* * *
Not quite. It was eight in the morning when Hugo Thurston took the call—and by eight fifteen every resource of Thurston Holdings was diverted to looking for one girl who’d fallen off a ship somewhere between Darwin and Broome, and the guy who’d fallen off with her.
‘He’d better look after her.’ Amy, Rachel’s sister, was helpless in her terror when Hugo broke the news.
‘If I know the Cotton women, it’ll be the other way round,’ Hugo said grimly. ‘Heaven help anything that threatens our Rachel.’
‘If he tried to attack her... If that’s why she fell...’
‘Then he’ll be croc meat and she’ll be sitting on a rock somewhere waiting for us to fetch her,’ he said. ‘So let’s not mess around. Let’s get your sister rescued.’
CHAPTER SEVEN
‘I DON’T suppose you thought to pack a Scrabble board in your waterproof pouch,’ Rachel said.
It was three o’clock. The heat outside the shelter of their rock ledge was searing. The last of their shallow rock pools had long dried up and only the makeshift cover over the deeper hole was protecting their water.
She’d like another drink but it was too hot to head out and get one. Why couldn’t the waterhole be in the shade?
Why couldn’t lots of things?
There were too many questions and no answers at all.
‘Scrabble,’ Finn said cautiously. ‘Sorry, I forgot.’
‘It would have been useful. Even a pack of cards...’
‘I always was useless at packing.’
She managed a smile at his contrition.
They were sitting as far back in the shadows as they could manage. Maybe they should be down on the shore, waving for help.
Not yet. There’d be crocs on the shoreline and they had a decent lookout here.
They needed to get the T-shirt up the scree—but there was a problem. The rock was brittle and crumbling, and every time the birds took off and Finn tried to climb, he ended up crumbling the edges still more and making no progress.
Rachel had been gearing up for an hour now. Thinking...could she?
She and Amy had spent their childhood becoming seriously good at martial arts. She’d also done serious gym work getting her hip back to strength. It meant she was agile and fast. Also light.
She still had a gammy hip. It still didn’t do what it was supposed to do. If Finn knew how badly it was damaged...
He didn’t, and the only way to get the T-shirt up there was for her to get it there.
She sat and thought about Scrabble for a while and thought about water and the rest of the barley sugar.
She tried not to think about the guy beside her, who’d grown silent as well.
He was carving something out of a piece of wood he’d found, whittling with patience, intent on who knew what?
She was so aware of him...
The second osprey launched itself from the nest and headed out to sea. The first had gone five minutes before.
They’d been timing the birds. Each excursion lasted half an hour or more.
They had twenty-five minutes. She had twenty-five minutes.
She pushed herself to her feet. ‘T-shirt.’
He stared up at her, startled. ‘What?’
‘I’m climbing. Give it to me.’
‘You know we can’t.’ He spoke as if he were humouring a child. ‘I’ve tried. It’s too dangerous.’
‘Not to me. I’m light, lithe and strong.’
‘You have a bad leg.’
‘I had a bad leg, and I’ve been climbing since I was a kid. Anything there was to climb, I’ve climbed. I’ve also been on more geology excursions than you’ve had hot dinners and I know my rocks. I know what’s stable and what’s not. While you’ve been whittling your tourist carvings...’
‘Tourist carvings...’ He almost exploded. ‘You think I’m carving...what, wooden crocodiles?’
‘I’m sure they’ll turn out very pretty,’ she said placatingly, ‘but I’ve been looking up at the crag, figuring out a route. I have it worked out. T-shirt. I’m going now.’
He put down his carving. ‘You’re not going anywhere.’
‘Says who?’
‘Rachel...’
‘We have no choice. Field glasses will never pick us from a distance.’ She held out her hand for the shirt. ‘You know that. A T-shirt waving from the top may well do the trick. You’re wasting time. Hand it over.’
‘You’ll kill yourself. No.’
‘If I don’t go, we may well both starve to death, and you know that, too. I won’t kill myself, and I need to go—now.’
‘We’ll both...’
‘You’re not coming,’ she snapped. ‘You’ll crumple my rock.’
‘Heaven forbid. So I stand at the bottom and catch?’
‘I won’t fall.’
There was a moment’s silence. A moment’s tense battle of wills.
‘Then I’ll stand at the bottom and watch you not fall,’ he said at last. ‘And watch for ospreys.’
‘Thank you,’ she said, and went.
* * *
To say he was astounded would be an understatement. He, Finn Kinnard, was standing at the base of a crumbling cliff, while a little cute woman was scaling the cliff above him—doing what had to be done to get them rescued.
To say Finn had a warped view of women would be unfair. Or would it?
To say Finn had a warped view of small, cute women would be fairer.
It was, in fact, not fair at all, but it was true.
His mother had been small and cute. She’d also been a victim, a doormat, who’d depended on his grandfather for everything. Her ill health had excused her—a bit—but Finn’s grandmother had been the same.
Rachel Cotton was small and cute—and she was halfway up a jutting crag in the middle of nowhere, when any minute the ospreys could return and she’d be in deathly trouble.
‘I won’t be,’ she’d said. ‘You watch for them, you yell and I’ll scramble down so fast you won’t see me for dust.’
Which would work if she was only halfway up, but if she was any further...
She carried a stick, the heaviest she could find, strapped to her shoulder by his belt. She could defend herself but these birds were huge.
He watched her climb, he saw the hesitation every time she put weight on her left hip, he saw resolution in every fibre of her body, and he thought... He thought...
He thought she might as well be a six foot six Amazonian. One of those mythical women who chopped a breast off to give them better aim for their arrows.
Something was twisting inside him. Changing.
Swimming with her last night, there’d been no hint of clinging. No hesitation. She’d twisted her jacket off and knotted it, thinking for herself, and then she’d swum at his side, asking nothing of him but that he stay beside her—and he’d asked that of her as well.
This morning she’d reacted in fear when the osprey swooped, and she’d clung, but then she’d pulled away. Since then she’d been entirely practical. She’d made herself as respectable as she could. She’d been prosaic and sensible, timing the ospreys, watching as he’d attempted to climb, watching as he’d failed.
All the time assessing her own chances.
That was why he was letting her go. He could see her mind working. As he’d failed the first time she hadn’t said, Let me try. She’d watched him fail again—and again—because for him to climb was the most sensible option. He was stronger and he didn’t have an injured hip.
But then she’d sat and thought and assessed the crag and come to her own conclusion.
Which made him think... Maybe he shouldn’t be quite as definite in his classification of li
ttle cute women.
Maybe he should reclassify Rachel.
Maybe he already had.
And maybe there were other things than her courage that were changing that classification as well. The way she looked... The way she felt in his arms...
Holding her, wet and naked in the pool, feeling her heartbeat against his, feeling her mould to him... Watching her now, clambering resolutely upward, he felt...
Okay, he didn’t know what he felt. He was feeling emotions he didn’t recognise.
Which wasn’t surprising, given the circumstances, he thought dryly, but this was more than that.
He wanted...
No. This was not the time to think about wanting Rachel Cotton.
She’d reached the top. He could only watch her out of the corner of his eye because all his attention had to be on the skyline, watching for the ospreys returning.
They’d agreed she’d drape the shirt over the topmost rock and weight a corner, so it’d flap in the breeze.
Instead she hauled the stick from her belt, tied the shirt to the end—a simple rip in the sleeve had it attached like a flag—shoved it into a fissure in the rock and turned to come down.
As a dark shape appeared on the horizon.
‘Rachel...’
‘I’m on my way...’ She was already slithering and he swore.
‘The stick...’ He was yelling now. She needed it—that’s why she’d taken it—but she’d left it behind to get the shirt higher.
He couldn’t get up there to help her. The rock crumbled under his weight—he tried again and the weathered edges simply gave.
‘Hurry...’ It was a desperate roar.
‘Believe it or not...’ Unbelievably there was laughter in her reply as she called down to him. ‘I’m hurrying.’
Not fast enough. The bird had seen Rachel, was screeching in, fast and furious...
Finn launched a rock straight up.
It didn’t hit—of course it didn’t—but it was enough to make the osprey veer and circle and come round again.
Another rock was hurled upward as Rachel clambered on.
Another.
Another.
And then she was on the final rock, shoulder height, close enough for him to grab her and lift her and haul her back into the shadows of the cliff and hold her safe.
And hold her and hold her while he rethought this attitude to women in general and this woman in particular and maybe his attitude to all women in the known universe.
Or just one.
Rachel.
* * *
She didn’t stay in his arms for her. She did it for him.
She’d figured it out. She’d fallen into him in terror this morning but this was different.
He was the one who’d been frightened, she thought. He was the one who needed reassurance. She was doing him a favour letting him hold her, and that was the only reason she was still here.
She had no business thinking how good it felt and how safe and how warm and how...right.
Be practical, she told herself. Move on.
He was still holding her. She could feel his heartbeat.
Move on.
Her feet hurt. That was something a girl could safely think about.
‘My feet hurt,’ she said, muffled against his breast, and she felt him think about it. He hugged her close one last, long time—and finally, reluctantly—really reluctantly—put her away from him. Not far. Just at arm’s length.
‘Your feet...’
‘I needed hobnail boots.’
They both did. He’d abandoned his shoes in the swim last night and she hadn’t been wearing any. His feet were raw and bleeding from his attempts to climb the crag, and he didn’t have dainty female feet.
Only he had to stop that sort of thinking. He was starting to figure out that thinking of Rachel as dainty was just plain wrong.
‘Let’s see,’ he said, and she plopped down on the rock and checked them out.
He stared down at her, at this fragile-looking slip of a woman who’d just climbed a crag he couldn’t, who’d risked her neck by making their flag more obvious, who was now sitting cross-legged, studying the soles of her feet.
‘Ouch,’ she said. ‘Do yours look like this?’
She saw his answer on his face and she winced.
‘And you tried three times!’
‘And you tried once and succeeded.’
‘Yeah, and now I can’t even whinge to you,’ she said mournfully.
‘But you can look at your flag.’
‘I can,’ she said and cheered up. They could see it from where they sheltered, a brave little flag fluttering in the hot wind. ‘Unless the ospreys attack it.’
‘They’re too busy worrying about you.’
‘They’ll get used to us.’ She sighed. ‘I’d give anything to stick these feet in our waterhole.’
‘It’d add flavour.’
She grinned. ‘Ugh. You want a barley sugar?’
‘It’s been hours since breakfast,’ he conceded. ‘We might as well make pigs of ourselves.’
‘Let’s do it,’ she said, and they ceremoniously unwrapped a barley sugar apiece and then sat side by side and looked out at the endless ocean and their little flag, and all sorts of thoughts were going through both of their minds but neither could find the courage to say any of them.
* * *
Rachel finally figured what it was Finn had been whittling. He’d carved a slot six inches long and an inch wide in a flat piece of driftwood, and then made a rounded stick, eight inches long and a fraction thinner than the slot. He proceeded to rub the stick back and forth in the slot, methodically, patiently, over and over, with his arms in the sun to get maximum heat. He was making a fire.
‘I read about this somewhere,’ he told her. ‘It’s more effective than rubbing two sticks together. Or it should be.’
She watched for a while, fascinated. She offered to help but he knocked her back.
‘This is man’s work.’
‘So we’re dividing labour according to sex? You want me to hunt and kill while you make fire?’
He grinned. ‘Be my guest. Go bash a barley sugar to death.’
‘I’m far too sensitive. They look at me with their big brown eyes.’ Then she saw his hands and her smile died. ‘You need to let me help. Your hands are already blistering with sunburn.’
‘Yours are prettier than mine to start with,’ he said. ‘Why spoil four hands? But you might usefully hunt and kill firewood. Does driftwood look at you?’
So that was what she did, keeping a watchful eye for the ospreys. And crocodiles. She had to clamber down too close for comfort to the croc-threatening waterline. That made Finn nervous as well, but they both knew they had no choice. The wood was below the high tide mark.
‘Just get down and back fast,’ he told her. A flag during the day and fires at night were their best chance—their only chance—of attracting the attention of rescuers.
She worked on, diving in and out of the shade, climbing down and up from the waterline. Finally she’d collected a pile big enough for a decent nightlong blaze. She headed back to Finn—and he was staring at a flame with awe.
‘I feel like I’ve just passed Basic Boy Scout Training,’ he breathed, and he looked like a kid on Christmas morning. He looked...adorable, she thought. Before she could think it through, she knelt beside him and hugged him.
Then she pulled away and inspected his fire—and inspected him. She wanted to hug him again. Sense prevailed.
‘Your poor hands...’ she managed. ‘Let’s get some water on them.’
‘And your nose is bright red,’ he said. ‘Water on that as well?’
The fierceness was f
inally going out of the sun. They headed back to their waterhole, cupped their hands and drank, allowing a little for sunburned noses.
‘We’ll move to rationing when it gets half full,’ Finn decreed. ‘But for now...’
For now they had to face the night with water and dwindling barley sugar. It wasn’t enough to keep hunger at bay. It wasn’t enough to keep fear at bay.
‘Tomorrow we try roasting lizards?’ Rachel said doubtfully.
‘Maybe we could raid the ospreys’ nest. If the eggs have only just been laid we could have osprey omelette.’
‘Ugh,’ she said. ‘You get to climb and steal them. Good luck.’ She hesitated, eyeing another barley sugar. ‘I wonder what they’re having on the ship right now.’
‘Nothing,’ Finn said promptly. ‘They’ll be sitting round in mourning clothes, not eating out of respect. Sobbing into their empty plates while they keep a lookout in case we happen to drift past.’
‘They won’t return to look for us?’ It was almost wistful.
‘They can’t,’ Finn said gently. ‘The Captain’s responsibility is to all of his passengers. These are uncharted waters with huge tides. There’s no way he can turn and search. He’ll leave it to others.’
‘Just as well we have Maud, then,’ she whispered and he watched her face and he thought, Please, Maud...
They were depending on an eighty-three-year-old woman. On a woman who loved Rachel.
They were depending on a love he was just barely starting to understand.
* * *
As darkness fell they lit fires on the three points of the island so searchers could see them from any direction.
‘I’ll stoke them during the night,’ Finn decreed. ‘I’ll keep them flaming. Tomorrow we’ll let them smoulder. The trails of smoke will be seen for miles.’
‘But you’re sure...’ She didn’t finish, but he knew what she was asking.
‘That only the right people will be searching? I’m sure.’ He met her gaze directly, glad he could believe what he was telling her. ‘Wasting manpower trying to find us is not what drug runners do.’
‘I can’t believe anyone could be so wicked.’
They’d settled back on the same ledge where they’d slept the night before. The afternoon sun had warmed the sand underneath, giving as much comfort as they could hope for, but for now, Rachel wasn’t comforted. Darkness had brought the return of demons. He heard the shake in her voice and he tugged her close.
A Bride For The Maverick Millionaire (Journey Through The Outback #2) Page 9
