Praise for Marion Lennox

‘Marion Lennox’s Rescue at Cradle Lake is simply magical, eliciting laughter and tears in equal measure. A keeper.’

—RT Book Reviews

Dear Reader,

This is the sixth romance in the Wildfire Island Docs series, and it marks the end of one of the most dramatic, exotic series I’ve ever been involved in. Wildfire Island is a tropical paradise. Our heroes and heroines are our ideal lovers, the most skilled, the most gorgeous and the most fun doctors, nurses and paramedics … Oh, and did I mention the most sexy?

Meredith Webber, Alison Roberts and I have loved co-creating our characters, our worlds, our romances. Each is a stand-alone love story, but together we believe they’re awesome. Linked stories push our creative boundaries, and they deepen our friendship in the process.

Max and Hettie’s story tugged on my heartstrings as I wrote it, and I hope you’ll be as touched by it as I’ve been. I love how much they deserve their happy ending. Let me know if you enjoy it—write to me at marion@marionlennox.com. If you love it as much as we do … who knows? We may be recruiting more medics for Wildfire!

Meanwhile, happy reading.

Marion

MARION LENNOX has written over a hundred romance novels, and is published in over a hundred countries and thirty languages. Her international awards include the prestigious RITA® Award (twice) and the RT Book Reviews Career Achievement Award for ‘a body of work which makes us laugh and teaches us about love’. Marion adores her family, her kayak, her dog, and lying on the beach with a book someone else has written. Heaven!

A Child to Open Their Hearts
Marion Lennox

www.millsandboon.co.uk

My books in this series are dedicated to Andy, whose help and friendship during my writing career has been beyond measure. I’ve been so proud to call you my friend.

Contents

Cover

Praise

Dear Reader

About the Author

Title Page

Dedication

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

EPILOGUE

Copyright

CHAPTER ONE

THIS COULD BE a disaster instead of a homecoming. He could be marooned at sea until after his daughter’s wedding.

Max wasn’t worrying yet, though. Things would be chaotic on Wildfire Island after the cyclone, but the weather had eased and Sunset Beach was a favourite place for the locals to walk. If the rip wasn’t so fierce he could swim ashore. He couldn’t, but eventually someone would stroll to the beach, see his battered boat and send out a dinghy.

Max Lockhart, specialist surgeon, not-so-specialist sailor, headed below deck and fetched himself a beer. There were worse places to be stuck, he conceded. The Lillyanna was a sturdy thirty-foot yacht, and she wasn’t badly enough damaged to be uncomfortable. She was now moored in the tropical waters off Wildfire Island. Schools of tiny fish glinted silver as they broke the surface of the sparkling water. The sun was warm. He had provisions for another week, and in the lee of the island the sea was relatively calm.

But he was stuck. The waters around the island were still a maelstrom. The cliffs that formed the headland above where he sheltered were being battered. To try and round them to get to Wildfire Island’s harbour would be suicidal, and at some time during the worst of the cyclone his radio had been damaged and his phone lost overboard.

So now he was forced to rest, but rest, he conceded, had been the whole idea of sailing here. He needed to take some time to get his head in order and ready himself to face the islanders.

He also needed space to come to terms with anger and with grief. How to face his daughter’s wedding with joy when he was so loaded with guilt and sadness he couldn’t get past it?

But rest wouldn’t cut it, he decided as he finished his beer. What he needed was distraction.

And suddenly he had it. Suddenly he could see two people on the island.

A woman had emerged from the undergrowth and was walking a dog on the beach. And up on the headland...another woman was walking towards the cliff edge.

Towards the cliff edge? What the...?

As a kid, Max and his mates had dived off this headland but they’d only dived when the water had been calm. They’d dared each other to dive the thirty-foot drop. Then they’d let the rip tug them out to this reef, where they’d catch their breath for the hard swim back. It had kept them happy for hours. It had given their parents nightmares.

For the woman on the headland, though, the nightmare seemed real. She was walking steadily towards the edge.

Suicide? The word slammed into his head and stayed.

He grabbed his field glasses, one of the few things not smashed in the storm, and fought to get them focussed. The woman was young. A crimson shawl was wrapped around a bundle at her breast. A child?

She was walking purposefully forward, closer to the edge. After the cyclone, the water below was a mass of churning foam. Even as a kid he’d known he had to get a run up to clear the rocks below.

‘No!’ His yell would be drowned in the wind up there, but he yelled anyway. ‘Don’t...’

His yell was useless. She reached the cliff edge and walked straight over.

* * *

Hettie de Lacey, charge nurse of Wildfire Island’s small hospital, rather enjoyed a good storm. It broke the humidity. It cleared the water in the island’s lagoons and it made the world seem fresh and new.

This, however, had been more than a good storm. The cyclone had smashed across the island three days ago, causing multiple casualties. Even though most wounds had been minor, the hospital was full to bursting, and Hettie had been run off her feet.

This was the first time she’d managed a walk and some blessed time to herself. Sunset Beach was relatively sheltered, but she was close to the northern tip, where waves flung hard against the headland. The seas out there were huge.

In another life she might have grabbed a surfboard and headed out, she thought, allowing herself a whiff of memory, of an eighteen-year-old Hettie in love with everything to do with the sea.

Including Darryn...

Yeah, well, that was one memory to put aside. How one man could take such a naïve kid and smash her ideals... Smash her life...

‘Get over it,’ she told herself, and she even smiled at the idea that she should still angst over memories from all those years ago. She’d made herself a great life. She was...mostly happy.

And then her attention was caught.

There was a yacht just beyond the reef. It was a gracious old lady of a yacht, a wooden classic, anchored to the south of The Bird’s Nest. The Nest was a narrow rim of rock and coral, a tiny atoll at the end of an underwater reef running out from shore.

The yacht was using the atoll for shelter.

It’d be Max Lockhart, she thought, and the nub of fear she’d been feeling for Caroline dissipated in an instant. Oh, thank heaven. She knew the owner of Wildfire Island was trying to sail here for his daughter’s wedding. Max had left Cairns before the cyclone had blown up, and for the last few days Caroline Lockhart, one of Hettie’s best nurses, had been frantic. Her father was somewhere out to sea. He’d lost contact three days ago and they had no way of knowing if he’d survived.

She could see him fairly clearly from where she was, but she’d never met him—his few visits to the island during her employment had always seemed to coincide with times when she’d taken leave. But this must be him. The entrance to the harbour was wild so this was probably the safest place he could be.

She went to wave, and then she hesitated. The guy on the yacht—it must be Max—was already waving. And yelling. But not at her. At someone up on the headland?

Intrigued, she headed to the water’s edge and looked up. Another islander out for a walk? Max must be stuck, she thought. He’d be wanting to attract attention so someone could send a dinghy out to bring him in. He’d seen someone up on the cliffs?

And then her breath caught in horror. Where the shallows gave way to deep water and the cliffs rose steeply to the headland, the wind still swept in from the cyclone-ravaged sea.

And up on the headland... Sefina Dason.

The woman was thirty feet above her but Hettie would know her anywhere. For the last few days Sefina had been in hospital, battered, not by the cyclone but by her oaf of a husband. She’d had to bring her toddler in with her because no one would care for him, something almost unheard of in this close-knit community.

There’d been whispers...

But this wasn’t the time for whispers. Sefina was high on the headland and she was walking with purpose.

She was headed for the edge of the cliff!

And then she turned, just a little, and Hettie saw a bundle, cradled to her breast in a crimson shawl. Her horror doubled, trebled, went off the scale.

Joni!

No! She was screaming, running, stumbling over the rocks as beach gave way to the edges of the reef. No!

She could hear the echoes of the guy on the yacht, yelling, too.

But yelling was useless.

Sefina took two steps forward and she was gone.

* * *

Max knew the water under the headland like the back of his hand. In good weather this was a calm, still pool, deep and mysterious, bottoming out to coral. It was a fabulous place for kids to hurl themselves off the cliff in a show of bravado. The rip swept in from the north, hit the pool and tugged the divers out to the rocky outcrop he was anchored behind. As kids they’d learned to ride the rip to their advantage, letting it pull them across the shallow reef to the atoll. They’d lie on the rocks and catch their breath, readying themselves for the swim across the rip back to the beach.

But that rip would be fierce today, too strong to swim against. And the water in the pool...would be a whirlpool, he thought, sucking everything down.

All this he thought almost instantly, and as he thought it he was already tearing up the anchor, operating the winch with one hand, gunning the engine with the other.

His mind seemed to be frozen, but instinct was kicking in to take over.

Where would she be hurled out?

He hit the tiller and pushed the throttle to full speed, heading out of the shelter of the atoll, steering the boat as close as he dared to the beach. He couldn’t get too close. Sheltered or not, there were still breakers pounding the sand.

There was a woman running along the beach, screaming. The woman with the dog? She’d seen?

But he didn’t have time to look at her. He was staring across the maelstrom of white water, waiting for something to emerge. Anything.

He was as close as he could get without wrecking the yacht. As far as he could tell, this was where the rip emerged.

He dropped anchor, knowing he’d be anchoring in sand, knowing there was a chance the boat would be dragged away, but he didn’t have time to care.

There... A wisp of crimson cloth... Nothing more, but it had to be enough.

If he was right, she was being tugged to twenty feet forward of the boat.

He’d miss her...

He was ripping his clothes off, tearing. Clothes would drag him down. If he used a lifejacket he could never swim fast enough.

He had so little chance the thing was almost futile.

He saw the wisp of crimson again, and he dived.

* * *

Sefina.

Joni.

Hettie was screaming but she was screaming inside. She had no room for anything else. Where...?

She’d swum here. There was a rip, running south. Hettie could swim well. Surfing had once been her life, but to swim against the rip in these conditions...

The guy on the boat had seen. If she could grab Sefina and tow her with the rip, maybe he could help.

A mother and a toddler?

She couldn’t think like that.

As a teenager she’d trained as a lifeguard, hoping for a holiday job back when she’d lived at Bondi. Her instructor’s voice slammed back now. ‘Look to your own safety before you look to help someone in the surf.’

This was crazy. Past dangerous.

Oh, but Joni... He was fifteen months old and she’d cradled him to sleep for the past few nights. And Sefina... Battered Sefina, with no one to turn to.

Forget the instructors. Her clothes were tossed onto the sand. ‘Stay,’ she yelled at Bugsy, and she was running into the waves regardless.

* * *

The rip was so strong Max was swept south the moment he hit the water. Anything in that pool would be tugged straight out, past the reef and out to sea.

He surfaced, already being pulled.

But Max had swum like a fish as a kid, and for the past few years gym work and swimming had sometimes seemed the only thing that had kept him sane.

He couldn’t swim against the rip but if he headed diagonally across he might collide with...with what he hoped to find. That slip of crimson.

He cast one long look at the pool, trying to judge where he’d last seen that flash of crimson.

He put his head down and swam.

* * *

Was she nuts? Trying to swim in this surf? But if she got past the breakers she only had the rip to contend with. She could deal with the rip, she thought. She knew enough not to panic. The guy on the boat would have seen her. If she could reach Sefina and hold on to her, she could tread water until help came.

Even if the guy hadn’t seen her, she was due to go on duty at midday. The staff knew she’d gone for a walk on the beach. If she didn’t return they’d come down and find Bugsy, find her clothes... Once the rip dragged her out, she could tread water and hope...

Yeah, very safe, she thought grimly as she dived through another wave. Not.

What would she do if she reached them? The lifeguard part of her was already playing out scenarios.

The quickest way to kill yourself is to put yourself within reach of someone who’s drowning. They’ll pull you down as they try to save themselves.

There was her instructor again.

Sefina wouldn’t try to save herself, though. Sefina wanted to die.

Sefina...

She’d known how unhappy the girl was, but in the post-cyclone chaos all Hettie had been able to give the young woman had been swift hugs between periods of imperative medical need. She’d promised her she was safe in the hospital. She’d promised they’d sort things out when things had settled.

She hadn’t realised time had been so achingly short.

Hettie surfaced from the last breaker and looked around wildly. The rip was stronger than she’d thought. Maybe she’d missed them.

And then she saw someone else in the water, swimming strongly across the rip. The guy from the boat?

There went her source of help if she got into trouble, she thought grimly. All of them in the water? This was breaking every lifesaving rule, but it was too late to back out now. She was watching the rim of the foam where the deep pool ended and the relative calm began.

There! A sliver of crimson.

She must have shouted because the swimming guy raised his head. She waved and pointed.

He raised a hand in silent acknowledgement and they both put their heads down and swam.

* * *

He could see her now, or he could see the swirl of crimson shawl she’d wrapped around her body. If he could just get closer...

The pull of the rip was hauling him backwards. By rights it should’ve propelled the woman’s body towards him.

Was she stuck on the edge of the reef? Had the shawl snagged?

The rocks were too close to the surface for safety. He should stay well clear...

He didn’t.

* * *

This was crazy. Suicidal. She couldn’t swim into the foam. She daren’t. As it was, the rip was pulling so hard she was starting to doubt her ability to get herself to safety.

A breaker crashed on the rocks and threw a spray of water, blocking her vision. She could see nothing.

With a sob of fear and frustration she stopped trying and let herself be carried outward.

Free from the foam she could tread water. She could look again.

She could see nothing but white. Nothing...

* * *

There! Max’s hands had been groping blindly in front of him, but the touch of fabric had him grabbing.

He had her, but she was wedged in rocks. He was being washed by breaker after breaker. He couldn’t see. He pulled upwards to take a tighter hold—and a child fell free into his arms.

The child must have been clinging, or tied within the shawl. The rip caught them again and they were tugged outwards.

He had a child in his arms. He had no choice but to let himself go. To ride the rip...

He was pushing the child up, rolling onto his back, trying to get the little one into the air. The water was sweeping...

‘Here!’

It was a yell and suddenly someone was beside him. A woman, dark-haired, fierce.

‘Give him to me. Help Sefina. Please!’

‘You can’t hold him.’ He didn’t even know if the child was alive.

Her face was suddenly inches from his, soaking curls plastered across her eyes, green eyes flashing determination. ‘I can. I know what to do. Trust me.’

And what was there in that that made him believe her?

What was there in that that made him thrust the limp little body into her arms and turn once again towards the rocks?

He had to trust her. He had to hope.

* * *

Joni was breathing. He’d been limp when he’d been thrust at her, but as she rolled and prepared to breathe for him—yes, she could do it in the water; lifesaver training had been useful—the little one gasped and choked and gasped again.

His eyes were shut, as if he’d simply closed down, ready for death. How many children drowned like this? Thirteen years as a nurse had taught Hettie that when children slipped untended into water they didn’t struggle. They drowned silently.

Somehow, though, despite not fighting, Joni must have breathed enough air to survive. As she touched his mouth with her lips he gasped and opened his eyes.

‘Joni.’ She managed to get his name out, even though she was fighting for breath herself. ‘It’s okay. Let’s get you to the beach.’

His huge brown eyes stared upwards wildly. Joni was fifteen months old, a chubby toddler with beautiful coffee-coloured skin and a tangle of dark curls. He was part islander, part...

Well, that was the problem, Hettie thought, her heart clenching in fear for his mother.

She couldn’t do anything for Sefina, though. The sailor—Max?—had handed her Joni and she had to care for him.

Where was he now? she wondered as she trod water. Her first impressions had been of strength, determination, resolution. His face had been almost impassive.

He’d need strength and more if he was swimming back against the reef. The risks...

She couldn’t think of him now. Her attention had to be on keeping Joni safe.

Keeping them both safe?

She cupped her hand around Joni’s chin and started side-stroking, as hard and fast as she could, willing him to stay limp. The rip was still a problem. Getting back to the beach was impossible. The boat was too close to the breakers, but the atoll at the end of the reef might just be possible. If she could just reach the rocks...

Blessedly Joni stayed limp. It must be shock, she thought as she fought the current, but she was thankful for it. He lay still while she towed.

But the rip was strong. She was fighting for breath herself, kicking, using every last scrap of strength she had, but she couldn’t do it. She couldn’t reach the atoll. It was so near and yet so far.

If she could just keep floating, someone would help, she thought. If she rode the rip out, if she could hold on to Joni...

But if he struggled...

She had no choice. The rip was too strong to fight.

She held him as far out of the water as she could and let herself be carried out to sea.

* * *

He had her. For what it was worth, he had her, but she was dead. He could see the head injury. He could see the way her head floated limply.

She must have crashed onto the rocks, he thought. She’d stepped straight down instead of diving outwards. Death would have been instantaneous. It had been a miracle that the child had stayed with her.

He had her free of the reef, but what to do now? He couldn’t get her to the beach. There was no way he could fight the rip. It was carrying them out fast, towards the atoll. Did he have enough strength to get them both there?

By himself there’d be no problem, but holding this woman...

He couldn’t.

She was dead. Let her go.

He couldn’t do that, either. A part of him was still standing at his son’s gravesite.

A part of him was remembering burying his wife, all those years ago.

Somewhere, someone loved this woman. To not have a chance to say goodbye... It would have killed him.

Holding on to her might kill him. He couldn’t keep fighting for both of them.

Despite the strength of the rip, the water he was in was relatively calm. He was fighting to get across the current but he paused for a moment in his fight to get a bearing. To see...

And what he saw made him rethink everything. The woman he’d given the child to still held him, but they were drifting fast, so fast they’d miss the atoll. They were being pulled to the open sea.

The woman didn’t seem to be panicking. She had the child in the classic lifesaver hold. She seemed to know her stuff, but she wasn’t strong enough. In minutes she’d be past the atoll and she’d be gone.

A woman and a child, struggling for life.

A woman in his arms, for whom life was over.

Triage. Blessedly it slammed back. For just a moment he was a junior doctor again in an emergency room, faced with the decision of which patient to treat first.

No choice.

He gave himself a fraction of a second, a moment where he tugged the woman’s body around and faced her. He memorised everything about her so he could describe her, and then, in an aching, tearing gesture that seemed to rip something deep inside, he touched her face. It was a gesture of blessing, a gesture of farewell.

It was all he could do.

He let her go.

* * *

She’d never reach it. Her legs simply weren’t strong enough to kick against the current.

She was so near and yet so far. She was being pulled within thirty yards of the atoll and yet she didn’t have the strength to fight.

If she was swept out... If Max didn’t make it... How long before they could expect help?

The child in her arms twisted unexpectedly and she almost lost him. She fought for a stronger hold but suddenly he was fighting her.

‘Joni, hush. Joni, stay still...’

But he wasn’t listening, wasn’t hearing. Who knew what he was thinking?

She was being swept...

And then, blessedly, she was being grabbed herself by the shoulders from behind. She was being held with the swift, sure strength of someone who’d been trained, who knew how to gain control.

Max?

‘Let me take him.’ It was an order, a curt command that brooked no opposition. ‘Get yourself to the atoll.’

‘You can’t.’

‘You’re done,’ he said, and she knew she was.

‘S-Sefina?’

‘She’s dead. We can’t do anything for her. Go. I’m right behind you.’

And Joni was taken from her arms.

Relieving her of her load should have made her lighter. Free. Instead, stupidly, she wanted to sink. She hadn’t known how exhausted she was until the load had been lifted.

‘Swim,’ Max yelled. ‘We haven’t done this for nothing. Swim, damn you, now.’

She swam.

* * *

He could do this. He would do this.

Too many deaths...

It was three short weeks since he’d buried his son. The waste was all around him, and the anger.

Maybe it was Christopher who gave him strength. Who knew?

‘Keep still,’ he growled, as the little boy struggled. There was no time for reassurance. No time for comfort. But it seemed to work.

The little boy subsided. His body seemed to go limp but he reached up and tucked a fist against Max’s throat. As if checking his pulse?

‘Yeah, I’m alive,’ Max muttered grimly, as he started kicking again against the rip. ‘And so are you. Let’s keep it that way.’

* * *

Rocks. The atoll was tiny but she’d made it. The last few yards across the rip had taken every ounce of her strength, but she’d done it.

She’d had to do it. If Max and Joni were swept out, someone had to raise the alarm.

She wasn’t in any position to raise any alarm right now. It was as much as she could do to climb onto the rocks.

She knew this place. She’d swum out here in good weather. She knew the footholds but her legs didn’t want to work. They’d turned to jelly, but somehow she made them push her up the few short steps to the relatively flat rock that formed the atoll’s tiny plateau.

Then she sank to her knees.

She wanted—quite badly—to be sick, but she fought it down with a fierceness born of desperation. How many times in an emergency room had she felt this same appalling gut-wrench, at waste, at loss of life, at life-changing injuries? But her training had taught her not to faint, not to throw up, until after a crisis was past. Until she wasn’t needed.

There was a crisis now, but what could she do? She wasn’t in an emergency room. She wasn’t being a professional.

She was sitting on a tiny rocky outcrop, while out there a sailor fought for a toddler’s life.

Was he Max Lockhart?

More importantly, desperately more importantly, where was he? She hadn’t been able to look back while she’d fought to get here, but now...

Max... Joni...

She was a strong swimmer but she hadn’t been able to fight the rip.

Please... She was saying it over and over, pleading with whomever was prepared to listen. For Joni. For the unknown guy who was risking his life...

Was he Max? Father of Caroline? Owner of this entire island?

Max Lockhart, come home to claim his rightful heritage?

Max Lockhart, risking his life to save one of the islanders who scorned him?

So much pain...

If he died now, how could she explain it to Caroline? For the last three days, when the cyclone had veered savagely and unexpectedly across the path of any boat making its way here from Cairns, Hettie’s fellow nurse had lost contact with her father. She’d been going crazy.

How could she tell her he’d been so near, and was now lost? With the child?

Or not. She’d been staring east, thinking that, if anything, he’d be riding the rip, but suddenly she saw him. He was south of the atoll. He must have been swept past but somehow managed to get himself out of the rip’s pull. Now he was stroking the last few yards to the rocks.

He still had Joni.

She’d been out of the water now for five minutes. She had her breath back. Blessedly, she could help. She clambered down over the rocks, heading out into the shallows, reaching for Joni.

She had him. They had him.

Safe?

CHAPTER TWO

FOR A WHILE they were too exhausted to speak. They were too exhausted to do anything but lie on the rocks, Joni somehow safe between them.

The little boy was silent, passive...past shock? Maybe she was, too, and as she looked at Max collapsed beside them she thought, That makes three.

‘S-Sefina,’ she whispered.

‘Neck,’ he managed, and it was enough to tell her what she needed to know.

Oh, God, she should have...

Should have what? Cradled Sefina yesterday as she was cradling Joni now?

Yes, if that’s what it would have taken.

If this had happened at a normal time... But it hadn’t. Sefina had been admitted into hospital, bashed almost to the point of death, while the cyclone had been building. With the cyclone bearing down on them Hettie hadn’t had time to do more than tend to the girl’s physical needs.

Afterwards, when there’d been time to take stock and question her, Keanu, the island doctor on duty, had contacted the police. ‘I want her husband brought in. With the extent of these injuries it’s lucky he didn’t kill her.’

It’s lucky he didn’t kill her...

She remembered Keanu’s words and her breath caught on a sob.

Hettie de Lacey was a professional. She didn’t cry. She held herself to herself. She coped with any type of trauma her job threw at her.

But she sobbed now, just once, a great heaving gulp that shook her entire body. And then somehow she pulled herself back together. Almost.

Max’s arm came over her, over Joni, enfolding them both, and she needed it. She needed his touch.

‘You’re safe,’ he told her. ‘And the little one’s safe.’ And then he added, ‘Keep it together. For now, we’re all he has.’

It was a reminder. It wasn’t a rebuke, though. It was just a fact. She’d been terrified, she was shocked and exhausted, and she still had to come to terms with what had happened, but the child between them had to come first.

And Max himself... He’d swum over those rocks. Over that coral...

She took a couple of deep breaths and managed to sit up. The sun was full out. The storm of the past days was almost gone. Apart from the spray blasting the headland and the massive breakers heading for shore, this could be just a normal day in paradise.

Wildfire Island. The M’Langi isles. This was surely one of the most beautiful places in the world.

The world would somehow settle.

She gathered Joni into her arms and held him tight, crooning softly into his wet curls. He was still wearing a sodden hospital-issue nappy and a T-shirt one of the nurses had found for him in the emergency supplies. It read, incongruously, ‘My grandma went to London and all she brought me back was this T-shirt’.

It was totally inappropriate. Joni didn’t have a grandma, or not one who’d acknowledge him.

Max had allowed himself a couple of moments of lying full length in the sun, as if he needed its warmth. Of course he did. They all did. But now he, too, pushed himself to sitting, and for the first time she saw his legs.

They’d been slashed on the coral. He had grazes running from groin to toe, as if the sea had dragged him straight across the rocks.

What cost, to try and save Sefina?

He’d saved Joni.

‘I never could have got him here,’ she whispered, still holding him tight. The toddler was curled into her, as if her body was his only protection from the outside world. ‘I never could have saved him without you.’

‘Do you know...? Do you know who he is?’ Max asked.

‘His name is Joni Dason. His mother’s name is...was Sefina.’

‘A friend?’ He was watching her face. ‘She was your friend?’

‘I... A patient.’ And then she hesitated. ‘But I was present at Joni’s birth. Maybe I was...Sefina’s friend. Maybe I’m the only...’

And then she stopped. She couldn’t go on.

‘I’m Max Lockhart,’ Max said, and she managed to nod, grateful to be deflected back to his business rather than having to dwell on her shock and grief.

‘I guessed as much when I saw your yacht. Caroline will be so relieved. She’s been out of her mind with worry.’

‘My boat rolled. I lost my radio and phone three days ago. Everything that could be damaged by water was damaged.’

‘So you’ve been sitting out here, waiting for someone to notice you?’

‘I reached the island last night. It was too risky to try for the harbour, and frankly I wasn’t going to push my luck heading to one of the outer islands. So, yes, I’ve been here overnight but no one’s noticed.’

‘I noticed.’

‘Thank you. You are?’

‘Hettie de Lacey. Charge nurse at Wildfire.’

‘I’m pleased to meet you, Hettie.’ He hesitated and then went on. ‘I’m very pleased to meet you. Without both of us... Well, we did the best we could.’

‘You’re injured. Those cuts need attention.’

‘They do,’ he agreed. ‘I need disinfectant to avoid infection, but the alternative...’

‘You never would have saved Joni without swimming over the coral,’ she whispered, and once again she buried her face in the little boy’s hair. ‘Thank you.’

‘I would have...I so wanted...’

‘Yes,’ she said gently. ‘But she jumped too close to the rocks for either of us to do anything.’

‘Depression?’

‘Abuse. A bully for a husband. Despair.’

The bleakness in her voice must have been obvious. He reached out to her then, the merest hint of a touch, a trace of a strong hand brushing her cheek, and why it had the power to ground her, to feed her strength, she didn’t know.

Max Lockhart was a big man, in his forties, she guessed, his deep black hair tinged with silver, his strongly boned face etched with life lines. His grey eyes were deep-set and creased at the edges, from weather, from sun, from...life? Even in his boxers, covered with abrasions, he looked...distinguished.

She knew about this man. He’d lost his wife over twenty years ago and he’d just lost his son. Caroline’s twin.

‘I’m sorry about Christopher,’ she said gently, still holding Joni tight, as if holding him could protect him from the horrors around him.

‘Caroline told you?’

‘That her twin—your son—died three weeks ago? Yes. Caroline and I are fairly...close. She flew to Sydney for the funeral. We thought...we thought you might have come back with her.’

‘There was too much to do. There was financial stuff to do with the island. To do with my brother. Business affairs have been on the backburner as Christopher neared the end, but once he was gone they had to be attended to. And then...’

‘You thought it might be a good idea to sail out here?’

‘I needed a break,’ he said simply. ‘Time to get myself together. No one warned me of cyclones.’

‘It’s the tropics,’ she said simply. ‘Here be dragons.’

‘Don’t I know it!’

‘But we’re glad you’re back.’

That got her a hard look.

Max Lockhart had inherited the whole of Wildfire Island on the death of his father. The stories of the Lockharts were legion in this place. Max himself had hardly visited the island over the past twenty years, but his brother’s presence had made up for it.

Ian Lockhart had bled the island for all it was worth. He’d finally fled three months ago, leaving debt, destruction and despair...

Ian Lockhart. The hatred he’d caused...

She hugged the child in her arms tighter, as if she could somehow keep protecting him.

How could she?

The sun was getting hotter. She was starting to get sunburnt. Sunburn on top of everything else?

She was wearing knickers and bra. But they were her best knickers and bra, though, she thought with sudden dumb gratitude that today of all days she’d decided to wear her matching lace bra and panties.

They were a lot more elegant than the boxers Max was wearing. His boxers were old, faded, and they now sported a rip that made them borderline useless.

‘You needn’t look,’ Max said, and she flashed a look up at him and found he was smiling. And in return she managed a smile back.

Humour... It was a tool used the world over by medical staff, often in the most appalling circumstances. Where laypeople might collapse under strain, staff in emergency departments used humour to deflect despair.

Sometimes you laughed or you broke down, as simple as that, and right now she needed, quite desperately, not to break down. Max was a surgeon, she thought gratefully. Medical. Her tribe. He knew the drill.

‘My knickers are more respectable than your knickers,’ she said primly, and he choked.

‘What? Your knickers are two inches of pink lace.’

‘And they don’t have a hole in them right where they shouldn’t have a hole,’ she threw back at him, and he glanced down at himself and swore. And did some fast adjusting.

‘Dr Lockhart’s rude,’ she told Joni, snuggling him some more, but the little boy was drifting towards sleep. Good, she thought. Children had their own defences.

‘My yacht seems to be escaping,’ Max said, and she glanced back towards the reef.

It was, indeed, escaping. The anchor hadn’t gripped the sand. The yacht was now caught in the rip and heading out to sea.

‘One of the fishermen will follow it,’ she told him. ‘The rip’s easy to read. They’ll figure where it goes.’

‘It’d be good to get to it now.’

‘What could a yacht have that a good rock doesn’t provide?’ she demanded, feigning astonishment. And then she looked at his legs. ‘Except maybe disinfectant and dressings. And sunburn cream.’

‘And maybe a good strong rum,’ he added.

‘Trapped on an island with a sailor and a bottle of rum? I don’t think so.’ She was waffling but strangely it helped. It was okay to be silly.

Silliness helped block the thought of what had to be faced. Of Sefina’s body drifting out to sea...

‘Tell me about yourself,’ Max said, and she realised he was trying to block things out, too.

‘What’s to tell?’ She shrugged. ‘I’m Hettie. I’m charge nurse here. I’m thirty-five years old. I came to Wildfire eight years ago and I’ve been here ever since. I gather you’ve been here once or twice while I’ve been based here, but it must have coincided with my breaks off the island.’

‘Where did you learn to swim?’

‘Sydney. Bondi.’

‘The way you swim... You trained as a lifesaver?’

‘I joined as a Nipper, a trainee lifesaver, when I was six.’ The surf scene at Bondi had been her tribe then. ‘How did you know?’

‘I saw how you took Joni from me,’ he reminded her. ‘All the right moves.’

‘You were a Nipper, too?’

‘We didn’t have Nippers on Wildfire. I did have an aunt, though. Aunt Dotty. She knew the kids on the island spent their spare time doing crazier and crazier dives. I’ve dived off this headland more times than you’ve had hot dinners. We reckoned we knew the risks but Dotty said if I was going to take risks I’d be trained to take risks. So, like you, aged six I was out in the bay, learning the right way to save myself and to save others.’ He shrugged. ‘But until today I’ve never had to save anyone.’

‘You are a surgeon, though,’ she said gently, looking to deflect the bleakness. ‘I imagine you save lots and lots.’

He smiled at that and she thought, He has such a gentle smile. For a big man...his smile lit his face. It made him seem younger.

‘Lots and lots,’ he agreed. ‘If I count every appendix...’

‘You should.’

‘Then it’s lots and lots and lots. How about you?’

‘Can I count every time I put antiseptic cream on a coral graze?’

‘Be my guest.’

‘Then it’s lots and lots and lots and lots and lots.’

And he grinned. ‘You win.’

‘Thank you,’ she managed. ‘It takes a big surgeon to admit we nurses have a place.’

‘I’ve never differentiated. Doctors, nurses, even the ladies who do the flowers in the hospital wards and take a moment to talk... Just a moment can make a difference.’

And she closed her eyes.

‘Yes, it can,’ she whispered. ‘I wish...oh, I wish...’

* * *

He’d stuffed it. Somehow they’d lightened the mood but suddenly it was right back with them. The greyness. The moment he’d said the words he’d seen the pain.

‘What?’

Her eyes stayed closed. The little boy in her arms was deeply asleep now, cradled against her, secure for the moment against the horrors that had happened around him.

‘What?’ he said again, and she took a deep breath and opened her eyes again.

‘I didn’t have a moment,’ she said simply. ‘That’ll stay with me for the rest of my life.’

‘Meaning?’

‘Meaning Sefina was brought into hospital just before the cyclone. Ruptured spleen. Concussion. Multiple abrasions and lacerations. Her husband had beaten her to unconsciousness. Sefina’s not from M’Langi—she came here eighteen months ago from Fiji. Pregnant. Rumour is that...Joni’s father...brought her here and paid Louis to marry her. Louis’s an oaf. He’d do anything for money and he’s treated her terribly. She’s always been isolated and ashamed, and Louis keeps her that way.’

There was a moment’s silence while he took that on board, and somehow during that moment he felt the beginnings of sick dismay. Surely it couldn’t be justified, but once he’d thought of it he had to ask.

‘So Joni’s father...’ he ventured, and she tilted her chin and met his gaze square on.

‘He’s not an islander.’

‘Who?’

‘Do I need to tell you?’

And he got it. He looked down at the little boy cradled in Hettie’s arms. His skin wasn’t as dark as the islanders’.

His features...

His heart seemed to sag in his chest as certainty hit. ‘My brother? Ian? He’s his?’ How had he made his voice work?

‘Yes,’ she said, because there was no answer to give other than the truth. ‘Sefina is... Sefina was a Fijian islander. As far as I can gather, Ian stayed there for a while. He got her pregnant and she was kicked out of home. In what was a surprising bout of conscience for Ian, he brought her here. He paid Louis to marry her and he gave her a monthly allowance, which Louis promptly drank. But a few weeks ago the money stopped and Louis took his anger out on Sefina. The day before the cyclone things reached a crisis point. They were living out on Atangi. We flew her across to Wildfire, to hospital, but then the storm hit...and I didn’t have that moment...’

‘I’m sure you did your best.’ It was a trite thing to say and he saw a flash of anger in response.

‘She needed more.’

‘She had no one else?’

‘You need to understand. She was an outsider. She was pregnant by... And I’m sorry about this—but she was pregnant by a man the islanders have cause to hate. She married an oaf. Her mother-in-law wouldn’t have anything to do with her, and vilified anyone who did. And the only person responsible—your brother—is now missing.’

‘He’s dead,’ he said, and her gaze jerked to his.

‘Dead?’

‘That’s another reason I couldn’t get back here until now. Ian’s been gambling—heavily. Unknown to me he racked up debts that’d make your eyes water. That’s why he’s bled the island dry. And that’s why...well, his body was found two weeks ago, in Monaco. Who knows the whys or wherefores? The police are interested. I’m...not.’

There was a long, long silence.

She was restful, this woman, Max thought. Where others might have exclaimed, demanded details, expressed shock, disgust or horror, Hettie simply hugged the child in her arms a little tighter.

She was...beautiful, he thought suddenly.

Until now, despite the lacy knickers and bra, despite the attempt at humour, she’d seemed a colleague. A part of the trauma and the tragedy. Now, suddenly, she seemed more.

She was slight, five feet four or five. Her body was tanned and trim, and the lacy lingerie showed it off to perfection.

Her dark hair was still sodden. Her curls were forming wet spirals to frame her face.

Thirty-five, she’d said, and he might have guessed younger, apart from the life lines around her shadowed green eyes.

Life lines? Care lines? She’d cared about Sefina, he thought. She was caring about Joni.

Her body was curved around him now, protective, a lioness protective of her cub. Everything about her said, You mess with this little one, you mess with me.

His...nephew?

‘You realise he’s yours now,’ she whispered at last into the stillness, and the words were like a knife, stabbing across the silence.

‘What...?’

‘This little boy is a Lockhart,’ she said, deeply and evenly. ‘The M’Langi islanders look after their own. Joni’s not their own. He never has been. He was the child of two outsiders, and the fact that an oaf of an islander was paid to marry his mother doesn’t make him belong. The islanders have one rule, which is inviolate. Family lines cross and intercross through the islands, but, no matter how distant, family is everything. Children can never be orphaned. The word “orphan” can’t be translated into the M’Langi language.’

‘What are you saying?’ There was an abyss suddenly yawning before him, an abyss so huge he could hardly take it in.

She shrugged. ‘It’s simple,’ she said softly. ‘According to the M’Langi tradition, this little one isn’t an orphan, Dr Lockhart. This little boy is yours.’

* * *

He had complications crowding in from all sides but suddenly they were nothing compared to this one.

Ian had had a son.

The boy didn’t look like Ian, he thought. He had the beautiful skin colour of the Fijians but lighter. His dark hair wasn’t as tightly curled.

He was still sleeping, his face nestled against Hettie’s breast. Max could only see his profile, but suddenly...

It was a hint, a shade, a fleeting impression, but suddenly Max saw his mother in Joni.

And a hint of his own children. Caroline, twenty-six years old, due to be married next week to the man she loved.

Christopher, buried three weeks ago.

Christopher, his son.

This little boy is yours...

How could he begin to get his head around it? He couldn’t. Every sense was recoiling.

He’d loathed Ian. Born of gentle parents, raised on this island with love and tenderness... There’d never been a reason why Ian should have turned out as he had, but he’d been the sort of kid who’d pulled wings off flies. He’d been expelled from three schools. He’d bummed around the world until his parents’ money had dried up.

Max thought back to the time, a few years back, when Ian had come to see him in Sydney.

‘I’m broke,’ he’d said, honestly and humbly. ‘I’ve spent the money Mum and Dad left me and I can’t take the lifestyle I’ve been living anymore. I need to go back to Wildfire. Let me manage the place for you, bro. I swear I’ll do a good job. We both know it’s getting run-down and you don’t have time to be there yourself.’

It was hope rather than trust that had made him agree, Max thought grimly. That and desperation. It had been true; the island had needed a manager. But Max had needed to be in Sydney. Christopher had been born with cerebral palsy and he’d lurched from one health crisis to another. Max had been trying to hold down a job as head of surgery at Sydney Central, feeding as much money as he could back into the island’s medical services. Caroline, too... Well, his daughter had always received less attention than she’d needed or deserved.

If Ian could indeed take some of the responsibility...

Okay, he’d been naive, gullible, stupid to trust. That trust was coming home to roost now, and then some. He was having to face Ian’s appalling dishonesty.

But facing this...

This little boy is yours...

His son was dead. How could he face this?

‘You don’t need to think about it now,’ Hettie was saying gently, as if she guessed the body blow she’d dealt him. ‘We’ll work something out.’

‘We?’

‘I love Joni,’ she said simply. ‘I’m not going to hand him over until I’m sure you want him.’

‘How can you love him?’

Her eyes suddenly turned troubled, even a little confused, as if she wasn’t quite sure of what she was feeling herself. ‘He has no one,’ she said, tentatively now. ‘His mother trusted me and depended on me. I was there at his birth.’ She took a deep breath. ‘Maybe...until you’re ready to accept your responsibilities, I can take care of him for you.’

‘My responsibility...’

‘Whatever,’ she said hastily. ‘Until there’s another alternative, I seem to be all he has. He needs someone. He has me.’

‘You’re not saying you’ll take him on?’

‘I’m not saying anything,’ she whispered, and once again her lips touched the little one’s hair. ‘All I’m saying is that for now I’m holding him and I’m not letting go. Oh, and, Max...’

‘Yes?’

‘There are people on the beach,’ she said. ‘Waving. I think rescue is at hand. Time to get back to the real world.’

He glanced around sharply. There were, indeed, people on the beach.

‘Caroline will be overjoyed,’ Hettie told him. ‘Your daughter. Your family.’

And there was something in the way she said it...

He knew nothing about her, he realised. Nothing at all. He was a Lockhart. The islanders, including Hettie, must know almost everything there was to know about him. But Hettie? He knew nothing about her other than she was holding...

His son?

CHAPTER THREE

THE CORAL CUTS on Max’s legs were treated by his about-to-be son-in-law. Keanu, the island doctor Max’s daughter was about to marry, greeted him with overwhelming relief, but was now insisting Max submit to his care.

It seemed Sam, the island’s chief medical officer, had had to fly out that morning, transporting an urgent case to the mainland. ‘We’re always short on medical staff,’ Keanu told him, ‘so you’re stuck with me. But I think we can get away with no stitches. Now, anaesthetic?’

‘The last thing I need is a general anaesthetic,’ Max growled. ‘And no blocks. I’ve wasted enough of my time here. I don’t intend to lie round, waiting for anaesthetic to wear off. Keanu, leave it. I can clean them myself.’

‘So who’ll explain to Caroline that you can’t give her away because your legs are infected?’ Keanu demanded. ‘Not me. You’ll let me clean them properly.’

So he had no choice. He lay back and thought about biting bullets as Keanu cleaned, disinfected and dressed his cuts.

Thankfully the cuts were on his legs and not his face, he thought. He might still manage to look okay at Caroline’s wedding.

‘You have no idea how relieved she’ll be when she finds you’re here,’ Keanu told him as he worked. ‘She’s been out at a clinic at Atangi but she’s due back any time now. Our wedding plans are all in order and now she has her dad. We were starting to think we’d have to send Bugsy down the aisle in your place.’

‘Bugsy...’

‘The dog,’ Keanu said briefly, inspecting a graze that almost qualified as a cut. ‘This one’s nasty. Hold your breath for a bit, there’s a bit of muck stuck in here.’

Max held his breath. Maybe an anaesthetic wouldn’t have been such a bad idea.

‘Dog,’ he said at last when he could concentrate on anything other than pain.

‘Bugsy, the golden retriever. He’s responsible for us finding you so fast. Hettie left him on the beach. Normally Bugsy would loll around, waiting for her to come out of the water, or go for a swim himself, but he must have figured something was wrong. He came haring up to the hospital, soaking wet. We were already worried about Sefina and Joni. Sefina had discharged herself but we knew she couldn’t go home, so when Bugsy appeared looking desperate, running back and forth to the beginning of the path to Sunset Beach, and we couldn’t find Hettie, we put two and two together and figured we needed to investigate.’

‘You let Sefina discharge herself?’

‘Junior nurse,’ Keanu said grimly. ‘But it wasn’t her fault. Short of holding Sefina by force, which was impossible, there wasn’t a lot she could do when Sefina decided to leave. She let us know as soon as she could, and then Bugsy arrived.’ He hesitated. ‘Bugsy’s a shared dog, devoted to all of us. He officially belongs to one of our fly in, fly out doctors, but Maddie’s on maternity leave right now so Bugsy’s main caregiver is Hettie.’

‘Hettie has...no one else?’

Keanu cast him a sharp look. ‘Hettie has everyone on the island.’

‘Is that a warning?’

There was a moment’s silence, and then Keanu gave a reluctant shrug. ‘I know you’re not Ian,’ he conceded. ‘I need to keep reminding the islanders.’

‘Meaning they think if I was Ian I couldn’t be trusted with anything in a skirt.’

‘Ian couldn’t be trusted with anything at all,’ Keanu said bluntly. ‘But he was your brother and Hettie tells me he’s dead. I’m sorry.’

‘Are you? Will anyone on this island be sorry?’

‘No,’ Keanu admitted bluntly. ‘Maybe Sefina might have mourned him, but now...’ He shrugged again, and then went back to focussing on Max’s knee. ‘Maybe a stitch here...’

‘Steri-Strips,’ Max growled. ‘A scar or two won’t hurt.’

‘You can always cover it with pantyhose,’ Keanu said, and grinned. ‘It’s good to have you home, Max. You’ve done so much for the island.’ And then he glanced up as the door opened a crack. ‘Hettie. Come in. That is, if Dr Lockhart doesn’t mind you seeing his bare legs.’

‘I saw a lot more than his legs out in the water,’ Hettie retorted. ‘And there’s nothing our Dr Lockhart has that I haven’t seen a thousand times before.’

‘Shall we let the lady in?’ Keanu asked.

And Max thought, What the heck? It was true, Hettie was a professional. Right now, he was a patient, she was a nurse. There was no reason he should feel odd at the idea of her seeing him dressed in a hospital gown with bare legs.

‘Sure,’ he growled, and Hettie popped in, smiling. It was a professional smile, he thought, just right, nurse greeting patient. She was in nurse’s uniform, blue pants and baggy blue top. Her curls were caught back in a simple ponytail.

She looked younger than she’d looked on the atoll, he thought, and then he thought... She looked lovely?

She wasn’t beautiful in the classical sense, he conceded. Her nose was too snub, her cheeks were strong-boned, and her mouth was maybe too generous to be termed lovely.

She was wearing no make-up.

He still thought she looked beautiful.

‘How’s Joni?’ Keanu asked, before Max could form the same question, and Hettie smiled, albeit sadly.

‘Clean and dry and fast asleep in the kids’ ward. He’s the only occupant, now that any kids with minor injuries after the storm have gone home. I left Bugsy asleep beside his cot.’

‘The dog?’ Max stared. What sort of a hospital let dogs stay in the children’s ward?

‘We have monitors,’ Hettie told him. ‘The moment Joni stirs I’ll be in there, but the first thing he’ll see when he wakes will be Bugsy. Bugsy’s a friend, and Joni...well, Joni needs all the friends he can get.’

‘What will you do with him?’ Keanu asked. Keanu was still cleaning. Hettie had moved automatically to assist, handing swabs, organising disinfectant. They were both focussed on Max’s legs, which was disconcerting, to say the least.

The question hung and suddenly Max realised Keanu was talking to him.

What will you do with him?

‘He’s not mine to do anything with,’ Max growled, and Keanu raised his brows.

‘That’s not what the islanders think.’

‘They’ll think he’s yours,’ Hettie said. ‘I told you. He’s your brother’s child, your brother’s dead, therefore he’s your family. You don’t want him?’

‘Why would I want him?’

‘Goodness knows,’ Keanu said, and kept on working. It was disconcerting, to say the least, to be talking to two heads bent over his legs—plus talking about a child he’d only just learned existed. ‘Family dynasty or something?’ Keanu suggested. ‘He is a Lockhart.’

‘I have no proof he’s a Lockhart.’

‘You don’t, do you?’ Hettie was concentrating—fiercely, he thought—on his legs, and yet he could tell that her thoughts were elsewhere. On a little boy in the kids’ ward. ‘He could be anyone’s.’

Yeah, but he looked like a Lockhart.

‘Is there any sort of Child Welfare in the M’Langi group?’ he asked.

‘We don’t need Child Welfare,’ Hettie snapped, and Keanu cast her a surprised look. But then he shrugged and addressed Max.

‘We don’t normally need Child Welfare,’ Keanu agreed. ‘The islanders usually look after their own, but Joni’s an exception. He’s an outsider.’

‘He’s not an outsider. He belongs here, and if Max won’t look after him, I will.’ Hettie murmured the words almost to herself, but for a murmur it had power. The words were almost like a vow.

They made Keanu pause. The doctor stood back from the table and stared at Hettie, who was still looking at Max’s legs fiercely.

‘What the...? Het, are you suggesting you adopt him?’

‘If no one else claims him, yes.’

‘You can’t decide that now.’

‘I have decided. If his family doesn’t want him, I do. I mean it. Keanu, do you want to keep cleaning or will I take over?’

Keanu stared at her for a moment longer and then silently went back to cleaning. There was a tense stillness, broken only by the sound of tiny chinks of coral hitting the kidney basin.

His legs really were a mess but, then, everything was a mess, Max thought grimly. So what was new? When hadn’t life been a mess?

For just a moment, this morning, watching the sun rise, watching the fish darting in and out of the water, watching a pod of dolphins give chase, he’d given himself time out. He’d thought, What if...?

What if he finally let himself be free?

Twenty-six years ago his wife had died on this island, giving birth to twins. He and Ellie had been babies themselves, barely twenty.

He’d met Ellie at university. They’d both been arts students, surrounded by friends, high on life. They’d fallen in love and when they’d discovered a baby was on the way they’d accepted the pregnancy with all the insouciance of youth.

‘Maybe it’s not a mistake,’ Ellie had told him. ‘Maybe we’re meant to be a family.’ The knowledge that she’d been carrying twins had only added to their feeling of excitement.

‘How do you feel about marrying on Wildfire?’ he’d asked, and she’d been ecstatic.

‘The Lockhart family home? Your real-life island? Max, can we?’

They could, but not until summer vacation. They’d travelled to the island as soon as exams had ended. Ellie had been thirty-two weeks pregnant, excited about her pregnancy, excited about her sheer bulk.

He remembered their welcome. His mother had been wild with joy at their homecoming. His father had been gravely pleased that his son had found someone so beautiful to wed. No one had worried that Ellie had been pregnant at the ceremony. After all, what trouble could come to this truly blessed couple?

No one had worried that twin pregnancies sometimes spelled trouble.

He remembered his brother the night before the wedding. Ian had been blind drunk, toasting him for the hundredth time. They’d lit a campfire on the beach. Ian had waved his glass towards the island and then out at the stars hanging bright and low over the ocean.

‘Here’s to us, bro. We’ve got it all.’

He’d even been stupid enough to agree. The next day, he’d married. They’d danced into the small hours.

Ellie had gone into labour that night.

There had been no medical centre on the island then. They’d faced an agonising wait for medical evacuation, while Ellie had bled and bled.

She’d died before help arrived. The twins, Caroline and Christopher, had survived, but prematurity and birth trauma meant Christopher would be burdened with cerebral palsy for the rest of his life.

Christopher. His son.

‘Family dynasty or something? He is a Lockhart.’

No. Christopher was his son, he thought grimly. Not some child called Joni. How could he ever want another child?

He closed his eyes and Keanu paused again.

‘If this is hurting too much, let me knock you out.’

‘Just go for it.’

There was silence as Keanu started work again. Undercurrents were everywhere, Max thought, gritting his teeth against the pain.

‘Het, you won’t be able to just...adopt him,’ Keanu said at last into the stillness. ‘You’ll have to go through channels. If it’s really what you want then we’ll support you, but you’re not deciding this today. This suggestion seems right out of the blue. It’s a huge decision and there are legal channels to be dealt with. You know we come under Australian legal jurisdiction. If Joni doesn’t have relatives on the island...’ Here he cast a quick glance at Max. ‘As the island’s acting medical director, I’ll need to report Sefina’s death and Joni’s status to the mainland authorities. A kid like Joni...there’d be mainland couples lined up to adopt a toddler like him. You’ll need to plead some special case to be allowed to keep him.’

‘Sefina was my friend,’ Hettie told him.

‘Sefina was your patient.’

‘I let her down.’

‘We all let her down but her death is not our fault. I’m not about to let a guilty conscience force you into adoption.’

‘I’m not being forced.’

‘Why would you want to adopt?’ Max asked, and they both paused in their work, as if they’d forgotten he was there.

Maybe they should have had this discussion without him, Max thought. After all, it had nothing to do with him. Just because it was Ian’s child...

This little boy is yours.

No. He wanted nothing to do with Ian’s child.

His own son was dead. His daughter was about to be married to the man of her dreams and he might even be free of another responsibility.

All his life he’d accepted the responsibility the Lockharts had carved for themselves through generations of ownership. Every spare cent he’d earned had been ploughed back into this hospital. He’d worked so hard...

But now... In the next couple of days Max would meet the man who’d funded a world’s best tropical diseases research facility and tropical resort on Wildfire. Ian had conned a Middle Eastern oil billionaire—a sheikh, no less—into purchasing island land for the resort, but the sale had been built on forged signatures and falsehoods. Island land was held in a Lockhart family trust for perpetuity and Ian had had no power to sell. Amazingly, though, once he’d known the facts, the sheikh had still been prepared to invest, leasing instead of buying. He had seemingly limitless money and resources. He was giving work to the islanders, giving hope, and for the first time since that night before his wedding, twenty-six years ago, Max was feeling a taste of freedom.

Maybe he could walk away from here and never come back.

This little boy is yours. Hettie’s words, Keanu’s words meant nothing. They couldn’t. He did not want any more responsibility.

But finally Hettie was answering his question. ‘I want to adopt because I can,’ she said. It was as if she’d needed time to work out her answer, but now she had it clear. ‘I’ve spent my life looking out for no one but myself. Sitting out on the atoll this morning, holding Joni, knowing Sefina was dead, it crowded in on me. I give nothing. I love...nothing. If I can have Joni... I will love him, Keanu. I promise.’

‘But it won’t be up to me,’ Keanu told her, giving her a searching look. ‘We’ll report Sefina’s death to the authorities and see what happens.’

‘I won’t let him leave the island.’

‘Het, the islanders won’t accept him,’ Keanu said gently. ‘He’s Ian’s child and Ian robbed them blind.’

‘He’ll be my child.’

‘Let’s see what the authorities say.’ Keanu fastened a last dressing on Max’s legs. ‘There you go, Dr Lockhart. All better. You’re free to go.’

Free to go...

It sounded okay to him, Max thought, swinging his legs gingerly from the examination table. Hettie held his arm while he stood, and he had the sense to let her. Lying supine during medical procedures could make anyone dizzy.

And dizziness did come, just a little, but it was enough for him to be grateful for Hettie’s support.

She was small and slight. She’d been through an appalling experience, too, and yet he could feel her strength. She was some woman. How many women would have backed up such a morning with heading into work; with continuing to keep going?

With offering to adopt a child?

‘Are you okay?’ Hettie asked, sounding worried.

She was worried about him?

‘I’m fine. Just a bit wobbly.’

‘Take your time,’ Keanu told him. ‘We’ll find you a bed in the ward.’

‘If you can find me some clothes I’ll head up to the house.’ His clothes were either in the water or on board the boat. And where was his boat?

‘You need someone to keep an eye on you,’ Hettie said. ‘With those legs, you need care. I’m not sure where Caroline is...’

And, as if on cue, the doors to the theatre swung open. Caroline burst through the doors, looking frantic.

‘Dad,’ she said as she saw him. ‘Oh, Dad...’ And she flung herself into his arms and burst into tears.

Hettie stepped back.

‘You’ll be okay now,’ she said softly. ‘You’re with your family.’

And she walked out and left him with his daughter.

* * *

Keanu was waiting as Hettie finished her interview with the local constabulary. He’d protested as she’d donned her nurse’s uniform instead of civvies the moment she’d reached the hospital. Now, though, with Max settled with his daughter and Joni asleep, there seemed no reason for her to stay. The hospital on Wildfire had settled to a new norm. Without Sefina.

Hettie could hardly think of Sefina without wanting to be sick. Of all the senseless deaths...

‘There’s nothing more you can do, Het,’ Keanu told her as the policeman left. The young doctor was starting to sound stern. ‘You’ve had an appalling shock. For you and Max to save Joni was little short of miraculous. You need to give your body time to recover. Take Bugsy home with you and sleep.’

‘How can I sleep? Keanu, we failed her.’

‘The island failed her,’ he said. ‘The islanders hated Ian Lockhart, and Sefina was someone they could vent that anger on.’

‘It wasn’t her fault.’

‘We all know that. Even the islanders know that. It was only her husband who was overtly cruel and he’ll be prosecuted. Now you need to take care of you.’

‘I’ll stay with Joni.’

‘Not on my watch, Het,’ he said, even more firmly. ‘Joni’s a problem we need to solve but not now, not when you’re emotionally distraught. If I let you stay with him all the time it’ll tear your heart out when he leaves. I don’t know where your offer of adoption came from, but it’s crazy. You know it is. You haven’t had time yet even to absorb the enormity of Sefina’s death. So let’s be professional. We’re taking care of him. Go home.’

‘I don’t want to.’

‘I’ll give you something to help you sleep,’ he said, as if he hadn’t heard her objection, and he took her shoulders and propelled her to the nurses’ station. ‘But you’re signing off now and that’s an order.’

* * *

It was all very well, following orders, but Hettie needed to work. She was exhausted but work seemed the only way to get the events of the morning out of her head.

She couldn’t—but neither could she get rid of this certainty of what she had to do.

She’d tried hard not to get emotionally involved with her patients. Why did she suddenly, fiercely, want to adopt Joni?

Why did she need to adopt Joni?

She walked slowly around the lagoon, in no hurry to get to her neat little villa overlooking the water. The island was lush, beautiful, washed with rain. Most of the storm damage had been cleared. A few palms had fallen but tropical rain forest regenerated fast. Soon there’d be nary a scar.

Except Sefina was dead.

Maybe it’d be easier, she thought, if there was a body to bury. To keen over?

It’d be a tiny funeral if the body was ever found. Nobody here had loved Sefina.

No one would love Joni. He was Ian Lockhart’s son.

He’d be adopted off the island, she thought bleakly. Here he’d never get over the stigma of being Ian’s son. He’d never be accepted.

‘I could make him be accepted.’ She said it out loud but even as she said it she faced its impossibility. On this island Joni was an illegitimate outsider. He always would be.

‘But I want him.’

Why? She sank onto a fallen log and stared sightlessly over the lagoon. Why did she want, so fiercely, to hug Joni to her? To hold?

Her maternal instinct was long dead. Killed by Darryn...

‘Oh, get over it.’ She rose and stared out at a heron standing one legged at the edge of the water. She often saw this guy here. He was a lone bird.

‘And that’s what I am, too,’ she told herself. ‘Today was an aberration. Joni will find himself some lovely parents on the mainland who’ll love him to bits. And I...’ She took a deep breath. ‘I’ll take the pills Keanu gave me and go to sleep. And I’ll wake up in the morning feeling not maternal at all. I’ll feel back to normal.’

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