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Heavy silence ensued as the men tossed glances of respect toward Petrowski. He’d lost his wife tragically two years ago and hadn’t been on the field since. He’d taken time off to regroup and be there for his boys. No one blamed the new widower and suddenly single parent of twin babies for backing out of the dangers that came with pararescue.
Now, Petrowski was trying to do everything in his power to keep Nolan on the team. And that meant coming back.
“We can manage without you. Your call, though,” Nolan said.
“Real question is, could you manage with me faster?”
Nolan tossed him rope and a set of gloves. “Absolutely.”
Petrowski donned the gear. “Let me brief the pilots and Central Command, and I’ll be down there.”
They secured headsets, by which they’d communicate. Test clicks sounded. His team would work together like a well-oiled machine gun. Rapid. Precise. Ready for any complication. And, as with any mission, there’d be at least one.
“Showtime. Let’s go.” Nolan stepped over the edge. Pave Low hovering above, the team, stringed like black beads on a silver strand, hoisted to the barely-there bridge. Once flat-booted on it, they circled their temporary leader for instructions, then commenced duty.
A barge with firemen and trucks extinguished blazes and sprayed cooling chemicals on the tanker. Nolan quickly cleared his area. Near the checkpoint, he found Vince and Petrowski.
“River Guard divers have it under control there.” Vince scanned the water. “I’m hanging back to be sure though.”
“Aaron and I are heading to the other side to make sure they got all the kids to safety. Meet us at the DZ debrief later.”
Vince gave a thumbs-up symbol. Nolan signaled the pilots to drop hoist ropes. He locked his legs around it and held on as it went airborne, dangling Nolan and Aaron across the chasm of destruction. Closer, Nolan peered through high-powered military binoculars at the remnant of people.
His eyes lit on one, surrounded by a handful of children. He blinked. Nearly slipped. He tightened his grip on the binoculars. Shock jolted through him.
Mandy? Memories assaulted him.
The woman looked exactly like his high school sweetheart. The one his dreams had never let him release. The one no other woman competed with in his heart. Looks like her but it can’t be, his mind mumbled, fumbled with the possibilities of this happening. She looked familiar enough to elicit an old ache. Yet different enough for doubt to detonate the crazy notion.
His Mandy smiled more. This woman’s frown seemed set in stone and engraved on her face.
Except when she tended to a huddle of children. The granite softened. Granted, she’d just been in probably the most harrowing ordeal of her life. But the underlying sadness cloaking her face was different. The longevity of lines pulling her mouth into a frown had been there awhile. A long while. Like she hadn’t smiled in forever.
The helicopter hovered near the split. The pilot lowered Nolan directly above where tons of concrete entombed cars…and people so he could call an “all clear” of the area. His soles brushed the broken bridge. The broken bridge brushed his soul. He let go of the hoist and unclamped the safety latch. Pausing to wait for Aaron, Nolan scanned the shredded waterway for the woman he’d seen from the air.
The woman who looked like Mandy. Good, they’d gotten her, the teachers and remaining children off the bridge. After calling “all clear” into his headset, he signaled the pilot to take him to the drop point, a nearby parking lot.
Once down, he jogged over. Awesome. All the children looked uninjured. She talked while assessing them. Her voice was as he remembered. Deeper maybe. Dark hair escaped a frazzled twist at her neck. Her hand patted it, her efforts only loosening hair from the stylish utensil holding it. Nolan smiled. Until he saw her other hand. The left angle indicated fracture. Yet she worried with her hair. Typical Mandy. If this was indeed her. Only one way to find out.
He nodded to the child she faced and approached her from the back. Petrowski strode past to where Chance knelt, securing a respiratory mask to a wheezing child while Brock held him.
“How’s it going over here?” Nolan asked.
The woman jerked at his voice. Had to be her. Only one way to be sure.
Nolan spoke their secret code.
Chapter Two
“Manda Panda,” a voice said softly behind her.
Mandy’s spine stiffened. Children giggled. She froze. Military-buzzed heads lifted to stare.
Again, the voice from moments before, and years before, suctioned the last pocket of air from her lungs.
No one had called her that in ten years. Ten.
Not possible. Can’t be him. Can it?
Warmth radiated from a presence behind her. Slightly ragged breathing. Maybe hers and not his. Hard to tell. She felt like she orbited in a pre-surgical anesthesia vortex all of a sudden. She inhaled deep, cleansing breaths and forced the shock from her face and neck. She used every ounce of strength to slowly turn around.
The instant his eyes lit on her face, his mouth slid open.
He stared.
Mandy stared.
Though he was more filled out and his impressive frame was that of a man instead of a boy now, she’d know him anywhere.
“Nolan?” He had to notice her voice sounded like a ventilator gone bad. She hated the breathlessness. Despised the tears stinging at the sight of him. The welcome sight.
No.
Only because he’s a rescuer. Not because he’s Nolan, the only man you’ve ever loved.
Eyes as kind as she remembered explored first her face, then her body, but not in a sensual way. He seemed unable to speak for a moment. Or blink.
“Manda Panda?” It awed out as a whisper.
The spoken name streaked emotional pain through her.
She didn’t want to hear it. No one had the right to call her that anymore. Especially not him.
She lifted her chin. “Mandy.” She hadn’t meant it to be so curt.
Hurt fluttered in his eyes. Then confusion. Disappointment. Concern. Maybe even a little irritation.
He stepped toward her. Ran a hand over his dark-blondish buzz and left it there as he took another slow step. He blew out a forever breath. “I can’t believe it’s you.”
He didn’t blink or take his eyes off her. His gaze reached her hand. “You’re hurt.” He took another step toward her.
Her muscles stiffened. Cold. Be cold. This is the man who broke your heart and never looked back. Never called, never—
She stood rigidly and lifted her shoulders. The way she did when she wanted to look in control, in charge, and professional at the hospital. When she called a cardiac arrest code and needed family and nurses carrying her out her lifesaving orders to believe she knew exactly what she was doing. Though she might be scared crazy. No one else needed to sense the emotion inside. Things went better for everyone that way.
He glanced around. “All children were removed okay?”
She blinked. “Children?”
He motioned a vague hand toward the bridge.
Heat rushed her face. “Oh. Yes. Yes.” She nodded at his uniform…that he more than sufficiently filled out. “Men, dressed like you, lifted them in baskets to helicopters.” She tried not to stare like a dolt. He really could be a poster boy for a military exercise regimen. Gone were those lanky arms and chicken legs she used to tease him about.
She tried to ignore how strong and eerily familiar he felt as he guided her to sit on a padded cooler full of ice and water bottles. His team had lowered it from a helicopter after rescuing everyone from the bridge.
His gaze danced down her face and lit on her neck. His jaw slackened. Lines around his eyes creased as he leaned in.
The panda necklace! That he’d given her at age sixteen. So you’ll never forget me, he’d said.
Her hand snaked up to clench it. Too late. He’d seen.
Surprise glittered over his face. “You still have it.” It came out more like a statement of disbelief than a query.
Not wanting to look like an idiot, Mandy slipped her hand from it. “It softens the children toward me in the hospital, makes them less afraid.”
As if sensing her discomfort—and her omission of the main reason she couldn’t take it off—he politely averted his gaze.
She tried not to look at his left ring finger, though it called to her like an emergency page on night shift. Forced herself not to care that his finger had no ring. Or how soft, warm and capable his hand felt as it brushed expertly over her injuries. He obviously knew what he was doing medically, not just what he was doing to her emotionally.
“Hurt anywhere?”
How ironic the question. Bottomless eyes bored into hers.
“Mostly my wrist.” Mostly.
He ceased staring only to check those areas. Leaning closer, he lowered his voice. “Look, Mandy, I know this is awkward. If you’d rather someone else—”
“I’m fine.” For the most part. What else could she say? Admit her heart still ached from ten-year-old trauma? No. She refused to show herself weak around him again. He’d seen her at her most vulnerable, then rejected and abandoned her. She could never put herself in that position again.
Not liking his knowing, penetrating visual inquiry, she glanced at his uniform. “I see you made it through boot camp.”
That caused him to laugh.
“Barely.” He splinted her wrist then wrapped a sling around her arm. “You know how I was never a morning person. Those o’dark-thirty wake-up calls nearly did me in.”
She fought nostalgia with a vengeance.
“I see you made it through med school.” Pride sparkled as his eyes viewed the title embroidered on her rumpled scrubs.
She nodded because the emotion in his words disabled her voice.
“I’m proud of you, Mandy.” His smile gleamed genuine and warm. His gaze lingered, reaching deep, almost desperate, as if searching for something lost. Yet glowed radiant as in fascinated wonder of something found.
Heat came to her cheeks. She averted her gaze. How had she forgotten how deep his dimples were? How smooth and suave his voice. And how exquisite his eyes.
Cold. Be cold.
Do. Not. Thaw.
She lifted her chin. She supposed he made it through pararescue training, otherwise he wouldn’t be here. Must have been one of those brave, uniformed men making a grand entrance from helicopters. Both of which had enraptured the children’s attention, and helped them momentarily forgo their fears. Had even caused her to forget for a few moments they were all on the brink of death.
How would an elite, world-class airman end up in a small town calamity? Did he live nearby?
Oh, please no. She forced herself to stop wondering about him, the one thing on earth that could undo her and unravel her future. She’d ask Miss Ivy, town matriarch, landlady and owner of Ivy Manor where Mandy lived. She straightened her shoulders and spine and adopted a professional air.
He studied her carefully, almost comically. As if he knew her drill. Using coping mechanisms to prove to both of them his presence wasn’t affecting her.
“I see you’re still military.” She eyed emblems on a maroon beret, peeking out his side pants pocket.
“I see you’re still Manchester.” His gaze dealt heavy inquiry as it dipped to brush her name tag before reaching for her face again. The tender way his eyes held hers reminded her of an all-consuming embrace. His embrace.
She swallowed. Of course she’d never married. Why would she after having her heart ripped out and stomped on by his proverbial combat jump boots? What business was it of his?
She shoved to her feet before her mind could wonder why.
Quick as a blink, he surged closer, hand out as if to steady her, but stopped when she took an unsteady step back.
Disappointment clashed with concern across his face, and something else she couldn’t put her finger on. Regret?
Well, so what? Too late for sorry. It didn’t change the past or kill the pain.
“It’s good to see you.” He cleared his throat when she didn’t nod or agree.
He took a deliberate step back from her and aimed a slow thumb behind him. Same thumb that used to swipe away her tears and tilt her chin up for good-night kisses. Memories brought warmth to her cheeks.
“I’m going to check on the others.” He nodded toward a group of elderly women. “I’ll have one of my teammates direct you to an ambulance.”
She nodded.
He motioned toward her hand. “You need to have those bones X-rayed and set. Of course, being a doctor, I imagine you know that.” He met her gaze and held it like his strong arms had the children going up the hoist rope.
Her mind flashed back ten years ago, to the day he left on a bus to Air Force boot camp. It had taken every ounce of strength not to chase it down the street. While her heart had cried for him to come back, her feet had stayed firmly planted because he’d promised to write every week. In the midst of a heart raging with titanic emotions, her mind and common sense reasoned that he’d enlisted and legally there’d been no getting out of it.
But months later after no letters, her bleeding heart had won, convincing her mind that Nolan had left for something better. Just like her dad had left her mom and Mandy. A better life and she wasn’t part of it.
And she’d felt no less abandoned by Nolan. Especially after all the loneliness, emotional trauma and family tumult he’d helped her through. Doing what he was meant to: rescue. He was doing that now but he’d always shown tendencies.
But she wasn’t that needy person anymore. She clenched trembling fingers against her side as well as her injuries allowed. All the while he gauged her as though searching for signs of life.
Or lack of.
She dipped her head toward other victims. “Go on. I understand triage. And I’m not that hurt.”
His chin lifted and his expression took on a knowing manner, as if he’d picked up on the terse tones of the last sentence.
He pivoted, not seeming to be able to remove his gaze. His mouth moved as if to say something.
Slowly, he walked backward as though seeing her was like witnessing someone dead coming back to life.
