Alison Roberts - At His Service - Her Boss the Hero - One Night With Her Boss / Her Very Special Boss / The Surgeon's Marriage Proposal

She was just a passenger. An unwanted one. Present but not included, and it stirred memories Mikki had thought long buried.

They came in to land on the hospital helipad with their patient still stable and breathing well. The two paramedics were clearly satisfied with the way the job had gone. Tama seemed to have forgotten the debacle with intubation but Mikki couldn’t. She had to bite her lip and blink away a very unexpected prickle in her eyes that suggested the possibility of tears.

She was about to cry?

No way!

Mikki clenched her jaw tight as she climbed out of the helicopter to follow the stretcher. She wasn’t going to let it matter that Tama didn’t want her. That she had played into his hands by begging to go on a job and then demonstrating a very uncharacteristic lack of ability.

He’d give her another chance.

He had to.

‘HAPPY?’

‘Yeah … sure,’ Tama replied.

Josh quirked an eyebrow. ‘You should be. You don’t have to carry on with the incredibly boring stocktake.’

This was true. If it remained quiet on station he could carry on with Mikki’s training. She needed to learn how to load and unload the stretchers. How to secure sliding doors and all the medical gear and what to check before telling the pilot that ‘all was secure in the rear’.

‘Do you know how many individual components we have in IV gear alone?’

‘No.’ And Tama didn’t know why he wasn’t as happy as he claimed to be either.

‘Fourteen,’ Josh said in disgust. ‘Five different gauges of cannula, wipes, luer plugs, giving sets, Tegaderm, tape …’

Tama pushed open the door of the men’s changing room, barely registering the list. Mikki wasn’t in the kitchen end of the messroom and it was well past time they had some lunch. Where was she?

‘Then there’s four sizes of syringes and six sizes of needles on top of that,’ Josh continued, ‘and I have to count every single one of them.’ He, too, looked around the room. ‘Where’s the mouse?’

‘Dunno.’

‘She was kind of quiet when we got to the hospital. If the job had been a bit much for her, I would have expected her to feel happy to be on familiar turf, even if it wasn’t an ED she’s worked in. She didn’t look happy, though, did she?’

‘No.’

‘Maybe she doesn’t like it as much as she thought she would. She looked pretty excited when we headed off.’

‘Yeah.’ That glow had been well and truly snuffed out, hadn’t it? And Tama knew why. Having been called to check that fire officer, Josh hadn’t seen Tama take over the intubation of that difficult patient. He had no idea how tense it had been. How lucky Tama had been to succeed on his first try and how it must have made Mikki feel like she’d messed up and shown herself to be less than competent.

The wind had been taken out of the royal sails all right. Tama had demonstrated his own prowess at her expense. He should be pleased with himself. Experiencing the kind of satisfaction that had once been a dream—to prove that someone like him was just as good, if not better, than someone like her. He should be happy, dammit!

‘Coffee?’

‘Sure.’ Maybe she was still in the tiny bathroom area kept for visitors that was now deemed the female locker room. That would be it. She probably needed to touch up her mascara or nail polish or something after working rough.

I don’t do manicures.

Josh turned from where he was fossicking in the fridge. ‘And how about I nuke the leftover chow mein we put in the freezer last week?’

Tama nodded. He wasn’t bothered about what they ate. He was more bothered by how clearly he could hear Mikki’s words echoing in his head. She wasn’t into nail polish. Her hair colour was natural and she liked the size of her breasts. So there !

Tama could feel a corner of his mouth pulling sideways. Spirit like that was something he could approve of. Like the way she had punished herself keeping up with him during those pre-requisite challenges. She had been so determined to make the grade, hadn’t she? To prove she was up to the job.

Had that spirit been snuffed out, along with the glow?

OK, the glow had been irritating but that was partly because he understood it. Not that he’d ever let it show on his face like that. At least, he hoped he hadn’t, but he knew what it was like to get a shot at something you wanted badly enough to get so excited about. And he also knew what it was like to want something that badly and have it all turn to custard. To blame yourself for whatever was going wrong. He hoped Mikki wasn’t into beating herself up too thoroughly. While it might be good to have tarnished the glow a little, crushing that spirit entirely would not only be unnecessary, it could lead to repercussions. What if the boss learned that the princess was unhappy? Who would be held accountable? Him, that’s who.

Josh was pushing buttons on the microwave and Tama should have been looking forward to the food, not standing here, worrying about the mental state of an extra crew member.

The faint growling sound he emitted did not come from his empty stomach.

Josh looked over his shoulder. ‘What’s up?’

‘Just need a bit a fresh air. Be back in a minute. Don’t eat it all.’

Patting his pocket as he strode through the hangar on his way outside was automatic. Remembering that he’d packed in smoking a long time ago didn’t help alleviate the odd tension. Neither did spotting Mikki.

She’d hung her overalls back on the peg and she was just standing there, her back towards Tama. She probably had no idea how the slump of her shoulders was advertising her state of mind as clearly as her expressions did.

Tama’s need for a bit of solitude went head to head with the knowledge that he could—and should—do something to debrief their new recruit. She hadn’t seen him, however. He could slip out the back door and find a quiet spot in the sun for a minute or two.

There would be plenty of time later for some reassurance and encouragement, but Tama had hesitated and then he was lost. With a sigh, he gave in to the pull that led him away from the back door.

‘What do you think you’re doing?’

Mikki jumped.

Oh, God! What had she done wrong now ?

This day had started with such promise and excitement and now it was going from bad to worse, but she wasn’t about to let Tama know how crushed she was feeling. She really didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of having his doubts affirmed.

No. She knew that when the going got tough, that was when the tough had to get going. Mikki straightened her shoulders and lifted her chin before she turned to face Tama. She held his gaze and waited for whatever reprimand was coming. Ready to fight back, if necessary.

Her resolve to hold that eye contact wavered with the horrible thought that Tama could see way too much. There was something about those dark eyes that made her feel curiously defenceless. Whatever he saw, however, didn’t seem to displease him because his mouth pulled to one side in a half-smile that was distinctly disconcerting. People didn’t usually smile at you when they were about to tear you to shreds.

‘We tend to leave our overalls on for the rest of the shift after the first callout,’ he said. ‘You never know what’s coming next.’

‘We’. He’d said ‘we’ as though he considered her to be one of the crew. Mikki took a careful inward breath and dampened the flash of hope that tiny word had created. Was he patronising her in some way? Did he really expect her to believe he didn’t consider her an incompetent encumbrance after this morning’s efforts?