Single Dad in Her Stocking Read online

  ‘There’s no time for that.’ Emma shook her head. ‘Can you break this back window? I reckon I could get in there.’

  ‘There’s hardly any space in there.’ The paramedic had come back. ‘There’s no way we could get a spinal board in and get him out.’

  Both the paramedic and Max were tall, broad-shouldered men. They wouldn’t even be able to get through a window space. But Emma could—if she was brave enough. Again, as she had when first arriving on this scene, she had a moment of wondering if she might be about to tackle something that might defeat her. And, again, she found herself catching Max’s gaze. This time, it felt different. He wasn’t considering taking over because he couldn’t do what Emma could attempt, thanks to her size. This time, it felt as if he was offering her encouragement. Bolstering her confidence by letting her know that he believed she could do this. And it felt...great. It was exactly what she needed to vanquish any beat of fear.

  ‘I can get in,’ she told them. ‘I need to secure his airway. I can work in a tight space. You could pass me in the gear I need.’ She had to try and save this man. He’d been simply sitting in his car, stopped at a red traffic light, and his world had just been overturned in a split second and it just...well, it wasn’t fair...

  The chief fire officer looked undecided but Emma held his gaze to give him the silent message if he wasn’t going to help her, she was going to try by herself.

  He finally nodded. ‘Okay. Stand back and I’ll get the window out.’

  * * *

  He should go back to his emergency department, Max thought. It wasn’t just that he’d left all the children in the care of a staff member. He was automatically focusing on how the department was going to cope with a sudden influx of trauma patients. He knew that his staff would be managing the first of these patients from the crash scene perfectly well, but the more seriously injured, like the semi-conscious driver of the second vehicle, might be stretching immediate resources and they needed to plan for someone who could need major resuscitation—if they could get him into the department alive. Or maybe it should be Emma who went back to manage the department, seeing as she was officially doing his job today.

  But right now she was wriggling herself through an empty window space of a crashed car and somehow contorting her body so that she could touch and assess the unconscious driver. She was inside a partially crushed car and there was a heavy truck still lying across the vehicle. It looked difficult and bloody dangerous and...and there was no way Max was going to leave until he knew that Emma was okay. He couldn’t believe the courage she’d shown even crawling into that vehicle. The fact that she now sounded calm and in control of the situation was, well...it was seriously impressive.

  ‘He’s got multiple fractures in his face and his airway’s obstructed.’ Emma put down the bag mask she had been trying to use to assist the man’s breathing. ‘There’s no way I’m going to be able to do an orotracheal or nasotracheal intubation. How far away are we from being able to get him out?’

  Max signalled one of the fire officers and repeated Emma’s query.

  ‘We’re getting some jacks in place. It should be safe enough to cut the side out of the car in about ten minutes.’

  Emma had heard the response. ‘Too long,’ she said. She was almost lying down beside her patient in the narrow space left in the crushed car but she twisted her head to look directly at Max.

  ‘Surgical cricothyroidotomy?’ she suggested.

  ‘It’s what I’d do in ED.’ He nodded. ‘But have you got enough space in there?’

  ‘It’ll have to be enough,’ Emma said. ‘His pulse is dropping. We’re going to lose him if I don’t do something right now. I need some fresh gloves, a number ten or eleven scalpel, a bougie and a size six endotracheal tube, please.’

  It was Max who handed everything that Emma required in through the empty window space, reaching in so that he could place things in her hands without her having to try and move. With her new gloves on, he watched her find her landmarks on the man’s neck, stabilising the larynx with one hand and then locating the space between the thyroid and cricoid cartilages. He was ready to hand her the scalpel as soon as she was ready to make her first incision.

  ‘I’m through the cricoid membrane,’ she said, seconds later. ‘I’m going to make the horizontal incisions now.’

  Max knew this was where things could get messy and enough blood could not only obscure the field but undermine the confidence of anyone who might not be very familiar with this emergency procedure. He knew that Emma was going to be working purely by feel from now on and when there was movement of the crushed vehicle from what the firies were doing to stabilise the truck above them, he held his breath to see whether that might give Emma enough of a fright to interfere with what was the critical moment of her attempt to save this man’s life.

  It didn’t seem to rattle her at all. She slid the bougie guide into the hole she’d made in his neck, slipped the endotracheal tube over the top of the bougie and managed to make it look easy to secure the tube, despite the awkwardness of the space she was working in and gloved hands that were slippery with blood.

  ‘Can you see where the bag mask is?’ she asked Max.

  ‘It’s right behind you.’

  ‘I can’t reach...’

  ‘I’ve got it.’ Max leaned further into the car and picked it up. He pulled off the plastic face mask and the paramedic beside him had the attachment needed so that Emma could clip it to the endotracheal tube.

  ‘Equal chest movement,’ she said a moment later. ‘Can we get some oxygen on? I’d like to get an IV in, as well.’

  Max could see the firies setting up their hydraulic cutting gear right beside him. As he looked at the officer in charge he received a nod in response.

  ‘They’re ready to start cutting,’ he told Emma. ‘Is he breathing well enough to wait a couple of minutes until we can get him out? The sooner we can get him into the department the better, yes?’

  ‘Of course.’ Emma had one hand on the man’s abdomen, feeling for his efforts at respiration. She had her other hand on his wrist, feeling for his pulse. ‘Okay...yes...let’s get him out of here.’

  She stayed with her patient for as long as possible as the firies cut through twisted metal and lifted a door and the central pillar out of the way. Then she had to move and the paramedics took over, being the experts in getting the victim onto a spinal board and then out of the vehicle and onto the waiting stretcher. It took only a few minutes but, for that period of time, Max had Emma standing right beside him and he could sense her focus on what was happening for her patient and a tension that suggested that a successful outcome to this case was very, very important to her.

  He was looking at her face as the badly injured man was finally lifted from the car and, as if sensing his gaze, she looked up at him and he could see what he had suspected in her eyes. Emma was determined to win this fight for life. She not only had a bucket of courage, this woman, but she loved her job as much as Max loved his and she truly cared about doing the absolute best she could for anyone under her care. It was a moment of connection that was as powerful as it was brief.

  Their patient had been freed but needed more intervention and then a high level of monitoring even for the few minutes it would take to get him inside the hospital walls. The other victims of this incident had already been transported into the Royal’s emergency department and that was where Emma and Max both headed back to now. There was still a lot of work to be done and Max wanted to be working alongside Emma to make sure the department could handle everything that needed to be done for everybody involved.

  It was then he realised that, during the tense minutes of assisting Emma in the amazing job she’d just done in saving a man’s life, he’d actually forgotten that he had other responsibilities as well. That there were three small children waiting for him, probably in the staffroom o
f his emergency department. He felt completely torn in that moment—in two very different directions—and it was overwhelming.

  Had Emma sensed that it was almost too much? Was that why she chose to look up from her patient for a heartbeat and catch his gaze? There was a softness to her mouth that hinted at a smile and there was a confidence in her eyes that told him she thought they were winning. That they had a very good chance of winning this challenge they had just tackled together.

  Max chose to take something more from that look as well. That he might well be facing the biggest challenge of his own life but he had a very good chance of winning that too. Especially if he could persuade Emma to hang around, even if was only for a short time. And then he remembered that was why he had dropped by the hospital in the first place—to try and persuade her not to find alternative accommodation.

  He’d have to wait before he could find an appropriate moment to do that so he hoped the children were happy to stay for a bit longer. That would also give him time to think up an approach that Emma couldn’t refuse.

  He could remind her of her promise to help Ben and Tilly make stars.

  Or he could remind her of what she believed about Christmas. About the magic that could happen when a family came together to celebrate the bonds they had. The love. He could tell her what he believed—that they all needed Emma to make that happen.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  THIS FELT AS if it could be a mistake.

  As if Emma was doing something that meant she was stepping over a line and it might be impossible to step back again even if she really needed to. But here she was, doing it. Driving back to Upper Barnsley. And it was Max Cunningham’s fault.

  He had made it impossible for her not to return to the manor house after her shift had ended. He had stayed on at the Royal, allowing staff members to take care of his nieces and nephew, until they had stabilised all the victims of the major accident and their patients had been transferred either to Theatre under the care of surgical teams or admitted to various wards for further treatment.

  And then he’d brought the children in from the staffroom or the relatives’ room or wherever someone had been caring for them and Ben had pinned Emma with that gaze that was far too serious for a six-year-old boy to have mastered.

  ‘Is it time for you to go home now, Emma?’ he’d asked.

  ‘I guess it is,’ she’d admitted, checking her watch. But just where it was that she would be heading as her temporary home was totally unknown. She hadn’t found a single moment today to go online and check for the availability of hotel rooms within a manageable distance.

  ‘Are we going to make stars?’ Tilly’s gaze was almost as sombre as her brother’s—as if she was still processing her new knowledge that life didn’t always deliver what it was supposed to. ‘I like stars and...and you said I could help.’

  Ben still had her pinned. ‘You promised...’

  Technically, Emma had offered rather than promised to show the children how to make stars but the semantics were irrelevant because she couldn’t let Ben and Tilly down.

  Or Max...

  If he’d brought these children in to see her as a form of emotional blackmail to get another night of her assistance with their care, he had certainly achieved his goal but that wasn’t what Emma was thinking about as her gaze touched, and then held, his.

  To be honest, she wasn’t thinking of anything very coherent at all. It was more of a feeling. A warmth. They had worked together this afternoon. They had saved a life and the connection that gave them was more than simply professional. They had shared a goal and they’d needed each other in order to achieve it and they had succeeded and...trust between them had been born. It was that trust that was creating a warmth that started in Emma’s chest and unfurled and grew to reach right to the tips of her fingers and toes.

  Or maybe the connection had already been there from years ago and had been rediscovered.

  And maybe a new depth to that connection had been established between them yesterday when Emma had been present while Max was struggling to get his head around the enormous changes that had just overturned his world. She had helped because she was there and she couldn’t not help but then he’d asked her to stay. He’d said that he needed her...

  Whatever it was, it was powerful. And it was touching something very deep in Emma’s heart. Not in the space that was still locked away because she didn’t quite recognise this new part of her heart. It felt like no-man’s land, halfway between caring so much that something could tear your heart apart when you lost it and caring only because you knew that it was temporary so the loss was already built in—the now very familiar space that her locum work had given her in her professional life and the avoidance of any long-term relationships had provided in her private life.

  For a moment, Emma had to shake off a longing that came completely from left field—that she was over being in this space and ready to put roots down and create a life that wasn’t going to keep changing. As always, the best way to deal with a doubt like that was to think of a positive point to balance it and there was one that sprang to mind instantly. It almost felt as if she could allow herself to enjoy the sensations that came from unwrapping an old attraction that didn’t seem to have faded at all because this was as temporary as her new position being the stand-in HOD of the Royal’s emergency department. She knew that when this locum position ended she would walk out of the job and away from Max Cunningham and his now very complicated life would be none of her business. Perhaps she could even allow herself to enjoy the company of young children—away from her professional environment—which was something she knew she had instinctively kept herself away from.

  It was all temporary. Keeping her word to show Ben and Tilly how to make stars committed her to no more than spending one more night at the manor house. She could find the time to search for a hotel room tomorrow.

  Pulling her car to a halt beside Max’s, outside his family home, Emma sat still for a moment, watching Max get out of the driver’s seat and move to open the back door to lift his small passengers from their car seats. He paused for a heartbeat, however, and looked over the Christmas tree strapped to the roof of the vehicle to catch Emma’s gaze, his lips curling into a smile.

  Emma’s breath came out in a sigh that held the edge of an unexpected sound.

  Oh, yeah...that attraction hadn’t faded at all. It seemed to have matured into something that had rather a lot more bite to it and she recognised the tiny sound that had escaped with her breath for what it was—an expression of physical desire.

  Lust, even...

  * * *

  It had been a weird thing to think about as he unclipped Tilly’s safety belt and lifted her from her car seat but there was no way that Max could have stopped the memory filling his head.

  That time he’d kissed Emma Moretti under the mistletoe at the paediatric ward’s staff Christmas party. He hadn’t given it any more thought after it had happened because, no matter how soft her lips had been and how delicious the curves of her body were and how astonishingly powerful the urge to do a lot more than kiss Emma had been, it was never going to happen.

  Emma was the earth mother type. The type who was destined to marry and have a family as soon as possible. A huge family, probably, seeing as she had adored children and babies so much and, because that was something Max wanted to avoid at all costs, it had been easy to dismiss the attraction that had both led to and been inflamed by that kiss.

  Dismissing it hadn’t made it go away, though, had it? Judging by the kick in his gut that Max recognised all too easily as a reaction to a very healthy physical attraction, it was actually stronger than it had ever been.

  Was that because there were things about Emma that were familiar but other things that were so very different? She was just as gorgeous as she’d been ten years ago, even though she was less curvy and she had cut off th
ose glorious long waves of her hair and she seemed...what was it, exactly? More contained, perhaps? Less ready to laugh or even smile. Yes, she was definitely different but that gave the attraction an edge of mystery that added surprisingly to its power.

  Emma wasn’t the only one who was different, either. Who could have predicted that he’d be the one who’d end up with what seemed a huge family and the earth mother would still be alone?

  He set Tilly down on her feet beside Ben, who immediately took hold of his sister’s hand, and then he unclipped the bucket seat that Alice was strapped into.

  ‘Okay, guys. Let’s go inside and say hullo to Grandpa and then I’ll bring the Christmas tree inside.’

  But James Cunningham was nowhere to be seen. Neither was their housekeeper, Maggie, though she’d left a note in the kitchen with a list of food she had prepared for both the children and adults.

  ‘Dad’s probably in the clinic. Or on a house call. Or he might have taken Pirate for a walk.’

  Or he might be avoiding spending time with his grandchildren because, like Max, he was still grappling with how to cope with his new responsibilities.

  Alice had begun to cry as they’d come inside. Max had a brief but fierce yearning for the old days in the paediatric ward when he’d been working with Emma and how he had been able to hand a baby back to its mother or a nurse when it needed changing or feeding, but he wasn’t about to repeat his actions of the previous evening of shoving Alice into Emma’s arms.

  Not when he had been quite aware of that flash of something like panic he’d seen in her eyes, even as her arms had gathered the baby close. Besides, he had to learn how to cope and this was as good a time as any. He pulled wipes and a clean nappy from the bag of supplies he had taken into town earlier and set about making Alice comfortable. It was a mission to deal with all those fiddly little fasteners on her stretchy suit and clean that tiny bottom when she was kicking her legs so energetically and by the time he carried the baby into the kitchen to get on with his next task of preparing a bottle of formula he found Emma sitting at the long table with an array of materials in front of her that included all the cardboard boxes she had gathered at the hospital before coming home.