At least Jeff had been trained for what he faced. Cassie had little preparation for this scale of an emergency and his protective instincts rose. He’d failed her brother and wouldn’t let another Rowe family member come to harm on his watch. He owed Jeff that much and more.
But aside from that obligation, he would put Cassie Rowe out of his head. He’d fought too hard to get back in the cockpit after the weeks he’d been grounded following Jeff’s death. No way would he let a woman get to him, undermine all he’d devoted his life to achieve.
Fat splats of rain peppered the glass and he glanced down at his radar. The last vestiges of the hurricane brewed their mischief up ahead. The final salvo in a storm that had inflicted devastating damage...yet a certain blonde on board his aircraft felt like the greater threat.
He would not be with her again, even if she’d had any inclination to come near him a second time. Getting close to Cassie would jeopardize the mission. His career. Possibly his sanity.
The problem with playing with this particular fire, however, was already knowing how sweet the burn would be.
“GOOD WORK, NURSE ROWE.” The Red Cross’s chief nurse, Marjorie Little, nodded briskly as she strode down the long row of cots lining the temporary aid station’s sides.
They’d erected the house-size tent this morning since the inflatable field hospital units wouldn’t be operational for a couple of days. Minimum.
“Thanks.” Cassie peeled her damp collar from her neck and hoped for sooner than later. She secured an ACE wrap around her latest patient’s swollen ankle and turned, striving not to sway on her feet. It’d been a long ten-hour shift, but damned if she’d let it show. In fact, strange as it sounded, she’d enjoyed the frenetic pace. It was so different than the usual crawl of taking blood pressure and giving flu vaccinations at her father’s general practice. Best of all, she’d been too busy to think of a certain pilot...
Moans and cries, accompanied by murmuring medical volunteers and beeping, generator-fueled machines, comprised the day’s sound track, as relentless as the pelting rain against their canvas roof. The combined scents of sweat and antiseptic hung in the humid air. It coated her mouth, lined her nasal passages. She could smell it on her uniform. Her hair even...
“It’s all gone,” sobbed her patient, Melinda, an island tour guide. She clutched a small framed photo of her family—the only thing she’d managed to grab before her house collapsed, she’d told Cassie earlier.
“I’m so sorry.” She clamped down her own fatigue and smoothed a hand over her charge’s forehead. Good. Cooler. The ibuprofen had kicked in.
Despite her relief, a restless feeling swept through her. For the hundredth time today, she wished she could do more to help. Her patient would regain her health, but what about the rest of her life?
The flattened structures she’d glimpsed before landing on a less damaged coastal section being used for the Coast Guard’s staging area flashed through her mind. Eroded beaches, boats and debris appeared to be shoved ashore by an invisible, monstrous hand. The same one that’d punched out windows and torn the roofs off the few standing buildings. Lives, ripped apart at the seams, crushed and pulverized by powers beyond their control.
Although she had never experienced anything like that, in her own way, she could relate.
Her weary gaze drifted over the large bandage that hid a stitched gash on the woman’s temple.
She stiffened.
Right.
Tetanus shot.
Her patient risked lockjaw.
Adrenaline zipped through Cassie. A buzz. Urgent and fierce.
She moved aside as Raeanne slid by to attend to a writhing man on the cot beside Melinda’s and flagged down a physician.
“Doctor.” Cassie held out her patient’s paperwork. “I need a signature for a tetanus shot order.”
The stooped man scanned the patient’s file, peeked at her bandage and scrawled something fairly illegible on the chart before hurrying on.
“Do you have any allergies?” she asked her charge while consulting the chart. It never hurt to double-check. Melinda shook her head.
“I’ll be back in a few minutes, Taufik.” Raeanne squeezed Cassie’s arm as she passed by again, her faint smile appearing and disappearing as fast as it came.
“Any chance you might be pregnant?” Cassie continued.
“No.”
She snapped the chart closed and gave Melinda a reassuring smile. “I’ll be right back with your shot.”
A moment later, she slipped behind the curtained partition that held their medication and other supplies.
“How’s it going?” asked Raeanne, tapping a couple of oxys into a paper cup.
“Good.” She scanned the syringes, looking for the right size. She selected the correct needle and turned slowly, stabbing pain shooting down her spine.
“Good?” Raeanne dropped the bottle in the med cabinet, locked it and blew a dangling red curl out of her face. Her narrowed green eyes skimmed over Cassie. “That almost sounded like you meant it. You were so quiet on the flight, I thought you were having second thoughts.”
And she had been, she mused, grabbing a vial of Dtap. “I’m glad I came.” Which was mostly true, if not for Mark.
Still, she couldn’t shake the memory of how his arms had made her feel safe, his kisses transporting her away from all the fear of the upcoming mission. Little had she known he was a devil in disguise.
And now she risked seeing him again when she retrieved the bag she’d left on his helicopter. If only she’d taken a moment to remember her things rather than dashing away the second they landed, desperate to avoid Mark.
At her frustrated breath, Raeanne raised her eyebrows. “Now you definitely don’t sound sincere. Spill it, girl. You’re allowed to complain on your first day. After that, I’ll only pretend to listen.”
Cassie’s mood lifted and she smiled, or tried to. Her lips felt too tired to move. “I’m no whiner.”
The curtains parted and a couple of nurses hustled inside. “I need coffee. Stat,” rasped one of them, a woman with thick dark hair done up in a topknot. She yanked off her stained uniform top and grabbed another from the shelf.
“Me, too.” Her companion popped in a piece of gum before grabbing an armload of fresh linens. “When is our relief coming on?”
“Two hours,” Raeanne put in. “A minute over that, we strike.”
She stared at the chortling group before laughing, too, marveling at the nurses’ capacity for humor in the face of grueling work. It was a coping mechanism for sure, and a way to bond. Never before had she felt such camaraderie. She liked it.
Was this what had appealed to Jeff? Tempted him to work such a risky job? She’d always thought he was crazy. Had wished he’d stop giving their anxiety-prone mother reasons to fret. But now she saw it. A glimmer, maybe, of what had motivated him to leave their hometown.
Why he’d urged her to do the same.
“So, who knows something about our hot pilot?” one of the nurses asked. The strong smell of antiseptic soap stung Cassie’s nose as the bubbly brunette lathered suds across her palms and beneath her fingernails.
She pulled in 0.5 ml of Dtap and capped her needle with shaking hands.
“He lost one of his crew members,” Raeanne supplied. Large bubbles glugged from the water dispenser as she pulled its blue lever. “Really broke him up. He was grounded, too. Had to get clearance to fly again. My cousin,