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With a soft curse he lengthened his stride and talked sense into himself.
What was wrong with being single? Nothing. It was just that it was Christmas Day and all the emphasis seemed to be on families.
That was why he’d chosen to go for a walk instead of returning home to his big, empty house. He could have driven to the hospital and spent the day at work, but why would he want to do that when he’d already spent too much of the year working? In fact, work was probably one of the reasons he was on his own. It was hard to get out and meet people when you were trapped in a hospital day in, day out.
His spirits lifting as he walked, he forced himself to count his blessings. He was healthy, he had a great job at the hospital and he loved his work with the mountain rescue team. He had nothing to complain about.
And if his life sometimes felt a little empty—well, he’d never had trouble filling the void before now.
He walked upwards, enjoying the snow-muffled silence and the cold sting of the air in his lungs.
The visibility was reducing by the moment and he knew he probably ought to turn back. He was familiar with the path and he was well equipped, but he also had a healthy respect for mountains and didn’t want to be the one responsible for dragging his colleagues in the mountain rescue team away from their Christmas gatherings.
He was just about to turn back when he caught a flash of colour through the thickening snow. With a quick frown he narrowed his eyes and looked again but it was gone.
It had been so brief that it would have been all too easy to have dismissed the vision as nothing more than a figment of his imagination, but twelve years on the mountain rescue team had honed his instincts and sharpened his brain. So he didn’t turn. Instead, he walked forward a few more steps and the stopped dead.
A small figure, half covered in snow, was huddled against a rocky outcrop. A child?
And then the snow-covered figure lifted her head and he saw that it wasn’t a child. It was a woman.
And a very beautiful woman.
He couldn’t remember ever seeing eyes so exotic. Dark as sloes and framed by thick, lush lashes, they simply accentuated the pallor of her skin. Wisps of damp, ebony hair framed an almost perfect bone structure and the only colour in her face was her mouth—a rich, generous curve of soft pink that might have been designed with the sole purpose of driving a man to distraction.
She looked delicate and feminine and just about the last person he would have expected, or wanted, to find in the mountains in a blizzard.
Snow clung to her hair and her whole body was shivering, and it took just that one glance for him to realise that the situation was serious. This wasn’t a seasoned walker, prepared for a hike in the mountains. She looked like a woman who should have been somewhere else entirely.
The shivering was a good sign, he reminded himself grimly as he swung the rucksack off his broad shoulders and delved inside for the equipment he knew he was going to need. When the shivering stopped it meant that the human body was no longer able to produce heat. Still, he didn’t need his medical degree or his mountain rescue skills to know that the girl was seriously cold.
He needed to warm her up, check her over and then decide whether he could get her down by himself or whether he was going to need the assistance of his colleagues in the mountain rescue team.
He hoped they’d all enjoyed their Christmas dinner because he had a feeling that he was going to be calling on their services very shortly.
‘What are you doing here on your own? Where are your friends?’ Dispensing with pleasantries, he selected various items from his rucksack, his movements swift and purposeful as he spoke to the girl, assessing her level of consciousness, knowing that her answers would give clues as to just how cold she was. ‘Where are the rest of your party?’
Had the others left her and gone for help? Didn’t they have the sense to know that someone should have stayed with her? Or were they in trouble, too?
For a long moment she didn’t answer him and he wondered with a flash of concern whether she was too cold to speak. Had his first judgment of the situation been wrong?
‘What’s your name?’ His tone was urgent now and he crouched down to her level and took her face in his hands, forcing her to look at him. ‘Tell me your name.’
Speak to me. Say something.
Drowsiness and confusion were signs of the onset of hypothermia and he didn’t like what he was seeing.
Her dark eyes slid to his and he saw something in her gaze that twisted his insides. An empty hopelessness.
‘Miranda.’ Finally she spoke and her voice seemed tiny in the huge emptiness of snow and ice. ‘No friends. No party.’ Her arms were huddled round her waist for warmth. ‘Just m-me.’
‘Here, sit on this.’ Jake pushed a thick pad underneath her, reminding himself that there would be time enough later to talk to her about the dangers of walking alone in winter weather conditions. ‘It’s insulated and it will stop the snow seeping through your clothes. Then we need to get you something to eat.’
Mentally he ran through the various stages of hypothermia.
He knew that the most effective warming of the casualty came from the inside. She needed glucose and fluid and he needed to stop her losing any more heat.
He handed her a chocolate bar and then pulled a fleece hat onto her damp hair to try and prevent further heat loss from her head.
