Breathless for You: Outback Skies, Book 1 (8 page)

But everything that made him a doctor told him he had to leave now. A baby’s life was possibly at risk. He had to go. As soon as he got back to the Ridge, however, he’d be knocking at her door.

He refused to let this undo her. Not just because he loved her, not just because he’d come to the realization he didn’t want to be without her, but because she
was
more than just a pilot. And he wanted to be the one to help her find who and what that
more
was.

The rotors on Ryan’s chopper were already a spinning blur when he yanked open the cockpit door. “Ready, Doc?” the heli-musterer shouted as he climbed up into the small cabin. “It’s going to be a fast trip. Can’t guarantee it’s going to be a smooth one. There’s a storm brewing south of the Ridge and we’ve gotta fly straight through it, I’m afraid.”

Settling into the seat, Matt fastened his seatbelt and gave Ryan a nod. “Understand. Who wants a smooth flight anyway?” He took the headphones Ryan handed him and rammed them over his ears, ignoring the hot pain in his head wound the sudden pressure caused. “Where’s the fun in that?”

Ryan barked out a laugh and adjusted the beat-up cowboy hat on his head. “That’s the spirit.”

And without another word, the heli-musterer pulled back on the cyclic stick and the helicopter took off, turning the RFDS plane into a small toy below them quicker than Matt could fathom.

Taking him away from Tash just as quickly.

Chapter Seven

She didn’t answer his knock on her door five hours later.

Nor did she answer her phone when he rang.

He stood on her front porch, arm and forehead pressed to the smooth wood of the door, stare locked on the toes of his boots, the back of his head a throbbing heat.

He’d admitted Michelle Gribble’s baby to the small Wallaby Ridge hospital three hours and thirty-five minutes ago, suspecting the tiny five-day-old girl had measles. While there, the hospital’s only resident doctor—a stern woman in her fifties with no discernible sense of humour and the unfortunate name of Dr. Ophelia Dickie—had noticed the cut at the base of his skull, once again seeping blood, and announced he wasn’t going anywhere until she’d stitched him up and X-rayed his head.

It didn’t matter how many times he protested or told Dr. Dickie he needed to be somewhere else. It wasn’t until she threatened to sedate him with a dose of Propofol that he finally accepted he wasn’t getting to Tash’s place until the obstinate woman tended to his injury and declared his skull free of fractures, contusions or bruised bone.

As soon as he was cleared to leave, he did. He wasn’t a good patient at the best of times. What doctor was? Especially a doctor who’d survived not only a militia attack and a coma, but an almost plane crash as well?

Drawing a slow breath, he knocked again.

Silence answered. Again.

“Damn it,” he muttered, pushing himself from the door.

He shoved his hands in his back pockets, in part to stop himself skimming his fingertips over the six stitches sticking out from the back of his head, in part to stop himself banging on the door in frustration.

“Damn it,” he repeated.

The dull throb of his head wound grew hotter. His gut clenched.

Where was she?

In the whole time he’d known Tash, she pretty much spent her time in two places—the plane or here. Occasionally, she’d go to the Wallaby Ridge public swimming pool to do laps, but that was only in the early hours of the morning, when dawn was breaking and the sweltering heat of the Outback sun had yet to scorch the day. Of course, she
could
be doing something as innocuous as grocery shopping at the town’s only supermarket, a four-aisle shop that was lucky to stock more than a hundred different items.

He yanked his phone from his hip pocket and, scanning through the list of contacts, located the one he wanted and hit dial.

“Gary’s Foodmart,” a chipper voice said on connection.

“Kitty, it’s Doctor Corvin,” he said, scanning the dusty, empty street in front of Tash’s house. “Any chance Natacha Freeman is there?”

“Sorry, Doc,” the supermarket’s owner answered. “Haven’t seen her all this week. Everything okay? You meant to be flying somewhere?”

Matt dragged his hand through his hair and then winced as the stitches in his scalp let him know they were still there. “No, it’s all good.” He flicked his fingers a quick look. No blood. That was good. “Just need to ask her something. Take care.”

He disconnected before the woman could question him further. Knowing Kitty, the whole of Wallaby Ridge would know he was looking for Tash within the next fifteen minutes. That could be a good or a bad thing.

Turning back to the door, he knocked again. Thanks to Jen, he knew Tash had a treadmill and exercise bike in the spare room. Maybe she was working out? Perhaps she had earplugs in and was on her way to destroying her eardrums as surely as she thought her life was destroyed thanks to her asthma?

What did he do now? Break in? Drag her off the bike or treadmill if she was on either, silence her inevitable protests with a kiss and then fuck her senseless? Or more to the point, fuck some sense into her?

The thought—at once thoroughly selfish and thoroughly appealing—sent a tight lick of heat through his groin.

He bit back a growl, disgusted with himself.

“C’mon, Tash,” he ground out. “Where are you?”

What if she’s had another asthma attack? What if it hit her before she found her inhaler? After all, she didn’t have it in the plane yesterday. She’d somehow lost it at Old Man Dingo’s place. Probably while you were trying to get into her pants by the billabong. Maybe she doesn’t have a spare and she’s now asphyxiating somewhere all because you couldn’t keep your hands—

He cut the thought off before it could finish. If he didn’t, he’d really start to panic.

Huh! And you aren’t now?

His pulse drummed in his neck. His blood roared in his ears. Shit, what did he—

In his hand, his phone burst into the
Doctor Who
theme song.

Matt looked at the screen, his heart slamming into his throat. It was Tash. Making the connection, he rammed his mobile to his ear.

“Tash?” he damn near shouted. “Where—”

“It’s me, Doc,” Jen cut him off. “Natacha left her phone at my place and I figured I’d call you to let her know.”

“How long ago? And why’d you think she was with me?”

“About thirty minutes ago.” The confusion in Jen’s voice stirred the churning tension in Matt’s gut. “She was here having a cuppa with me.”

“What did she tell you?”

“Nothing really.” Surprise replaced confusion. “We chatted a little about the weather, Old Man Dingo’s hip, and then she told me she had something important to tell you and left. I thought she was heading to your house when she left.”

Matt swung back to her door. Stared at it.

“How did she seem, Jen?” He ran a slow gaze over the wooden panel before him. How solid was it? Could he kick it down? “Tight in the chest? Wheezy?”

“No wheezing. Quiet. And pensive. Like she had the weight of the world on her shoulders. Not like Tash at all. And she kept cough—”

Matt dropped the phone from his ear and smashed his foot against the door.

White-hot pain lanced up the back of his head as the jarring impact rocked his entire body.

He shut it off, hauled back his leg and kicked at the door again.

A splintering crack filled the air and the door slammed inward.

Matt caught himself before he stumbled across the threshold, correcting his forward movement into a run instead.

“Tash?”

His shout fell flat in the silent house.

His heart slammed faster in his chest, his throat. The back of his head throbbed in painful rhythm.

He hurried through her living room, into her kitchen. Down the hall to the room he knew she used as a gym. The bathroom.

Empty.

Dragging in a deep breath, he ran for her bedroom.

Flung the closed door open.

Empty.

Not a sign she’d even been—

His stare fell on something on the floor beside the bed and he froze.

Two duffle bags. The kind the movies told him those in the armed forces used to carry their personal possessions and clothes.

Swallowing at the lump in his throat, he stepped closer to them.

Yep. That’s what kind of bags they were. Currently sitting on the floor of Tash’s bedroom, stuffed full of…what? Clothes?

He raised his stare from the two bags and scanned the room, his brain—no longer convinced it was going to find an asphyxiated woman—noticing small details he hadn’t seen before.

Her cupboards open. Empty coat hangers. Empty shelves.

A dull pressure wrapped Matt’s temples. The lump in his throat grew thicker. His gut clenched.

He dropped his stare to the duffle bags again, a strange numb sensation stealing over him.

Leaving.

She was—

“Matt?”

He spun at the sound of a voice behind him.

Tash stood at the threshold of her bedroom, wearing loose sweat pants, a Nick Blackthorne T-shirt, and an expression of stunned disbelief. “Did you kick in my door?”

“Don’t go,” he blurted out. “I’ve never felt this way before, Tash, and dammit, I was
engaged
. I should have felt this way before, but I didn’t. This is different. This, what I feel for you, it’s special. It’s so much more. I
know
that, and so do you. I can tell.”

She stiffened.

“Don’t go,” he repeated, the words barely more than a choked breath. “Don’t leave me…us. Don’t—”

She balled her fists at her side. Turned her head away. “Matt…” she began.

He destroyed the distance between them in three strides and captured her lips with his. “Don’t go,” he murmured, threading his fingers into her hair and pressing his forehead to hers. “I know you don’t think you have any purpose here, and I know it’s a shit ton of weight to put on you, and fucking selfish as all hell on my part, but when I questioned my life, when I questioned my purpose for breathing, I realized
you
were the answer. Every day, every call-out, all those flights with you…they were the answer. I’ve been living for them. And the moment you kissed me beside Old Man Dingo’s billabong… Well, I just want to see where life will take us
together
.”

“Matt…” she rasped. But she didn’t move. Didn’t push him away. Didn’t step backward or turn her head. Just whispered his name, her breath warm on his lips, her scent forever in his being.

“Please don’t go, Tash,” he beseeched once more, his heart a heavy hammer in his chest, his throat, his ears. “Not when we’ve only just begun. Let me help you discover who you are now. Let me be the one to hold your hand and dispel your fears and give you strength. In the very way you’ve given me the same. Let me be with you, Natacha. And let yourself be with—”

She silenced him with a groan, her lips crushing his.

He kissed her in return. Poured every want and longing and need and hope and dream into it. Surrendered his soul to her.

Completely. Utterly.

Their tongues met and mated. Their teeth clicked. He growled into her mouth and grabbed at her arse, jerking her hips to his, needing to feel her whole body pressed to his.

She deepened the kiss, a soft whimper vibrating through her, the sound raw with desire and need.

He worshipped her lips, her chin, her throat. He reclaimed her mouth and made love to it with his own.

When she raked her hands down his back, when she reached for his belt, his head swam. Stilling her hands with a gentle grip, he pulled away from the kiss.

Gazed down into her face, heartbeat wild, chest tight. “Please don’t go, babe,” he repeated, knowing it was the last time he would voice the plea. Knowing if she said she was leaving, he would respect her decision even as he died inside.

She held his stare with hers, pressed the softness of her belly to the aching ridge of his need for her, the unmistakable beat of her heart radiating through her breast into his chest.

“Please?” he whispered.

She shifted on her feet, smoothing her hands over his back as she nestled closer still to his body. “Y’know…I’ve been thinking…”

Matt swallowed.

“If the RFDS will let me stay in the sky…”

He waited, incapable of speech. Or breath.

A slow smile curled the corners of her mouth. “Maybe I could be a teacher.”

“Teacher?” he croaked.

She nodded, rolling her hips against his. “I could teach
you
to fly. I do believe, Dr. Corvin, with some serious hoop-jumping, hand-holding and the right flight instructor, you’d make an amazing
co
-pilot. The
perfect
co-pilot, in fact, to keep my inhaler safe. Just in case my fucked-up lungs decide we need to spend another night making love under the stars out in the middle of the Outback. Interested?”

A rush of pure shock and joy flooded Matt. A wave of concentrated happiness and amazement and relief.

Was he interested?

He kissed her.

Thoroughly, until she moaned his name and he forgot everything but her. But them.

Interested
didn’t cover it.

About the Author

Lexxie Couper started writing when she was six and hasn’t stopped since. She’s not a deviant, but she does have a deviant’s imagination and a desire to entertain readers with her words. Add the two together and you get romances that can make you laugh, cry, shake with fear or tremble with desire. Sometimes all at once. When she’s not submerged in the worlds she creates, Lexxie’s life revolves around her family, a husband who thinks she’s insane, an indoor cat who likes to stalk shadows, and her daughters, who both utterly captured her heart and changed her life forever.

Contact Lexxie at
[email protected]
, follow her on Twitter
www.twitter.com/lexxie_couper
or visit her at
www.lexxiecouper.com
where she occasionally makes a fool of herself on her blog.

Look for these titles by Lexxie Couper

Now Available:

The Sun Sword

Tropical Sin

Triple Dare

Dare Me

Sunset Heat

Suspicious Ways

Party Games

Suck and Blow

Twister

Heart of Fame

Love’s Rhythm

Muscle for Hire

Guarded Desires

Steady Beat

Lead Me On

Blame it on the Bass

Getting Played

Savage Australia

Savage Retribution

Savage Transformation

Principatus

Dark Destiny

Dark Embrace

Coming Soon:

Outback Skies

Burn for You

Bare for You

Better with You