‘Right,’ Alistair said, in a voice thick with an emotion he couldn’t conceal. ‘Enough emotion. We have a cyclone to outrun.’ He turned the little boy to face him—their nameless child. ‘You’ll come with us?’
The little boy nodded, but Georgie thought it was great that Alistair had asked.
‘What’s your name?’ she asked him again. He looked like a little owl, freckly and wiry and filthy, and, oh, so serious. ‘You’ve been so brave. Can you tell us who you are?’
Nothing.
‘Well, let’s call you Rowdy,’ Alistair said, and gave the kid another swift hug. Man to man. ‘It’s a man’s name because you’ve just been as brave as a man.’
‘Why did you choose Rowdy?’ Max asked.
‘‘Cos he’s the rowdiest man I know,’ Alistair said. ‘Rowdy means really, really noisy. All this noise … I don’t know how we stand it.’ He chuckled and suddenly they were all smiling. ‘So, Rowdy, will you come with us?’
Another nod. And another small smile.
‘Great,’ Alistair said. ‘But you’re taking a ride. On my back, Rowdy, mate.’ He tugged his backpack around to his front and swung the little boy onto his back. The child was wearing only one shoe, and under the grime of a filthy, wet sock they could see a smudge of bloodstain. ‘Georg, can you carry Scruffy?’
‘Of course I can,’ she said. She picked up the little dog, she grabbed Max’s hand—and they ran.
Or they clambered. They moved as fast as they could over the rough terrain.
By the time they reached the road the wind was building up again. It was whistling eerily through the trees. The trees were starting to moan.
Please, please, please, Georgie thought. They had to get back to the truck. They must. She knew what the force was like now and she knew that Alistair was right. To be out here with no protection meant death.
They’d reached the bikes. Alistair didn’t hesitate. By the time Georgie had pulled her bike to point back towards the truck he was on his bike, Rowdy was in front of him and he was holding his hands out for the dog.
‘You can’t,’ she said, and he grimaced and motioned to his backpack.
‘I took everything out. The dog goes in.’
‘He won’t,’ Georgie breathed.
‘He does or he’ll stay here,’ he said grimly, and before she could protest again he’d slipped the little dog inside. As if he knew exactly what was expected, the dog hunkered down so only his nose was sticking out. Alistair grinned and slung the pack carefully over his shoulders.
‘We’re all being sensible here,’ he told Georgie. ‘Max goes behind you. Go.’
How they made it she’d never know. It was hard enough for her to have Max behind her. Dirt bikes weren’t meant for passengers. But Alistair hadn’t been able to put Rowdy behind him because of Scruffy in the backpack. So Rowdy was huddled against his chest.
The set-up on his bike looked somehow … heart-wrenching? The wind was really rising now and Georgie had to concentrate fiercely as they pushed on, but there was still a part of her that was far too aware of Alistair Carmichael.
This man was about as different as it was possible to be from the slick, professional doctor she’d met from the plane two days ago.
He hadn’t shaved for at least twenty-four hours. He was wearing borrowed leather pants, a ripped shirt and an ancient helmet, battered and filthy. He was battered and filthy.
He had a kid cradled against his breast and a dog in a backpack. He’d won Rowdy’s trust with instinctive ease. He was riding a mud-splattered dirt bike with skill and precision.
He was heart-meltingly, life-changingly gorgeous.
He’d been offered a job in Croc Creek.
Life-changing? Could she change her life for him?
Now was no time for decisions. She slowed as he did, ducking and weaving around timber felled by the storm. Max was holding on for dear life behind her. She was aware that he was holding her tighter with the right arm than the left. What was the damage?
She should stop and look, only the blasts of wind were terrifying on their own now. To stop except for the times when she had to get off and shove her bike through water or around some obstacle was suicide. She’d fallen twenty feet behind Alistair’s bike as it was.
There was a massive crack of splintering timber from above her head. She slammed her brakes and stopped inches from the trunk of a falling forest giant. For one heart-stopping moment she thought Alistair and his precious cargo were underneath. Oh, God … But then, almost before the last of the branches had sighed and settled, there was a hoarse shout, so loud it could be heard above the wind.
‘Georg …’
There was such fear there that she caught her breath. Alistair was afraid. For her?
And she’d felt the same, she thought, dumping her bike and gathering Max tight against her. The little boy had come to the end of his resources. He was a mass of trembling fear, sobbing against her, hugging her close.
She gathered him tightly against her and hugged, but she had to yell back.
‘Alistair.’
‘Georg.’ It was a shout of near relief—almost relief but still there was fear.
‘It missed us,’ she yelled. She’d been daydreaming, she thought. As fearful as this situation was, she’d allowed her attention to stray a little. She’d fallen back a little behind Alistair.
That moment’s inattention had saved her life.
The mound of fallen timber in front of her was massive, but the wind was already shifting it again. She had to get over …
Max was going nowhere. His feet had gone from under him. ‘We have to go beneath and around,’ she told him, but he was incapable of moving.
‘Max …’
She couldn’t carry him. She couldn’t …
‘Georg …’ How he’d got there so fast she didn’t know, but Alistair was there. He’d gone down the hill from the road and clambered around, underneath the roots of the fallen tree. There was a trickle of blood slipping down his cheek. His face was white and shocked. He reached them and gathered them hard against him, and swore. And swore and swore.
‘Max can’t walk,’ she told him, taking strength from the sheer bulk of him.
‘Of course not.’ He swung Max into his arms. ‘Max, you’re a hero,’ he told the little boy. ‘But you’ve done enough. The rest is up to me.’
As it was. Max may have run out of resources but Georgie was a close second. She followed numbly as Alistair retraced his steps but she was aware that he had to slow his steps not to draw ahead. It took them three times as long as he’d taken to get around the uprooted stump.
But finally they made it. Rowdy and Scruffy were huddled where they’d been put—right underneath the mound of fallen branches, with the bike shoved in after them to protect them from the worst of the blast.
The wind was so fierce now that it was an effort to move at all. Left to her own resources, Georgie might have stayed where she was. She’d have had to—there was no way Max was moving.
But Alistair was made of sterner stuff.
‘Move,’ he said. ‘We ditch the bikes here but I’m thinking we’re only minutes from the truck. Georgie, can you carry Rowdy?’
She took a deep breath. ‘Of course I can.’
‘Of course you can,’ he said, and he smiled. ‘My Georgie.’
And they did. Ten minutes later, battered beyond belief but essentially still in one piece, they reached the truck.
It was still as they’d left it, wedged firmly between cliff and tree.
It was all Georgie could do not to kiss it.
The windscreen was smashed. A branch had hit it, piercing it, but, instead of leaving it open to the elements, more foliage had been blasted against the front, making it a rigid shelter that nothing could now reach.
Including them. It took Alistair five minutes to pull enough of the rubbish away for them to enter. Georgie couldn’t help—she sat and cradled two terrified children to her until he’d cleared the pat
h in. He hoisted his backpack in first—with dog—and then motioned for them to precede him.
They were home.
She climbed in, tugging the kids in after her.
Alistair climbed in and pulled the doors behind him.
Safe.
The word was so overwhelming it was all she could do not to sob. But Max was already sobbing and Rowdy was so white she thought he might pass out. And the dog had crawled out of its backpack and was cringing, its belly flat on the floor, its eyes huge, its tail flattened. Georgie couldn’t bear it. She lifted the pup into her arms first and then tugged Max against her, and then Rowdy looked so terrified as well that she tried to fit him against her as well, but it didn’t work.
Or it did work.
Because Alistair had gathered the child against him and he was holding Scruffy and Max as well, and maybe a bit of her, too.
A sandwich squeeze. Five of them taking comfort, giving comfort, not able to speak for the moment—not a able to do anything except hug and realise that they were alive and that there just might be an afterwards.
The second blast of the cyclone was worse than the first but it couldn’t reach them.
For the first hour they hardly moved. This was no time for assessment. It was simply time for reassurance and comfort and holding.
But then, as the little boys grew used to the rocking of the van, as they accustomed themselves to the screech of wind against the metal, they ate a few more of the chocolate bars that were still miraculously in Georgie’s pack and the children drifted toward sleep.
They couldn’t have slept at all in the long hours down the shaft, Georgie thought. It must have been a special kind of hell.
The boys needed to be examined, but for now comfort was of paramount importance, even for the little dog. He’d included himself in their sandwich squeeze and they were pleased to have him. Georgie and Alistair lay on either side of the kids and the dog, but they weren’t rigidly side by side. The kids were sprawled over them like a litter of puppies, and so was Scruffy.
‘Yeah, I love you, too,’ Alistair told him as the little dog gave him a slurpy kiss and Max even gave a sleepy giggle.
Even Rowdy smiled a little.
What was it with the child?
‘There doesn’t seem to be a physical reason why he’s not talking,’ Alistair murmured as both children relaxed even further into heavy sleep. ‘I thought at first he must be deaf, but he was responding to my directions on the bike.’
‘Max says he hasn’t said a word.’
‘I did a fast check of his mouth as he came out of the shaft,’ Alistair said. ‘No damage.’ He stirred, seemingly reluctant to break their hold. ‘We need to check them completely.’
Which they did—sort of, though not so comprehensively that they’d wake them. Max had a long, ugly scratch on his arm. It had bled through the dressings Rowdy had put on, but when Georgie carefully unwrapped it she thought it didn’t need stitches.
‘And cleaning can wait until we’re out of here,’ Alistair said. ‘We’ll give him a dose of antibiotic but I’m not waking him for germs.’
Rowdy had got off even more lightly. A few scratches and bruises, with a couple of deeper scratches on his foot. He’d been wearing only one shoe. They tugged both the kids’ shoes and socks off, getting rid of water that might well be contaminated. Weren’t gold mines full of stuff you didn’t want to think about?
They couldn’t worry about that now. Rowdy seemed fine. He was huddled against Max, supremely trusting. The little boy’s pockets were still stuffed with the chocolate bars they’d tossed into the shaft, and as she tried to remove them he whimpered and clutched at them as if they were important. But he wasn’t still hungry. What was his story?
Georgie thought back to the bus passengers she’d seen. Who had been with this kid? No one who’d been capable of missing him, obviously.
One of the DOAs?
‘Don’t think about it,’ Alistair growled, and she looked across at him and grimaced. This man could read her thoughts. It was a really scary ability.
‘We need to make a splint.’ He’d unwrapped Scruffy’s back leg. This was a wound that needed proper medical attention. ‘How’s your animal husbandry?’
‘Lousy,’ she said.
‘Mine, too. But this leg’s fractured. Hell, he must have dragged himself over those stones, running away. Poor little rat.’
‘Yes.’
‘Will you let Max keep him?’
‘Of course I will.’ Some things were no-brainers.
He grinned. ‘There you go. Georgie of the huge heart, expanding to fit all comers. Bear me in mind when you’re working out how far you have to stretch.’
‘Alistair …’
‘I know,’ he said, and he smiled at her with a look of such tenderness that she almost gasped. ‘Much too soon. But inevitable, my Georg. Let’s just work on it as a given.’
CHAPTER TEN
EVEN when the cyclone was past, their ordeal wasn’t over. The cyclone had torn apart the district, wreaked its havoc and then swept out to sea, but there it paused and hovered, threatening still and keeping the land buffeted by gale-force winds.
There was no single moment when they thought, Now it’s over, now its safe.
But as the worst of the wind died, the water damage made itself felt. The road where the truck was parked slipped a little and the truck lurched sideways. Not very much, but enough to force their decision to search for another place to shelter.
Georgie knew the area. Dan Mackers’s banana plantation was the closest. Dan had evacuated himself and his family as they’d brought out the bus-crash victims, but surely somewhere there they could find refuge. The Mackerses’ main house was up past the bus-crash site, but there were a couple of smaller huts used for itinerant workers that were closer to where they were. Georgie had delivered the Mackerses’ children and she’d been to several Mackers parties. She knew where the huts were—or she hoped she did.
It was now impossible to use the bikes. Carrying Rowdy and Scruffy and helping Max all they could, they fought their way on foot through the mess that was the road and found one of the cottages still standing. Almost. Its outhouse had disappeared, but who needed outhouses?
The roof was intact, the place was dry and, best yet, there was bedding, canned provisions and bottled water.
‘And mashed bananas for as far as the eye can see,’ Alistair said in satisfaction.
They were safe, but they were stuck. There was no telephone—all lines were long down. In that last mad dash, taking the boys back to the truck, Alistair had transferred his radio from his backpack to his pocket. Somehow his whole pocket had been torn away, and the radio had been lost.
Charles would be frantic, Georgie thought as the hours wore on, but then she thought, No, he’d guess, or at least he’d hope. The weather was too wild for anyone to institute a search.
They settled down to wait.
They treated the boys’ needs properly. They stripped them of their wet clothes, cuddled them and told them silly stories. They resplinted Scruffy’s leg and kept him dry and warm and still.
They slept.
There were only two single beds in the hut. The boys and Scruffy had one. Alistair and George shared the other. No impropriety—how could there be in such close proximity to the boys?—but Alistair hugged her to sleep and there was no way she was objecting. No way at all.
He felt so right. Could she make room in her life for him? she found herself wondering. Could she learn to trust?
She didn’t know, but more and more she knew she had to try.
And then, at midday on the day after the storm, the chopper came sweeping in from the east. First it headed for the main Mackers place—the obvious place to search. It hovered overhead for maybe twenty minutes as those in it obviously searched unsuccessfully for a place to land, and Alistair and Georgie fretted impotently and wondered whether they could make a fire with saturated green wood and no matches.
But then those on the helicopter obviously decided to give up and fly instead to check the outer huts.
There was no need for the helicopter to hover and search here, for they were out of the hut, waving and shouting, the little boys yelling louder than they were, and Georgie thought she was probably crying but, hell, who was watching?
Cal was at the controls. And Mike was up there, too. Mike, who must be having the most tumultuous introduction to married life anyone could imagine. And Harry. Her friends.
They were yelling and cheering and Georgie and the kids were yelling and cheering, too, but Georgie had tears running down her face she couldn’t stop. Alistair’s arm came round her waist and he gripped hard.
‘I don’t have a handkerchief any more,’ he said, and she choked on a chuckle. And she didn’t move away from his embrace.
It didn’t matter what the guys on the chopper thought. She’d worry about that tomorrow.
There was no place to land. They’d have to be retrieved by harness but that was fine by all of them. The little boys had recovered enough to be brave—even excited at such a form of rescue. Harry lowered himself down in the harness for the first retrieval and Georgie let go of Alistair and ran forward and hugged Harry.
For the normally emotionally contained Georgie this was well out of character, and she could see Harry’s astonishment.
‘Hey,’ he said, and hugged her back. Then he turned to Alistair and held out his hand. ‘And hey to you, too. All of you. You’re all safe?’
‘We’re all safe.’ Georgie was struggling to get her voice to work. ‘You know Max,’ she managed. ‘And this is Rowdy. Scruffy’s inside with a broken leg.’
‘Scruffy?’
‘Max’s dog,’ Georgie said, and grabbed Max’s hand. ‘Our dog.’
‘Max,’ Harry said, and shook his hand. ‘And Rowdy.’ Alistair had his hand on Rowdy’s shoulder. Rowdy was pressing hard against Alistair—a small boy in a big unknown world. But he was brave. Harry shook Rowdy’s small hand and Rowdy gave him a small smile. ‘You have no idea how much Charles has been sweating on you guys,’ Harry said, still smiling down at Rowdy. ‘What happened to your radio?’
The Australian's Desire (Mills & Boon By Request) Page 17
