“She said Bram saved her.”
“Yes, that’s right. He did.”
“And she’s not hurt or anything?”
“She has a sore paw, but it’ll heal. What happened next, Georgie?”
“I went back to find Jay, but he’d gone. I was scared and my torch went out and I ran too and… and then…”
“Shh, it’s all right, baby, I know the rest,” Regan soothed. “You don’t have to tell me any more now. And don’t worry, Jay won’t get into trouble, I promise. But he can’t live in a cave, you know that don’t you?”
Georgie nodded and Regan just hoped the boy had made it to the cave and was still there.
CHAPTER SIX
It seemed as if the whole town had turned out to search for Jay. His mother was full of what she was going to do to him when she got hold of him and Regan didn’t believe a word of it. Katie was just desperate and almost out of her mind with fear and worry. Regan herself was filled with trepidation. If they found him and it was a very big if, then the chances of him being unhurt were slim.
Over twelve hours had passed since Georgie’s rescue and the tide was high again which hampered their efforts. The weather had calmed, the rain had stopped and the Molly Jane was patrolling a few hundred metres from shore, but as the tide began to recede there was still no sign of the little boy. Regan stood apart from everyone else on the beach.
She felt numb with exhaustion, but knew if she went to bed right now she wouldn’t be able to sleep knowing another child was out here somewhere, especially when that child was Jay.
“I’m going to head along the beach towards the cliff,” a voice said as a hand gripped her arm. “You coming?”
“Bram!”
“None other,” he said grimly. “I had no idea there was another kid out here last night. If I had…”
“Don’t blame yourself,” Regan said. “There was no way anyone could have known Jay was out here. Georgie was so determined not to betray her friend. She’s a very loyal little girl.”
“Well,” he said. “I’d certainly want her on my team. What were they playing at, do you know?”
“Jay thought if he ran away from home, he could blackmail his parents into getting back together,” Regan explained.
“Ah, kid logic,” he said. “And is there any chance of that happening?”
“I don’t know,” Regan sighed. “They’ve lived apart for a couple of years, but he’s been around a lot lately.”
“A kid needs both parents,” Bram said fiercely.
“In a perfect world,” Regan muttered. “Sometimes two parents aren’t any better than one. Sometimes they’re worse. There are no ideals.”
She knew that from experience.
He stood, bracing himself on the rocks, staring up and down the beach. There was still enough of a breeze to ruffle his hair. Then he looked down at her and her heart flipped.
“You’re hardly dressed for the beach,” he said and Regan was aware of her lightweight jacket, the one she wore to drive or to go shopping. The chill went right through it and she felt cold in her bones, but she didn’t want to leave the search just to find something different to wear.
Her uniform wasn’t meant for outdoors and her bare legs were frozen, Her shoes were already rubbing her heels. A little discomfort was nothing though. All that mattered was finding Jay.
Before she could say anything, Bram was sliding his leather jacket from his shoulders and holding it for her.
“Oh, no, I couldn’t.”
“Stop arguing and put it on,” he said. “At least wear it till you warm up a bit. You’re freezing and the last thing we need is people collapsing on us.”
“Don’t worry. If I’ll collapse I’ll try not to knock anyone else over,” she said and he laughed softly.
The jacket was warm from his body and smelled faintly of him. She nestled inside its soft lining and remembered when she’d felt the direct warmth of his body rather than his second hand but very welcome heat.
“You okay over the rocks?”
She nodded. “I’m pretty sure the cave Jay was planning to live in is just round here. I used to play in it when I was a kid. We all did. My parents would have had a fit if they’d known.”
“You?” Bram laughed. “Climbing cliffs?”
She bit her lip and gave him a sheepish smile. Maybe Georgie hadn’t got all her recklessness from her father’s side after all. Come to think of it, she had been quite a little daredevil herself when she was little. Nothing used to frighten her. It was only when she grew up and fell in love that she truly began to know the real meaning of fear. And now she was a parent, her fear knew no bounds.
She hadn’t been able to live with the fear of losing Bram, but when it came to her daughter she had no choice. There was no walking away. She’d learned a lot from being a mother. If only she’d had that knowledge before she let Bram go.
“I was young once you know,” she said lightly. “We used to make camps in there. But Bram, we always climbed up from the beach, not down from the cliff top.”
She shivered thinking of Jay trying to climb down the side of the cliff in last night’s storm. He must have been driven by such desperation.
Some of the others were approaching from the other end of the beach and more people were up on the top or further down near the dunes searching the beach huts.
Eventually they’d meet the people coming from the opposite direction and by then the tide would be out further and they would start searching along the water’s edge, following the tide out, hoping against hope there was nothing to find on the shore.
“Are you limping?” Regan asked.
“Me? No! Well, maybe a little,” he said. “Might’ve twisted my ankle a bit last night, but…”
“But nothing! What are you doing down here climbing about over rocks?” Regan sighed. “You don’t change do you, Bram? How can you expect anyone to care about you when you don’t give a damn about yourself?”
He gave her a look, the kind of look that turned her stomach to jelly.
“Who said no one cared about me?” he said and she was taken aback. She’d assumed that he, like her, was still on his own. What a stupid thing to think.
Bram was gorgeous, a wonderful man, so easy to love despite being the most annoying man she’d ever known. It was unthinkable that he wouldn’t have been snapped up. And snapped up by someone with more courage than she had.
She stopped between the rocks and looked up at him, then took a step and her foot sank into the mud almost up to her knee. She shrieked with surprise and Bram leapt forward and grabbed her. He was laughing as he tried to pull her free of the sucky mud and Regan felt her shoe go and knew she’d just lost one of the most comfortable shoes she’d ever owned.
At last her foot came free of the mud, streaked with black and grey and minus the shoe. She wrenched herself away from Bram, pulled the other shoe off and hurled it at the sea with a yell of fury.
“Good work,” Bram said, still laughing, blue eyes twinkling. “That’ll show it.”
She was even shorter now and glared up at him furiously.
“Come on,” she said. “We have a lost child to find. There is nothing to laugh about.”
Her words sobered him and he followed her across the rocks. She knew where she was headed and he had to follow.
What she wanted was to put as much distance between them as possible. His arms around her, even if he was pulling her out of a hole, had been ever so slightly unbearable. Not in an unpleasant way either, which made it more unbearable still. Maybe if it was unpleasant all of this would be easier to handle, but the strength of her feelings for him even after all this time, had caught her completely off guard.
Bram watched her slip and slide over the rocks and step over stones and mud in her bare feet and he could hardly believe this was the Regan he knew and used to love. Used to, he reminded himself. Used to. Couldn’t say it enough times, but he was yet to convince himself that there was any “used to” about
it. She was as sure footed as a wading bird and knew exactly where to step and where to avoid. He followed closely in her footsteps.
All that time they’d been a couple, living together, loving each other and he’d never seen this side of her, never seen the beach urchin she truly was. Regan had always been a little bit prim up there on her high horse. It felt strange to see her with her feet firmly planted on the ground.
In some places she stretched her arms out to her sides for balance, but the sleeves of his jacket were so long on her that her hands disappeared. In other places she hopped from rock to rock like a mountain goat. Fascinating to watch, but Bram kept one eye on the ground around them, looking for evidence he hoped not to see.
“My God!” She stopped dead ahead of him, staring at something caught between the rocks.
“What is it?” He hurried to her side as she bent down and picked up a small red shoe.
“It’s Georgie’s,” she whispered, hugging it against her chest. The little shoe was sodden wet and full of sand. Green weed had stuck to the Velcro strap. The tide must have picked it up and spat it out again.
“I don’t expect she’ll want it back,” he said.
But it was strange, the sight of that little shoe had been like a kick in the stomach for him too. It was a stark symbol of what could have been, how differently this could have ended for that little girl. Strange to feel so emotional about a kid they’d both seen for the first time last night, but what a kid! “Throw it away, Regan. It’s no use now it’s been in the sea. Her parents won’t want it back.”
But she was hugging it against her as if her life depended on it and big fat tears were rolling down her face. He’d seen her get emotional before. Usually when she was dead on her feet and often when he’d got hurt.
Yet at Tom’s funeral she’d been icily calm. Pale faced. Cool. No tears. He blinked the memory away because every time he thought about Tom, he remembered how he’d hung on to him in the water, telling him they were going to be okay.
They’d got to be. Tom had two small children. But he hadn’t been okay. Even as Bram struggled to keep him afloat, it was already too late. The only thing Bram had been able to do was to spare Tom’s widow of the agony of waiting for a body to wash up on the beach.
There was nothing icy or cool about Regan now. She was coming apart at the seams!
Her nose had gone red and when she looked up at him, eyes huge and moist with tears, he felt a kick in his gut. She cuffed the end of her nose with the heel of her hand. He reached out for her, but she took a step backwards and he could see she was making a huge effort to compose herself.
“It’s up there,” she said, pointing up the cliff. “The cave.”
She pressed the shoe into his hands.
“I’ll go up and see if there’s any sign of him,” she went on.
“No, you…”
“Oh, pipe down, Bram! You don’t have to do every damn thing yourself you know and I’ve done this a lot of times. With your twisted ankle and your sore back – and don’t tell me it isn’t sore! I saw you wincing when you were going over the rocks. There’s no way you’re climbing up there.”
There was no point arguing the toss with her. He knew from experience that once Regan Tyler had made up her mind about something, there was no stopping her. And she was right. His back was sore. Worse than sore and his ankle was giving him hell. There was no way he wanted to climb up that cliff. But he didn’t want her doing it either.
He hadn’t come back here, found her again only to promptly lose her. He still had quite a lot of work to do as far as Regan Tyler was concerned, but he hadn’t given up hope just yet. She hurried over to the foot of the cliff and looked up, no doubt planning her route.
He tapped her on the shoulder and she turned round.
“Actually I was going to say I’d call one of the other guys to go up, Regan,” he said quietly and he could practically see the wind falling out of her sails. “I might be reckless, but I’m not stupid and I don’t think you are either.”
“I know what I’m doing,” she said and before he could stop her, she was crawling up the rock like a spider. After all she’d said to him about putting his life in danger, there she was doing exactly the same thing.
Okay, it wasn’t a high climb, but it was a slippery one and if she fell she probably wouldn’t kill herself, but if she hit her head…
“Regan, wait!”
She was finding purchase on the slippery, weed covered rocks and grasped a handful of weed to pull herself up and it broke free. He couldn’t be sure, but he could have sworn he heard her fingernails snap. He held up his arms ready to catch her, but she halted her slide and carried on up, more determined than ever.
This was not the Regan Tyler he knew, or thought he knew. The Regan Tyler he knew wouldn’t be climbing up rocks and she’d definitely be more coy about showing off her underwear.
“What are you laughing at?” she called down.
“Just enjoying the view.”
“Look the other way, Fletcher.”
He stopped laughing, reminding himself why she was climbing up the cliff. You had to laugh sometimes or you’d go mad, but he had an awful feeling that there wouldn’t be anything to smile about today.
“Just be careful,” he said soberly.
Regan pushed herself forward onto her stomach and slithered into the shallow cave. Amazing how the technique all came back to her despite it being many years since she’d done it. It hurt a lot more now though than it did when she was a kid.
There were signs of a camp, but it was an old one, probably left over from last summer which was when the local kids tended to play down here. Some things never changed she thought wryly. Kids were always up for a bit of adventure away from the television and computer games.
But it meant that Jay hadn’t been here. She was bitterly disappointed. She’d hoped to crawl in and find him huddled up in blankets looking sorry for himself or at least to find some of his stuff.
And now she had to get back down again. How could she have forgotten how hard that was? Getting up to the cave was the easy part. Getting down was another animal entirely.
Getting down was cutting yourself on sharp barnacles and jagged stone and bruising yourself on lumps of unforgiving rock. And it was one thing to get those kind of wounds when you were ten years old and shrugged off such things, but when you were a grown woman of twenty-nine with a lot less bounce and a lot more fear, it was quite another.
And why oh why hadn’t she grabbed trousers when she got dressed?
Just how did she used to do it? She looked up. There was always the choice of keeping on right to the top. At least then she wouldn’t have to look down. When she did look down she saw Bram looking up at her, arms folded across his broad chest and fought back a wave of dizziness. Ugh, it looked a long way to the bottom.
“Nothing,” she called down, trying to hide the wobble in her voice. “No sign of him at all.” She wasn’t sure if that was a good or a bad thing. Her heart hoped it was a good thing, but her head told her something else. Georgie said he’d disappeared and Jay wasn’t the sort of boy to have gone off and left Georgie behind. Not deliberately.
“Come on down then,” he said. He knew very well that coming down was harder than going up. She had no idea how to even start.
“I can’t,” she admitted.
“Why not? You want to stay up there and live in a cave? Your bed would get wet every time there was a spring tide and you’d end up smelling like a fish.”
Damn him, this wasn’t funny. She was tired, wrung out and she just wanted to be back on the beach so she could continue looking for Jay who was probably hiding out somewhere with absolutely no idea that such a big search was taking place. At least she still hoped he was, because she was not going to listen to that voice in her head telling her they were too late.
Maybe he hadn’t disappeared at all. Perhaps he was there and saw Georgie go over the cliff and panicked. He might even
have made his way home and be hiding under his bed or something equally daft. She hoped so. She hoped so with all her heart.
“Want me to come up and get you?”
“No!” she said. “Not with your back and your ankle.”
“Well I can’t leave them on the beach,” he said.
“Oh, ha ha,” she said sarcastically, but still she couldn’t stop a smile twitching the corners of her lips.
He looked up and grasped a handful of weed, shoving his foot into a dent in the rocks.
“Bram, don’t you dare come up here. Stay where you are. I’ll get down somehow and if I can’t, then…” she looked upwards. “I’ll just keep going up. I’ve done it before.”
Going up was easier than coming down.
“Now that really would be stupid,” Bram said and he was already six feet off the beach. “I’m not coming all the way up to you, just far enough to guide you down. Okay?”
She wanted to tell him to get lost, but she knew she needed help and there was nothing to gain by trying to do it on her own. Except maybe a few broken bones and a badly bruised ego.
“Okay,” she said reluctantly and when he was just a few feet below her, he told her to turn round and come back down towards him.
“I’ll guide your feet into place,” he said. “Trust me.”
Trust him? But what choice did she have? Very soon others would join them and she’d be showing off her lack of climbing skills not to mention her knickers to half the town.
“Okay, Regan, keep coming, keep coming… steady… that’s it. There.”
He reached up and guided her foot into a dip.
“Now the other one. Slowly, honey, relax. You’re doing fine.”
It went perfectly well until her foot slipped and she began to slide. Her knees scraped painfully against the rock and she landed back against Bram, pushing him away from the cliff face and sending them both into a fall.
She screamed, but it was cut abruptly short.
They’d only fallen a few feet and she’d landed on top of him, luckily on the sand.
Dangerous Love Page 6