The Paramedic's Unexpected Hero

Can this maverick midwife…

…be her knight—in shining leathers?

Thrown together with motorbike-riding, leather-wearing midwife Ari Lawson, cautious paramedic Kelly Reynolds is immediately out of her comfort zone. But when they find their paths keep crossing, Kelly discovers she was too quick to judge, because beneath his bad-boy exterior, he’s dedicated, kind—and irresistible! Being around him makes her finally feel safe—and, dare she say, loved for the first time?

ALISON ROBERTS is a New Zealander, currently lucky enough to be living in the South of France. She is also lucky enough to write for the Mills & Boon Medical Romance line. A primary school teacher in a former life, she is now a qualified paramedic. She loves to travel and dance, drink champagne, and spend time with her daughter and her friends.

Also by Alison Roberts

Melting the Trauma Doc’s Heart

Single Dad in Her Stocking

Rescue Docs miniseries

Resisting Her Rescue Doc

Pregnant with Her Best Friend’s Baby

Dr Right for the Single Mum

Medics, Sisters, Brides miniseries

Awakening the Shy Nurse

Saved by Their Miracle Baby

Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk.

The Paramedic’s Unexpected Hero

Alison Roberts

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ISBN: 978-0-008-90248-3

THE PARAMEDIC’S UNEXPECTED HERO

© 2020 Alison Roberts

Published in Great Britain 2020

by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF

All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.

By payment of the required fees, you are granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right and licence to download and install this e-book on your personal computer, tablet computer, smart phone or other electronic reading device only (each a “Licensed Device”) and to access, display and read the text of this e-book on-screen on your Licensed Device. Except to the extent any of these acts shall be permitted pursuant to any mandatory provision of applicable law but no further, no part of this e-book or its text or images may be reproduced, transmitted, distributed, translated, converted or adapted for use on another file format, communicated to the public, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher.

® and ™ are trademarks owned and used by the trademark owner and/or its licensee. Trademarks marked with ® are registered with the United Kingdom Patent Office and/or the Office for Harmonisation in the Internal Market and in other countries.

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Note to Readers

This ebook contains the following accessibility features which, if supported by your device, can be accessed via your ereader/accessibility settings:

 Change of font size and line height

 Change of background and font colours

 Change of font

 Change justification

 Text to speech

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

About the Author

Booklist

Title Page

Copyright

Note to Readers

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

EPILOGUE

Extract

About the Publisher

CHAPTER ONE

OH, MAN…

It was clearly going to be one of “those” days. Ari Lawson could hear the shouting as soon as he pulled his helmet off, having shut down the engine of his powerful motorbike and secured it on its stand. Checking the house numbers in this outer suburban London street confirmed that one of the people engaged in this heated argument was standing in the doorway of the address he’d been dispatched to but it definitely wasn’t the person he’d been asked to check up on. This was a belligerent man in his mid-thirties—about Ari’s age—who was waving his fist at the middle-aged woman from the next-door terraced house.

‘Mind your own bloody business,’ he was yelling.

‘It is my bloody business,’ the woman yelled back, ‘if you’re punching holes in walls that I’m on the other side of. I’ve called the police.’

‘As if they’ll listen to you, you daft old bat. They never have before.’

Ari had lifted his kit from one of the panniers on the back of his bike. He walked towards the house.

‘Who the hell are you?’ the man demanded. He looked Ari up and down, his expression disgusted. ‘Get lost, whoever you are. You’re not wanted here.’

‘I’m here to see a Vicky Tomkins. This is where she lives, yes?’

‘There you go.’ The next-door neighbour folded her arms across an ample chest. ‘Vicky’s called for help. ’Bout time, if you ask me.’

‘Nobody asked you,’ the man spat. ‘And she didn’t call anyone.’

‘Yes, I did.’

Everybody turned instantly towards the woman now framed by the doorway behind the angry man. An obviously pregnant woman who was pale enough for alarm bells to start ringing for Ari.

‘I called my midwife,’ she said. ‘She said she couldn’t come but she’d find someone who could.’ But the younger woman was sounding hesitant now. ‘Another midwife…?’

‘That’s me,’ Ari confirmed. ‘Your midwife—Yvonne—is busy at the hospital in the middle of a delivery at the moment so she asked if I could come and see you. I’m a midwife, too.’

The moment’s silence didn’t surprise him. Ari was quite used to people finding a male midwife an unusual concept. Add in the fact that he was well over six feet tall, wore a leather jacket to ride his motorbike and kept his shoulder-length hair up and out of the way in a man bun for work hours and the reaction from others could often be a lot more than bewilderment. It wasn’t the first time he’d heard something like the raucous burst of laughter from the man in front of him.

‘You have got to be kidding me,’ he said. ‘A midwife? Well, you’re not getting anywhere near my wife, mate.’

For the umpteenth time, Ari had to wonder why it was such an odd concept that the only appropriate male role in pregnancy or childbirth was that of an obstetrician. At least he was quite familiar with dealing with this kind of prejudice.

‘I think that decision is up to Vicky,’ he said calmly. ‘She’s the one who called for help.’ He caught her gaze and held it, doing his best to convey reassurance that she could trust him. ‘You’re experiencing some abdominal pain, yes?’

She nodded. ‘And I’m bleeding,’ she told him. She had a protective hand on her belly and her voice dropped to a shaky whisper. ‘Please… I’m scared…’

The man wasn’t about to move but Ari was a head taller and he wasn’t about to let this client down. He knew she was less than thirty weeks pregnant and, if she was in pain and bleeding, she could be in real trouble. He could hear a siren not far away, which reminded him that he could well need to call for back-up sooner rather than later.

‘There you go.’ The neighbour sounded satisfied. ‘That’ll be the cops on their way and they’ll sort you out. I hope they lock you up this time.’

Sirens were commonplace in any huge city and this area of London had more problems than many so Ari thought it unlikely that they would be responding to a minor disturbance like this, but Vicky’s husband was incensed, stepping sideways and raising his hands as well as his voice so that he could grab the fence railing between them and shake it. Ari used the opportunity to step closer to the person who had called for help.

‘Are you safe here?’ he asked quietly. ‘Or do I need to get you somewhere else to check what’s happening?’

Vicky shook her head wearily. ‘He’ll settle down,’ she said. ‘He just gets wound up sometimes, you know?’ There was curiosity in her glance this time. ‘Are you really a midwife?’

‘I really am. But if you’re uncomfortable with that, it’s okay. I can refer you to hospital for an obstetric check.’

‘I don’t want to go in there. I’d have to wait for hours and I’m supposed to be working tonight. Ow…’ Vicky clutched at her belly with her whole arm as she bent forward. ‘Oh, that really hurts…’

‘Come and lie down somewhere.’ The sound of the siren was fading rapidly as Ari put a supporting arm around her shoulders. ‘Couch or bed—whatever’s easier. We need to find out what’s going on.’

A very short time later, he ended his phone call, hoping that he would be hearing another siren from an emergency vehicle in the very near future—from the ambulance he had just summoned.

Paramedic Kelly Reynolds shut down the lights and siren on the rapid response vehicle she was driving as she approached the suburban address she’d been dispatched to. Parking directly behind a large motorbike, she jumped out of the driver’s seat to go to the back hatch of the SUV to collect the gear she might need, slipping her arms through the straps of the backpack that contained an extensive first-aid kit. One hand was then free to carry the life pack with its monitoring and defibrillation capabilities and Kelly took a deep breath as she took her first step across the road.

As a rapid response paramedic it was her job to either arrive first to assess and stabilise what could be a serious case, or back up an ambulance crew that needed expert assistance. Sending an officer that worked alone—especially a female officer—into a potentially volatile situation was not ideal but when a call like this came in, it had to be the closest available vehicle that got dispatched and, this time, that had been Kelly.

She wasn’t about to stand back and wait for the back-up of the ambulance that she had heard being dispatched at the same time she had received the Code Red, urgent priority callout, on her radio. Not when there was a pregnant woman and a midwife on scene who needed assistance. She just needed to remember her training. To keep a clear escape route behind her at all times and to carry a heavy bit of kit like the defibrillator in front of her so that, in the worst-case scenario, she could throw it at someone to make her escape easier.

There was a woman leaning on an iron railing fence that separated her property from the house they’d been dispatched to.

‘’Bout time someone got here,’ she told Kelly, with satisfaction. ‘He’s kicking off again.’

Kelly acknowledged the greeting with no more than a nod. She could hear a raised voice coming from inside the house so she walked past the neighbour and rapped on the open door.

‘Ambulance,’ she called loudly.

The hallway was empty. The man’s angry voice was coming from a room to one side.

‘It’s her own bloody fault. I reckon she got pregnant on purpose. How do I even know the kid’s mine?’

It was the cry of pain from a woman that made Kelly move, her hackles rising as she got closer to what turned out to be a living room. She held the heavy life pack in front of her body as she’d been trained to do—poised to hurl it if she found herself under attack. The angry man wasn’t making an assault on anyone, however. He had a can of beer in his hand and he was simply standing in the doorway to a kitchen. The woman who sounded as if she was in severe pain was lying on a couch and there was another man crouched beside her.

An extraordinary-looking man, with olive brown skin and his hair pulled up into a bun that was a lot higher than the one Kelly always used to tidy her own hair for work. A lot messier, too. He was wearing jeans and a leather jacket of all things but he had what looked like a professional medical kit open on the floor beside him with a stethoscope and blood-pressure cuff visible. And he was placing his hands on the woman’s pregnant belly. Large, capable-looking hands, she noticed, but even from this distance she could see—or sense—how gentle his touch was. Kelly wasn’t the only one watching.

‘Get ya hands off her,’ the man yelled. ‘Nobody touches my wife without my say so.’

He lunged towards the couch but Kelly was faster as she stepped into the room at the same moment to get between him and the pregnant woman. He stopped in his tracks and swore vehemently but then backed off a little. He was a bully, Kelly realised, lowering the defibrillator. He might thrive on making threats but he was actually unlikely to follow through on them. Not that that made the abuse or interference with medical care any more acceptable, of course.

‘It’s not my fault,’ he muttered as he stepped back. ‘It’s that cow next door. She’s the one who’s causing all the trouble round here—not me. So we were having a bit of a barney…so what? Who doesn’t?’

‘What is happening here?’ Kelly only took her gaze off him for an instant because, while she thought she had the measure of this man, he was still clearly posing a threat. Her swift glance over her shoulder was long enough to see that the woman on the couch was looking distressed and far too pale. It was also long enough for the man who was crouched beside her to look up and meet her gaze.

Dark, dark eyes. A serious expression on a very intelligent-looking face.

‘I’m Kelly,’ she introduced herself. ‘From the ambulance service.’ She was still a little confused about who this man was. ‘And you are…?’

‘He’s a midwife,’ the man in front of her sneered. ‘A boy midwife. And you’re a girly medic. Who let you out to play all by yourself? If you ask me, the world’s gone bloody mad…’ He crumpled his beer can, hurled it towards the corner of the room and then turned back towards the kitchen. ‘I need another drink…’

Kelly ignored him, her gaze fixed on the midwife. She could sense that, beneath that calm expression, he was worried about his patient. Seriously worried.

‘I often work with the obstetric and neonatal flying squad,’ she told him. ‘Do we need to call them?’

The flying squad was a specialised team with a dedicated ambulance that was mainly used for transport of premature or sick babies to a hospital like the Kensington, which had a neonatal intensive-care unit, but it could also cater for any obstetric emergency like a home birth going wrong or a complication like a post-partum haemorrhage or obstructed labour. The team could include an obstetrician and/or a neonatal specialist, midwives and paramedics and had an incubator as part of their equipment in case an out-of-hospital birth or transport was needed for a fragile infant.

‘Maybe.’ There was a hint of a smile on his face as the midwife spoke to Kelly for the first time but it was ironic rather than amused. ‘For now, it’s good that you’re a “girly” paramedic. Between us, we might be able to properly assess how much blood Vicky’s actually losing.’

Any hint of that smile had faded but his glance still communicated the fact that this man was well aware of the threat that Vicky’s husband posed and that his attitude to a male midwife being here was exacerbating that threat. He wasn’t about to let it stop him doing his job, which deserved serious respect as far as Kelly was concerned. That simple reference to her being “girly” conveyed both an understanding of the kind of prejudice that could come with crossing perceived career boundaries or trying to assert authority and the kind of humour that meant he’d learned long ago how to deal with it. That earned more than respect from Kelly.

She liked this man.

As an advanced paramedic whose expertise had been requested, Kelly was theoretically now in charge of this scene but she wasn’t about to ask this midwife to step back if it wasn’t necessary. He had looked as though he knew exactly what he was doing when he’d been checking both the position of the baby and how tender or rigid Vicky’s abdomen was, and now he was about to move her clothing to check on her blood loss—something they both needed to assess as rapidly as possible.

A split second later, however, he reared back as an open beer can, spewing froth, whistled through the air to narrowly miss his head. Vicky cried out in fear and shrank back against the couch, even as the midwife moved to shield her, and it was in that instant that Kelly knew this woman had been struck in the past.

Maybe they should have waited until they could have taken Vicky out of there and into an ambulance before starting any assessment or treatment but this was most definitely not the time to start thinking about how she could have improved her management of this scene. Abuse of any kind was totally unacceptable and the midwife—who’d come into this situation alone with the sole intention of looking after a vulnerable woman—could have been seriously injured by that can.

With anger driving her muscles, it only took Kelly three steps to get to the other side of the room, although it was long enough for a hole to get punched into a wall. Not that that slowed Kelly down. If anything, she was even more furious as she faced up to the violent thug that Vicky was unfortunately married to.

‘Get in there,’ she shouted, jabbing her finger in the direction of the kitchen. ‘If you so much as put a foot back in this room while we’re looking after your wife, I’ll have the police here so fast you won’t know what’s hit you. And, believe me, they’ll make sure you don’t get to cause any more trouble for anyone for a very, very long time. Now…move…’

Wow…

Ari had his stethoscope in his ears because, having seen the alarming amount of blood Vicky had already lost, it was a matter of urgency to check on the baby’s status, but there was no missing the absolute authority in that voice. This paramedic—Kelly—might be blonde, pretty and as “girly” as they came, but she was not about to get messed with and that was exactly the kind of medical back-up he had hoped would arrive. He moved the rounded bell side of his stethoscope to pick up the baby’s heartbeat, which was reassuringly rapid and steady…for now.

‘Have you been feeling the baby move today, Vicky?’

‘Yes.’

‘How long ago did the pain start?’

‘I dunno. Maybe an hour. Or maybe a bit longer. The fight started because Brendan didn’t like what I was making for lunch and he…he…’

Ari lowered his voice, even though the kitchen door had been slammed behind Brendan. He knew that Kelly was coming back to this side of the room and would be able to hear him.

‘Did he hit you, Vicky? Is that how the pain started?’

‘N-no…he just…shook me a bit, that’s all.’

Again, his gaze met that of the paramedic for a heartbeat. He could see that Kelly, as a frontline member of the emergency services, had seen it all before. He could also see a fierce determination to help a vulnerable mother-to-be. He recognised that determination easily because it was something Ari had lived with himself for almost as long as he could remember. A need to protect and care for those more vulnerable than himself. Especially babies. Including babies that hadn’t been born yet and had no idea how tough life could be.

Kelly had her fingers on Vicky’s wrist but Ari knew she wouldn’t be able to locate a radial pulse because that had been the first thing he’d tried to assess. The tiny frown that appeared between her eyes was confirmation that she’d taken on board the warning that they needed to move fast. An absent radial pulse was an indication that the blood pressure was far too low.

‘Vicky?’ Kelly’s tone was reassuring. ‘I’m going to put a mask on you so that we can give you some oxygen. And I’m going to put an IV line into your arm, love. You’ve lost a bit of blood and we need to give you some fluids to get your blood pressure back up again. Then we’re going to get you into hospital. Is that okay with you?’

Vicky nodded wearily, lying back as she closed her eyes, her response no more than a mumbled assent. Kelly must have noticed that Ari was watching her rather intently because she flicked him a sideways glance. One that acknowledged what they both suspected—that Vicky’s placenta could be separating from the uterine wall and the amount of blood she was losing could put her into haemorrhagic shock that could be life threatening—both for this young mother and her baby.

There was a question in Kelly’s eyes. ‘You okay with staying here?’ she asked quietly as she opened her backpack and took out an equipment roll. ‘Want me to call for police back-up? There’s an ambulance on its way but we could try and get Vicky next door in the meantime.’

Ari kept his voice just as low—no more than a murmur that Vicky probably couldn’t catch. ‘I’d prefer to get her stable before we move her. Her GCS is dropping already. I reckon we can handle this between us…’ He tilted his head towards the kitchen door. ‘In fact, I think you could handle it all by yourself.’

A brief curl of one side of Kelly’s mouth acknowledged the compliment but her nod was an agreement with his preference to stay put and get some fluid resuscitation started. Movement could make the loss of blood more rapid and Vicky’s condition could deteriorate rapidly, tipping her into a possibly irreversible state of shock. Kelly had the tourniquet and the foil packet containing an alcohol wipe in her hands, ready to start establishing an intravenous line.

Ari reached for a cannula, peeling back the plastic cover before holding it out for Kelly to take as soon as she cleaned the skin over the vein she’d chosen in Vicky’s forearm. In that moment, they became even more of a team than they had when they’d agreed to stay here and try to stabilise their patient’s condition.

‘Vicky? Sharp scratch, love, but it’s only for a second.’ She slid the needle in, slid the cannula into place and released the catch on the tourniquet so swiftly and smoothly it looked like a single action.

Impressive.

‘There’s a bag of zero point nine percent saline in the kit. Top pocket.’

Ari pulled it out. Then he read out the expiry date for her.

‘Thanks…’ Kelly paused, a finger pressed onto the vein above the small, plastic tube in Vicky’s vein as she reached for the Luer plug he’d left beside her knee. ‘Sorry… I didn’t catch your name.’

‘We didn’t exactly get the chance for introductions.’ Ari was unwinding the giving set to poke the spike into the bag and then run enough fluid through the tubing to remove any air bubbles. ‘I’m Ari. Ari Lawson. I’m a midwife attached to Kensington Hospital.’ He held the end of the tubing out to Kelly who took it to attach to the Luer plug. With the IV line securely taped, she worked just as swiftly and smoothly to attach ECG electrodes to Vicky’s chest and flick the defibrillator into monitoring mode. Almost immediately, an alarm started sounding.