A Hero To Hold. Linda Castillo

was loose and blowing in his face.

      He shouldn’t have acknowledged, even to himself, how good she felt wrapped around him like that—she was a trauma patient. He was an in-flight medic. She’d shoved a gun in his face just two minutes earlier, for crying out loud! God only knew what kind of a person she was.

      All that aside, even under the best of circumstances, John figured he was the last man on earth who had the right to indulge in this woman’s vulnerability.

      Steeling himself against his uncharacteristic reaction to her and physical sensations he knew better than to acknowledge, he forced his thoughts back to the operation and prepared to board the chopper. The ride up was swift and turbulent. The winds spun them like a top, but the woman didn’t make a sound. When a particularly strong gust sent them careening toward the chopper’s skid, he swiveled in midair and took the impact in the small of his back, determined to keep her from getting any more bruises.

      “About time you showed up.” Buzz Malone’s voice reached him over the roar of the chopper’s engines and rush of wind. “What do we have?”

      “Hypothermia. Possible frostbite.” Strong hands pulled them into the chopper. John looked down at the woman in his arms and felt a flutter of low-grade lust in his belly. Terrific. “You handled that like a pro,” he told her.

      Her gaze met his. Despite her earlier terror and the fact that she was seriously hypothermic and shivering uncontrollably, a smile touched the corners of her mouth. The smile reached him as no words could have. For a moment he couldn’t look away. Simultaneously something shifted deep in his chest, something new and uncomfortable—and uncharacteristic as hell. He wanted to say something cocky, something to let his teammates know he wasn’t the least bit affected by all that red hair and her pretty eyes, but for the first time in his life, his wit failed him. He felt like he’d just been punched right between the eyes. All he could do was stare back at her and pray his team members weren’t aware that he’d suddenly lost his power of speech.

      “Are you going to stand there all day, or are you going to let me unfasten her, so we can get an IV started?”

      John jerked at the tone of Buzz’s voice. Realizing belatedly that the woman was no longer supporting herself, that he was just standing there holding her, he unclipped her harness and relinquished her to the two waiting men.

      “What the hell, John? Did you get struck by lightning out there, or what?” Buzz asked.

      “Must have been that boulder Flyboy slammed me into,” John muttered. Not sure why he’d reacted so strongly to her, ready to write it off to his long-neglected male libido, he stepped back, determined to walk away and forget it.

      But John couldn’t make himself turn away. He damn well couldn’t shake the feeling that he’d just stepped out onto thin ice and was about to plunge headlong into something that promised to take a lot more than just his breath.

      Her gaze never left him as Buzz and junior medic Pete Scully lifted her on the count of three and eased her onto the litter. Armed or not, she still had the most incredible eyes he’d ever seen. They were soft, expressive pools the color of expensive cognac. Rich with intelligence, they stared back at him with a moving mix of relief and gratitude—and the unmistakable realization that he’d saved her life.

      So what if that fed his ego? There wasn’t a search-and-rescue professional alive that didn’t like having it stoked. So he’d reacted to her. It had been a while since he’d been with a woman. John wasn’t any Romeo—not by a long shot. He knew all too well the dangers of getting involved and he wasn’t going to go off the deep end over a pair of incredible eyes and handfuls of silky red hair.

      Still, his reaction to her disturbed him—almost as much as the fact that she could very well have blown his head off.

      “Buzz.”

      Buzz tore the wrap from an IV needle. “What is it, Maitland?” the older man asked, never looking away from his work.

      “Uh…she had a gun.”

      Buzz swung an incredulous stare at him. “What?”

      “I said she had a gun—”

      “I heard you the first time.” Buzz looked down at the woman, his expression incredulous. “Where is it?”

      “She dropped it.”

      “Did she threaten you with it?”

      John had debated telling him the part where she’d pointed it at him. But Buzz was an ex-cop. John trusted his judgment. “She was terrified. Confused.”

      “Holy hell. She did, didn’t she?”

      “She thought I was someone else,” he said, hating it that he felt as if he’d somehow betrayed her. He didn’t owe her anything. For all he knew, she could be a criminal.

      “Who was she expecting, Jack the Ripper?”

      “She was scared out of her mind.”

      “Scared enough to pull a gun on a man trying to save her life?”

      John looked down at the pale woman lying on the litter. “I don’t think she planned to use it.”

      Buzz cursed, his face set and angry. “Open a line for me, Scully,” he snapped. “Let’s get some fluids into her.”

      Using the shears from the med kit, Buzz began cutting away her sweater and jeans. He hesitated an instant when the purple bruises on her arms and throat came into view. “Bloody hell.”

      “Criminy.” Scully’s jaw tightened, his gaze sweeping from the woman’s bruised body up to Buzz.

      John stared at the dark bruises marring the flesh of her throat. Bruises that were the perfect imprint of a man’s fingers. Outrage burgeoned in his chest. Nausea seesawed in his gut as the memory of another woman taunted him. A woman with fear in her eyes and bruises on her body. The burn of shame sizzled through him followed by the sting of regret so sharp he winced.

      “Looks like maybe she was trying to protect herself,” Scully offered.

      The woman tried to sit up, her eyes glued to the scissors. “Please…don’t….”

      John knew Buzz had seen too much in his years as a cop and then as a medic to let the sight of her bruises faze him. “Try to relax, honey,” the team leader soothed. “We’re going to treat you for hypothermia. I’ve got to get these wet clothes off you. Hold still for me, now, all right?”

      Shivering uncontrollably, she lay back on the litter and squeezed her eyes shut. But John could clearly see that she wasn’t relaxed. Her hands were clenched into fists, her jaws clamped tight. Her entire body trembled violently. He wondered if it was from the cold—or the terror she’d suffered at the hands of whomever had put those bruises on her. The thought sickened him.

      As the beauty of her flesh came into view, John averted his gaze. He’d seen plenty of victims prepped for the emergency room over the years. Most times, that included cutting away the impediment of clothing so the team could assess whatever trauma they’d sustained. In this case, removing her wet clothes was imperative in treating hypothermia. Male or female, in all the years he’d been a medic, the procedure had never bothered him. The fact that it did with this rescue—and this particular woman—left him feeling acutely uneasy. A hell of a reaction for a man who’d devoted his life to the art of never getting involved.

      John had one staunch rule that he’d lived by since the day he walked out of the Philadelphia tenement at the age of seventeen and never looked back: Never get involved. Not with the people around him. Not with his patients. And never, ever with women. He’d broken that rule only once in the last thirteen years—and paid a terrible price. He wouldn’t do it again. So why was his heart pounding like a drum as he watched the tears well in her eyes and spill down her wind-burned cheeks?

      Reaching into the med kit, John withdrew an insulated blanket and snapped it open. Stepping over to the litter, he pulled