sigh was almost as deep as her own.
‘We’ll just have to wait and see,’ he said quietly. ‘Reuben’s going to get someone in from Atangi to fence the site and he was going to tell the small crew still working as soon as I was out of sight.’
‘So they wouldn’t rend you limb from limb?’ Caroline queried, although she couldn’t find even the slightest of smiles to go with the suggestion.
‘Probably,’ Keanu agreed. ‘But it’s done now, so that’s one less thing for you to worry about. Let’s get started on these breakfasts.’
He’d done it so she could stop worrying about it?
‘Weren’t you talking about making breakfasts?’
One word, and a practical one at that, yet tingles still ran down her spine.
‘Of course. I’ve only got two and shortly I’ll be down to one patient, but would you mind asking them what they fancy for breakfast? Vailea’s left a list—there’s scrambled, boiled or fried eggs, bacon, baked beans, toast and jam, and I think there’s cereal.’
‘I might have to have the lot to wake me up,’ he said before turning and walking out of the kitchen.
To wake him up?
It hadn’t been that late when they’d parted.
So, had he, like she, lain awake long into the night, rethinking the kiss?
Or had he been thinking about his marriage?
About his wife?
Though perhaps he’d been worried about the mine closure and his decision to be the one to tell Reuben? Kept awake by things that had nothing at all to do with the heated, almost desperate kiss and the discussion that had followed it.
FINDING THE RATHER large kitchen altogether too small to share with Caro, Keanu delivered the breakfast orders and departed, excusing himself by explaining he wanted to change the dressings on the Buruli ulcer, which was causing both him and Sam a lot of concern.
It wasn’t responding to the medication, the young lad was in severe pain and the flesh was continuing to deteriorate, as was the lad’s general condition.
‘Are you sure nothing got into it before you came in here?’ he asked as he deadened the area around the wound to clean it yet again.
‘Could have.’ A shrug strengthened the typical boy reply.
‘Like what?’ Keanu asked, but all he got that time was a shake of his head.
He put the new dressing on the wound, wrote up stronger painkillers and was departing when the young aide, having just started on duty, brought in the breakfast tray.
Time he was gone, yet his feet led him to the kitchen.
‘Hettie tells me she’ll be here just before ten so you can come down to the longhouse.’
All he got for a reply was a frown, although eventually she must have summoned up enough courage to speak.
‘I—um—I’m not sure, Keanu. I really don’t like funerals—even the island celebratory ones. I hate that people say all the nice things about someone after they’re dead and can’t hear them. Why don’t people tell them that stuff before they die?’
Keanu moved across the kitchen towards her and put his arms around her.
‘You did tell him, Caroline, when we sat with him before he died. He knew how much he meant to you and if you don’t want to come down, of course you shouldn’t. I guess Hettie just assumed you would want to.’
He felt her body rest against his and tension drain from it. He longed to kiss her, but now he knew where kisses led …
He shouldn’t have come close enough to touch her, let alone give her a hug, at least until they’d had time to talk about last night’s revelations. About how she felt, about whether it mattered at the moment that he was still married …
So he let his lips brush the soft, golden hair on the top of her head and eased away from her.
‘I’ll bring you some food later,’ he said, and got out of the place before the regret that he hadn’t kissed her overcame his common sense.
The longhouse was busier than he’d expected, and he could pick out people from every inhabited island in the group. The harbour down at the mine would be crowded with boats and the old truck would have been ferrying locals from there to the research station all morning.
Someone had put a row of chairs at one end of the building, and he and the elders took their places there. The crowd grew quiet when he spoke, talking with love of the man he’d known—the young, strong man who’d been a master boatman, often called upon to rescue people who had foolishly put out to sea when the weather was bad.
He reminded his people of some of the history of M’Langi that Alkiri had passed on to him, true tales and folklore, fascinating stories for two story-hungry youngsters.
And finally he asked for others to speak, and speak they did. A flood of reminiscences followed, first the elders, then ordinary people whose lives Alkiri had touched.
Swallowing a lump of emotion as he listened, he was almost glad Caro wasn’t here. Always a softie, she’d have been in floods of tears by now.
Caro …
A disturbance of some kind at the back of the longhouse brought him out of his reverie—useless reverie, in fact.
There were raised voices, angry voices, then one of the men departed, maybe told to leave by someone senior to them.
But the bits and pieces of talk he’d heard suggested the man was going to the hospital. He could see Hettie and Sam sitting with the works foreman, Hettie having obviously returned when Caroline had explained she wasn’t coming down.
Caroline!
The man was a miner …
With a very hasty excuse to the nearest elder he departed, following the man up the hill, hurrying to catch up, to get in front of him.
He recognised him.
Definitely one of the miners he’d seen the other day.
He called to him but in spite of the early hour the man had probably been drinking and nothing could make him deviate from his determined path.
Keanu was close on the miner’s heels when he reached the gate near the airstrip and there Keanu diverted from the miner’s path, taking the back way, which he knew was shorter, running now, his heart thudding in his chest, reaching the hospital and racing in, calling for Caro.
He must have looked and sounded like a madman because she reached out her hand and
