When Hunter O'Banyon glanced over at the pretty little blonde he'd met only moments ago, adrenaline began to pump through his veins. Her porcelain cheeks were flushed with a mixture of heat and excitement, and he could tell from the sparkle of urgency in her violet eyes that he was in for one hell of a ride.

"I hope you don't mind, but this is going to have to be faster than I'd planned," she said, sounding a little breathless.

Grinning, he nodded. "Bring it on. I can take it as fast as you want to go."

"I like the way you think." Her smile caused his heart to race like a twelve-stroke engine hitting on all cylinders. "Hang on, big guy. This might get a little wild."

Hunter took a deep breath and braced himself. "Burn it, darlin'."

At the same time as she pushed the gas pedal all the way to the floor, she reached out to flip a switch on the dash. Lights and the keening wail of a siren competed with the sound of spinning tires kicking up a huge cloud of gravel and southwest Texas dust as the pickup truck careened away from the tarmac at Devil's Fork Community Airfield.

When Hunter had discovered there was no commercial air service to the little town, he'd wondered why the pilot of the Cessna Skyhawk he'd chartered to fly him to Devil's Fork from El Paso had laughed like a hyena when Hunter had called it an airport. Now he knew why. The entire thing consisted of an asphalt landing strip that he'd bet barely met FAA standards, a storage shed that leaned precariously to one side and a wooden pole with a tattered wind sock attached to the top just above the United States and Texas flags. As far as he could tell, there weren't even any lights for landing at night. He could only hope the Life Medevac operation looked better.

"By the way, I'm Callie Marshall, the flight nurse on the Evac II team," the blonde said conversationally.

Nice name for a nice-looking woman, he thought as they approached the edge of town. "I'm Hunter O'Banyon."

"Thank God." She grinned. "When my pager went off, I didn't give you time to introduce yourself, and it suddenly occurred to me that you might not be the man I was supposed to meet."

His heart stalled and he had to clear his suddenly dry throat. When she smiled, Callie Marshall wasn't just pretty, she was drop-dead gorgeous.

"What were the chances of anyone else flying into Devil's Fork?" he asked when he finally got his vocal cords to work.

Her delightful laughter was one of the nicest sounds he'd heard in a long time. "Good point," she said, nodding. "I think you're the first person I've heard of flying into Devil's Fork since I arrived two months ago."

"Somehow that doesn't surprise me." He tightened his safety harness when she turned a corner, seemingly on two wheels. "Did you arrive by plane?"

"No way." She shook her head, causing her ponytail to sway back and forth. "I drove over from Houston. I wasn't about to take one of those puddle-jumper flights in here."

As they sped down Main Street, Hunter decided that if he'd blinked, he might have missed the entire town. Besides the fact that Callie was going so fast it wasn't much more than a blur, the business district was only a few blocks long and there wasn't much more than two or three blocks to the residential section.

"Mary Lou, our dispatcher, said you're from the Miami area. It might take a while for you to get used to Devil's Fork. It's about six hundred miles from the nearest beach and not exactly a hotbed of social activity."

"No kidding." He cringed when they sailed through a four- way stop on the opposite end of town without so much as slowing down. "I knew this place was small, but I expected something a little bigger than this."

"I did, too," she agreed. "After I drove through it the first time, I had a hard time believing there was enough of a call for a medevac operation to be based here. But I was wrong."

Hunter thought back to what he'd read in the file he'd been handed on the business his grandmother had given him to run. "The way I understand it, we're the only emergency service available for sections of five different counties."

She nodded. "The population is so sparse in this part of Texas, it isn't cost-effective for communities to have their own ambulance." Shrugging, she steered the truck onto a dirt-packed road leading up to a large aircraft hangar with Life Medevac Helicopter Service painted on the side. "Besides, if they had a ground unit, it would take too long to reach most of the people and even longer to get them to a hospital. We're their best hope for emergency medical care."

When she drove the truck around the side of the building, Hunter breathed a little easier. The Life Medevac base appeared to be in much better condition than the Devil's Fork airfield. Besides the well-kept hangar, there were two brand-new, top-of-the-line Bell EMS helicopters sitting on brightly painted helipads, and the entire area was ringed with what looked to be state-of-the-art lighting for night takeoffs and landings.

"I'll see you when we get back," she said, jamming the gearshift into Park at the same time she killed the engine and threw open the driver's door. "I have a flight to catch."

"Thanks for the ride," Hunter called, getting out of the truck.

Turning, she gave him another one of her killer smiles. "I almost forgot to tell you — beware of Mary Lou's coffee. She'll tell you it's the best you've ever had, but don't believe it." She grimaced. "It's awful."

As he stood there staring at Callie slowly jogging toward the waiting helicopter, he couldn't put his finger on what it was about her, but something bothered him. Aside from the fact that she'd driven the truck through town as though the hounds of hell were chasing them and she now moved as if she had all the time in the world, there was something about the snug way her navy-blue flight suit fit her around the middle that didn't seem quite right.

But when she disappeared inside the cabin space of the chopper and the door slid shut behind her, he quickly dismissed his concerns as Evac II lifted off the helipad. Although Emerald Larson had assured him that she'd seen to it that all the equipment was up-to-date and exceeded state requirements, he intended to order new flight suits in a color that could be more easily differentiated from other first responders that might be on scene when the Life Medevac crews arrived. And he'd make sure everyone wore the right size.

"You must be Hunter O'Banyon, the new boss of this outfit."

At the sound of the female voice behind him, Hunter turned to face a woman he'd judge to be somewhere in her late sixties or early seventies. With curly snow-white hair, a perfectly round face and a pair of narrow reading glasses perched on her nose, she looked as if she could easily play Mrs. Claus in a Christmas pageant.

He smiled as he extended his hand. "That would be me. And you must be Mary Lou Carson."

"The one and only." Grinning, she firmly shook his hand. "Come on in the dispatch room and rest a spell. I'll pour you a cup of the best coffee you've ever had, then I'll show you your quarters."

Reaching into the bed of the pickup truck, Hunter grabbed his luggage and followed Mary Lou out of the late-August heat and into the air-conditioned office of the hangar. When she led him into the dispatch room, he looked around at the framed military medals hanging on the wall beside the door.

"Did these belong to your husband?" he asked conversationally.

"Some of them." Mary Lou walked over to a small kitchen area on the opposite side of the room to stir the delicious-smelling contents of a huge pot on the electric range. "The rest are mine."

When she walked back over to where he stood, she handed him a cup of coffee, then motioned for him to sit in one of several chairs on the opposite side of a scarred wooden desk. "Take a load off, Hunter."

"What branch of the military were you in?" he asked, sitting down.

"Lester and I were both career Navy." She walked between the desk and a built-in counter filled with radio equipment, a computer and several telephones to settle herself into an old wooden desk chair that looked as if it might have been around since World War II. "He was an aircraft mechanic and I was a nurse. He died in an accident onboard an aircraft carrier not long before we were supposed to retire."

"I'm sorry." Hunter knew all too well what it was like to lose someone unexpectedly.

"Don't be sorry," she said, surprising him. "Lester died doing what he loved most — working on fighter jets. That's the best way any of us can hope to go out of this world." Before he could respond, she shrugged. "That's why I'm a dispatcher here. After my arthritis forced me to stop working the floor in a hospital, I took this job. When people call with an emergency, I sometimes stay on the line and talk them through whatever medical crisis they have until one of our crews arrives. It's almost as satisfying as nursing."

Hunter took a sip of coffee as he considered what Mary Lou said. But as the bitter taste spread over his tongue, he had to force himself to swallow. Quickly setting the cup on the desk, he barely controlled the urge to shudder. What Callie had told him about the coffee being awful had been an understatement. The stuff was as thick as syrup and tasted as though it had been made with quinine.

Coughing, he looked up to see Mary Lou watching him expectantly. He could tell she was waiting for him to tell her how good it was.

"You like your coffee strong, don't you?" he asked, trying not to grimace.

She shrugged. "I like my coffee to be just the way I like a man — strong and the best I've ever had."

If he'd thought her coffee was enough to send his system into shock, her outspokenness finished the job. He couldn't have been more dumbfounded if he'd tried. Unable to think of a thing to say, he waited to see what she'd say next. Unless he'd misjudged her, that shouldn't take very long.