left ear if you’re taken. Left because it’s closer to the heart, and in truth it’s probably a tourist legend, not a local custom at all.’
He was too close. Fran’s nerves were skirmishing with her brain, urging her to move closer, while her brain yelled for restraint.
Restraint!
It was practically a byword in her life, preached by her mother, confirmed by her husband, restraint in everything.
Not that her ex-husband had shown any restraint when it came to Clarissa...
Did that explain this sudden urge to fling it all away? To move out of the confining bounds of the life she’d always led? To forget the stupid guilt she’d felt when her father had left her and her mother, and the restraint she’d imposed on herself since that day.
Don’t rock the boat had become her motto.
Foolishly?
‘Definitely not taken,’ she muttered, disturbed as much by the memories and the fight within her as the closeness of the attractive man.
‘Good,’ he said quietly as he slid the flower’s delicate stem behind her right ear, letting his fingers brush against her jaw as he withdrew his hand, his eyes holding hers, sending messages she didn’t want to understand.
Or didn’t want to acknowledge?
‘Now, should we drive or walk? It’s up to you. The walk down is beautiful because you look out over the town and the sea, but coming back up the hill isn’t fun if you’re tired after your flight.’
Fran took his words as a challenge. Tired after her flight indeed!
‘I hope I’m not so feeble I can’t manage a flight and a walk up a hill all in one day,’ she retorted, trying in vain to remember just how high the hill they’d driven up earlier might be.
Ha! So she’s got some spirit, this sophisticated beauty, Steve thought, though all he said was, ‘That’s great.’
They set off, up past the hospital, along the ridge that looked out over a peaceful lagoon with small islands dotted about it.
‘I love this view,’ he said. ‘You’re looking down at the centre of Port Vila, and out over a few of the smaller islands. Some of the other islands in the group are much larger than this one, but Vila, or Port Vila, the proper name, is the capital.’
He continued his tourist guide talk as they walked, pointing out the smart parliament building, telling her of the cyclone that had hit just east of the town a few years back, and the earthquakes the island group had suffered recently.
‘Yet people still live here—they rebuild and life goes on?’
She turned towards him as she spoke, obviously intrigued.
‘It is their home,’ he reminded her, and she nodded.
‘Of course it is.’
‘And your home? Has it always been in Sydney?’
Normal, getting to know you talk, yet it felt more than that. Something inside him wanted to know more of this woman who’d come into his life.
‘Always Sydney,’ she replied.
They were heading downhill now, traffic thickening on the road as they came closer to the waterfront.
‘And you?’ she asked, moving closer to him as they passed a group of riotous holiday makers.
‘Sydney, then a little town on the coast, Wetherby, then Sydney again. It’s complicated.’
She smiled at him.
‘Like the pelican?’ she teased. ‘Seems you’ll have a lot to tell me over dinner.’
Was she interested or just being polite?
Not that it mattered. He might be attracted to this woman but everything about her told him she wasn’t a candidate for a mutually enjoyable affair and anything more than that was still a little way down his ‘to-do’ list.
Not far down but still...
He returned to tour guide mode, pointing out various buildings, and soon they were down at the waterfront, and she stopped, looking out over the shining water.
‘It’s a beautiful setting for a town, isn’t it?’
‘It is indeed,’ he agreed. ‘It’s one of the reasons I never mind coming back here.’
‘The people being another?’ she said, and he turned towards her and smiled.
‘Of course!’
He led the way along the boardwalk built out over the water’s edge towards the restaurant in a quieter part of the harbour. But a cry made them both turn. A group of Japanese tourists was talking excitedly and pointing down into the water, crowding so closely to the edge they were in danger of falling in.
Steve ran back, Fran following more slowly, arriving in time to catch Steve’s shirt as he threw it off and stepped out of his sandals, before diving into the inky depths beneath them.
‘Ambulance!’ he yelled when he resurfaced, before diving back down out of sight.
Fran turned to one of the locals who’d joined the group, and said, ‘Ambulance?’
He nodded, holding up his cell phone to show he was already on it.
Which left Fran free to push back the excited onlookers and beckon the burly local who’d phoned the ambulance to come and join her.
Steve’s head reappeared, a very dark head beside it.
‘If you can lean over, I think I can pass him up.’
The breathless words weren’t quite as clear as they might have been, but Fran understood and she and the local man lay down so they could lean forward towards the water.
With what seemed like superhuman strength, Steve thrust the slight form of a young man upwards, to be grabbed by the stranger next to Fran, then Fran herself.
Together they hauled him up, with a couple from the tourist party helping to lift him clear. Fran waved the crowd away again and rested their patient in the recovery position, while Steve swam towards some steps fifty yards away.
Fran cleared the young man’s airway and felt for a pulse. Not even a faint one!
Rolling him onto his back, she pinched his nose and gave five quick breaths, then changed position to begin chest compressions.
Steve arrived as she reached the count of thirty, so she let him take over the compressions while she counted and did the breaths. The ambulance siren was growing louder and louder as it neared them but they kept pumping and breathing until, finally, the young man gave a convulsive jerk, and Steve rolled him back into the recovery position before he brought up what seemed like a gallon of sea water.
He was breathing
