He thought it through. Thought of all the preconceptions he’d had of her. Felt ashamed.
‘She really is a loner,’ he said at last, because he couldn’t think of anything else to say. Gina was speaking almost impersonally, and he sensed making it all about Babs might make it possible for her to go on. Her tone said sympathy wasn’t required.
And he sensed right. She nodded.
‘She surely is. Even now, when she’s grateful to have someone staying—I know she truly is scared—she’s relieved when I leave the house. Did you know she got jilted three days before her wedding? Grandma told me that. She’s been a recluse most of her life. Just like you.’
‘Hey.’
She raised her brows, the grimness of the story fading a little as she gave the hint of a teasing smile. ‘What, you’re not a recluse?’
‘I just like my own company.’
‘Fair enough.’
Silence. A long silence.
If he’d had to predict, he thought he was expecting questions. Tit for tat? ‘What happened to you? Why do you have a limp? Why have you locked yourself away?’
Instead she gazed ahead at the road and seemed to drift into thought. It was a restful silence, though. No pressure.
He was still thinking of a fifteen-year-old stuck on a mountain with her dead parents. Of a kid with a pet ferret. Of a brick.
Tit for tat? Fair enough.
Maybe it was time to break his silence.
He motioned to the little dog on Gina’s knee, took a hand from the steering wheel and gave him a brief pat.
‘I guess I was lucky my Hoppy didn’t meet the same fate as your Arsenic,’ he said slowly, and she nodded again, as if she’d been expecting this twist in the conversation.
‘So he had quarantine issues?’
‘Quarantine here was the least of it. One of my team scooped him up after I was injured and arranged to keep him for me, even transporting him back to Australia. When I got out of rehab, one of the people in my team presented him to me, everything arranged. I’d been treated by an army shrink, and maybe he’d told them how much I’d need him.’
He cast a glance at her and thought, hell, what was he doing, talking about the past? But after what she’d gone through...
‘I was working with an international medical aid team,’ he told her. ‘We’d set up within a peace-keeping army base, in a country that’d been ripped apart by war. We weren’t working for the army but were there to look after traumatised locals. There’d been an arrangement that the defence forces would provide us with security, but that was getting harder as the peace negotiations broke down. The last few months were tough.’ He was trying to keep his voice light, as if it were no big deal. As if he didn’t still wake thinking of the things he’d had to deal with even before the bomb blast.
‘Hoppy was a stray, a starving mutt in a village where needs were everywhere,’ he continued, fighting to keep emotion at bay. ‘He hung round our camp and decided I was his new best friend. Wherever I went he seemed to follow. A few of the nurses started feeding him. I didn’t—I was hard-hearted enough to accept we’d have to leave, and his best bet was to attach to a local—but still he followed me. And then, the night of the explosion...’
‘Bomb?’
‘How...?’
‘Rumours,’ she said briefly. ‘Am I right?’
‘Yeah.’ He didn’t want to go further. Not the moments after the blast. Not waking to find the men who’d tried to protect him...
‘So let me guess,’ she said, gently though, with a smile that was teasing, but at the same time warm and full of empathy. ‘Hoppy flew into your arms and shrapnel hit his leg, which was right above your heart. So he lost his leg, but his action saved you. And they gave him the military medal and a pension for life, and assigned him as your bodyguard for ever? Why isn’t he wearing medals on his collar?’
‘He’d lost his leg well before I found him.’
‘No, don’t tell me. I don’t want to know,’ she said, shaking her head so her gorgeous ponytail bounced on her shoulder. ‘If he did, I’m sure it was for an action just as heroic.’
And he grinned. The awfulness of what they’d spoken of faded, just a little, and he glanced at her and he thought, She has such courage.
The determination to survive here, to put her head down and work for a scholarship to give herself a future, to accept the limitations of that future...nurse instead of geologist...
To find a career that was challenging—medic on an expedition boat... He’d seen her skills now and he thought her as competent as most doctors. Cool in a crisis. Decisive. Kind.
Kind. There was a word that hung.
All those years ago Babs had greeted a traumatised, bereaved teenager and killed her pet with a brick. And yet, years later, Gina had returned because Babs needed her.
He thought of the conclusions he’d reached when she’d first arrived, and he felt ashamed.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, and she arched those expressive brows.
‘What, because you won’t let Hoppy wear his medals? You ought to be. Hey, isn’t this the place where I hit Hubert?’
It was.
He pulled the truck onto the verge and sat. He wouldn’t have minded a few moments to assimilate what he’d just learned, but Gina was out of the truck almost as it stopped. Moving on.
‘You can’t let him out here,’ she said, looking around. ‘Should we find somewhere safer?’
‘It’s pretty nice here,’ he told her, climbing out after her. They were on the rise leading down to their bay. The ocean was glinting sapphire in the distance. The view was spectacular.
‘Yeah, but the road...’ Gina said, worried.
‘You know how few people use it. And wombats are territorial. They swap burrows with other wombats, but only one uses a burrow at a time. And they’re aggressive, scent-marking their territory and defending it. Hubert’s been gone for less than a week so his markings will still be fresh enough to keep others away. If we put him somewhere else, chances are he’ll be encroaching on someone else’s patch, and the last thing he needs is a fight-to-the-death with another wombat. So he’s safest here. If you like, I’ll make a couple of Beware Wombat signs and stick them on the road. Just to remind us.’
‘Remind me, you mean,’ she said darkly, and he grinned.
‘I think you’ve learned your lesson.’
‘Gee, thanks. Right, then,’ she said briskly. ‘Moving on.’
And wasn’t that what they both needed to do? Hugh thought. Wasn’t that what he’d been trying to do for years?
And hadn’t it felt as though he’d succeeded?
His life here was pretty much how he wanted it. He had his house, his dog and a worthwhile occupation, making the Trust more useful. He was probably even doing more good than he had as a field doctor, and this way he could stay isolated. Yes, he had to step in and cope with the occasional medical crisis on the island, and that meant an intrusion into his longed-for solitude, but he could retire afterwards. To his quiet place where the nightmares could be held under control.
But Gina had her nightmares, too. The story she’d told him had been horrific, and he suspected he knew just a sliver of it. But she’d figured her own way of moving on. This island stay—her loyalty to an aunt who seemed to have barely done her duty by her—must be messing with it.
Which was her problem, not his. Surely?
So why did the way he’d felt as she’d outlined her story seem as if it was messing with his solitude as well?
CHAPTER SEVEN
THEY RELEASED HUBERT as far back from the track as they dared, within the confines of a territory Hugh had researched. ‘I rang a wildlife official,’ he told her. ‘He’ll be fine here.’
And it seemed he was. Hubert stood in his cage for a long moment when Hugh opened it, then st
umped out, cast them a backward glare through his squinty little eyes—that glare had to be for her, Gina thought—and then waddled firmly into the undergrowth.
He’d done with them.
‘You’d have thought he could have said thank you,’ Hugh said as he scattered hunks of sweet potato round the entrance to a couple of empty burrows.
She grimaced. ‘He probably said thank you to you when I wasn’t watching. He hardly has anything to thank me for.’
‘But maybe the island as a whole does,’ he said, thoughtfully. ‘If it hadn’t been for Hubert’s accident you wouldn’t have been at my place when that call came in. You wouldn’t have come with me—and you saved lives.’
‘Not me, mate,’ she retorted. ‘You’re the hero.’
‘Can we not use that word?’
She glanced up at him and saw the wash of revulsion, quickly repressed. And thought...hero.
It was a word thrown around in the military, she knew. On her expeditions she’d met a few ex-soldiers, and she’d learned a bit about their worlds. One incident stood out. A guy in his late fifties who’d spent thirty years in the military had been reading a news report when she’d been with him. He’d snorted and thrust the offending article aside.
‘Another of our guys gets it,’ he’d snarled. ‘Lost his arm and guess what, the media’s calling him a hero. That’s what you get, and it’s supposed to make you feel better. I went to a shrink once when there was stuff in my head I couldn’t deal with, and the first thing she said was never forget you’re a hero. As if that helped when what I was never forgetting was...well, let’s not go there.’
He’d stomped away, and a few hours later she’d found him curled in his bunk with a migraine that had lasted three days.
‘I’m sorry,’ she told Hugh now, softly. ‘That was insensitive. Anyway, enough, this day’s great and as long as the islanders don’t produce any more medical emergencies, we’re free. Or at least I am, and I hope you are, too. Because that basket in the back of the truck contains our picnic. “Stay away as long as you want,” Babs told me. Me being close makes her fidget. She’ll be forced to wear some of it, though. She knows how sick she is. She wants me there, but she doesn’t. The fact that I’m coming back and forth, that there’s someone sleeping in the house with her, is enough.’
‘Her only other option’s a nursing home.’
‘She knows that. From the notes she allowed me to read from the cardiologist on Gannet, she shouldn’t be alone at all, so she’s graciously—or almost graciously—conceded to have me here. And she’s grateful underneath. I think. I scrubbed the floor before I left, and she sat on a chair in the corner and supervised every sweep of the mop. Boy, I did a good job, too.’
‘I bet you did.’
‘So, picnic...’ she said, and he thought, Picnic.
Like Babs, he wanted solitude. Company did his head in.
Sort of.
He glanced at her and she was smiling, but behind her eyes he saw what looked almost a challenge. As if she guessed how he was feeling.
‘Otherwise you can drop me off before the turn-off to Babs’s and I’ll head to the beach and watch the sandpipers while I eat it myself,’ she told him. ‘There’s too much for one, but maybe the sandpipers will help. Or the seagulls if the sandpipers are fussy. Babs would prefer if I spend the day away, but I don’t mind being alone.’
She said it brightly, but he had a sudden vision of a fifteen-year-old kid, next to a crashed plane, in the dark. ‘I don’t mind being alone...’
‘I’m not knocking back a picnic,’ he said, because there was no choice. And what was there in the word picnic that was making warning lights flash in his head?
It was that kiss. A kiss that meant nothing.
A kiss that had to mean nothing.
‘We’ll have a picnic,’ he said, and caught himself. It had come out a growl. ‘Sorry.’ He sighed. ‘That sounded grumpy. A picnic would be good.’
‘Hey, I’m used to grumpy. I’m living with Babs, remember? But where?’ she said, looking round, considering. ‘Maybe not here. Hubert’s not going to be happy until he has his home to himself again.’
That makes two of us, Hugh thought, but he didn’t say it, and even as he thought it there was a part of him that was yelling, ‘Liar’. The thought of spending more time with this woman...
Yeah, those warning lights were definitely flashing, but there was enough stuff beyond for him to step right through.
‘There’s a waterfall about a kilometre’s walk from here,’ he told her. ‘You can walk in along the side of the creek. It’s not a bad place for a picnic.’
‘Hey, I know it.’ She sounded surprised and suddenly delighted. ‘I used to hike there sometimes to do my homework. Or just to lie in the sun.’ She wrinkled her nose. ‘It’s a bit of a hike though.’
And he got that, too. He’d seen that flicker of a glance at his leg. The bomb had shattered his knee, making his leg permanently stiff. She was worrying about him?
‘I can do it,’ he growled.
‘Of course you can,’ she conceded. ‘Possibly because you’re not wearing purple sneakers designed for looks rather than action.’
‘But you were worrying about my leg.’
‘Ooh, who’s being touchy?’ That cheeky grin popped out again. ‘If you know the waterfall then you must know the track, so I’m assuming you’re tough enough to cope. But I had to touch up my ballerinas last night and I worry about my girls in these flimsy sneakers. You tell me if it’s too much for them and stop making it all about you.’
He had to grin. He looked down at her sneakers and he thought about her ridiculous toes—and he kept smiling.
‘I guess these sneakers have enough tread to keep me safe,’ she conceded, moving on. ‘And if we sing all the way any snake will skitter before us. So if we’re both okay... You want to go or not?’ She glanced back at the truck where Hoppy looked hopefully out—he’d had to stay in the cab while they’d released Hubert. ‘Hoppy’s waiting, and three legs or not, gammy leg or not, ridiculous sneakers or not, I reckon we could all make it.’
‘Fine,’ he said, goaded. ‘Don’t blame me if you break an ankle.’
‘My ankle’s fine,’ she told him. ‘All of me’s fine. You worry about you and I’ll worry about me.’ Her smile faded a little and she added a rider. ‘Isn’t that the way I suspect it’s always been for both of us?’
* * *
It took half an hour to wend their way along the winding creek bed, through bushland and finally to a clearing where water cascaded down a rock face to splash into a pool below. Huge willow myrtles—native willows—spread across the pool, casting it into dappled shade. The trees were flowering, which meant their tiny white blossoms were drifting downward in the gentle breeze, floating on the water’s surface. Moss grew on the rocks around the pool, forming vibrant green cushions.
Gina remembered the first time she’d found this place. The rocks in the background... The water cascading... It had become her own private sanctuary, worth the couple of hours’ hike it had taken to get here from Babs’s.
But from where they’d parked the truck, the route was much shorter. Not that it would have made much difference, she thought. Yes, Hugh’s leg was stiff, there was a perceptible limp, but he strode strongly, and she had a feeling he was holding back in deference to...her toes? To the fact that he thought she wasn’t up to it?
Well, maybe she wasn’t. The last four months had been a progression of shipboard confinement and quarantine, and her muscles seemed to have turned to jelly. But there was no way she was even thinking of huffing. Hoppy was tearing along in front, impatiently checking when they were too slow. A three-legged dog and a guy with a wounded leg... She had her pride. But when they emerged to the clearing, she fought back a sigh of relief.
Then she stood and soaked in the sight before
her. And felt, for the first time since she’d arrived on the island, a sense of coming home.
‘I’m so glad you found this place,’ she managed, struggling to keep her voice from sounding puffed.
‘I was glad to have found it, too,’ he told her, a hint of a smile telling her he knew darned well she’d been struggling. ‘Hoppy and I have pretty much explored all this side of the island, but we were here for six months before I found this place.’
‘It was nearly a year before I found it,’ she told him. ‘But from then on it was mine.’
‘And here Hoppy and I have been thinking it’s ours.’ He quizzed her with a smile. ‘So do we toss for it, or do we share?’
‘Share,’ she said, because suddenly she felt happy.
Happy. There was a deep word. For all the expeditions she’d been on, the amazing things she’d done, the life she’d lived since her parents died—or maybe even before—there’d been few moments where this sensation had hit, the knowledge that right here, right now, she was simply extraordinarily happy.
And with that came an impulse impossible to ignore. ‘I’m going in,’ she told him, and kicked off her sneakers and started unbuttoning her shirt.
‘Swimming?’ he said, sounding startled.
‘Why not?’
‘It’ll be cold.’
‘Chicken,’ she said, stripping off her jeans. She was wearing respectable knickers and bra—or almost respectable. They were a matching set, soft, turquoise lace with cotton panels hiding the important bits. She owned a bikini that was more revealing than this.
But Hugh was gazing at her as if...she was a coiled snake?
‘Um...you have a problem with this?’
‘No,’ he said faintly. ‘No problem.’
‘But you’re not coming in? Boxers or jocks? Respectability rating, one to ten?’
‘Ten,’ he said, just as faintly. ‘But have you felt that water?’
She had. She’d swum in it almost every day when she’d lived here. It came from somewhere higher on the crags that formed the volcanic island’s centre. She’d tried to find its source and realised it ran underground, where it stayed cold, all year round. But that wasn’t stopping her.
Healing Her Brooding Island Hero Page 9