicopter’s approach and hurried to collect the black bag that held all the drugs she could possibly need. But she checked it anyway, relieved to see a spacer for an asthma inhaler, a mask for more efficient delivery of the drug, and hydrocortisone in case the child was badly affected.

      Outside, she waited by the building until the bright red and yellow aircraft touched down lightly. Then, ducking her head against the downdraught from the rotors, she ran towards it.

      The side door slid open and an unidentifiable male in flight suit and helmet reached out a hand to haul her aboard. She’d barely had time to register a pair of very blue eyes before she was given a not-so-gentle nudge and told to take the seat up front.

      She clambered into the seat wondering where the air crew were, but there was no time to ask as the man was already back behind the controls, handing her a helmet with a curt ‘Put it on so we can talk’, before lifting the aircraft smoothly into the air.

      Emma strapped herself in, settled the bag at her feet and pulled on the helmet with its communication device.

      ‘I’m Marty,’ her pilot said, reaching out a hand for her to shake. ‘And I believe you’re Emma. Stephen told me to look out for you.’

      ‘Stephen?’ She had turned towards him and shaken his hand—good firm handshake—but wasn’t able to take in much of the man called Marty. Unfortunately, checking him out had diverted her from working out who Stephen might be.

      ‘Stephen Ransome—he was up a couple of months ago to introduce the family to Fran. He’s my foster brother. You know he got married?’

      Steve Ransome was this man’s foster brother? Why? How? Not questions she could ask a stranger so she grasped his last bit of information.

      ‘No, I didn’t know, but I’m so pleased. He’s a wonderful guy and deserves the best.’

      ‘He is indeed,’ Marty agreed, and Emma turned to look at him—or at what she could see of him in his flight suit and helmet.

      Tanned skin, blue eyes, straight nose, and lips that seemed to be on the verge of smiling all the time.

      So, this was Marty, subject of the hot gossip and, apparently, the local lover-boy!

      Foster brother of Steve, who ran an IVF clinic in Sydney and had been her specialist when she’d decided to use Simon’s frozen sperm to conceive the boys.

      Simon...

      Just for an instant she allowed herself to remember, felt the familiar stab of pain, and quickly shut the lid on that precious box of memories.

      She was moving on—hadn’t that been another reason for the shift to Braxton?

      Marty was saying something, pointing out the path of the fire, visible in patches where the smoke had blown away.

      She glanced out the window as he manoeuvred the controls to give them both a better view, then straightened up the chopper, intent on reaching their destination.

      Marty, the man who didn’t do commitment and was open about it...

      As she mentally crossed him off her list—not that she had a list as yet—she wondered why he’d be so commitment-shy.

      His growing up in a foster family might be a clue.

      Had he been born in a disruptive, and possibly abusive, family situation?

      That last could make sense...

      But he was talking again and she had to concentrate on what he was saying, not on who he was or why he wasn’t into commitment, although that last bit of info was absolutely none of her business.

      ‘There’s a coastal path that runs for miles along most of the coast in this area, and people can do long walks, camping on the way, or short walks,’ he explained. ‘The school mini-bus dropped these kids about five miles up the track—there’s a picnic area that’s accessible by road—and the idea was they’d walk back to Wetherby and be picked up there. It’s a yearly tradition at the school, and the kids love it. Unfortunately, the wind spun around from northeast to northwest and the fire jumped the highway and raced through the scrub towards the path.’

      ‘Poor kids, they must have been terrified,’ Emma said. ‘Do we know how many there are?’

      ‘Two teachers, a teacher’s aide, and sixteen children,’ Marty said grimly. ‘Hence no aircrew. We stripped everything not needed from the chopper because we’ll only have two chances to lift them all off the little beach they ran to. Once the tide comes in, that’s it, and not knowing the age or size of the kids makes calculations for lift-off weight difficult.’

      Emma nodded. She’d learned all about lift-off weight during the training she’d undertaken in Sydney, necessary training as the rescue helicopter at Braxton relied on emergency department doctors on flights when one might be needed.

      They were over the fire by now, seeing the red line of flame still advancing inexorably towards the ocean, while behind it lay the black, smouldering bushland.

      Two rocky headlands parted to give a glimpse of a small beach and as they dropped lower she saw the group, huddled among the rocks on the southern end, their hands held protectively over their bent heads as the down-thrust from the rotors whipped up the sand.

      ‘Good kids, did what they were told,’ Marty muttered, more to himself than to Emma.

      They

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