Wishing for a Miracle (4 page)

But Julia had other ideas.

‘I'll go up with him.'

What he could see of her face looked very pale.
Pinched, almost, as though she had been doing more than reassuring Ken and had actually taken some of his pain on board. Mac shook the thought off but whatever the cause she was reaching the limits of her endurance and steadying a stretcher being winched to make sure it didn't catch on obstacles, not to mention helping to lift it over the lip of the destination, was no mean feat.

‘I think
I
should,' was all he said.

But then he looked down from Julia's face to where her hand was holding Ken's. To the way Ken was looking up at Julia, his fear only just contained. And, for a weird moment, Mac felt envious. Of that connection. Of that touch.

‘OK,' he amended a little hurriedly. ‘If you're sure.'

Julia gave a single nod. ‘I'm sure.'

 

There were hand-held television cameras on the bridge now. Journalists eager to interview Julia as Ken was transferred to waiting paramedic crews who had a helicopter ready to evacuate him.

‘You're going to the best spinal unit in Glasgow for assessment,' Julia was able to tell Ken as she said goodbye. ‘I'll come and visit you very soon.'

She avoided the media, pushing back to watch anxiously as her SERT colleagues brought out the man with the serious head injury, who was, amazingly, still clinging to life, and were then winched up themselves, one by one. By the time Mac joined her on the bridge, they had been on scene for nearly five hours and their official shift had finished some time ago.

Not that any of them were about to leave just yet. The
weather was closing in and the transport that had taken Ken to Glasgow had been the last that would be leaving by air. Joe was grounded so they would have to organise road transport to get back to station and the people who could do that for them were otherwise occupied because the crane had finally arrived and the last stages of this rescue were under way.

Things hadn't quite ended. It made no difference that they had started this shift well over twelve hours ago and that they were both exhausted. This had become ‘their' job and they would see it through to the bitter end.

Had she known how bitter that end would be, Julia thought later, she would never have been so willing to accompany Mac back to the carriage for a final check. She would have found some way to ensure that someone other than them were the last people present.

The dead body was sprawled flat on the floor now, debris strewn under, around and over him. Julia edged in beside a seat to give the men in orange overalls room to load the man onto a stretcher and carry him to the temporary morgue set up in one of the huge tents. A space she knew already had fourteen occupants from this disaster.

She watched in silence as the stretcher was eased through the door and outside into the bleak night. Then she turned her head to see Mac also watching. Unguarded for an instant as the beam of her headlamp caught his face, she could see his exhaustion and the kind of defeat that went with every life lost on their watch.

Then he stooped and picked something up from the debris that had been pushed into piles to make way for
the stretcher. Julia focused on what he held. It was a soft toy animal of some kind. Probably well loved and shabby to start with but it now had stuffing coming from a ripped-off leg and it was covered with bloodstains.

‘Carla's, do you think?'

‘Probably. We didn't have any other children in the carriage, thank goodness.'

For a long moment, she held Mac's gaze. Watching the wheels turning in a brain shrugging off how tired it was. For a moment she wondered if he was thinking her statement was another indication of her aversion to working with paediatric cases but then she saw the grim lines in his face deepen and a haunted look appear in the way he frowned. There was another possibility.

They both turned to look back at the space the dead man had filled.

At the door that had been blocked by the body.

It was Mac who moved to open it. He had to put his shoulder against it and push because it was blocked from the inside. And then Julia heard him curse, softly but vehemently, as he dropped instantly to a crouch.

Her view was limited to what she could see over his shoulder because Mac filled the narrow doorway. She could see narrow shoulders and the back of a head covered with long, blonde hair. A woman, then. Had she been thrown to hit her head against the basin during the violent change of direction as the carriage had tipped? Except that there was no obvious injury to be seen from this angle.

Mac had his hand on her neck, searching for a pulse.

‘She's too cold.' Mac's voice sounded raw. ‘Been dead for a fair while.'

At least there hadn't been a child in here as well. Julia still had to swallow hard as she reached for the portable radio clipped to her belt. ‘I'll let the guys know to bring the stretcher back.'

‘Wait!' Mac was examining the woman, looking for an indication of what might have killed her. He found nothing.

‘Pelvis?' Julia suggested.

Mac put his hands on the woman's hips and pressed. Julia knew it would have been a gentle test but she could see the movement. There were major blood vessels running through that area. If one was cut it was quite possible to bleed to death in a short space of time.

It was also possible they might have been able to save her if they'd got to her first.

Mac was pressing a hand to the woman's abdomen now. It was distended. Even more distended than they might have expected from all the internal bleeding.

‘Oh,
God
!' Mac groaned.

Julia didn't ask. She didn't need to. The shape was too regular and obviously too firm to be simply an accumulation of blood. The woman had probably only been in the early stages of her pregnancy but there had been two lives lost here.

Mac straightened. He didn't meet Julia's horrified gaze.

‘It's time we went home,' he said heavily. ‘There's nothing more we can do here.'

S
OMETHING
wasn't right.

They should have been able to debrief and put things into perspective on the long road trip back to headquarters courtesy of a military vehicle. They could have talked through how impossible it would have been to save that young woman. Even if they'd known she was there, they would still have had to evacuate all the mobile people and the time needed to shift the dead man and then extricate her would have put Ken in more trouble. And they couldn't have known. There wasn't even a window that Julia could have looked into from the outside.

These were things that should have been said aloud. Dissected and come to terms with. And maybe then they could have congratulated themselves on a job well done. The fact that ten people had made it out alive when it could have gone in a very different direction and claimed even more victims.

But Mac, for the first time Julia had known him, didn't want to talk and that was confusing. He was the strongest, bravest man she had ever met. Six feet tall in his socks and without an ounce of fat on his body. His
strength alone was enough to inspire confidence Julia couldn't hope to impart as soon as he arrived on scene. But there was more to Mac than physical attributes. He was so open and honest and always smiling. Smiling so much that he had deep crinkles around his eyes and grooves on his cheeks. She had seen him tired beyond exhaustion. Frustrated enough to be angry. Sad, even, to the point of his voice sounding thick with tears, but she'd never seen him quite like this.

‘I'm stuffed,' he said, when she tried to get him to talk at the start of their road trip home. ‘I need sleep. Let's leave the talking till later, OK?'

Which would have been fine, except that Mac didn't sleep. Neither could Julia, Not after she'd noticed the way he was staring through the window on his side. Lost in thoughts he obviously didn't want to share and looking so…bleak.

He closed his eyes, later, but he was feigning sleep. Julia could tell because she could see the way his hands were clenched into fists. So tense.

She wanted—badly—to touch him. To find out what was bothering him and—somehow—make it better.

She cared, dammit. Too much.

And so she said nothing. She kept to her side of the back seat and stared out of
her
window. Her body ached with weariness and more than a few bumps and bruises but her heart ached more.

For Mac.

 

Ten years.

It had been a decade ago and Mac hadn't even thought about it for eons.

What was it about that moment that had brought it back so vividly?

The long blonde hair?

The early pregnancy?

Or was it because Julia had been standing so close to him?

It was like pieces of a jigsaw he hadn't intended, or wanted, to solve had come together out of nowhere.

Mac could hear the suck of heavy-duty tyres on water-soaked roadways along with the rumble of the engine and the background buzz of the radio station the driver was listening to. Runnels of water coalesced on the window and then streaked sideways but Mac wasn't really watching. He was seeing an altogether different picture.

No wonder he found Julia Bennett so damned attractive on so many levels. It wasn't just that she was gorgeous and smart and brave. It was that full-on approach to life in combination with an ability to sidestep any hint of a meaningful personal relationship that did it.

Presented the kind of challenge any red-blooded man would find irresistible, it was almost a matter of honour to have a crack at winning such a prize. Or wanting to.

Why hadn't he put two and two together before this?

Because he'd done his damnedest to forget Christine, that was why. To forget the heartache of absolute failure. To move on and make a success of his life.

‘You OK, mate?' Julia had asked when they were on the main road and settling in for their journey back to headquarters.

‘I'm stuffed,' he'd growled. And he was. Exhausted both physically and emotionally. In pain, actually,
because something raw had been unexpectedly exposed deep within. He'd never talked to anyone about it. Ever. And if he did, Julia would be at the bottom of any list of potential listeners. He wasn't about to admit the kind of failure he was on a personal level. Preferably not to anyone but especially not to a woman whom he doubted had ever failed at anything and who would be less than impressed with a man who was nowhere near her equal.

‘I need sleep,' he'd added tonelessly, turning away from her. ‘Let's leave the talking till later, OK?'

She accepted his withdrawal and why wouldn't she? Today had been tough. This was the best job in the world but it took a day when they succeeded a hundred per cent to reinforce that. A job when no one died or got maimed for life. The way through feeling like that was to talk about it, of course. He knew that. Debriefing was ingrained in anyone who worked in careers that dealt with this kind of trauma and degree of human suffering. It was a part of the job, really, to analyse everything that had happened. To take a quiet pride in things that had been done well and to learn from anything else so they could go out and do an even better job next time.

But he couldn't talk to Julia about this. Not yet. Not when he'd been blindsided by memories and could see danger signs a mile high. Signs that warned him how easy it would be to fall in love with this woman. Hell, he was already quite a way down that track and hadn't even noticed.

He couldn't afford to let her anywhere near him right now, when the scab over that failure had been ripped off
and he was feeling raw. Vulnerable, even, and Alan MacCulloch didn't do vulnerable, thanks very much. Imagine if she wasn't unimpressed with his history. If she accepted him, warts and all. He'd fall. Hard. In a way he'd managed to avoid for a whole decade. Nearly a quarter of his life, come to think of it.

She didn't want that.

Neither did he.

Julia was looking at him. He could feel it. He could sense her concern, like a gust of warmth crossing the gap on the back seat in the back of this vehicle. She wanted to offer comfort but Mac didn't want that either. He closed his eyes and pretended to sleep.

Well after midnight, they got back to the outskirts of Glasgow and the station they shared with a road-based ambulance service. They collected their packs from the back of the truck.

‘Cheers, mate,' Julia said to the soldier who'd been their chauffeur. ‘Hope you get to go back to base and get some shuteye now.'

‘Not a chance.' The young soldier grinned. ‘I've got to get back to the scene. We'll be there until it's all cleaned up.'

Cleaning up was exactly what he and Julia needed to do. Mac picked up his pack and swung it onto his back. From the corner of his eye he could see Julia struggling to do the same. She was so tired she could barely stay upright, poor thing. The urge to look after her was far too strong to ignore.

‘Here,' he said gruffly. ‘I'll take them. You go and hit the showers.'

‘No, thanks.' The tone was cool. ‘I can manage.'

She gave up on lifting the pack to her back and just held it in her arms instead, turning away without a glance in his direction.

It was a slap he deserved so he had no right to feel hurt. Julia had done nothing wrong and hadn't deserved to be treated the way he had treated her. God, how selfish had he been? Maybe she'd been the one who needed the debrief. Praise, if nothing else, for her extraordinary courage and endurance.

He'd made a mistake. A big one. How hard would it have been to talk about the job like they always did? Made a few jokes, even. The kind of black humour that diffused the dark space they were all in danger of slipping into with this kind of job. He could have made her smile and that would have made
him
smile and feel good. She would never have guessed that he'd been thinking of anything other than work.

He'd been stupid as well as selfish. Not only had he created an uncomfortable distance between himself and his partner, it had been the worst defence possible for himself. He'd had nothing to do but think for nearly two hours. Sitting there being so aware of the woman sitting beside him. Wanting her and pushing her away simultaneously.

God, he'd never felt this tired. Exhaustion was becoming confusion. A long, hot shower was what he needed and then he'd head home. Maybe it was better not to say anything more to Jules tonight in an attempt to put things right because, the way he was feeling, he would most likely make things worse. They were due
for two days off now. By the time they had to see each other again, she might have forgotten his moodiness or at least forgiven his silence. They could just go back and pick up where they'd left off.

Being colleagues who respected and cared about each other. Julia had called the soldier ‘mate' and it was what she often called him as well. That's what they were. Mates. Comrades. Not quite friends because that implied something a lot more personal than they had. Dangerous territory.

The decision to leave things was a relief. The shower and change into warm, dry civvies was a comfort. Mac signed himself out and noted Julia's signature already in the logbook. She'd left before him and that was good.

Or was it?

And why was her car still in the parking lot at the back of the station?

Maybe she'd gone into the messroom to talk to the crew on night shift. Mac battled, briefly, with the desire to retrace his footsteps and find her but solved the problem by turning towards his own vehicle—a hefty, black four-wheel drive that filled his allocated space. Overflowed from it, in fact, despite him nosing it in until the front bumper virtually touched the moss of the old stone wall surrounding this area. There were trees on the other side of the wall. Big, dark shapes that created such intense shadows he didn't see Julia until he was about to pull his driver's door open.

She was sitting on the wall. Wrapped up in a padded anorak and mittens. Waiting for him.

‘
What
the—?'

Julia jumped down. Her hood fell away and she wrapped her arms around her body as she took a step forward. And then another. Until she was close enough for him to see that her hair was still damp despite the protection the hood had given her from the drizzle. Close enough for him to smell the shampoo she'd just been using.

‘I couldn't go home,' she said quietly. ‘Not without knowing what rattled your cage so much tonight.' Her gaze caught his and held it. ‘Was it something I did?'

‘Good grief, no!' Mac was transfixed. By the smell of…what was it? A mixture of soap and…almonds, that's what it was. Even more by the warmth he could feel radiating off this small, determined woman. Most of all, by the way her eyes seemed to catch the glow from the lights behind him in the parking lot. He knew her eyes were blue but right now they were just huge and dark and full of concern.

‘It…it was the job,' he told her. ‘It…got to me.'

‘Of course it did.' A tiny nod advertised that Julia had already come to that conclusion. ‘There'd be something wrong if it didn't.' She frowned now, glancing down and lowering her voice. ‘But why couldn't you talk about it? Like we always do?'

Mac opened his mouth to offer the same excuse of exhaustion. Or to say he'd been asleep but it was obvious she knew he would be lying. She was looking up at him again and he could see plainly that she knew he hadn't been asleep. She'd seen through him in the truck and she was seeing through him now. Right into
his head. Into his heart. There was no escape and, suddenly, Mac didn't want to find one.

‘That woman,' he heard himself saying. ‘She…reminded me of someone.'

‘Ahh.' The sound was long. It contained complete understanding that there was—or had been—a woman of great importance in his life. Far more important than herself.

Mac could actually see the thought process going on in the way she was standing so still she wasn't even blinking. The almost imperceptible backing away he could sense. The way her lips were parted a fraction as her mind worked.

And that slight parting of her lips was Mac's complete undoing.

She was so wrong to put herself down in any way but that was exactly what she was doing. She was convincing herself that she had been dismissed in favour of the woman he'd been thinking about. That she was somehow less worthy of his attention. So wrong, and there was only one way he could think to prove it as soon as he noticed her lips.

He had to kiss her.

She could have stopped him. Time seemed to slow down to a crawl. He looked at her mouth and then back to her eyes and he could see that she knew he was unable to resist the temptation now that the thought had occurred to him. Slowly and deliberately…so slowly she had any amount of time to duck out of reach, he tilted and lowered his head. He was giving her the chance to move. Part of him was desperately hoping she would.

But she didn't move a single muscle.

Her mouth was there. Waiting for him. Her lips still parted. And even then Mac moved so slowly he could feel the warmth of her breath against his lips before he closed that last, infinitesimal space.

Once his lips touched hers, he couldn't think of anything else at all. Her mouth claimed his. Dragged him in. Drugged him. It was only the need for oxygen that forced him to break the contact but then he heard the sound that Julia made. A soft whimper of desire and he was lost again.

When her mittened hands came up to circle his neck, he surrendered himself without a heartbeat's hesitation. He caught her head in his hands and tilted it. Touched her lips and then her tongue with his own and it felt like the ground had vanished from beneath his feet. He was weightless. Floating. Vaporised in some fashion by the heat being generated.

When he became aware of what he was standing on again, Mac felt reality returning with a jolt. Who had broken that extraordinary kiss? He didn't think he could have if his life had depended on it.