And then...
A shout.
‘They’re in here. All still. More timbers...’
The crowd behind the tape hushed. The whole world hushed. No one breathed.
More timbers went sliding in. The fire chief barked instructions. There was a change of the order at the site, someone ducked low into the timber-lined chasm, and there was more silence.
And then...
One of the diggers, hard hatted and masked, backed out, tugging...
A boy...
There was a sob of fear from behind her, a woman lurched forward and was restrained...
Arms lifted the boy, sand-coated, masked. Someone tugged the mask free and the child looked around and saw his mother...
‘M-Mum.’
There was a collective gasp as the paramedics moved in to do their job. Callie rose to help but Zoe was no longer watching. Her attention was back with the diggers.
Please...
Another shout. Another child was pulled free. They were using shoring timbers to hold him flat and someone yelled for Callie.
Spinal injuries?
But he, too, quavered a whisper as his parents reached him.
Please...
And then, emerging behind the board...looking like the abominable sandman, coated from head to foot, letting men pull him, blinking in the light, wiping his face, accepting a towel and brushing sand away, hauling the mask off and shaking his head as paramedics moved in...
Sam.
She couldn’t move. She could only stare. Sam.
Alive.
He was searching the crowd. Men were gripping his shoulders, one of the paramedics was offering mask and oxygen, but he was searching...
He found her.
His gaze met hers.
And right there, right then Bonnie realised that this sand-coated apparition was the guy she loved with all her heart. Unequivocally. No conditions. The big Labrador bounded forward with as much bounce as her splinted leg allowed, and Sam was covered in Labrador, he had his dog in his arms but he was striding forward as he hugged, and somehow she was standing and moving as well.
And then he reached her. ‘D-down,’ Sam said in a voice that was none too steady. ‘Sit.’
And Bonnie subsided and sat and Sam Webster looked at Zoe Payne and there was something in that look that was a marriage vow all by itself.
‘You got help,’ he said, and she blinked back tears and reached for his hands and held and held and held.
‘You got out.’
‘I had to get out for you.’
‘I don’t suppose it’s any use for me to say never, ever, ever do anything so terrifying ever in your life again,’ she whispered. ‘Sam, I thought you were going to die.’
‘I thought I might,’ he said. They were almost formal. They were standing holding hands while the rest of the world watched, while people grinned their approval, while the world came to terms with this rescue and while Zoe and Sam came to terms with something new. With the rest of their lives.
‘I couldn’t bear it,’ she whispered. ‘To lose you.’
‘I guess we’ll have to bear it one day,’ he said. ‘But not today. I’m giving us sixty years.’
‘Not if you keep taking risks like today.’
‘I couldn’t not,’ he said soberly, looking back at the collapsed sand. ‘I couldn’t not go in there. Like you can’t stop nursing kids with sniffles. Or climbing mountains. It’s who we are.’
‘But I love you, Sam,’ she said, and it was a vow. ‘If you ever scare me like that again I’ll...’
‘You’ll?’
‘I’ll love you more,’ she whispered, and at last she fell forward and he tugged her into his arms. He was a mass of sand, it felt like hugging a crumbed rissole, but he was her Sam, he was here, he was alive, and he was...
Sam.
‘I’ll let you worry,’ she whispered.
‘That’s big of you,’ he said into her hair.
‘But I need to worry back.’
‘Granted,’ he said, and tugged back and tilted her chin so he could look into her eyes. ‘Zoe, I might get paranoid...’
‘And I’ll tell you you’re paranoid. I might get dumb and try to climb mountains too big for me.’
‘Then I’ll tell you you’re dumb.’
‘I foresee fights.’
‘I like a decent fight. Will you let me win?’
‘Half the time,’ she said. ‘We’ll put a chart on the refrigerator. Fifty per cent me, fifty per cent you. Sam...’
‘Mmm?’
‘When Dean cared...he loved me because he could care. He loved me because he loved worrying. It took me years to figure it out and it scared me.’
‘And when Emily took risks she took them because she loved taking risks,’ Sam said, just as gravely. ‘I can’t tell you how much that scared me. You reckon, though, if we know what we’re fighting, we can work through it?’
‘We can try,’ she said shakily.
‘Zoe?’
‘Mmm?’
‘I think that’s enough negotiation for one afternoon,’ he said, and suddenly there was no hint of shakiness in his voice. This was Dr Sam Webster who’d just saved two lives. This was Dr Sam Webster who was standing in the late afternoon sun holding the woman he loved. This was Dr Sam Webster about to kiss the woman he loved with all his heart.
There was no more prevarication. The time was right to kiss his Zoe—and he did.
* * *
Callie was helping to load the two kids into the ambulance when Cade arrived. Word must have gone around the hospital like wildfire—every off-duty medic from Gold Coast City seemed to be on the beach now. These kids couldn’t possibly get better attention.
Cade saw Callie and headed straight for her.
‘Status?’ he said in the clipped, unemotional tone of an emergency physician working out triage.
‘No deaths,’ Callie said, responding to his tone and trying to keep her voice unemotional. ‘Two teenagers, one with a smashed shoulder, the other with suspected fractured hip, possible ribs, query spine, but there’s movement so we’re not looking at paraplegia.’
‘And Sam?’
Sam was Cade’s colleague, Callie thought. They’d only worked together for a few weeks but Callie knew there was already respect and friendship between the two men.
‘He managed to get himself through falling sand into the cave they were buried in,’ she said. ‘He took in masks and oxygen and kept them alive until help arrived.’
‘He’s okay?’
She gestured down to the beach where one man and one woman were totally entwined, kissing as if there was no tomorrow, even though there was a crowd around them and one chocolate-coloured Labrador was nudging between them with increasing impatience.
‘What do you think?’
Cade stared down the beach for a long moment, and his mouth twisted into a wry grimace.
‘Love conquers all,’ he said, and he couldn’t disguise the sarcasm.
‘So it seems,’ Callie said steadily.
‘You’re going to advise her to cut and run?’
‘I’m not advising anyone,’ Callie said. ‘I know nothing and understand less. I love it that they’re happy. I hope it lasts.’
‘Me, too,’ Cade said unexpectedly. ‘Other people can be happy. Just not us, right?’
‘You’ve got it in one,’ she said, and turned back to help load two battered kids into the ambulance.
* * *
Sunday.
It was surfing lesson number twenty-nine and she did it.
She hit the green room.
The green room was a special, magic place, known only to surfers who’ve been sur
fing for years. Zoe wasn’t ready. The great, curling wave came from nowhere. If Sam had had time he’d have yelled to Zoe to let it go, it was too big, she wasn’t expert enough.
She caught it with ease.
He’d been lying on his board two hundred yards away. The great wave curled towards him.
He could watch over it and wait with fear until Zoe came out the other end—if Zoe came out the other end—or he could catch it himself.
The board lifted him and he pushed forward and felt the magic force as wave and board came together.
It curled high, high, higher...and over.
He was totally enclosed, a ring of green water, a tunnel pushing him forward. Sunlight glinting through the green walls. Force was all around him. Breathtaking beauty.
Somewhere in the same wave was Zoe.
He could hold his breath in terror or ride his wave, and somehow there was no room for terror.
The green room enclosed him in its magic and somehow he knew that the magic was closing around Zoe as well.
His surfing girl. His Zoe.
The wave was an endless curve, a once-in–a-lifetime ride, curling more and more for almost the full length of the beach. He rode its length until it fell away as the beach became shallow, as the green room became a simple breaking wave washing to the shore. He emerged to sunlight and to a whoop of pure joy from twenty yards away.
He turned and she was there, laughing, crying, joyous, his beautiful surfer girl. His Zoe.
He’d meant to wait. He’d had it planned, a three-week holiday to Nepal, a trek to the base of Annapurna Two, a candlelit dinner organised by sherpas, a ring, a question.
Instead, he paddled the few feet between them, he tugged her from the board, he lifted her into his arms and he kissed her so deeply he knew that no time would be more perfect.
No woman would be more perfect.
Somehow he unfastened their leg ropes, letting the tide carry their boards to the shore. She smiled and smiled, as if she knew what was coming, as if she, too, knew the perfection of this moment.
He put her down, he sank to one knee—and a wave knocked him sideways.
He surfaced spluttering, to find her choked with laughter and sinking to her knees to join him.
‘You drown, we drown together,’ she told him.
‘Does that mean you’ll marry me?’’
There was a long, long silence while four more waves washed over them, while more curling waves broke and ran for shore, while the world settled on its axis to what was right, what was perfect, what was now.
‘Why, yes,’ Zoe whispered at last as he drew her close. ‘Why, yes, Sam Webster, I believe it does.’
He whooped with joy. He kissed her long and deep and with all the love in his heart.
And then one brown Labrador bounded into the water to join them, a kiss became a sandwich hug and Sam Webster and Zoe Payne became a family.
* * * * *
GOLD COAST ANGELS: TWO TINY HEARTBEATS by Fiona McArthur, the next story in this fabulous series, is also available this month.
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ISBN-13: 9781460320679
Copyright © 2013 by Harlequin Books S.A.
GOLD COAST ANGELS: A DOCTOR’S REDEMPTION
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