Falling for His Island Nurse, page 1
“Speaking of Noah...”
“Yeah?” She was almost visibly gathering herself back into her self-contained shell again.
“I told him we’d have fish and chips on the beach tonight,” Angus said. “Would you like to join us?”
It was as if a clam, opened with caution, had suddenly sensed peril. The shell slammed shut.
“Thank you but no.”
“Can I ask why not?”
“Because it’s taken me years to accept that I don’t need people,” Freya whispered. “I just...don’t need anyone. So you, Noah and Seaweed are very welcome to share my garden, and I hope you have a wonderful time on the beach tonight. But I’ll stay where I belong.”
“Alone?”
“I spent years being terrified of being alone,” she told him. “And I’ve spent many more learning that it’s far, far better than the alternative.”
Dear Reader,
Once upon a time a group of us managed to rent a stunning beach house, a huge rambling homestead set in gorgeous gardens, with tracks leading down to a wonderful swimming beach. We stayed for a week and left with every one of us thinking how wonderful it would be to live in such a dreamy house.
But on our last day as everyone left, I wandered through the empty rooms and thought how it would be to live in such a place alone. Actually maybe not so great?
Which brings me to Freya, who lives in the place of her dreams, with the ghosts of her past as her only company. So what does she need? A hero, of course. Plus a kid? Plus a dog? Plus a whole island of people who care? Bring it on! I had such fun bringing my empty house to life, and I hope you enjoy it, too.
This is the second of my Birding Isles novels. Gannet Island was the first—Mistletoe Kiss with the Heart Doctor. This romance is set on Shearwater Island, and my romance set on Sandpiper Island is on its way.
Marion Lennox
Falling for His Island Nurse
Marion Lennox
Marion Lennox has written over one hundred romance novels, and is published in over one hundred countries and thirty languages. Her international awards include the prestigious RITA® Award (twice!) and the RT Book Reviews Career Achievement Award for “a body of work which makes us laugh and teaches us about love.” Marion adores her family, her kayak, her dog and lying on the beach with a book someone else has written. Heaven!
Books by Marion Lennox
Harlequin Medical Romance
Bondi Bay Heroes
Finding His Wife, Finding a Son
Falling for Her Wounded Hero
Reunited with Her Surgeon Prince
The Baby They Longed For
Second Chance with Her Island Doc
Rescued by the Single Dad Doc
Pregnant Midwife on His Doorstep
Mistletoe Kiss with the Heart Doctor
Harlequin Romance
Stranded with the Secret Billionaire
The Billionaire’s Christmas Baby
English Lord on Her Doorstep
Cinderella and the Billionaire
Visit the Author Profile page at Harlequin.com for more titles.
In this difficult year, this book might well not have happened without the cheerful companionship of Rusty. My grateful thanks go to Seona, and of course to Audrey and Murphy. You’ve brought our family joy.
Praise for Marion Lennox
“What an entertaining, fast-paced, emotionally-charged read Ms. Lennox has delivered in this book.... The way this story started had me hooked immediately.”
—Harlequin Junkie on The Baby They Longed For
Contents
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
EXCERPT FROM TWIN SURPRISE FOR THE BABY DOCTOR BY AMY RUTTAN
CHAPTER ONE
‘DOG.’
It was the first word Noah had said since they’d boarded the ferry. That wasn’t unusual—kids with Down’s syndrome were often slow to speak. Four-year-old Noah’s big dark eyes seemed to take everything in, but he seldom chatted.
And today there was so much to take in. Two days ago Dr Angus Knox and his son Noah had flown to the Birding Isles to start what Angus hoped would be a new and peaceful life. Angus’s new job was to be that of family doctor on Shearwater Island, one of the six islands that made up the Birding group.
They’d come nine months ago, at Christmas, for Angus to talk to the medical staff at the central Gannet Island hospital about possible employment, but there’d been divorce and custody issues to sort before they could come permanently. Now they’d flown here to stay. There’d been two nights on Gannet first, getting to know the regional set-up. Then the nurse who ran Shearwater’s tiny clinic—Freya Mayberry—had come to collect them. They were now on the ferry heading to their new home.
Freya was a nurse practitioner, extra training allowing her to perform some of the emergency functions usually handled by doctors. Angus had seen her credentials and been impressed, but on a personal level she seemed almost as uncommunicative as Noah.
His first impression had been that she was cute. Yeah, that was inappropriate, but there it was. The résumé he’d seen had her age at twenty-seven, but apart from her slightly shadowed eyes she didn’t look that old. She was five feet two or so, wiry and tanned. Her burnt copper hair was cropped into an elfin haircut, which accentuated wide green eyes, neatly spaced. Her nose was liberally freckled. As a nurse travelling to Gannet to meet the doctor she’d be working with from now on, she might have been expected to dress relatively professionally, but she’d obviously not read that manual. She was wearing denim shorts, a sleeveless shirt tied at the waist, and flip-flops.
So she didn’t look professional, but in her conversation she was nothing but. Her answers to his questions were brief, their conversation all about work and very much one way.
Why? Did she resent him coming? That might be a worry, as it seemed they’d be sharing a house for the foreseeable future.
Then... ‘Dog,’ Noah said again, and pointed, and Angus stopped thinking about the cute but curt nurse and followed the direction of Noah’s finger.
To what looked like some floating debris, a dark brown mass.
They were currently sitting on a bench on the ferry’s back deck—the sole passengers of the twenty-person boat. It was a special ferry-run, organised to take just the three passengers plus medical equipment. Now there’d be a doctor on the island, the aim was to equip a tiny hospital. Angus had been told a hall was being converted, and the equipment had arrived almost as he had.
So on board were desks, chairs, a couple of hospital beds, and boxes and boxes of basic equipment. The plan was that he and Freya could now take care of the minor stuff themselves, or do basic emergency work before evacuation to the bigger medical centre on Gannet Island. Or, in worst-case scenarios, evacuation to Sydney.
This meant that right now they were seated behind the mass of boxes loaded onto the back deck. The ferry-boat captain and the boat hand were upfront.
His little son was still staring intently out to the side, to that brown blob floating in the water.
Was it a dog?
‘It’s some rubbish, Noah,’ Angus told him. It looked like a floating bit of nothing. ‘Or maybe seaweed.’
But the woman beside him was suddenly on her feet, shading her eyes.
‘No.’ It was a curt snap. ‘He’s right. It just moved. Gareth!’ She was kicking off her flip-flops, yelling to the ferry skipper. ‘I’m going overboard,’ she announced. ‘Haul to and wait.’
And before Angus could begin to react, she’d climbed onto her seat, taken a fleeting moment to check out the floating blob again—and dived overboard.
It was done so fast they were all left stunned. The skipper, Gareth, a bearded guy in his forties, swore and shoved the engine into neutral. The boat hand, a kid of about seventeen, gave a whoop of excitement and leaped to the roof of the cabin to see.
‘Get to the rear and put down the swim platform,’ Gareth snapped at him, but Angus was already on it.
He knew boats. He’d grown up with them on Sydney harbour. His parents had had a luxury cruiser they’d used for entertainment. The platform at the back of his parents’ boat was set up to be lowered so guests could swim off the boat and re-board with ease.
The ferry’s platform looked as if it was used more to help load cargo than to swim from—maybe the flat-bottom boat could be backed into a beach? It was easy enough to slip the catch and hit the winch, all the while watching the slip of a girl streak across the bay towards the...dog?
He was yet to be convinced it was one. She could be risking her life for a piece of refuse.
Actually she wasn’t exactly risking her life, he conceded. They were at the entrance to the wide bay that led to Shearwater Harbour. The water was deep and clear, and it wasn’t so rough that an experienced swimmer couldn’t cope.
And she was an experienced swimmer. There was no doubting that, he thought, as he watched her streamlined figure slice through the swell towards her goal.
Noah was clutching his hand, tight, fearful. ‘Dog,’ he said again, and Angus swung him up in his arms so he could see.
But was that wise? Maybe he should take him down into the cabin, he thought. If indeed it was a dog, there was every chance that it was already dead. Dragging the body of a dead dog aboard would not be pretty.
She’d said she’d seen it move. That could be wave action. It could...heaven help them...be something feeding on a carcass.
A shark?
He should get Noah out of here.
He couldn’t take his eyes off her.
Girl and boat were floating further apart.
‘Get closer,’ he found himself yelling, and the ferry captain stopped staring in bemusement and turned back to his controls. There was another sharp command to the boat hand, which Angus didn’t hear—he was too focussed on what was happening in the water.
‘Get dog,’ Noah whispered, each syllable an effort, and he hugged him tighter.
‘We don’t know yet,’ he told him. ‘It might not be a dog.’
For Noah’s sake he should retreat, but he couldn’t tear his eyes from what was going on. Part of him wanted to be overboard as well, helping her, but there was no one to hold Noah. He could only watch.
But what to tell Noah if...?
‘She’s got it.’ He could see it for himself, but Gareth’s shout confirmed it. ‘It is a dog.’ The skipper slipped the boat into low gear, heading towards them, but he went slowly, slightly off course.
He wouldn’t want the wash, or even the propeller, hitting them.
The dog was alive. As Angus watched, Freya touched it, and he saw the mass of floating fur twist and struggle. And claw desperately towards its rescuer.
Once upon a time, Angus had had a golden retriever. Buddy had been a fantastic teenage companion, but she’d been loyal to the point of stupidity. When Angus went surfing with his mates, Buddy was fully convinced he’d drown, and if he didn’t have her secured, she’d race into the shallows to save him.
And when she reached him she’d cling. The first time it had happened he’d been twelve years old, skinny and slight, and Buddy was big. He’d been pushed under the water over and over again. Luckily he’d had mates who’d swum to help, but he still remembered the sensation of being weighed down by the lump of panicking dog.
He saw what was happening now and the memory flooded back. The dog was fighting to grip onto Freya. It’d be terrified. Desperate.
The boat hand had clambered down to the back of the boat, a bit late to let down the platform. He was standing gaping at the girl in the water. They were twenty metres or so away, and Gareth had cut the engine.
Angus had been introduced to the deck hand when they’d boarded. Mike was a big, gentle lad who had been gruffly nice to Noah, and Angus blessed him for it now.
‘Noah, I need to help the lady with the dog,’ he told him. ‘Will you stay with Mike?’ And before either of them could protest—this was too important for protests—he thrust Noah into Mike’s arms, kicked off his shoes and pants.
Fast.
‘You a decent swimmer, Doc?’ the skipper yelled back to Angus. He was still behind the wheel, watching Freya and the dog, but also aware of what was going on behind him.
‘Yes.’ No room for false modesty.
‘Then go. Mike, chuck the lifebuoys over the side. They’re on ropes. Drag one with you, Doc. Get Freya holding one of them and we’ll take over.’
‘Done,’ he snapped, and then he was over the side, grabbing the first lifebuoy Mike threw and towing it out to whatever was waiting for him.
* * *
She hadn’t thought this through.
She’d expected a half-dead dog, and that was what she had. It had been totally limp as she approached, apart from its nose, which surfaced every moment or so to gulp in air. It looked as if it was at the end of its strength—maybe even the end of its life.
It was mostly submerged, a mass of sodden black and brown fur. If Noah hadn’t pointed, if she hadn’t seen that faint movement, she would have taken it for some floating seaweed.
She’d acted on instinct, but if she’d stopped to think she’d have said she was expecting to grab a collar or a chunk of fur and tow it back to the boat. Which would have been easy. As an island kid she’d spent her childhood in and out of the water. Someone had even taught her the basics of saving someone from drowning, how to grab a frantic swimmer.
Not a frantic dog.
And that was an omission, because the moment she touched it, the dog reacted with a surge of adrenalin so fierce she was almost subsumed.
Who knew how long it had been in the water? Who knew how close to death it was? Regardless, one touch and the dog reacted as if it were suddenly in reach of dry land. It grabbed and clawed, and it did so with every ounce of strength left in its body.
This was a big dog, shaggy, huge. She’d only seen maybe a tenth of it above water, like the tip of an iceberg. Two massive, clawed paws found purchase on her shoulders and pushed her under.
She grabbed its feet, trying to break the grip. She did for a moment, managing to surface, and then the dog lunged again.
‘No!’ She screamed it but the dog was too far gone to register. Maybe if she’d been this animal she’d have lunged at anything within reach as well. She fought to back away, but the dog surged again.
And then stopped, mid surge. Caught from behind.
The dog was trying to twist, still trying to reach her, but it was being pulled further back.
A lifebuoy was thrust sideways across at her.
‘Grab!’ It was the guy from the boat. The new doctor. Angus. She hadn’t seen him come, but he was holding the dog back, fighting to restrain him, throwing curt orders at her.
She grabbed the lifebuoy. The dog couldn’t reach her. She took three gulping breaths and the panic eased.
He was still holding the dog from behind, gripping like a vice. The dog had its head above water. Its paws were still flailing but weakly in front of him. There was nothing there to cling to.
‘Are you okay?’ he demanded.
‘F-fine.’ Sort of.
How to help? But even as she thought it, her orders came, firm and sure. He’d know that she’d been held under, but he’d figure by the strength of her response, maybe by the sight of her initial swim, that she could still help. ‘Hold your buoy and grab me another,’ he instructed. ‘Mike’s thrown three into the water.’
She looked around, wildly.
‘To your left. Five metres. Go.’ His voice was harsh, loud, totally domineering.
She cast one last glance at the guy practically hidden behind the dog—and she went.
* * *
In the end it was almost straightforward. She reached the second roped lifebuoy and swam sidestroke back to man and dog, hauling the buoys beside her. ‘Come from behind me,’ he told her as she neared, and she did.
He grabbed the second buoy and swung it in front of the dog. Instinctively it clawed and clung, as if it was trying to haul itself onto the solid ring.
‘Now you grab my shirt from behind and hold tight,’ he told her. ‘Don’t let go of your lifebuoy. We need the flotation and we need it as backup.’
She was beyond arguing. She grabbed a handful of his shirt and clung.
They were a train. Dog, then Angus, then Freya.
Freya had no use for domineering men—well, not usually. Right now he was welcome to domineer all he liked.
‘Pull us in with the rope from the buoy the dog’s on,’ Angus yelled at the ferry skipper, and finally, clinging to Angus and to her buoy, Freya had a chance to see the overall picture.
Back on the ferry, the skipper had abandoned the wheel. The ferry was drifting, not an immediate risk when they were in the relatively calm waters of the wide bay entrance. The boat hand was holding Noah, both open-mouthed, shocked. The skipper was clambering down to the platform, to carefully, slowly, haul in the buoys.
Amazingly the plan made sense. If the dog let go of the buoy it was holding, Freya was clinging to Angus and she had the extra lifebuoy. Gareth could just swap the lines to pull them in. This way though, the dog’s flailing claws were still attached and chances were it would keep cling. All she had to do was hold Angus, and their little procession would be hauled aboard.
