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But then the helicopter was dropping, like a lead balloon, until the rotors began once more, and it sort of seemed to stabilise. But not enough. Not when there was smoke coming from the rear.

Her heart was slamming into her ribs for another reason now. She didn’t give anything a moment’s thought. How could she? She ran back into the house, through the front door, and to her car, starting the engine with a quick press of the button, and reversing away from the house in a furiously panicked cloud of dust.

CHAPTER TWELVE

WHEN HER MOTHER had got sick, Sarah had started to make deals with God. She’d prayed harder than she ever had in her life, begging, pleading, promising anything, for her mother to be saved. It hadn’t worked, but that didn’t stop Sarah from doing the same thing now as tears streamed down her cheeks. At first, she prayed that the father of her baby would be okay, but then she was just keeping all her fingers and toes crossed for Tate. Tate as a person, a man. Tate as someone she’d spent the last week getting to know, and was due to marry in two days’ time.

Tate, who all of a sudden she couldn’t imagine living without.

Tate, who had somehow become the light of her future. Only, it wasn’t a question of ‘somehow’; it was evidence of inevitability. Of all the ways he’d weaved into her soul, the very depths of her being, since she’d come to tell him about the baby. Even before then?

She’d fought him—and this—so hard, perhaps because on some level she’d known it was everything she’d ever wanted, and was too scared to reach out and grab.

She pressed a hand to her mouth to hold back a sob as reality suddenly exploded through her. Tate wasn’t just a man she was marrying because of their baby. She’d spent the last week getting to know him, inside and out, in ways that couldn’t be explained easily, and yet the idea of having a lifetime more together seemed like just enough to really understand him. Now that she’d agreed to marry him, she could be honest with herself: she wanted this. She wanted him. She’d chosen to marry him, not because of the baby, not because of the media, but because there was no version of her life she wanted more—even when that scared her.

And now…

Her eyes tracked across the sky, to where the cloud trailed down to the ground, and another sob escaped her.

When the sheds came into sight, she revved the car, driving faster, until she saw the station staff standing just outside. She cut the engine and ran towards the shed, with no thought for how she looked, or what they’d think. ‘Is Everett here?’

The man who answered was ashen. He jerked his thumb towards the left side of the building; Sarah didn’t break her stride.

She flung open the door to Everett’s air-conditioned office right as he was picking up his keys from the desk.

‘Everett—the helicopter.’

He barely looked at her. ‘I know. I got his Mayday call.’

‘Mayday call,’ she repeated, relieved, at least, to hear that he’d had time to do that. ‘What happened?’

‘God knows,’ he grunted. ‘You coming?’

She raced after him, a screeching noise in her ears that wouldn’t quit. She couldn’t think about anything. She most particularly couldn’t think about Tate’s body, in the wreckage of that helicopter. And then she did, and the tears fell unbidden, silent sobs racking her body as she scrambled into the passenger seat of Everett’s ute as he sped off, away from the sheds. She caught a glimpse, in her side mirror, of the station staff staring after them, each a study in absolute shock.

Tate Carrigan was untouchable…until he wasn’t. In the end, it turned out, he was not ironbark, but, rather, just a man.

The only man she’d ever loved. And if by some miracle he survived, it would be the first thing she said to him.

* * *

Holy hell. So this was what pain was, he thought with a grimace as he curved his hands around steaming-hot metal, cursing aloud at the searing sting that bit into his palms. But he couldn’t stay where he was, within cooee of helicopter wreckage, the flames already sparking towards the dry grass. He had no idea what had gone wrong, probably something electrical. That and the impact of the crash, the flickering flames, meant he was already on borrowed time. He’d be lucky if this thing didn’t blow in the next few minutes, and he wasn’t sure luck was with him today.

Which was particularly inconvenient, given that he was pinned to the ground beneath a long chunk of hot metal that felt as if it weighed at least five times as much as him.

He had to get out.

He would not die like this, not now.

Not when he had so much to live for.

Their baby deserved to know his father. Wasn’t that what all this had been about? Wasn’t that why he’d insisted on Sarah staying, thrown everything he possibly could at making sure she agreed to marry him? Wasn’t that why he’d been moving all the pieces of his life into place, to get this across the line?

And he had.

She’d agreed, and he’d known he could make her happy, that this would be the right thing for everyone. He’d known, once and for all, that he wasn’t his father, and that he had a lifetime to show the world that. Because his marriage wouldn’t be scandal-plagued, filled with affairs and misery.

He and Sarah would work as a team to raise their son or daughter, happy, respectful, the very opposite to what he’d known as a child.