by Annie O'Neil
“There are only two choppers for this entire region,” Oliver snapped. “Who’s to say one’s available?”
“We’re hardly going to know if we don’t try. I didn’t take you for a no-hoper.”
Oliver quirked an eyebrow in response.
He was willing to listen. Good. Maybe some good old-fashioned logic would get through that thick skull of his.
She continued, “If any rib cage shards pierce his lungs when the tractor moves, we won’t have the equipment to deal with it. Opening him up here would be as good as killing him.”
“Good point.” Oliver pushed an arm under the portion of the cab pinning Reg to the ground and felt his extremities. “Nothing seems to be blocking blood flow. His legs are still warm. Let’s see what we can do.”
She nodded and continued to swab away the blood on Reg’s forehead, hoping Oliver didn’t see the slight shake in her hand. He might be used to traumas like this in Africa, but it was Julia’s first. Volunteering at military family clinics hadn’t prepped her for this. The fact there was even a semblance of calm steadying her heart rate made her feel proud. And she was not a little relieved Oliver was there. The man exuded control. He was definitely in his element.
“Mike.” Julia turned to Reg’s son. “I don’t want you to worry, but we may need to help your father breathe. We think he’s fractured some ribs and it makes it very difficult for him to breathe on his own.” Or near impossible. Flail chests led to a decrease in oxygen exchange at the site of the trauma and affected both lungs. Pendulum respiration was no joke. With the same air moving from one lung to the other, hypoxia or respiratory failure weren’t far behind.
“Can you make a call to emergency services and say we need a helicopter right away? Tell them it’s a flail chest. Got that?” He nodded, pupils wide with stress. She had to keep him focused. “Then can you help Oliver with the ropes, please? You’re going to have to help pull the tractor off when the helicopter arrives.”
“He’s going to be all right, isn’t he?”
“We’re going to do everything we can. Maybe you could start by unhitching the muck spreader?” She knew better than most you couldn’t make promises. Matt had never promised he’d come home safe—he’d only told her that his heart was always with her. She pulled a fresh swab out of her kit and got to work.
“You’ve got all the bells and whistles.” Oliver nodded toward her kit, rising as he spoke. “You all right on your own for a bit?”
“Yeah. You two go ahead. I’ll do what I can here.”
Julia fine-tuned her focus and quickly went to work cleaning the wound on Reg’s head before applying a bandage. Next, she lowered her cheek to his mouth to check on his breathing.
It was still strained, and Reg remained unresponsive.
She needed to stabilize his chest wall before they moved him. If it wasn’t secured now, just one misstep and he could die. It was as simple as that.
She popped her stethoscope on and forced a slow breath through her lips as she established his respiratory rate and pattern. The full minute she timed felt like a century. She checked for neck swelling, swollen veins along his cervical collar and hyper-expansion in his lungs. There didn’t appear to be a pneumothorax but, from the cooling of his skin, things weren’t looking good.
“Mike, how are we doing on the helicopter?
Mike appeared around the corner. “They say one can be here in ten minutes.”
“Brilliant, thanks.” It could’ve been an “I told you so” moment, but Oliver was nowhere to be seen, and smugness wasn’t her style. “How are you holding up?”
“Muck spreader’s unhitched. Just attaching the tow lines now.”
Right. Focus, focus, focus. The number of things that could go wrong in ten minutes was mind-numbing: cardiac tamponade; pericardiocentesis; to chest drain or not to chest drain? Not to mention all the things they should be considering now that Reg was going to fly to hospital.
“Right, we’re all hitched up. What do you need me to do?” Oliver’s voice wrapped round her like a warm blanket. Oliver the doctor was a much nicer person to spend time with. He made her believe she could do this.
“We need to splint up his rib cage before the tractor is raised. Any ideas?”
“Obs?”
Julia rattled off what she knew while reaching into her kit for a trauma blanket.
“Maybe we could use this for splinting. If we can turn him round to the flail side as we wrap him in the blanket, it should hold him steady and give him extra warmth while we wait.” She pulled off her coat and bundled it up. “Use this as a support cushion to help.”
He took the coat and placed it on the ground where they would roll Reg. “Do you have any morphine?”
“Some.”
“Let’s make use of it, shall we?” Oliver gave her a gentle smile before returning to his exacting placement of the blanket around Reg’s ribs.
Julia handed over the vial and prepared a needle for him. She liked how he worked—steady. In control. Doing what he could in a bad situation. It was easy to picture him working in a conflict zone. Shame. As each moment passed, it was getting easier to picture him here. Julia shook her head. Not the time or place to daydream!
Ever so carefully, they managed to shift Reg’s upper torso onto the left side, the high-flow oxygen mask attached to his mouth.
“How long is it before the helicopter arrives?”
Julia glanced at her watch, surprised to see five of the ten minutes had passed. It had felt like the blink of an eye. “About five more minutes.”
“Why don’t you hold Reg in place, and Mike and I will go ahead and pull the tractor off? It will take a couple of minutes and that way when the chopper arrives we won’t be in the way. They can land in the center of the field no problem, put Reg on a board and get him to hospital.”
“Are you sure the tow ropes can handle it?”
Oliver locked eyes with her, his voice rock solid. “I wouldn’t try it—particularly with you looking after Reg—if I wasn’t sure.”
“Oh.” She blinked away the desire to stay there, searching the depths of his eyes, exploring what he meant by “particularly with you.” Was it a slight or was he looking after her as well as Reg? She blinked again and saw he needed a decision. “No, of course not. Let’s get going.”
* * *
Oliver double-checked the gears and eased his vehicle forward. It had a three-and-a-half-ton towing capacity. A quick check on the old-fashioned tractor had said it was just over two tons. This should be a no-brainer. He began to feel the strain of the tractor tug on his vehicle. Lifting it against the pull of the slope was going to make it tough. Tough—but not impossible. Slowly, he inched forward. With his eyes darting between the rear-view mirror and the field in front of him he began to feel his vehicle take on the full weight of the tractor. This would go well. The familiar sensation of success kicked in. This was the Oliver he knew. The one who made decisions and stuck with them. As the tractor came upright with a comfortable thud, Oliver gave himself a grin in the rear-view mirror. See? Nothing to it.
The familiar sound of a helicopter’s rotors snapped him back into action. Mike was already untying the tow leads so Oliver could move the Land Rover out of the helicopter’s way.
Within moments, the crew was on the ground, and Reg Pryce was boarded and on the way to hospital. He didn’t know if the poor man would survive his injuries—they were serious—but at least they had done all they could. He looked over as Julia signed some paperwork before the flight took off. Scrubbing at his chin, he silently acknowledged that Reg stood a much higher chance because of her. He wouldn’t even have tried to get a helicopter in and that bored straight through to his soul.
Had this place really made him that cold—that lacking in drive? He certainly wasn’t like that anywhere else he worked. His brain worked well outside the box in the stark environs of a combat zone and it didn’t feel good that he was as likely to fall into old patterns here at
Bryar Estate as the next person. A smile crept onto his lips despite himself. Maybe Julia’s arrival was a reminder of all that was possible in this hideaway hamlet. Just maybe.
CHAPTER FOUR
“RIGHT.” OLIVER TURNED around decisively as the helicopter swept up and beyond their sightline. “It’s time we jumped in the shower.”
Julia stared at him in disbelief. She’d only just met the man and he wanted them to take a shower together? Images whirled through her mind kaleidoscope-style. Warm water cascading down her naked body, through the thick tangle of Oliver’s black hair. Little streamlets weaving their way along the contours of his cheekbones, past those green eyes, along his jawline, as they took turns lathering...
“Earth to Julia. C’mon, jump in the car. We’re going straight to the Hall. You’re shaking.”
Julia shook her head, not comprehending. She knew Oliver was hard to read, but this? This she wasn’t ready for. “Sorry? No. No. I’m fine—you can just drop me at mine. I need to get to the clinic.”
“You’re not going anywhere near the clinic in the state you’re in. You’re lucky I’m not strapping you to the bonnet, you mucky pup.”
Well, then. No room for misinterpretation on that one.
“Fine.” She shot him a glare, as if it would change anything. At least she’d stop thinking about soaping up his naked...
“No need to be churlish. We’re on the same side here.”
Unlikely.
Her eyes traveled up from his lips to the inky-black tumble of his hairline. What would it be like, she mused, just to tease her fingers through...?
Oliver tipped his head toward the four-by-four, an undisguised expression of exasperation playing across his face. “Are you getting in or am I going to have to lift you in?”
Ooh. Well, if you put it that way...
Shock. She must be suffering a minor case of shock after the accident. Never before had she been prone to the waves of saucy thoughts crashing through her systematically practical approach to life. “No Nonsense Julia,” her friends had dubbed her. Blimey. It was more like Jitterbug Julia these days.
Shock. Definitely. Or she was going nuts.
Before she could climb into the car, Oliver was squaring her to him, a hand on each shoulder, the heat spreading like a warm balm along her neck and gently meandering down her spine. “Your pipes have burst, the place is filthy—you’re filthy—and you need to get cleaned up. You’re a head cold waiting to happen and that’s the last thing your patients need.”
Good point. She would’ve come to the same conclusion. Eventually. Particularly if he hadn’t been standing a hand’s breadth away from her, diverting her focus with all his man scent and rugged handsomeness. It was plain rude to be so distracting. Surely they’d taught him that in charm school or wherever it was dukes-in-waiting went?
“I think I can manage well enough, thank you,” she primly announced.
He opened the door, pointedly ignoring her refusal as he put a supportive hand to her elbow while she climbed in. Mmm... That felt nice, too. She wondered how his hands would feel if they shifted from her elbow to her waist, a finger just tracing along the curve down to her hip and... She shook herself out of her reverie. This really had to stop.
The engine roared to life, and Julia grabbed ahold of the door handle as the vehicle surged forward under the thick green canopy of woodland.
She risked a glance over to the driver’s side of the car. Oliver was stony-faced, staring dead ahead. Uh-oh. Here they come.
The giggles.
Her go-to nervous reaction. A hand flew to her mouth to stem the flow, only causing her to choke instead. A series of coughs overtook the giggles and before she knew it tears were streaming down her face. Without warning a sting of pain fought the whimsy of her laughter. She missed intimacy. Knowing someone would touch her. Desire her. Support her when she was feeling fragile. Matt would’ve known her giggles meant she was a bit overwhelmed and would’ve pulled her in for one of his reassuring bear hugs. A hiccupped laugh escaped the fingers clamped over her mouth. Were grief and joy natural bedfellows? Whether her tears were happy, sad or just a biological by-product of her coughing attack was suddenly beyond her. Perhaps Oliver had a point—she wasn’t up to seeing the patients just yet.
She swiped at her face, hoping to heaven Oliver was too focused on the rutted track flashing underneath them to notice her emotional tailspin.
“All right, there?”
“Of course!” Her high-pitched I’m okay voice filled the cab. “Just a little something stuck in my throat.”
What was going on with her? With Matt she had never been this nervy. She could hardly bear what interacting with Oliver was reducing her to. A giggling wreck with a newfound panache for daydreaming. Seriously?
She had no illusions that Oliver was responding to her in the same way. He was too assured. Too no-nonsense. The man she’d seen out there working today had been one hundred percent focused. Not someone daydreaming about slipping his fingers through her hair. A latent twist of heat stirred within her. She pinned her legs tightly together and pressed her head against the car window, willing the cool glass to freeze away the tempest of thoughts teasing at her imagination.
She needed to see Oliver as the enemy. Frenemy? Whatever. He was the one person who could take away the life she’d built here. So. Enemy it was. Even if the enemy came in a to-die-for, six-foot-something, uberassured, sexy-as-they-come package. Making St. Bryar her home and career base was the goal. Not soapy encounters in the shower with the man who had the power to take it all away.
“Right you are, madam. Let’s get you scrubbed up.”
Not helping!
* * *
Oliver watched as Julia skipped up the stone steps leading up and over the moat to Bryar Hall’s formal entrance. He never used the front door. Using it was too close to ownership of the title that would inevitably fall to him. Even so, something had made him bring her here. He had feigned ignorance when he’d seen Julia wiping away tears in the car and, despite all his well-constructed defenses, had physically ached to reach out to her, comfort her. There was something about this woman that spoke to him, told him they were on a similar emotional journey. Fighting demons from the past.
Bringing her here—to the cornerstone of his inheritance—was akin to admitting he wanted her to try and peel away the protective layers he’d built up through the years, see if the good man he knew he was still lay within. To having someone to confide in, to understand the pressure to fill his brother’s shoes and take on the weight of history foisted upon him from that awful day when Alexander had died.
Who was he kidding? It was his burden alone. Julia had enough on her plate without him lumping his problems on, as well. Besides, one of her biggest problems was him. Whatever he chose to do with the estate wouldn’t just affect him—it would directly affect her life in the form of the clinic.
He swung the car door shut with a satisfying clang.
“Is that a hint I’ve gone the wrong way? Are you sure you don’t want me to go in the servants’ entrance?” Julia teased, turning to him from atop the steps, her eyes bright with humor. She looked like a child about to go into a candy store.
“I’ll make an exception, as you’re a guest.” He allowed his eyes slowly to scan up her skinny jeans and curve-hugging jumper as he carefully chose his words, his smile growing as he spoke. “It is unusual for someone covered in muck to enter through the front. My mother would have had a fit if she saw you like that in the entrance hall.”
The thought felt simultaneously accurate and disloyal. She hadn’t been a cruel woman by any means, just born and bred to an exceedingly strict set of guidelines. One he had always taken delight in stretching to the outer limits.
“I’m quite happy to go back to my—your—little cottage and change there.” Julia’s bright eyes darkened. “I’ve got patients to see, things to do. I didn’t ask for any of this, Oliver.”
“And you thin
k I did? I wanted this about as much as you wanted—” He stopped, knowing he was heading toward being unfair. He’d nearly said she hadn’t asked to be a widow. Surely a rage must be burning in her from the loss of her husband? God knew his brother’s death seared his heart each time he thought of it. The subsequent battle to live up to the expectations of the title he’d never wanted... He would never be like Alexander. How could he?
“I didn’t want what?” Too late. Julia’s eyes were ice blue—and just as cold.
“You didn’t ask for the pipes to burst in that tumbledown cottage of yours. Now come on. Let’s get you sorted.”
“I’m perfectly happy in that so-called tumble—”
Julia’s voice stopped midprotest as Oliver swung open the doors to Bryar Hall. He knew they’d be unlocked. His father’s voice rang through his head as the doors opened wide. “We’ve been given so much, son, we should always open our doors to others.”
A trio of fingers played at Julia’s lips as she scanned the grand hall. He envied them for a moment, the way her mouth pressed up against them as she intently took in the details of the opulent entry hall. He wondered how her lips would respond to his fingers touching her, tracing the lines of her mouth.
“I don’t get it.”
Oliver bristled at her tone. It was pretty clear she wasn’t going to ask for an art history lecture.
“What?”
“Why you aren’t here more. If this were mine, you’d have to tear me away from it.” It was impossible to miss the delight and wonder in her voice. Exactly the type of reaction that made him want to get shot of the place as soon as possible. She didn’t know the weight of memories that came with Bryar Hall. The loss. The grief. The millstone of responsibility his mother had weighted the title of Duke of Breckonshire with.
Wasn’t being a good doctor enough? That was where his heart was. That was where his passion lay. Not in an old building. This old building.
