Wish Upon a Star

by Sarah Morgan

  The deep snow crunched under his boots, the air was cold enough to numb the face and in the distance he could hear the peal of bells from the village church.

  It was Christmas Day.

  He should have felt happy.

  When he’d set out, the sun had been shining in a perfect blue sky, he’d just enjoyed a traditional turkey dinner with his oldest and dearest friends and watched their children opening presents and playing happily round a twinkling Christmas tree.

  The house had been filled with warmth and joy, not least because Alessandro and Christy had finally patched up the holes in their marriage.

  He was pleased for them. Relieved. But as he’d closed the door behind him, leaving them to their happiness, a hollow, empty feeling had gnawed at his insides. There was nothing like Christmas to remind you that you were on your own.

  It wasn’t that he was short of prospective candidates. With a total absence of vanity, he was more than aware that there were no end of midwives and female doctors who were interested in ending his bachelor lifestyle. But none of them interested him. At least, not in the long term.

  He dated, of course. He was a healthy, single male so no one expected him to live like a monk. But no matter what happened during the twelve months leading up to Christmas, he always seemed to end the year on his own. No woman had ever held his attention for the long term.

  Except Christy, and she’d married his best friend and he’d long since trained himself to put thoughts of her out of his head.

  Alessandro was an incredibly lucky guy, he mused. Christy was an amazing woman, the children were beautiful—

  With a soft curse he lengthened his stride and talked sense into himself.

  What was wrong with being single? Nothing. It was just that it was Christmas Day and all the emphasis seemed to be on families.

  That was why he’d chosen to go for a walk instead of returning home to his big, empty house. He could have driven to the hospital and spent the day at work, but why would he want to do that when he’d already spent too much of the year working? In fact, work was probably one of the reasons he was on his own. It was hard to get out and meet people when you were trapped in a hospital day in, day out.

  His spirits lifting as he walked, he forced himself to count his blessings. He was healthy, he had a great job at the hospital and he loved his work with the mountain rescue team. He had nothing to complain about.

  And if his life sometimes felt a little empty—well, he’d never had trouble filling the void before now.

  He walked upwards, enjoying the snow-muffled silence and the cold sting of the air in his lungs.

  The visibility was reducing by the moment and he knew he probably ought to turn back. He was familiar with the path and he was well equipped, but he also had a healthy respect for mountains and didn’t want to be the one responsible for dragging his colleagues in the mountain rescue team away from their Christmas gatherings.

  He was just about to turn back when he caught a flash of colour through the thickening snow. With a quick frown he narrowed his eyes and looked again but it was gone.

  It had been so brief that it would have been all too easy to have dismissed the vision as nothing more than a figment of his imagination, but twelve years on the mountain rescue team had honed his instincts and sharpened his brain. So he didn’t turn. Instead, he walked forward a few more steps and the stopped dead.

  A small figure, half covered in snow, was huddled against a rocky outcrop. A child?

  And then the snow-covered figure lifted her head and he saw that it wasn’t a child. It was a woman.

  And a very beautiful woman.

  He couldn’t remember ever seeing eyes so exotic. Dark as sloes and framed by thick, lush lashes, they simply accentuated the pallor of her skin. Wisps of damp, ebony hair framed an almost perfect bone structure and the only colour in her face was her mouth—a rich, generous curve of soft pink that might have been designed with the sole purpose of driving a man to distraction.

  She looked delicate and feminine and just about the last person he would have expected, or wanted, to find in the mountains in a blizzard.

  Snow clung to her hair and her whole body was shivering, and it took just that one glance for him to realise that the situation was serious. This wasn’t a seasoned walker, prepared for a hike in the mountains. She looked like a woman who should have been somewhere else entirely.

  The shivering was a good sign, he reminded himself grimly as he swung the rucksack off his broad shoulders and delved inside for the equipment he knew he was going to need. When the shivering stopped it meant that the human body was no longer able to produce heat. Still, he didn’t need his medical degree or his mountain rescue skills to know that the girl was seriously cold.

  He needed to warm her up, check her over and then decide whether he could get her down by himself or whether he was going to need the assistance of his colleagues in the mountain rescue team.

  He hoped they’d all enjoyed their Christmas dinner because he had a feeling that he was going to be calling on their services very shortly.

  ‘What are you doing here on your own? Where are your friends?’ Dispensing with pleasantries, he selected various items from his rucksack, his movements swift and purposeful as he spoke to the girl, assessing her level of consciousness, knowing that her answers would give clues as to just how cold she was. ‘Where are the rest of your party?’

  Had the others left her and gone for help? Didn’t they have the sense to know that someone should have stayed with her? Or were they in trouble, too?

  For a long moment she didn’t answer him and he wondered with a flash of concern whether she was too cold to speak. Had his first judgment of the situation been wrong?

  ‘What’s your name?’ His tone was urgent now and he crouched down to her level and took her face in his hands, forcing her to look at him. ‘Tell me your name.’

  Speak to me. Say something.

  Drowsiness and confusion were signs of the onset of hypothermia and he didn’t like what he was seeing.

  Her dark eyes slid to his and he saw something in her gaze that twisted his insides. An empty hopelessness.

  ‘Miranda.’ Finally she spoke and her voice seemed tiny in the huge emptiness of snow and ice. ‘No friends. No party.’ Her arms were huddled round her waist for warmth. ‘Just m-me.’

  ‘Here, sit on this.’ Jake pushed a thick pad underneath her, reminding himself that there would be time enough later to talk to her about the dangers of walking alone in winter weather conditions. ‘It’s insulated and it will stop the snow seeping through your clothes. Then we need to get you something to eat.’

  Mentally he ran through the various stages of hypothermia.

  He knew that the most effective warming of the casualty came from the inside. She needed glucose and fluid and he needed to stop her losing any more heat.

  He handed her a chocolate bar and then pulled a fleece hat onto her damp hair to try and prevent further heat loss from her head.

  The chocolate bar slipped through her fingers and her eyes drifted closed. ‘Not really hungry. Tired now…’ she murmured, and he cursed softly under his breath as he rescued the chocolate.

  ‘You need to eat, Miranda. It will warm you up.’ He pulled the wrapper off the chocolate, pushed the bar into her hands again and closed her fingers around it. ‘Eat!’

  Her eyes opened at his sharp command and she stared blankly at the chocolate bar as if she’d never seen one before and then took a reluctant nibble.

  Jake removed her sodden coat, which would have struggled to give protection against a light shower in the city, let alone heavy snow in the mountains.

  ‘Don’t take my coat off.’ She mumbled her protest and tried to stop him but he’d already dropped it on the ground and was dragging extra layers from his rucksack.

  ‘You need to put these on. You need dry clothes. Put on this fleece and then this waterproof shell.’

  She stared at
the clothes he dropped onto her lap and he gave a sigh and picked them up, deciding that he was going to have to dress her himself. So he pulled the fleece over her head and then manoeuvred her arms through the sleeves, then did the same thing again with another layer and finally zipped her into his spare coat.

  It was like dressing a doll. She was limp and unresisting and his coat swamped her, but at least it was dry and weatherproof. He wrapped a scarf around her mouth and nose to warm the air she was breathing, running through the options in his head. Helicopter evacuation? Not in this weather. Which meant calling the team out. But it would take them a couple of hours to reach this point and that was two hours during which Miranda could grow even colder.

  ‘All right.’ Pleased to see that she’d finished the chocolate bar, he handed her another and reached into his rucksack for the insulated flask that he always carried. ‘This is the situation. We basically have two choices. I can contact the mountain rescue team and then put up a shelter and we can lie naked in a sleeping bag together while we wait. That should warm you up.’

  Her eyes slid to his and he saw a glimmer of humour. ‘Is that an indecent proposal?’

  Something in her slightly cynical tone made him smile. She had a sense of humour and that was a good sign. ‘Believe it or not, it wasn’t. Skin to skin contact is the fastest way of rewarming a casualty.’

  Her teeth were chattering as she nibbled reluctantly on the second chocolate bar. ‘That’s the most original seduction line I’ve ever heard and, believe me, I’ve heard a few.’ Her voice was weak and rasping. ‘And I’m not a casualty.’

  He decided not to point out that she was fast becoming one. ‘The second choice is that we walk down. But that requires you to get up and move your legs. Are you up to it?’

  ‘Of course.’ More alert now, she rubbed the snow out of her eyes with the back of her hand. ‘What do you think I am? Pathetic?’

  No, hypothermic.

  He was relieved to see that she suddenly seemed to be waking up. ‘So tell me what you’re doing out here on a day like this.’ Concern made his voice sharper than he’d intended. ‘Do you have a death wish?’

  ‘No. And the day was nothing like this earlier this morning. It was sunny.’ Despite the extra layers he’d given her, her teeth were still chattering and her breath clouded the freezing air. ‘And I was out for a walk, just like you.’

  Jake glanced down at her feet and lifted an eyebrow. ‘Not like me,’ he pointed out gently. ‘You’re wearing trainers.’

  Her hands still clutching the chocolate bar, the girl stared down at her feet and gave a wan smile. ‘Well, they were all I had. I don’t possess walking boots. I thought I’d be all right providing I stuck to the path.’

  ‘Is this the same path that has just disappeared under a layer of snow? And didn’t you possess gloves either?’ Jake gave a sigh and reached inside his rucksack again. ‘If you don’t own walking boots then you shouldn’t be out on the mountains, especially not at the height of winter. What were you thinking of?’

  For a moment those incredible eyes were haunted by ghosts and then she turned her head away. ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ she said huskily. ‘This and that. Stuff.’

  Stuff?

  Something about the set of her profile made him frown and want to question her further but then he reminded himself that hesitation could make the difference between life and death in the mountains. This wasn’t the time for polite conversation. ‘Finish the chocolate.’ He laid a pair of gloves on her lap. ‘And then put these on before you develop frostbite in your fingers. Have you any idea what the temperature is today?’

  She finished the last of the chocolate and then slowly wriggled her hands into the gloves. ‘No, but it certainly isn’t the Bahamas, that’s for sure. The sun was shining when I left.’

  It was a common mistake, Jake reflected. Believing that a cloudless blue sky would last. A significant proportion of the calls to the mountain rescue team were made by people who had underestimated the changeability of the weather. ‘You shouldn’t be out here on your own in this weather. It’s Christmas Day, you should be home with family, eating turkey.’ The moment the words left his mouth he wanted to kick himself. Presumably, if that had been an option she would have taken it, and her next words confirmed his suspicion.

  ‘I don’t have any family.’ She spoke the words calmly,

  as if it wasn’t that great a problem. ‘But you’re completely right, of course. Coming out here was a stupid thing to do. It’s just that it was beautiful and I needed to think and—’

  ‘And you didn’t want to sit in by yourself on Christmas Day. You don’t have to explain to me.’ He gave a wry smile. ‘All around the country at this precise moment in time, people are opening presents they don’t want from relatives they haven’t seen all year and gaining pounds that they’re going to spend the next few months failing to lose.’

  ‘So is that what you’re doing up here in the wilderness? Avoiding presents and weight gain?’ Her gaze rested on his shoulders and then lifted to his mouth and lingered there for a moment. Then she lifted her eyes to his again and he felt something stir inside him. The urge to kiss her was so powerful that he forced himself to take a step backwards, reminding himself that this wasn’t the time or the place.

  Or the woman. He didn’t know what her problem was, but it was clearly something significant.

  ‘I happen to love it up here in the wilderness.’ He watched as she slowly stood up. ‘It’s my favourite place.’

  ‘Oh.’ She hugged her arms around her body to try and stop the shivering. ‘Well, lucky for me that you happened to be passing. If you’ll just point me in the right direction, I’ll make my way home. Sorry to have bothered you and eaten all your chocolate rations. I hope there are plenty more waiting for you back on your Christmas tree.’

  He was torn between exasperation and admiration. He knew she was hideously cold and uncomfortable. Every other female he knew would have been moaning, hysterical or both by now. Miranda seemed remarkably calm. Too calm?

  ‘This isn’t a shopping centre with a hidden exit. Do you have any idea how much danger you’re in?’

  ‘Yes, actually,’ she said calmly, stamping her feet to clear her trainers of the snow. ‘But I assume that panicking isn’t going to help. Better to make a plan and get on with it.’

  ‘And that’s what you were doing, sitting on the rock, when I found you? Planning?’

  ‘Actually, I was trying to work out which way was up and which way was down.’ She squinted through the steady fall of snow. ‘I didn’t want to move until I was sure and everything seems to have merged. You can’t tell the difference between the sky and the ground.’

  Jake gave a disbelieving shake of his head. ‘It’s called a whiteout,’ he informed her gently, wondering what would have happened to her if he hadn’t chosen to take this particular path. ‘One of the most dangerous weather conditions that exists in the mountains.’

  ‘I’ve never seen one before.’ She stretched out a hand and caught some of the thick snowflakes as they landed. ‘Gosh.’

  ‘Gosh? Gosh?’ Shaking his head with exasperation, Jake lifted the flask. ‘Here—drink some of this.’ He poured the creamy liquid into the cup and handed it to her.

  ‘What is it? I don’t drink alcohol.’

  ‘And I don’t give alcohol to victims of hypothermia. It would kill them.’

  She lifted her chin and her dark eyes flashed with anger. ‘I’m not a victim.’ Her tone was chilly. ‘Don’t ever call me a victim.’

  He found himself wondering why that one word seemed to trouble her more than her immediate situation. ‘You will be a victim if we don’t warm you up soon. It’s hot chocolate. It will give you energy and warm you up.’ He pushed the flask into her gloved hands. ‘Stop talking and drink.’

  ‘Hot chocolate? You keep pulling amazing things out of your bag.’ Her teeth were chattering again as she clutched the mug. ‘Clothes and now hot drinks. W
ho are you, Father Christmas?’

  ‘A well-equipped climber,’ he said pointedly, and she stared into the mug without enthusiasm.

  ‘We can’t all afford fancy equipment.’

  ‘It isn’t about fancy equipment! It’s about safety. And if you don’t have the right equipment, you shouldn’t be out here.’ He heard his voice sharpen and stopped talking. What was the matter with him? He never lectured people. On the contrary, he believed that people had the right to live their lives the way they wanted to live them. But he didn’t feel remotely relaxed about Miranda.

  What if she did the same thing again and he wasn’t around to rescue her?

  He shook himself, wondering why he cared so much about someone he’d known for less than an hour.

  She sipped the chocolate. ‘Oh…’ She closed her eyes and gave a low moan of delight. ‘That’s delicious. I’ve never tasted anything better in my life.’

  Looking at the thickness of her dark lashes and the vulnerability of her soft mouth, Jake felt a thud of lust and almost laughed at himself.

  He really needed to get out more. His life was truly in a sorry state if he was lusting after a half-frozen woman whose knowledge of the mountains could have been written on a bootlace.

  She drank the chocolate and he pushed the Thermos back into his rucksack and withdrew a rope and harness.

  ‘I’m going to put this on you because your footwear has no grip and the ground is slippery.’

  She looked at the rope. ‘You’re going to lower me down the mountain?’

  ‘We’re going to walk down the mountain. I’m going to tie you to me,’ he explained patiently. ‘That way, if you slip, I catch you.’

  ‘Or I pull you over, too.’

  He refrained from pointing out that he had more muscle in one arm than she appeared to have in her entire body. ‘That isn’t going to happen.’

  She took a deep breath and gave him a slightly chilly smile. ‘Thanks for the chocolate and the extra layers. I’ll be fine now. I can get down by myself. If you give me your address, I’ll deliver your things back to you after Christmas.’