The Maverick Millionaire
Alison Roberts
The man she has been waiting for…Jake Logan may be ex-military, but recently he'd been more at home among the glitterati of Hollywood's finest. So different from where he is right now: seeking shelter from a powerful storm with the most beautiful woman he's ever met. She's a breath of fresh air!Ellie Sutton doesn't trust easily; she's discovered that the hard way. With nowhere to run, for some reason she feels safe with the handsome enigmatic stranger. But as rescue draws closer, they realize they don't want their time together to end….The Logan Twins: One storm–two happy endings!
“Here …” Jake offered her a hand. “Take it easy, though. That foot won’t want much weight on it.”
He held out his other hand as Ellie started to rise, and a heartbeat later she found herself on her feet, holding both Jake’s hands.
And he wasn’t letting go.
She couldn’t even look away from his face. From a gaze that was holding hers with a look that made the rest of the world cease to exist. Everything seemed to coalesce. Surviving the rescue, finding their way to shelter, being rescued herself and the bond that had grown and grown today, thanks to Jake’s heroism. So many powerful emotions.
His face was so close. She only had to lean a little and tilt her face up and her lips would meet his.
And, dear Lord … She could feel it happening, and no alarm bells were going to halt the process, no matter how loudly they tried to sound.
She was so close now she could feel his breath on her lips, and her eyes were drifting shut in anticipation of a kiss she wanted more than anything she could remember wanting in her life.
The sharp crackle of static from behind made her jump.
“Medic One, do you read? Ellie … are you there?”
THE LOGAN TWINS (#ulink_741781a7-929b-5f85-b4b2-534d0e38d9f0)
Twin brothers Ben and Jake Logan have each become wildly successful in their own way, and yet they’re still getting into trouble together. This time it’s when they’re sailing off the coast of New Zealand and a massive storm hits, tearing their boat apart …
But the Logan brothers aren’t beaten easily. And when they find themselves on very different shores neither of them knows just how much the storm—and the strong, irresistible women they meet in the heart of it—will change their lives for ever!
Read both books in this amazing duet!
NINE MONTHS TO CHANGE HIS LIFE by Marion Lennox, June 2014
THE MAVERICK MILLIONAIRE by Alison Roberts, July 2014
The Maverick Millionaire
Alison Roberts
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
ALISON ROBERTS lives in Christchurch, New Zealand, and has written over sixty novels for Mills & Boon
Medical Romance™. This is her debut for the Cherish™ line. As a qualified paramedic she has personal experience of the drama and emotion to be found in the world of medical professionals, and loves to weave stories with this rich background—especially when they can have a happy ending.
When Alison is not writing you’ll find her indulging her passion for dancing or spending time with her friends (including Molly the dog) and her daughter Becky, who has grown up to become a brilliant artist. She also loves to travel, hates housework, and considers it a triumph when the flowers outnumber the weeds in her garden.
This one’s for Linda, with much love xxx
Contents
Cover (#ub90c1bb7-e68b-5875-990b-b7b3051cc1bc)
Introduction (#u86890815-0a68-5165-9fbb-9b185456d221)
The Logan Twins (#ulink_944150b4-c7c8-5987-9d5d-f573fa3e675a)
Title Page (#uca3311c6-13f9-5220-8529-447683280672)
About the Author (#u5aff4661-f071-5d0a-9a91-7c39ce8409ea)
Dedication (#ucd089fd2-fe59-5bd6-8a3c-8b9a0f7928f5)
Chapter One (#ulink_5c123617-19a1-57cf-a54f-f980a0a38fbe)
Chapter Two (#ulink_fc6636a8-6d32-5301-b2cc-8a2afd3bde81)
Chapter Three (#ulink_d515ec4e-c2ec-509e-b60d-53e191efe4ae)
Chapter Four (#ulink_33005134-7845-55bf-8ba8-7b81c1f7c1bb)
Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)
Extract (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_bcfefe8a-defa-5223-9064-29c894b96315)
NO. NOT THIS TIME.
Jacob Logan was not going to let his older brother assume responsibility for sorting out the mess they were in. Not again. Not when he was still living with the scars from the last time.
Ben was only the elder by twenty minutes and their parents were long gone. Why was it so incredibly hard to break free of the beliefs that had got embedded in childhood?
But this time it was his turn to take charge. Yet again, it had been his bright idea that had got them into this mess and it was a doozy. So bad that it might be the only chance he ever got to look out for Ben for once.
This was more terrifying than the aftermath of their father’s wrath for any childhood scrape they’d got themselves into. Worse than being in the thick of it in Afghanistan after they’d both escaped by running off to join the army. This was a life or death battle and the odds were getting higher that they weren’t going to win.
There’d been warnings of possible gale-force winds yesterday and they’d known they could be in for a rough day, but nothing like this. Cyclone Lila had changed course unexpectedly overnight and dawn had broken to mountainous seas, vicious winds and driving rain that almost obliterated visibility. The strong currents made the waves unpredictable, and the fleet of yachts in this Ultraswift-Round-the-World Challenge had been caught, isolated and exposed in the open seas east of New Zealand’s north island.
They’d caught some of the stats on the radio before the yacht had finally been crushed under a mountain of water and they’d had to battle to get into their bubble of a life raft. Winds of sixty-five knots and gusts up to two hundred miles per hour. Waves that towered up to fifty feet, dwarfing even the biggest boats. Competitors were retiring from the race in droves and turning to flee, but not fast enough. Boats had overturned. Masts had snapped like matchsticks. Mayday calls had gone out for men overboard. Bodies had already been recovered. There were search aircrafts out all over the place, but the only thing the Logan brothers had heard over the sound of an angry sea had been the deep drone of an air force Orion and that had been a long way away.
The Southern Ocean was a big place when you were in trouble.
They’d been drifting for hours now. Being tossed like a cork in the huge seas.
By some miracle, they’d finally been spotted. A helicopter was overhead and a crewman was being lowered on a winch. Jake could see the spare harness dangling.
One harness.
No way could more than one person get winched up at a time.
And he wasn’t going to go first. This weather was getting worse by the minute. What if the chopper couldn’t get back?
‘You’re going first,’ he yelled over the noise of the sea and the chopper.
‘Like hell I am. You’re going first.’
‘No way. You’re hurt. I can wait.’
The guy on the end of the winch had disappeared behind the crest of a wave. Caught by the water, he was dragged through and suddenly swinging dangerously closer. Someone was putting their life on the line here to rescue them.
‘Look—it was my stupid idea to do this. I get to decide who goes first.’
He didn’t have to say it out loud. It was his fault. Things that turned to custard had always been his fault.
Desperation had him yelling loud enough to be really heard as the rescuer got close enough to shove a harness into his hands. He pushed it towards Ben. Tried to wrestle him into it.
‘Just do it, Ben. Put the harness on. You’re going first.’
But Ben pushed it back. Tried to force Jake’s arm into a loop.
‘Someone’s got to look out for you,’ he yelled.
‘I’ll be okay. I can wait.’
‘This isn’t make-believe, Jake. It’s not some blockbuster movie.’
‘You think I don’t know that?’
‘I know you don’t. You wouldn’t know reality if it bit you. You’re just like Mom.’
And now it was their rescuer yelling. Helping Ben to shove the harness onto Jake.
‘There’s no time for this.’ Good grief...was this person risking life and limb to rescue them female?
Jake was still resisting. Still focused on his brother. ‘What the hell is that supposed to mean?’
‘She couldn’t face reality. Why do you think she killed herself?’
That did it. The shock took the fight out of Jake. The harness was snapped into place.
‘The chopper’s full,’ the rescuer yelled at Ben. ‘We’ll come back for you as soon as we can.’ She was clipping heavy-duty carabiners together and she put her face close to Jake’s. ‘Put your arms around me and hang on. Just hang on.’
He had no choice. A dip into icy water and then they were being dragged into the air. Spinning. He could see the bright orange life raft getting smaller and smaller, but he could still see his twin brother’s face looking up at him. The shock of his words was morphing into something even worse. Maybe he’d never find out the truth even if he wanted to go there.
Dear God... Ben...
This shouldn’t be happening. Would he ever see his brother again?
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_e6883b34-d42c-57f1-a455-be9a1f45ed68)
THE WAVE WAS the last straw.
As though the adrenaline rush of the last few hours was simply being washed away as Eleanor Sutton faced the immediate prospect of drowning.
How much adrenaline could one person produce, anyway? She’d been burning it as fuel for hours as the rescue helicopter crew she was a part of had played a pivotal role in dealing with the stricken yachts caught up in this approaching storm. They’d pulled two people from a life raft and found another victim who’d had nothing more than his life jacket as protection as he rode the enormous swells of this angry sea.
Then they’d plucked a badly injured seaman from the deck of a yacht that was limping out of trouble with the broken mast that had been responsible for the crewman’s head injuries. The chopper was full. Overfull, in fact, which was why Ellie had been left dangling on the winch line until they could either juggle space or get to a spot on land.
With her vantage point of being so much closer to the water as the chopper had bucketed through the menacing shark-gray sky, she’d been the one to spot the bright orange bubble of a life raft as it had crested one of the giant swells and then disappeared again. In the eerie light of a day that was far darker than it should be for the time, it had been all too easy to spot the two pale faces peering up at the potential rescue the helicopter advertised.
The helmet Ellie wore had built in headphones and a microphone that sat almost against her lips. Even in the howl of driving wind and rain and helicopter rotors, it was easy to communicate with both her pilot, Dave, and fellow paramedic, Mike.
‘Life raft at nine o’clock. At least two people on board.’
‘We can’t take any more.’ It was Dave who responded. ‘We’d be over limit in weight and this wind is picking up.’
There was a warning tone in those casual last words. Dave was a brilliant pilot, but he was already finding it a challenge to fly in these conditions. Some extra weight with the approaching cyclone getting ever closer might be enough to tip the balance and put everybody in even more danger.
But they couldn’t leave them behind. The full force of Cyclone Lila wouldn’t be felt for a good few hours yet, but they shouldn’t still be in the air as it was. All aircraft would be grounded by the time they reached land again. It was highly unlikely that this life raft would be spotted by any other boats and, even if it was, it would be impossible to effect a rescue.
If they didn’t do something, they were signing the death warrants of another two people. There had already been too much carnage in this disastrous leg of the Ultraswift-Round-the-World yacht race. At least one death had been confirmed, a lot of serious injuries and there were still people unaccounted for.
‘We can get one,’ Ellie said desperately. ‘He can ride with me on the end of the line. We’re so close to land. We can drop him and try going back for the other one.’
There was a moment’s silence from above. It was Mike who spoke this time.
‘You really want to try that, Ellie?’
Did she? Despite the skin-tight rescue suit she was wearing under her flight suit, Ellie knew she was close to becoming hypothermic. Would her fingers work well enough to manipulate the harness and carabiner clips to attach another person to the winch safely? She was beyond exhaustion now, too, and that old back injury was aching abominably. What if the victim was terrified by this form of transport and struggled? Made them swing dangerously on the end of the line and make a safe landing virtually impossible?
But they all knew there was no choice.
‘Let’s give it a try, at least,’ Ellie said. ‘We can do that, can’t we?’
And so they did, but Dave was having trouble keeping the chopper level in the buffeting winds, and the mountainous swells of the sea below were impossible to judge. Just as they got close enough to hover near the life raft, the foaming top of a wave reached over Ellie’s head and she was suddenly underwater, being dragged through the icy sea like a fish on a line.
And that did it.
She wasn’t under the water for very long at all, but it was one of those moments where time seemed to stand still. Where a million thoughts could coalesce into surprising clarity.
Eleanor Sutton was totally over this. She was thirty-two years old and she had a dodgy back. Three years ago this hadn’t been the plan of how her life would be. She would be happily married. At home with a gorgeous baby. Working part time, teaching one of the subjects she was so good at. Aeromedical transport or emergency management maybe.
The fact that she could actually remember this so clearly was a death knell. This kind of adrenaline rush had been what had got her through the last three years when that life plan had been blown out of the water so devastatingly. Losing personal priorities due to living for the ultimate challenge of risking her life for others had been the way to move forward.
And it wasn’t working any more.
If she could see all this so clearly as she was dragged through the wave and then swinging in clear air again over the life raft, Ellie knew it would never work again. She shouldn’t be capable of thinking about anything other than how she was going to harness another body to her own in the teeth of the approaching cyclone and then get them both safely onto land somewhere.
This was it.
The last time she would be doing this.
She might as well make it count.
Unbelievably, the men in the life raft weren’t ready to cooperate. Ellie had the harness in her hands. She shoved it towards one of them, holding it up to show where the arm loops were. The harness was taken by one of the men, but he immediately tried to pass it to the other.
‘Just do it, Ben. Put the harness on. You’re going first.’
But he pushed it back and there was a brief struggle as he tried to force the other man’s arm into one of the loops. Too caught up arguing over who got to go first, they were getting nowhere.
‘I’ll be okay,’ one of them was yelling. ‘I can wait.’
‘This isn’t make-believe,’ the other yelled back.
Static in her ears made Ellie wince.
‘You still on the air?’ Dave’s voice crackled. ‘That radio still working after getting wet?’
‘Seems to be.’ Ellie put her hand out to stop the life raft bumping her away. It was dipping into another swell. And the men were still arguing. Good grief—had one just accused the other of being just like his mother?
She thought the terrifying dunk into that wave had been the final straw, but this was just too much. Ellie was going a lot further than the extra mile here, making her potentially last job as a rescue helicopter paramedic really count. She shouldn’t be doing this and this lack of cooperation was putting them in a lot more danger. Suddenly Ellie was angry.
Angry with herself for endangering everybody involved in the helicopter hovering overhead.
Angry with these men who wanted to save each other instead of themselves.
Angry knowing that she had to face the future without the escape from reality that this job had provided so well for so long.
She was close enough to help shove the harness onto one of the men. To shout at them with all the energy her anger bestowed.
‘There’s no time for this.’
But they were ignoring her. ‘What the hell is that supposed to mean?’ one yelled.
There was another painful crackle of static in Ellie’s headphones. ‘What’s going on?’ Dave asked in her ear.
‘Stand by,’ Ellie snapped. She was still angry. Ready to knock some sense into these men, but whatever had been said while Dave had been making contact had changed something. The man she’d been helping to force the harness onto had gone completely still. Thankfully, Ellie’s hands were working well enough to snap the clips into place and check that he was safely anchored to the winch line.
‘The chopper’s full,’ she shouted at the other man. ‘We’ll come back for you as soon as we can.’ She clipped the last carabiners together and put her face close to her patient’s. ‘Put your arms around me and hang on,’ she instructed him grimly. ‘Just hang on.’ She knew they would have been listening to every word from above. Hopefully, they’d think the lack of reassurance she was providing was due to the tension of the situation, not the anger that was still bubbling in her veins like liquid lava.
‘Take us up, Dave. Let’s get out of here.’
* * *
‘Ben...’
The despairing howl was whipped from Jacob Logan’s lips by the force of the wind as he felt himself pulled both upwards and forwards in a violent swinging movement. It was also drowned by the stinging deluge of a combination of rain and sea spray, made all the more powerful by the increasing speed of the helicopter rotors above.
It was too painful to try and keep his eyes open. Jake squeezed them shut and kept them like that. He tightened his grip around the body attached to his by what he hoped was the super-strong webbing of the harnesses and solid metal clips. There was nothing he could do. However alien it felt, he had no choice but to put his faith in his rescuers and the fact that they knew what they were doing.
Shutting off any glimpse of the outside world confined his impressions more to what was happening internally, but it was impossible to identify a single emotion there.
Fear was certainly there in spades. Terror, more like, especially as they were spinning in sickening circles as the direction of movement changed from going up to going forward, interrupted by drops and jerks that were probably due to the turbulence the aircraft was having to deal with.
There was anger there as well. Not just because he’d lost the fight over who got rescued first. Jake was angry at everything right now. At whoever had come up with the stupid idea of encouraging people to take their expensive luxury yachts out into dangerous seas and make the prize prestigious enough to make them risk their lives.
At the universe for dropping a cyclone onto precisely this part of the planet at exactly this time.
At fate for ripping him apart from his twin brother. The other half of himself.
But maybe that anger was directed at Ben, too. Why had he said such a dreadful thing about their mother? Something so unbelievable—so huge—it threatened to rip the brothers apart, not just physically but at a much deeper level. If what he’d said was true and he’d never told him, it had the potential to shatter the bond that had been between the men since they’d arrived in this world only twenty minutes apart.
Was life as he knew it about to end, whether or not he survived this dreadful day?
And there was something else in his head. Or his heart. No...this was soul-deep.
Something that echoed from childhood and had to be silenced.
Dealing with it was automatic now. Honed to a talent that had made him an international star as an adult. The ability to imagine the way a different person would handle the situation so that it would all be okay in the end.
To become that person for as long as he needed to.
This was a scene from a movie, then. Reality could be distorted. He was a paratrooper. This wasn’t a dreadful accident. He was supposed to be here. It wasn’t him being rescued, it was a girl. A very beautiful girl.
It was helpful that he knew that this stranger he had his arms wrapped around so firmly was female. Not that she felt exactly small and feminine, but he could work around that.
He’d never had this much trouble throwing the mental switches to step sideways out of reality. A big part of his brain was determined to remind him that this horrible situation was too real to avoid. That even if it was a movie, there’d be a stuntman to do this part because his insurance wouldn’t cover taking this kind of a risk. But Jake fought back. If he could believe—and make countless others believe, the way he had done so far in his stellar career—didn’t that make it at least a kind of reality?
He was out to save the world. The chopper would land them somewhere and he’d unclip his burden. He’d want to stay with the girl, of course, because he was desperately in love with her, but he’d have to go back into the storm. To risk his life to rescue...not his twin brother, that would be too corny. This was the black moment of the movie and he was the ultimate hero so maybe he was going back to rescue his enemy.
And, suddenly, the escape route that had worked since he’d been old enough to remember threw up a barrier so solid Jake could actually feel himself crashing against it.
Maybe Ben was the enemy now.
Even if it hadn’t been a success, the effort of trying to catch something in the maelstrom of thoughts and emotions and turn it into something he could cope with had distracted him for however long this nightmare ride had been taking. Time was doing strange things, but it couldn’t have been more than a few minutes.
Close to his head, he could hear his rescuer trying to talk to the helicopter pilot. The wind was howling like a wild animal around them and she was having to shout, even though she had a microphone against her lips. As close as he was, Jake couldn’t catch every word.
Something about a light. A moon.
Was she kidding?
In even more of a fantasyland than he’d been trying to get into?
* * *
‘The lighthouse,’ Ellie told Dave, her words urgent. ‘At five o’clock. It’s Half Moon Island.’
‘Roger that.’ Dave’s voice in her ears sounded strained. ‘We’re heading southeast.’
‘No. The beach...’
‘What beach?’
‘Straight across from Half Moon Island. The end of the spit. Put us down there.’
‘What? It’s the middle of nowhere.’
‘I know it. There’s a house...’
It was hard enough to communicate through the external noise and the internal static without trying to explain. This area was Ellie’s childhood stamping ground. Her grandfather had been the last lighthouse-keeper on Half Moon Island and the family’s beach house was on an isolated part of the coast that looked directly out at the crescent of land they’d all loved.
The history didn’t matter. It was the closest part of the mainland they could put her down and she knew they could find shelter. It was close enough, even, for them to drop their first victim and try to go back for the other one.
He still had her in a grip that made it an effort to breathe. An embrace that would have been unacceptably intimate from a stranger in any other situation. His face was close enough to her own to defy any concept of personal space but, curiously, Ellie didn’t have any clear idea of what he looked like.
The hair plastered to his head looked like it would be very dark even if it was dry and it was too long for her taste for a man. The jaw was hidden beneath a growth of beard that had to be weeks old and his eyes were screwed shut so tightly they created wrinkles that probably made him look a lot older than he was.
He was big, that much she could tell. Big enough to make Ellie feel small and that was weird. At five feet ten, she had always towered over other women and many men. She’d envied the fragility and femininity of tiny women—until she’d needed to be stronger than ever. That had been when she’d finally appreciated the warrior blood that ran in her veins from generations past.
No man was ever going to make Eleanor Sutton feel small or insignificant again.
She put her mouth close enough to the man’s ear to feel the icy touch of his skin.
‘We’re going to land on the beach. Keep your legs tucked up and let me control the impact.’
Dave did his best to bring them down slowly and Ellie did her best to try and judge the distance between them and the solid ground, but it had never been so difficult. The crashing rolls of surf kept distorting her line of sight and the wind was sending swirls of sand in both horizontal and vertical directions.
‘Minus twenty...no...twenty-five...fifteen...’ This descent was crazy. They were both going to end up with badly broken legs or worse. ‘Ten... Slow it down, Dave.’
He must have done his absolute best, but the landing was hard and a stab of pain told Ellie that her ankle had turned despite the protection of her heavy boots. There was no time to do more than register a potentially serious fracture, however. She fell backwards with her patient on top of her and for a split second she was again aware of just how big and solid this man was.
And that she couldn’t breathe.
But then they were flipped over and dragged a short distance in the sand. Ellie could feel it scraping the skin on her face like sandpaper. Filling her mouth as her microphone snapped off. The headphones inside her helmet were still working, but she didn’t need Dave’s urgent orders to know how vital it was that she unhook them both from the winch line before they were dragged any further towards the trees that edged the beach.
Before they both got killed or—worse—the line got tangled and brought the helicopter down.
Somehow she managed it. She threw the hook clear so that it didn’t hit her patient as it was retracted and the helicopter gained height. Once she’d unclipped herself from this man, she could get into a clear position and they could lower the line to her again.
But it was taking too much time to unclip him. Her hands were so cold and she was shaking violently from a combination of the cold, pain and the sheer determination to get back and save the other man as quickly as possible.
He was trying to help.
‘No,’ Ellie shouted, spitting sand. ‘Let me do it. You’re making it harder.’
His hands fisted beside his face. ‘You’re going back, aren’t you? To get Ben?’
‘Yes. Just let me...’ Finally, she unclipped the last carabiner and they were separated. Ellie almost fell the instant she tried to put weight on her injured ankle but somehow managed to lurch far enough away from her patient to wave both arms above her head to signal Dave. There was no point in shouting with the microphone long gone, but she did it anyway.
‘Bring the line down. I’m ready.’ She wouldn’t need to worry about her ankle once she was airborne again. It shouldn’t make it impossible to get the other man from the life raft.
‘Sorry, El. Can’t do it.’ Dave’s voice was clear in her ears. ‘Wind’s picking up and we’ve got a status one patient on board under ventilation.’
The helicopter was getting smaller rapidly. Gaining some height and heading down the coast.
‘No...’ Ellie yelled, waving her arms frantically. ‘No-o-o...’
The man was beside her. ‘What’s going on?’ he shouted. ‘Where’s he going?’ He grabbed Ellie’s shoulders and it felt like he was making an effort not to shake her until her teeth rattled. ‘You’ve got to go back. For Ben.’
His face was twisted in desperation and Ellie knew her own expression was probably close to a mirror image of it.
‘They won’t let us. It’s too dangerous.’
The man had let her go in order to wave his arms now. ‘Come back,’ he yelled. ‘I trusted you, dammit...’
But the bright red helicopter was vanishing into the darkening skies. Ellie could still hear Dave.
‘We’ve got your GPS coordinates. Someone will come as soon as this weather lifts. Get to some shelter. Your other radio should still work. We’ll be in touch.’ She could hear in his voice that he was hating leaving her like this. It broke all the unspoken rules that cemented a crew like this together. ‘Stay safe, Ellie.’
The helicopter disappeared from view.
For what seemed a long, long time, Ellie and the rescued man simply stood on this isolated, totally deserted stretch of coastline and stared at the menacing cloud cover, dark enough to make the ocean beside them appear black. The foam of the crashing breakers was eerily white.
The man took several steps towards the wild surf. And then he stopped and let out a howl of despair that made Ellie’s spine tingle. He knew he’d lost his friend. The lump in her throat was big enough to be painful.
‘I would have gone back,’ she yelled above the roar of the wind and surf. ‘If they’d let me.’
He came closer in two swift strides. ‘I would have stayed,’ he shouted back at her.
He was angry at her? For saving his life?
His words were a little muffled. Maybe she’d heard wrong. Dave was too far away for radio contact now and the communication had been one-sided anyway, thanks to the broken microphone. Ellie undid the chin strap of her helmet and pulled it off. The man was still shouting at her.
‘Who gave you the right to decide who got rescued first?’
Ellie spat out some more sand. ‘You’re lucky to be alive,’ she informed him furiously. ‘And if we don’t find any shelter soon we’ll probably both die of hypothermia and then all this would have been for nothing.’ He wasn’t the only one who could be unreasonably angry. ‘Who gave you the right to put my life in danger?’
She didn’t wait to see what effect her words might have had. Ellie turned and tried to pick out a landmark. She had to turn back and try to catch a glimpse of Half Moon Island to get any idea of which direction they needed to go. The lighthouse was well to her left so they had to go north. The beach house was in a direct line with the point of the island where the lighthouse was.
Confident now, Ellie set off up the beach. She didn’t look to see whether he was following her. He could have his autonomy back as far as she was concerned. If he wanted to stay out here and die because she hadn’t been able to rescue his friend then maybe that was his choice. She was going to survive if she could, thank you very much.
Except that she didn’t get more than two steps away. Her ankle collapsed beneath her and she went down with a shout of anguish.
‘What’s the matter?’ The man was crouched over her in an instant. ‘What’s happened?’
‘It’s my ankle. I... It might be broken.’
If he was swearing, the words were quiet enough for the wind to censor them. Ellie felt herself being picked up as if she weighed no more than one of those tiny women she’d once mistakenly envied. Now she was cradled in the arms of this big man as if she was a helpless child.
‘Which way?’ The words were as grim as the face of the man who uttered them.
‘North.’ Ellie pointed. ‘About a mile.’
A gust of wind, vicious enough to make this solid man stagger, reminded her that this was only the beginning of this cyclone. Things were going to get a whole lot worse before they got any better.
The stabs of pain coming up her leg from her ankle were bad enough to make her feel sick. On top of her exhaustion and the knowledge that they were in real trouble here, it was enough to make her head spin. She couldn’t faint. If she did, how would he know how to find the beach house, which was probably their only hope of surviving?
‘There’s a river,’ she added. ‘We turn inland there.’
She could feel his arms tighten around her. It had to be incredibly hard, carrying somebody as tall as she was in the face of this wind and on soft sand, and they had a long way to go.
Could he do it?
Ellie had no choice but to put her faith in him, however hard that was to do. With a groan that came more from defeat than pain, she screwed her eyes shut and buried her face against his chest as he staggered along the beach.
It had been a very long time since she had felt a man’s arms around her like this.
At least she wouldn’t die alone.
CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_5b5bda7d-d3a6-5118-b968-bd6ed010dbc4)
SHE WAS NO lightweight, this woman in his arms.
Jake had to lean forward into the fierce wind and his feet were dragging in the soft sand that was no match for these conditions. It swirled around enough to obscure his feet completely and it would have reached his nose and eyes if the rain hadn’t been heavy enough to drive it down again.
Another blast of wind made Jake stagger and almost fall. He gritted his teeth and battled on. They had to find shelter. She’d been right. He might wish it was Ben instead of him, but he was lucky to still be alive and he owed it to her to try and make sure the heroic actions of his rescuers weren’t wasted to the extent that one of them lost her life.
A river, she’d said. Good grief. He didn’t even know the name of the woman he was carrying. A person who had risked her life for his and he’d been ungrateful enough to practically tell her he wished she hadn’t. That he would have stayed with Ben if he’d been given a choice.
His left leg was dragging more than the right and a familiar ache was tightening like a vice in his thigh.
Another vice was tightening around his heart as his thoughts were dragged back to Ben, who would still be being tossed around in the ocean in that pathetically small life raft.
The combination of his sore leg and thoughts of his brother inevitably dragged his mind back to Afghanistan. They’d only been nineteen when they’d joined the army. Sixteen years ago now but the memories were as fresh as ever. Had it been his idea first that it was the ideal way to escape their father?
Charles Logan’s voice had the ability to echo in his head with all the force of the gunfire from a war zone.
You moronic imbeciles, you’re your mother’s children, you’ve inherited nothing from me. Stupid, stupid, stupid...
No. They’d both wanted to run. Both had needed the brutal reality of the army to find out what life was like outside an overprivileged upbringing. To find out who they really were.
But he had been more excited about it, hadn’t he? In the movies, the soldiers were heroes and it always came out all right for them in the end.
They weren’t supposed to get shipped home with a shattered leg as the aftermath of being collateral damage from a bus full of school kids that had been targeted by a roadside bomb.
His brother’s last words still echoed in his head.
Why do you think she killed herself?
It had been Ben who’d found her, all those years ago, when the boys had been only fourteen.
Did he know something he’d never told him? Had he found evidence that it hadn’t been an accidental overdose of prescription meds washed down with alcohol?
A note, even?
No. It couldn’t be true. She wouldn’t have deserted her children with such finality. She’d loved them, even if she hadn’t been around often enough to show them how much.
A cry was ripped from Jake’s lips. An anguished denial of accepting such a premeditated abandonment.
Denial, too, of what was happening right now? That his brother was out there somewhere in that merciless ocean? Too cold to hang on any longer?
Drowned already, even?
No. Surely he’d know. He’d feel it if his other half was being ripped away for eternity.
* * *
The cry of pain was enough to pull Ellie from the mental haze she’d been clinging to as she kept her face buried from the outside world, thinking of nothing more than the comfort of being held in strong arms and, hopefully, being carried to safety.
What had she been thinking? Eleanor Sutton wasn’t some swooning heroine from medieval times. She didn’t depend on anyone else. She could look after herself.
‘Put me down,’ Ellie ordered.
But he kept lurching forward into the biting wind and rain.
‘No. We’re not at the river.’
‘I need to see where we are, then.’ She twisted in his arms to look towards the sea.
Taking her helmet off had probably been a bad idea. The wind was pulling long strands from the braid that hung down over Jake’s arm. They were plastered against her face the moment they came free and she had to drag them away repeatedly to try and see properly.
‘I can’t see it. The waves are too high.’
‘See what?’
‘The light from the lighthouse. The bach is in a direct line with the light, just before the river mouth.’
‘The what?’
‘The bach. A holiday house.’ Ellie had finally picked up the drawl in the man’s voice. ‘Are you American?’
‘Yep.’
‘A cabin, then. Like you’d have by a lake or in the woods. Only this one’s near the beach and it’s the only one for a hundred miles.’
‘How do you know it’s even there?’
‘Because I own it.’ Maybe it wasn’t dark enough for the automatic light to be triggered, but she’d seen it earlier, hadn’t she? When she’d told Dave where to drop them?
Maybe she’d only seen the lighthouse itself and it had been childhood memories that had supplied the flash of light. The flash she’d watched for in the night since that first time she’d stayed on the island with her grandfather. A comforting presence that had assured a small girl she was safe even if she was on a tiny island in the middle of a very big sea.
‘We’ll have to keep going till we get to the river. I can find the way from there.’
How long did he keep struggling against the wind before they finally reached the river mouth? Long enough for Ellie to know she’d never felt this cold in her life. At least they had the wind behind them as they turned inland, but there was a new danger when they reached the forest of native bush that came to meet the coastline in this deserted area. The massive pohutukawa trees were hundreds of years old and there were any number of dead branches coming loose in the vicious wind to crash down around them. Live bits were breaking off, too, leafy enough to make it impossible to see the old track that led to the bach.
Ellie had to rely on instinct. Her fear was growing. Had she made a terrible mistake, telling Dave they could find shelter here? The little house that Grandpa and her father had built had seemed so solid, wedged into the bush that had provided the wood to make it. A part of the forest that would always be here even if she had never come back. A touchstone for her life that was a part of her soul.
But how many storms had there been in the years that had passed? Had the tiny dwelling disintegrated—like all the hugely important things in her life seemed to have a habit of doing?
No.
They almost missed it. They were off to one side of the patch of land she owned. She might have let herself get carried right past if she hadn’t spotted the tiny hut that sat discreetly tucked against the twisted trunk of one of the huge pohutukawas.
‘We’re here,’ she shouted.
The man looked at the hut. If he went inside the bleached wood of its walls, he would have to bend his head and he wouldn’t be able to stretch out his arms. ‘Are you kidding me? That’s your cabin?’
Ellie actually laughed aloud.
‘No. That’s the dunny.’
‘The what?’
‘The long drop. Toilet.’ Oh, yeah...he was American. ‘It’s the bathroom.’
She didn’t wait to see a look of disgust about how primitive the facilities were. The track from the outhouse to the real house was overgrown, but Ellie knew exactly where she was now. And if the outhouse had survived, maybe everything else was exactly as it should be. Within a few steps they could both see the back porch of the beach house, with its neatly stacked pile of firewood. The relief of seeing it look just like it always had brought a huge lump to Ellie’s throat.
She felt herself being tipped as he leaned down to grasp the battered iron knob of the door. He turned and pushed. The door rattled but didn’t open.
‘It’s locked.’
She couldn’t blame him for sounding shocked. It wasn’t as if another living soul was likely to come here when the only access was by boat so why would anybody bother locking it?
Another childhood memory surfaced. The door that had been purchased in a city junkyard had been roped to the deck of the yacht, along with an old couch and a potbelly stove.
‘The door’s even got a lock and a key.’ Her father had laughed. ‘That’ll keep the possums out.’
A family joke that had become a tradition. Unlocking the bach meant they were in residence in their tiny patch of paradise. Locking it meant a return to reality.
‘I know where the key is. Put me down.’
This time he complied and it was Ellie’s turn to be shocked as she felt the loss of those secure arms around her, along with the chill of losing his body warmth that she hadn’t been aware of until now. She staggered a little, but her ankle wasn’t as bad as it had been. Hellishly painful but it didn’t collapse completely when she tested it with a bit of weight. Maybe it was a bad sprain rather than a fracture.
‘Can you walk?’
‘I only need to get to the meat safe. The key’s in there.’
The wire netting walls of the meat safe were mangled, probably by possums, and the box frame was hanging by only one corner, but the big, wrought-iron key was still on its rusty nail. Getting it inside the lock was a mission for her frozen hands, though, and turning it seemed impossible.
‘It must be rusty.’ Ellie groaned with the effort of trying to turn the key.
‘Let me try.’ His hands covered hers and pushed her fingers away so that he could find the end of the key. She was still wearing her rescue gloves and his hands had to be a lot colder than hers were, but the pressure of the contact felt like it was skin to skin. Warm.
Maybe it was the reassurance that she wasn’t alone that was so comforting?
He was shivering badly, Ellie noticed, but when he jiggled the key and then turned it, she could hear the clunk of the old lock opening.
And then they were inside and the sound of the storm was suddenly muffled.
* * *
Safety.
They might be frozen to the bone and in the middle of nowhere, but they had shelter.
Jake was safe, thanks to this woman. Thanks to her astonishing courage. She’d not only risked her life to get him out of that life raft, she’d battled the elements, despite being injured, to lead him here. To a place where they had four walls and a roof and they could survive until the storm was over.
She seemed as stunned as he was. They both stood there, staring at each other, saying nothing. It couldn’t be nighttime yet, but it was dark enough in here to make it difficult to see very clearly. She was tall, Jake noted, but still a good few inches shorter than his six feet two. Eyes dark enough to look black in this light and her lips were deathly pale but still couldn’t hide the lines of a generous mouth. A rope of wet hair hung over one shoulder almost as far as her waist.
‘What’s your name?’ He’d been so used to shouting to be heard outside that his voice came out loudly enough to make her jump.
‘Eleanor Sutton. Ellie.’
‘I’m Jacob Logan. Jake.’
‘Hi, Jake.’ She was trying to smile but loosening her facial muscles only made her shiver uncontrollably. ‘P-pleased to m-meet you.’
‘Likewise, Ellie.’ Jake nodded instead of smiling.
His name clearly didn’t mean anything to her and it was a weird feeling not to be instantly recognised. He didn’t look much like himself, of course. Even his own mother probably wouldn’t have recognised him in this dim light with the heavy growth of beard and the long hair he’d had to adopt for his latest movie role. But instant demotion from a megastar to a...a nobody was very strange.
Jake wasn’t sure he liked it.
And yet it was oddly comforting. It took him back to a time when he had only been known for being ‘one of those wild Logan boys.’ Closer to Ben, somehow.
Should he tell her? Was it being dishonest not to? Would Ben consider this a form of play-acting as well?
Keeping silent didn’t feel like acting a part. Just being the person he used to be. And there would be no reason for this Ellie to present herself as anything other than who she really was and, in Jake’s experience, that wasn’t something he could ever trust. This might be the only time in his life that he got to see how a stranger reacted to him as a person without the trappings of extreme wealth or fame. He was curious enough to find this almost a distraction from his desperate worry about Ben.
‘We need to get warm.’ She wasn’t even looking at him now. ‘There should be enough dry wood to get the fire and the stove going. Hopefully the possums won’t have been inside. There’ll be plenty of blankets on the beds. And there’s kerosene lamps if the fuel hasn’t evaporated or something. It’s been a fair few years since I was here.’
Beds? For the first time, Jake took a good look around himself.
The dwelling was made of rustic, rough-hewn boards that had aged to a silvery-gray that made it look like driftwood. An antique glass-and-metal lamp hung from a butcher’s hook in the ceiling and there was a collection of big shells lined with iridescent shades of blue and purple attached to the wall in a curly pattern. Beside that was a poster of a lighthouse, its beam lighting up a stormy sky while massive waves thundered onto rocks below. There was a kitchen of sorts in one corner of the square space, with a bench and a sink beside the potbelly stove close to a small wooden table and spindle-back chairs.
The other half of the space was taken up with an ancient-looking couch and an armchair, positioned in front of an open fireplace. Two doorless openings in the walls on either side of the fireplace led to dark spaces beyond. The bedrooms?
‘Don’t just stand there.’ The authority in her voice made Jake feel like he was back at school. Or under the charge of one of the many nannies the Logan boys had terrorised. Incredibly, he had to hide a wry smile. No woman had ever spoken to him like this in his adult life. And then he remembered being shouted at on the beach. Being told that no one would be going back to rescue his brother.
What did it matter whether Ellie knew who he was? Or what she thought of him?
Nothing would ever matter if he’d lost Ben.
Ellie was opening a cupboard in the kitchen. She pulled out a big tin. ‘Do something useful. You’ll get even colder if you don’t move. You can get some wood in from the porch.’ She prised open the lid of the tin. ‘Yes...we have matches.’
A fire. Warmth. This basic survival need drove any other thoughts from Jake’s head as he obeyed the order. He took an armful of small sticks in first to act as kindling and then went back for the more solid lumps of wood. His brain felt as frozen as his fingers. Worry about Ben was still there along with the anger of no attempt being made to rescue him, but he couldn’t even harness the energy of that anger to help him move faster. And then something scuttled away as he lifted a piece of wood. Did New Zealand have poisonous spiders, like Australia did? Or snakes?
Man, he was going to have some story to tell Ben when he saw him again.
If he saw him again.
There was a puddle of water on the floor where Ellie was crouching to light the fire and he could see how badly her hands were shaking, but she’d managed to arrange small sticks on a nest of paper and while the first two matches spluttered and died, the third grew into a small flame.
She looked up as he walked towards her with the wood. He saw the way her eyes widened with shock.
‘You’re limping.’ Her tone was accusing. ‘You’re hurt. And I let you carry me all that way. Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘I’m not hurt.’ He dumped the wood on the floor beside her. His old injury was hardly a state secret, but it wasn’t something he mentioned if he could avoid it.
‘I’m a paramedic, Jake. I’ve got eyes. I can see—’
‘Drop it,’ he growled. ‘I told you. I haven’t been injured. Not in the last ten years anyway.’
‘Oh...’ She caught her bottom lip between her teeth. Maybe she was attempting a smile. ‘Old war wound, huh?’
He glared at her. ‘First time anyone’s found it funny.’
Her face changed. Was she embarrassed? Not that she was about to apologise. There was an awkward silence as she turned her attention back to the fire and then she must have decided that it was best ignored.
* * *
‘Some rats or mice had shredded the paper for me,’ Ellie said. ‘Good thing, too, because my fingers are still too cold to work properly.’ Her tone was deliberately lighter. Impersonal, even. ‘Don’t think we’ll use the beds, but the blankets might be okay.’
The wood sizzled a little, but the flame was still growing. The glow caught Ellie’s face as she leaned in to blow gently on the fire. Water dripped from her long braid to add to the puddle at her feet. Smoke puffed out and made her cough.
‘There could well be a bird’s nest or two in the chimney, but they should burn away soon. We’ll get the potbelly going, too, if we can, and that should get things toasty in no time.’
Jake had to forgive the dismissal of his old injury as some kind of joke. She didn’t know the truth and, if he wasn’t prepared to enlighten her, it would be unfair to hold a grudge. And he had to admire her. She was capable, this Eleanor Sutton, but that was hardly surprising given what she did for a job. Jake was given the task of feeding larger sticks into the fire as it grew while Ellie limped over to the kitchen to get the stove going. His hands began aching unbearably as heat finally penetrated the frozen layer of skin and, when he looked up, he saw Ellie’s pained expression as she shook her hands.
‘Hurts, doesn’t it?’
‘It’s good. Means there’s some circulation happening and nerves are waking up.’ She nodded in satisfaction at the fire Jake was tending. ‘I’ll see if I can find us some dry clothes. My dad kept a trunk of stuff under the bed and it’s a tin trunk so it should have kept the rats out.’
‘Do you get snakes, too?’
‘No snakes in New Zealand. Have you never been here before?’
‘No.’
‘I guess you were just passing by with the yacht race. Wasn’t there a stop planned in Auckland?’
‘Yeah. I was getting off then. I’m here for a job. That was why I talked Ben into giving me a lift on his yacht.’
‘Ben? That’s your friend who was on the life raft with you?’
‘He’s my brother. Twin brother.’
‘Oh...’
The enormity of having to leave Ben behind and not trying to go back and get him was clearly registering.
‘I...I’m sorry, Jake.’
‘Yeah... Me, too.’
‘It was a good life raft. There’s still hope that he’ll make it.’
Jake found himself staring at Ellie. It felt very odd—his gaze clinging to hers like this. As if he was pleading...
Desperately wanting to believe.
Begging her to prove herself trustworthy?
She was in the business of rescuing people who found themselves in dire situations so she should know what she was talking about.
‘We weren’t the only rescue team out there,’ she told him quietly. ‘There were other choppers. Planes. And there’s other boats. Container ships as well as the coastguard. There’s plenty of daylight left and...’
There was such compassion in her eyes and her body language. The way she was leaning towards him. Holding out one hand. If she’d been close enough, she’d be touching him right now.
He wished she was that close.
‘And there are literally hundreds of islands on this part of the coastline. All it needs is for a current to get him close to land and he’ll be able to find shelter until the worst of the storm is over.’
Maybe it was the compassion he could see that did it. Or the comfort of the reassurance she was offering. Or maybe it was because of that longing that she had been close enough to underpin her words with human touch.
Whatever it was, Jake could pull back. Yes, she was offering him what he wanted more than anything in this moment. And the invitation to believe her was so sincere, but they were all like that, weren’t they? Especially women.
He knew better than to trust.
‘Yeah...right...’ He wrenched his gaze free, turning back towards the fire and using a stick to poke at it. He didn’t want to talk about Ben. He didn’t want to show this stranger how he was really feeling. How afraid he was. Who knew what contacts she might have? What could turn up as a headline on some celebrity website?
* * *
The warmth Ellie had been getting from the stove seemed to have been shut off and the cold in her gut turned into a lead weight.
No wonder they’d been arguing about who got to be rescued first. Or that Jake had said he would have stayed if he’d been given the choice. She didn’t even have a sibling and these men were twin brothers. She could imagine how close they were. As close as she’d dreamed of being with another living soul. Loving—and being loved—enough for one’s own safety to not be the priority.
She would have gone back for Ben if it had been possible, but it hadn’t been. At least she’d brought Jake to safety, but maybe, in the end, he wouldn’t thank her for that. He obviously didn’t want to talk about it. He was hunched over in front of the fire, looking very grim as he poked at the burning sticks, sending sparks flying and creating a new cloud of smoke. Fiercely shutting her out.
Was it the smoke in his eyes that made him rub at them with the heel of his hand? Even hunched up, she was aware again of what a big man he was. Intimidatingly big. She knew that trying to offer any further comfort would be unwelcome. She’d probably put her foot in it, too, the way she had when she’d tried to make some kind of joke about his obvious limp.
It had been the way Grandpa had brushed off any concern about his physical wellbeing.
It’s nothing, chicken. Just the old war wound playing up.
But Jake was an American. Had she made a joke about some horrible injury he’d suffered in somewhere like Afghanistan? She’d been too flustered to think of a way to apologise without it seeming insincere. Or prying. There was something about this man that suggested he valued his privacy a lot more than most people.
So, once again, she simply avoided anything personal.
‘I’ll go and see if I can find us those dry clothes.’
* * *
By the time Ellie returned with an armload of clothes from the old tin trunk, the living area of the small house was already feeling a lot warmer.
‘The trousers are pretty horrible, but we’ve scored with a couple of Swanndris.’
Jake looked up from where he was still crouched in front of the fire. He was shivering uncontrollably despite being so close to the heat. ‘S-swan—what?’
‘They’re shirts. I’m wearing one.’ Ellie dumped the pile she was holding onto the sofa, extracting a black-and-red-checked garment to hold out to Jake. ‘New Zealand icon. A hundred percent wool. Farmers have relied on them for decades over here and they’re the best thing for warmth. Even better, these ones are huge. Should fit you a treat.’
Neither her father or grandfather had been small men by any means. The shirt Ellie was wearing came well down over the baggy track pants she’d struggled into in the bedroom, but it was just as well they were so loose because they’d gone right over the sodden boots that had laces she couldn’t manage to undo yet. And maybe it was better to leave them on. At least her ankle was splinted by the heavy leather and padding of her socks.
He took the shirt and nodded. ‘Thanks.’
‘Don’t just stare at it. Put it on. No, hang on...’ Ellie dived back into the pile. ‘Here’s a singlet that can go on first so it’s not itchy.’
Getting changed into dry clothes was easier said than done. Ellie had found it enough of a struggle getting out of her wet clothes in the bedroom and she’d been wearing state-of-the-art gloves to protect her hands up until now. Jake’s hands had been bare ever since he’d been plucked from the life raft and were still so cold there was no way he could manage the zipper of the heavy anorak he was wearing.
He fumbled several times, cursed softly and then stopped trying. Ellie dragged her gaze up from his fingers to his face and, for a long moment, they simply stared at each other.
The fire was crackling with some enthusiasm now. Adding enough light to the dark, stormy afternoon for her to get a good look at this man. He was big, broad shouldered and...and wild looking, with that long hair and the beard. His face was fierce looking anyway, with a nose that commanded attention and accentuated the shadowed eyes that had an almost hawk-like intensity.
The pull of something—an awareness that was deep enough to be disturbing—made Ellie’s mouth go dry. She tore her gaze away from those compelling eyes. They both knew she had no choice here.
‘I’ll help you,’ she said.
Her voice sounded weird so she pressed her lips together and said nothing else as she started to help him undress. The scrape of the metal zip sounded curiously loud. He had layers underneath. A sodden woollen pullover and thermal gear beneath that.
And then there was skin. Rather a lot of skin covering the kind of torso that spoke of a great deal of physical effort.
Ripped. That was the only word for it.
Dark discs of nipples hardened by the cold decorated an almost hairless chest that seemed at odds with the amount of hair Jake favoured on his head and face.
And...dear Lord, there was a tattoo in the strangest place. A line of what looked like Chinese characters ran from his armpit to disappear into the waistband of his jeans.
It was discreet body art and it must have significance, but Ellie wasn’t about to ask. She shouldn’t even be looking. Just as well it got covered up as Jake pulled on the black singlet and then the thick woollen shirt. He managed to pop the button on his jeans but, again, the zipper was beyond the motor skills that had returned to his hands so far.
Ellie had undressed countless patients in her career. She’d cut through and removed clothing and exposed every inch of skin of people without the slightest personal reaction. Why did it have to be now that she was so aware of touching someone in such an intimate area? Why did she feel so uncomfortable she had to swallow hard and actually close her eyes for a heartbeat?
Like remembering her past when it should have been totally obliterated by the adrenaline of being in real danger, maybe this was a sign that she was no longer fit for active service as a paramedic. Something like grief washed through Ellie at the thought and it was easy to turn that into a kind of anger. Impatience, anyway, to get the job over with.
‘I’ll do the zip,’ she snapped. ‘You should be able to manage the rest.’
She tried not to think of what her fingers were brushing. The zipper got stuck halfway down and she had to pull it back up and try again. A warmth that had nothing to do with the fire crept into her cheeks. As soon as she got the zipper down past where it had stuck, she dropped her hands as though the metal was red hot and she turned away as Jake hooked his thumbs into the waistband and started peeling the wet fabric from his skin.
She’d seen enough.
Too much.
* * *
Nobody had undressed Jake Logan without his invitation since he’d been about two years old and had kicked his nanny to demonstrate his desire for independence.
Except for when he’d been in the care of the army medics, of course, and then of the nurses in the military hospital back home. He’d flirted wickedly with those nurses, making a joke of the humiliation of being helpless.
He couldn’t have flirted to save his life when Ellie had been struggling with that zipper. He’d been looking down at her bent head. The rope of black hair was still dripping wet, but the fronds that the wind had whipped free were starting to dry and they were softening the outlines of her face. Or they would have been if it wasn’t set in such grim lines of determination.
She really didn’t want to be touching him, did she? This was an ordeal she was forcing herself to get through because she had no choice.
Like being unrecognised, this was an alien experience for a man almost bored by the way women threw themselves at him. Not a pleasant experience either, but it wasn’t humiliation or even embarrassment that was so overwhelming. He couldn’t begin to identify what it was he was feeling. He just knew that it was powerful enough to be disturbing.
Very disturbing.
The choice of trousers was embarrassing with the only pair he had any hope of fitting being shapeless track pants that didn’t cover his ankles. At least the socks looked long and he could be grateful there were no paparazzi around.
‘What will we do with the wet gear?’
Ellie had taken the lamp down from the hook on the ceiling and was pouring something from a plastic bottle into its base.
‘We’ll hang them over the chairs. They might be dry enough to get back into by the time we get rescued from here.’
‘How long do you reckon that’ll be?’
Ellie had the glass cover off the lamp now. She struck a match and held it to a wick. ‘We had a lot of info coming in about the cyclone while we were in the air. The worst of it won’t hit until early tomorrow, but it should blow through within about twelve hours.’
The flame caught and Ellie eased the glass cover back into place. She fiddled with an attachment to the base, pumping it gently, and suddenly the light increased to a glow that seemed like a spotlight focused on her. As she looked up and caught his gaze, a hint of a smile made her lips curve. ‘It’s going to get worse before it gets better, I’m afraid.’
Jake’s mouth felt suddenly dry.
Even the hint of a smile transformed Ellie’s face. Made it come alive.
She was an extraordinarily beautiful woman. He could actually feel something slamming shut in his chest. Or his head maybe.
Don’t go there. Don’t get sucked in. Even if she doesn’t know who you are, it’s not worth the risk.
Remember what happened last time.
But Ellie stretched to hang the lamp from its hook and the unbuttoned sleeves of her oversize shirt fell back to expose slim, olive-brown arms. Long, clever fingers made another adjustment to the base of the lamp.
Jake couldn’t drag his gaze free.
Yeah...it probably was going to get worse before it got better.
But he could deal with it.
He had to.
CHAPTER FOUR (#ulink_85e0826c-68e1-501d-a27b-01f35fdeae11)
THE KEROSENE LAMP hissed and swayed gently in the draughts that were a soft echo of the fierce storm outside. The glow of light strengthened as day became night and shadows danced in the corners of the room as the light moved—a dark partner to the bright flicker of the flames in the open fireplace.
The room was warm enough for the wet clothing draped over the spindle-back chairs to be steaming gently and one end of the table was covered with a collection of items that had come from the pockets of Ellie’s flight suit, like a bunch of keys, ruined ballpoint pens and an equally wet and useless mobile phone. Most importantly, there was a two-way radio that had been securely enclosed in a waterproof pouch.
Jake had been disappointed that they couldn’t use it to listen and hear updates on the weather, but Ellie was more concerned about whether it was in working order. It didn’t seem to be transmitting.
‘Medic One to base—do you receive?’
A crackle of static and a beeping noise came from the device, but there was no answering voice. Ellie gave up after a few tries.
‘We may be out of range or it could be atmospheric conditions. I’ll turn it on in the morning and we might get communication about our rescue.’
The radio sat on the edge of the table now—a symbol of surviving this ordeal.
Except, for the moment, it didn’t seem to be that much of an ordeal. They were safe and finally warm. And Ellie had discovered a store of tinned food in the bottom of a cupboard.
‘Chilli baked beans, cheesy spaghetti, Irish stew, peas or tomatoes.’ She held up each can to show Jake. ‘As my guest, you get to choose. What do you fancy?’
‘They all sound good. I don’t think I’ve ever been this hungry in my life.’
‘Hmm...’ Ellie had almost forgotten what it felt like to really smile. ‘That’s not a bad idea. I’ll see if I’ve got a pot that’s big enough.’
The result of mixing the contents of all the chosen cans together was remarkably tasty. Or maybe she was just as hungry as Jake. Whatever the reason, sitting cross-legged in front of the fire, spooning the food from a bowl, Ellie decided that it was probably one of the most memorable meals she would ever eat.
‘There’s more in the pot if you’re still hungry,’ she told Jake.
‘Maybe we should save it for tomorrow.’
‘There’s still more cans. My mother must have stocked up big time on their last trip.’
‘When was that?’
‘Six years ago. I didn’t come on that trip because I was in the middle of my helicopter training.’ Ellie stared into the fire. ‘Who knew it would save my life?’
‘How d’you mean?’
‘Their yacht ran into trouble on the way home. Both my parents drowned.’
‘Oh...I’m sorry.’
Ellie could see Jake put his plate down suddenly, as if his appetite had deserted him. She kicked herself mentally.
‘No, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to remind you of...’ Her voice trailed into silence. He didn’t want to talk about Ben, did he? She didn’t need to glance sideways at his bent head to remind her of that walled-off private area. It was none of her business, anyway.
But she heard Jake take a deep breath a moment later. And then he shook his head as he got to his feet. He shoved his hair behind his ears.
‘You wouldn’t have a rubber band or a piece of string or something, would you? My hair’s going to drive me nuts if I don’t tie it back.’
Ellie blinked. ‘I can find something.’ She couldn’t help a personal question. ‘Why do you wear it so long if it annoys you?’
‘Not my choice. It’s temporary. You could say it’s a—a work thing.’
‘Ohh...’ Ellie was bemused. ‘What are you—a male model?’
Jake’s breath came out in a snort. ‘Something like that.’
Ellie could well believe it. She’d seen that body. The dark wavy hair that almost brushed his shoulders would probably be wildly exciting for a lot of women, too, but the beard? No...it wouldn’t do it for her.
She almost changed her mind as Jake used his fingers to rake his hair back properly from his face. Even with the beard hiding half his face, she had trouble dragging her gaze away from him.
‘What? Have I got spaghetti on my face or something?’
‘No...you just look...I don’t know...different.’
Different but oddly familiar. Or was that simply a warning signal that something unconscious was recognising the magnetic pull this man seemed to have? Ellie turned away with a decisive enough head movement to make her aware of the heavy weight of her own hair. The loose bits had long since dried, but the braid was still wet.
‘Here. Have this...’ She pulled the elastic band from the end of her braid. ‘I need to get my hair dry and it’ll take all night if I leave it tied up.’
So Jake bound his hair back in a ponytail and Ellie unravelled hers and let it fall over her back with the ends brushing the wooden boards of the floor. Now it was Jake’s turn to stare, apparently. She could feel the intensity of his gaze from where he was sitting on the sofa behind her.
Was it the hissing of the lamp or the crackle of the fire or was there some kind of other current in the air that Ellie could actually feel instead of hear? It had all the intensity of a bright light and the heat of a flame and something warned Ellie not to turn her head.
The current was coming from Jake.
She heard him clear his throat. As though he thought his speech might be hoarse if he didn’t?
‘Must have been tough, losing your parents like that. Have you got any brothers or sisters?’
‘Nope.’
‘Husband? Boyfriend? Significant other?’
‘Nope.’ Ellie felt her hackles rise. It was none of his business. He wasn’t about to let her into personal areas. Why would he think she was willing to share?
‘Sorry. Didn’t mean to pry.’ Jake’s voice was flat. ‘I just thought...it’s going to be a long night and it might be kind of nice to get to know each other.’
Did that mean that if she was prepared to share, he might too? That she might even find out the significance of that intriguing tattoo, even?
‘Fair enough.’ But Ellie got to her feet. ‘Let me find us some blankets and pillows first, if they’re useable. And I’ll boil some water. We don’t have milk, but there’s probably a tin of cocoa or something around. We need a drink.’
It was some time before Ellie was satisfied they had all they needed for a while. The fire was well banked up with wood. They both had a blanket and a pillow and, by tacit consent, Jake would have the couch to try and sleep on while Ellie curled up in the armchair. Neither of them wanted to move any further away from the fire.
Exhaustion was taking over now. Her body ached all over and her injured ankle was throbbing badly despite the hastily applied strapping with a damp bandage that she’d found in one of her suit pockets when changing her clothes.
It had been one of the longest days of Ellie’s life and the physical exertion had been draining enough without the added stress of the emotional side of it all. Not only the fear for her own safety but also the grief of knowing that the job was no longer enough to shield her from what she had run from.
Maybe part of it was renewed grief for the family she’d lost. Impossible for that not to be surfacing now that she’d finally come back to a place she’d been avoiding for that very reason.
And maybe that was what made her prepared to talk about it. About things she’d never had anyone to talk to about.
‘I haven’t been here since my parents died,’ she told Jake. ‘It was bad enough when we all came here after Grandpa died and I didn’t want to come back knowing that I had no family left.’ She sighed softly. ‘I didn’t have a boat anyway. I wasn’t sure I wanted anything more to do with the sea.’
‘Hard to get away from, I would think, when you live on an island.’
‘Well—it’s a big island, but you’re right. The home I grew up in is in Devonport in Auckland and it’s right on the beach. I still live there. There’s salt water in my family’s blood, I reckon. That’s why Grandpa took the job as the lighthouse-keeper on Half Moon Island.’
‘The moon... Yeah, I heard you say something about that on the radio.’
‘I recognised it from the air. I spent so much time there when I was little that it’s like part of the family. That’s a picture of it over there, on the wall.’
‘I thought most lighthouses were automatic now.’
‘They are. And Half Moon was automated long before I was born, but Grandpa couldn’t bear to leave it behind. That’s why he bought this patch of land and virtually lived here from when my dad was a teenager. I sailed up with them every school holiday until he died when I was seventeen. And then Mum, Dad and I still came at least a couple of times a year. Having Christmas here when all the pohutukawa trees are in full bloom is quite something. And we could still go over to Half Moon and explore. It’s got an amazing amount of birdlife. It should be a national reserve.’
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