Her heart twisted.
It had been wrenched every which way in the last few hours, she thought, suddenly angry. Love. Terror. Hope.
Love. She loved Max. Her one true thing. They said love could extend to fit all comers. It surely felt like that. The way she felt about this man holding her close was surely something like that. This man she’d thought a manicured wimp in a classy suit, who was suddenly a biker and an abseiler and who’d lifted her as if she weighed nothing.
‘Alistair, I always change my mind.’ She had to be honest here. He deserved that at least. ‘Please, don’t fall for me. I’m not … I don’t even trust myself.’
‘Why not?’ Maybe they were getting accustomed to the wind. Or maybe it was that they were so close to each other. They’d relaxed a little now, lying face to face, their mouths barely inches apart. Their noses were practically touching. The most intimate of settings …
‘I fall for the violent ones,’ she whispered. ‘Like my dad. Like Ron. And I can’t … do anything about it.’
‘So you’re saying you can’t fall for me.’
‘Yes, but that’s just the problem.’ She barely understood this herself—how to explain it to him? ‘I have fallen for you. You said you felt this … thing. Well, I do, too, but I don’t trust myself. How can I trust you?’
‘How can you not?’
‘See, if I fall for you, I don’t know how you’ll be,’ she said, and she knew she was sounding pathetic but she didn’t have a choice. ‘And if you ever hit Max …’
‘I would never hit Max,’ he said, astounded. ‘And what about if I ever hit you? Georgie, do you think I could do that?’
‘No.’ But she bit her lip and shook her head. ‘Yes. I don’t know. You see, all my values—they’re all over the place. I can’t figure out how to trust anyone because whenever I do it’s all wrong. I came to Crocodile Creek to get away from stuff …’
‘To get away from someone?’
‘From a whole string of someones,’ she said desperately. ‘Guys I thought might be the one, only every time I did they just … they just …’
‘Hit you?’
‘I’d never let them,’ she said with an attempt at dignity. What was it about this place, this situation, that was letting her expose herself so completely? ‘Do you really think I’d let anyone hit me?’
‘Only Smiley,’ he said, smiling softly into her eyes. ‘Only if it was absolutely necessary to put someone in jail.’
‘I’m good at defending myself,’ she said. ‘I’ve had to be. But if you were great to me …’
‘You’d think I was soft?’ He was trying desperately to understand, she thought, and it made it worse.
‘I can’t figure it out myself.’
‘You don’t think you could give it a chance? Let me into your life a little and take it a step at a time?’
‘You’re leaving straight after Cal and Gina’s wedding.’
‘See, here’s the thing,’ he said, almost apologetically. ‘Charles has offered me a job.’
She felt like her breath had been punched out of her. A particularly violent blast rocked the truck, but she was getting more fearful of what was happening right in here.
‘You’ll never do it.’
‘Would you hate it?’
‘I … It’s nothing to do with me.’
‘If I stayed, would you run again?’
‘I can’t,’ she said, and her voice was a wail. ‘I have Max. Max has all these friends. Gina’s little boy, CJ. Charles’s adopted daughter, Lily. Mrs Grubb. They all love Max to bits and he loves them. How could I walk away?’
‘But you’re so fearful of me that you might?’
‘I don’t know,’ she whispered.
Another crash. Something hard and solid crashed down on the top of the truck. She shivered and Alistair was holding her tight again.
She should fight him. She should …
She couldn’t.
‘One day at a time,’ he said, whispering against her ear. ‘Let’s just do it like that. I know I’ve added to the pressure—I shouldn’t have told you but, you know, I thought maybe this might be the only chance I ever have to say it so, damn, I’m going to say it. Georgie, like it or not, take it or leave it, I’ve suddenly figured it out. I love you. And unless you object very, very loudly, so loudly that I can hear you above this damned cyclone, I intend to kiss you into the middle of next week. Right here. Right now. Any objections?’
Any objections?
Of course she had objections. She had a thousand objections. She just couldn’t quite manage to voice them. She just couldn’t quite manage …
He kissed her.
CHAPTER NINE
THE eye of the storm, when it came, came so swiftly that for a moment Georgie thought she was dreaming.
She’d been fast asleep. Wise or not, dopy or not, she’d been sleeping in Alistair’s arms. The blast of the wind had been dulled by the beat of his heart. His declaration had been crazy. It had frightened her. But she’d been honest, she told herself. He knew where he stood.
So when he’d kissed her, what was a girl to do but respond? What was a girl to do but take comfort where comfort was offered?
What was a girl to do but to savour every single moment of his kisses? Of this time she’d held him tightly. Before the world had blasted its dreadful reality back against her.
So she’d gone to sleep, and maybe he had, too. She woke up feeling warm and safe and cherished. And the wind had stopped.
She opened one eye and then the other.
‘Alistair.’
‘I’m hearing it,’ he said, and she could feel the rumble of his voice as well as hear it. Nice.
Very nice.
‘The eye of the cyclone,’ he said.
‘You mean it’ll come back.’
‘Yeah, but we may have time.’ He set her away from him, but then he smiled, tugged her back and kissed her, briefly but hard on the lips. A man claiming his own.
‘Let’s see,’ he said, and reached for the radio.
Charles answered in seconds.
‘You guys are safe?’
‘We’re safe,’ Alistair snapped. He was hauling the box of gear forward to inspect its contents. Georgie moved to help him. He talked into the radio while she tugged open the lid.
‘It’s hell here,’ Charles said, ‘but the hospital’s still standing.’
‘As bad as that?’
‘Maybe worse,’ Charles said grimly. ‘I can’t spare anyone to help you.’
‘You don’t need to.’ Alistair had discovered a coil of rope. He ran his hand along its length. Twenty feet? Maybe a little more. ‘We have everything we need.’
‘But the kids …’
‘We’ll get them out now.’
‘You have maybe an hour, tops,’ Charles snapped. ‘Don’t take any risks.’
‘We won’t take any more risks than we need to,’ Alistair said gently. ‘But even by being in the hospital back at Crocodile Creek we’d be taking risks. The guys are saying the eye might give us an hour’s break?’
‘That’s the outer estimate.’
‘Then we need to move,’ Alistair said, and he replaced the radio in the backpack and hauled open the truck doors. To chaos.
The rainforest was a tangle of smashed timber, debris flung everywhere, the remains of trees mixed with the broken shards of others. It was like a huge crazy game of pick-up sticks.
The silence was eerie.
They hardly talked as they hauled the bikes out from their cover. They’d pushed them almost completely under the fallen tree, and the wind had pushed them further. But they were essentially undamaged.
Could they ride them? Maybe, in the lee of the cliff.
‘We’ll try,’ Alistair said. They’d never get back to the mine shaft without them. Not in time.
And somehow they did. It was a feat of pure riding skill, Georgie thought, but it wasn’t her skill. Alistair rode first, and she merely pl
aced her bike’s wheels in the tracks made by his.
Even so, it was a ghastly ride, with them half pushing, half riding through a mass of tangled undergrowth, a crazy jumble of smashed forest. The lee of the cliff had deflected some of the mess but not all, and it hadn’t deflected water. Their wheels were sliding in pure slush. How much rain had there been? A flood? At times the road was more like a river, and there was nothing for it but to get off and push through.
But somehow they did, with Alistair’s fierce determination to push through more than matching her own. As they reached the crash site and came to a halt, she felt like her insides had been put in a mouli mix.
There was still no wind. Not a breath, and it was still almost dark.
Ominous was too good a word for the sensation she was feeling, and she’d gone past terror. But fear had to be put aside. What they were attempting might seem crazy, but the alternative was to leave the kids in the shaft longer. And the land was now waterlogged. If there was another slip …
Don’t think about it. Just think about putting the next step in front of the last. Alistair was off his bike, fighting his way through broken branches to the edge of the road. She fought her way through to join him and stared down.
The bus was no longer there.
For a moment she thought she was dreaming. The cables holding the trees hadn’t snapped, but the trees to which they’d been attached were no longer there either.
The bus had presented a vast mass of metal, its broken windows opening it to the elements. The result must have been inevitable.
And she’d wanted to shelter in it?
‘Oh, God,’ she whispered, and Alistair’s hand caught hers. He gripped, hard.
‘Come on. We have work to do.’
Max. Please, God, Max.
It was lucky they had the old creek bed to follow, otherwise they’d never have found them. This was no simple walk, as it had been only hours ago. It was a mass of tangled timber they had to climb through, clamber over, creep under. And the creek bed was now just that—a torrent of tumbling water.
‘The time,’ Alistair murmured, and she glanced at her watch. Twenty-five minutes since the silence had started. They had an hour at most before the force started again. Oh, God.
She stumbled and Alistair caught her and steadied her yet again.
‘We can’t go any faster than we’re going,’ he said. ‘Come on.’
At least he wasn’t suggesting they go back. And, Georgie thought, that’s huge. This wasn’t Alistair’s little brother stuck in the shaft. Alistair had had every right to stay back in Crocodile Creek. Right now, the sensible thing to do to protect himself was to stay in the truck and wait for the second blast to finish.
But that might be another half a day and he’d know—he’d know!—that she couldn’t bear it. That running for safety even for those first hours had almost killed her.
He was doing this for her and she felt sick.
‘I had no right,’ she said, and he glanced across at her in concern. He’d managed to get over a half-rotten tree trunk, and he was helping her over.
‘Sorry?’
‘I had no right to drag you into this,’ she said, louder this time and more strongly.
And, unexpectedly, astonishingly he chuckled.
‘See, that’s just it,’ he said. ‘What we were talking about. This love thing. You’d better get used to it. I love you, Georgie Turner, and from now on you don’t drag me anywhere. From now on, you’ll just look behind and I’ll be following.’
It was such a huge statement it took her breath away. She didn’t … She couldn’t …
‘Don’t get your knickers in a twist,’ he said, and he grinned still more. ‘We go down together, Georgie, or we don’t go down at all. How romantic’s that? But if you don’t mind, I prefer the latter option so we need to move ourselves quite sharply.’
She gulped. She swallowed. He grabbed her hand still more tightly and led her forward.
Once again, if they hadn’t known exactly where to go, they’d have been lost. The landscape was so different it was weird. The rainforest canopy had been swept to the forest floor. There were mountains of litter. Mountains.
But somehow they kept to the track. Somehow. And then …
‘Here,’ Alistair said. ‘This log.’ And then he raised his voice.
‘Max.’
There was a moment’s deathly silence when Georgie’s heart forgot to beat. Then, magically, wondrously from below them … ‘Georgie?’ The yell broke in the middle into a sob, and Georgie thought her own heart would break. But this was no time for emotion.
‘I’m here,’ she yelled back. ‘We promised we’d come. Max, are you OK?’
‘J-just scared. It was so noisy. We weren’t game to use our torch much in case it conked out. And there’s water in here now, right up to our knees. Can you get us out now?’
Water. Oh, God.
‘Sure.’ Or she thought they could. She hoped they could. Alistair seemed to know what he was doing. He was looping the rope he’d brought around a vast tree trunk that had crashed right by the shaft.
Rising water.
It didn’t bear thinking of.
‘How’s the other little boy?’ she asked.
‘He still won’t talk. He’s cuddling Scruffy.’
‘Is Scruffy his dog?’
‘Scruffy’s my dog.’
‘Why aren’t you cuddling him?’ she asked, trying to figure things out.
‘My arm’s sore.’
Her heart stilled all over again. ‘Has it been bleeding?’
‘A bit of stuff came down just after you left,’ he said. ‘It hit me. But the kid bandaged me up with some of the bandage you tied on the torch.’
‘So he bandaged you with the same bandage you used on Scruffy’s leg?’ Alistair was knotting his rope, forming a loop in the end.
‘The kid tore it with his teeth,’ Max said. ‘I was … I was crying.’
‘Oh, Max …’ And who was this strange kid? She wanted to hug him.
Why was she up here?
‘Are you coming down now?’ Max obviously felt the same way she did.
‘Alistair is,’ she said, as Alistair slid the looped end of the rope into the shaft.
‘No,’ Alistair said. ‘You are.’
‘Me.’
‘You can’t pull me out but I can pull you out,’ he said. ‘It makes sense. And if I go down and get stuck, I can’t see you sensibly going back to the truck and waiting again.’
‘I … I would.’ Maybe.
‘I’m not risking it,’ he said. ‘Put your foot in the loop. See the knots? They’re to hang onto—they’ll give you a better grip as I lower you. You go down and we’ll figure out who comes up first when you’re down there. Just hang onto it, relax and I’ll pull.’
‘You can’t.’
‘Watch me.’
She trusted him. There was nothing else to do. She put her foot into the loop and slid over the side.
The kids at the base were shining their torch up.
‘Lean against the far side of the shaft and put your faces against the wall again,’ Alistair warned them. ‘There’ll be rubble falling.’
She was on her way down. He was lowering her with the ease of a mechanical lift, as if such a weight was no problem at all.
But then she forgot about Alistair as she reached the base and Max was in her arms. He was wet and cold and shivery and he clung to her fiercely. Her Max.
It was such a tight fit. There was no room for them all, but Max was huddled into her, sobbing, and her arms enveloped him and then because there was no room and there was a need here as well, she was enveloping the other kid as well, and the dog …
The dog was licking her face.
‘Move,’ Alistair said above them. He was shining his torch down and his voice sounded a bit wobbly. ‘Come on, Georg. I know this is a reunion but every second counts. Hugs are for when we’re safe.’
Right. Sh
e gulped and pulled away a little.
‘Littlest first,’ she said. ‘Can you hold onto the rope?’ she asked the small boy.
He nodded.
‘Will you tell me your name?’
Silence.
‘He could hold Scruffy ‘cos he’s the lightest,’ Max volunteered, and they all looked at Scruffy and then the silent child reached out and took him and held him. Tight.
It was a big ask for a little boy to put his foot in the loop, to hold Scruffy in one arm and the rope in the other, but there was that silent look of determination about him that told Georgie he could do it.
She smiled at him, gave him another swift hug for good measure and sent him on his way.
One boy and one dog rose smoothly to the surface.
The rope came down again. ‘Max’s turn,’ Alistair said from above them.
‘Georgie,’ Max said, and gulped back a sob. But there was no time for hesitation.
‘Go,’ she said, and pushed him upward, then waited in the dark shaft for the rope to return. She was standing calf-deep in water, but at least her leathers and biker boots were keeping her dry.
The boys had been soaked. To have been stuck down there for hours … It didn’t bear thinking of.
But there was no time to think. A moment later the rope was lowered again. Alistair tugged her up as if she weighed nothing. She rose smoothly into daylight, and Max and the kid and the dog and Alistair were all waiting for her. They grasped her under the arms as she came over the side and she wasn’t sure who was doing the pulling.
But she was safe and here it came. The hug. Ten seconds of pure group hug—the whole lot of them. She felt so overwhelmed she couldn’t do anything but hold and hold and hold.
The Australian's Desire (Mills & Boon By Request) Page 16
