Page 39 of Twin Surprise for the Italian Doc

CHAPTER EIGHT

SO...

Here he was...

Doing the craziest thing he’d ever done in his life.

Matteo Martini paused as he reached the top of the spiral staircase that led from the enormous helicopter hangar to the offices and staff quarters above.

The bright red overalls of his new uniform felt a little stiff and he rubbed the side of his neck where the coarse material was irritating his skin.A glance through the wall of glass beside him made him pause for a moment.

Edinburgh’s Emergency Response Centre was an impressive set-up. This hangar and the tarmac where the helicopters were parked were side by side with the land-based arm of the ambulance service. He could see the huge building that housed the control centre and quarters for the dozens of paramedics who worked here. Therewas an astonishing number of ambulances lined up outside the building and a row of the SUVs that were painted in the same colours, with beacons on the top. They had similar vehicles in Milan, where experienced paramedics could be sent as a first response or backup to ambulances.

He could see one of these cars heading out as the automatic gates slid open. As soon as it outside the gates, he couldsee that the driver activated the beacons and he could hear the faint wail of a siren.

Matteo took a very deep breath.

It could be Georgia. Luke had told him that she was currently employed in one of those cars.

He assumed that she didn’t know that he had taken this job on the helicopter team. Why would she? The land and air services might work closely together but these bases were separateentities. It might, in fact, prove difficult to see much of Georgia.

Especially given that she wouldn’t want to be seeinghim.

Okay. Perhaps taking this new job in a strange city wasn’t the craziest thing he’d ever done.

That prize had to go to proposing marriage to a woman he’d only spent one night with. A woman who’d made it very clear that night, a couple of weeks ago, that she didn’t needa man to help her.

Didn’twantone.

And yet here he was. Making himself available. Putting himself on the line in a way that would have been incomprehensible for any other woman he’d ever met.

Why?

Because he hadn’t been able to talk himself out of it, that’s why. It just felt...right. He’d convinced himself that, if nothing else, this could be a good career move. He could get experience inthings that were hard to come by in a huge city like Milan. Mountain rescues perhaps. Or working in difficult conditions, like deep snow. It would be an adventure.

The fact that it was the only first step he could think of on a journey that could lead to Georgia changing her mind about him was irrelevant.

It had to be. Matteo started moving again. Dougal had given him a comprehensive tour ofthis facility yesterday and he would be waiting to introduce him to the new team of his paramedic partner and their pilot. His first shift was about to begin.

The new pager clipped to his belt could sound at any moment.

Matteo felt his heart rate kick up a notch. This was one of the things he loved about this job. You never knew when something was going to happen. Or what challenges it couldpresent.

He was ready.

For anything.

* * *

The crescendo beat of an approaching helicopter had never been so welcome.

Georgia known that something was wrong as soon as she’d arrived on scene and approached the huddle of people at the bottom of the hill in this mountain biking park on the outskirts of Edinburgh.

A ground-based ambulance crew was already here and, when she saw the look ofrelief on the young paramedics’ faces when they noticed her arrival, it was obvious that this situation was well out of any comfort zone.

At first glance, she couldn’t understand what was disturbing them so much. Automatically assessing the scene for safety and any clues about what kind of injury she might need to treat, Georgia had already noticed a bicycle with a very bent wheel amongst theundergrowth and the young boy who was lying on his side, apparently unconscious. A group of other pre-teen children were grouped well away, clutching the handlebars of their bikes, and there were adults with them who were wearing blue polo shirts with a logo that had a bike in mid-air as it cleared an obstacle. Was this a school trip to an adventure park perhaps?

More adults in the blue shirtsand a couple in civvies were close to the injured boy and one of the paramedics was taking a blood pressure. That suggested that the child was still alive but the expressions on the faces she could see were telling a different story.

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