“Am I being clear enough?” Tristan asked, with a small laugh. “I want you to work for me. Almost as much as I wanted to see you again.”
“Tristan?” Skye’s voice suddenly cut into their space. Erin pulled her hand back. “Tristan, are you still up there?”
He leant back into the main lights. “Yeah?”
“We’ve kept a plate for you, and I’m taking a list of questions. I thought you’d want to look at it.”
“Gimme a sec.” Tristan ducked back into the curtains. “Duty calls. What do you say, Erin?” he asked quickly. “Come work for me.”
“It’s a lot to take in,” she said.
“At least tell me you’ll think about it?”
“Okay, I guess.”
He grinned as if she’d agreed. “Not too long, though. I’ll need an answer by the weekend. So, why don’t you go and think it over, and come back with a ‘yes’ at the dance on Friday.”
When he was gone, Erin sat a long time, breathing in the sandalwood, and the fancy cologne Tristan was wearing. If he was serious, it could be an amazing opportunity, but warnings were doing laps in her mind. She’d seen the look in his eye when Skye had called out, that flash of anger that stripped all the light out of his face. Too much a reminder of why they’d broken up.
As she left the hall, she passed a man standing at the ramp rail outside. It was that new doctor, staring off into the ocean. Out there, the full moon threw a pale glow over Bella’s Leap, so that it seemed a rocky island hanging in the sky. Erin stopped for just a moment as she looked for Bella, the ghostly woman who sometimes appeared on the cliff. Hearing her footsteps pause, the doctor looked around.
He didn’t say anything; they just stood and stared at each other, for a fraction longer than they should have. A moment caught in a moonbeam. For just those seconds, it was as if he sensed what she was thinking: that this wasn’t a time for words. It was for running along the beach in the dark, roaming over the island hills, running far, far away from tomorrow.
Erin blinked, and the moment collapsed. She stalked away, no closer to working out what to do.
Chapter 4
By eleven the next morning, Alex was busier than the appointment book would have suggested.
“Oh, everyone’s just curious,” Sandy said, after the third walk-in patient appeared for a “check-up”, which really meant a sticky-beak around the surgery and Alex’s room. Sandy had already shooed out one woman who’d brought a vase of cut flowers. Now, he faced Greta on the exam table, who’d actually made an appointment. From her file, she was in her mid-fifties, and had limbs of sinewy muscle that barely filled the smallest adult blood pressure cuff he had.
“How long have you had the blood pressure issue?” he asked, as he pumped the cuff and pressed his stethoscope against her elbow.
“Ten years,” she said. “It’s the genes – my mother had it too.”
“But it’s been more problematic these last few years?” he asked, making a note of 145/95.
“More stress,” she said. “And worse food. Can’t get enough fresh stuff over here. Of course, when the resort opens again, that’ll be different.”
“Everyone seems excited about that,” Alex said, settling his fingers to feel her pulse.
“Too right. Less excited about the Jacobs girl being back though. Never thought to see her again after this long. I think she’ll be gone again soon, though.”
“Oh?” Alex asked, feigning indifference as he placed the stethoscope on Greta’s lungs. In truth, he’d been unable to keep his eyes off Erin at the meeting last night. Was it just that she’d so obviously cut him dead at the door? Or that she’d stood in the wings the whole night, looking unimpressed with Tristan’s smooth delivery? He’d always been drawn to the girl at the edge of the party. Or had it been the look in her eye when she’d passed him outside in the moonlight? She’d looked ready to do damage. Whatever it was, he was curious. More than curious.
“I wouldn’t want you to think I’m mean, Alex, but after what happened with her father? The girl’s bad luck, that’s what. And we don’t need that with these plans to get the resort open again.”
“Bad luck?”
“Yes. Dr Jacobs was such an experienced sailor. What happened to him doesn’t make any sense.”
It wasn’t the last time he heard such a thing today, but people were cagey about the details. All they would say was that there’d been some kind of accident at sea, and that Erin was involved. Alex was interested, but he had other mines to dodge.
“What about you, Doctor? Have a wife back on the mainland? Kids?”
“No, just me. Married to the job,” he said, more than once, a little white lie that avoided him saying not anymore.
Only the young backpacker – whose issue turned out to be a swollen lymph node in his groin and not a venereal disease as Sandy had intimated – gave him a break.
By the time the day was over, his social patience was as raw as a butcher’s window. He sat on the edge of his bed, the air full of wattle scent from the flowers now on his bedside table. He was meant to be here to get away from all the mental chatter.
On the desk, Sandy had left books – a yellowing diver’s guide to the surrounding reefs was on top. Alex flicked past it. Even if he had been in the mood to go diving, he’d have asked Darren Travers for advice before trusting a guide book. The former medic had been instant good company, and happy to lend a hand if Alex ever needed it.
“Just remember, I’m going stale on the emergency stuff,” Travers had warned.
“Well, you’re the only pair of hands I’ve got.”
They’d stuck around after the town hall meeting, drinking beers, Travers telling him a few war stories, but never once asking Alex about his own past. Alex liked the man for his discretion. Other men might have pushed. And Alex might have told them he came from a well-respected medical family, most of whom lived down south. That his father had been a doctor, that his cousins were all doctors. And then he might have thought he could talk about what had happened with the crash, which he would then regret. But Travers … it was as though he’d sensed all the history, and had the tact not to go there.
Now, Alex flicked over a few ageing paperbacks – a Tom Clancy he’d read before, a Jeffrey Archer he hadn’t. And there at the bottom, he found a map of the island. Perfect.
Map in hand, he slipped out the back door and slogged through the sand to the top of the dunes. The sun was coming down over the mainland, a ball of orange flame rolling over grey clouds hugging the horizon. It would be light a good while yet.
He faced down the beach, aligning the map. The village and the old resort were drawn as a collection of dark squares along the main beach. The rest of the island was a large scalloped coastline, full of inland waterways, mountains in the north, and cliffs at the eastern end of the main bay. A homestead was clearly marked in the centre. He frowned at it, wondering who lived there.
Walking tracks were dashed across the terrain, all the way to the far northern point. He squinted at the numbers scratched against landmarks, partly cut off by a bad photocopy. Six hours to the northern point, it said. Too far for an afternoon.
But the cliff at the end of the bay, that was a different story. It looked doable in an hour, there and back. Bella’s Leap, the map said, and a small square drawn on the next promontory over was marked The Artist’s Den.
Alex closed the back door, keen to shake off the day. He followed the construction fence until it bent away into the scrub, where the map said there should be a vehicle track to follow up onto the cliffs. But the bushland in front of him presented no such path.
Eventually, after fossicking through the long grass, he found an old trail marker, hidden in a shrub. The resort had been closed so long that the trail had grown over.
Once he was out of the greener zone behind the beach, however, the path came into sharper relief. The cicada drone vibrated in his chest, the smell of eucalypts filling his senses. Half-way up, he pa
used, looking down along the beach. It was a perfect arc of white sand, the water shimmering with sunset orange. He could see all the way to the village, and out onto the long sandy finger that the point pushed into the ocean.
Beautiful. And calm. He took several minutes to really feel it.
He hiked on and the path levelled out, then the trees retreated, leaving a barren crop of cracked stone. Alex could hear the pounding waves striking the rocks below. The path led onto the exposed shelf, so he inched out, his eyes searching for where the map said the trail would continue around to the next headland, where Helmut’s studio was supposed to be. He couldn’t find it, not anywhere in the thick shrubs that clung to life all over the rocky crop.
He found himself right at the edge, and staring into that blue oblivion.
The waves breaking on the rocks weren’t as big as he’d imagined from the noise. All the hard rock echoed, amplified the sound. Still, it was a long, long way down, straight onto the ribbons of cutting oyster shells. The sun going down into a dark night. He shuddered, pulling his eyes up, and rubbed his arms. The next headland was clearly visible from here, and now he spotted the hard line of a roof amidst the trees.
Then, he saw the stone steps.
They were cut into the rock of the cliff, an old wire rope for a handrail set into the stone and rusted in the salt air. The stairway was so steep he couldn’t see further than the first three steps.
He stopped, suddenly sure he was being watched.
Someone stood at the edge of the tree line. He only had to take one look at her long, brown limbs, curved with muscle, and the tousled sun-bleached hair to recognise Erin Jacobs. His stomach dipped at the sight of her.
“I wouldn’t go down there if I were you,” she said.
“Not the path to Helmut’s, then?”
“What do you want with Helmut?”
“I like his work.” Alex turned away from the stone stairs, approaching her, feeling his heart pound. He offered his hand. “I’m Alex Bell. I’m the visiting—”
“I know who you are,” she said.
“Well, I’m just getting to know the place.”
They stared at each other, like they had outside the hall.
“You’re Erin Jacobs,” he said slowly, her name thrilling on his tongue. “I saw you Monday night, dodging Travers at the door.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “How do you figure I was dodging Travers?”
“Because if you were dodging me, you wouldn’t have bothered warning me about going down there.”
She laughed unexpectedly, her eyes creasing, her amusement bringing a smile to his lips, too.
“Might have figured you’d come up here, with you staring at the Leap the other night,” she said.
“Noticed that, huh?”
“Those steps run out half-way down,” she said. “The rest broke off in a storm years ago. People think they can jump the rest of the way, but then they get stuck down there. When the tide comes in ...” She ran her fist into her palm.
“Jesus, shouldn’t it be signed or something?”
She shrugged. “It was. But metal rusts through in a season, and print fades in the sun. The resort used to do maintenance, but no one in the village is silly enough to do it anymore. The path to Helmut’s comes off the trail about twenty metres back. You just missed it.”
“But the map says it’s here,” he said, showing her the dark lines.
“That map was drawn by a teenager with a felt-tip. See here?” She pointed to the edge of the island’s outline, where a tiny SJ was drawn in slanting letters.
“Skye?”
“Afraid so. School assignment.”
She stepped back, rubbing her arms. “At least you made it to the top,” she went on. “Most of the tourists get the wiggins and turn back, look at it from a safe distance, over at the studio.”
“Because of the ghost?” he said, remembering Tim and Monster. “Bella?”
“Isabella Mason. She lived in the homestead, once. Now she’s supposed to appear when the storms roll in.”
Pieces clicked together in Alex’s mind. “So that’s who Helmut paints. Is she supposed to have jumped? I mean, it’s called Bella’s Leap.”
Erin shrugged. “That’s one story.” But she didn’t quite meet his eyes. Alex felt as though she’d pulled some barrier up between them.
“Have you ever seen her?” he asked.
“Once,” she said. “I think. But maybe I imagined it.”
She moved towards the edge to peer down on the rocks, stepping towards him. In the narrow space at the cliff top, her closeness was natural. When she looked back at him, her eyes were the colour of the ocean itself, and for just that instant, it felt as if they were alone in a world of endless blue.
“I used to love sailing on nights like this,” he said. The words flew out of his mouth before the associations could stop him. Then came the memories, feeling ugly in his heart. He found her staring at him, waiting for what he’d say next. … but I screwed it up. … but that was a long time ago. Not the kind of thing you said to someone you didn’t know, much less an attractive woman. He’d been pausing too long, now. Most women he’d known would have registered the pause, asked him what was wrong, or to go on. But Erin didn’t. Instead, a quizzical look wrote itself in her features, though Alex didn’t know if it was interest, or if she was working out how much of a crazy person he was.
“I better head back. I’ll show you the path,” she said.
He followed her into the trees, not wanting her to go yet.
“That’s the trail, there,” she said, nodding to a vanishing line of sand off the main path. Then she paused, and said, “My yacht’s the Fair Winds, off the jetty.”
Alex was left with only a glimpse of her suntanned shoulders disappearing into the scrub, and the tantalising hint of her invitation.
Erin had her charts spread on the small table in the main cabin when she heard the soft creak of footsteps on the wooden jetty. The sky had gone dark in the portholes and the first moths had snuck inside to bash themselves against the lights. But when the footsteps stopped alongside, she knew instantly who was out there.
Alex Bell, doctor-new.
What the hell had possessed her to tell him her boat? A moment of weakness, that’s what. Because he was an attractive man, and she’d been alone for too long. Forgetting that he was the man who was sitting in her father’s chair. He was completely not her type. She liked her men unmysterious, not coming with woo-woo moments in the moonlight and clifftops. Growling at herself, she crept up the cabin stairs and stuck her head out.
“I was just working out how to knock,” he said.
“Funny,” she said. “Never heard that one before.”
“Sorry. I’m still recalibrating to human contact, you know, after having a dog for my first patient.”
She smiled despite herself. And he did have a cute face. “So that was your work on Monster?”
“Guilty,” he said. “I’m hoping the vet board won’t come after me, you know, practicing without a licence.”
All right, he was a little funny. And not overassuming, still standing on the jetty. He ran his eyes over her yacht, his hands in his pockets, a few feet back as if giving the Fair Winds a respectable distance. Erin in turn ran her eyes over the muscled legs under his long board shorts. His chest was certainly broad enough for a mastman, but he was too reluctant for a sailor. Had he been lying about that? He wouldn’t be the first man who tried a come on pretending to know his way around a boat. Maybe he was a runner, or worse, a Crossfitter.
“How was Helmut?” she asked.
Alex looked down, sheepish. “I didn’t make it. I must admit I spent a while searching around the cliff top, imagining what Helmut must see there when he paints. Then I started correcting the paths on the map, which ended up with me slightly lost down the hill.”
“Slightly lost?”
“All right – a lot lost. Fortunately, it wasn’t too hard to find
my way out again because I could hear the waves, but after that it seemed a bit late. Didn’t fancy navigating back by the stars.”
Erin laughed at him, until the corner of his mouth lifted in a wry smile. He really was attractive when he did that. “Don’t tell Skye about the bad map, she’ll be offended,” she said. “Are you coming over?”
“I’m thinking about it.”
He was thinking about it. Something was a little odd there. Man, the moment he started on with the benefits of his nutritional plan, she was jumping overboard. “I’m looking at charts. Shoes off.”
Seeming to finally make up his mind, he stepped out of his boat shoes and across onto the yacht’s deck, moving with the grace of muscle memory. All right, now he looked like a sailor. His eyes tracked over the rigging in an experienced way. “Nice set-up,” he said. “You sail it solo?”
Erin forced herself to unfold her arms. “She’s rigged that way now. But I can break it back to two hands or more. She races pretty well with a small crew.”
“Where’s your mainsail?”
“Busted the halyard before I got to the Haven channel, then ripped it when I docked. It’s with Gus – he’s the chandler up the beach. It’s my fault, really,” she said, leaning back against the bimny. “I had Fair Winds in port too long down south. Didn’t get back to her as often as I meant to, what with the racing season.”
She caught herself before she said, Dad would kill me for the lack of maintenance. She looked away, out over the jetty and towards the last smudge of orange on the sunset horizon, and then pretended to check the time on her watch. Alex sat on the short padded bench.
“How does a chandler make a living on the island?”
“With difficulty these days,” Erin said, glad to be distracted. “Random jobs from yachters island hopping and putting in for repairs, and he specialises in restoring antique fittings. There’s a small market in it online, but the postage must be brutal.”
On a Starlit Ocean Page 4