Encounter with a Commanding Officer. Charlotte Hawkes

during his seven tours of duty over the last decade, several back to back. He had an incredible respect for the doctors and medics who ran what was, essentially, an airborne operating room. Many of his men, his friends, were still alive today because of the swift, skilled actions of MERT teams. But although he’d carried many casualties to the heli as part of the infantry team on the ground, the only time he’d actually been on board had been when he himself had been seriously injured.

      Ash kept his eyes firmly open. If he closed them, the sounds were too brutally familiar. If he closed them, the scents, the turbulence, transported him right back to that day. If he closed them, he could almost feeling his life ebbing away.

      Instead, he studiously watched the attractive blonde major who was running this flying operating room with impressive command and focus. Even now she was diligently prepping any last pieces of equipment. He could imagine her as the focused, methodical doctor, but he still couldn’t imagine her ever breaking the rules to save a soldier, the way his new unit had claimed she’d done on more than one occasion.

      But that wasn’t the reason he was here, was it?

      From the minute she’d walked into that room yesterday, she’d somehow slipped under his skin and he’d found himself reacting to her in a way that made him feel out of control. And for Ash it was all about being in control. About not allowing himself to feel. Because feeling meant being at the mercy of emotions. And that wasn’t something he permitted.

      He’d kept an iron grip on his emotions for two decades now. They were a liability he couldn’t afford. Not since the beatings, the push and pull from the miserable care home to the squalor of foster homes, to his dad, who’d somehow convinced the authorities he’d stopped the drinking, right up until the cycle had started all over again. Only Rosie and Wilf had shown him another way. They’d been the only foster parents able to take on that angry, out-of-control kid that he’d been and show him love, and hope, and a way out.

      A darkness unfurled in him, snaking its devious way up to constrict his chest painfully until he found it hard even to breathe. Controlling his emotions, keeping people at arm’s length, had been an important lesson growing up and it was even more important now. Out here on a tour of duty and waiting, at any time, for a phone call to tell him the inevitable had happened, that Rosie had finally lost her fight and he would have to fly home for what was likely to be the worst funeral of his life.

      Perhaps it was no wonder, then, that he’d reacted as he had done when the Major had strode into that office yesterday. Even now, at the mere memory, awareness crackled through his body, dancing over the darkness which had filled him a moment ago as though it was nothing. As though that forbidding fear couldn’t compete with the light-hearted lust which toyed playfully with him. As though it knew that once, just this once, he could be tempted to cross the line and consider a hot...fling with someone like the Major, just because it offered him the promise of distraction, a release from the tension of waiting. Of not knowing.

      That’s not going to happen.

      Furiously, he shoved the idea aside. He never mixed personal relationships with his career. Not out here. Not within the Army. It had too much potential to become...messy.

      Yet his eyes slid inexorably across the heli to the commanding Major. She made him react to her in the basest of ways. Yet she also challenged him mentally. He hadn’t intended to give her the dressing-down that he had, anticipating instead that he’d voice his concerns and find out what she had to say before making a judgement. Instead, he’d allowed his attraction to her to override his usual common sense.

      But, instead of meekly surrendering, she’d looked him in the eye and refuted every one of his statements clearly and confidently. And that had piqued an interest in Ash. Before he’d known where he was, he’d bagged himself a ringside seat to all the shouts her MERT would respond to over the next twenty-four hours.

      This wasn’t helping.

      He dragged his attention away from her and concentrated on the four-man QRF team made up from his new infantry unit. The Major had been right about them too. It hadn’t taken him long yesterday to find out that his new unit was particularly wound up about the incident which had claimed the life of Colonel Waterson. He would do well to boost their morale and he had no doubt that, given half a chance, the Major would happily instruct him on that too.

      And now he was back to her. Again.

      But now, for the first time he could ever recall, his iron grip, honed over the last two decades, was slipping. His focus threatened. And all because of this one woman.

      His gaze slipped back to the by-the-book Major as he tried to work out what was so different about her. So prim and proper, she was certainly attractive with those barbed Nordic blue eyes and blonde hair pulled into such an eye-wateringly severe yet generous bun that his fingers had actually itched to reach up and release. To slide his fingers through the silk curtain and soften the strait-laced doctor, even a fraction.

      What the heck was wrong with him?

      It was the last thing Ash needed. Not just because she was General Delaunay’s niece but because this was the first role Ash had taken behind the wire, in the relative safety of Camp Razorwire. He certainly felt on edge at the prospect of facing the next few years behind a desk instead of out in the field. Out where he belonged. Barely a month ago he’d been a major himself, on the front line and leading his company as he risked his own life alongside his men. Now he was a colonel, in charge of a battalion and destined—maybe not on this tour of duty, but on a future one—not to lead his men but to send them into potential danger zones.

      How the hell was he supposed to get used to that?

      Behind a desk wasn’t where he functioned best. All his career he had experienced the adrenalin kick, the fear, the buzz, and he’d been in control.

      Now, as galling as it was to admit, he felt lost.

      Suddenly, the heli filled with dust as it dropped, the rotor blades churning up the ground covering and drawing it into the back on the air currents, blinding them all. Ash buried his nose into his combat jacket like a filter so that he could breathe. And then they landed, rough and abrupt, and the dust was sucked quickly instantly out, leaving the aircraft clear again.

      It took everything Ash had to fight his instinct to jump out of the back ahead of his QRF to help secure the area around the heli, safe zone or not. As two of his men secured the rear, where soldiers were already running across the open ground carrying a litter-bound casualty, the other two men leapt up to man the ramp-mounted and side-mounted machine guns respectively. They were smooth and slick and Ash nodded to himself in satisfaction. It was what he’d expected, but still, it was good to see.

      ‘RTA on the Main Supply Route,’ the young team medic for the soldiers’ unit rushed ahead to the heli to brief the MERT, yelling over the din. ‘Local guy driving a flatbed truck across the bridge running perpendicular above us when he suffered a tyre blow out and lost control. Nothing he could do, his truck jack-knifed and he crashed through the barrier and landed on our convoy. We’ve got three casualties.’

      Even as he finished, the soldiers had already reached them with the first casualty and the Major and her team efficiently hauled the litter on board and began their medical care. Just behind, two soldiers were helping the injured local man to hobble to the heli, an open fracture to one arm and clearly shaken. Walking wounded, that was always preferable. The teams would settle him in a seat and then pass him on to the camp hospital for care. But, even from across the helicopter, Ash could see that the first victim had significant crush injuries. He wasn’t a doctor but Ash had enough experience to know. All vital signs were absent and, to all intents and purposes, the soldier was gone. But it wasn’t the MERT’s place to call time of death; they didn’t have the authority. That could only be done when they returned to Camp Razorwire and a team from the hospital came out.

      Not that you’d know it from the Major’s poker face; there was no sign of defeat in her expression, nothing to knock the morale of the soldiers on the ground, who wanted her to save the life of their buddy. Instead the MERT were doing their job and starting care, the Major already checking