Sharon Archer - The Man Behind the Badge

Three minutes.

Five minutes.

Kayla laid her fingers against Andy’s neck, felt the reassuring bump in the carotid artery. ‘Okay, we have a pulse.’

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the policeman sink back on his heels and lift the handset. ‘Dispatch, the victim has a pulse.’

Kayla felt an odd shiver as she let the deep, calm voice wash over her. She shook her head. She was tired, her muscles trembling with fatigue in the aftermath of the adrenalin-charged situation. The tremors were nothing to do with a deep, dark, baritone voice.

The unit crackled. ‘Thank you, Sergeant. They should be with you shortly. Standing by.’

She looked at the profile of the man who’d been helping her. Dustin’s police sergeant. The strong jaw with a shadow of whiskers on his cheeks. He looked stern and forbidding with the black T-shirt clinging to his chest and sculpted biceps. Much as she loathed large, muscle-bound men, she had to be thankful he’d been here tonight. She’d never have got Andy out of the car on her own.

She swallowed and turned her attention back to her patient. She tucked Andy’s arm along his body and reached across for his other one. ‘We should turn Andy into the recovery position.’

There was a faint wail of sirens in the distance, creeping closer.

‘Going to be sick,’ Andy slurred.

‘We need to roll him,’ she said urgently. ‘I’ll support his neck, you roll him towards me. My command, on three. Got it? Okay. One, two, three.’ Kayla fired out the order as she held Andy’s head.

And then the sour smell of vomit as Andy disgorged his stomach contents over the knee of her trousers. She swallowed the gag reflex that threatened. ‘Okay, let’s settle him so I can clean him up. Gently, gently.’

‘Wha’s happen…?’ Andy struggled to move as she slipped a folded towel under his head.

‘Just stay still for me, Andy.’ She kept her hand firmly on his shoulder, held him steady as she spoke. ‘You’ve had an accident. We’re getting help for you.’

The sirens were closer.

‘The cavalry’s on its way,’ Tom murmured, his rich, gravelly voice sliding over her.

‘Amen to that.’

She looked up to find shadowed eyes on her.

And then he smiled. A simple curve of his mouth and his face was transformed. Sergeant Jamieson was a very, very attractive man. Kayla’s heart squeezed hard.

Too much man for her to handle, whispered a confidence-sapping inner voice. Too much, too big. Too hard.

Andy moved under her hand. With relief, she wrenched her gaze away from the disturbing man opposite her patient.

THE smell of smoke drifted on the still air. Tom leaned sideways to look around the end of his car. Flames licked around the front tyre of the wreck.

As he got to his feet, the Dustin fire truck slid between him and his view of the fledgling fire. Thank God. He felt the tension ease across his shoulders.

A paramedic ran up to join Kayla as the ambulance backed slowly towards them. It stopped a couple of metres away and the second medic came around to open the back doors. Tom stood and moved back to give them more room. He watched a moment as Kayla meshed smoothly with the men, working to stabilise their patient.

Feeling superfluous, he crossed to the back of his four-wheel drive to take out the camera, tape measure and notepad. With his gear in hand, he walked around to the other side of the fire truck. The team had the wreck and surrounding area well doused with foam.

‘Tom.’ Dustin’s fire captain, Jack Campbell, nodded to him then turned back to look at the crumpled car. ‘How’s your vic?’

‘Looks like he’ll make it, thanks to Kayla.’

‘Lucky she was on hand.’

‘Yeah.’ Tom stared at the wreck, remembering the frenetic light and sound show in the seconds before the crash. ‘Even luckier she wasn’t involved in the accident.’

‘What happened?’ Jack’s voice was sharp with concern.

‘I need to have a good look at the tyre marks and take her statement.’ Tom lifted his shoulder. ‘But I’d say she did some pretty fancy driving to avoid a collision. It’ll have to be confirmed but indications are that the driver is alcohol-impaired.’

Jack grunted his disgust.

‘Yeah.’ Tom sighed heavily. ‘I’m going to take some photos, make a few measurements for my report. I won’t get in your way.’

‘Sure. I called Dennis. He’s on his way with the tow truck.’ Hands on hips, Jack pointed his chin at the wreck. ‘We’re under control here but we’ll hang around to make sure there are no flare-ups when the car’s pulled off the tree trunk.’

‘Thanks.’

Tom moved away and began snapping photographs from different angles. Inside the car, he took several pieces of the broken whisky bottle, making sure he got a clear shot of the label.

From a vantage point to one side, he made a quick sketch of the scene, placing the cars. On a walk along the road with his torch, he identified the skid marks—Andy’s coming onto the main road from the lane; Kayla’s where she’d braked and swerved to avoid him.

He could see quite clearly how the incident had unfolded. The tyre tracks told the story. Thick black rubber lines on the sealed road segued into gouges in the gravel verge before spiralling back onto the tarmac again. Just traversing the two vastly different road surfaces in a straight line was enough to bring many motorists to disaster. It was nothing short of a miracle that her little car hadn’t rolled with the massive forces it had been under.

By concentrating on his job, he could prevent himself from thinking about how close Kayla had been to injury or death. He laid out the measuring tape then jotted in distances on his sketch. With everything he needed for his report, he glanced over the road as he wound the tape up.

The paramedics were wheeling Andy to the back of the ambulance. Kayla was turned away from him, bent double as she wiped a towel down one leg.

Tom inhaled deeply then let the air out through his pursed lips in a silent whistle. The unimpeded view of her shapely bottom in the soft draping material of her trousers was very fine. Very fine indeed.

He wrenched his gaze away, looked down at the equipment in his hands. He wanted to talk to her…sensibly. Which was going to be a tough assignment if he couldn’t rein in his physical response.

He gathered his thoughts. They’d made a connection here tonight and he wanted to build on that, not give her any chance, any excuse, to draw back. He’d seen a different side to her as she’d dealt with Andy. Brave, resourceful, competent—and he liked it. A lot.

Holding fast to those thoughts, he refused to succumb to further masculine appreciation of the view as he crossed the road.

‘Kayla.’

She straightened abruptly—staggered slightly.

‘Oh…no.’ Her words were a small, useless protest as she slowly pitched forward.

Tom took the last two steps to her side, catching her to his chest. ‘Steady, I’ve got you.’

‘Sorry, sorry,’ she mumbled. ‘D-don’t know what happened…Must have…stood too quickly.’

She didn’t resist as he stepped her over to a small tree stump and lowered her to sit. He bent over her and pushed her head between her knees, acutely conscious of the soft, warm skin of her neck beneath his fingers. After a minute, she struggled against his pressure.

‘I’m all right. Thank you, Sergeant.’ Her voice sounded strangled.

‘Tom.’

‘Anything. Whatever.’ He felt her convulsive shudder as she turned her head towards him, her eyes closed. ‘Please. All I can smell is the vomit on my knee.’

‘Oh. Sorry, I forgot.’ He released her, his grip supporting her as she sat up straight. Silky strands of hair teased the back of his hand. She took a quick breath and swallowed audibly. ‘Just sit a minute.’

He kept a hand on her nape as he called to the paramedic who had just backed out of the back of the ambulance and was closing the doors. ‘Gaz? Can you take Kayla back with you for a once-over?’

‘Sure, no problem.’

Beneath his palm, he could feel the delicate shifting of muscle as Kayla shook her head.

‘That’s not necessary, Sergeant. I—’

He looked back at her. ‘I think it is, Kayla. You were a hair’s breadth from being involved in a nasty accident tonight. And the name is Tom.’ If she called him Sergeant one more time tonight, he’d plant a kiss right on that luscious mouth and completely ruin her opinion of him.

‘But I need my car.’ She looked mutinous, her silver eyes glowing with irritation.

‘And I’ll see that you get it,’ he said as he stood. ‘For now, I’m impounding it.’

Her mouth opened.

He bent, slipping one arm around her shoulders, the other under her knees and scooped her up. Her mouth snapped shut on a small squeak as she grabbed at his shoulder to steady herself. He smiled grimly. His hands were on Kayla and he couldn’t do a thing about it. Torture. He looked down on the curve of lashes on her cheek, the gentle swell of her breasts…the fist in her lap. He’d take no bets on where she’d like to plant it.

He was a masochist.

‘Open your front passenger door for me, Gaz.’

‘Sure thing, Tom.’ Gary grinned as he opened the door wide.

Tom shovelled his armful of warm woman onto the seat, wondering if his reluctance to let her go was obvious to anyone other than him.

God, he had to get out of here before he made an idiot of himself. He stepped back quickly and cleared the congestion from his throat.

‘Buckle up, Doc,’ he said as he shut the door.

Kayla’s narrow-eyed glare should have sizzled his skin. At least her anger had brought some colour to her pallid cheeks. A little hectic but colour just the same.

Tom pivoted and strode over to where Jack Campbell was rolling up the hose. The bonnet of the car had been wrenched open and the engine was now well doused with fire-retardant foam.

‘Kayla okay?’ asked Jack.

‘She says so.’ Tom avoided his friend’s shrewd eyes. ‘I’ve sent her back with the ambos for a check over.’

‘And she was okay with that?’

‘Sure. Why wouldn’t she be?’ Tom set his jaw and ignored the laughter he could see in Jack’s face. ‘I’ll get one of your guys to drive her car back to the hospital when we go, if that’s okay?’

‘Sure. Might as well be me. I want to roust Liz out. She should have been home a couple of hours ago.’

‘Good luck with that.’

‘Yeah.’ Jack chuckled.

Kayla sucked another deep breath into her oxygen-deprived lungs. Her diaphragm had frozen from the moment the sergeant had lifted her. Making a conscious effort to ease her tension, she uncurled the fists in her lap. Her short practical nails had dug into the soft tissue, leaving small red dints in her palm.

Even with his disturbing presence gone, she could still feel his touch. Hard enough when it had just been his hand on her nape, strong fingers clasped gently on her neck, the rasp of his calloused skin while he’d been holding her head down. Being clasped to his chest, surrounded by his warmth and strength…the awareness of her female softness against the hardness of his muscular frame had overwhelmed her.

The honest, earthy scent of him, a smell that owed more to a hard day’s work than scientists testing essences in a laboratory, seemed to call to her in a way that was disturbing, primitive. She’d always liked men to be well groomed, wearing a subtle, musky aftershave. Yet no one she’d dated had ever affected her as profoundly as this man in his snug jeans and a simple black T-shirt.