“All right,” she said wearily. “I give in. I’m not pregnant, Alex, but I am thinking about having a baby.”

He looked horrified. “What on earth for?”

“I’ve decided I want one. Soon.”

“How soon is soon?”

“As soon as possible.”

Alex looked dazed. “And who is the father of this baby going to be? You’ve got someone in mind already, haven’t you? Who is it?”

The smile had been bottled up too long. Given the chance to escape, it rushed onto Sam’s face in what could only be described as a beam.

“You, of course. Alex, who else?”

Dear Reader,

Sometimes inspiration for a new story can come from very unexpected places. The book I wrote before Emergency Baby was based on the premise of the hero donating a kidney to the heroine and how this was both a catalyst and complication for their relationship. The Surgeon’s Perfect Match was a very emotional experience to write as I was caught up in creating characters based on people that I have incredible admiration for—who struggle with life in the face of debilitating illness and who are heroic enough to put more than their hands up to help.

I felt I needed a change of atmosphere for this story. Something a bit lighter. Kidney donation had left a very distinct impression on my mind; however, it was almost a joke to think about a sperm donation. Hmm. It was certainly different. The more I thought about it, the more I could see the potential to provide an interesting conflict or two.

So that’s how Emergency Baby came about. I have no idea where my next story might appear from, but I won’t be complaining if it’s as pleasant a surprise as getting to know Sam and Alex and following their story.

Happy reading!

Love,

Alison xxx

Emergency Baby
Alison Roberts

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CONTENTS

Cover

Excerpt

Dear Reader

Title Page

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

Extract

Copyright

CHAPTER ONE

IT HAD finally happened.

Echoes of all the voices that had ever informed Samantha Moore she was crazy; the expressions on the faces of people who learned what a young, intelligent and perfectly presentable looking young woman did for a living; memories of physical pain and the aftermath of trying to deal with experiencing real fear—all came home to roost in a single moment.

She was crazy.

She was also stuck.

Don’t panic, Sam reminded herself automatically. Don’t fight the rock. You can’t win.

It was easy to close her eyes for a moment. To breathe evenly and wait for a well-rehearsed protocol to override the jangled messages her brain was flashing as some basic survival instinct tried to take control. It was easy because Sam felt indescribably weary.

Fed up.

Having reached this point, Sam realised that the normal adrenaline rush had been missing ever since the start of this mission. The call to scramble SERT—Specialist Emergency Response Team—for the second time that day had been less than thrilling. The fact that this was an unusual call for a team that could be deployed to anything from an armed police operation to a shipboard emergency on the high seas hadn’t even been enough to spin Sam’s wheels today.

Abseiling down the sinkhole in an area popular with cavers had been a breeze. It would have been enjoyable had it come earlier in the shift. Crawling through increasingly narrow spaces in the underground rock formation was a lot less fun, however, and trying to squeeze through the ridiculously narrow gap that Sam was now firmly stuck in was just plain crazy.

She tried to inch herself back the way she had come. A trickle of water on the rock beneath found a way to breach the flap of her overalls that covered the front zip and the measure of environmental discomfort slipped into a new level. Sam’s helmet scraped on the rock above and her knuckles dug painfully into her ribs as she tried to free the hand wedged under her body.

‘You OK, Sam?’

The deep rumble of the male voice came from beyond this tunnel designed for some nasty, slithery underground creature. How the hell had Sam’s partner, Alex, managed to get through here, anyway? He was well over six feet in height and his shoulders had to be twice as wide as hers. It simply wasn’t physically possible.

Sam’s response was a noncommittal grunt. She turned her head to point nose down again as she tried to flatten and relax her body and wriggle back another few millimetres. The tip of her nose touched the icy runnel of water and she jerked up, only to crack her helmet on the unyielding ceiling.

‘Does it ever occur to you, Alex,’ she said through gritted teeth, ‘that we might be nuts?’

A deep chuckle was amplified by the confined space. ‘All the time, mate.’

He was still enjoying himself, though, wasn’t he? Getting a kick out of overcoming the odds to render assistance to someone in trouble. More than one person in this case. The reminder of why they were here was enough to make Sam try again. And try harder. The effort and pain of a scraped elbow elicited a grunt this time.

‘You’ve got your elbows too far behind your shoulders.’ The light from the lamp on the front of Alex’s helmet was reflecting off wet rock as he peered back at Sam. ‘Wriggle back and extend one arm in front of you.’

Sam resisted the impulse to tell him he wasn’t saying anything she didn’t already know. It would only provide justification for some smart rejoinder that underlined the fact she hadn’t been focussed enough. That she wasn’t firing on all cylinders right now. It could well come back to haunt her for weeks, too. As the only female member of an exclusive team, Sam had to make sure she kept up. The incentive to try to get one step ahead at least occasionally was always strong but the extra adrenaline that always kept her thinking fast enough and capable of physical feats that had long since made her ‘one of the boys’ was just…gone.

Why now?

The painfully slow backward movement finally reached a successful turning point. Sam eased her arm free and then pushed it forward, finding she now had plenty of space to move in the desired direction. There was room to get onto all fours after the short squeeze and Sam found herself crawling, like some overgrown infant, with the light from her helmet illuminating the shape ahead of her.

‘How on earth did you fit through that gap, Alex?’

‘Sheer skill,’ he responded easily. ‘I’m just too good.’

‘Huh!’ Sam’s snort was not without an element of affection. Alex Henry might well be the best in their team of elite paramedics but she wasn’t about to encourage any personal trumpet blowing here. ‘I suspect you’re some kind of shape-shifter,’ she told him. ‘You can turn into a snake any time you like.’

Another chuckle. ‘Funny you should say that. My last girlfriend said something rather similar.’

The corner of Sam’s mouth lifted into a private, wry smile. Sonia must have tried too hard to pin Alex down, then. She must have been given the brush-off, probably in the nicest possible way, but women did tend to get rather passionate about staking a claim on Alex Henry.

Hardly surprising given the combination of dark, good looks, a very sharp intelligence, humour and a career that was dramatic enough to make most females go at least a little weak in the knees.

Funny that it had the opposite effect the other way around. The same skills Sam possessed in the way of courage, assertiveness and determination were always enough to scare men away remarkably fast.

‘You guys OK?’ The shout came from well ahead. From one of those strange people who actually did this sort of underground thing as a sport. He was the member of the group who had been left uninjured by the passage collapse and had been able to return to the surface and summon help.

‘We’re fine,’ Alex called back. ‘Minor hold-up in that last stretch.’

‘Yeah. Bit tight, isn’t it? You can see why the other teams need to go the long way with their gear.’

The skills and tools needed to deal with people buried under rock were being brought in by the team of Urban Search and Rescue technicians whose helicopter had landed in this remote part of the west coast of New Zealand’s South Island only minutes after the SERT team’s arrival.

‘You’ve got a bit of deeper water coming up and then the pit’s round the next bend after that.’

‘How deep’s the water?’ Sam tried to sound casual but there was no way she was in the mood for any underground diving.

‘Only a couple of inches. No big deal.’

It felt like a big deal for Sam. The water was running swiftly enough to splash continuously into her face. The volume was enough to make the waterproofing of her overalls inadequate and within seconds the leather gloves she wore felt like concrete mittens. In a few minutes she was going to have to negotiate a tricky climb down a narrow, flexible aluminium ladder that was a permanent fixture on this caving route. Doing it with frozen hands and wet boot soles was not going to be fun.

But who’d ever promised that her chosen profession would always contain elements of pleasure, anyway? And had she ever really enjoyed pushing herself to such limits or had it simply evolved into a way of life? With three older brothers competing for the attention of a father who’d been a legend in the police force, achieving something beyond expectations had been the only way to get noticed.

Sam had been far too young when her mother had died and not being noticed had made for a lonely existence. Maybe the real pleasure to come from testing herself had been in the approval of others and she had merely swapped one tribe of males for another in adulthood.

It was not a pleasant revelation. If the thrill had come from chasing that approval and for some reason that was suddenly no longer enough, then Sam was about to face a major life crisis comparable to the childhood trauma of losing her mother. What did she have to show for her thirty-four years on earth apart from an impressive array of pre-hospital emergency medical skills and a passion for practising them under the most difficult conditions imaginable?

Nothing, that’s what.

It was her life. And for the last five years, since leaving a road-based ambulance job, Sam had lived and breathed SERT. Her friends were her fellow team members and their partners, so her social life revolved around people who shared her passion. Her sport and recreation consisted of training in whatever area of skill was deemed useful and any spare time was taken up with minimal attention to life’s chores in order to gain opportunities to improve her knowledge base.

She was a SERT geek!

Proud of her status as the only female to make the grade. Happy to be one of the boys and eager to hurl herself into whatever dangerous mission she was lucky enough to score on her shifts.

The appreciative whistle from Alex broke the downward spiral of Sam’s thoughts that were trickling beneath what she needed to focus on as she carefully made her way down the ladder. Sadly, it wasn’t her skill in managing to keep the ladder so steady during her descent that he was admiring.

‘Will you look at that?’ he exclaimed. ‘I’m beginning to understand why you guys do this stuff.’

‘Amazing, isn’t it?’ But the agreement from their guide was perfunctory. ‘Come on, we need to go this way.’

Sam had only a few seconds to scan what had impressed Alex so much. The vertical drop from the higher-level tunnel ended in a huge cave festooned with stalactites over a black pool of water where massive stalagmites protruded like islands in an alien seascape. Shadows from her lamp cast shadows that accentuated the eerie scene but there was no time to do any more than register and file away the new experience. Not far into the tunnel leading away from the other side of the pool was where the accident had occurred. One man lay unable to move, thanks to a badly fractured leg. Two other men lay either beyond, or beneath, the rockfall, which had been caused by a minor earth tremor. It was fortunate there was no time to dwell on the possibility of another earthquake.

‘Bruce! How’re you doing, buddy?’

‘Thought you were never coming back, Mike.’

‘Sorry, mate. I had to wait for the chopper to get here so I could show them where you were. This is Alex and that’s Sam. They’re paramedics.’

‘Hope they’re good at shifting rock. My leg can wait.’

‘I’m not so sure about that.’ The beam from Sam’s lamp revealed an ominous pool of blood glistening on the dark rock beneath their patient. She stripped off her leather gloves and flexed her fingers repeatedly, but they were still too cold not to fumble with the zip on the pack Alex had brought with them.

‘I heard someone calling. I think it was Tim.’

‘Really?’ Mike’s relief was evident. ‘How long ago?’

‘A while back. I dunno. I’ve kind of lost track of time a bit. Arrrgh!’

‘Sorry.’ Sam had cut and pulled away the remnants of protective clothing over Bruce’s leg. Alex ripped open the packaging for a large gauze dressing and emptied a saline sachet to dampen it. He was ready to cover the open wound with the protruding bone on Bruce’s thigh.

‘We’re going to splint this leg, mate,’ Alex said. ‘We need to control the bleeding. We’re also going to give you something for the pain and start a drip to give you some fluids. Anything else hurting?’

‘No!’ Bruce pushed himself up onto his elbows. ‘Forget my leg. What we need to do is shift some of this rock. I couldn’t manage it by myself but with four of us…’ He fell back with a groan of frustration but the wave of his hand showed the others where he’d been shifting small pieces of rubble despite his injury.

‘There’s another crew coming in to deal with the rock,’ Sam said reassuringly. ‘They’ve got the equipment they’ll need.’

‘Where the hell are they, then?’

‘They have to come in the long way, Bruce,’ Mike said. ‘They couldn’t have got their gear through the “squeeze”. They’ll be a wee while yet.’

It had taken an hour for Sam and Alex to make their way through the underground maze to reach their patient. Another hour had been used in getting to the site after the call had come in and it had taken Mike over an hour to get out by himself and raise the alarm. Bruce had to have lost a significant amount of blood from his fractured femur in that period of time, and he could well have other injuries he wasn’t admitting to due to concern for his missing friends.

The tunnel they were in now was by no means large enough to make for easy working conditions and loose, jagged pieces of rubble from the collapse added to the difficulties presented. Sam bruised her knee when she knelt to try and establish IV access. She shredded a surgical glove and grazed her knuckles a short time later as she slipped a hand behind Bruce to check for any rib injuries.

Alex was as cheerful as ever. You could put that man anywhere and he would still function with a far higher than average level of competence. He would also remain cheerful and establish a rapport with any patient. Bruce relaxed noticeably with the distraction of conversation and became a lot less anxious when Mike decided to use his waiting time pushing as much rubble as he could back towards the cave end of the tunnel in preparation for the upcoming phase of the rescue effort.

Periodic calls to the trapped men quickly became part of the routine.

‘Tim? Can you hear me, mate? Steve? Are you OK?’

‘Keep calling,’Alex advised into the silence. ‘They may be able to hear us and it’ll help if they know there’s a rescue effort under way.’ The lamp beam swung away from Bruce. ‘Check this for me, Sam?’

‘Morphine, ten milligrams,’ Sam confirmed, holding the ampoule up to catch her own beam of light. ‘Expiry date’s fine.’

‘This might make you feel a bit sleepy,’ Alex informed Bruce, ‘and I’m going to give you something else so it doesn’t make you feel sick.’

‘Right. Hey, what’s the time?’

‘A bit after 6 p.m.’

Bruce swore softly. ‘The girls will be frantic.’

‘Girls?’

‘My wife, Lauren. And Steve’s wife, Courtney. They were going to come back and meet us at the tunnel entrance. Hey, Mike!’

‘What’s up, buddy?’ Mike had crawled back ready to start rolling a new piece of rock away.

‘What’s happening up top? Did you call the girls?’

‘They were here already when I went up. It was Lauren’s phone we used to call the emergency services.’

‘Is she all right?’

‘She’s worried,’ Sam told him, ‘but she’s OK. I had a word with her before we came down. She’ll be doing her best to look after her friend. She’s due to have a baby pretty soon, isn’t she?’

‘Courtney? Yeah, she’s due in about three or four weeks, I think. That’s why we took a week off work to come caving. Steve’s not going to get away much for a while after that. He might never get away again after this. Courtney worries enough at the best of times.’

‘Hmm.’ Sam had been concerned about the level of distress the pregnant woman waiting near the sinkhole had been in. How much worse was it going to be to know there were no signs of life yet from the father of her baby? She made a mental note to spend some time with Courtney after they had accompanied Bruce to the waiting helicopter. It was quite likely that it would be rather a long time before they could reach the trapped men and Sam could only hope that when they did, medical intervention would still be of benefit.

It was going to be a long night.

The more easily negotiated route to the underground cave took ninety minutes longer than the path Sam and Alex had taken. By the time the extra personnel and equipment arrived, they were more than ready to secure Bruce into the Stokes basket stretcher and start the long trip back. They had done what they could to stabilise their patient. His leg was in a traction splint, which helped control both internal bleeding and pain. He had received some fluid replacement to help counteract blood loss but he was showing signs of shock with raised respiration and heart rates. The sooner they got him into a hospital’s emergency department the better.

There were plenty of people to help with the difficult task of hauling the stretcher through the tunnels leading back to the surface but there was no way to avoid the more precarious start to the journey by having to pull their patient up the vertical wall beside the ladder.

‘I’ll go up with Bruce,’ Alex told Sam. ‘You get up top and direct the rope work.’

Having ascended the ladder, Sam looped a rope around a solid piece of rock and clipped a carabiner on her belt to the anchor. She fed another length of rope through a belay brake on the wall that had clearly been used as a means of descent before the ladder had been installed and this rope was secured to the Stokes basket. She stationed another person beside her to control a rope attached to Alex’s harness and they both pulled in the extra length as the stretcher slowly moved upwards.

Sam watched the strength Alex displayed, climbing the ladder with only one arm, hooking his legs around the thick edge wires to put his feet on the rungs heels first and help prevent any sway. He had his other hand through one of the gaps cut near the rim of the heavy plastic of the Stokes basket and Sam had the silly impression that if their ropes failed for some reason, Alex would simply keep hanging on and save their patient from plummeting to the floor of the cave.

Totally impossible, of course, but that was the kind of confidence Alex exuded. Normally, it inspired Sam to push herself a lot harder in the hope that Alex would be as proud of his partner’s abilities as she was. Sometimes she actually got the impression that Alex was doing the same thing but they had become so closely welded as a team over the last few years that it was hard to tell just who inspired whom.

What if the thrill was permanently gone for Sam? A lack of passion would be reflected almost instantly in her performance. Maybe it had been already, the way she had allowed herself to get stuck. Alex hadn’t seem perturbed, however, and that was both a relief and a warning. The thought of seeing concern—or, worse, disappointment—reflected in those dark eyes was not a pleasant one.

‘Almost there, Alex,’ she called. ‘It’s well over the lip. We’re going to start tipping the basket back and then drag it onto flat ground.’

Even with help, the effort required was enough for Sam to have to catch her breath for a moment. Bruce was not a small man.

‘You OK?’ Alex was unclipping his rope.

‘Absolutely. You?’

‘Nothing a strong coffee won’t cure. Let’s get moving, eh?’ He dropped to a crouch. ‘How’re you doing, Bruce?’

The response was a mumble that Sam couldn’t make out. ‘Is his GCS dropping?’ she asked with concern. A drop in consciousness could be a sign that the level of shock was worsening rapidly.

‘He’s a bit drowsy. I topped up his morphine before we started up the wall.’

Sam nodded. ‘Probably a good way to be. It’s not going to be a very comfortable trip being dragged over rock.’

It was uncomfortable for everyone and it felt like the longest three hours Sam had ever experienced. Only two things prevented it from being unbearable. One was that Bruce’s condition remained stable and he wasn’t too distressed by the trip even on some rougher patches.

The other was that Sam managed to maintain her usual stoicism and kept the growing dismay that she had turned some corner in life and was about to fall into a void completely hidden.

Or so she thought.

Right up until Bruce had been despatched in a rescue helicopter with a new paramedic crew to accompany him to hospital. Until Sam had spent time trying to offer what comfort she could to the pregnant wife of one of the men still missing and until she had been given a hot meal and drink and directed to sit down and rest near the fire roaring in a concrete barbecue area of the campground that marked the entrance to the caving network.

Alex folded his long legs to sit beside her a few minutes later, balancing a heaped plate of hot casserole and potatoes on his knee.

‘What’s up, Sam?’

The habit of doing anything necessary to live up to the privilege of being Alex Henry’s partner was not something Sam could easily relinquish. She certainly wasn’t going to admit to the sensation that she was standing on the edge of some emotional precipice. Alex was unlikely to be able to understand, let alone sympathise with, such a situation.

Or would he?

‘You look tired,’ he said succinctly. ‘Let’s hope our relief team arrives before they summon us underground again.’

‘Yeah.’ Sam was grateful for a believable reason for any odd vibes she might be emanating. ‘It was a hard one, wasn’t it?’

‘Cool, though.’ Alex spoke between mouthfuls of the savoury meat dish. ‘I wouldn’t mind doing a bit of caving that didn’t have the pressure of being a rescue situation.’

Sam’s smile felt a bit strained. A year ago—even a week ago—she would have encouraged such an interest. Would have felt the same way, in fact, and angled for an opportunity to accompany Alex on a new venture.

‘So?’ Alex couldn’t have satisfied his hunger enough to explain the way his fork hung halfway between his plate and his mouth. The intensity of the glance that came Sam’s way wasn’t diminished by the flickering firelight, and she found it unnerving.

‘“So”, what?’

‘Are you up for it? Shall we see if we can hook up with a caving expedition when we’ve got a few days off?’

‘Maybe.’ Sam pushed a piece of food around her plate, her appetite fading rapidly. What on earth was wrong with her?

She looked up, knowing that distraction would be readily available in the busy scene around them. The numbers of rescue personnel continued to grow steadily. Experts in all sorts of areas had been called in by now, even people from the army who dealt with explosives.

Alex ate in silence for a minute until he had scraped his plate clean. He eyed Sam’s half-eaten meal. ‘You going to finish that?’

‘Nah. I’ve had enough. Here…’ Sam handed him her plate. ‘You have it, Alex. You’re a bottomless pit.’

‘So are you. What’s the matter, Sam? You sick?’

She shook her head, carefully avoiding direct eye contact. ‘Just tired. And I’m worried about Courtney.’

‘The pregnant woman?’

‘Yeah. That’s her over there, sitting in the Red Cross tent.’

‘She looks as though she’s being looked after.’

‘I don’t think hand holding and offering cups of tea are helping much. She’s terribly withdrawn. I tried talking to her after Bruce’s wife went off in the helicopter with him. She’s absolutely distraught. I think she’s convinced herself that Steve is dead.’

‘She could well be right.’

‘She won’t eat or drink anything. She won’t rest. She won’t even talk. That kind of stress can’t be good for the baby.’

‘Let’s keep our fingers crossed for some good news. The first rock-breaking crew must be due out for a break soon. They sent the second team in when we came out with Bruce.’ Alex pushed back a mud-encrusted overall sleeve to look at his watch. ‘They’ll be bringing in the next SERT watch in an hour or so. We might well escape having to go back in.’

‘It’ll be Angus and Tom on the next shift.’

‘Yeah. Gus will enjoy having something different to do.’

‘He’s going a bit hard out these days, isn’t he?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Since Fliss left. I think he’s more miserable than he’s letting on. He’s covering up by giving a hundred and ten per cent of himself at work.’

‘Look who’s talking!’ White teeth gleamed in the firelight as Alex grinned but then his face softened. ‘Giving a hundred and ten per cent is what this job is all about. You know that probably better than any of us, Sam.’

‘Yeah.’ The subtle praise was as warming as the fire but Sam’s response came out as almost a sigh. It fell into a silence that felt as dark as the night pressing in on the edges of the brightly lit rescue base set-up.

Alex cleared his throat. ‘When you asked, down in that tunnel, if it had occurred to me that we were nuts…you were serious, weren’t you?’

He sounded wary, Sam decided, and no wonder. If your job was the most important thing in your life—which it had to be if you were going to cut the mustard as a SERT member—and the partner you depended on started having doubts, the repercussions could be huge.

They did work with other partners sometimes, when illness or injury or holidays interfered with roster placements, but it was never quite the same. Communication could seem awkward. The level of trust just a shade not deep enough. And the combination added a tension it was much better not to have given the type of work they could be required to do.

A curious restraint hung between them now. Sam had always been more than happy to talk to Alex about anything. She had no secrets from someone who was closer to her than any of her brothers even. A ‘best friend with attitude’ was how she’d once described their relationship. How would it affect that relationship if she kept her current emotional state bottled up? Could that, in fact, be more destructive than a confession? Maybe she should test the waters.

‘There are moments,’ Sam admitted cautiously, ‘when I do wonder whether there should be more to life than what we do.’

She could actually feel Alex blink in astonishment. ‘Like what?’

‘Like…relationships.’

Alex sounded smug now. ‘I get my share.’

Sam snorted. ‘True.’ The amusement faded from her tone. ‘They don’t last long, though, do they?’

‘They would if I wanted them to.’

‘Would they?’ Sam tipped her head sideways trying to ease a crick in her neck. ‘Angus was all set to settle down with Fliss, wasn’t he? Do the whole marriage and kids bit. She was the one who decided she couldn’t take the stress of living with what he did for a career, and I can’t blame her.’

Sam looked past the fire to the Red Cross tent where Courtney could be seen, still sitting in a hunched position, her shoulders shaking again as she sobbed. ‘Imagine what it’s like, having someone you love go off to do dangerous things. Being left to wait and worry and wonder if they’re ever coming back.’

‘We’ve got the most amazing job on earth,’ Alex responded firmly. ‘That’s got to be worth a sacrifice or two.’

‘But what about when it stops?’ Sam could hear the warning but ignored it. ‘If we got injured or totally burned out or something? What would we have then?’

But Alex didn’t appear to be listening. He got to his feet in a fluid movement that belied the physical exhaustion he had to be suffering.

‘What you need,’ he declared ‘is another coffee. A good, strong one. You’re going weird because you’re too tired.’ He bent to collect their empty plates. ‘You stay here. I’ll be right back.’

So she was going ‘weird’, was she? She’d been right about that warning tone. Or was Alex simply running from a conversation about something he was not prepared to give any head space to? He was the epitome of confidence. Invincibility, even. Maybe he couldn’t afford to pick at the edges of a persona like that by having doubts.

She was on her own on this one.

Wearily, she pushed herself to her feet and moved. Sitting alone in her current mood was not a good idea. She’d had her break and it was time to see if she could help someone.

Like Courtney, maybe.

The heavily pregnant woman was still hunched over and sobbing. The sound became more of a concern as Sam got closer. Courtney seemed to be gasping for air rather than crying and she sounded like she was in more than emotional pain.

‘What’s happening, love?’ Sam crouched, her fingers registering a rapid heartbeat as she took hold of Courtney’s wrist.

‘It…It hurts!’

An older woman from the Red Cross was rubbing Courtney’s back. ‘I know,’ she said soothingly. ‘They’re doing their best to help. We just have to wait.’

Sam wasn’t convinced that reassurance was all Courtney needed right now. She gripped the hand beneath hers.

‘What hurts, Courtney?’ she asked urgently. ‘Talk to me. Is it the baby?’

Courtney raised her head finally and Sam could see the panic in her face. The hesitant nod was not needed to confirm the unexpected development in this rescue scenario.

‘Close the tent flap,’ Sam ordered the Red Cross worker. ‘And then hold this blanket up to screen Courtney. I need to check to see if she’s in labour.’

Sam wasn’t prepared for what she found, having persuaded Courtney to lie back and allow her to remove the clothing from her lower body. Maybe the labour had started long ago and had been unnoticed or ignored due to the stress of the situation. Or maybe the birth would have been precipitous anyway.

It didn’t matter now. When Sam found herself shining a torch on the crowning head of a baby about to enter the world, she could do nothing but don a pair of gloves and wait to assist. At least any birth that happened this quickly was highly unlikely to be complicated.

And it was over in seconds. Another gasping groan from Courtney and the baby slithered into Sam’s hands. She lifted it, keeping its head down to help clear the airway and hoping desperately that suction wouldn’t be necessary. Tiny limbs moved, making it harder to keep a secure grip and then the baby took its first breath and expelled it in a cry of bewilderment.

‘You’ve got a little boy, Courtney!’

‘Oh…Oh!’ Courtney held out her arms. ‘Give him to me…please?’

‘Lift your jersey up,’ Sam suggested. ‘Let’s get him against your skin and keep you both wrapped up to stay warm.’ She looked up at the Red Cross woman who was standing, open-mouthed. ‘We need some towels,’ she said calmly. ‘And more blankets. And would you have any idea where my partner, Alex, is?’

‘I’m right here.’ The tent flap moved. ‘What’s the—’ His jaw also went slack as the lump under Courtney’s jersey gave another warbling cry.

‘I need some clips for the cord,’ Sam told him. ‘Can you find something in the kit?’

The adrenaline rush that had been missing throughout this job had finally arrived. Sam’s fingers worked swiftly and automatically and her brain refused to register any physical weariness. The delivery was completed, the placenta saved for later examination and Sam held the infant, having wrapped him in fluffy towels, while two Red Cross women helped Courtney into some dry clothes and Alex went to find some available transport to take mother and child to the nearest hospital.

The baby was a few weeks early but he seemed a good size and perfectly healthy. He lay in a cocoon of soft towelling, his eyes wide open, staring up at Sam.

She stared back, and something stirred deep within her that had nothing to do with any extra adrenaline in her system. Too nebulous to be tacked to any clear memories, it was more like a pool of feelings that had been long buried. It had to do with being held by arms that belonged to someone who could offer the ultimate in comfort to a helpless being. To do with absolute trust. And unconditional love.

The things that a mother offered her child.

The things that Sam had had taken away too long ago. Things that could never be replaced because she could never have another mother.

The stirring was more than poignant. A need that had no hope of ever being fulfilled could only be painful. Sam could never be given what she had once needed so very badly.

Or could she?

Maybe she didn’t need to receive it to ease that sore patch on her soul. Maybe giving it would have the same effect.

Sam couldn’t take her eyes off the tiny unblinking face of Courtney’s baby. She was totally mesmerised.

The longing—the need—was overwhelming. This was a night for revelations, wasn’t it? But didn’t everything happen for a reason? Had she simply been presented with an answer to what could lie in her life beyond her career? Something that could negate any void? A future that could actually repair the past?

Alex gave her a strange look as he returned and took the bundle from her arms to give the baby back to his mother.

‘Don’t go getting any ideas,’ he warned softly.

The warning was way too late.

The longing might come to nothing but the idea had taken firm root.

Samantha Moore wanted a baby.

Big time.

CHAPTER TWO

SOMETHING had changed.

Alex couldn’t quite put his finger on what it was, but that disturbing little niggle had been there ever since that caving job a week ago and it kept popping up at the oddest times.

Like now, when they were in the middle of dealing with a three-car pile-up on the main road near the airport and he should be totally focussed on the patient he was currently assessing.

He was focussed—kind of. Fortunately, no life-threatening injuries had been caused by the accident even though one of the cars had been travelling at a fairly high speed on one of the semi-rural roads. SERT members were based at the airport, in order to be near their helicopter transport, but they also crewed a standard ambulance and were used as first response to any callouts that wouldn’t take them more than five minutes’ drive away from their base.

Such as this scene, where an elderly driver had failed to stop at an intersection and had gone into the side of a car that had then swerved into the lane of opposing traffic. The driver coming the other way had luckily had time to brake as he’d swerved himself but he had still connected with the elderly woman’s car with enough force to cave in the passenger side.

Remarkably, she appeared to be unhurt. She was also very cross.

‘Someone is going to have to pay for this damage to my car!’

‘Do you have any medical conditions that you’re being treated for, ma’am? Problems with your heart or blood pressure perhaps?’

‘Are you suggesting this accident was my fault, young man?’

Alex almost grinned. It was all relative, he supposed, and thirty-eight would make him a whippersnapper to someone who looked to be well into their eighties. This accident could not have been anyone else’s fault, however. The faded blue eyes glaring at him belonged to someone who had just gone through a very clearly marked ‘stop’ sign.

‘I just want to check you out and make sure you haven’t been hurt,’ he told her.

‘I’m not hurt but I could have been killed! I want to know who’s responsible.’

‘Are you having any trouble breathing?’ Silly question. Nobody would be snapping at him like an angry barracuda if they were in serious respiratory distress. ‘Do you have any pain anywhere?’

Alex glanced up to see whether he might be needed with a more seriously injured person in one of the other vehicles. No such luck. The male driver of the third vehicle involved was talking to a police officer and his wild gesticulations towards the ‘stop’ sign and then Alex’s position suggested that he wasn’t in any degree of physical distress.

Sam was with the occupants of the car that had been hit side on by the old woman’s car. She was crouched in front of a baby’s seat that had been lifted from the rear of the car. A young woman stood beside her, looking very anxious. Even from this distance Alex could see that the baby was smiling in response to whatever noises or exaggerated facial expressions Sam was making and her posture made it quite obvious that everything was under control there.

And there it was again.

That disturbing little niggle.

A curious disappointment, perhaps, that this job wasn’t going to provide the kind of challenge that his partner thrived on. One that would drive any current dissatisfaction with her career into the background.

Where it belonged.

‘I’m bleeding! Oh, my goodness! I’ve ruined a brand-new pair of stockings.’ The dismay in his patient’s voice was wildly misplaced. The thin leg Alex could see now protruding from the car had had a sizeable flap of skin peeled back from the shin. He snapped open the catches on his kit and reached for a gauze pad and a saline sachet to dampen it.

‘I’m going to cover this to stop the bleeding, ma’am. This might sting a little bit.’

‘It’s not going to fix my stocking, is it? Someone’s going to have to replace these as well. They’re not cheap, you know. I only buy the best. None of that nasty supermarket rubbish!’

‘Of course,’ Alex murmured. ‘Can you tell me your name, please, ma’am?’

‘What for?’

‘I’m going to need to fill in some paperwork.’

‘Oh…all right. It’s Esme. Esme Dickson.’

Alex wound the bandage around Esme’s leg to hold the dressing in place and apply enough pressure to stop the bleeding. ‘And how old are you, Mrs Dickson?’

‘None of your business. And it’s “Miss”, not “Mrs”.’

It was a relief to see a police officer approaching. Alex should be able to get the information he needed with a lot less angst after Miss Dickson had had her interview with more authoritative personnel.

‘Is she all right?’

‘Relatively minor skin tear.’Alex had cleaned the wound and eased the skin back into place before bandaging. ‘I don’t think she needs transport to hospital unless it’s what she wants.’

‘Of course it isn’t,’ Esme declared. ‘There’s nothing wrong with me that a good cup of tea won’t fix.’

‘A visit to her GP might be in order to ensure that it doesn’t get infected.’

‘And “she’s” the cat’s mother.’ Esme wagged a finger at Alex. ‘I do have a name, as you well know, young man.’

‘This is Miss Dickson,’ Alex told the police officer, keeping the twitch of his lips firmly under control. ‘I’ll just do a quick check of her blood pressure and so on and then she’s all yours.’

The expression on the officer’s face did not suggest delight. ‘Do you have your driver’s licence available, Miss Dickson?’

‘I hope you’re not suggesting I don’t have one.’

‘Not at all, but it would be helpful if you could show it to me.’

‘It’s right here, in my handbag. Oh…Where is my handbag? It was just here, on the seat beside me.’

‘Is this it?’Alex fished a cavernous bright green bag with thick handles and an ornate clasp from behind the front seat.

‘Yes. Thank you. Now I just need to find my glasses.’

The police officer almost sighed aloud. ‘Do you require your glasses for driving, Miss Dickson?’

‘Of course I do. And I was wearing them. They must have fallen off.’

Alex could see a pair of spectacles, minus their case, inside the now open green bag as he wound the blood-pressure cuff around his patient’s upper arm. ‘Those wouldn’t be the ones you’re looking for, by any chance?’

Miss Dickson looked disconcerted. ‘Goodness! How on earth did they manage to fall in there?’

Alex let down the cuff. ‘Blood pressure’s fine,’ he announced. ‘Heart rate and rhythm are also normal. I’ll come back in a minute to get the details I need for the paperwork.’ He straightened and gave the police officer a sympathetic lift of his eyebrows. ‘I’d better go and see whether my partner needs any assistance.’

She didn’t, of course. By the time Alex approached the knot of people around the back of the ambulance, Sam had lifted the infant from its car seat, presumably having given it a thorough check, and it was bouncing in her arms, looking delighted at the amount of attention being bestowed on it.

There was something just not quite right any more about seeing Samantha Moore with a baby in her arms. Maybe that was what had started making things seem different.

That weird feeling he’d experienced last week, seeing Sam staring at the baby she’d just delivered. Holding it as though…as though it was her own child.

Alex had joked about it at the time, warning Sam not to get any ‘ideas’, but he was quite sure now that he’d discovered the cause of what had been bothering him for the last few days. That Sam’s biological clock had inexplicably started ticking and she was going to go off and have babies and leave him to try and find another partner that he could work with as well as he worked with Sam.

As if!

On both counts. Alex smiled at Sam. A relieved smile. He knew perfectly well how Sam felt about marriage. He’d even met her overpoweringly successful father and the brother that had gone into the fire service rather than trying to follow in his father’s footsteps and join the police force, as her other two brothers had.

Alex could understand why Sam was so fiercely protective of her independence. That was why she was so adamant about never sharing her life with any other male on a permanent basis. And a child would sap that independence even more. Of course he could understand. He felt the same way himself, cherishing his own independence enough to make even a relationship of a few months’ duration seem long term. The idea of permanence or, worse, dependants, was a fate worse than death.

The idea of finding someone else he could work with so well was equally ludicrous. It might have taken a while to get used to in the beginning but Sam was special. As good as any bloke to work with. Better, really, because there were times that Alex’s extra physical strength was needed and he could provide it and feel great. There was none of that subtle competitive stuff you’d get working with another male. And then there were times when a feminine touch was needed. The sympathy angle or an examination on a female patient that everybody was more comfortable having another female providing. Sam could do that and feel great.

Neither of them ever held such advantages over the other. They complemented each other perfectly. They were the best team.

Alex took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. He could put that disturbing niggle to rest now. It was something that he had got entirely out of proportion because Sam had been so tired that night and had made those comments about there being more to life than their jobs. About them being crazy, doing what they did. Seeing her holding that baby on top of the odd comments had triggered an entirely unfounded fear.

He’d seen Sam dealing with kids dozens of times over the last few years, hadn’t he? Just like now. She was terrific in handling them and perfectly happy to give them back to whoever they belonged to. The mother of this particular rugrat was smiling rather tentatively as she took her baby from Sam.

‘Are you sure she’s OK?’

‘She seems absolutely fine. We can take you into hospital to have her checked out again if you’re still worried, though.’

‘I don’t know…Maybe I should…’

‘I’ll just get some paperwork done while you think about it.’ Sam climbed into the back of the ambulance where Alex had beaten her to the patient report forms.

He ripped some pages off for her. ‘Do you want me to arrange transport for the kid? I’ve already contacted Control and told them a second vehicle wasn’t needed.’

‘I thought we could take them in,’ Sam said. ‘We’re due to take the truck back to Headquarters in half an hour or so.’ She smiled at Alex. ‘And if we happened to be in the hospital, we could take a few minutes and go and see whether Steve’s out of Intensive Care yet.’

It was a winning smile that made it quite clear how keen Sam was to follow up on the victims of the caving incident. After more than twelve hours of being trapped by rubble, one of the men last week had succumbed to a head injury but Steve, the father of the baby Sam had delivered, had survived. He’d been in the ICU the last time they’d visited but any day now he should be joining Bruce, who was still in the ward recovering from the surgery needed on his fractured femur.

Maybe this time Alex could ask about the chance of getting another underground trip. He didn’t need that special smile from Sam to persuade him.

‘Works for me,’ he said. ‘I’ll talk to Control again and I need to get some patient details from the others involved here.’

It was ten minutes before they left the scene and another fifteen minutes to get to the emergency department of Christchurch General Hospital. By the time they had handed over the only patient they’d transported, Sam and Alex were officially off duty.

‘They don’t mind if we’re a bit late back with the truck,’ Sam informed Alex. ‘Angus and Tom are having a coffee and they can find another vehicle for them to get to Base if there’s a callout.’

‘Great. Quick visit to the ward, then?’

‘Absolutely.’

They stopped at the ward clerk’s desk to see whether Steve had been transferred from the intensive care unit yet. The nurse who overheard their request happened to be the one looking after both Steve and Bruce for the afternoon shift and she was more than happy to discuss her patients with Alex.

Big blue eyes were fastened on Sam’s partner and the eager, if subtle, leaning forward posture was nothing new, either. Sam was quite used to the interest women showed in Alex. She would have felt the same way in their position but it had never occurred to her to do anything more than appreciate his looks in a very academic way.

‘No fishing off the company pier’ had been a maxim handed down from her brothers well before Sam had seen for herself what damage such relationships could do to a working environment. Hardly a refined pearl of wisdom but very good advice nonetheless, and Sam’s narrow brush with disaster had sealed her acceptance. When her relationship with an ED doctor had petered out somewhat acrimoniously, the time spent in that department had been uncomfortable for months afterwards.

This pretty young nurse had dragged Steve’s notes from the trolley to show Alex.

‘He had a massive haemopneumothorax. Six fractured ribs. Would you like to see the X-ray?’

‘Maybe later. So he’ll still be pretty sore, then?’

‘Mmm. The chest drain only came out today. He’s had another CT scan on his head and neck, too. Did you know there was a hairline fracture in C6/7? Just as well you guys knew how to take such good care of him.’

Sam’s attention wandered as the nurse’s dimples flashed. There was a noticeboard in the central corridor beside the main desk. Photographs and thank-you cards from patients were interspersed with notices from support groups, rules for visitors and hospital services such as the hairdressing salon and chemist.

Below the large pinboard was a long, custom-built pocket that housed a variety of pamphlets. Idly, Sam scanned the titles. There were tips for incorporating a healthy level of exercise into a daily routine— ‘Push play for thirty minutes a day’. Dietary guidelines for a heart healthy eating plan had a cute little smiley red heart with legs. More professional looking were the warning signs and self-help checks for testicular and prostate cancer, but not many had been taken.

‘So, did you get any good calls today?’ The nurse was edging the conversation into a more personal arena.

‘Nah. Quiet day for us. Sam? You ready? Steve’s in room 3.’

‘Sure.’ But Sam didn’t turn directly towards Alex because her line of vision had just connected with something interesting.

Very interesting.

‘I’ll come with you,’ the nurse announced. ‘He’s due for obs, anyway.’

Sam started to follow the pair down the corridor but then hesitated. Too quickly for Alex to notice, she turned back, pocketed one of the pamphlets and then strode a step or two to catch up.

‘How’s Bruce doing?’ she queried.

‘Really well.’ You would have thought it had been Alex who’d spoken the way the nurse’s gaze was dragged back to the man she was keeping in step with. ‘They asked to be in the same room, which is why I’ve got them both on my list. He’s been up on his crutches today.’

The men from the caving club were delighted to see their visitors and show off their progress to representatives from the emergency services that had ensured their survival. Sam happily joined in the conversation but part of her mind was still firmly captured by the light-bulb moment she had experienced back at the noticeboard.

It wasn’t a flashy brochure trying to win people over to the benefits of a low-fat diet or thirty minutes of activity every day. It was even more discreet than the testicular cancer one. Sam hoped it would have lots of information inside but the two words that had caught her eye so effectively were enough all by themselves really.

Sperm bank.

A baby bank. An anonymous donation and then a withdrawal and bingo! A ‘no-strings’ baby. Sam’s buttons had not been pushed last week by the notion of falling madly in love, getting married and settling down to raise a family. Oh, no! What Sam wanted, purely and simply…was a baby. A being she could afford to love, heart and soul. A tiny person she could guide and protect and watch grow and develop. Someone who would love her back and could provide the bond between mother and child that had been missing from Sam’s life for what felt like for ever.

It wasn’t as though she needed a man in her life. Not on a permanent basis anyway. She was perfectly happy the way she was, thank you, and who needed the angst and stress of a relationship that didn’t work out long term? The argument that a child needed a father figure didn’t hold much water, either. Sam had no shortage of suitable male role models readily available if she happened to end up raising a son.

Financially she was secure enough and Sam didn’t intend giving up her job for ever anyway. A good day-care centre would have the added benefit of solving any issues regarding a lack of siblings for her child as well.

Dammit! Sam smiled at Bruce, realising she hadn’t heard a word he’d just said and he was looking at her expectantly, waiting for a response.

‘Hmm,’ she said thoughtfully, buying some time.

‘She’d love it,’Alex declared.

They were talking about caving, Sam realised as her brain retrieved snatches of the half-heard patch of recent conversation. Steve was actually looking as enthusiastic as Bruce at the thought of taking Alex off to climb dark vertical walls and squeeze painfully through impossibly small fissures. Did these men have rocks in their heads?

Maybe if Tim—the man who hadn’t made it through the disaster—hadn’t been a new and relatively unknown club member, his death would have made enough impact to dampen that enthusiasm a little longer.

‘I reckon I’ll be fit enough in a month or so,’ Steve was saying. ‘I’ll give you a bell.’

‘We’ll find somewhere easy for your first run,’ Bruce added.

‘Hopefully somewhere away from any fault lines,’ Sam suggested.

The three men looked at her sadly. The looks were eloquent enough to tell her they were using their passion as positive energy to get through their current discomfort and the tragedy that had occurred. They didn’t need someone pulling them down, but her reaction was only to be expected. She was a girl after all.

That was quite enough to push a button that had been well honed throughout Sam’s childhood.

‘Hey, don’t get me wrong,’ she said brightly. ‘I’m in. I need to keep an eye on my partner here, don’t I? Just to make sure he doesn’t get himself into trouble.’

Two sad glances were directed at Alex now.

‘Sounds as bad as being married, mate,’ Steve muttered.

‘Worse,’ Alex said cheerfully. ‘Can’t get away from her even when I’m at work.’

Sam’s eyes widened as a sharp retort sprang to her lips but it died as the softening she detected in Alex’s smile let her know he wasn’t serious. That he didn’t want to get away from her at all.

She smiled at Steve. ‘How’s Courtney?’ she queried. ‘And the baby?’

The memory of that tiny vulnerable face and the way the baby had lain in her arms, totally dependent on her protection, gave Sam a sharp twinge of longing.

It also triggered unease. How could Steve be so keen to put himself back into a situation that had almost denied that baby one of its parents? Sam recognised the hypocrisy of the criticism instantly. Wasn’t she planning to continue what most people would consider a high-risk profession if she had a baby?

But that was different. Her passion was a career, not a hobby. And she was very good at what she did. The risks were carefully calculated. Minimal, really.

Steve was beaming proudly in response to Sam’s query. ‘He’s great,’ he said.

‘He’s noisy,’ Bruce said. ‘That kid yells its head off every time it comes in for a visit.’

‘You might see them if you wait a bit,’ Steve told Sam.

‘We need to hit the road,’ Alex said hurriedly. ‘We’re overdue to hand over our vehicle to the next crew.’

Sam couldn’t object to the reason for their departure but she was surprised by the pace Alex set as they left the ward.

‘What’s the hurry?’

‘Time to go home. I’ve got a cold beer waiting for me in my fridge.’

Sam had her doubts about that response. Not that there was a beer waiting, of course, but she had the distinct impression that Alex was moving fast in order to avoid meeting Courtney and the baby.

Come to think of it, he hadn’t looked too thrilled at having to transport that infant from the accident scene this evening, either. Was Alex developing an aversion to children or was she just overly sensitised towards them at present? Alex would think she was mad and he could well be right, but the last week had proved that fighting this desire was swimming against an astonishingly powerful tide.

On her recent days off, Sam had tried everything she could think of to either distract herself or talk herself out of the idea of having a baby. Visits home to wrangle with her brothers and to try and find something to talk about that might impress her father. Punishing sessions at the gym, one of which had included Alex as they had their regular race along the most difficult climbing wall. She had only won that by the skin of her teeth this time. They’d had another afternoon together, on a refresher course for abseiling skills, and she’d gone out one night to the pub where most of her friends from various branches of the emergency services gathered.

None of these activities were remotely connected to children. They had all been as enjoyable as they always were but the sense that something big was lacking from Sam’s life refused to go away.

It simply got bigger.

‘You’ll need fresh batteries in the life pack.’

‘Cool.’ Angus McBride hung his reflectorised, wet-weather coat behind the driver’s seat in the ambulance. ‘Anything else?’

‘Trace paper might be low. We ran through rather a lot with the arrest we went to this morning.’

‘Successful?’

‘No.’ Sam shook her head with resignation. ‘Sad case, too. Eighty-five-year-old lady was on the plane ready to go for a trip to see all her new great-grandchildren in England. It took years for the family to persuade her to make the trip and a daughter actually came out to accompany her. They were taxiing down the runway for take-off when she collapsed.’

‘And running an arrest scenario in the aisle of economy class is definitely not to be recommended.’ Alex reached past Sam to remove his kit from the back of the ambulance. ‘Which reminds me. What did you do with that code summary, Sam?’

‘Oh—I completely forgot to do anything with it.’ Sam fished in her pocket for the carefully folded strip of paper from the life pack that had recorded each stage of the arrest scenario. ‘Here it is.’

‘What’s this?’ Angus’s partner, Tom, came around the side of the vehicle at that moment and stooped to pick something up. ‘Did you drop this, Sam?’

‘Yeah, thanks.’ Sam reached to grab the item but the look on her colleague’s face told her she was way too late. Tom had already spotted those two eye-catching words. Why on earth hadn’t she thought to fold the dratted pamphlet so they would have been hidden on the inside?

‘Whoa!’ Tom held the pamphlet just high enough for Sam’s reach to be inadequate, which wasn’t difficult given that his height matched that of Alex and Sam was a good six inches shorter.

‘Tom!’

Her tone attracted the attention of both Alex and Angus.

‘I know you consider yourself to be one of the boys, Sam,’ Tom said gleefully. ‘But this is going a bit far, isn’t it?’

‘What is it?’ Alex asked with interest.

‘Nothing,’ Sam growled. ‘Just something I picked up on the ward.’

Tom had opened the pamphlet and was holding it above his head to read. ‘Apparently, they’re short of donors for the sperm bank,’ he announced.

Even Angus was grinning. ‘Just how did you think you could help, Sam?’

‘By giving it to you lot,’ she retorted. ‘One of these days you might like to consider doing something useful with all those little tadpoles you waste.’

‘Hmm.’ Alex’s eyebrows rose, which seemed to accentuate a familiar mischievous glint in his dark eyes. ‘She could have a point. Think of all those fantastic genes that aren’t getting passed on.’

‘Especially yours.’ Sam was quite ready to pass this off as a joke and make sure none of these men came anywhere near guessing the real reason she had pocketed that pamphlet. ‘I was intending to leave it in your locker, as a matter of fact.’ She glared at Tom. ‘But somebody has spoiled the surprise factor.’

Angus was still smiling. ‘I think you’re right, Alex. Sam does have a point. With the way you treat your women, it’s probably the only way you’ll ever see a son and heir.’

‘Except I wouldn’t see him, would I?’ Surprisingly, Alex seemed to be giving the notion serious consideration. ‘He’d be some stranger’s kid.’

‘There might be ten of them,’ Tom suggested. ‘You’d go to a job at a kindergarten one day and half the kids would look just like you.’

‘They wouldn’t do that.’ Sam didn’t like the idea of there being an unknown number of half-siblings for any child of her own. ‘Would they?’

‘Depends how short they are on the good oil, I guess.’ Angus certainly wasn’t going to take any of this seriously. ‘Personally, if I was going to have a kid, I’d want to know about it. And I’d want to be there while it was growing up.’

A slightly uncomfortable silence fell for a moment as they all remembered that Angus had recently been dumped by the very woman he would have chosen to be the mother of his children. Alex cleared his throat and took on the task of making the atmosphere less strained.

‘I dunno,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘Speaking as someone who has no intention of getting married, it seems like a socially responsible kind of thing to do. I wonder if they let you know about any kids. Send a photograph on birthdays or something.’

‘Doubt it,’ Tom said. ‘They probably wouldn’t want the sprog to know so they definitely wouldn’t want some stranger who’d insist on turning up at birthday parties.’

‘Try a private arrangement,’ Angus suggested.

‘Yeah.’ Sam didn’t want to appear silent for a suspiciously long time. ‘Put an ad in the paper,’ she said lightly. ‘“Sperm available to the right woman. No-strings baby required to preserve an exceptional gene pool.”’

‘No payment required either.’ Tom chuckled. ‘Provided the applicant has an exceptional body.’

They all laughed.

Except Sam.

She was staring at Alex as she experienced her second light-bulb moment in the same day.

He’d be perfect. Smart as a whip. Good-looking. Healthy. What more could she ask for? He wouldn’t make any claims other than genetic responsibility for the child’s best attributes and he’d probably be invited to the birthday parties in any case.

But Alex was shaking his head firmly, almost as though he could read Sam’s thoughts.

‘No way. I’d probably end up having to pay child support for triplets. I’d rather spend my spare money on beer, thanks.’ He picked up the kit he’d abandoned by his feet. ‘Speaking of which…’

‘Yeah. Have a good night.’ Tom finally held the pamphlet out to Sam. ‘Here you go.’

‘You can keep it,’ Sam told him. ‘I really don’t need it anymore.’

Turning, she caught a glimpse of Alex Henry’s back as he disappeared into the locker room. It was hard not to smile.

Everything happened for a reason, didn’t it? It had been worthwhile picking up that pamphlet, that’s for sure.

She could always go and get another one if she needed information but, with a bit of luck and some careful preparation, Sam was quietly confident that she would not need the services of a sperm bank.

Something much better might just become available.

CHAPTER THREE

IT COULD never work.

By 10:00 p.m. that night, Sam had changed her mind. Even ignoring having to get over the embarrassment of what she would have to ask Alex to supply, the potential complications of using him as a sperm donor loomed like clouds quite dark enough to dim the light of that bright idea.

What if Alex wanted a say in how the child was raised, for instance? If he thought that day-care centres were less than satisfactory, he would disapprove of Sam returning to her job and their working relationship would be irreparably undermined.

She might have to justify every decision she made, from where and how she chose to give birth to when and how she wanted to start potty training the child. Alex could be just as determined as she was when it came to getting his own way. Sam could conceivably end up with all the disadvantages of being married to the father of her baby without any of the benefits, like someone else getting up at night.

No. Being totally independent about this was the only way to go.

Sam wondered if Tom had thrown that pamphlet away. She would need to check whether she fitted any eligibility criteria for obtaining a totally anonymous donation.

The pamphlet was nowhere to be seen around headquarters the next morning and Sam certainly wasn’t going to make any enquiries, but it didn’t matter because by 11:00 a.m. that day she had changed her mind back again.

Her close observation of Alex since she’d arrived at work at 7:00 a.m. hadn’t been deliberate in any way and Sam was confident it had been subtle enough not to have been noticed. Maybe it had started because she was still finding it impossible not to throw things into the mental scales her brain had activated so energetically last night. She had come to work with the scales way down on the negative side of the equation but, bit by bit, the positive side was getting heavier again.

Maybe that cheerful smile and greeting from Alex had been the catalyst. Everybody else was grumbling about the weather. A southerly blast was catching the east coast of New Zealand’s South Island and it was cold, wet and blustery. Arriving at their airport base, Sam was inclined to agree with the helicopter pilot who was gloomily forecasting a dull day with them not being able to get off the ground.

The squally showers had eased by midmorning but it was still cold and grey and no jobs had come in. Boredom or frustration hadn’t dampened Alex’s mood, however. It never did. How come she had never noticed before how much she appreciated his generally cheerful demeanour? He was never surly first thing or too snappy or irritable when exhausted. Sam had seen him angry when things hadn’t gone the way he’d intended them to go but that anger was almost always used in a positive fashion. If an error had occurred, Alex Henry was going to make damn sure it wasn’t likely to happen again.

Cheerfulness was an attribute high on the list of what desirable children should have. Sam could imagine a small person beaming at her from its cot when she went in to wake it up in the mornings. Or toddling towards her with outstretched arms and a wide, cheeky grin on its face. Just like its father’s. The flash of fantasy was enough to make her smile. She would catch that toddler and hold it close. Maybe swing it around and hear a gurgle of laughter before hugging it tight and planting a kiss on a mop of silky curls.

At 11:30 a.m., Sam’s apparent concentration on her textbook was interrupted by the strident beep of her pager. Alex dropped the car magazine he’d been leafing through and picked up the phone that was a direct link to the control centre.

Sam kept writing to finish the note she was making about ‘Hammon’s crunch’—a noise that could be heard with each heartbeat from mediastinal emphysema caused by a pneumothorax. The incoming job was bound to be road-based, in which case Alex would be keen to drive and he could fill her in at the same time with any details he was gleaning from Control.

Any estimation of blood loss?’ she heard him ask. ‘Any other injuries?’

Something in his tone stilled Sam’s pen. Not tension exactly, but an alertness that suggested he was more than normally interested in what he was hearing. If Alex was that interested, the job had to carry a substantial element of danger.

‘It’ll be up to Terry, I guess.’ Alex was peering up at the sky through the window now. ‘It’s a hell of a lot better than it was an hour ago, anyway.’

So it was a helicopter job. Terry’s pager must have sounded already because he entered the office from where he’d been pottering about in the hangar. He saw the question in Alex’s expression and gave a brief nod.

‘I’ve just had the latest met report,’ he said. ‘We’re sweet.’

That gleam in Alex’s eye was definitely a worry. Sam ripped a small strip of paper from her pad and used it to mark the textbook page before closing the heavy volume on emergency medicine. She had the distinct impression it could be some time before she could resume her study.

‘It’s a fishing boat,’ Alex announced as he hung up the phone. ‘We’ve got rough co-ordinates but there’s no GPS on board. It’s about thirty kilometres off shore.’

An oddly heavy sensation settled in the pit of Sam’s stomach. Perhaps it was the thought of the heavily rolling sea that the ebbing southerly would have left in its wake. A winch job onto a vessel was tricky enough even in relatively calm seas. Not that Sam suffered from any kind of motion sickness. She was just experiencing an empathetic moment for whoever was unwell out there.

‘What’s happened?’ she queried.

‘Partial amputation.’Alex held the door to the hangar open just long enough for Sam to catch up. ‘Compound fracture tib and fib. Sounds like the guy got in the way of a wire that snapped when the boat hit a particularly deep swell.’

‘Mmm. Deep swells, huh?’ Sam tried to summon the reaction she would normally have to the prospect of such a challenging job. To see it as a personal step towards conquering anything that could hold her back. There was no need for either of them to discuss the dangers of trying to get from a helicopter to a pitching ship’s deck safely. ‘Sounds fun.’

Alex’s head turned sharply to catch her gaze and Sam had the horrible thought that he might have detected something she wouldn’t admit even to herself. That that heavy sensation in the pit of her stomach wasn’t empathetic seasickness at all. It was fear.

She grinned at him. ‘Toss a coin, then?’

It was their usual method of deciding who got to do the most challenging part of a job they were both equally qualified to do. Both Sam and Alex were trained to be either the winch operator or the person who got dangled. They needed to decide in advance, however, so that the winching harness could be put on and the correct seats taken before the confined space of the aircraft made it difficult.

‘It’s my turn,’ Alex said firmly. ‘You got to do it last time.’ He reached for the winching harness and stepped into it.

Had she? Sam tried to remember the last sea rescue they’d been on. It had been months ago and hadn’tAlex gone down and brought a conscious patient up in a nappy harness?

‘But—’

‘Too slow.’ Alex clipped the front of the harness together and turned to step onto the skid and into the cabin. ‘Get with it, Sam. We’re off.’

Terry had already done all the checks the helicopter needed. The rotor speed was increasing and Sam knew they would be off the ground as soon as her safety belt was fastened. There was no point trying to argue with Alex and it wasn’t until well after take-off, when they started scanning a menacing-looking sea beneath them, that Sam realised why it was still bothering her.

It wasn’t that she needed to face whatever was causing that irritating level of nervousness. It was more that she sensed Alex had picked up on it and had claimed the more dangerous part of the job because he was trying to protect Sam.

The cheerful grin she received on shooting a suspicious glance in Alex’s direction had an element of self-satisfaction that she would normally have put down to Alex scoring in the game of chasing the biggest adrenaline rush. The flash of something quite different that she caught in the depths of those dark eyes confirmed her suspicion, however.

The impression was gone in an instant. If she hadn’t been searching for it, Sam would never have recognised it. On how many other occasions might she have missed it? She’d never looked for anything like it because Sam had never had any doubts about what she wanted to do so had never been concerned that anyone would pick up on something potentially shameful.

They all had things that scared them to some degree. They would be idiots if they didn’t, but Sam, like the boys, had never allowed any level of fear to put up a barrier she couldn’t find a way to cross. She’d always fought for her chance to take on anything that came their way. Sometimes she won and sometimes she didn’t, but now that Sam was thinking along new lines, she realised that Alex had often found ways to circumvent the coin-tossing on jobs that had the potential to be particularly fraught.

He hadn’t denied the accusation she’d fired at him once—that he just wanted to claim the glory of doing the hardest part of the job—but it was quite possible that the gung-ho attitude was a cover. That Alex tried to protect her far more often than she’d ever been aware of.

The very notion should have been like a red rag to a bull as far as Sam was concerned. If she’d picked up on anything like this a month ago she would have been furious. Would have demanded a showdown once they got back to Base and sorted her colleague’s attitude out. But Sam was too puzzled to be angry.

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