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?
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
