A Father Beyond Compare. Alison Roberts

CHAPTER TWO

      SHE was so cold. Emma had never been this cold in her entire life. She had never been this terrified. She could ignore the deep ache in her leg, even dismiss the sharp pain in her ribs when she tried to take a deeper breath but she couldn’t escape the terror.

      Not while she was alone like this, anyway. It had almost gone for a while back there—when Tom had been with them. Having Mickey to focus on had been an overwhelming distraction as well. How long had it been since Tom had taken her son away? Five minutes? Forty-five minutes? Impossible to tell.

      At least her teeth weren’t chattering hard enough to feel like they were going to shatter now. And her head was still above water, although every so often the van rocked enough to make a wave lap against her face. Emma had to screw her eyes tightly shut when that happened and hold her breath. And pray that Mickey, at least, had made it to safety.

      This was all so unfair. So stupid! What right had she to drag her son off on what was probably a wild-goose chase? She could have stayed where she was and come to terms with always having that shadow hanging over her life. She could have kept them both safe. Her parents had thought she was wasting her money.

      ‘Have a holiday closer to home, for goodness’ sake,’ her mother had said more than once. ‘There’s absolutely no point in going all the way to New Zealand. He could have found you last year, you know—if he’d really wanted to.’

      Spain would have been nice. Or the south of France. Or a Greek island. A nice short plane ride away from Wales. Mickey could have built sandcastles while Emma lazed on a beach and tried to sort out the direction she wanted to take at this crossroads in her life.

      Instead, she was trapped in a van. Waiting to be swept to her death. Or maybe to drown first, the way the van was rocking and sending water over her face right now. Either way she was going to die. Alone.

      No. Emma took a gasping breath in between the waves. She wasn’t going to give up. She was only twenty-eight, for God’s sake, and she had a young child who depended on her.

      And…and she wasn’t alone. She could hear someone yelling her name.

      ‘Tom? Is that you?’ Emma opened her eyes and thoughts of imminent death faded. She couldn’t see much of the paramedic’s face, what with the helmet and visor and a microphone attachment but she could see enough. Dark eyes that were fastened on her. And a smile that could light the darkest of places.

      Even the place they were both in right now.

      ‘How it’s going, then?’

      Such a silly question but Emma was so relieved to see Tom that she had to smile. Then she had an important question of her own. ‘Mickey?’

      ‘He’s safe. On board the chopper and they’ll be taking him to the ambulance crew to get checked out.’

      ‘Was he…good? No trouble?’

      Tom was grinning. ‘I only got pinched a few times. He didn’t want to leave his mum.’

      Emma couldn’t hold the tears back. Relief vied with panic that she would never see her child again.

      ‘Hey…’ Tom was squeezing himself as far through the gap as he could without falling on top of Emma. ‘It’s going to be all right. We’ll get you out of here in no time.’

      She believed him. Almost. ‘But my foot’s still stuck.’

      ‘I’m going to see if I can do something about that. How are you feeling otherwise?’ Tom stripped off a glove and reached down to take hold of her wrist. ‘You’re pretty cold, aren’t you?’

      He was taking her pulse. Although her hands were almost numb with the cold, Emma could feel the contact. The warmth of another human touching her. The fear of dying alone evaporated. Even the fear of dying at all faded. If anyone could get her out of this, it would be this big man, with his reassuringly calm manner and that wonderful smile.

      ‘Are you having any trouble breathing?’

      ‘It hurts a bit. I think my ribs got a bit bruised by the steering-wheel.’

      ‘How’s your neck? And your head?’

      ‘Fine…I think.’

      ‘Were you knocked out?’

      ‘No.’

      ‘Do you know what day it is?’

      ‘Um…Wednesday.’ Tom was trying to assess her level of consciousness. ‘The fourteenth,’ she supplied. ‘We came over on the ferry from North Island yesterday…and we were taking a roundabout route to get to Christchurch.’

      ‘Where are you from?’

      ‘Wales.’

      Tom was grinning again. ‘Can you sing?’

      Emma actually laughed. ‘Not right now.’

      ‘Fair enough.’ Tom leaned further in. Emma could have wrapped her arms around his neck if she’d wanted to. And she did want to. Very much.

      ‘I’m just going to have a feel down your leg,’ Tom told her.

      ‘OK.’

      ‘I hope you don’t say that to every man you’ve just met.’ It was astonishing how Tom could actually make a joke of trying to assess how badly she was trapped. It was a great technique, though. Emma trusted him completely. She would do whatever she had to do to be co-operative.

      ‘Ow!’

      ‘Sorry. You’ve got some trauma. You’re bleeding a bit.’

      Emma had heard that kind of understatement from medical professionals more than once.

      ‘I do feel pretty weird. Have I lost enough to be in shock, do you think?’ Dark eyes flicked up to meet hers and Emma smiled wryly. ‘I’m a nurse,’ she told Tom. ‘I’ve probably imagined the worst-case scenario here in lurid detail.’

      ‘I’ll bet.’ Tom was pulling at something well below the water line. Emma felt something metallic scraping against her leg and bit her lip to prevent crying out and restricting his efforts. ‘What kind of nursing?’

      ‘I used to be a theatre nurse. I’ve worked in Emergency, too, and loved that. I’ve just been a general practice nurse since Mickey was born and I’m more than ready for a change.’

      ‘Not exciting enough?’

      ‘No.’

      ‘So you came looking for some adventure.’ Tom grunted with the effort of trying to bend something from his upside down position.

      ‘Not this kind.’

      ‘Long way to come.’ Tom adjusted his position. He used one hand to anchor himself on the doorhandle just behind Emma’s head and twisted, pushing his other arm further into the water. ‘Have you got family in New Zealand?’

      Did Mickey’s father count? ‘Not exactly.’

      ‘Friends?’

      ‘Um…’ What she and Simon had had could hardly be described as ‘friendship’. A wild affair with undying passion declared on both sides. Something that had ignited so quickly it had bypassed anything resembling a friendship. A conflagration that had been over even more quickly than it had begun.

      ‘Not really,’ Emma told Tom.

      ‘You don’t sound too sure.’

      ‘Mmm.’ That was it in a nutshell, wasn’t it? Emma wasn’t sure. ‘It’s a bit complicated.’

      ‘Ah-h…’ Tom sounded sympathetic but polite. He was still trying to bend whatever piece of metal was trapping Emma’s leg. He was also clearly trying to distract her with some conversation but didn’t want to tread on any ground that was too personal. ‘So you