CHAPTER SEVEN
IZZY PACED HERSELF on the run along the coastal path, which, right now, bordered a small sheltered beach. Ahead, the path rose high over headland cliffs, and further on it wound through coastal scrub. A truly beautiful part of the world—the place she loved, the place she belonged.
She’d been working nights, so this early-morning run was in the nature of a reward. A little treat before returning to her real world—making sure Nikki was ready for the start of the new term, catching up with her parents to get the latest family news, walking the dogs across the lush paddocks around the house—relaxing!
Nikki!
Her daughter would be thirteen next month—thirteen going on thirty—sensible, loving, doing well at school. So why was there always a little knot of worry tucked beneath Izzy’s sternum where Nikki was concerned?
Izzy stopped—well, jogged on the spot—peering down onto the beach where an unidentifiable lump of something lay just beyond the lapping water.
Too big to be a body, she told the lurch in her stomach, but best she check.
Scrambling down over lumpy rocks from the path to the sandy beach, she caught a glimpse of movement up ahead.
Someone else heading towards the unknown object?
Or someone leaving the—
No! It was definitely too big for a body; besides, the movement had now resolved into a person, tall, dark-haired—lots of dark hair—definitely heading for the lump.
Izzy was the first to reach what was now apparent as a beached mammal, and knelt beside it, speaking quietly, touching it gently—a baby whale? Surely it must be because dolphins were a different shape, sleeker, their faces pointed, beaked...
Although the sun was not yet high in the sky, the animal’s skin was hot. Izzy ripped off her T-shirt, dunked it in the waves and spread it over the animal’s back.
‘Good idea,’ a deep voice said. ‘I’ve a towel in my pack, I’ll get that.’
He’d turned and was gone before Izzy could get a good look at him, nothing but an impression of a very unkempt man with a lot of facial hair and plenty more in a tangled mess all over his head.
‘Bring something like a bottle or a cup if you’ve got one, and clean water, too.’
She yelled the order after him then returned to studying the animal, trying to remember things she’d learned when she and Nikki had visited Sea World some years ago.
Sea mammals usually stranded themselves on their side.
Tick!
This one certainly had.
The stranger returned.
‘Porpoise,’ he said in an authoritative voice.
‘You think? I thought maybe baby whale.’
A shout of laughter made her look up, and up, to the tousled-haired man standing above her.
‘Whale calves are three times the size of this fellow and weigh a ton or more.’
‘Know-it-all,’ Izzy muttered to herself, but as the man had dunked his towel in the water and was efficiently covering the animal she could hardly keep arguing with him.
And why was she arguing?
Did it matter?
‘I think the first thing is to get it onto its belly.’
Bit late now to tell him she’d already thought of that.
‘But the fresh water?’
Ha, something she knew that he didn’t!
Deep inside she wondered at the petty thoughts flashing through her head but hopefully he wouldn’t have noticed the momentary pause before she answered.
‘Just pour a little over each eye, like where he’d have an eyebrow, so it will run down. I seem to remember you need to keep the eyes moist but—’
‘The salt gets encrusted on them if you use sea water,’ he finished for her, smiling, so white teeth flashed in the mess of dark hair.
And something gave a tiny tug in the pit of Izzy’s stomach...
No! Not that! No way!
Carefully he poured water to a point above first one eye, then the other, allowing the water to run down over both eyes.
‘I’m Mac,’ he said, screwing the lid back on the bottle to preserve the rest of the water.
‘Izzy,’ Izzy replied, lifting her hand towards his so they shook above the body of what was apparently a porpoise. ‘We’ll have to roll him this way, towards the sea, to get him on his belly and I think if we dig a hole along this side, he might turn easily.’
‘You’ve done this before?’ Mac asked, joining Izzy on the seaward side of the animal, and digging into the sand.
‘Nope, but I once went to a lecture about beached mammals. Big ones you shouldn’t roll because you can break their ribs, and, oh, you should keep the tail and flippers and this fin on the back wet because they cool themselves through these thinner bits of their body.’
Mac, who’d brought a billycan as well as the bottle of water, began filling it and tipping it carefully onto the fins and tail while Izzy kept digging, focused on what she was doing so the tremor of—what? Awareness?—that tickled through her body when Mac settled beside her again, scraping sand away, almost passed unnoticed.
Almost!
What malign fate had brought him to this precise spot at this exact moment in time? Mac wondered as he knelt far too close to the half-naked woman and pulled sand away from the stranded animal.
A three-week trek down the coast path had been an opportunity to clear his head and prepare himself for
