Page 8 of Mountain Impact

“Do you?”

“Write that up in your report. I know I can’t save everyone, and I’m proud of the work we did yesterday. It was a big success.”

Her eyes narrowed to thin slits. “Don’t tell me how to do my job.”

He stifled a groan.

“Do it properly, then,” he said. “No games. Let me go back to my team. Early fall is a busy time of year for us, and with our commander out of town, we’re short one man.”

She went on as if he hadn’t spoken. “What are your first thoughts after the incident?”

“That I’m never getting on a cable car again, if I can help it,” he said. She nodded, and this time she wrote something down.

He fielded her questions for a while. Isolde was like a dog with a bone, coming at the problem, or what she thought might be the problem, from several angles at once.

Finally, Drake stood up, running his fingers along his hair.

“I don’t understand how you do what you do. Our team rescued thirty people last week, but you won’t have heard of those rescues, because everybody survived. It must be hard to only get involved when rescues go south, when we fail to do our job.”

He saw by the way she gripped her pen tighter that he’d struck a chord. She inhaled slowly, then came up fighting. “That’s not how I see it. Let’s go back to yesterday’s events. The two men you rescued yesterday are doing fine. I’d just gotten off the phone with their doctor before you arrived.”

He sighed theatrically. “You know what I mean. The only reason you’re involved is because I happened to be the one out there. I imagine the colonel, or somebody who knows what happened six years ago, called you and asked you to come out.”

She didn’t bother denying it.

“You keep bringing up that other incident,” she said carefully. “Do you want to talk about what happened then, Drake?”

“No.”

“Okay,” she said easily. “How do you feel today? Any unusual symptoms of stress? Restlessness, insomnia, irritability?”

He cocked an eyebrow at her.

“Greater than normal irritability,” she clarified.

“I slept like a baby last night, Doc.” He paused briefly. Once again, she didn’t call him out on the use of the nickname. Instead, she looked at him in that careful, considerate way of hers―just waiting for him to say something else.

Drake stood his ground. This was a game two could play.

#

Isolde

“How can I be sure you’re not just lying to me? I know how badly you want to get back to your team.”

He nodded, staring down at his hands for a moment. When he looked back up at her, his eyes shone like twin pieces of ice on his chiseled face.

“I’m okay.” His voice was deep, strong, confident. She stared at his lips for an instant, remembering what it’d felt like to kiss those lips―what it’d felt like to have those strong arms wrapped around her.

Isolde dug her nails into her palms, berating herself for her wholly inappropriate thoughts. It’d been wrong of her to sleep with him six years earlier. She should have stopped seeing him as a patient first. She should have informed the colonel that they were―

But it was too late to do any of that.

Suddenly, she wanted to ask him why he’d never said anything. She knew Drake had felt betrayed when her report had been released―he didn’t know it wasn’t finished, and that she’d never meant for it to get out like that. At that point, he could have destroyed her career just by telling someone they’d slept together. He could have gotten her fired―maybe even worse. But he’d said nothing to anyone, as far as she could tell.

“What?” he asked gruffly. “You’ve run out of questions? Does that mean we’re done here?”

She bristled at his tone.