‘Leith…’
‘It’s touch and go whether she’ll walk again.’ Ryan told her. ‘She needs expert rehabilitation. More than just swimming lessons now. And I thought, if I went back to the States I’d never know that it was done properly. I’d walk away and it would be up to others to see that she had the right treatment.’
‘But-’
‘Hush,’ he told her. ‘Listen. Over the past five days, I’ve been seeing Sapphire Cove at its best. I’ve watched how surrounded Leith’s parents have been.
‘And Steve… He’s down there in Brisbane and he has no family at all but I don’t think there’s a family in Sapphire Cove who haven’t sent him flowers or chocolates or fruit or something! The local primary-school children have sent him pictures to decorate his walls. His bedroom’s packed, he’s touched to the core and he wants to come back.
‘Steve’s been a loner all his life, trying to find roots, and he’s found them here. He wants to work here.’
‘What-permanently?’
‘Yes. He wants to marry Caroline and stay here.’
‘Are you saying I could go because of that?’ Abbey asked slowly. ‘Go with you? To the States?’
‘No.’ He kissed her then, lightly, on the nose. ‘I’m not. At first that’s what I thought but then… the more I thought about it the more jealous I grew. Jealous of Steve. His decision seemed so right. To stay here with the woman he loved. To live long term in a community like this. To bring his kids up where they could hunt for turtles.’
‘S-so?’
‘So, if it’s OK with you, I’ll rearrange my life,’ Ryan said seriously. ‘Steve and I have it figured.’
‘Steve and you…’
‘Steve and I. And my co-researchers in the States. The reason I’ve come here so late is that this is the only reasonable time I can talk to New York and I’ve been trying to organise everything so I can hand you a deal on a platter.’ He hauled her close again and kissed her.
‘A deal, Abbey Rhodes. Abbey Wittner. Abbey soon-to-be-Henry. You want to hear my deal? It’s taken me days and days to organise it so it’s worth a listen.’
And he kissed her again, so deeply that there was no way in the wide world that she could hear anything at all.
Then he managed to pull away. Ryan was laughing down at her in the moonlight, triumphant and loving. And Abbey’s heart was turning somersault after somersault, so fast she could hardly breathe.
‘Want to hear?’ he demanded again, and Abbey managed a shaken laugh.
‘Oh, Ryan, of course I want to hear. Of course.’
‘My plan is this.’ He held her at arm’s length and groaned. ‘Hell, Abbey, stop looking so damned beautiful. I can’t make myself think here.’
‘Think,’ she told him severely. ‘You need a bucket of cold water, Ryan Henry.’ Then she reached out and touched him on the lips with her finger. And laughed with joy. ‘I need a bucket of cold water myself. Tell me fast, Ryan,’ she begged. ‘Fast.’
‘I’m moving here to live. Permanently.’
That stopped her. The laughter died.
‘Ryan, you can’t,’ she said uncertainly. ‘Your career…’ She shook her head. ‘Ryan, you’d be like me in the States. A fish out of water.’
‘Nope.’ He pulled her to him again and kissed her hair. ‘Not a fish out of water.’ He held her close and spoke thickly into her curls. ‘It’s all organised. Steve’s interested in my research areas. He’s bright and young and keen as mustard. Cairns is only an hour and a half away and it has an international airport. We’re going to keep on with our research. I’m going to keep on with my teaching commitments in the States-via video conferencing.
‘I’ll be working here with Steve, intermittently in Cairns and Brisbane, and twice a year I’ll have to fly back to the States for two-week stints at the hospital where I’m based now. But ninety per cent of the time I’ll be based here, Abbey Wittner. Here!’
‘But… but how?’
‘The world is getting smaller,’ Ryan told her, holding her close. ‘With video conferencing, the Internet, e-mail-hell. Abbey, I spend my life in the States on the end of a modern, talking to doctors two rooms away. Now I’ll be doing the same thing but I’ll be half a world away.
‘And I’ll keep my feet on the ground by indulging in a little general practice. As will Steve. So, between us, we’ll give Sapphire Cove three part-time doctors. You and me and Steve. And we’ll all five happily ever after.’
Then the laughter in his voice died and his eyes became a trace uncertain. Anxious. ‘How does that sound, my lovely Abbey? Will it work? Will you mind me going back to the States-leaving you for two weeks twice a year? I’ll give up my research if I must-to win you. If it’s not enough.’
‘Oh, Ryan…’
‘Tell me, Abbey.’
‘No,’ Abbey said breathlessly, and her eyes were bright with unshed tears. ‘It’s not enough, Ryan Henry. Eleven months of a year are not enough as a basis for a marriage…’
‘Abbey…’
‘I’ll only marry you on one condition, Ryan Henry,’ Abbey murmured joyfully, and she put her arms around him and held him close. So close she thought she’d never let him go again. Not ever.
‘Condition?’ Ryan’s voice was slurred by love and desire. Abbey’s body was curled into his and his hands were sliding under her wrap. Feeling the delicious contours of her body. Pulling her against him.
A man and a woman, becoming one.
‘On condition that when you go back to the States for your month every year I’m going too,’ Abbey told him. ‘Me and Jack. Your family. Whither thou goest, I go, my love. My home is your home, Ryan Henry. My heart is your heart.’
Ryan closed his eyes. In any man’s life there should be this pinnacle of joy, he told himself. This was it. This was the moment he’d been waiting for all his life, and now he was here he couldn’t believe he’d reached it.
‘You want to wake Jack?’ he asked, and his voice was as unsteady as he’d ever heard it. As unsure. ‘Tell him he’s got a new daddy?’
But Abbey was shaking her head and her hands were moving down… down… In a gesture of pure wifely possession.
‘Let’s not,’ she whispered as her fingers found what they were looking for.
‘Let’s do something else.’
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
RYAN and Abbey Henry’s honeymoon lasted one whole night before it was interrupted.
Janet and Sam, married two weeks earlier-‘we’re in our seventies: we don’t have as much time as you young things for wasting time unmarried’-were caring for Jack. Steve, walking with a limp but well on the way to recovery, was caring for the hospital. Two weeks of ‘Bliss’…
The discussion on where to go had been short.
‘You hijacked one honeymoon of mine at “Bliss”,’ Ryan told Abbey severely. ‘It’s your duty to give me another.’
And Abbey couldn’t think of a single reason to disagree.
On the first morning of her honeymoon Abbey woke late, stirred and found she was going nowhere. She was being held fast in Ryan’s arms. Ryan felt her wake. He shifted slightly so he could look down at her.
His wife.
His lovely, lovely Abbey.
The wedding had been perfect. The tiny church high on the headland overlooking Sapphire Cove… Everyone there…
Last night had been perfect. The merging of two bodies into one.
Abbey. His wife.
Ryan’s arms pulled her closer as the knowledge of Abbey as his bride-his woman for always-surged though him.
And then the phone rang. Of course the phone rang. The medical imperative!
‘If that’s an earthquake I don’t want to know about it,’ Abbey murmured sleepily, snuggling in closer against her love. But there was a sinking sensation in the pit of her stomach all the same. No one would disturb them unless it was an emergency, and one thing Abbey didn’t want for the rest of her life was emergencies.
It was a pity, then, t
hat she was a doctor.
Ryan sighed and lifted the receiver. ‘Ryan Henry.’ Abbey could tell by the sound of his voice that he was as tense as she was.
But then Ryan smiled as he listened to the disembodied voice on the end of the line. When the voice had finished speaking he put the phone down.
‘Come on, my love,’ Ryan said, and he lifted Abbey into his arms and kissed her soundly. ‘Time to get ourselves decent. The honeymoon’s on hold for an hour or two.’
‘Oh, Ryan…’ It was a wail of dismay. Medical imperatives be damned, Abbey thought bitterly. She wanted this time alone with her love.
And then she looked more closely at Ryan’s face. His smile was growing.
‘What is it?’ she asked.
‘I’m not missing this, even for a honeymoon,’ Ryan told her, swinging his legs over the edge of the bed and reaching for his pants. ‘Come on, Abbey. Let’s go. Our turtles are hatching.’
The entire population of Sapphire Cove was on the beach.
There was no way anyone could have predicted exactly when the turtles would hatch. The experts said between fifty-four and seventy days, depending on the depth they were buried and the strength of the sun. So, apart from setting up a duty roster of guards, no one had planned for this.
But everyone was here. Abbey looked around in amazement as she and Ryan pulled to a halt. Everyone!
School had been let out. Grandmas and grandpas were arriving in convoys. The local shopkeepers and bankers and publicans had closed shop and headed for the beach.
Steve and Caroline stood hand in hand by the water’s edge, Steve leaning lightly on Caroline’s arm to support his weak leg.
There were men and women in wheelchairs and with walking sticks, and even a couple of stretcher cases being carried by volunteers. The hospital inmates had come en masse. Here were patients who were too sick to walk, but who wouldn’t miss this for the world.
Ted was here, holding a small child from Children’s ward and trying hard to keep his expression ghoulish when really he was as filled with wonder as everyone else.
Who else?
Ian Miller was here, dressed in the neat trousers and tie that denoted the professional. Sapphire Cove’s newest solicitor was taking his first holiday. Ian’s grin was as broad as his face, and his mother beside him had a matching smile a mile wide.
Leith Kinley was here, confined to a wheelchair but only just Four days ago she’d stood for the first time. She’d be going back to Brisbane soon for more intensive rehabilitation but she’d been allowed home for Abbey’s and Ryan’s wedding.
And now she was here for this. Sapphire Cove’s event of the decade.
There were two long lines of people, forming an avenue of honour from the freshly scattered mound where the turtle had laid her eggs down to the sea.
An avenue of honour for the hatchlings.
One by one they came. Tiny, tiny turtles, wide-eyed and terrified, scrambling through the sand, burrowing their way out into the open, blinking in the sunlight-and then heading for the sea.
Up above were their enemies. Gulls and terns and all sorts of seabirds, wheeling and squawking and demanding in no uncertain terms that these people depart and let them at their prey.
No way.
The school children were taking turns to toss bread further down the beach, filling the birds’ stomachs and distracting them from tastier prey.
All along the line of honour umbrellas were being shaken upwards. Umbrellas… Scores and scores of them in every colour of the rainbow, covering the tiny turtles’ flight and preventing any daring gull from getting near.
And one by one the turtles were reaching the waves, stopping momentarily in shock at the first touch of foam-and then charging gamely on. Each one was two tiny inches of turtle, heading for the horizon.
Sapphire Cove couldn’t protect these little ones once they reached the sea, but once there they had a chance. A chance of one day being as huge as their mother and returning here years hence to breed themselves.
Abbey and Ryan climbed from the car and stood on the grass verge, looking down at the spectacle before them.
Jack, safely held between Janet and Sam, saw his mother and crowed with delight-and then went right back to crowing with delight at the turtles.
Abbey’s eyes filled with tears.
‘Did you ever see such a sight?’ she whispered to Ryan. ‘Our turtles. Oh, Ryan, it’s a miracle.’
‘It is indeed a miracle,’ Ryan agreed softly, his arm firmly around Abbey’s waist and his eyes moving from the turtles to his brand new son-and then back to his wife.
And he held her close and kissed her, and kissed her again.
‘Life is,’ he said.
Life is a miracle.
Marion Lennox
Marion Lennox has had a variety of careers-medical receptionist, computer programmer and teacher. Married with two young children, she now lives in rural Victoria, Australia. Her wish for an occupation that would allow her to remain at home with her children, her dog and the budgie led her to attempt writing a novel, and she is now published regularly. She also writes nonmedical stories for Harlequin Romance as Trisha David.
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