The Family You Make (Sunrise Cove #1)(3)

He’d noticed the medical patch across the back of her jacket. “Ski patrol?”

“RN,” she said. “I’m a traveling nurse, working a rotation at each of the five urgent care medical clinics in the North Shore area.” She once again waved her first aid kit. “I’m qualified to save people’s lives—even if I can’t manage to get my own together.”

He started to smile, but another hard gust of wind hit and they spun like a toy, so fast they just about went topsy-turvy. There was a sound of metal giving way—the shelf above his head for passenger belongings—and Levi lunged to shield her body with his.

Everything flew in the air like they were in orbit, and for a single long heartbeat, gravity seemed to vanish. Levi wrapped himself tight around his companion, her head tucked into his chest when something hit his head.

And then it was lights out.





Chapter 2


When the gondola finally stopped moving, Jane couldn’t breathe or see. Oh, God. She was dead.

Wait.

Her eyes were closed.

She blinked them open. Okay, whew, but either she was paralyzed or something was on top of her, something heavy.

No, not a something, a someone. The guy who’d been unfailingly steadfast in the face of her rising panic, and he was a dead weight. Carefully, she crawled out from beneath him, because while they hadn’t yet fallen to their deaths, it could still happen at any second. At the thought, she broke out into a cold sweat, despite the frigid temps. “Hey.” She leaned over the man with her and checked his pulse, nearly whimpering in relief when she felt it. Thready, but he was alive. “Can you hear me?”

Not so much as a twinge.

Mr. Talkative was out cold, leaking blood like a sieve from a dangerous-looking two-inch cut that sliced at an angle through his right eyebrow and along his temple. Normally she saved swearing for bad traffic, but as she looked around them, she let out a string of pretty impressive oaths, if she said so herself. Because now what?

It was still snowing like a mother, but the wind had calmed enough that the gondola was now swinging almost gently compared to the violence they’d just endured. The floor looked like a garage sale gone wrong, their stuff scattered everywhere. On top of everything lay the steel shelving rod that had broken loose, probably what had hit Mr. Talkative in the head.

This was bad. Very, very bad. “Come on, Sleeping Beauty, time to rise and shine.” The guy had lunged across the gondola to tuck her into him, saving her from getting hit. What was that? She was a perfect stranger. She checked his pulse again. Still faint, but steady.

She looked around for her phone before remembering it was dead. And anyway, who was she going to call? Not the clinic she’d just left; she’d been the last staff member out and had locked up herself. Logically, she knew that security at the base would figure out what had happened to the gondola in front of them—after all, someone had shut them down, right? Surely they’d be working their way toward them for extraction.

The man still hadn’t moved. Not good. She ran a hand along his body, checking for other injuries. Nothing obviously broken, but when she turned him onto his side, beneath his jacket she found his shirt sticky with blood. Shoving his layers up, she found two slashes across his back and shoulders, also bleeding freely.

Well, hell. “You had to play the hero.” She shrugged off her jacket to stuff it beneath his head as a makeshift pillow. “Isn’t that just like a man.” She stripped off her scrubs top and the thermal she had on beneath, using the former against the scratches on his back. The thermal she pressed carefully against his head wound to slow the bleeding. “Okay, seriously, if anyone’s going to nap, it should be me. I’ve just worked a long shift. So rise and shine, okay? No fair letting me be the only one awake when we die.”

Nothing.

Stripping further, she pulled off her outer gear ski pants, which she rolled and used to prop him up on his side so he didn’t lie on those wounds. Then she checked herself over. She looked like a horror flick victim. She was pretty sure the blood was all his, but dear God. She’d been through a lot of shit in her life, almost all of it she’d dealt with on her own. And most days she was okay with that, but today? Today wasn’t one of those days where she wanted to be alone.

She twisted around to look for her first aid kit, which was not in immediate sight. It had to be twenty degrees in the gondola and the blizzard didn’t seem to be interested in slowing down any. And here she sat, stuck a million feet in the air. No, make that five hundred and fifty feet in the air, in a glass prison wearing only her sports bra and thermal leggings because her patient was currently bleeding through everything she had. “Come on,” she cajoled, leaning over him. “If I have to be the one in a million to die in a gondola, you have to wake up to die with me.”

Not even a flicker. So . . . she pinched him, right on the ass. As it was a very fine, very taut ass, there wasn’t a lot to work with, but she managed.

He let out a grunt and she nearly collapsed over him in relief. “That’s it,” she murmured. “Now open those pretty gray eyes of yours and tell me once again how we’re going to be just fine.”

He groaned, sounding rough. “You actually talk more than I do, did you know that? How long was I out?”

“A few minutes.”

Still not opening his eyes, he gave a small smile. “You think my eyes are pretty. And you touched my ass. Admit it, you want me bad.”