Rescue Nights

by Nina Hamilton

  ‘I slipped the guy selling the tickets an extra fifty to give us our own gondola,’ Andrew explained. ‘Did you see the teenagers with runny noses behind me? I didn’t want to have to listen to them for the whole hour.’

  ‘And you complained about the cost of your mother’s gift. I knew it, you are a snob,’ said Kate.

  The truth was that she actually appreciated the gesture, even if it did make her nervous. There was something about being sealed off from the rest of the world, even knowing that that seclusion was temporary.

  As she settled into her seat, she spotted the indulgent grin on the face of the bribed attendant. ‘He probably thinks you are going to propose to me.’

  ‘Well, make sure you look happy then when we disembark.’

  The Skyrail pods were small, and both of them were tall enough that Kate had to swing her legs to the side to avoid them touching. Andrew sat there, looking too big and blond for comfort. They were lucky that they didn’t have the maximum six people in here. His shoulders would have definitely made for a tight squeeze.

  As the gondola started to move, Kate leaned on the glass and looked down at the dense rainforest below. The view was beautiful from up above, and this was an activity where she brought visitors that she actually enjoyed.

  ‘Don’t tell me cool Kate actually enjoys something as naff as a scenic tour?’ Andrew asked.

  ‘It is pretty, so bite me,’ Kate replied, without even looking over at the man who was gently mocking her.

  Quickly, before she could react, he was sitting next to her, his mouth on her neck and his teeth scraping lightly over her skin. The sensation was both overwhelming and tenderly delicate. For a long moment, Kate just inhaled and enjoyed the feel of Andrew touching her with his mouth.

  When she slid back away from him, Andrew looked up and the intensity of his arousal was evident in his gaze.

  ‘I didn’t think you were the kind of girl who would withdraw a dare,’ he said.

  Kate’s head whirled at the sudden shifting of the boundaries between them. ‘So you are not here to sightsee?’

  Andrew threaded his hand through the ends of her hair. It seemed he wasn’t a man who backed away from a move.

  ‘We probably get a better view from the chopper anyway,’ he said. ‘And we are here in a glass box for the next twenty-five minutes, so we have got to find something to do.’

  ‘What woman wouldn’t want to be thought of as a relief from boredom?’ In contrast to Kate’s words, she punctuated each word with a short kiss, sliding her mouth diagonally against his. The brush of lips was a temptation and, just as she hoped, Andrew dived in. Kate had known last night that this was an inevitable moment and for once, she didn’t want to intellectualize everything. As if sensing her surrender to the universe, Andrew softened his hold and leaned back and let her follow him.

  Kissing Andrew was drugging enough that the sensation should probably be on the banned substances list. He was biting gently on her lower lip when she heard the announcement come through the gondola’s sound system.

  She pulled back reluctantly and said, ‘OK you have to look now, this is worth the price of admission.’

  Andrew grumbled, ‘Well, I already thought I was getting my money’s worth.’

  However, when he turned his head he couldn’t hide the look of wonder at the vista opening up before them. The gorge and the waterfall, out the window, were cutting through dense rainforest. The amount of water coming down over rocks was awe inspiring and the forest looked to be from pre-historic times.

  Andrew turned to her with intent in his eyes again. ‘OK it’s pretty. Now what?

  As he leaned in, putting his hands on her hips, Kate couldn’t hide her flinch.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said, as he removed his hands from her bruised side. ‘Don’t remind me that I’m still pissed at you for not telling me about your injury.’

  Kate almost went to defend herself, but the simple truth was she didn’t want to miss out on any of the pleasure he was giving her with his mouth. With slow deliberation, Andrew put his hands on the glass behind her and began kissing her again.

  Kate was almost glad of the fact that the three-hundred and sixty degrees of the pod around them was glass. She needed the incentive of public exposure not to climb into Andrew’s lap and deepen the contact.

  She had forgotten how good just kissing could be. That fun of feasting on a mouth, and way that attraction swelled and danced between them. The rasp in Andrew’s throat when she got the angle of her lips just right. Even the ache between her thighs and the ultra-sensitivity of her breasts added to the pain, pleasure of the moment.

  The gondola swung to a stop and they had to, reluctantly, break apart.

  ‘You don’t want to walk in the rainforest do you?’ she asked.

  ‘I am definitely not one for walking around with my pants practically strangling me.’

  Kate’s laugh sounded breathy, even to her own ears, as she looked down at his impressive bulge. ‘Yeah, maybe it would be best for public decency if we were to stay here together.’

  ‘We are fine to do the round trip,’ Kate said, leaning out of the door to tell the attendant they weren’t going to do the tourist stop.

  Unfortunately, there was a five-minute wait while the gondolas around them disembarked. Kate had rules about public displays of affection, and making out with people standing within metres was not on her list of acceptable activities.

  With pretend insolence, Kate reached out one hand to where Andrew sat and delicately traced the outside of his ear. With gentle fingers, she followed the strong line of his jaw and traced across his lips. Andrew paid her back for her sensual torture with an intense look of need.

  As the gondola started moving again, their mouths fused.

  Half an hour later, as they got out of the gondola, Andrew swung his arm around her. His six-foot-two frame was big enough to give her a feeling of warmth and protection, but she still felt obliged to raise her eyebrow at him.

  ‘I don’t want to look like the loser who couldn’t get a woman to marry me,’ he explained.

  To further exasperate her, as they went past the ticket booth, he gave the attendant a thumbs up.

  ‘She said “yes”,’ he called.

  Kate smiled until they were out of sight, then she gave his side a punch. ‘Liar.’

  ‘I’m pretty sure you said yes at some point,’ Andrew exclaimed.

  Kate felt her cheek’s heat as she remembered the word falling from her mouth, when Andrew had traced the back of her neck in an intricate pattern as his mouth explored her suddenly sensitive collar-bone.

  There was no answer to that, so Kate stayed silent as he opened his car’s passenger door for her.

  As Andrew parked the car outside of the resort, Kate was suddenly almost breathlessly nervous. She couldn’t help resenting him for that. During the drive, their conversation had stayed on neutral topics. Lack of lively discussion was not one of their problems. Kate got out of the car as they pulled up, before he could even think of helping her. She felt the need to keep out of arms’ reach, now they were back on home turf.

  Walking along the path, thankfully alone, Kate dreaded the moment of awkwardness at her doorstep.

  So instead, she blurted out what had been on her mind.

  ‘Living next to each other like this, shagging each other senseless regularly could be very convenient.’ Kate was glad they were walking so she didn’t have to look him in the eye, ‘The thing is, Andrew, I’m really not good with being a convenience.’

  There was a pause and Kate concentrated only on her speeding up her walk. Maybe if she got to her villa faster, this conversation would end sooner.

  His voice, when he spoke, sounded more uptight and English than ever. ‘I don’t recall ever asking you to sleep with me, let alone having scheduled a time to do so on a regular basis.’

  Ouch. The only good thing now was that her front door was in sight.

  ‘OK, then that has pu
t me in my place,’ she replied. ‘Maybe we can pretend today never happened, and just skip anything else.’

  Kate fumbled in her bag for her key-card, glad to have another reason to avert her gaze. Andrew, however, had different plans and took a step closer forcing her to look him in the eye.

  ‘I didn’t say I didn’t want you,’ he said. ‘Hell, I’ve wanted you against that wall, since before you took off your top in front of me. But considering we haven’t gone past first base, I don’t think I should be accused of treating you like a dirty shag.’

  It was the tension as much as anything that forced a laugh out of Kate’s lungs.

  ‘Seriously, first base, Andrew, don’t you feel like a teenager even thinking that in your head?’

  At least the man had a sense of humour, as reflected in his rueful smile.

  ‘The boys’ school talk reverts. Just for that, though, I’m not going to sleep with you until you beg me.’

  Kate tried not to pay much attention to the small wrinkles she had now noticed next to his eyes. That small imperfection made his conventionally handsome face all the more attractive.

  ‘You won’t be here for longer than a fling,’ she said. ‘So begging might not be on my agenda. I’m old enough to need a relationship along with all the other stuff.’

  There, as she said the words, Kate realized how true they actually were. As fantastic as those kisses today had felt, she wasn’t up for much more with a man who she knew was going to walk away.

  ‘Beg, or not, Kate. I’m not flying out of the country tomorrow so you’ve got enough time to decide what it is that you want from me.’

  Andrew ducked his head and kissed her cheek, casually. Kate wanted to stamp her foot in frustration that he could seem so at ease with her not choosing him. Here she was thirty and the man made her feel all the angst of a fifteen-year-old-girl.

  And here she was left on her own door step, watching him close the door.

  Chapter Twelve

  ‘Are you really so eager to get to second base?’ Andrew asked, as he opened the door for Kate. It was six-thirty in the morning, on their day off. Considering how blue balled he had gone to sleep last night, if she was going to wake him up at this hour he hoped it was going to include sexual favours.

  Instead of greeting him with lingerie intended to seduce, Kate was wearing her jeans and an oversized florescent jacket. ‘Yeah, you know how you have those SES papers still to be signed somewhere around? I’ve had a phone call about a missing kid, so I’ve signed us both up to be part of the search team.’

  Andrew slumped his shoulder against the doorframe. What was it about this woman that she would commandeer his off-hours, expecting him to obey like an employee?

  ‘Come on,’ she continued. ‘Running shoes are probably all you need. We’ll get you a medical team jacket on the scene.’

  Andrew rubbed the last of the sleep out of his eyes and tried not to think to longingly about the sleep-in he had planned. Hell, it wasn’t like he could refuse his time when it was a missing child that she had decided to badger him with.

  The one bonus of hanging with a girl that everyone liked was that she got to breeze into the resort’s kitchen and pick up a special order of bacon and egg rolls.

  ‘I only push my luck like that when I do volunteer call-outs,’ she explained, as she handed him over a food filled paper bag.

  Kate had insisted on driving, talking about the need for diving gear. By the time they were halfway to the scene, Andrew had decided that if he was going to be giving up his day, he better get some fun in return.

  ‘I had a long shower last night thinking about your bare skin,’ he said. ‘Although I did have to Photoshop my mental picture to get rid of the bruise. Injuries aren’t really my thing.’

  ‘You absolutely can’t say that, seeing the only reason you got close enough to see the details was because you were doing a medical examination.’

  ‘See, I thought of that,’ Andrew replied, enjoying the blush staining her cheeks. ‘But then I realized that you didn’t request my medical expertise, so I decided I could do anything I wanted with the memory.’

  He really had had a long soapy shower the night before. Something had to relieve an hour of making out; he didn’t think he’d done that much dedicated kissing since he was a teenager. Kate was wary and there had seemed not much point in pushing her further than she had wanted to go.

  Deciding that pressing the issue wasn’t going to be in his favour, Andrew asked for more details about the search they were going to participate in today.

  ‘It’s a ten-year-old boy. He went missing yesterday afternoon but they didn’t realize he was gone until late last night. There is some scrubby bush behind the houses so the SES and police will be searching there.’

  ‘Are there rivers and lakes nearby?’ Andrew asked the question that had been bothered him since she had mentioned bringing her diving equipment.

  ‘Two lakes in five kilometres,’ Kate replied with a grimace. ‘It isn’t the nicest job but ruling them out is worth it.’

  Andrew watched the landscape out the window turn from their well-heeled area of Cairns to a much less glamorous rural area. There was a look of concentration on Kate’s face that he recognized from when they went out on missions. Why would anyone do this to themselves on an off-day? Was she atoning for something?

  A road full of emergency vehicles and cars signalled they’d arrived.

  ‘You can help me grab the oxygen,’ Kate said to Andrew, in reply to his offer of help.

  As they walked towards an empty block, Andrew couldn’t believe the mass of people. Some were in uniforms but others were just in civilian clothes, waiting to be put into search parties.

  A friendly face appeared from the crowd.

  ‘Hey Reid,’ Kate waved.

  Lucy’s cop looked infinitely more official in his uniform. He came over, clipboard in hand. ‘Thought I would see you here.’

  ‘So no luck yet?’ Andrew asked.

  ‘No, we couldn’t get too far into the bush last night,’ Reid replied. ‘The scrub is pretty thick and the ground is full of potholes which made any efficient search pretty impossible. We started here at first light but he must have gone further afield.’

  As they were talking, they headed over to a temporarily set up command post, comprising of picnic tables and an expensive array of electronic gear, and paper maps that looked well distributed.

  The SES members, who Andrew had previously thought looked like they should be manning a cake sale were surprisingly efficient in giving Kate the co-ordinates to rendezvous with the police divers.

  Nola, the local SES Commander, looked him over. ‘If you want to take the dedicated medical position here, you can.’

  The local ambulance was standing by, but Andrew wanted in on the action.

  ‘I’d rather take part in the search party,’ he explained.

  Nola looked dubious, until Kate intervened. ‘He is rescue certified, so he can follow a map.’

  A green tag soon identified him to his quadrant and a short wave radio was given as backup to his mobile phone.

  As they walked away, Andrew gestured to the photocopied map he had been given. ‘How did they get this organized so quickly?’

  Kate was making a good pace down the path to the lake. ‘Nola would have been up at 3am this morning, photocopying and plotting out the search. She would have started getting organized the minute the police talked to her last night.’

  Well, that would teach him to underestimate the woman who looked like someone’s kindly grandmother.

  They arrived at the lake and Andrew couldn’t help a grimace at the state of the water. Muddy and brackish, it looked more likely to infect than anything else.

  Kate must have correctly identified the look of horror on his face. ‘I won’t open my mouth when I get in there.’

  A group of officers and three divers were also setting up at the water’s edge. They greeted Kate, even as they checked
their equipment.

  ‘Surely it is dangerous in there?’ Andrew asked. ‘There can’t be any visibility if there are any obstructions.’

  He kept his voice pitched low, not wanting the men around him to hear.

  The soothing smile Kate shot him couldn’t help but seem a little patronising. ‘There isn’t a bush track wide enough for vehicles, so we shouldn’t be encountering any stolen cars, which are a massive hazard. Otherwise, we dive with a buddy and we are only going down ten metres, so even if we lost air we should be OK.’

  Watching Kate strip down to put on a wetsuit, Andrew was actually too worried to enjoy the view. The ease of long practice that she demonstrated did only go some way to reassuring him.

  However, before he left to join the land search, he spoke to the police supervisor and handed over his mobile number. ‘Any one of them that looks like they are having breathing problems or collision injuries, call me directly after the ambulance.’

  It might have been breaking protocol but the older police officer took the number. No-one wanted to see anyone under their command hurt.

  Andrew took a final look at Kate entering the murky water. This was not what he imagined when he heard diving around Cairns was her hobby.

  Arriving at the designated search quadrant, Andrew was immediately rotated into a team. He had done the training but the absolute monotony of the work couldn’t help but surprise. While searching your world had to narrow down to a three-metre circle. Five-minute breaks, on the half-hour, were designed to keep their eyes fresh. Andrew found himself further motivated as he learnt about the missing boy. The circulated photo was of a wiry ten-year-old.

  ‘Nice kid,’ said a local Cairns butcher, who was the SES radio point person for their section today. ‘He has run away before, but never for long and certainly never overnight.’

  Andrew had noticed the extra energy expended by the searchers who knew their target’s family. However, under the controlled search protocols, Andrew never saw anyone slacking off. For all anyone knew the child could be hiding in a suburban backyard shed or holed up behind the local shop, but no-one double guessed their actions. All they could hope for was that the child turned up alive, one way or another, and here in the scrub outside his home there was a chance they would either find him or rule out this particular quadrant as not one of his hiding places.