“Massive,” Alex said. “I couldn’t believe how many people turned out.”
She listened while he described the sails filling the horizon, the crowds and the spirit of the week, the fireworks on the last night. How he’d found himself treating injuries, mostly sprains and strains but occasionally something serious – a degloved finger (Erin made a gagging noise) and a broken arm.
“You are handy to have around. How did you manage to score that gig?”
“Someone I used to know had family who were professional racers in Europe. They organised it.”
The way he said someone I used to know told Erin that his person was either an ex, or a friend he’d fallen out with. But the way he talked about the boats – the colours and the smells and the spectacle – she found herself itching to be back on the water. If it hadn’t been night, she’d have taken the boat out immediately, at risk of taking off across the water for Fiji and beyond. She edged around further and put her hand up to crack the port window, wanting to smell the sea. The window refused to budge, and the next moment, the seat shifted and Alex reached up behind her, giving the pane a shove.
It opened, flooding them with a rush of cool night air, even as Erin felt the warmth of him beside her. She sank down slowly, her body fitting beside him. She looked up and he met her eyes, a smile on his lips. He looked lazily and deliciously mysterious.
“Sure puts our tiny plans in perspective,” Erin said, her blood warming.
His lips curved as he ran a finger down her cheek. “I don’t know, I hear there’s some big guns signing up for the next one.” But his eyes said he didn’t give a fig about the race. He wanted her, and all she had to do was give him a reason to take her to the cabin. The atmosphere was pure liquid heat, and she could barely think of anything but pulling his clothes off and putting her lips to his skin.
“Go on,” he whispered.
She stretched up and kissed him. A groan escaped him, and his hands gripped her ribs, the heat of his hands moving as his kiss became a naked demand. In response, Erin turned, splitting her thighs around him so she could face him and brush her tongue inside his mouth. The table creaked as he moved, his hands sliding over the curve of her butt. His head dropped to her neck, his lips brushing along her collarbone and sending shivers down her back. She tugged at his shirt. When it came away over his head, she ran her hand over the smooth muscle, the soft hair trailing down to the waistband of his pants. He unbuttoned her shirt and pushed it off her shoulders. Erin, braless, had the cool night air run over her flesh before the warmth of his mouth replaced it. She arched her back, sliding her hands under his waistband as he pulled her down to his mouth again.
“Bed,” he said in her ear. “Right now.”
Later, they lay in the bunk’s twisted sheets, listening to the gentle wash of swell against the jetty piles. Erin’s fingers were still twined in Alex’s, her head against his shoulder. She’d half-expected him to be searching for his pants, making fast work of getting off the boat. That had often been her experience, sleeping with men she didn’t know so well, no matter what port she’d been in, no matter how amazing the experience.
But Alex didn’t seem to be going anywhere. And when he did finally say something, it wasn’t anything close to what she expected.
“How long have you had this boat?”
Erin laughed. “A few years.”
“Looks like it’s done a few miles.”
She softly snorted. “Yeah, a few. Across the Pacific four times, who knows how many trips from here to Sydney. Auckland, too. I’ve lived on it, except when I had to fly somewhere.”
“Nice,” he said, simply.
“Dad helped me pick it out,” she said. “She was run down, and the interior was a mess. The whole thing smelled like weed and garbage. She was part of some divorce dispute – been sitting in a marina rotting away while the lawyers fought it out. Some local kids were using it as a hang out. But it had good bones, and I’d never have afforded anything better. We stripped it out and fixed her up. You’d never know now.”
Alex moved a warm hand to her waist. “You don’t talk much about your Dad. Everyone says they loved him. And now, I’m working out of his office. Does it upset you?”
Erin shifted onto her side away from him, so the pressure in her chest could drain itself in tears, without having to show him her face. He slid his arms around her. “I’m sorry,” he said softly. “Insensitive question. Talk about something else.”
“Like what?”
“You ever done the Sydney to Hobart?”
“Sure, a few times,” she said, sucking back the emotion into its proper hidden place. But it was still pushing at the edges of her soul, and so she found herself telling him something she hadn’t mentioned in many, many years.
“My first Sydney to Hobart was in 1998,” she said. “When that huge storm hit the fleet. We’d had a bad start, so we were lagging well back in the field. Dad saw the weather reports coming in, saw other people pushing ahead, but he kept looking at the horizon and saying he didn’t like it. It got rougher and rougher. I remember being cold and soaked through, and we weren’t even in the worst of it. Dad pulled us out and turned back. I was so disappointed at the time. We only found out later about what happened to everyone else. Six people died. Five boats sank. One of our crew never went out on the water again. They never got over it.”
She stopped, feeling the tension that had developed in Alex’s body, his chest like a brace of steel cables. She turned back over, stroking his skin, until he let out a long breath. “Jesus, Erin. You can’t have been very old.”
“Sixteen,” she answered. “After that year, they changed the rules. Made the minimum eighteen. Required everyone to do survival training, and a bunch of other stuff. It didn’t put me off sailing. But I did get a lesson in who’s in control out there. And it’s not us. Up until then, I trusted my Dad could handle anything – Haven has weird storms as I’m sure you’ve heard, and we’d been out in them before. But after that race, I realised that I had to be smarter than thinking I would always be safe. I don’t love it any less but there’s a time to turn back.”
He made a sound, deep in his chest, pushing himself up on his elbow. “This is going to sound stupid ... but I hate the idea of you out in something like that.”
“That’s because you just slept with me,” Erin teased. “It’s caveman brain. You’ll get over it.”
“I would never stop you,” he said, bending his head to kiss the bare skin along her collarbone, his voice gruff. “But I like you here much better.”
“Better make use of me, then,” she whispered, pulling him close.
Much later, as Alex slept softly beside her, Erin lay awake with memories of her father rushing through her mind. The ninety-eight Sydney to Hobart was a distant memory now, fogged in time. She’d been young; almost too young to trust her own memories of it. But more recent events were very clear. Too clear. A different night, a different storm. And she’d been alone to face that one. So newly alone.
She was glad Alex was asleep, because the pressure of those secrets wanted relief. Here in the quiet with him, she almost felt she could tell him if she wanted to.
The idea was so frightening she dug her fingernails into her palm until they bled.
He left just after dawn, kissing her goodbye all the way to the cabin stairs. Erin stared after him as he sauntered down the jetty like a satisfied man, having no idea what this all meant. She was used to moving from port to port. And for all she knew, so did he. He was a blow-in from the mainland, maybe as intense as a Haven storm, but over just as quickly. But she liked the idea he was here now, and she was already thinking about the next time, about wordlessly undressing him right in the middle of the main cabin. She smiled at the thought even before he was out of sight.
Alex went back to bed at the clinic, sleeping late, and still had a smile on his face when he eventually grabbed a coffee from the bakery around lunch time.
“You’
re awfully happy today,” Sandy commented, clearly suspicious.
“It’s Sunday,” he said. “Sun’s out, slept in, what’s not to be happy about?”
“I hear Erin’s gone over the other side of the island again, plotting the course for the race. That Travers took her round there couple of hours ago in his boat.”
Sandy was clearly fishing with the surest bait she had. Alex rubbed the back of his head as if confused. “Oh yeah, she might have mentioned that.”
Alex could tell Sandy wasn’t buying it; she was convinced something was going on. She was focused on him so intently, she was going to burn the milk. But there was no way Alex was giving up any of the delicious details. If anyone had asked directly, he’d tell them he’d given her a shot for her migraine. Awful things, migraines. No one needed to know it was Erin who’d given him the shot. He hadn’t felt this alive in years.
“I’ll come by in half an hour and do the appointment book for tomorrow,” Sandy said, as she dumped the milk into his coffee.
“Nah, enjoy your Sunday,” Alex said. “I’ll do it myself. And I’ll water the plants.”
He left Sandy in a cloud of voyeuristic frustration and let himself back into the surgery through his room in the back. Courtesy of the wide awnings, the air inside was cool. Alex sipped the coffee, sliding into the front desk chair to dig in the drawer for the appointment book, even as he wondered when Erin and Travers would be done with mapping today. The computer was right in front of him.
He found himself googling Dr Jacobs. Alex knew next to nothing about the man who had used these rooms before him, but Erin had cracked the window open, just barely, and now he wanted to see what was beyond it. He knew Dr Jacobs’ first name had been Bryan – Sandy had hastily removed the name plate from the desk on Alex’s first day. It was still in a storage box that lived in the bottom filing drawer.
Most of the pages Alex turned up were for other Dr Bryan Jacobs. Seemed there were quite a few – an obstetrician in Brisbane, a max-facs surgeon in Melbourne, a dozen others. So he started adding Great Haven to the search, and then he found a scatter of stories from local papers – Dr Jacobs sponsoring renovation work in the children’s ward at the mainland hospital. Dr Jacobs posing with his family on the main beach on Great Haven.
Alex leaned forward to squint at the photo – it was old and pixelated, a black-and-white scan. Anna was young and carefree in the photo, her hair dark and long, her arms around her husband. Skye and Erin came barely to their father’s chest. Skye was a young copy of Anna, Erin so like her father in the slope of her shoulders, the expression on her face – a careful smile, but at the same time, fiercely determined. And there, over Dr Jacobs’ shoulder was Bella’s Leap against the white backdrop of the sky.
Alex closed the page and moved on, but there wasn’t much else to find. Many of the tiny regional papers hadn’t put their back-catalogues up online, if they were still in business. He found brief mentions – regattas and race meets at yacht clubs where B. Jacobs was listed among the winners, or on the organising committee. He had been a community man, through and through. Accomplished in his career, and in his sport. So why wasn’t what had happened to him reported?
It wasn’t until Alex began searching specifically for his death that a story from a yachting quarterly surfaced, and then two others. Dr Bryan Jacobs and his oldest daughter had been sailing across the Pacific when they were caught in a storm. A line had snapped and Dr Jacobs had gone out onto the deck to try to cut away the sail, which had been dragging in the water. His oldest daughter then said that he had been lost overboard, and despite frantic searching in the waves, had lost contact with him. Dr Jacobs’ body had never been recovered. He hadn’t been wearing a harness at the time, or a life jacket, which was highly out of character.
Alex flicked through the different accounts of the accident, all the same. The journalists had obviously taken the information from the same place. A few pictures accompanied the items – old stock photos of Dr Jacobs racing, for when the stories described him as an experienced sailor. Erin reportedly limped the boat into Fiji, and had disappeared without comment. Without compelling pictures, Alex supposed perhaps it hadn’t made much splash in the Australian news. He certainly never remembered hearing about it. But it was odd that such an upstanding member of the local community could depart this world with so little fanfare.
He found only two further sources – one, an item from the mainland paper listing a vale for Dr Jacobs, with interviews with the mainland hospital administration and nurses, all lauding him as a talented doctor and family man. And another, just a few lines in a side bar, saying that the investigation into his death had concluded that he had likely drowned after being lost at sea. And there, the trail seemed to end.
Alex sat back in his chair, mulling. After what Erin had said about the Sydney to Hobart, and her father being cautious and well-prepared, it didn’t make much sense. They must have been unlucky. Lost overboard in a storm. Five simple words that denied the calamity of the sea. And Erin had been there in the middle of it. Frantic, scared, alone.
The idea wrapped him in knots. Because he knew exactly what that was like.
Chapter 17
Monday’s meeting was the flip side of Saturday’s. Erin and the others worked through issues and planning, taking two conference calls with printers and promoters in Sydney and Cairns, all while Tristan sat in the corner, barely saying a word. Erin watched him from the corner of her eye as he nursed a coffee in one of those fancy reusable cups, but didn’t drink it. His attention seemed somewhere else. Erin found this quiet, brooding Tristan more unnerving than the fiery, argumentative one of the last meeting.
Because he wasn’t distracted, not really.
She was almost sure he was angry.
She could feel him radiating displeasure, so intense it almost made the air shimmer around him like a mirage. The others had noticed too; Troy and Benny had dropped their voices, and Kit, who tended to be the comedian, loosening up the suppliers with jokes, had lost her sense of humour. All of them made a quick exit when Erin called a lunch break, leaving Erin and Tristan alone in the meeting room.
The ticking of laptops shutting down was the only noise for three long minutes. Erin wasn’t keen to stand in front of whatever speeding truck of frustration Tristan had going on; maybe it was about a short piece in the news yesterday about some merger Drummond Industries was involved in, and it being held up or subject to government oversight, or something. But they were too short on time. With less than four weeks to race day, they couldn’t afford impediments, especially in the form of the company’s short-tempered CEO.
“Want to clue me in on what’s bothering you?” she asked.
He raised an eyebrow. “I would have thought that was obvious.”
She pulled her chair around to face him, wondering if he was offended that she’d skipped out on the dinner with Skye. “Sorry, my mind-reading’s on the blink today.”
“How’s the migraine?” he asked, with a very direct stare.
So it was about the dinner.
“Look, Tristan, I didn’t know Skye had invited you. I just didn’t want to spend an evening with her questions.”
Tristan stood up, pacing to the window where he squinted out into the overgrown garden, which had once lined the resort’s western-most pool. He hadn’t removed his suit jacket today, the slate designer grey just like the Haven thunderclouds.
“You know what I can’t stand?” he said. “When people lie to me. I don’t care when people don’t agree with me, but lying is a weakness. It’s the easy way out. And if someone’s lying, I can’t trust them. So I have to ask myself, why am I trusting you?”
Erin’s stomach clenched and her skin tightened across the back of her neck. “I don’t know what you’re saying.”
“Four days ago, you told me you weren’t interested in a relationship. That there wasn’t anyone else. Did you really expect someone wouldn’t see? I was quite off the money, wasn�
�t I, asking you about the diver boy. No, you’re screwing a real genuine doctor instead.”
Erin stared into Tristan’s angry eyes, her cheeks burning. “That’s none of your business.”
“Oh, isn’t it? I’d say it’s my business when someone I’ve employed demonstrates their casual disregard for the truth.”
Erin tried not to remember the last time they’d been in a real argument, but she couldn’t help that day coming to mind. Years ago, on the mainland, when she’d been about to leave for a competition and he’d still been an up-and-comer, far from the high-powered business man he was today. But it was the same look in his eye, the same rage on his tongue. She couldn’t even remember how that argument had started back then, but she remembered exactly the way it had ended. In the years since she’d doubted how she’d acted, then.
She didn’t now.
She stood and gathered her notes, very carefully to disguise the shaking. “I’m not working for someone who can’t respect the difference between my work and my private life. And I’m not going to ever be in that situation with you again, Tristan.” She met his eyes. “Never again.”
“I have no idea what you’re—”
“Never again,” she said, and walked out. Onto the parched grass crackling under her boat shoes, across the sand-covered pavers and through the construction fence. Shit, she thought, over and over. Shit, shit, shit. She’d been stupid to work with him. Shit, there went the whole deal to help the village.
He caught up with her just before the main beach.
“Erin, wait.”
She kept walking.
“Just stop, will you.”
She turned. “What?”
He was puffing, for once looking out of place, no longer the man in control of his world. He tried to step closer and she stepped back.
“Look, I probably deserve that,” he said.
“Probably?”
“Okay, I do.”
Erin huffed a breath, looking down at the sand. “You asked me before why we broke up years ago. Well you know exactly why, so don’t pretend.” Erin pushed the words out around the blockage in her chest. She could taste blood in her mouth again, like the night she’d walked out on him. Blood from where he’d hit her.
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