Their Christmas Vows. Margaret McDonagh

having a helicopter based here significantly cuts down response times. It has been running for six months now, and has paid for itself time and again, saving umpteen lives.’ Archie Stewart’s pride in the achievement of his staff had been evident. ‘Our operation is affiliated to, yet separate and run slightly differently from, the main air service in the rest of Scotland. We have our own shift patterns and we’re crewed along the lines of the successful HEMS unit in London, with a pilot and a flight trauma doctor teamed with a specially trained flight paramedic.’

      Callie had learned that there were three full-time crews who worked three days on, three nights on and then had three days off—night work and bad weather seeing crews using the all-terrain road vehicle rather than the helicopter. There was a relief crew, and individual relief staff, who filled in for holidays, illness and emergencies.

      ‘The helicopter can fly at night, but landings are dangerous if the pilot cannot see obstacles, cables and so on, so we tend to avoid it unless absolutely necessary,’ Archie had explained. A smile had creased his weathered face. ‘You’ll find we’re a good team here—like a second family … We work together, watch out for each other, socialise together. You’re a part of that now, Callie.’

      A second family. Except she didn’t even have a first family. She never had done. Having always been alone, on the outside looking in, this was a chance to experience what it was like to belong. If only she could let down some of her protective barriers. That was easier said than done—especially after Ed, and all she had been through these last months—but she knew she needed to try and be more social, to make an effort to fit in to her new home in Strathlochan. So she had gone out one evening last week, enjoying a drink with her new workmates and meeting up with colleagues from the hospital and other emergency services at their favourite hangout, the Strathlochan Arms. The banter had been friendly, the welcome warm.

      Despite her wariness with people, she had particularly bonded with Annie Webster, one of the A and E doctors. It gave Callie hope that she had been right to come here, putting her troubled past behind her. However, the gossip about Frazer McInnes, the doctor Archie had paired her with, worried her. One hungry-looking casualty nurse had been outspoken on her views of the alleged romeo, but her unsubtle comments about Frazer’s supposed prowess and love-them-and-leave-them lifestyle had made Annie roll her eyes in distaste.

      ‘Take no notice of Olivia and her claimed conquests, Callie. She has her eye on every man around here under sixty, but that doesn’t mean they return her interest. Frazer may be one of Strathlochan’s most sought-after bachelors, and he certainly enjoys a good time, but he’s a lovely guy. He’s also a great doctor,’ Annie had reassured her.

      At least, Callie assumed the words had been meant as reassuring. They just hadn’t entirely had that effect. Everything she had heard about Frazer McInnes made her nervous and brought fresh waves of doubt. But she would keep up her guard and reserve judgement until she met him. And today was the day. All her struggles and preparations had led her here, to the moment she would begin her exciting, long-dreamed-of new job as flight paramedic, when all the extra training and hard work she had done would pay off. Professionally. Personally she still had a very long way to go.

      Hesitating outside the entrance, she twisted the narrow gold band on her ring finger before sliding it off and fixing it to a chain around her neck, out of the way for work. She didn’t like what it said about her, the fact that she was insecure enough to wear it, using it as an emotional shield, a protective screen. She’d hoped she had come further than that these last eighteen months. Apparently not. A shiver—one that had nothing to do with the cold—rippled down her spine.

      Hearing noises in the hangar, she pulled herself together and sucked in a steadying breath, trying to calm the nerves that were rampaging inside her. Time to head inside and prepare for her first proper shift. And face her first meeting with the man who would be her work partner for the foreseeable future.

      Dr Frazer McInnes jogged across the frosty car park towards the base, his Border terrier, Hamish, trotting at his heels. If the forecast was to be believed—and from the icy blast that had greeted him this morning it was—he had arrived back in Strathlochan after ten days in Perthshire, climbing Monroes with friends, just in time. He loved this time of year—the run up to Christmas, the festive spirit, the parties, the fun—but it also brought a lot of hard work, and the extra-harsh weather this December was a warning that there could be even more problems than usual ahead of them. Not that hard work bothered him.

      He loved it. Loved what he did. The buzz of being a flight doctor, of never knowing what was going to happen next, always brought a burst of adrenalin. It was what everyone said about him—that he worked hard and played hard. As far as he was concerned life was for living, and he always planned to live it to the fullest.

      The holiday had been great, but he had a smile on his face as he pushed through the door, anticipation at being back with the team and getting on with the job bubbling inside him. Hearing chat and laughter coming from along the corridor, he stowed his belongings in his locker and then made his way to the crew room, where the team going off-shift were preparing to hand over to his own before heading for home. He paused for a moment, soaking up the atmosphere, sketching a wave to his pilot, Craig Dalglish, who was helping himself to a mug of coffee in the refreshment area which housed food and drink supplies, a fridge-freezer and a microwave. The rest of the large but comfortable room was filled with easy chairs, sofa, tables, a work space, a small pool table, a piano, shelves of books and a TV with assorted DVDs.

      As Hamish, unofficial base mascot, made himself the centre of attention and reacquainted himself with his adoring public, Frazer glanced around the room, his smile broadening as he spied his quarry. In her forties, married with two teenage boys, Mel Watson was his friend and colleague. They had a great working relationship and were always playing pranks on each other. In fact, he owed her for that last practical joke before his holiday, and with her rear end pointing straight at him as she bent over to reach something, he’d been gifted with the perfect opportunity to get his own back. It was way too much temptation to resist.

      Silently, he moved up behind her and teasingly fondled her shapely curves. For a millisecond unease nudged his brain that the delectable feminine form beneath his hands wasn’t as familiar as it should have been. The next moment …

       Bam!

      The blow caught him unprepared. Delivered with surprising force and accuracy, it drove all the air from his lungs and dropped him like a sack of potatoes. Stunned, he landed on his backside, a grunt of shock escaping as he sprawled unceremoniously on the floor. His assailant—not Mel, he registered now it was far too late—spun round and glared at him, fists clenched at her sides, her feet planted hip-width apart as if readying for battle. Wow! If he had managed to regain any breath at all, he would have lost it all again just looking at the unknown woman. In her late twenties, she couldn’t be more than five feet four, and that was being generous, so how on earth could her legs possibly seem to go on for ever? The yellow Nomex flight suit she wore was a good two sizes too big, masking the female shape he had all too briefly felt beneath his hands and swamping her small frame. Short dark brown hair, layered and feathery, framed delicate features, a cute nose and lush, rosy lips, while the most amazing eyes he had ever seen—surely they couldn’t really be purple?—fizzed with fire and fury.

      Silence descended on the room for several drawn-out moments. Then his colleagues laughed uproariously at his plight. Their reaction, however, made the woman even more angry, and he regretted the flash of humiliation he could see in her eyes. He’d never do anything to show someone up. This had all been a ghastly mistake. His hand went to the point of pain at his midriff, where her elbow had delivered the killer blow, and he tried to suck some much-needed oxygen back into painfully starved lungs so he could speak.

      But she didn’t wait around to concern herself with his apology … or his recovery. Instead, she stepped around him, giving him a wide berth, then marched from the room. It was an impressive march, too, for such a tiny thing. Now he had seen the whole impressive package, he couldn’t understand how he had ever mistaken the stranger for the taller, more robust Mel, who was also a decade or more older than the firebrand who’d just decked him. As he sat there,