She wrapped her arms right around him, she held him against her and she just...hugged.
He’d never had such a hug. Or maybe he had—surely he must have. But if he had, he’d forgotten.
The warmth of her. The smell...something citrusy, fresh, nice. The way her breasts molded against his chest, her head pressing into his shoulder, her hair brushing his chin.
He froze. He had an almost overwhelming desire to hug back, but he wasn’t stupid. This was entirely inappropriate. He should push her away. He should...
He didn’t. He simply stood, frozen, and let himself be hugged.
And she took her own sweet time finishing. This wasn’t a hug to be cut short, and somehow, he got the sense that she needed it, too.
There was such a strong urge to hug back. But he didn’t. He kept his head. Somehow.
And finally it ended. She tugged away and stood facing him, smiling a bit sheepishly. For some reason, there was a tear tracking down her cheek. He had an urge to put out his hand and wipe it away...
Dear Reader,
Sometime back, I attended a talk by a motivational speaker, who asked us to imagine ourselves in our happy place. I can’t tell you what she spoke of next, as I was instantly transported to a sun-warmed beach with soft sand littered with gorgeous seashells. Gentle waves frothed in and out as tiny sandpipers hunted for low-tide pickings. This is my magic island, my dreaming place, and in Healing Her Brooding Island Hero, book three of my Birding Isles quartet, I take you there.
Gina and Hugh are on Sandpiper Island because fate sends them there. For Hugh it’s an escape. For Gina it’s a duty.
I’ve loved watching Gina and Hugh as they discover that Sandpiper Island can be what they most need. A place of love. A home.
I wish a little of the happiness they find rubs off on you.
Marion
Healing Her Brooding Island Hero
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
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
Falling for His Island Nurse
Harlequin Romance
English Lord on Her Doorstep
Cinderella and the Billionaire
Visit the Author Profile page at Harlequin.com for more titles.
For Alison, whose love and knowledge of beach and garden was a gift to us all.
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
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
EPILOGUE
EXCERPT FROM SECOND CHANCE WITH HER GUARDED GP BY KATE HARDY
CHAPTER ONE
SHE’D FORGOTTEN ABOUT WOMBATS.
Gina Marshall had been on Sandpiper Island for less than an hour before she remembered, and she remembered with a thump. Now she was standing on a gravel track surrounded by thick bushland, shining her phone torch at a wombat lying in front of her aunt’s car. Feeling ill.
How hard had she hit it? Surely not hard enough to do major harm.
Gina had caught the last ferry to Sandpiper, arriving after dark. Her Great-Aunt Babs had organised her car to be left for her at the ferry terminal. Babs’s car was a Mini, old, battered and tiny. The wombat was large. Gina had been lucky the car hadn’t rolled.
Wombats had been a menace on Sandpiper roads for as long as Gina could remember. They were like solid, heavy logs. The locals knew and respected them, but Gina had forgotten. She’d braked when she’d seen the ‘log’, but she hadn’t braked soon enough.
The wombat was now upended, lying on its back with its four little legs in the air.
One of its legs looked...bloody.
Uh oh.
She was in the middle of a national park, and this side of the island was almost uninhabited. The dark and the enveloping bushland were enough to give her the shakes, but she needed to pull herself together. She was a nurse, trained in emergency medicine. Triage. Action. Surely she could deal with this.
‘I’m so sorry I hit you,’ she said, out loud. ‘But what to do next?’
That was helpful. Asking the patient for a plan of action?
And the wombat clearly was unimpressed. It stared up at her, its little eyes unblinking. There wasn’t a huge amount of blood, but it lay unmoving.
Head injury? Spinal injury? Was it lying still because of shock, or something worse?
How could you tell with a wombat?
Given a human, she should check its breathing, its pulse, its vital signs, but she knew enough about wombats to know that, unless the wombat was actively dying, she stood a very real chance of being scratched or bitten.
But she needed to get it off the road, and this was a seriously big wombat. She wasn’t sure she could lift it, even if she was game to try.
Aaghh.
She stood in the middle of the road and tried to think of what to do next. She hadn’t been on the island for years, and she had no contact details for emergency services. She thought back to the darkened little town she’d just driven from. She thought of the sole operator of the ferry terminal, switching off all the lights as he’d left, leaving the place locked and dark.
Black.
That was what the night was. Unwanted memories were suddenly all around her. A mountainside, impenetrable darkness, the stink of blackened ruins, and nothing, nothing, nothing.
This wasn’t black, she told herself. She had the car headlights. She had her phone torch. But beyond their beams...
Get over it, she told herself harshly. Move on.
Her only choice was to phone her great-aunt. Babs was frail, with advanced heart failure, which was why she hadn’t come to collect her in person, but she’d be waiting up for her to arrive. Babs could at least give her island emergency numbers.
And blessedly she answered on the first ring. ‘Gina.’ Her voice was acerbic, a bit annoyed. ‘Are you on the island? Did you find the car? I told Joe to give you the keys. I expected you before this.’
‘I found the car,’ she said. ‘But, Aunty Babs, I’ve hit a wombat.’
‘You’ve what? Oh, for heaven’s sake...’
This wasn’t a promising start. Babs’s tone held astonishment—and also immediate judgement. Sandp
iper Island was the smallest of the Birding Isles, an hour’s flight from Sydney plus a ferry ride from the biggest island in the group, Gannet. It had a population of about four hundred, mostly small-scale farmers or fishermen. It was known for its solitude—and for the protection it gave its wildlife.
‘I didn’t hit it very hard,’ Gina said defensively. ‘But I think I’ve hurt its leg, and it’s not moving.’
‘Is it conscious?’
‘It’s looking at me.’
‘I imagine it is,’ Babs snapped. ‘It’ll be terrified. Don’t go near it unless you have to.’
‘Right,’ Gina said, just as dryly. ‘Don’t scare the wombat. Got it. But apart from that... Babs, I need help. What should I do?’
There was a moment’s silence. Then... ‘You need Hugh.’
‘Hugh?’
‘Hugh Duncan. He’s a doctor.’
‘Don’t I need a vet?’
‘Of course you do,’ Babs said, in that condescending voice Gina remembered so well. Gina had been thought of as useless from the moment Babs had met her. ‘But Sandpiper’s not big enough to have a vet. We don’t even officially have a doctor—you remember we take the ferry over to Gannet if we get sick? But Hugh’s worked for some foreign aid organisation—those doctors who go to war zones. Rumour is he was hit by a bomb. He has a gammy leg and he hates being disturbed, but he’ll help in an emergency. If he can keep it alive until tomorrow, you can put it on the ferry to Gannet. There’s a wildlife rehab place there. Meanwhile there’s a rug in my car. Cover it so it doesn’t scratch, put it in the car and take it to his place.’
In the dark? Gina thought. And then she looked back at the wombat and thought even if she wanted to—which she didn’t—picking it up wasn’t an option.
‘I can’t lift it,’ she admitted. ‘It’s enormous.’
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake...’ Babs’s exasperation was growing. ‘Ring him, then. He won’t like it, but he’ll come.’
‘Isn’t there a policeman or someone else? I mean, I’ll stay until someone arrives but...’
‘You could ring Joan Wilmot,’ Babs told her. ‘You must remember her—she’s our local mayor, and our police. But she’ll just ring Hugh, and then you’ll have two people fed up with you. Three if you count me.’
‘You’re fed up?’ Already, she thought.
‘You should have been more careful,’ Babs snapped, and Gina thought, I’ve come halfway around the world because you admitted you needed me, and I get a lecture before I’ve even arrived?
Suddenly she was thinking back to herself at fifteen, arriving on the island after her parents died, being gathered into Babs’s arms and hugged as if she’d never be released. Then, half an hour later, she was being scolded because she’d set the table with the knives and forks on the wrong side. But even with Babs’s judgement, she remembered staring down at the table and feeling a surge of something that could only be described as relief. After weeks of horror, Babs’s scolding had somehow made her world settle.
At least briefly.
But that was why she was back here now. Babs was ill, but this was the same Great-Aunt Babs she knew. She’d be scolding until the end.
‘So I have to ring this... Hugh.’
‘I’ll ring him for you if it helps,’ Babs said magnanimously, and then spoiled it by saying: ‘You’ll only mix up the directions. I imagine you’ll be on the track leading down to Windswept Bay by now. Up on Windy Ridge?’
‘How did you know?’
‘Because wombats are always on that track,’ her aunt snapped. ‘Stay where you are, and I’ll ring now.’
‘Babs?’
‘Yes?’
‘Ring me back and tell me if he’s coming,’ Gina said, trying—and failing—not to sound like a scared kid.
‘I will,’ Babs told her and sniffed. ‘I remember you don’t like the dark. You should have got over that by now, but you needn’t fear. The only bogey man you need to worry about is Hugh Duncan.’
* * *
He did not want to answer the phone.
Dammit, he should have chosen another island. One with a medical service.
He’d come to Sandpiper because it seemed about as far from the world he knew as he could get. The island was ninety per cent nature reserve, ten per cent small farms. Most of those farms were on the other side of the island, centred around the only town. This side of the island was practically deserted.
He’d bought this place from a guy who’d seemed almost a hermit, and that was pretty much what Hugh intended himself to be.
He and Hoppy, the little fox terrier retrieved from the hellhole where they’d both been injured, had looked at the natural beauty of the place and thought, Yes! There’d been a few issues with Hoppy and the wildlife, but a three-legged, not very young dog posed little threat. Once Hoppy had learned snakes were for avoiding—and a bite from a blue-tongue lizard had helped—they’d settled well.
And then the islanders had discovered he was a doctor.
He’d never intended to be the sole doctor on a remote island. He needed his head read for not finding out the situation before he’d come, but once the islanders learned of his medical background, he was stuck.
He could refuse to help, and if it was something a ferry ride across to the excellent medical service on Gannet Island could fix, then he did. But in the three years since he’d been here, there’d been calls he couldn’t refuse.
‘Doctor, he’s dying... Doctor, there’s been a crash...’
So now it was ten at night and his phone was ringing. The islanders had learned his response to waste-of-time calls. He knew whatever it was would be unavoidable.
And then he saw the number on the screen, and he thought, Trouble.
Babs Marshall was eighty-four years old. She lived in the only other cottage on this side of the island, but, like him, she kept to herself. He saw her sometimes when he and Hoppy were on the beach. She’d be collecting driftwood, or carting seaweed back to mulch her garden, but she never made an attempt to chat. She was private to the point of surliness.
Then, a few months back she’d had a major heart attack. She’d only survived because he’d noticed her lights hadn’t come on at dark and he’d been worried enough to walk over and check—to find her unconscious, near death. After she’d come home from hospital, he’d ordered her to ring him whenever there was the faintest need, so there was no choice about responding now.
‘Babs,’ he said briefly because social niceties were wasted on his neighbour. ‘Problem?’
‘It’s Gina,’ she said, sounding waspish. ‘My niece.’
He relaxed a bit at that. Despite the best of treatment after her attack, Babs’s heart was still failing, and there was little he or any other medic could do to help. When he’d seen her number on his phone, his own heart had sunk. But...niece?
This Gina must be the phantom niece she’d talked of when he’d worried about her living by herself. ‘I’ve told my niece she’s needed,’ she’d said months ago, but he’d heard nothing since. So now...
‘She’s here? Is she ill?’
‘She’s just arrived, and she’s hit a wombat on the ridge track,’ she snapped. ‘She says she’s hurt its leg, and it’s not moving.’
Silence.
Apart from his and Babs’s smallholdings, this side of the island was a designated nature reserve. Speed limits were strict. Wildlife was sacrosanct.
‘She wouldn’t have been speeding,’ Babs said, seemingly following his thoughts. ‘She’s driving my car.’
He knew the car and he almost grinned. Babs’s tiny car was almost as old as she was. The fact that it still went at all was a miracle, and if there was a choice between the car’s speed and that of a lumbering wombat, he reckoned the wombat might win. But at night, on these roads...
Idiot.
‘All right,’ he said wearily. ‘Tell her to bring it over.’
‘Well, that’s what I can’t do,’ she said, still waspishly. ‘She’s by herself. She says it’s a big one and she can’t lift it. Sometimes she’s not very bright. She’s also scared of the dark. I’d try and help, but she has my car. She just landed on the island tonight, and Joe took my car down to the ferry so she could drive here herself.’
‘She’s a mainlander?’
‘She’s been on one of those cruise ships,’ Babs told him. ‘She spends her life doing that—talk about a waste of space. Only now with the pandemic and everything, the cruises have stopped so she’s finally come.’
Oh, great. The vision he had of the niece was getting worse every minute.
‘You know I hate to bother you,’ Babs was saying. ‘But could you get her out of trouble? Not for her sake, you understand, but for the wombat.’
For the wombat.
He practically gritted his teeth.
But Hoppy was staring up at him in concern. The little dog had been pretty much his lifesaver over the last few years. If you wanted empathy, Hoppy was your dog. Now he had his head cocked to one side and his eyes were huge.
Hugh glanced back to his fire, his book—an excellent mystery, half read—the glass of whisky.
Then back to Hoppy, who was showing his concern in every fibre of his being. Another creature in trouble?
He was anthropomorphising, giving human feelings to a dog. Hoppy couldn’t even hear what was being said.
He was still looking at him.
‘Fine,’ Hugh said, goaded.
‘Thank you.’
He didn’t bother replying, just disconnected and grabbed his boots.
‘Keep the fire going and don’t touch the whisky,’ he told Hoppy, and Hoppy gave a tentative wag of his tail.
‘Yeah, I know, it’s a wombat and I have to help,’ he snarled. ‘But it’s also a dingbat woman who spends her life on cruise ships. I’ll help, but there’s no reason I have to do it graciously.’
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