Breathless for You: Outback Skies, Book 1 (4 page)

“Tash!” Matt yelled.

She grabbed at the controls, trying to level out the King Air B200 even as she fought for breath. Oh God, this couldn’t be happening. She had to do something.

Autopilot. Activate the autopilot now!

Head swimming, chest on fire, she reached for the switch that would activate the autopilot, and let out a strangled wail as the plane tilted sickeningly, the wheel jerking violently out of her single grip.

No. Oh God, no—

She grabbed the wheel with both hands again, whimpering with frustration.

Her headphones were torn from her head and then Matt pressed his hands to her face with fierce pressure. “Tash,” he spoke, his voice loud and yet calm, so very calm. “Tash, look at me.”

He turned her head to face him, his stare connecting with hers. Even as the black swirls of oxygen-deprived panic filled her vision, she could see his smile.

His smile.

Oh God, she loved his smile. “In-inhaler,” she rasped. “I…don’t…have…”

“Your inhaler?”

She tried to nod. Her lungs burned from a lack of oxygen. Her head swam. She tried to tell him about the autopilot, but the word wouldn’t come.

“Okay, babe, I need you to stay calm,” he ordered. “I’m going to get the corticosteroid from the med kit. Don’t crash the plane while I’m—”

The world turned to grey fog.

Her lungs ignited. Her throat seized up.

The pressure on her face vanished. A jarring movement to her left followed by a heavy thud scraped at her fading awareness. Her lips tingled.

She clung to the flight controls, kept the plane as level as she could. Even in the asphyxiating fog, she clung on…

And then a sharp pain pierced her arm and her lungs flooded with oxygen again.

Just in time to wrench back the control wheel as the plane pitched to the right in a spiraling nosedive.

A sickening crunch filled the cockpit as Matt slammed into the wall, the hypodermic needle in his hand clattering to the floor. The plane’s on-flight med kit flew through the air, crashing against his chest.

“Matt,” Tash screamed, watching him slump to the floor and unable to do a thing about it.

She snapped her head back to the windscreen, fighting the plane’s plummeting dive with what little strength she had in her oxygen-deprived muscles. She stared at the rapidly approaching ground, gauged its distance and then flicked a look at the bank of instruments. Still twelve thousand feet below. Twelve thousand feet…

Eleven thousand…

Sweat trickled into her eyes. Warning alarms screeched and beeped and blared around her, a klaxon cacophony she’d hated even in her air-force days when it was the mocking sound of a flight-simulator exercise gone bad.

Fucked if she was going to let it go on any longer.

She yanked harder on the control wheel, feet rammed to the floor. Her shoulders strained.

C’mon, Freeman.
She ground her teeth.
Pull this fucking bird up. Pull this fucking bird up now!

“Pull up, you fucking bitch,” she screamed, hauling at the control wheel with every fibre of strength she had. “Pull up now!”

Her stomach lurched, her middle ears popped, and then the plane fell silent, leveled out.

And stayed level.

“Holy fuck,” she whispered, staring at the cloudless dusk sky stretching forever before her once again. “Holy fuck, I did—”

A weak groan came from the floor.

Tash’s heart punched up into her throat. “Matt!”

She activated the autopilot with a savage flick of the switch, unbuckled and then flung herself from her seat, propelling herself to where Matt lay in a folded heap.

“Doc?” She slid her hand behind his head and jerked it away again when her fingers encountered something hot and wet.

“Oh God, Matt,” she moaned, staring with numb horror at the blood slicking her fingertips.

He groaned again, his face scrunching with pain. “I take it…” he rasped, struggling to sit up on the plane’s floor, “…we’re not going…to crash?”

A ragged laugh burst past Tash’s lips and she shook her head, smoothing her hands around his torso to help him. “Oh, no, we are,” she said, brushing his hair from his face even as she tried to see the wound at the back of his head. “I just got sick of all the noise.”

He flicked her a bleary-eyed look, his lips twitching. “Ahh, I see. In that case, care to kiss me as we go…”

The rest of his jest slurred into silence, his eyes closing again. He slumped sideways, his face going slack.

“Matt?” Tash shook his shoulders, gentle. Anxious.

Tight chested. Again. “Matt?”

He didn’t answer.

She felt for his pulse, even as she fought to suppress the urge to cough.

It was there. Faint, but there.

She coughed again.

And again.

Cold terror flooded through her, quickly followed by sinking realization.

She was about to have another asthma attack. She could feel it in her lungs, her throat. An insidious constriction was already trying to steal her breath.

Which meant she had to land the plane. ASAP.

Or sooner.

Because with Matt unconscious and her inhaler who the fuck knows where, she had no hope of surviving another attack without crashing.

And if she crashed, she’d not only kill herself, but the unconscious man beside her she freaking wanted more than anything. The only man capable of keeping her from dying at this point in time due to her faulty fucking lungs.

Not exactly what she’d planned.

Biting back another cough, her chest tighter than ever, she wrapped her arms around Matt’s torso and tried to haul him off the floor. Her muscles, utterly depleted of energy, refused to co-operate. Her stomach rolled. Her chest squeezed.

She let out a choked curse, frustration melding with self-hate and despair. It was foolish to exert so much energy when her lungs were going belly-up. Foolish and dangerous. But she had to get Matt buckled into his seat. She
had
to. She refused to land the plane with him unbuckled. It was too dangerous for
him
. He was already hurt, already injured because of her. She couldn’t risk him being flung about the cockpit again.

Mustering all the strength she had—which was currently fuck all—she threaded her fingers behind his limp back, planted her feet as firmly as she could on the floor and pulled.

He moved. Only a little at first. But it was enough.

“Man,” she grunted, shuffling backward a step as her knees shook under his weight, “you’re heavier than you look.”

And harder. He was all muscle under his clothes. If it wasn’t for the fact he was unconscious, she was on the verge of dying of asphyxiation and they were miles from any discernable runway, she’d take a moment to appreciate just how damn delicious his body felt.

Instead, she grit her teeth, drew a wheezy breath and half-carried, half-dragged him to the co-pilot’s chair.

With a coughing grunt, she dumped him into it, refusing to let her mind process the warm blood seeping from the unseen wound at the back of his head.
That
would have to come when they landed. For now, she had to focus on actually getting them on the ground. In one piece. Then she could use the miniscule field-medic skills she’d retained from her air-force training.

Hands shaking, lungs burning, she yanked the straps of Matt’s seatbelt over his shoulders and fastened the buckle across his lap.

A groan slipped from him, the barely audible sound like a siren’s call to her ears. “I’m here, Doc,” she said, taking a precious second to brush her thumb over his lips and trace the jagged scar down the side of his face. “We’re going to be okay. After I save us, you need to save me, okay?”

He groaned again, his eyelids fluttering as his head lolled the side against his seat’s headrest.

“I’m taking that as an agreement,” Tash muttered, checking his buckle with a sharp tug before scrambling back into the pilot’s seat.

She slipped her own arms through her seatbelt straps, snapped her buckle together, snatched up her headphones and shoved them onto her head.

“Okay, let’s get this bird on the ground.”

Drawing in the deepest breath her deficient lungs and bronchial tubes would allow, she flicked off the auto-pilot and took control of the plane again.

Her navigational instruments told her she was somewhere near the outer-paddocks of Old Man Dingo’s cattle station. That would put her approximately four-hundred and twenty kilometres from any homestead or populated area. It also meant she was approaching the beginning of what was known as the Wallaroo Plains, a massive flat stretch of arid, unsettled land.

“Perfect.” Shifting in her seat, she adjusted her flight path and activated her com-radio.

“This is RFDS VH one-forty-two, repeat, this is RFDS VH one-forty-two, broadcasting on all channels. We have an on-board medical situation forcing an emergency landing. Repeat, we have an on-board medical situation forcing an emergency landing.”

On her left, Matt groaned something. Something that, to Tash’s adrenaline-spiked ears, sounded like a slurred, “This wasn’t in the brochure.”

Reeling off their co-ordinates, she killed the radio, tightened her grip on the control wheel and checked all the displays and indicators. She threw him a wry grin, biting back a dry cough. “Ready to go down with me, Doc?”

He didn’t reply.

A part of Tash knew that was for the better.

What was to come next wasn’t going to be smooth.

Or fun.

Christ, why the hell hadn’t she become a professional dog walker when she finished high school?

Chapter Four

The first thing Matt became aware of as he dragged himself up from a black fog of nothingness was a wild, bumping pressure on his body. The second was the sound of shrill beeps and warning alarms. The third, as he fought to open his eyes, was a wheezing rasp he recognized without any problems.

Asthma attack.

Tash was in the midst of an asthma attack.

He sat upright and let out a yelp as the straps of his seatbelt snapped against his shoulders and groin, halting his abrupt movement.

“Hey…Doc,” Tash said on his right, her voice scratchy, barely more than a whisper. “Glad…you’re with—fuck…hold on…a sec.”

The plane bounced, a violent jolt that detonated a white-hot pain in the back of his head.

It took him a second to process the situation. A slow second where nothing made sense even as it screamed at him.

They were speeding across a rough surface, definitely
not
the Wallaby Ridge RFDS runway, the landscape beyond the plane’s windscreen a blurring streak of reddish-brown, golden-pink and purple.

Land. Lots of it. Land and dirt and dusk sky. Never-ending purple sky and rust-red land.

Where the hell were they?

Tash wheezed and coughed beside him, her stare fixed straight ahead. Her hands gripped the control wheel, her knuckles white, her shoulders bunched.

Matt frowned, a distant part of his brain telling him there was serious pain in his left side, middle ribs and the back of his head. The rest of his brain, however, registered his pilot’s inability to draw normal breath even as he processed the sight beyond the window and the insane forward movement of the plane. “Are we—”

“Crashing?” Tash rasped. “No. Kind…of. Maybe.”

He shot a look out the front of the windscreen, his head swimming at the disorienting view of the world blurring past them. Wincing, he swung his stare back to Tash and almost blacked out at the sudden rush of fresh pain in the back of his head. Okay, he was injured. That wasn’t good.

But not as bad as the state of Tash’s breathing.

“Tash, you’re having a—”

“Yep,” she cut him off, keeping her focus locked straight ahead. “Big…one. Worse…than the one…before. You can…fix…me after…I bring the…bird to—”

The plane’s wheels hit something large, bouncing the craft—and Matt and Tash—with a violent jolt off the ground for a split second.

“To a halt,” she continued, flicking at switches and yanking on levers. “Probably…best…you assume…the crash pos…position.”

He stared at her. Registered how pasty-blue her face was, how purple her lips. He had to help her. He had to—

A deafening bang filled the cabin. A bone-jarring thud rocked the plane. Fresh pain blasted through Matt’s body as the impact flung him sideways in his seat. He yelled out, the straps of his seatbelt saving him from hitting the floor, the shocked cry cut short as another fierce jolt shuddered the plane.

Hot liquid coated his tongue and his mouth filled with the copper taste of blood.

He grabbed at the console deck, desperate for an anchor, and fixed his stare on Tash.

On her profile.

On the gut-wrenching sight of her fierce determination to bring the plane to a halt.

On the terrifying sight of her fighting for breath.

For life.

Hers, and his.

And then, just when he knew she couldn’t fight any more, when he saw the hideous signs of complete oxygen deprivation, she let out a strangled shout and the plane lurched to a standstill.

Flinging them both against their seatbelts.

He snapped open his buckle before inertia could grab him. Propelled himself from his seat.

“Tash,” he said, slapping her cheek. Actually slapping her cheek. He needed her body to react. Before she slipped away.

“Hey,” she rasped. At least, that’s what he hoped she said. Her eyes were closed, her lids a sickening reddish-blue. Her muscles had gone limp and a stillness had fallen over her body.

Matt moved. Fast.

He scrambled from beside her and scanned the floor of the cockpit. He needed corticosteroid.
She
needed corticosteroid.

His head roared. Fear and adrenaline choked his veins. Fuck, he hadn’t been this terrified even when the Al-Shabaab militants had attacked his Doctors Without Borders camp last year. When he’d thought he was going to die on the other side of the world, away from his home and loved ones.

A glint of glass amongst the debris on the plane’s floor caught his frantic eye. Relief rushed through him, hot and icy at once.

One hypo shot. That’s all he had.

One shot.

One chance.

Snatching up the pre-prepared dose of corticosteroid, he spun back to Tash, now deathly silent and still in the pilot’s seat.

He grabbed her limp arm by the wrist. Shoved up the sleeve of her T-shirt. Flicked her inner arm, once, twice and then, refusing to listen to the panic and fear crowding his mind, pierced her skin with the hypodermic needle and pressed the plunger.

For a heartbeat, she didn’t respond.

Nothing.

And then she arched in her seat and sucked in a long, fierce breath.

Pulled into her lungs all the air in the world.

Gorged herself and her oxygen-starved body on it.

And then slumped back into her seat, her chest rising and falling, rising and falling, her eyes still closed.

“Guess…” she whispered, as if the word was splintered glass in her throat, “I…owe…you…one.”

Closing his eyes, Matt cupped the back of her head and let out a ragged laugh. “Let’s call it even. You did, after all, land the plane even as you were doing your best to die on me.”

Her answering chuckle bubbled past her lips in a weak puff. “I’m…talented.”

He pressed his forehead to hers, growing aware of the fact the plane’s engine had at some point, died. “You’re incredible,” he whispered.

“No, I’m not,” she answered, her voice stronger, her breath less strained.

He pulled away a little, looking down at her.

She gazed up at him, dark smudges under her eyes, her lids heavy.

“What are you then, Captain Tight Pants?” he asked.

She closed her eyes and slumped deeper in her seat. “Tired.”

Matt watched her. Counted her breaths, monitored their duration, their depth.

The side effects of a severe attack like this, coupled with the double dose of systemic corticosteroid and the adrenaline spike of a near-plane crash were a worrying mix. There wasn’t a hope in hell he was going to take his eyes off her. Not until they were rescued.

“Tash,” he whispered, brushing his knuckles over her cheek. “I know you’re tired and I’m going to let you rest soon, but I just want to check that the rest of the world—”

Her lips curled in a slow smile and, without opening her eyes, she held out her hand. “Headphones, please?” she whispered.

He plucked the headphones she wore during flight from the floor and then placed them on her palm.

Eyes still closed, she pressed one padded earpiece to the side of her head, aligned the small mic close to her lips and then reached forward and flicked a switch on the control panel.

“This is RFDS VH one-forty-two,” she said, her voice only a little stronger. “Repeat, this is RFDS VH one-forty-two, broadcasting on all channels. Just letting the world know we have landed safely. Repeat, we have landed safely. No rescue needed.”

Dropping the headphones into her lap, she let out a slow breath. “There you go, Doc. Now the world knows we’re okay,” she murmured with a small smile, eyes still closed. “Give me a few moments to get my breath back completely and I’ll get us up again. You won’t be stuck with me and my defective lungs for that long. Promise.”

“Hey.” He cupped her face. “Hey, look at me.”

She did, her gaze unfocused for a moment before fixing on his face.

“I want to be stuck with you forever.”

The declaration left him before he was aware it had formed in his head, but the moment it was out there, he realized it was the truth.

Six weeks working with her, six weeks being in her constant company, of growing attached to her aloof distance even as he ached for the simmering fire he sensed beneath her cool surface had brought him to this very reality. Fearing he was going to lose her to a severe asthma attack only cemented that reality.

He wasn’t just falling in love with her. He was ready to make her his life.

“Whoa.”

Tash’s husky exclamation drew a grin to his lips. He traced her bottom lip with his thumb, watching the slow path before lifting his gaze to her eyes. “Wasn’t expecting that?”

She shook her head.

“Me either. But it’s true.” He chuckled. “Think you could handle being Wallaby Ridge’s sexy doctor’s sexier girlfriend? We could be the town’s real-life romance novel, the kind that Jen is always reading when we’re flying to a call-out—the doctor and the pilot. Saving lives and riding the clouds to—”

Tash threw herself from her seat, damn near shoving him to his butt as she scrambled from the cockpit.

“Tash?”

“I gotta get some air,” she threw over her shoulder, hurrying for the plane’s exit.

A cold fist clenched around Matt’s heart. Fuck.

He pushed himself to his feet, ready to go after her.

And staggered sideways as white-hot pain detonated in the base of his skull, shooting down his neck, his spine. His hip struck the edge of his seat, the collision sending shards of agony over his ribs.

He winced, steadying himself with one hand on the back of his seat as he reached up and touched the back of his head with his other hand.

His fingers encountered warm moisture. Hot pain radiated over his head.

Letting out a ragged breath, he explored the unseen wound with tentative jabs and strokes, assessing what his fingertips found. Laceration, approximately three centimetres long, deep, definitely needing stitches.

It’d have to wait though.

First, he needed to go after Tash.

After finally realizing he wanted to be with her for the rest of his life, he wasn’t going to let a bloody head wound stop that life starting now.

Tash paced along the length of the King Air B200’s right wing, palms cupping her elbows, the toes of her boots kicking up red dust.

She should stop. The dust, the cool dusk air…the insane nervous tension strapping her chest, churning her belly…if she wasn’t careful she’d have another goddamn attack.

“I want to be stuck with you forever.”

Matt’s words scraped at her, a feverish jumble of notions and desires.

“Think you could handle being Wallaby Ridge’s sexy doctor’s sexier girlfriend?”

Pivoting on her heel, she hurried back towards the plane’s tail, hugging herself tighter.

She sucked in a breath, grateful for it even in her agitated state.

“We could be the town’s real-life romance novel…”

“The doctor and the pilot…”

Pilot.

Her throat constricted. Her belly knotted. A soft moan slipped from her lips.

Pilot.

There
was the kicker. The problem right there.

How could she stay in Wallaby Ridge as pilot for the Royal Flying Doctors Service if she wasn’t going to fly anymore?

How could it be “the doctor and the pilot” if she was going to stop flying planes?

After today, there was no question that’s
exactly
what she had to do—quit. Hand in her pilot’s license and stick to the ground. There was no other way around it. For starters, it was highly unlikely the RFDS would ever let her pilot one of their planes again. And there was no way she was going to put anyone else’s life at risk like she had today, least of all Matt’s.

“Tash?”

She flinched at his voice. The worried question in her name twisted the knot in her belly tighter.

Flicking a look to her right, she watched him round the nose of the plane, his stare fixed on her face.

He frowned. “What’s going on?”

Without answering him, she turned away, the sight of him walking toward her, his hand on the nose of the King Air B200 too much to deal with.

Matt and her plane. The two things she didn’t want to live without.

The two things she realized now she had to walk away from.

Thanks to her damn defective, fucked-up, stupid lungs.

“Tash?”

A warm palm slid up her arm, over her back.

She stilled. Pulled a slow breath and then turned back to him. “Hi.”

“Hi?” He raised his eyebrows at her. “Really? That’s what we’re going with?”

Despite herself, she laughed. Then she bit back the reaction with an exasperated grimace. “Yeah, sorry. That was a bit lame, wasn’t it?”

“Want to tell me the reason for the dramatic bolt from the plane?” He narrowed his eyes, studying her. Not just as a guy who a second ago professed his desire to spend the rest of his life with her, but as a doctor. “Anyone would think you were trying to get away from me.”

Tash swallowed. Met his stare. “I was.”

“Is that so? Why?”

The relaxed calm of his response unsettled her. She shook her head, aching to press herself to his body, to feel the warm solidity of his existence for one last moment before she ended what they hadn’t truly had a chance to begin. “My parents,” she said, “are high-powered venture capitalists. The kind who make those labeled as high achievers seem like lazy layabouts.”

Confusion filled Matt’s face. She let out a dry laugh, her belly churning, her heart aching. Would he understand what she was so poorly trying to say?

“Three days away from graduating from the air force as a fighter pilot,” she went on, “the adult on-set asthma none of us knew I had killed my dreams. Mum and Dad’s dreams as well, so it seems. They turned their back on me from that point, shunned me for failing to make the grade. Neither cared that I’d been rejected during my final medical. Neither were concerned I’d been the best in every class I took, both practical and theory. For them, the fact my lungs weren’t as exemplary as my brain and flying skills just meant I wasn’t the daughter they’d wanted.” She pulled a face. “If you’re not the best, you aren’t theirs.”