by Lilian Darcy
‘No.’
‘Ever seen the sun rise?’
‘In hospital.’
Oh, hell…
He squeezed Josh’s shoulders. ‘Well, this will be much better.’
It was. Seconds later, a line of fire spread between the sky and the water, which was suddenly dazzling with white light. The air immediately began to warm, while colour spread over everything. The greens of the rainforest glowed. The sand turned to gold. The sky grew bluer and deeper by the minute.
‘Can I swim?’ Josh asked.
They hadn’t brought a towel or a swimsuit, but Nick couldn’t turn down the idea. Josh’s whole face was eager and his breathing was clear, no hint of a wheeze.
And he’s talking to me. He’s looking at me.
Somehow the looking felt even more important than the talking. He could deal with Josh’s silences—just—but the resolute, close-faced looking away always cut him to the bone.
‘Sure,’ he said. ‘Take off your pyjama top and just wear the bottoms.’
He stripped off his own stretch cotton T-shirt, thinking that it could serve as a towel to wrap Josh in if he got cold.
Would he?
Anna had stressed the danger of sudden cold as a trigger for Josh’s attacks. Nick hated that she gave him these intimidating lists of warnings and reminders when he would have known it all for himself if she hadn’t tried so hard to keep him away.
As usual, he questioned his own degree of blame. He had withdrawn too much. He hadn’t fought hard enough. He’d let her shut him out. The two of them had got married for the wrong reasons, and that fact hadn’t helped. When the emotions had got tough, he’d opted out. Had he learned this lesson from his father too well? Was he wrong?
The air wasn’t cold, he decided.
They went down to the water together. Josh loved swimming in the heated pool he went to every week. Most asthmatics were helped by swimming. But because of the trigger of cold, he hadn’t ever been into the chilly waters of Australia’s southerly seas, even in high summer. Here on Wallaby Island, it was different. The water was softly cool, and safely flat. The tiny waves lapped the sand…and Josh’s toes…like bits of lace.
He jumped over each one. Nick took his hand and they jumped together, wading out a little further each time, taking it slowly, until Josh was in chest-deep, which Nick decided was far enough. Josh was thrilled about it, leaping and splashing, laughing helplessly when Nick threw him into the air and swung him around, making an arc of wake with Josh’s feet.
He’s forgotten to be scared of me…
For the moment, at least.
His body was too thin and pale, though, and even in such balmy water he soon began to look purple around the mouth. His teeth were chattering.
‘Time to stop,’ Nick said.
He turned towards the shore, and there was Miranda in dark blue jogging shorts and a white vest top, coming back from a jog along the sand. He took a breath to call out to her, Hey, Miranda, look at Josh in the water! But then he swallowed her name back, knowing it would have come out too eagerly.
She saw them, though, and waved as she jogged—had probably recognised them when she’d first arrived for her run. There were several other people on the beach now, too. How could you stay in bed or shut away in a cabin on a morning like this?
Josh didn’t argue about stopping. Despite the warmth of the water, it had chilled him now. He’d started to wheeze, but wouldn’t let Nick carry him back to the beach. ‘I can go myself.’ They waded to the shore together, with Nick listening to every breath. He wrapped his discarded T-shirt around Josh, grateful for his own size because the garment practically qualified as a blanket on a small five-year-old.
‘OK, Joshie?’
Josh nodded.
‘Your inhaler’s back at the cabin.’
‘I’m OK,’ he wheezed. He had his fists clenched and his jaw stuck out, but the gestures came from stubbornness, Nick decided, not panic.
Should he be panicking, though? Josh’s asthma gear was a hundred or so metres away. The medical centre was twice that distance. The nearest hospital lay across a gap of tropical ocean. Maybe panicking was the right approach.
There was a helicopter rescue service, Nick reminded himself. He wasn’t going to overreact yet.
Miranda reached them. She was wheezing, too, from the exertion on her lungs. She had her hands on her hips and her chest was pumping up and down, strands of damp hair stuck to her forehead, ponytail in place, tips of her elfin ears showing, long tomboy legs bare and brown and softly muscled, and that indefinable sense of achievement and satisfaction that Nick always got, too, when he ran, despite the aching legs and fighting lungs.
A surge of sudden and very male desire flooded through him, and he wondered what it would feel like to hold her hot, breathless body in his arms, and how her skin would smell after she’d run on a beach at dawn.
‘You look happy,’ he said stupidly.
She grinned. ‘I love the beach, and I love to run.’ Then she added, ‘Got your inhaler, Josh?’ She’d heard the sound of his breathing.
‘Do you want to borrow it?’
‘No, sweetheart, I meant for you.’
‘I’m OK. It’s in the cabin.’
Still breathing hard, Miranda looked at Nick, and he read her easily. ‘We’ll go back,’ he mouthed.
‘No drama,’ she mouthed back, ‘but, yes, I think you should.’ Then she turned away and began her cool-down routine of slow stretches, closing her eyes and facing the morning sun.
Nick went to pick Josh up but he shook his head and started off on his own, in a gesture of independence Nick suspected he wasn’t allowed to follow through on very often. He followed his son, watching the neat, resolute feet moving rhythmically on the sand, watching him warm up fast in the morning sun, with the damp T-shirt still wrapped around him.
Neither of them spoke, but the silence between them felt fine after their noisy time together in the water. To an outsider, they would have looked as if they were going back to get dressed for breakfast, not in search of lifesaving medication.
Josh was still wheezing by the time the two of them were sitting on his bed with the inhaler and spacer ready. As far as Nick could tell, however, the wheezing hadn’t progressed to the frightening tight and struggling stage it often reached.
‘Ready for this?’ he asked Josh, who nodded, and they managed the dose together with good smooth timing. He breathed more easily at once.
Nick did, too. ‘Time for breakfast soon,’ he said.
There came a light knock at the cabin door some minutes later, after they’d dressed in dry clothes and were ready to go and eat. Miranda stood there. She’d showered and changed after her run. Nick could smell the lingering scent of shampoo on her damp hair, which lay loose around her shoulders, and she was wearing a skirt and top that looked tropical but sufficiently professional to remind him she wasn’t here for a break.
‘Everything fine?’ she asked.
He knew she was speaking as Josh’s doctor, and responded accordingly. ‘Yes, the inhaler worked fast today.’
‘It wasn’t a bad attack. You did the right thing, taking it calmly and letting him walk back on his own.’
‘Are you heading over for breakfast?’
‘Yes, I’m on my way. Coming, too?’
It seemed logical to walk together, and to sit together once they reached the camp’s large communal dining room. Nick remembered how their conversation had limped to a halt last night when he’d refused to continue what he’d begun to say on the beach. He wanted to talk to her, but not about the tough, confronting things. Why put either of them through that? And why avoid her, when there were plenty of easy subjects they could talk about?
‘How often do you run?’ he asked instead.
‘Oh, you know, the usual kind of schedule for that kind of thing.’ She grinned, warm eyes alight. ‘Every day, except for all the days when I don’t.’
He laughed. ‘T
hat’s about my schedule, too.’
Josh had found Lily. ‘Can I take my plate over to the other table?’
‘And sit with Lily?’
Josh nodded.
‘Of course you can.’
Which left Miranda and Nick not exactly on their own, because there were people all around them and questions she had to answer every few minutes, but there was an odd kind of privacy to their breakfast all the same, and by the time they’d each drunk two cups of coffee and eaten bowls of cereal and yoghurt and fruit, the dining room had almost emptied out and Josh and Lily were chasing each other round the tables.
Nick hadn’t even registered how much time must have gone by until Lily fell and scraped her knee, which caught the attention of Charles, who’d been talking to the catering manager over by the kitchen door. He wheeled himself over, and Miranda looked at her watch and gave an exclamation of horror. ‘I need to get going!’
So I can still talk to her, Nick thought.
And we can still, both of us, lose all track of time because we’re enjoying it so much.
He didn’t know what it meant, but he felt a mixture of eagerness and trepidation that was rapidly brewing into a potent cocktail inside him.
How much had he changed? Enough? Or not at all?
CHAPTER FIVE
IT WAS happening. All over again. Miranda was falling for Nick, and falling fast.
Like jumping out of a plane with no parachute.
Like watching a huge wave rolling towards you while you stood waist deep in the ocean, and having no idea whether you should surf, duck or run.
She couldn’t run. She was stuck here on the island with him until at least next weekend.
And then he’d leave, and she’d be able to duck the whole problem.
Which would be worse.
OK, no ducking or running. That left…
Surfing.
Oh lord, surfing her feelings for Nick! Did she really mean that? Did she really intend to let herself keep having these lovely relaxed—and only superficially safe—conversations with him? On the beach. In the pottery room. On the glass-bottomed boat that took the whole group on a fabulous reef trip on Monday afternoon.
Was she going to keep looking at him when she had her sunglasses on so that he couldn’t see the direction of her gaze? Was she going to keep smiling at him and patting the chair beside her so that he’d come over and sit with her at meals? Or, if he got to the dining room first, keep looking for him because she knew he’d smile and pat the adjacent chair in just the same way?
So he’s feeling it, too?
She knew he was. She thought he was…
Yes. The looks he gave her. The way he kept losing track of time when they were together. Her heart turned over when he would glance at his watch and get a shocked look on his face. If anything, he’d surrendered to this more than she had, because he was here on a holiday without the professional obligations that kept her just that little bit more cool-headed and in line.
Oh, cool-headed? Who was she kidding? She had a loving heart and she wanted to give it away—the same problem that had haunted her for ten years. She’d given her heart to Nick once before and he’d walked away and that had hurt and scared her so much that she’d never really let Ian make a full claim on her, which hadn’t worked either.
So why was she feeling this way? What should she do?
It wasn’t as if they’d talked about anything important. She felt totally at a loss to interpret what it all meant. For Nick, this might be nothing more than a holiday fling. Convenient. Fun while it lasted. Something that an experienced man took because it was on offer, without the remotest intention of trying to make it last.
Who says I’m offering?
Her heart felt fickle, one minute beating wildly because he’d walked into view and the next minute hardening itself in a surge of self-protective instinct when she remembered how it felt to be hurt. The on-again, off-again hardened heart was, she thought, the only reason Nick hadn’t kissed her yet. Sometimes she gave out a vibe that left him unsure and pushed him just far enough away.
Just.
But maybe I’m looking for a holiday fling, too.
Was she? Was she capable of something like that? Or was she too nice?
She thought about it—Monday night, lying in bed unable to sleep despite the busy, sun-filled day, the dawn run on the beach, the soporific sea air. She was thirty-four years old, single, secure. Why not have a fling? They could be scrupulous about protection, set out the ground rules in advance to make sure they were both on the same page. It would add, as some people would tell her, a nuance of delicious spice to her two weeks at Crocodile Creek Kids’ Camp and she’d never forget it.
Go for it, Miranda!
Not with Nick.
At one in the morning, and again at three, and then five, this was the point she always reached. Sure, Miranda, have a holiday fling if you want. But don’t have it with Nick. Find a sexy hotel waiter, aged twenty-five. The pool boy. The Swedish scuba instructor. Or how about that dyed and corseted lounge singer in the hotel bar last night, strenuously attempting to pass for thirty when he was more like fifty-five?
Yep, even him.
But not Nick.
Nick is too important.
You’ll get hurt. Again.
This was what she was left with in the end—a huge, clanging, discordant warning bell in her head telling her over and over the news she didn’t want to hear but knew she had to listen to, ‘You’ll get hurt.’
The sun packed a punch this far north. Miranda felt the sharp heat on her bare shoulders and knew she should put on more sunscreen. At three o’clock on Tuesday afternoon, the shadows from the greenery at the top of the beach had begun to lengthen a little, but she would still begin to burn at any moment.
Most of the kids were in the water. They’d had a morning of crafts, music and games, followed by a siesta after lunch. Miranda had taken one of her asthma patients to the medical centre in the wake of a severe attack triggered by too much running and laughing.
‘If she has to have an attack, running and laughing is the best trigger I can think of,’ her very sensible mother Julia had said, once her initial fears about her daughter had subsided. ‘I should have thought to use her inhaler beforehand, but I didn’t think they’d get so active right after lunch. I wonder, though…’ She frowned suddenly. ‘She’s usually more sensible because she hates having a bad attack. She’ll come up to me and take some puffs and wait until she feels safe to run around.’
Miranda had noted nine-year-old Kathryn’s state of agitation and use of accessory muscles in her struggle to breathe and had decided not to take any risks. She’d helped Beth Stuart to get Kathryn stabilised with oxygen and medication and they’d agreed that Kathryn should stay on corticosteroids for three days and spend the night in the medical centre, before hopefully being cleared for discharge in the morning.
In hindsight, though, she understood Julia Rabey’s concern. The nine-year-old had settled into her bed in the medical centre almost too willingly. Was there some attention-seeking going on? She asked Julia an open-ended question about it—any problems at home?—but there didn’t seem to be. If Mrs Rabey was hiding something, she was good at it.
There was a lovely, bubbly nurse from the mainland hospital working at the clinic today, Grace Blake, who’d told Miranda, ‘My hubby and I are coming to the bonfire and barbecue tonight. His name’s Harry. You’ll know him if you see him—lovely big Aussie bloke. He’s our local cop. The bonfire is a Crocodile Creek Hospital tradition, and we didn’t want to be left out just because Charles—that’s Dr Wetherby, our director—has temporarily transferred it out to the island. I’ll probably see you there.’
‘Better there than here in the medical centre.’
‘True, and you probably have a couple of patients who can’t go because of the smoke.’
But which ones?
Miranda uncapped her sunscreen bottle and ran through the
names on her mental list.
Lauren didn’t want to go. A beach barbecue? Lame! She and her parents were going for a gourmet dinner at the hotel’s five-star restaurant instead. There were several who were keen and should be fine. And there were a few more of her lot who would have their barbecue delivered to the dining room, as would a couple of Benita’s patients. The camp catering staff had promised to make it a special occasion with music and games so that the kids wouldn’t feel as if they were missing out.
And what about Josh?
Nick appeared beside her at that moment.
Well, not so much beside as over. He’d just come out of the water and still had a towel slung around his neck while he used the ends to wipe the salt water from his face as he stood just in front of her.
Josh had dropped to the sand nearby and had already begun to play with some of the other kids. With his little body covered in board shorts and a rash vest, he looked like a miniature, dark-haired version of Surfer Jamie, who was showing off his board-paddling techniques to any teenage girls who might be watching, twenty metres from shore. Garf, the golden labradoodle, was on the beach, too, bounding around and chasing a red rubber ball.
Nick spread out his towel and sat down beside Miranda, his knees thrust into the crooks of his elbows as he wrapped his arms across his lower legs. ‘I’m wondering about this bonfire and barbecue tonight,’ he said, throwing her a brief glance before staring at the water. Behind his sunglasses, Miranda couldn’t have seen his eyes even if he’d been looking directly at her. ‘Had you thought about whether Josh should go?’
‘About five seconds before you sat down. But I hadn’t made a decision.’
‘He wants to.’ Nick controlled a sigh.
‘I can understand why you’re not sure.’
‘Anna would play it super-safe.’
‘Do you want to talk to her about it? I’m assuming you’re in touch by phone.’
‘Morning and evening. I’d actually expected she’d phone more often than that.’
‘How is her mother doing?’