‘Or a diplocaulus,’ Henry ventured and Matt thought... What?
But the conversation continued without a pause. ‘It could be a very small diplocaulus,’ Meg said, appearing to consider. ‘Some pictures I’ve seen have fin-like feathering on their tails like this.’
‘What’s a diplocaulus?’ he asked, and both Meg and Henry looked at him as if they were astounded someone wouldn’t know.
‘It was a kind of shark,’ Henry said with patience. ‘It lived about three hundred million years ago, and it had a head like a boomerang. That made it hard for other things to swallow it.’
‘Which seems a good reason to have a boomerang-shaped head,’ Meg said, and she grinned.
And he thought, She’s beautiful. No, more than beautiful. She’s stunning.
She wasn’t his kind of woman. Not in a million years.
The women Matt associated with were part of his corporate world, socially elite. There’d never been anyone special enough to make him think of long-term commitment, but at some time in the future he imagined one of these women could become his wife. She’d be a woman who fitted seamlessly into the world he moved in, with her own career, her own identity, but who understood the needs his high-pressured job put on him.
Meg was so much out of that mould that maybe it was like the... What had they been talking of? The diplocaulus. With her bare feet, her torn jeans and stained windcheater, with her freckled nose, her badly cut copper curls, her wide green eyes... It was as if she’d come from a different planet from the one he inhabited.
But she was, indeed, beautiful.
‘What?’ she said and he realised he was staring.
‘I... Sorry. It’s just...the women in the circles I move in don’t fish.’
‘Is that a rule?’
He gathered his wits—with difficulty. ‘We don’t have a lot of places to fish in Manhattan.’
‘And yet you know your way round boats.’
‘My family’s always had a home in the Hamptons.’
‘Where’s that?
‘It’s on the South Fork of Long Island.’ He reached for his phone to show her a map. And remembered. There wasn’t a lot of internet access here.
She saw the motion and her smile returned. It really was dazzling. Her nose was snub. She had the remains of zinc on her nose—she’d insisted they use expensive sun lotion on the boat but she obviously preferred the old-fashioned kind. It must have its limitations, though. Her eyes crinkled at the edges, presumably because of too much exposure to water-reflected sun. A fault?
No. She was definitely beautiful.
‘So the Hamptons are where your mum and dad live?’
‘We use it for holidays.’
‘Gorgeous. Did you have it when you were a kid?’
‘We’ve had it for generations.’
‘There are holiday cottages like that in Rowan Bay,’ she said. ‘They look like they’re held up with string, but generation after generation arrive, summer after summer. A stovetop, bunks, a cold shower and the beach at the door. They love them. Is that what your place is like?’
‘Um...no.’ McLellan Place?
‘It does run to hot water,’ he admitted.
‘Luxury.’ The smile seemed irrepressible. ‘We have hot water at our...at my place, too.’
He got the our versus my. He saw the cloud.
‘Is that the place you shared with your grandfather?’
Where had that come from? Asking personal questions of someone he’d hired as a marine taxi driver wasn’t his style. She wasn’t a taxi driver now, though. She had her arm around Henry while he was concentrating on his line. What did you pay for making a kid relax? Personal interest seemed the least he could do, and, besides, he genuinely wanted to know.
And she told him. ‘I did live with my grandpa,’ she said. ‘I told you back at the office. He died six months ago and I miss him. I guess you feel exactly the same, Henry, missing your mom and all.’
And that pretty much took his breath away.
Henry hadn’t talked about his mother. Not once. Henry had been drawing dinosaurs before they’d left the office the day his mother had died, big dinosaurs on a huge sketchpad his mother had left him. He’d kept drawing in the days that had followed, but the dinosaurs had become very small.
So now Matt expected Henry to close down, as he’d closed every time his mother had been mentioned. But he was still encircled by Meg’s arm. Boof was nestled on his other side. They were watching the float above the hook on the end of the fishing line. No pressure.
‘I miss her at night,’ Henry whispered. ‘She always comes in to say goodnight, even if it’s really late. I make myself stay awake. Me and Teddy. Now we stay awake and stay awake and she doesn’t come.’
There was a gut clencher.
His heart seemed to close down in sympathy. Empathy?
Suddenly he was remembering years of waiting for his socialite parents to come home. Their steps on the stairs.
Goodnight, darling...
The flashback hit hard. He winced. This was not about him. He hadn’t lost his parents when he was a child. His father had died three years ago, of a coronary probably brought on by years of too much wine, too many cigars. His mother was still in his orbit although rarely coming close, expending her energy in keeping her place in New York’s social hierarchy.
He struggled to think of something to say. Anything.
But Meg was before him. ‘I bet your mom still says goodnight to you,’ she said, almost conversationally.
‘She’s dead.’
‘So’s my grandpa. At night, in bed, knowing he’s not in the next room, it hurts so much sometimes I feel like my chest is about to burst. But if I close my eyes, if I sing to myself, a song Grandpa taught me, or if I think of something we both liked—like dinosaurs—then I know that somehow Grandpa’s still with me. Not really, of course, not in the way he was there when he told me off for wearing muddy shoes in the house. Just...it feels like he still loves me. I feel him when I need him. Henry, I reckon you could feel your mom like that.’
‘My chest hurts, too,’ Henry whispered.
Matt thought, Ditto.
‘Your grandma will tell you stories about your mom,’ he managed. ‘Your grandma loves your mom, Henry.’
‘And I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if your grandma says goodnight to you every night, as well,’ Meg added. ‘But meanwhile, Henry, that float’s wobbling. I reckon there’s a fish about to bite.’
‘Yes!’ said Henry, lighting up again. Fish were immediate. Fish were now. He stared intently at the definitely wobbling float. Conversation over.
Matt expected Meg to turn her attention to the float as well. Instead she turned her gaze to him and her look was...thoughtful? Speculative?
More. The way he was feeling about Henry... In Meg’s eyes he could almost read the same, but for some reason it didn’t seem like sympathy toward Henry. Her emotions seemed directed to him.
How much was she seeing?
This was crazy. It was ridiculous to think this woman could sense the emptiness he shared with Henry.
And he didn’t share it. Not any more. It was simply that Henry’s loneliness had struck a chord.
But had that loneliness killed something? He’d tried his best over the last couple of weeks to find some way to comfort Henry, to give him time out from his grief, but his approaches had been stilted. He knew they had. Henry had become more and more exhausted with his fear of an unknown future, and Matt had found no way to break through.
This woman, though... From the time she’d grasped Henry’s hand and shaken it, adult to adult, to now... She’d been giving Henry time out, and she’d been doing it almost instinctively. How did she do that?
And what was with the way she looked at him? As if he needed sympathy, too?
‘I’ll check the fire,’ he said, a bit too roughly, and her smile came back. But this time her smile was different.
‘You do that,’ she said. ‘We’ll need it to stay warm tonight.’ And then she turned back to Henry as the float plunged underneath the water. ‘Henry, we’ve got one. Ooh, look at him. Trevally! Careful, hold steady but no tugging. Hooray, Henry, we might be about to meet our dinner.’
CHAPTER FIVE
GIVEN THE CIRCUMSTANCES, it was an excellent dinner.
Meg was obviously an old hand at cooking fish. She wrapped it whole in damp seaweed, then buried it in hot ash. Half an hour later she dug it out and lifted the charred seaweed away. They used their fingers to lift away chunks of the succulent flesh and Matt thought he’d never tasted such fish.
Even Henry, who’d eaten birdlike portions over the last couple of weeks, enjoyed his. It might have been because he was sharing with Boof. The fish they’d caught was big enough for them all, but Meg discussed rules with Henry before they ate.
‘Boof eats doggy kibbles. You fed him on the boat so he shouldn’t be hungry. Sometimes, though, I give him me-food as a treat, but he’s not allowed to ask. I eat three bites and give him one. Then three more bites and one for him.’
It sounded an unlikely rule. Matt raised an eyebrow and Meg smiled. As Henry started on his first bite, Meg sent him a conspiratorial wink.
She had him entranced. He watched Henry do the three-one rule and he thought, How clever was that? She’d seamlessly persuaded Henry to eat three pieces of fish before he could feed Boof. The fish went down, then Henry shared his muesli bar.
With Henry fed, safe, warm, the little boy leaned against Meg and listened as she told him about the evening star, just starting to appear as the light faded.
She told him of an Aboriginal legend: two beautiful sisters, escaping danger, one flying all the way into the night sky to become the evening star, then using her powers to watch over her earthbound sister and keep her safe.
Meg was sure she was also watching over them.
Yep, he was definitely entranced.
The dark descended and Henry fell asleep. Meg went to lift him, to carry him to the tender but Matt was before her.
‘Give me a break,’ he told her. ‘I’ve watched you save us from fire, provide us with a campsite, catch our dinner. I need at least one opportunity to be manly.’
‘Or one excuse to give Henry a hug,’ Meg said as he lifted Henry into his arms and that made him blink, too.
She made him transparent.
She made him feel...vulnerable?
That was dumb, but as he carried the sleeping child to the tender, as he settled him on its air-filled base and tucked a thermal blanket around him, making sure Teddy was close, his feeling of vulnerability increased.
Why?
It was obvious, he told himself. He was somewhere in the Southern Ocean, stranded after a fire that could easily have killed them.
Matt McLellan was a man to whom control was everything. He’d been born to inherited wealth, and his financial acumen had seen that wealth increase tenfold. He was one of Manhattan’s movers and shakers.
But this situation wasn’t frightening. Yes, they were stranded but Peggy would contact the authorities. They had fresh water, they had fire and they had food. Thanks to Meg and her blessed bag.
And that was where his thoughts paused. Meg.
Meg, who worked for a company that had nearly killed him.
Meg, who made a little boy chuckle.
Meg, who looked at him as if she saw inside.
That was being dumb. She didn’t see anything, or, if she did, maybe it was just that shock had meant his face was less than impassive.
But the thought still had him unnerved. He spent longer than he needed making sure Henry’s blanket was tucked around him, giving himself space. He needed to focus on imperatives. Making contact with the outside world.
But for some reason his thoughts were stalling there as well. For the time being they were safe. The weather was kind. Something about this situation—or was it something about Meg?—was helping Henry put aside the trauma of the last weeks. To be honest, Matt was feeling the same. He wouldn’t mind a little longer...
Or not. Was he thinking? He needed to hand Henry to his grandmother, make sure he was safe and then get back to the world he knew. He didn’t need to get any more involved. The last two weeks had hauled him out of his comfort zone, facing emotion he didn’t know how to deal with.
Meg knew how to deal with it. She was warm, funny, empathic. She was all the things he wasn’t. She provided things he’d been trained since birth not to need.
He turned back to the fire. Meg was sitting on a driftwood log. Her face was lit by the flames. She looked...
It didn’t matter how she looked. It didn’t matter that something within him was telling him to ignore what he needed to do and go sit beside Meg.
Moving on. He rose and headed for her blessed bag, stooping to forage.
‘What are you looking for?’ she asked. ‘Don’t you dare eat the orange-and-chocolate muesli bars. I’ve saved them for breakfast. If you eat them now, we’ll be reduced to the bran-and-oatmeal ones.’
‘I’m looking for something to save us from bran and oatmeal. Yes!’ He tugged flares from the base of the bag.
‘I already thought about the flares,’ she said diffidently. ‘But it seems unsafe.’
‘Because Peggy might see them from Garnett?’ He guessed her thinking on this one. Peggy seeing was one thing. What Peggy did with that knowledge was another.
‘Our rescue’s not urgent,’ Meg explained. ‘We’re within sight of Garnett Island. It’s still maybe half an hour away in a decent boat, but a flare could well be seen over there. But Peggy’ll have been expecting her grandson and by now she’ll be terrified something’s happened. I’m hoping she’ll have contacted the authorities, which means they’ll be organising a search, but that won’t start until dawn. If she sees a flare now, it could be from a sinking boat. If she thinks that... If it was my grandson, I’d be in a boat, heading out, no matter how elderly I am or what condition my boat is in.’
‘I agree,’ he said, setting the flares in a row. ‘Twelve flares. Excellent.’
‘So what I just said?’
‘Factored in, but my plan is to try to stop her spending the night out of her mind with worry. I’ve been trying to put myself in her shoes. If I were Peggy, I’d have radioed the authorities but I wouldn’t stop there. I’d be scanning the sea, waiting, hoping. So my current plan is to use more of this excellent driftwood to light three burning fires along the top of the cliff. Spaced so they look as if they’ve been deliberately lit and they can’t be mistaken for a burning boat. I imagine they’ll still be hard to see from Garnett, but if we light the flares, I hope she’ll see a flash and focus. The fires should be spots of light visible by the naked eye and easily seen with field glasses. She sounded sensible when I talked to her. I imagine she’ll figure where we are, which means tomorrow we’ll be rescued without the need for an expensive search. And she’ll sleep...not easy but maybe she won’t be in total meltdown.’
There was a moment’s silence. A long one. And then, for some reason, Meg’s eyes welled. She swiped a tear away with what seemed anger, and when she spoke again her voice was choked. ‘That’s...that’s a great plan. And kind.’
‘Self-preserving. We’ll be rescued sooner.’
‘You know we’ll be rescued. But to think of Peggy... Matt, that’s brilliant. I’ll help you collect driftwood. We just need to climb...’
‘No,’ he said forcibly. ‘Meg, there’s not a snowball’s chance in hell that you’re doing more tonight. I can still hear the smoke in your lungs. There’s no way you’re climbing cliffs.’
‘I’m responsible,’ she said miserably. ‘You paid me, and I
got you into this mess.’
‘I paid your boss, and your boss was paying you to be at the wheel of an unseaworthy boat. We’re in the same mess, except you’ve been injured and I haven’t. Also... Meg, Henry’s asleep and if he wakes, do you think I want him alone? He needs one of us here and you’re elected.’
And then, because he could see a tear tracking its way down her smoke-stained face in the firelight—he didn’t know what that tear was about but he was stopping it regardless—he cupped her chin and wiped it away with his finger.
‘Put the albuterol in your pocket in case you need it,’ he told her. ‘Then get into the tender with Henry and stay there. Tug another thermal blanket around you. Hug Boof. Hug Henry if he needs it. But see if you can sleep. I’ll keep the fires going, Meg, and I’ll keep watch.’
‘In case of werewolves?’ She was struggling to sound light.
‘Yep. No werewolf will get past me and my trusty...’ He searched the ground for something weapon-like and found a flare. ‘Me and my trusty flare. And I have twelve of ’em.’
And she chuckled. It was a choked kind of chuckle but it sounded...okay.
‘Take Boof,’ she managed. ‘He’s good at werewolves.’
‘Really?’
‘In all the years I’ve had him, I haven’t been troubled by a werewolf once.’
‘That’s a huge recommendation,’ he said. For some reason he was still cupping her chin. Smiling down at her. ‘But you know what? I’ll cope with my own werewolves. Boof’s staying here to cope with yours.’
* * *
She followed orders and it felt wrong.
Or maybe not wrong. Strange. Someone else was in charge of her world.
She should feel terrible. She’d lost the boat. She’d almost killed her paying customers and she knew already that Charlie would put the blame squarely on her. If this guy was to sue—and he was a hotshot US lawyer so that was well within the realms of possibility—she already knew she’d be thrown to the wolves.
Cinderella and the Billionaire Page 5