Air Ambulance Read Online Free PDF

picking up the threads.”
    “You told me less than an hour ago that you thought you should,” Alison reminded him.
    He regarded her questioningly.
    “Pick up the threads,” she prompted. “The threads of living objectively, you meant.”
    “I said that because I thought you might help me.” He covered her hand with his where it rested on the divan seat between them. “This isn’t a proposal of marriage or even a new approach to a flirtation,” he added with a hint of the old sarcasm creeping back into his voice. “You’re not the sort of girl one takes out and then kisses on the doorstep by way of payment. You’re different, Alison. I want us to be friends.”
    “Of course I hope we’ll be friends,” Alison agreed immediately. “We’ll be working together some of the time.”
    “Good enough!” he said. “I’ll tell you some day why I didn’t propose to you straight away!”
    His tone had been light, but his eyes were suddenly clouded by a memory. She could not press him to talk about the past because she knew that he would come to it in his own good time. All he wanted just now was her friendship, and she was prepared to give him just that.
    “Where to?” Ronald asked as the restaurant’s revolving door closed behind them. “It looks as if we’ll have to dance. Unless,” he added as they went in search of his parked car, “you’d like a run along the coast? It’s the sort of night for it, with a moon coming up, and all that!”
    Alison said: “I think the run might be very nice,” and then regretted it, for after all, what did she really know about him?
    “Pax!” he said, reading her thoughts. “You know we’re friends!” He drove along the coast, down the estuary of the Clyde, and the moon came up over the hills behind them before they reached Largs, shimmering on the low ridge of the Cumbraes and on the dark shores of Bute across a stretch of silver Firth.
    They went as far as Ayr, out on to the Heads, where they could see the stark outline of ruined Dunure silhouetted against the sea.
    “There’s so much beauty everywhere on a night like this,” Alison reflected, sitting close beside him in the stationary car. “The sort of beauty you promised I might find on Heimra.”
    “Damn Heimra!” he exclaimed violently. “Let’s forget about it.” He pulled her towards him. “Perhaps I made a mistake about that kiss,” he added roughly. “After all, Alison, you’re a very attractive person out of uniform, even if you are a prim little nurse during the day!”
    She held him at arms’ length.
    “We’ve got to work together—remember?” she said.
    He laughed harshly.
    “I guess you’re right,” he agreed. “It was all that bit about Heimra and its magic that upset me.”
    “I’m sorry,” she apologised swiftly. “I didn’t think you felt that way about the island. I had guessed it held rather sad memories for you, but I thought it was your mother not being able to go back there before she died that hurt most.”
    She hesitated, wondering if she had already said too much, and he was silent for a long time, not answering her.
    “It was that and so much more,” he said at last. “That and the fact that the only girl I ever wanted to marry married Heimra instead.”
    She twisted round to look at him, uncomprehending at first.
    “You mean—?”
    “I mean that she married Gavin Blair instead of me,” he told her bitterly. “She married Blair of Heimra, and he was killed three months after their wedding day.”
    Alison sat very still. She could not say that she was sorry. The confession she had just listened to held all the elements of tragedy, making a mockery of any conventional expression of sorrow on her part, and she knew that Ronald Gowrie did not want her pity.
    “That’s why I’ve never been back.” Her companion’s voice was fully controlled now, all the passion gone out of it. “I couldn’t go there, even for my mother’s sake, and, anyway, all our