Joe eased himself back against a wall. He was happy enough to wait for help. There should be plenty of people available to rescue him. They had been on a final check of the area when his stupid accident had occurred and it was doubtful that anyone was still trapped elsewhere. There had been some fatalities and serious injuries but they had all been within a small radius of the blast. The deployment of the USAR teams had been a formality more than anything. Almost an anticlimax.
Especially as Jessica hadn’t responded to the call. She hadn’t come to the USAR class reunion at the vineyard either, but that hadn’t been surprising. Joe had been looking forward to telling her about it when he saw her here. Would she be as stunned as the rest of them at the coincidence of having another callout virtually straight after they had all been discussing how unlikely it was? She’d be amused to hear that Kyle hadn’t lost any of his infatuation for Wendy, judging by the way he had stared at her all night. Or that Kelly had been under the influence of alcohol for the first time in her life and Joe had witnessed her in a rather passionate embrace with Neil Fletcher.
Joe’s groan wasn’t solely due to the pain he was in. It had been obvious on the plane trip south that something had changed between Kelly and Fletch. Maybe it had something to do with the trauma Kelly had just been through with her family, but they were clearly in love with each other…as much as he and Jessica had been. Still were, he corrected himself. At least, he still felt the same way. The doubts he’d had were gone or at least demoted to an insignificant part of the big picture. No problems could be enough to risk losing what he and Jessica had together.
Joe closed his eyes. Maybe he’d lost it already. Had Jessica avoided responding to this callout because she wanted to avoid ever seeing him again? The arrival of company as the first of his rescuers negotiated the stairwell with the safety precaution of an abseiling harness was a welcome distraction from the new misery Joe was creating for himself. He had no time to think about personal matters once his rescue was under way. An easier route for carrying him out was discovered when a fire escape was deemed safe to use. With oxygen flowing and pain relief on board, Joe was happy to lie back in the Stokes basket and let things happen around him. His friends stayed close and Joe found he was actually enjoying listening to their banter.
‘Hell, Joe—you weigh a ton.’ Wendy was panting with exertion as they climbed the solid concrete stairs of the fire-escape route. ‘It’s just as well I’ve been keeping up my fitness routine.’
‘Hope you can still run fast, Wendy.’ Kelly was grinning broadly. ‘Kyle’s been looking for you.’
‘How did he know about the callout?’ Fletch queried. ‘Dave said he deliberately didn’t ring him.’
‘I guess he heard about it on the news,’ Wendy groaned. ‘He doesn’t live far away from Dunedin, does he?’
‘Neither does Jessica and Dave did ring her. I wonder why she hasn’t made it?’
‘Maybe she doesn’t have her bag packed and waiting by the bedroom door, like Kyle.’
‘I hope that’s the only thing you’ll ever know about Kyle’s bedroom, Wendy.’ Fletch sounded stern.
The laughter was short-lived. They were all feeling the strain of carrying Joe’s weight and they paused to catch their breath on the first landing, lowering the basket carefully to the ground.
‘How’s the breathing, Joe?’ Kelly leaning over the head of the Stokes basket.
‘Not bad at all now.’
‘Morphine’s wonderful stuff.’ Fletch was pulling his stethoscope from around his neck. ‘I’m just going to check things again. We don’t want a pneumothorax sneaking up on us.’ He smiled a minute later. ‘Air entry equal and adequate,’ he pronounced. ‘How’s the head now, Joe?’
‘A lot better than it was.’
‘You’ve probably got a very mild concussion. You’ll feel better in a day or two.’
‘I’ll feel better when I get this collar off. I never realised how uncomfortable they are.’
‘They probably aren’t for most people,’ Wendy suggested. ‘Not our fault they don’t make a size for giants. You just grew too much, Joe.’
‘From your perspective everybody grew too much.’ Joe closed his eyes again as he felt the stretcher being lifted. He was confident the cervical collar would be deemed unnecessary as soon as he’d had an X-ray to check for any neck injury. He might well have slight concussion but the only reason he would need to stay in hospital would be for observation to make sure there were no complications from his rib fractures. It wouldn’t be for long and it wouldn’t be too bad to have to stay there overnight. With his best friends in town, he could be sure that he’d have a visitor or two to help pass the time.
The first visitor arrived within minutes of Joe being settled into the corner bed of the emergency observation area. A nurse poked her head around the curtain but she wasn’t holding the cup of tea she had offered to fetch for her patient.
‘Someone’s here who’s very anxious to see you, Joe. Do you feel up to a visitor yet?’
‘Sure.’ Maybe Kelly or Fletch or Wendy had finished up at the scene already. It couldn’t have taken too long to make sure the mall had been cleared of any casualties.
But it wasn’t anyone from the current USAR team that came through the gap in the curtains.
‘Jess!’ The exclamation was vehement enough to override the waning painkilling effect of the morphine. Joe’s hand went back to brace his ribs.
‘Joe! Are you all right?’ Jessica was so pale, her dark eyes looked huge. And desperately concerned.
‘I’m fine,’ he told her. ‘Just a bit of a headache and some sore ribs.’
‘I thought you were…I thought…’ Those huge brown eyes were brimming with unshed tears now. ‘Oh, Joe…I was so scared!’
Joe didn’t notice the sharp twinge his ribs gave when he held out his arms to Jessica. And he didn’t care about the pain that holding her caused. Jessica had been scared because she’d thought something terrible had happened to him. She could only have been that scared because she loved him. Really loved him.
‘You didn’t come to the callout. I was waiting for you.’
‘I didn’t know about it until I got home and got Dave’s message. Ricky turned the TV on and we saw you. They got your name wrong but I knew it had to be you. Oh…Joe!’ Jessica was smiling through her tears now. ‘Thank God you’re safe.’
‘Where’s Ricky?’ Joe was looking past Jessica’s shoulder. ‘Did he come with you? Won’t they let him in to see me?’
‘He’s not here.’ Jessica pulled back from Joe’s embrace. She pressed the back of her hand against her mouth as though struggling for control. One look at her eyes was enough to send a chill down Joe’s spine.
‘Where is he, Jess?’
‘We don’t know.’ Her control broke momentarily and Jessica choked back a strangled cry. She avoided Joe’s gaze as she struggled to continue speaking calmly. ‘He ran away. He’d seen you on the television coverage of the callout. I didn’t think he understood what he was watching, but he did. He knew you were injured and he must have gone to try and find you.’
‘What makes you think that?’
‘He got on a bus for Dunedin. There’s a café in the main street and the Christchurch-Dunedin service often stops there so people can get a drink or use the toilet. Ricky just climbed on at the tail end of a group and the driver thought he was part of a family. Julie Smythe from the café thought I must already be on the bus.
She said she thought my car must have something wrong with it and that we were taking the bus to go to Dunedin. She knew Ricky was due to have the cast taken off his arm.’
‘So where is he now? Still on the bus?’
Jessica shook her head miserably. ‘We didn’t know he’d got on until it was too late. I searched the street and the school grounds before calling Jim and Kay Summer for help. By the time we called the police and did a search of town the bus had already arrived down here. The police arrived at the bu
s station ten minutes after it came in. Someone saw Ricky run off but nobody bothered worrying about it.’
‘So he’s somewhere in Dunedin? By himself?’
Jessica nodded again. ‘There’s a massive search going on. They’re going to put more cars on the streets as soon as they get staff back from this mall incident. Jim drove me down. We came straight to the hospital.’
Joe’s own injuries were forgotten as the implications of the situation became disturbingly clear. Ricky was a small child who had difficulty communicating with anybody. He was now alone, wandering the streets of a strange city, in danger from traffic and heaven knew what else. Even in a small city like Dunedin there were parts of the inner city it wasn’t safe for anybody to venture in unaccompanied. And if he felt this alarmed, Jessica must be beside herself. In fact, why the hell was she here at all and not out on the streets, searching for her son?
‘Jess…Why are you here?’
‘There’s nothing I can do to help with the search. Jim’s going to let the police know where I am.’
Joe shook his head. He could remember vividly the way Jessica had fought for the right to be part of the search for Ricky when he’d been missing in Westgate Mall. How could he forget? The determination and courage she had shown were part of what he loved so much about this woman. No amount of reassurance that everything possible was being done would have been enough to deflect her from that search. But this time she was here, and didn’t appear to be in a huge hurry to leave.
‘Why are you really here?’ Joe asked quietly.
‘Because I had to know that you were OK,’ Jessica whispered. ‘I couldn’t have coped if anything terrible had happened to you, Joe.’
The chips had been down in a big way, Joe realised. The two people Jessica loved most had been in danger. Maybe he’d been easier to find, but Jessica had come to the hospital first. To find him. He mattered to her. As much as Ricky did. And Joe knew in that instant that Jessica’s love for Ricky was also part of what he loved about her. Part of her.
And he loved them both.
‘We’ve got to find Ricky.’ Joe leaned forward to push away the blanket covering his legs. The movement caused a wave of pain and Joe was unable to suppress his groan.
‘You’re not going anywhere.’ Jessica pushed him gently back against his pillows. ‘I’m going to find Jim and see if he’s let the police know that we’ve arrived in town. We can tell them that we’ll wait here for any news of Ricky.’
Joe watched the curtain fall into place behind Jessica as she left. The empty space she’d left in her wake could have felt desolate, but Joe knew that she would return. She loved him. And she would forgive him for putting her through the misery of the last two weeks.
It was a shame he hadn’t had a good bump on the head a bit earlier because it might have cleared his thoughts a lot faster. No wonder Jessica had thought he didn’t trust her and had left him. Imagine if he’d proposed to Jessica and she had accused him of wanting her because he was so fond of Ricky and maybe just wanted an instant family. It would have been devastating to have his love for her doubted.
Strangely, now that Joe had been given such obvious proof of how important he was to Jessica, he realised he had never really needed it. He had allowed some remnant of childhood insecurity to poison his own trust of others. It was gone now and he would never let even a vestige of it return to haunt him. Them, he corrected himself. Joe wasn’t going to be alone from now on. He would have Jessica with him for the rest of his life. And Ricky.
Ricky. Joe’s stare towards the point where the curtains joined became more intense. Jessica had been gone a long time now. Did the police have news of Ricky? Had they taken her somewhere to be reunited with her son? How long would it be before they could all be together again? Too long. Joe pushed himself upright once more. He’d get out of this bed if it killed him because he couldn’t just sit and wait any longer.
The curtain twitched as Joe braced himself to swing his legs over the side of the bed. He resigned himself to having to argue the toss with some nurse about the wisdom of discharging himself. He watched the gap in the curtains widen. He could hear a voice that sounded like Jessica’s.
‘Go on, then. You go in first.’
But it wasn’t a nurse that Jessica was giving way to. The curtain didn’t have to move far to admit the small figure that entered. A rather hesitant small figure who looked completely overwhelmed.
‘Hey, buddy,’ Joe said gently. ‘Am I glad to see you!’
Ricky didn’t move. He just stood and stared at Joe until Jessica edged her way back into the privacy of the curtained cubicle.
‘Ricky found the hospital all by himself,’ she told Joe. ‘The police were called when he was found sitting on the front steps. They couldn’t believe I was here in the emergency department.’ Jessica was smiling but her bottom lip trembled revealingly. ‘He came to find you, Joe—to make sure you were OK. Just like I did.’
Jessica bent down and kissed Ricky. ‘See? I told you he was safe. Joe’s got some sore bits, just like you did when you broke your arm, but he’s going to be just fine. Like you are.’ Jessica straightened. ‘Ricky’s got something for you.’
Ricky looked solemn as he finally inched forward. There was no hint of a smile as he extended his hand.
‘I bought it for Ricky when we came to Dunedin last week to have his arm X-rayed,’ Jessica said. ‘He hasn’t let it out of his sight since but he brought it with him tonight. He said it was for you.’
Intrigued, Joe held out his hand. What he found himself holding a few seconds later was enough to bring a lump to his throat. It was a tiny toy car. A Mustang.
‘Joe’s car,’ Ricky announced.
‘That’s cool,’ Joe told him. ‘Look, it’s got flames painted on the sides. Just like we’re going to do to the real car.’
‘Joe’s car,’ Ricky repeated with a nod. He looked up at Joe and smiled.
‘No.’ Joe shook his head. ‘I think it’s going to be your car as well, buddy. If Mum says it’s OK.’ He glanced over the top of Ricky’s dark thatch of hair to catch and then hold Jessica’s gaze. ‘Ownership of cars can only be shared amongst family members, however,’ he warned. ‘And we won’t be a real family until I can persuade you to marry me.’
‘Is it OK, Mum?’ Ricky turned in the silence that followed his query to add another intense gaze with Jessica as its target. What were Joe and Mum doing, just staring at each other and smiling like that?
‘Say yes,’ Ricky commanded.
‘Yes,’ Jessica said softly. Her gaze didn’t waver from Joe’s. ‘Yes, yes…yes!’
Read on for an extract from BOUGHT FOR THE GREEK’S REVENGE by Lynne Graham.
CHAPTER ONE
NIKOLAI DRAKOS SCANNED the photo with a frown and enhanced it. It couldn’t be the same woman; it simply couldn’t be! There was no way that his quarry, Cyrus Makris, could possibly be planning to marry a woman from a humble background.
Bemused, Nikolai lifted his arrogant dark head high and once again studied the picture of the ethereal redhead. No way could it be the same little temptress he had once met working as a parking attendant. The world wasn’t that small. Even so, he was aware that Cyrus owned a country house in Norfolk. A deeper frown lodged between his level dark brows, his quick and clever brain taking a rare hike into the recent past.
For all her diminutive size the woman he had met had had attitude, lots and lots of attitude, certainly not an attribute Nikolai sought from the transient beauties who shared his bed. But she had also had aquamarine eyes and a mouth as soft, silky and pink as a lotus blossom. A sizzling physical combination, which had taken a hell of a lot of forgetting on his part. His wide sensual mouth compressed with dissatisfaction. After she had blown him off, another man might have tried to find her again to make another attempt but Nikolai had refused to do so. He didn’t chase women, he didn’t do sweet talk or dates or flowers or any of that stuff ever. He walked awa
y. The mantra by which he lived insisted that no woman was irreplaceable, no woman unique, and he didn’t believe in love. She had simply caught his imagination for a few intoxicating moments but he had refused to allow lust to seduce him into pursuit. Since when had he had to pursue a woman?
And although it was generally known that Cyrus’s elderly father was putting pressure on his forty-five-year-old son and heir to take a bride, it was a challenge to credit that Cyrus could be planning to marry the feisty little redhead who had scratched the paintwork on Nikolai’s cherished McLaren Spider. Besides, only pure and untouched female flesh excited Cyrus, as Nikolai’s late sister had learned to her cost. And no way could that sparkling little redhead still be that pure and untouched.
Flexing his lean muscles as he sprang upright, Nikolai swept up the file he had been studying. The investigator he used was a consummate professional and the report would be thorough. He studied the photos afresh. He was willing to admit that the likeness between the two women was startling. Curiosity at a height, he began to read about Prunella, known as Ella. Yes, that night he had definitely heard her boss using that name, he conceded grimly. Ella Palmer, aged twenty-three, a former veterinary student who had once been engaged to Cyrus’s dead nephew, Paul. Now there was a connection he could not have foreseen for Cyrus, who rarely bothered with relatives.
Nikolai read on, unexpectedly hungry for the details. It had been a year since the nephew had died of leukaemia and two years since Ella’s father, George Palmer, had had a stroke. The older man was currently drowning in debt. Nikolai marvelled that Cyrus, who was rich but tight, had not stepped in to help Ella’s family, but perhaps he was holding that possibility in reserve as a power play.
Nikolai, on the other hand, immediately grasped that it was his optimum moment for action and intervention. He called his team of personal assistants and issued his instructions even while he was still struggling to work out why Ella Palmer could be in line to become Cyrus’s bride.
THE NURSE'S RESCUE Page 16