Hijacked Honeymoon

by Marion Lennox

  ‘If you were to come back… Well, like Abbey, the locals would fall on your neck and ask questions later. Maybe it’d work long term and maybe it wouldn’t, but in the short term I think Sapphire Cove might be just what you need.’

  ‘Come back…’

  ‘I don’t see why you shouldn’t-at least for a while,’ Ryan said. ‘You’re emotionally and physically exhausted. It doesn’t take Abbey’s or my medical qualifications to tell us that. You’ve been living a nightmare, and a stressful corporate job with an axe hanging over your head isn’t what you need. So why not come home for a while and see if Sapphire Cove can’t work its magic on you?’ He smiled. ‘Ian, Abbey and I saw a turtle laying her eggs last night. Why don’t you stick around and see those eggs hatch?’

  ‘A turtle?’ Ian pushed himself up on his pillows. Like Ryan and Abbey and most kids around Sapphire Cove, Ian had done his own turtle-hunting. His eyes lit up like magic. ‘Where?’

  ‘A mile south of where we found you, filling yourself with exhaust fumes. If you like, I’ll run you out later and show you.’

  Ian stared, and then let the doubt creep back. ‘You don’t have to do that. Hell, Ryan, I don’t need patronising.’

  ‘And I don’t need humouring,’ Ryan said mildly. ‘If you don’t want to come then say so. I’m going out to check anyway. I’ll stick my head in here when I leave and see if you’re up to a drive.’ His smile faded and he fixed Ian with a challenging look. ‘Now, Abbey and I have work to do and you need to think. Any questions?’

  ‘Maybe in a while,’ Ian told him slowly. He stared down at the sheaf of papers on his bed. ‘When I’ve read this.’

  ‘We’ll leave you to it, then,’ Ryan told him. ‘Take it that we’ll discharge you when you’ve summarised the lot!’

  ‘For heaven’s sake, Ryan, you sounded almost homesick,’ Abbey told him as they left the room together. ‘Talking Ian into coming back here to work… ’

  ‘If he agrees it’d be the best thing for him.’

  ‘But he’s a corporate lawyer. His mum says he spends half his life overseas on one international deal after another. How could someone like that be happy in Sapphire Cove?’

  Abbey glanced uncertainly at Ryan. She’d once known this man so well, and now she knew him hardly at all. He’d sounded convincing in there, talking Ian into a life in Sapphire Cove. Yet… Yet Ryan had left it without a backward glance.

  ‘Ian’s like you,’ she said softly. ‘He’s left here, Ryan, and I don’t think you can come back again. To be content with Sapphire Cove after you’ve seen the big wide wodd…’ She shrugged. ‘Well, you’d know how hard that could be.’

  Silence.

  Ryan didn’t answer. For the life of him, he couldn’t think of a single thing to say.

  Abbey looked at him for a long moment-and then turned away from his side to go and visit Janet.

  Sam Henry arrived back at Sapphire Cove an hour later, and within two minutes of arriving he demanded to see Janet.

  ‘You don’t think we should get you settled into a ward and give you a rest first?’ Ryan asked doubtfully. Sam had come though the operation with flying colours. Now ten days post-op, he was looking good but it was a long ambulance drive from Cairns.

  ‘Nope.’ Sam reached out and gripped Ryan’s arm. The ambulance officers were standing at each end of his trolley, waiting for directions, and Sam knew exactly where he wanted to go. ‘But it’s good to see you still here, Ryan. You’re not married yet, I hope?’

  ‘I told you we’d wait for you to get back before we tied the knot.’

  ‘Good. The wedding’s not this afternoon?’

  ‘No. I’ll bring Felicity in to see you this afternoon and we’ll talk about setting a time.’

  ‘Good.’ Sam smiled in satisfaction. ‘It’s not organised yet, then. I’m not up to a wedding for a few days at least. But Janet… ’ The hand gripping Ryan’s tightened in anxiety. ‘I need to see her. You said she was fine?’

  ‘She’s fine. She’s only three days post-op, though, Dad, and she’s pretty sore.’

  ‘Not up to receiving visitors?’ There was apprehension in Sam’s voice and Ryan frowned down at him.

  ‘She can have visitors, I guess. If it’s important we’ll take you there now.’

  ‘That’s what I want.’ Sam fell back on his pillows, folded his arms across his chest and prepared to be wheeled on. ‘Take me away, boys. I’ve got a mended heart here, and I’m raring to go.’

  ‘Why do you suppose my father wants to see your mother-in-law so badly?’ Ryan demanded. He’d tracked Abbey down in Sister’s station and found her writing medico-legal letters. ‘And just what do you think you’re doing?’

  ‘Catching up on some paperwork,’ Abbey said mildly.

  ‘Marcia told me she’d look after Jack until lunchtime and it seemed too good an opportunity to miss.’ She hesitated. ‘I guess as soon as you and Steve leave I’ll go back to chasing my tail again. I don’t want to start from behind.’

  ‘No.’

  There was silence while Ryan thought about Abbey chasing her tail with overwork again.

  And thought about leaving her for good.

  ‘Sam’s back, then?’ Abbey asked lightly, searching Ryan’s face. It seemed set and forbidding.

  ‘He arrived ten minutes ago. And the first thing he demanded was to see Janet.’ Ryan’s frown deepened. ‘Abbey, am I imagining things here? Do you think there’s anything between the pair of them?’

  ‘They’ve always been good friends,’ Abbey told him. She hesitated. ‘Like you and me,’ she added, her voice slightly hesitant. ‘They were kids together. That sort of thing.’

  ‘So there couldn’t be any sort of romantic attachment?’

  ‘I told you,’ Abbey said heavily. ‘It’s like you and me. Friends. That’s all.’ She searched for some way to change the subject, and her eyes rested on her pile of patient notes. Leith Kinley… as good a topic as any.

  ‘I saw Leith’s dad this morning,’ she told Ryan, her words sounding stiff and forced. ‘He stopped me outside the hospital as I arrived. He just wanted to tell me how well Leith was going with her swimming. I didn’t know you’d been taking her for more swimming lessons.’

  ‘Yeah, well…’ Ryan shrugged. ‘She’s a good kid. I’m enjoying teaching her.’

  ‘I would have thought…’ Abbey bit her lip but the words came out anyway. ‘Ryan, are you spending any time at all with Felicity? She must be bored stupid-with all the help you’ve been giving me, the time you spend with your dad and now Leith…’

  ‘Felicity’s not bored,’ Ryan said coldly.

  ‘Well, if it was my honeymoon you’d hijacked I’d be really cross,’ Abbey said frankly. ‘And if she knew you’d been kissing me last night…’ She swallowed and stopped in mid-sentence, the thought of kissing Ryan last night flooding back with dizzying intensity.

  But what she had to say must be said. Ryan had been so generous to her. He’d given her his honeymoon, but that honeymoon also belonged to Felicity.

  ‘Ryan, if you’re not careful you’ll mess up your marriage because of me,’ she said softly. ‘And I don’t think you want to do that.’

  ‘Abbey…’

  ‘I need to work now, Ryan,’ Abbey said dully. ‘Please… leave me alone to do that. I think you should go back to Felicity.’

  After that, Ryan finished doing his ward round, which had been interrupted by Sam’s arrival, and tried to get his thoughts in order.

  Abbey was right. He wasn’t being fair to Felicity.

  Hell, he’d thought Felicity would have been bored stupid by now. He’d thought Felicity wouldn’t have stayed.

  But Felicity seemed to have an endless supply of work at the end of her modern and was perfectly happy to base herself at Sam’s house while he helped Abbey.

  While he helped Abbey…

  There was no longer any need for him to help Abbey, he conceded as he changed the dressing on little Peter Harknet�
�s burned foot. The local farmers were still milking Abbey’s cows, despite her protestations, and they would until Janet was up and around again. Abbey had herself a decent babysitter. Her knee was almost back to normal and for the next two weeks Steve was here to make her workload reasonable.

  So…

  So Ryan should just slope on back to Felicity.

  He was like Steve. He didn’t want to.

  ‘How come you’re not talking?’ Pete demanded as Ryan cleaned down the burned area of his foot and applied cream. Five-year-old Pete had burned himself by sticking his toes into a box of dry ice which had been keeping his birthday ice-cream cake cold. He’d been in Children’s ward for three days. Normally he chattered like a butcher’s magpie, and Ryan’s silence wasn’t to his taste. ‘Cat got your tongue?’ he demanded.

  ‘No.’ Ryan managed a smile. ‘Sorry, mate. I’m just thinking. I’m just thinking what a really dumb thing it is to stick your toes in places to see what it feels like.’

  ‘I was going to taste some,’ Pete informed him. ‘Just lucky I didn’t do that, eh? Mum says I would have burned the tongue right out of my head!’

  ‘Very lucky,’ Ryan agreed. ‘Pete, if you live till you’re ten it’ll be a miracle.’

  ‘My mum says you’re getting married real soon,’ Pete went on, unperturbed. Then he winced. ‘Yike. That hurt.’

  Ryan winced too. The dead skin was coming away as he gently cleaned it. The procedure was impossible to do without hurting at all. Pete was a really brave little patient.

  He deserved to have all his attention.

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘You’re marrying a lady from America?’

  ‘Yep.’

  Pete screwed up his nose. ‘You sound a bit American but you’re really from Sapphire Cove-right?’

  ‘Well, yes. But that was a long time ago.’

  ‘Then why don’t you marry someone from here and live here again like we do,’ Pete announced. ‘Why d’ya want to go away for?’

  Why, indeed.

  Silence.

  ‘Cat got your tongue?’ Pet demanded, and Ryan could only nod agreement.

  Ian Miller didn’t have time to go with him to see where the turtle had laid her eggs. Ryan went back to Ian’s ward when he’d finished his rounds and found him surrounded by family.

  Masses of family. Mother, brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, brothers-in-law… the whole box and dice. And somewhere in the midst of them was Ian, being absorbed again into the clan.

  Ian looked through the crowd and met Ryan’s eyes-and grinned. The greyness in his face was receding by the minute.

  ‘Out, you lot,’ he ordered his family. ‘Here’s my doctor and I want to ask him if you guys can take me home.’

  When the family had receded just outside the door Ian hopped out of bed and closed it firmly against them. And grinned again.

  ‘You’d think they owned me.’

  Ryan smiled back. ‘You’ve told them?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘And you haven’t been cast out of the family?’

  ‘No.’ Ian’s smile faded. He sank onto the bed again. The toll of the last few weeks’ emotional turmoil and his brush with death the night before had left him weak, but there was a determination in his eyes which was growing by the minute. ‘Abbey… Dr Wittner was right,’ he said. ‘The family already knew I was gay. They hadn’t talked about it because they’d decided it was my business and I’d talk about it if I wanted it talked about. Typical, really. My family… ’

  ‘They want to help?’

  ‘They sure do.’ Ian shook his head, his voice laced with wonder. ‘I told them I was HIV positive and my sisters started berating me for not laying it on them and for not trusting them. My mother burst into tears and fell on my neck.

  ‘And my brothers-in-law told me I was a cloth-head and that your idea of me practising law here was the best one they’d heard for a long time. The general consensus was that I’d be a darn sight more use practising law in Sapphire Cove than pushing up daisies. Which I’m starting to think-’

  ‘Might be true,’ Ryan finished for him. ‘Hell, mate, you can only give it a go. Get yourself on a firm footing again, get your medical regime established and then see if you want to face the world outside Sapphire Cove again.’

  Ryan looked out the window across the headland. The sea was a wide band of sparkling sapphire against the horizon. ‘Sapphire Cove really is the loveliest place in the world to live,’ he said, and his voice was tinged with regret.

  ‘How come you don’t live here any more, then?’ Ian asked, and Ryan shrugged.

  ‘I’m still on a career path,’ he said with some reluctance. ‘I have commitments in the States that it’d take more than AIDS to shift, and I have a fiancée who couldn’t live here in a fit No. I wish you all the best here, mate, but I’m afraid I have to go.’

  The turtle eggs were safe.

  Ryan should have been back at home with Felicity. Instead, he spent the next two hours sitting on the beach, watching the barren sweep of sand where last night the turtle had laid her eggs. The tide had done its job well. There was now almost no sign that underneath the sand there were scores of tiny turtles growing towards life.

  How long did they take to hatch?

  Heaven knew. Ryan didn’t. And he didn’t want to know. He didn’t want to be back in the States, look down at his calendar and say, Today’s the day half Sapphire Cove will be out, escorting baby turtles to the water.’

  He had to go back.

  There was nothing for him here, he told himself. Nothing. Sure, Sapphire Cove was a beautiful place, but he hadn’t fought his way up the career ladder to abandon it now-abandon it on a whim.

  Abandon it because he wanted to please Abbey?

  The thought of Abbey was overpowering. He couldn’t get her out of his thoughts. The feel of her last night… her soft curves yielding to his touch… the scent of her… her lovely dusky curls against his face…

  Abbey…

  Dear God, he wanted her. Ryan shifted uneasily on the sand and finally rose. He walked down to the water’s edge and stood, looking out to sea, as if the answers could somehow be found out there.

  They couldn’t. Of course they couldn’t

  He had to go home. To the States. He had to marry Felicity.

  No.

  He couldn’t marry Felicity. He couldn’t.

  Last night Felicity had kissed him goodnight deeply-passionately. If the phone hadn’t demanded her attention she would have wanted to make love.

  And Ryan hadn’t wanted to make love one bit. Not with Felicity. Back in the States he had thought of Felicity as one of the most beautiful women be knew. Powerful. Ambitious. Wonderful.

  All the adjectives he’d used were still true, except the ‘wonderful’. He no longer wanted to many someone who spent her life attached to a mobile phone and a computer. He wanted to marry Abbey.

  The thought settled into his mind like a flaming arrow and it buried itself into his heart and burned.

  Marry Abbey.

  If he married Abbey then he’d already have a son. He and Felicity had talked of children and had decided against them. It wasn’t that either of them disliked them. It was just that they hardly felt they had time for them.

  But Jack…

  Ryan thought back to the flaming-haired toddler, demanding more egg to be aeroplaned into his mouth. Wobbling on his sturdy little legs. His head upended in a pudding bowl. And Ryan’s mouth curved into a smile. It’d be no problem at all to have Jack. Maybe adopt him, if Abbey didn’t object.

  And Abbey… Well, she could be a full-time mum. She’d like that. Give her a chance to be looked after for a change.

  How would she like New York?

  A flash of doubt swept through his mind at the thought of Abbey in New York, but he suppressed it fast. The thought of Abbey as his wife was so, well, so tantalising…

  It had to be possible.

  Convincing Abbe
y would be the easy part.

  What came before was the hard part.

  Telling Felicity he’d made an awful mistake.

  CHAPTER TEN

  ‘YOU have to be kidding!’

  As a reaction to a marriage proposal, Abbey’s first words left a bit to be desired, Ryan thought. Still, maybe it was no more than he deserved.

  He’d asked Abbey to marry him in her dairy.

  Ryan had come to Abbey’s that evening, expecting to find her resting and with Jack in bed. Instead, he’d discovered she’d told the local farmers who’d been milking her cows that she was fine by herself. Jack had been given his dinner and his mother had discussed bedtime with him but Jack had had a long afternoon nap and had been in no mood for sleep. He’d been making mud pies in a play-pen in a corner of the dairy and Abbey had been milking her thirteenth cow.

  ‘What do you want?’ she’d demanded when Ryan had come through the dairy gate and had startled Abbey’s cows in the process. The herd had then twitched and become nervous and had made Abbey’s job hard.

  Ryan had been thrown so far off balance that he’d told Abbey what he’d wanted, straight out

  ‘I’m not marrying Felicity any more,’ he’d said flatly. ‘I want you.’

  As a proposal it had lacked a little finesse, he told himself later. Abbey’s reaction had confirmed it.

  ‘You have to be kidding.’

  She reached up and patted her cow’s rump, settled herself again and kept right on milking.

  ‘No. Ryan, stay over there,’ she ordered, as he took a couple of steps nearer. ‘My girls don’t like strangers. I know you milked them once but they don’t remember you. Or maybe they do and it’s that that’s making them nervous.’ She frowned, and he couldn’t see by her face what she was thinking. ‘So tell me. What have you done with your Felicity?’

  ‘I haven’t done anything with Felicity,’ Ryan said, exasperated. ‘But she’s no longer my Felicity. She’s gone home. Abbey, can you leave your damned cows for a minute? ’