* * *
The cry of pain was enough to pull Ellie from the mental haze she’d been clinging to as she kept her face buried from the outside world, thinking of nothing more than the comfort of being held in strong arms and, hopefully, being carried to safety.
What had she been thinking? Eleanor Sutton wasn’t some swooning heroine from medieval times. She didn’t depend on anyone else. She could look after herself.
‘Put me down,’ Ellie ordered.
But he kept lurching forward into the biting wind and rain.
‘No. We’re not at the river.’
‘I need to see where we are, then.’ She twisted in his arms to look towards the sea.
Taking her helmet off had probably been a bad idea. The wind was pulling long strands from the braid that hung down over Jake’s arm. They were plastered against her face the moment they came free and she had to drag them away repeatedly to try and see properly.
‘I can’t see it. The waves are too high.’
‘See what?’
‘The light from the lighthouse. The bach is in a direct line with the light, just before the river mouth.’
‘The what?’
‘The bach. A holiday house.’ Ellie had finally picked up the drawl in the man’s voice. ‘Are you American?’
‘Yep.’
‘A cabin, then. Like you’d have by a lake or in the woods. Only this one’s near the beach and it’s the only one for a hundred miles.’
‘How do you know it’s even there?’
‘Because I own it.’ Maybe it wasn’t dark enough for the automatic light to be triggered, but she’d seen it earlier, hadn’t she? When she’d told Dave where to drop them?
Maybe she’d only seen the lighthouse itself and it had been childhood memories that had supplied the flash of light. The flash she’d watched for in the night since that first time she’d stayed on the island with her grandfather. A comforting presence that had assured a small girl she was safe even if she was on a tiny island in the middle of a very big sea.
‘We’ll have to keep going till we get to the river. I can find the way from there.’
How long did he keep struggling against the wind before they finally reached the river mouth? Long enough for Ellie to know she’d never felt this cold in her life. At least they had the wind behind them as they turned inland, but there was a new danger when they reached the forest of native bush that came to meet the coastline in this deserted area. The massive pohutukawa trees were hundreds of years old and there were any number of dead branches coming loose in the vicious wind to crash down around them. Live bits were breaking off, too, leafy enough to make it impossible to see the old track that led to the bach.
Ellie had to rely on instinct. Her fear was growing. Had she made a terrible mistake, telling Dave they could find shelter here? The little house that Grandpa and her father had built had seemed so solid, wedged into the bush that had provided the wood to make it. A part of the forest that would always be here even if she had never come back. A touchstone for her life that was a part of her soul.
But how many storms had there been in the years that had passed? Had the tiny dwelling disintegrated—like all the hugely important things in her life seemed to have a habit of doing?
No.
They almost missed it. They were off to one side of the patch of land she owned. She might have let herself get carried right past if she hadn’t spotted the tiny hut that sat discreetly tucked against the twisted trunk of one of the huge pohutukawas.
‘We’re here,’ she shouted.
The man looked at the hut. If he went inside the bleached wood of its walls, he would have to bend his head and he wouldn’t be able to stretch out his arms. ‘Are you kidding me? That’s your cabin?’
Ellie actually laughed aloud.
‘No. That’s the dunny.’
‘The what?’
‘The long drop. Toilet.’ Oh, yeah...he was American. ‘It’s the bathroom.’
She didn’t wait to see a look of disgust about how primitive the facilities were. The track from the outhouse to the real house was overgrown, but Ellie knew exactly where she was now. And if the outhouse had survived, maybe everything else was exactly as it should be. Within a few steps they could both see the back porch of the beach house, with its neatly stacked pile of firewood. The relief of seeing it look just like it always had brought a huge lump to Ellie’s throat.
She felt herself being tipped as he leaned down to grasp the battered iron knob of the door. He turned and pushed. The door rattled but didn’t open.
‘It’s locked.’
She couldn’t blame him for sounding shocked. It wasn’t as if another living soul was likely to come here when the only access was by boat so why would anybody bother locking it?
Another childhood memory surfaced. The door that had been purchased in a city junkyard had been roped to the deck of the yacht, along with an old couch and a potbelly stove.
‘The door’s even got a lock and a key.’ Her father had laughed. ‘That’ll keep the possums out.’
A family joke that had become a tradition. Unlocking the bach meant they were in residence in their tiny patch of paradise. Locking it meant a return to reality.
‘I know where the key is. Put me down.’
This time he complied and it was Ellie’s turn to be shocked as she felt the loss of those secure arms around her, along with the chill of losing his body warmth that she hadn’t been aware of until now. She staggered a little, but her ankle wasn’t as bad as it had been. Hellishly painful but it didn’t collapse completely when she tested it with a bit of weight. Maybe it was a bad sprain rather than a fracture.
‘Can you walk?’
‘I only need to get to the meat safe. The key’s in there.’
The wire netting walls of the meat safe were mangled, probably by possums, and the box frame was hanging by only one corner, but the big, wrought-iron key was still on its rusty nail. Getting it inside the lock was a mission for her frozen hands, though, and turning it seemed impossible.
‘It must be rusty.’ Ellie groaned with the effort of trying to turn the key.
‘Let me try.’ His hands covered hers and pushed her fingers away so that he could find the end of the key. She was still wearing her rescue gloves and his hands had to be a lot colder than hers were, but the pressure of the contact felt like it was skin to skin. Warm.
Maybe it was the reassurance that she wasn’t alone that was so comforting?
He was shivering badly, Ellie noticed, but when he jiggled the key and then turned it, she could hear the clunk of the old lock opening.
And then they were inside and the sound of the storm was suddenly muffled.
* * *
Safety.
They might be frozen to the bone and in the middle of nowhere, but they had shelter.
Jake was safe, thanks to this woman. Thanks to her astonishing courage. She’d not only risked her life to get him out of that life raft, she’d battled the elements, despite being injured, to lead him here. To a place where they had four walls and a roof and they could survive until the storm was over.
She seemed as stunned as he was. They both stood there, staring at each other, saying nothing. It couldn’t be nighttime yet, but it was dark enough in here to make it difficult to see very clearly. She was tall, Jake noted, but still a good few inches shorter than his six feet two. Eyes dark enough to look black in this light and her lips were deathly pale but still couldn’t hide the lines of a generous mouth. A rope of wet hair hung over one shoulder almost as far as her waist.
‘What’s your name?’ He’d been so used to shouting to be heard outside that his voice came out loudly enough to make her jump.
‘Eleanor Sutton. Ellie.’
‘I’m Jacob Logan. Jake.’
‘Hi, Jake.’ She was trying to smile but loosening her facial muscles only made her shiver uncontrollably. ‘P-pleased to m-meet you.’
‘Likewise, Elli
e.’ Jake nodded instead of smiling.
His name clearly didn’t mean anything to her and it was a weird feeling not to be instantly recognised. He didn’t look much like himself, of course. Even his own mother probably wouldn’t have recognised him in this dim light with the heavy growth of beard and the long hair he’d had to adopt for his latest movie role. But instant demotion from a megastar to a...a nobody was very strange.
Jake wasn’t sure he liked it.
And yet it was oddly comforting. It took him back to a time when he had only been known for being ‘one of those wild Logan boys.’ Closer to Ben, somehow.
Should he tell her? Was it being dishonest not to? Would Ben consider this a form of play-acting as well?
Keeping silent didn’t feel like acting a part. Just being the person he used to be. And there would be no reason for this Ellie to present herself as anything other than who she really was and, in Jake’s experience, that wasn’t something he could ever trust. This might be the only time in his life that he got to see how a stranger reacted to him as a person without the trappings of extreme wealth or fame. He was curious enough to find this almost a distraction from his desperate worry about Ben.
‘We need to get warm.’ She wasn’t even looking at him now. ‘There should be enough dry wood to get the fire and the stove going. Hopefully the possums won’t have been inside. There’ll be plenty of blankets on the beds. And there’s kerosene lamps if the fuel hasn’t evaporated or something. It’s been a fair few years since I was here.’
Beds? For the first time, Jake took a good look around himself.
The dwelling was made of rustic, rough-hewn boards that had aged to a silvery-gray that made it look like driftwood. An antique glass-and-metal lamp hung from a butcher’s hook in the ceiling and there was a collection of big shells lined with iridescent shades of blue and purple attached to the wall in a curly pattern. Beside that was a poster of a lighthouse, its beam lighting up a stormy sky while massive waves thundered onto rocks below. There was a kitchen of sorts in one corner of the square space, with a bench and a sink beside the potbelly stove close to a small wooden table and spindle-back chairs.
The other half of the space was taken up with an ancient-looking couch and an armchair, positioned in front of an open fireplace. Two doorless openings in the walls on either side of the fireplace led to dark spaces beyond. The bedrooms?
‘Don’t just stand there.’ The authority in her voice made Jake feel like he was back at school. Or under the charge of one of the many nannies the Logan boys had terrorised. Incredibly, he had to hide a wry smile. No woman had ever spoken to him like this in his adult life. And then he remembered being shouted at on the beach. Being told that no one would be going back to rescue his brother.
What did it matter whether Ellie knew who he was? Or what she thought of him?
Nothing would ever matter if he’d lost Ben.
Ellie was opening a cupboard in the kitchen. She pulled out a big tin. ‘Do something useful. You’ll get even colder if you don’t move. You can get some wood in from the porch.’ She prised open the lid of the tin. ‘Yes...we have matches.’
A fire. Warmth. This basic survival need drove any other thoughts from Jake’s head as he obeyed the order. He took an armful of small sticks in first to act as kindling and then went back for the more solid lumps of wood. His brain felt as frozen as his fingers. Worry about Ben was still there along with the anger of no attempt being made to rescue him, but he couldn’t even harness the energy of that anger to help him move faster. And then something scuttled away as he lifted a piece of wood. Did New Zealand have poisonous spiders, like Australia did? Or snakes?
Man, he was going to have some story to tell Ben when he saw him again.
If he saw him again.
There was a puddle of water on the floor where Ellie was crouching to light the fire and he could see how badly her hands were shaking, but she’d managed to arrange small sticks on a nest of paper and while the first two matches spluttered and died, the third grew into a small flame.
She looked up as he walked towards her with the wood. He saw the way her eyes widened with shock.
‘You’re limping.’ Her tone was accusing. ‘You’re hurt. And I let you carry me all that way. Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘I’m not hurt.’ He dumped the wood on the floor beside her. His old injury was hardly a state secret, but it wasn’t something he mentioned if he could avoid it.
‘I’m a paramedic, Jake. I’ve got eyes. I can see—’
‘Drop it,’ he growled. ‘I told you. I haven’t been injured. Not in the last ten years anyway.’
‘Oh...’ She caught her bottom lip between her teeth. Maybe she was attempting a smile. ‘Old war wound, huh?’
He glared at her. ‘First time anyone’s found it funny.’
Her face changed. Was she embarrassed? Not that she was about to apologise. There was an awkward silence as she turned her attention back to the fire and then she must have decided that it was best ignored.
* * *
‘Some rats or mice had shredded the paper for me,’ Ellie said. ‘Good thing, too, because my fingers are still too cold to work properly.’ Her tone was deliberately lighter. Impersonal, even. ‘Don’t think we’ll use the beds, but the blankets might be okay.’
The wood sizzled a little, but the flame was still growing. The glow caught Ellie’s face as she leaned in to blow gently on the fire. Water dripped from her long braid to add to the puddle at her feet. Smoke puffed out and made her cough.
‘There could well be a bird’s nest or two in the chimney, but they should burn away soon. We’ll get the potbelly going, too, if we can, and that should get things toasty in no time.’
Jake had to forgive the dismissal of his old injury as some kind of joke. She didn’t know the truth and, if he wasn’t prepared to enlighten her, it would be unfair to hold a grudge. And he had to admire her. She was capable, this Eleanor Sutton, but that was hardly surprising given what she did for a job. Jake was given the task of feeding larger sticks into the fire as it grew while Ellie limped over to the kitchen to get the stove going. His hands began aching unbearably as heat finally penetrated the frozen layer of skin and, when he looked up, he saw Ellie’s pained expression as she shook her hands.
‘Hurts, doesn’t it?’
‘It’s good. Means there’s some circulation happening and nerves are waking up.’ She nodded in satisfaction at the fire Jake was tending. ‘I’ll see if I can find us some dry clothes. My dad kept a trunk of stuff under the bed and it’s a tin trunk so it should have kept the rats out.’
‘Do you get snakes, too?’
‘No snakes in New Zealand. Have you never been here before?’
‘No.’
‘I guess you were just passing by with the yacht race. Wasn’t there a stop planned in Auckland?’
‘Yeah. I was getting off then. I’m here for a job. That was why I talked Ben into giving me a lift on his yacht.’
‘Ben? That’s your friend who was on the life raft with you?’
‘He’s my brother. Twin brother.’
‘Oh...’
The enormity of having to leave Ben behind and not trying to go back and get him was clearly registering.
‘I...I’m sorry, Jake.’
‘Yeah... Me, too.’
‘It was a good life raft. There’s still hope that he’ll make it.’
Jake found himself staring at Ellie. It felt very odd—his gaze clinging to hers like this. As if he was pleading...
Desperately wanting to believe.
Begging her to prove herself trustworthy?
She was in the business of rescuing people who found themselves in dire situations so she should know what she was talking about.
‘We weren’t the only rescue team out there,’ she told him quietly. ‘There were other choppers. Planes. And there’s other boats. Container ships as well as the coastguard. There’s plenty of daylight left and...�
�
There was such compassion in her eyes and her body language. The way she was leaning towards him. Holding out one hand. If she’d been close enough, she’d be touching him right now.
He wished she was that close.
‘And there are literally hundreds of islands on this part of the coastline. All it needs is for a current to get him close to land and he’ll be able to find shelter until the worst of the storm is over.’
Maybe it was the compassion he could see that did it. Or the comfort of the reassurance she was offering. Or maybe it was because of that longing that she had been close enough to underpin her words with human touch.
Whatever it was, Jake could pull back. Yes, she was offering him what he wanted more than anything in this moment. And the invitation to believe her was so sincere, but they were all like that, weren’t they? Especially women.
He knew better than to trust.
‘Yeah...right...’ He wrenched his gaze free, turning back towards the fire and using a stick to poke at it. He didn’t want to talk about Ben. He didn’t want to show this stranger how he was really feeling. How afraid he was. Who knew what contacts she might have? What could turn up as a headline on some celebrity website?
* * *
The warmth Ellie had been getting from the stove seemed to have been shut off and the cold in her gut turned into a lead weight.
No wonder they’d been arguing about who got to be rescued first. Or that Jake had said he would have stayed if he’d been given the choice. She didn’t even have a sibling and these men were twin brothers. She could imagine how close they were. As close as she’d dreamed of being with another living soul. Loving—and being loved—enough for one’s own safety to not be the priority.
She would have gone back for Ben if it had been possible, but it hadn’t been. At least she’d brought Jake to safety, but maybe, in the end, he wouldn’t thank her for that. He obviously didn’t want to talk about it. He was hunched over in front of the fire, looking very grim as he poked at the burning sticks, sending sparks flying and creating a new cloud of smoke. Fiercely shutting her out.
Was it the smoke in his eyes that made him rub at them with the heel of his hand? Even hunched up, she was aware again of what a big man he was. Intimidatingly big. She knew that trying to offer any further comfort would be unwelcome. She’d probably put her foot in it, too, the way she had when she’d tried to make some kind of joke about his obvious limp.
The Maverick Millionaire Page 3
