Page 20 of Scotlander

While hoicking up her bodice to contain her D-cups, she handed him the handkerchief. Finlay pressed it to Gabe’s hairline. It instantly turned scarlet.

Oh god. She’d killed Gabe. Sinking to her knees across from Finlay she whispered, ‘Did I crack his head open?’

‘It’s just a cut,’ Finlay said calmly but firmly. In a stupidly delicious accent. He pressed two fingers to the nook just below Gabe’s marble-hewn jawline. ‘His pulse is a bit thready, but he’s probably just knocked himself out for a wee bit. We should get the first responders—’

‘I’m calling 911,’ said the Idris Elba lookalike, pulling an enormous phone out of his sporran. ‘I’m Jeff, by the way.’ He put out a hand for Finlay to shake and then, clocking that he was busy holding the handkerchief to Gabe’s bleeding head, gave him a little salute instead.

‘Anyone got smelling salts?’ shouted another one of their group, in a loud Australian accent. ‘Pretty sure they would’ve used those back in the day.’

‘I think they’re called spirits of ammonia,’ said another woman, whose accent Willa couldn’t place.

‘It’s 999 here,’ said a blonde woman in an English accent she’d heard before when she’d binge-watched the British baking show. ‘My daughter, Jules, is ringing them.’

‘There’ll be volunteer first responders here at the airport,’ Finlay said. ‘Perhaps one of you can find an emergency phone and ring them?’

Willa opened her mouth to panic scream that she didn’t want volunteer first responders, she wanted a team of crack surgeons, when she remembered that her father and brother were both volunteer firemen and that, when it came to a crisis, you really didn’t care who showed up, so long as someone did. Preferably in a uniform.

To be fair, she was feeling strangely safe and secure with Finlay in charge.

His eyes were even more amazing up close. A beautiful blue-grey that spoke to a depth of character she instantly wanted to explore. He’d seen things and done things and had learnt from them. Quite the contrast to her world of film stars who had called upon people like Gabe to sort out their mistakes, no matter how frequently they committed them.

He exuded calm, assured control. Exactly the way you’d want someone to be in a crisis. His voice alone felt like having warm caramel poured down her spine. A bit too arousing at a moment when she shouldn’t be finding anything erotic apart from Gabe, who still managed to look breathtakingly beautiful even though he was bleeding and possibly never going to be able to use his brain again.

All of which sent her heart rate rocketing, as if she was a carnival goldfish accidentally dropped from its clear baggie on to the dusty ground, desperately trying to take deep, gulping breaths, none of them successfully filling her lungs with the requisite oxygen.

‘Hey.’ Finlay’s voice broke through her panic. ‘You’re alright. Breathe steady now. C’mon. There you are. Look at me. Right into my eyes. We don’t want the two of you in an ambulance now, do we? Steady now. That’s it, lass. One . . . two . . . nice and slow . . . three . . . That’s it . . . steady now.’

Finlay was putting her into a trance. A strong, capable man-in-a-crisis-rising-to-the-occasion trance. The emotional equivalent of a perfectly grilled cheese sandwich and steaming mug of tomato soup.

It was a brand new sensation to feel so . . . focused upon. As if he really cared whether or not she launched into a full-blown panic attack. Especially with Gabe breathing his last between them. She was usually the capable one. The type of girl who, at best, received a pat on the shoulder and a ‘You’re alright, aren’t ya, Wills?’

If he was secretly hypnotising her to quack like a duck, she was strangely fine with that.

His eyes cut away from hers.

One of the Japanese tourists was waving to him to move out of the way so she could sit next to Gabe and have her picture taken. A near dead, very hot Latino in a kilt wasn’t one of your everyday sights, but . . . really?

Finlay, still holding the compress, rose up to his knees, and with a fluid, authoritative air said to the gathering crowd, ‘Alright, everyone, let’s give the poor man some space.’ To Willa, he said, ‘Press down on this for me, would you?’ His eyes sought hers. ‘Do you think you can do that, Willa?’

Uhhh. Was he serious?

‘You just hold it down, not too hard, alright?’

Clearly, he was.

And in the time it would take a normal person to say, ‘Sure thing!’, a red mist descended.

Sure. She may have been on the brink of a panic attack a moment ago, but of all the things Willa hated most in life, being patronised was top of the list. Not because she was paranoid about her intellect – she was fine with her level of brain power. But being spoken to as if she couldn’t follow a set of simple instructions was an instant trigger, transporting her back to her childhood. A lifetime really, of her family speaking to her as if she was unable to differentiate between Real World Problems and Fictional Problems predicated on the basis that she liked television.

Now, she didn’t have it on excellent authority that belittling her was Finn’s main goal. (He seemed like a Finn now. If he could speak to her using toddler words, she could give him a nickname.) Maybe he thought she was overtired. Perhaps he could sense the headache creeping in courtesy of too many in-flight beverages. Or maybe, because it certainly had sounded that way, he did think she was stupid.

Whatever his motives they no longer factored. Shunting every single pleasant thing she’d thought about him did. And really, now that she thought about it? He reminded her just a little bit too much of home.

‘Yeah,’ she answered tersely. ‘I think I can just about rustle up the ability to hold a cloth.’

He stared at her with an intensity she couldn’t identify, then gave a particularly irritating fair-enough shrug, got up, ushered away the tourists and asked the rest of the group to form a protective luggage shield around Gabe. As they gathered round, the fifty-something blonde woman from their group approached and introduced herself as Jennifer. She untwisted her beautiful shawl-wrappy thing from her shoulders and tucked it over Willa’s shoulders with a practised motherly pat. ‘For your maiden modesty,’ she whispered kindly.

Willa’s cheeks turned scarlet. Her boobs had escaped again. And with fabulous timing. Right in the middle of her self-righteous snippery to Finn.