Elle didn’t understand how her jellified legs didn’t buckle under her weight. She wasn’t certain how she made it across the room and around the curtain to collapse in the chair, away from prying eyes. She couldn’t even be sure how her heart remembered to keep beating after initially hanging, frozen in her chest.
What a time to finally realise she was as invested in Fitz as her parents had once been in each other. As though she’d suddenly discovered that tiny last piece of who she was when she hadn’t known, all these years, that a piece of her had been missing. And now, at the fear that Fitz had been injured—or worse—it felt like that tiny, new part of her had just been smashed against an invisible wall and was, even now, shattering into tiny, irreparable fragments inside her. She knew she’d begun to care for him, but when had she begun to care so very deeply?
When had she fallen in love with Fitz?
The stark realisation came out of nowhere.
As insane as it was, a part of her had fallen for him that first night. When he’d been happy to take direction from her with the seizure yet had been able to pre-empt all her needs. When he’d opened up about his family dying in the car crash and she’d seen that very first hint of vulnerability.
Fitz had exuded self-assurance, determination and power right from the start. And it had excited and enthralled her; more than that it had intoxicated her. Yet she’d also seen kindness in him, and been privileged enough to glimpse a sensitivity that had intrigued her. Fitz was everything that Stevie wasn’t.
Everything she’d dreamed a life partner would be.
And she’d been prepared to let him slip through her fingers without even trying to fight for him, simply because convention suggested her break-up was too recent and Fitz had to be a rebound. Because she’d allowed Stevie’s betrayal to remind her of all the mental blows she’d absorbed from her stepmother as a kid, and she’d forgotten to tell herself that she deserved a love that was better than any of that.
It was time she stopped listening to her head and tried listening to her heart.
She leapt up from the chair and rounded the curtain so fast that she almost collided with another body.
‘Elle? Where are you hurrying off to?’ Jools gasped as she darted backwards.
‘To contact Colonel Duggan at Razorwire,’ Elle called over her shoulder as she jogged away. ‘They’re going to need doctors on the ground and I’m a damn sight more use out there than I am here right now.’
‘Good.’ Pushing off the wall, Jools raced to catch up. ‘Then can you count me in, too.’
* * *
‘Just leave it be,’ Fitz grumbled as he tried to snag his arm away from the young medic. ‘I’m fine.’
‘You need medical attention, Colonel.’ The lance corporal stared him down, though his Adam’s apple bobbed nervously. ‘Given the nature of your injuries, you need to be easing the strain on your body. The fact that you’ve just single-handedly pulled three people out of the rubble only means the risk of internal injuries is also a factor.’
Fitz glowered. The boy had guts, he’d give him that. He might only be a lance corporal but he knew that in medical matters he had the authority to dictate to a colonel and, boy, was the kid sticking to his guns. He suppressed a smile of admiration.
‘With an attitude like that, remind me to tell your CO that you deserve a field promotion,’ he muttered as he settled back on the makeshift gurney. ‘Just stitch me up and let me get back to my men.’
‘Thank you, sir, but you understand you need to be on a MERT back to Razorwire? You can’t put any more physical stress on your body.’
‘The MERTs have higher priority patients to evacuate than me. I’m walking and talking. I’m fine.’
‘Like I said, Colonel, we don’t know about internal injuries...’
‘Son,’ Fitz growled abruptly, glancing over to where the latest MERT was landing and teams were already ferrying stretchered patients across the ground. They really needed more trained medical staff on the ground, there were so many injured. ‘I’m fine. Now, fix me up as quickly as you can so that I can head back to help my men.’
‘Sir...’ the boy began, then shifted his glance as soon as he caught sight of Fitz’s expression. ‘Yes, sir.’
Whatever else the lance corporal might have been about to say was lost on Fitz as his eyes locked on one of the disembarking soldiers.
She couldn’t be out here.
Before the medic could finish attending to him Fitz had pushed off the gurney and was striding across the ground, barely even paying attention to his step as he moved past the debris littered all around. As though he couldn’t get to her fast enough. As though he was running through the thickest, stickiest treacle.
‘What the hell are you doing here?’
‘Good to see you too, Colonel,’ she muttered, as he realised he’d roared at her, his nose only inches from hers.
He forced himself to lower his voice, though it wasn’t as though anyone else could have heard them in the fracas, but he couldn’t feel any remorse. Fear splintered through him like an axe cleaving wood, and with it a sense of protectiveness so fierce it was overwhelming, chasing everything else from his head—the landslide, the mission, the chaos around them.
‘You can’t be here.’
Fitz couldn’t explain it, but he felt desperate, panicked, out of control.
Just like he had when he’d finally listened to his mother’s terrified messages that night.
He told himself he couldn’t see someone else he cared about getting hurt. Because however much he’d tried to dodge it over the last couple of months, he cared about Elle. Deep down, he suspected that was barely scratching the surface of it but he refused to follow that line of thought to its inevitable conclusion. He blinked as he realised she was answering him.
‘I’m a trauma doctor.’ Outwardly she looked the picture of calm, but he could hear the quiver in her voice. ‘And this is an accident site. Where else would I be?’
‘You should be back at the hospital. You have patients.’
A silent voice was urging him to send her back where it was safer. Back where even more of the valley couldn’t come crashing down over her any second. It had always been a treacherous valley but now no one could be sure exactly how much damage the aftershocks of that earthquake had caused. But that wasn’t his call, he wasn’t her CO. And thank God, because if he had been, this was exactly why a relationship between them would have been against the rules.
‘I should be right here. The relief in place are already taking over in the hospital, and I’m one of Colonel Duggan’s first choices to be out here.’
‘It isn’t safe.’ He heard the agony in his words as they were torn from his lips.
Yet the bedlam around them—the confusion that he was here to get a handle on and to calm—was nothing compared to the maelstrom raging deep within his chest right now.
‘And that’s our job,’ she finished softly.
Quiet but steadfast, determined, her jaw set and shoulders squared, ready to stand off against even him if he got in the way of her doing her job. Every inch the professional, driven Elle he’d seen that first night. The Elle he’d so admired, been so drawn to, so attracted to. For several long seconds they stood immobile, and Fitz had the peculiar sensation of everything receding around them.
All the chaos, and the noise, and the dust fell away. It was just him and Elle.
And he finally allowed his brain to acknowledge what his heart and soul had realised a long time ago.
He loved her.
The urge to tell her almost crushed him.
Beautiful, lovely Elle, who always looked for the upside. And if there wasn’t one then she created it just by her vibrant spirit and sheer force of will. She was like his morning coffee, like food, like air. He’d felt as though he’d almost been holding his breath until he’d seen her e
ach day, and never in his life had he felt such a compulsion to be with someone.
Elle was a woman like no other he’d ever known. The more he knew her, the more he felt he didn’t know enough. He wanted to know everything about her, tell her everything about him. He would never get enough of her, this woman who had shone a warm light into even the blackest caverns of his soul.
A woman who resisted the army chefs’ chocolate cake if she’d been working in the hospital all day, but could devour two slices if she’d been rushing around the local communities. The woman who loathed drinking her water from a round plastic bottle and always decanted it into a battered square one she refused to throw away. Who had a pink lion token on her pack so she could identify it day or night but had learned a funny little story in the local language to break the ice with the local kids. He knew she always loaded up one of the pockets of her vest with small colouring books and crayons for them.
The thought of losing her actually twisted inside his gut and the urge to tell her almost crushed him.
But this wasn’t the place and it certainly wasn’t the time.
She was right, it was their job out here, and he had always prided himself on his professionalism as an army officer. But more than that, it was who they both were. They’d both chosen this life, they both loved this life and, right now, that had to come first. Besides, Elle’s role was certainly vital but there was one thing in his favour.
The noise and pandemonium of their surroundings suddenly raced back to the foreground, crowding in on them.
‘Fine.’ Fitz blew out a breath. ‘But since we aren’t back at the hospital and this is my site, this is now my command. You listen to me, understand?’
‘Colonel.’ She dipped her head in acknowledgement, a soft smile playing on her lips as the light he so loved tiptoed back into her eyes. ‘So where would you like me?’
He thrust the last of his doubts and fear away.
‘What have you got? A couple of twelve by twelves?’
‘Three of them, so far.’
It took him seconds to glance around the site, years of experience kicking in. There was a decent location a few hundred metres away, safe enough to be out of line of immediate danger but close enough that the injured could be easily carried there to be triaged, treated or prepped for the MERTs, and close to the helicopter landing site.
‘You can set up over there.’
‘Yes, Colonel,’ Elle agreed, snatching her pack up and spinning back around to where her team was offloading kit from the helicopter. He watched her go, irrationally proud of the woman he saw; a woman who was liked and respected everywhere she went.
A woman who had achieved the one thing he’d never expected anyone could ever do so subtly he hadn’t even noticed it happening; she’d put the shattered fragments of his heart back together and, more than that, she’d done so with such skill that he almost couldn’t believe it had ever been crushed in the first place.
In his life there had been a few people who had known about what had happened to his mother and his sister. The therapist the state had made him visit for that first week before he’d turned eighteen, the army mental health doctor when he’d enlisted a couple of weeks later, even Janine when her father had told her what was in his file about the crash, but he’d never told them some of the things he’d told Elle that first night.
And although all of them had told him it hadn’t been his fault, none of them had made him believe it. None of them had known the full story that Elle had known, about the phone messages or the abuse his mother had suffered. Elle had been the one to make him accept that he couldn’t have changed anything. That he couldn’t have known his mother was calling because his father had reappeared after three years, and that even if he’d raced home after that first call they would already have been gone. Even if he’d called the police, no one could have got there in time.
She’d allowed him to finally accept that the only person to blame that night had been his father, and that it was time for him to let go at last. He’d spent nearly two decades focusing on his army life, his career, throwing himself into it as a way to avoid having to consider what his non-army life had been like. He’d thrown up a wall between his personal life and his professional one, always keeping himself on the side of the latter. But in a matter of months Elle had begun to take down that wall, brick by brick, and now he knew that he could step over what was left of that division if he wanted to. He could finally consider a future that didn’t centre on his career. Fitz wasn’t yet sure what that future might hold, he only knew it contained Elle.
He just had to convince her of that.
But he could wait. A day, a week, a month, until they had the chance to be alone again. She deserved to know how very incredible, and special, and unique she was. How he couldn’t foresee a life without her in it. And how what they had wasn’t transitory or a bit of fun, because she was the only woman with whom he could ever—had ever—been able to see tantalising glimpses of a future.
Unexpectedly, Elle turned, although he hadn’t said a word, and even if he had she could never have heard him over the clamour. It was an instinct that had begun to bind them ever since that first night.
‘Colonel?’
He couldn’t hear the words but he could read her lips, and still it didn’t stop him from speaking aloud, the words swallowed up within the pandemonium, yet that did nothing to diminish the excitement bubbling inside him.
Like he was once again the kid he’d stopped being the night he’d lost his beloved mother.
‘Nothing.’ He smiled. ‘Everything.’
For a moment Elle simply stared, as though trying to be sure that he meant what she thought. And then she responded with a smile of her own, the bright, easy, open Elle-style beam shining as brightly, as warmly as if she could reflect the very sun from the sky.
His Elle. He could spend the rest of his life bathed in the glow of her happiness and be a contented man. And he would willingly spend the rest of his life making sure she felt every bit as treasured, as admired, as loved as she deserved.
Chapter Fourteen
ANOTHER CHEER WENT up as they finally freed yet another kid from the rubble. Dirty and exhausted but most certainly alive. He lifted the tiny body as the child clung madly to him, his eyes locked on an exhausted Elle as she hurried over to them.
‘Bring her this way, we’ve set up more treatment areas over here...’ She indicated. ‘And then you need to take a break. When is the last time you ate?’
‘When’s the last time you did?’ Fitz challenged, following her as she lifted the rope to the cordoned-off area that allowed her to triage and treat without the pressure of understandably desperate relatives crowding in to see proof for themselves of their missing loved one.
As they slipped inside the tents the little girl was whisked away by Elle’s team, what looked to be her mother crying with relief by a waiting bed.
It had been almost twenty hours since they’d started securing the area and finding people to pull free. Even now, they were still finding occasional survivors, the shouts for silence going up any time they thought they heard sounds of a survivor, and marvelling at the resilience of the human spirit. But the death toll, low in the first few hours, was now beginning to race up, the bodies more damaged the deeper they excavated, and Fitz knew he would have to put the local volunteers on three-hour maximums before making them take a compulsory break, and to talk to someone about what they’d seen. His own men could work longer shifts, but it was still back-breaking work that was becoming increasingly demoralising the more time passed and the fewer survivors they found.
‘I’ve just had a break, actually,’ Elle said gently, answering his original question.
‘Voluntarily?’ he couldn’t quite picture that. ‘You mean someone made you take a break.’
Her sheepish expression said it all.
No one was around to overhear but, still, they both knew it was their way of silently showing each other they cared. In spite of their surroundings, he couldn’t help an unexpected wisp of happiness from curling up inside him.
‘I will when relief arrives,’ he consented eventually.
She glanced up quickly.
‘It should have arrived about half an hour ago. Major Howes brought his other two troops and Major Richards brought his squadron.’
‘But they haven’t reached us?’
‘No.’
Fitz frowned.
‘Which means it’s likely there’s been another slide on the other side of the valley, on the way in. I have to go and find out.’
‘No,’ Elle commanded, stepping inside. ‘I’ll give this little girl a check-up and then I want to inspect those stitches of yours, to see if they’re still holding up. I’m surprised you haven’t burst them out there.’
‘Is that a medical order, Major?’ Fitz cocked his eyebrow.
‘It is.’ She smiled, ducking into the next tent to retrieve a few medical supplies.
He settled on the edge of the bed, ready to expose the dressing on his shoulder.
‘Fitz?’
He stiffened, turned.
It couldn’t be.
‘Janine?’
He steeled himself for the inevitable guilt but it didn’t come.
Instead, in that instant, he finally understood what had happened with Janine. It had barely been a couple of years since the car crash and he’d been so desperate to fix the yearning chasm in his soul after his family’s deaths that he’d seen the way this sweet, young girl had loved him and he’d tried to convince himself that if he could love her back then he wouldn’t be damaged any more. He wouldn’t be alone any more. But Janine, as gentle as she was, could never have helped him rebuild his shattered past enough to move on. Janine would always have needed someone whole, untainted by tragedy, someone she could lean on to escape her controlling father. She could never have seen or understood the twisted mess inside him, much less helped him to untangle it. He would always have provided for their baby but in many ways it was a good thing there had never been a child stuck in the middle of them. He would always have been the wrong man for Janine, just as she could never have been the right woman for him. She wasn’t Elle.
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