‘Forget it,’ she snapped, reaching for the doorhandle.
There was something odd about the way the handle on Alex’s car door worked. Her fingers fumbled and completely ruined the dramatic exit she planned to make. At the sound of a wry chuckle from the driver’s seat, she turned to glare at Alex.
‘What’s so funny?’
‘Just a new experience for me, having a woman desperate to escape the very thought of having sex with me. Am I that repulsive to you, Sam?’
‘Don’t be stupid.’ Remorse that she could have really hurt his feelings surfaced until Sam caught the glint in his eyes. The best way to handle this so it didn’t make life awkward was to simply make a joke of it. She grinned. ‘No more repulsive than you’ve always been, anyway.’
‘I guess it was a good test.’
‘Test for what?’
‘How serious you really are about wanting a baby.’
‘I’m serious,’ Sam declared.
‘But you’d turn down a prime candidate? Who could be better, Sam? I understand what you want and I’m prepared to help. The idea of having a kid intrigues me but I have no intention of settling down to raise a family. I want one of those “no-strings” babies. We could help each other out. Heaven knows, we’d at least have a civilised relationship as co-parents who weren’t living together, which is more than I could hope for if I got anybody else pregnant.’
‘It’s not that I don’t think you’d be perfect as a donor,’ Sam assured Alex, ‘it’s just that I don’t want to have sex with you.’
‘Are you sure about that?’ For a second Alex’s gaze roved over Sam in the dim light of the car’s interior and it was like that switch responsible for turning on all the nerve endings in her skin had been flicked again. ‘I have to admit,’ Alex drawled, ‘that I find the idea rather…exciting.’
Oh, help! His gaze was glued to hers now and she was drowning in the blatant desire she could see. Sam’s mouth went dry. Her fingers forgot their mission and strayed from their position on the door handle. Alex’s fingers were moving as well. He reached up to touch Sam’s hair and she couldn’t move.
‘Thought so,’Alex murmured. ‘They look like prickles but they’re quite soft, aren’t they?’
His fingers were buried in her hair, cupping the back of her head now, but his gaze hadn’t left Sam’s. Alex leaned closer.
‘I’ll give you some time to think about it,’ he murmured.
‘I don’t need time to think about it,’ Sam whispered. If Alex leaned just a little closer, that magnetic pull would have her attach herself to him like a leech. This was crazy!
Had it been anyone else in the car with her, at least any other single male that she felt enormously attracted to, Sam would have given in to that magnetic pull. But this was Alex. Her partner! She had to face him the next day at work and for a thousand other days to come. Having his baby was a very bad idea.
What if this bizarre attraction to Alex grew in the same way her desire to have a baby had spiralled? Added to what she already knew and liked about her partner, it would be a potent mix. One that could never have any kind of future. There she’d be, tied to Alex for ever by shared parentage of a child and perhaps wanting more. Something she could never have but could never escape the reminder of because she’d see him virtually every day.
Her first instinct about the possible complications had been spot on.
‘The answer’s no, Alex. Thanks…but no thanks.’
Having sex with him was unthinkable. A complication all on its own. By tomorrow morning, Alex would probably be embarrassed that he’d even made the offer. She’d startled him by dressing provocatively and then he’d had a few beers. She was going to save them both a lot of grief by pulling the plug on the evening but, dear Lord, it took scraping the bottom of the willpower barrel to summon enough strength.
The doorhandle worked this time. The car door shut with a satisfying slam and Alex drove off into the night.
The amount of wine Sam had had to drink that night was no explanation for why it seemed so unusually difficult to insert the key of her front door into its lock.
Or why, when she was finally lying in her bed, it was totally impossible to get to sleep.
The very next day, Sam did what she should have done all along. She rang the receptionist at the fertility clinic that housed the sperm bank and made an appointment to discuss her situation with the consultant in charge.
Surprisingly, she wasn’t turned away at her first interview. Maybe the consultant thought she would be put off by the psychiatric evaluation she would be expected to undergo or the compulsory sessions with a counsellor and the mountain of paperwork that needed to be read before consent forms could be signed. The cost of using the service as a private patient would have put some people off as well but Sam was not going to be deterred.
What actually spurred her on as much as anything else, over the next few weeks, was a desire to show Alex that she was in complete control of her own life. Or was it really a need to prove that to herself?
Disturbingly, her physical attraction to her partner seemed to have been a sleeping giant and, having woken it up on the night of that engagement party, it loomed over Sam with increasing power.
Sam had the horrible feeling that Alex knew exactly how she was feeling. Not that he’d repeated his offer but she just knew it was still open. There was something very different in the way Alex looked at her since that night, even when she was wearing her shapeless boiler suit. Or maybe it was the frequency with which she caught him looking at her that was so unsettling.
Even more annoyingly, Alex was as laid-back as ever. Almost smug. The confidence he customarily exuded could easily be interpreted as having little to do with his work performance. Sam was sure that Alex was confident she would change her mind. That if he waited long enough she would actually be desperate enough to go crawling back and beg him to have sex with her so that she could conceive a baby with a superior—and familiar—set of genes.
No wonder he felt confident. Sam would not know how often Alex was eyeing her up if she wasn’t looking at him just as often, would she? Despite all attempts to modify her non-verbal communication, Sam was failing miserably on that score. If only he wouldn’t smile at her quite like that when their lines of vision connected. It was funny smiling and Sam didn’t like it.
Letting Alex know that her visits to the fertility clinic were progressing satisfactorily was not enough to kill the smiles, until the day that she informed Alex her first treatment at the clinic was booked.
‘Tomorrow? You’re going to go and get pregnant tomorrow?’
‘It might not happen instantly, Alex. It just happens to be the most fertile day of my cycle.’
‘How the hell do you know that for sure?’
‘Technology. You know those home pregnancy test kits you can buy at any pharmacy? Well, there’s a similar test kit available to find out when you’re about to ovulate.’
Alex didn’t appear to be listening. He shoved the replacement supplies into his kit and slammed the lid. ‘You’re not really going to go ahead with this, are you, Sam?’ he demanded.
‘Why shouldn’t I?’
‘Because I—’ Alex stopped abruptly. Then he pushed his fingers through his hair in an agitated fashion. Sam had to suppress the sudden memory of how it had felt to have his fingers in her hair. ‘I just think you’re rushing into it. What’s the hurry?’
‘It might not work the first time.’
‘What if it does? Have you done anything about letting management know that I’ll need a replacement partner?’
‘It’ll be weeks before I know one way or the other and I intend to keep working for at least the first three months. There’s plenty of time, Alex.’
‘No, there isn’t. Not if you’re planning to go and get yourself knocked up tomorrow!’ Alex rubbed the back of his neck. ‘Do you even know anything about the father?’
‘He’s five foot ten, has dark hair
and brown eyes, is perfectly healthy and he’s a doctor, apparently. Not from Christchurch. He and his wife needed IVF to start a family while they were living here and he wanted to help someone else. He asked that his sperm not be used until they left the country.’
‘Sounds perfect.’
‘Don’t go all huffy on me, Alex. It wouldn’t have worked using you, even if you hadn’t put your ridiculous condition on your offer. It would have jeopardised our working relationship and I don’t know about you but I think that’s too good to jeopardise.’
‘But—’
Whatever Alex was about to dispute was interrupted by the sound of their pagers.
‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ he snapped. He pulled the pager from its clip and read the message. ‘All right, all right,’ he muttered, heading for the phone in the duty room. He threw a brief glance at Sam over his shoulder as he moved. ‘I give up,’ he said. ‘You do whatever you like, Sam. I’m sure you will anyway.’
Sam watched him make the call to the control room and then listened as he relayed information about the job that had come in.
‘Car full of teenagers. It’s gone over a cliff up north near Kaikoura. Four youths in the car and one of them was still alive because he made the call for help on his cellphone. It’s too rough to get people or equipment close enough by boat and there’s no one qualified in abseiling available. We’re to go and check it out.’
Sam just nodded. She picked up her flight helmet and jammed it on her head. Why wasn’t Alex looking at her anymore when he spoke? She would almost welcome one of those funny smiles right now. Making her own decisions and following through had been supposed to put her back in the driving seat, so why did it suddenly feel all wrong?
Sam followed Alex towards the helicopter and climbed in. She welcomed the rush of adrenaline that always came when they took off to deal with an emergency call. It was just a shame that her excitement couldn’t quite obliterate the feeling that she was making a very big mistake.
And that she wouldn’t be able to change her mind because she’d just burnt the bridge she had wanted to cross all along.
CHAPTER SEVEN
HE WAS TOO LATE.
Alex cursed under his breath as he jammed the fastener of his safety harness into place and slumped into his seat in the helicopter.
If only he hadn’t held on, indulging himself by playing chicken with Sam. She must have guessed he was calling her bluff but Alex had the funny feeling that she wasn’t just pulling an ace out of her sleeve—she was perfectly serious about that appointment for tomorrow.
Too late now to admit that he’d decided long ago that if the only way Sam would agree to let him father her child was to use some clinical and totally impersonal procedure for conception then he would go along with it.
‘All set back there?’
‘Roger.’ Alex gave the pilot, Terry, a thumbs-up signal and felt the helicopter lift off seconds later.
Sam was sitting beside Alex because they had a copilot, Bryan, with them in the front, but Alex studiously avoided looking at his partner. He really didn’t want to give her the satisfaction of knowing how effectively she had just pulled the rug out from under him. He needed time to think. To decide whether Sam really meant what she’d said. To see if there was some way he could turn the clock back a little if she did mean it because if he didn’t, Alex was going to be the loser here.
The desire to have a child had taken firm hold on Alex by now. He was thirty-eight years old and still had no urge to find a life partner. He was quite happy the way he was, thank you, and he certainly didn’t want to be tied down and expected to spend his nights changing nappies and his weekends mowing lawns. To be an occasional dad was something else. An attractive prospect. He’d get the pleasure of watching the kid grow up from a safe distance that meant he wouldn’t be stifled by day-to-day routine and responsibilities. Every bloke’s dream, surely?
The brisk easterly wind blowing caused the chopper to dip sharply enough for Alex’s harness to tighten. His seat was far enough away from Sam’s for them not to touch, despite being jolted, but they may as well have been thrown together because the pressure of the harness on a particular portion of Alex’s anatomy reminded him very clearly of why he had been prepared to wait just that little bit longer.
The desire to father the child by natural means was a prospect that had become as attractive as having that ‘no-strings’ child. And no matter how much Sam denied it by look or body language or even the odd verbal snipe, Alex just knew she was feeling the same kind of curiosity. Attraction. Desire.
It had become a game to watch Sam and know that she would catch his gaze within seconds. To smile in a way that would let her know that his interest wasn’t fading. He really had believed it had simply been a matter of time until she capitulated. The tension had escalated over the last ten days or so. Alex could swear he heard a faint buzzing in the air when they got within a few feet of each other. Kind of like being under a power transformer in misty weather.
Sam could obviously feel it, too. That was why she’d upped the stakes and started telling him about her preliminary visits to that fertility clinic. She was calling his bluff. Maybe Sam realised, as he did, that the longer they waited and played this game, the more exciting it would be when it came to its natural conclusion and Sam changed her mind.
She had to change her mind. Why on earth wouldn’t she? They were both consenting adults. What was so wrong with wanting to add a bit of fun on the way to a more serious intent? It didn’t have to get heavy. A quick fling was all that was needed here. Sam could get herself in the club and then they could just go back to normal. OK, so they’d know each other a bit better than they had in the past, but in the long term that could give them a better working relationship, couldn’t it?
‘Target sighted.’ The voice of the copilot broke into Alex’s thoughts. ‘Eleven o’clock.’
It was time to tune back into what was happening around him and Alex had no trouble shutting the lid on the personal component of his brain. He still had time. Hours and hours of it, so he didn’t have to admit defeat yet. Sam might think she had changed her mind about the suitability of using his genes but she could easily change it back again, couldn’t she?
She was a woman after all.
Terry took the chopper in a circle above the accident scene as Sam and Alex surveyed the terrain and debated the best course of action.
The main road along the east coast of the South Island ran well above sea level at this point. The flashing lights of police, fire and ambulance vehicles had been visible for miles, but it wasn’t until the SERT crew were directly above the wild surf crashing onto a rocky shore that they could see the magnitude of what they would be dealing with.
The hulk of an old dingy green Holden sedan was crumpled onto the rocks, nose down. Tyre marks could be seen where the vehicle had obviously left the main road at speed, crashed through a safety fence and careered down a steep hill. The journey must have slowed to some extent, judging by the broken scrubby trees and uprooted smaller vegetation, but the car had still been moving fast enough to plunge over a vertical cliff that dropped at least fifteen metres to the jagged volcanic rock that made up this part of the coastline.
Cold grey water pushed relentlessly towards the land and the spray from the breakers obscured vision of the wreck at regular intervals. White foam boiled as the waves broke and water was sucked back past the unforgiving rocky surface of the beach. A body could be seen sprawled over a large boulder just in front of the wreckage. It wasn’t moving.
‘Looks like he went through the windscreen,’ Sam observed.
‘The guy that made the cellphone call was a passenger in the back seat. He reckoned he was trapped.’ Alex whistled silently as he craned to see more. ‘What do we know about the tide, Terry?’
‘On its way in,’ the pilot reported grimly. ‘We’ve got an hour at most before the water reaches the car.’
‘You still want to land up t
op?’ Sam queried. And abseil down?’
‘There’s no time, ‘Alex decided. ‘If there are still any survivors down there, we’ll have to winch them out now. By the time we got set up and down the cliff, we’d have no time to do anything.’
‘Bit dodgy to winch onto those rocks, isn’t it?’ Terry had the helicopter in a hover as his crew studied the scene.
‘It’s all we can do,’ Alex said. ‘Let’s move. We’re wasting time here.’
‘It’s my turn to go down,’ Sam reminded him as they both reached for the winching harness.
‘No way. This is my job.’ The authoritative tone brooked no protest but at least Alex had the decency to look slightly apologetic as he glanced at Sam. ‘There’s a car wreck down there with survivors possibly trapped and no way to get any cutting gear in,’ he said. ‘If brute strength can help get anyone out then I’ve got a lot more of it than you.’
Sam couldn’t argue with that. She watched as Alex fitted the harness around his upper body and nodded inwardly. He was far bigger than she was. Solid and muscular. The strength he could draw on was vastly superior to her own.
It was hardly the time or place to have one of those errant flashes but Sam couldn’t suppress it. She had spent too much time recently wondering what that solid, muscular body would look like…completely naked.
The rush of heat she experienced only added to the tension this job was already generating.
‘Get onto Control,’ Alex suggested to Terry. ‘It might be an idea to scramble a second chopper.’
‘Roger. Turning downwind,’ Terry responded.
Sam leaned forward, focussing on the beach. ‘I have the target.’ Her gaze flicked to the winch control panel. ‘Checking winch power.’
‘Turning base leg.’ Terry was turning the helicopter across the wind now, getting ready for the final run. ‘Speed back. Clear door,’ he said seconds later.
Emergency Baby Page 10