The Rescue Doc's Christmas Miracle. Amalie Berlin

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      Unless you counted that talk. The sexy smattering of words between lovers.

      Just like that.

      Don’t stop.

      Oh, God...

      Heaven help her, she was doing it again. Thinking about all that, which had caused all this. The consequences.

      She took the stairs at a run, pounding up the ten flights separating her current floor and the helipad on the roof.

      At the top, with blessedly buzzing lungs and legs, she checked her watch on her way to the chopper. Just over two minutes. She’d have to do better if she was going to make it up eighty-six floors at the Empire State Run-Up in the New Year. If she even could do the stair-climbing marathon while pregnant.

      She climbed into the thing she’d been calling “Baby” for two years and worked through the checklist to go over gauges and start it up. Only when she’d finished did she sit back and reach into her thigh pocket to pull out the wand. Before giving herself a chance to think anything or to get worked up, she flipped it over and read the display.

      Two lines.

      Yep.

      Out of the corner of her eye she saw movement. A full look tracked Gabriel’s long stride eating up the distance between them.

      “Dang it.” She stuffed the wand back into the pocket and zipped it as fast as she could.

      Then the door opened and he gave her a look.

      “What?”

      “Why aren’t you starting it up already? Is there a problem?”

      “What problem? There’s no problem,” she blurted, too fast and too loud, then gestured haplessly at nothing, trying to get back on course. “I’ve already done the checks. Why are you...?”

      He never came up to the roof anymore unless they had a call.

      “Did we get a call?” She looked at the radio and her stomach sank. Off. She hadn’t turned it on during her pre-flight checks.

      He said nothing, just turned the radio on while she started the massive rotors spinning.

      “Where are we going?” she asked, buckling in, and by the time he’d answered she was ready to lift off. That was part of why she went through the pre-flight checks—it was set up to go from nothing to flight in under a minute.

      “Is everything all right?” he asked through the comm once they were in the air. It wasn’t concern she heard so much as that hint of frustration that appeared in his voice every time things didn’t happen when he expected.

      To lie, or not to lie...

      “Can’t complain.”

      She really couldn’t, at least not right now. And complaining was something she tried to only do inside her head. Complaining about anything could still trigger her loved ones trying to rescue her, which she could appreciate on an intellectual level even if she couldn’t abide it anymore. Complaining about anything related to health? That might even bring her whole family out in full flailing fit mode, maybe even with questions about whether she was healthy enough to gestate a human life.

      The shape of the test in her thigh pocket stood out, and she prayed Dr. Notices Everything didn’t notice until she was ready to share.

      “You’re pale. Are you sick?”

      * * *

      Gabriel might not understand much about what went on inside Penny’s head but he understood her body unfortunately well, beyond just what his training had taught him about her physiological signs of distress.

      Pale face and darkness under blue eyes so bright the blackness beneath them seemed blacker. Some kind of unsteadiness in her hands. The silent call radio. No music either during her pre-flight routine, and she always listened to music when on standby. Tight-lipped when normally talkative...

      She squinted at him, then adjusted something amid the toggles and switches without answering him. Not right.

      Despite the somewhat fumbling quality her hands had taken with switches, on the controls everything went smoothly. The flight was steady, a straight line, something he could appreciate since his life depended on it, but something was wrong. And if she stayed true to form, he was going to have to shake it out of her. Later. They were already in the air, so his chance to swap out a focused pilot had gone.

      The two months since their...mistake...hadn’t been entirely easy months. The first couple of weeks had been the worst. Awkward enough that she’d barely looked him in the eye any particular day, which had been rougher than he’d have thought. But with a little willpower, and a pact of mutual amnesia, they’d worked through it and things had found a new normal, somewhat off-center from the way things had been before.

      Like when they bumped into one another changing in the locker room. She’d been wearing the same kind of simple and somehow ungodly sexy cotton things, and when she’d looked at him, he’d seen his thoughts reflected back at him. The pink that had infused every inch of her pale flesh had backed it up.

      Not embarrassed. Aroused. And unhappily so.

      Awkward.

      Now he changed in the men’s room and avoided the locker room unless he had to, or unless she’d gone home for the day. His initial plan had just been to keep everything as low-key and low-stress as he could so that she could forget. He knew he couldn’t forget, but he wasn’t as prone to impetuousness as she was—he could resist. When he found himself watching the way she tapped the end of her pen on her lower lip while filling out paperwork, he could shake himself out of it. Stop thinking about her mouth. Not give in to temptation. But that seemed harder for Penny to do, so he just tried to keep temptation from coming up.

      It had worked at first when they’d started working together and just had to ignore a spark, and it had even worked briefly in the middle of the time since their night, but a couple of weeks ago things had started getting tense again. Made no sense, and he didn’t know what to do about it. Time was supposed to take care of things like this, but their agreement not to discuss it meant he couldn’t even act as he would’ve in the past. Ask her what was wrong. Offer her an ear for her troubles. Just suss out symptoms and determine whether her oddness was physical or emotional... No easy course of action.

      If this was attached to the desire for another night, he couldn’t blame her, even if he would turn her down.

      “How long?” he asked through the comm, since he already had one patient to focus on, righting his thoughts. If she wanted his help, she’d ask for it.

      Normally he wouldn’t have to ask how long. Normally his chattering partner freely gave information during flight.

      She still didn’t look at him, but she did let go of the controls with one hand to point. “There. We’re landing on the roof next door.”

      Taciturn. Definitely something wrong. If he didn’t expect to need her paramedic skills, he’d put her on light duty for this run. But the patient they were flying to was a steel worker who’d fallen from the beams of a new construction site. Since СКАЧАТЬ