He’d come up behind her while she was splashing water at the silver streak of moonlight that lay across the lagoon.
Close behind her, but not touching.
And in spite of all the things she’d just decided, she heard herself saying, ‘You could stay here.’
She didn’t turn, though she heard him move, heard the water wash around his legs. Then his hands were on her shoulders and he was turning her towards him.
‘Stay for an affair?’ he whispered, looking down into her face, his own as unreadable as ever.
Stay for ever, Beth wanted to say—to yell it out loud so there could be no mistake.
But all she did was nod.
‘I don’t think that would suit me,’ he said, then he bent his head and kissed her on the lips. ‘Or you either, but I can only speak for myself, Beth.’
He kissed her again, harder this time, so her lips gave way and her mouth welcomed his tongue, taking it greedily inside, wanting more and more of him.
His hands slid around her back, holding her close, so there was no mistaking how his body felt about it.
She snuggled into him, sure all her doubts would be swept away if only—
No, don’t think, just kiss. Kissing Angus, being kissed by Angus—was there any better feeling?
The kiss deepened and her thoughts strayed, muddled, drifting, lost in the heat and wonderment of sensation, in the building of excitement in her body. She felt herself trembling in his grasp, her nipples hurting as they pressed against his chest, an ache of wanting deep within her.
Then he wasn’t there—cool air washing over her no doubt swollen lips—she could hear his voice but not make sense of what he was saying. Something about not wanting an affair, not liking her parameters, he’d see her, or maybe not, and wasn’t it time she was in bed?
‘Angus?’
She hated the sound of pleading in her voice but hadn’t been able to prevent it.
‘Now isn’t the time to be talking,’ he said, suddenly sounding as exhausted as she felt. ‘But we will talk, Beth. Tomorrow I’ll be busy in the morning. Later in the day?’
He held her elbow as she walked out of the water—polite to the last.
What was she supposed to say?
Should she suggest a time for them to ‘talk’?
Like a dental appointment?
And what had he meant by not liking the parameters?
‘We’ve never talked!’ she muttered, anger coming to her rescue, pulling her out of the post-kissing daze and the no-affair shock. ‘Not about emotional stuff!’
His smile raised the stakes as far as anger went, incensing her, but before she could react—or find a piece of driftwood and hit him really hard with it—he was speaking again.
‘Not really. That’s why we should, wouldn’t you say?’
She opened her mouth to yell at him, though what she’d yell she didn’t know, and while she dithered he stole the initiative again, closing her lips and blanking out her mind with one last kiss.
‘Goodnight, Beth,’ he murmured against her skin, then he turned her in the direction of her cabin and eased her gently in that direction.
Moving like an automaton, she went, one foot in front of the other, unable to think at all because she had no idea how to untangle what thoughts she had—where to start unwinding them so she could take a good look at them and try to work out what had happened.
Inside the living room she stripped off the scrub suit then made her way to the bathroom, where the packet of condoms mocked her from the laundry basket.
Muttering an oath she’d heard often but had never used before, she picked them up and flung them through the window. It was only as she climbed into bed, in her sensible pyjamas with sweet peas all over them, that she remembered the camp kids walked past that side of her hut to get to the art and pottery room so she had to get out of bed, find a torch and search through the undergrowth for the tell-tale packet.
Prickles spiked her bare feet and she cursed again as she fought the tangle of vines in the undergrowth, thinking now of snakes—night snakes—fear battling the need to find the darned packet.
She picked up a stick that had jabbed into her thigh and threw it deeper into the bushes. Then, out of nowhere, a yellow body hurled itself after the stick. Garf had escaped again and was sensing fun.
‘Go away, you stupid dog,’ Beth yelled at him, but Garf knew she loved him and ignored her anger, pouncing around in the bushes, then stilling suddenly, head alert, eyes on the darkness of the trees beyond the bushes.
But before Beth had time to wonder what Garf had sensed—please, heaven, it wasn’t a snake—she spotted the packet.
There!
She darted forward and thrust her hand into the bushes, then stood up, clutching it, triumphant.
Garf grabbed at it, but she held on, hearing the cardboard tear as she scolded the dog.
‘It’s not a stick—let go!’ she yelled, furious with him now, but he was having too much fun and he kept hold of his end of the small packet, shaking his head to dislodge her grip.
She was beginning to worry about the contents of the packet getting loose and choking him, when light flashed again, but this time there was a scuffling noise and Garf forgot the packet. He gave a sharp yap and dashed into the bushes while Beth wondered what on earth was happening.
She called the dog back, knowing he couldn’t go chasing through the national park, but as he reluctantly returned to her side and she gathered up the spilt condoms—how many were supposed to be in the packet?—she wondered about the intruder. Maybe not a ranger spotlighting—maybe a peeping tom.
On the island?
Not with a flashlight!
She dismissed the thought. Kids mucking around with torches—there were a couple of young boys at the resort who’d been plaguing the camp kids. Probably bored with resort life and playing games over here…
She hurried back to her cabin and slipped the torn packet into her rubbish bin, covering it and its now useless contents with the discarded scrub suit.
Much to her surprise, given the tumult of the day, she slept deeply and well, waking in the morning and looking around at the bright sunshine, unable to believe she hadn’t stirred.
‘Emotional exhaustion!’ she muttered to herself, as if she needed to excuse a good night’s sleep. ‘Not something Angus will be suffering from!’
Good. She still felt very peeved with Angus.
More than peeved—angry!
Hadn’t he realised just how much inner strength it had taken for her to suggest an affair—how tongue-tyingly, gut-wrenchingly difficult she’d found it, not only to say the words but to sound so casual and worldly and—yes, mature—as she’d said them?
And he’d turned her down!
Didn’t like the parameters—whatever that might mean!
Well, he could go to hell. She was over him. Seeing him again had been good because now she knew he wasn’t interested in her she could move on to the next step of her life and find someone who was.
Or who might be…
The pain in her chest suggested she might be fooling herself, but she knew about pains. They faded in time. They didn’t disappear altogether, but they got manageable enough to be put away in a far corner and more or less ignored.
This one, too, would shrink.
Eventually…
‘Dr Beth?’
Sam’s voice.
‘Come in,’ she called, hopping out of bed and straightening her pyjamas so she was decently covered.
The little boy sidled across her living room, his face tight with worry.
She hurried to him, kneeling by his side and putting her arm around his skinny shoulders.
‘What’s wrong, love?’
He nestled against her.
‘They took Danny away. They said he was too sick to stay, but Robbie’s sick and he stayed. Did Danny die?’
‘Oh, Sam, of course he didn’t,’ Beth assured him, lifting the child and si
tting down so he was on her lap, her arms around him. ‘It’s just that they had to take special pictures of his head and we don’t have the right machines here at the medical centre, so he went across to Crocodile Creek, where Bruce comes from, then down to Brisbane to a big hospital.’
Sam turned his head and his dark brown eyes looked steadfastly into her face.
‘It’s bad to tell lies to children,’ he reminded her, and she hugged him as she smiled.
‘It’s not a lie, darling,’ she whispered, rocking him in her arms, sadness flooding through her that a child so young should know so much about death and lies. ‘Danny’s sick, yes, but he had to go for scans—you know about scans. That’s all. Actually, we heard last night that the scans were good—that the operation Stella’s dad did on his head made him a whole lot better.’
Sam nodded his acceptance and snuggled closer to her, then changed the subject, reminding Beth how quickly children’s moods could swing.
‘CJ comes from Crocodile Creek,’ he said, mentioning Cal and Gina Jamieson’s little boy. ‘And Lily. Lily’s home now, in the cabin. Did you know?’
Beth agreed she did know, having heard about Lily’s in sistence on returning.
‘She said she’d be my girlfriend.’
Beth had been thinking how fragile Lily had seemed and wondering if letting her out of hospital had been such a good idea, so it took a moment for Sam’s words to sink in.
‘Girlfriend?’ she repeated helplessly. He was, what—eight?
‘Like Stella is for Jamie,’ Sam explained.
‘Ah!’ Beth murmured, as if understanding the girlfriend concept for the first time. Perhaps it was the first time—perhaps she’d never understood it any more than she understood relationships.
‘I took a flower to her cabin,’ Sam continued.
Beth smiled, although she was fairly sure she should be lecturing him on not picking flowers.
‘And did she like it?’
‘I don’t know. The cabin was real quiet so I left it on the deck.’
‘That was kind of you. Lily needs to sleep a lot so if she was sleeping, it was best not to wake her. Now, where are you supposed to be? Where are Benita and the other kids?’
‘They’re walking on the beach before breakfast. We walked up to the point then turned around, but I ran and got here first, because of the flower, you see.’
He’d no sooner explained than Beth heard the chatter of the children returning.
‘I’ve got to get dressed and go over to see Robbie, so how about you join them and maybe after breakfast we can do something?’
‘Not today,’ Sam told her, recovered enough now to climb off her knee. ‘We’re going fishing. In a boat. I’m going to catch a king.’
‘A king fish?’ Beth guessed.
Sam shook his head.
‘No. Some other kind of king—it’s big and pink and I’ll show it to you at lunchtime because we’re coming back for lunch.’
And with that, he was gone, a little boy with a tenuous hold on life, but making every second of it count.
While she was wasting hers…
Oh, she’d thought she’d moved on, but one glimpse of Angus had shown her how untrue that was. She’d just moved.
As if moving would make a difference when what ailed her was inside her—when it came with her wherever she went, like an illness in remission.
So! The time had finally arrived when she had to put the past behind her once and for all.
Would talking to Angus help this process or should she phone him—tell him not to come?
Probably.
She dressed and walked up to the medical centre, switching her mind from personal matters to medical ones, wondering just what the fallout of the lifting of the quarantine would be.
‘We’re all on telly,’ Grace greeted her, waving her into an empty patient room where several staff members were peering at the small screen of a television set.
Beth recognised the mobile lab, sitting on the beach, and there was Grubby, walking around with his bag of dead birds. Then a still shot of someone in scrubs walking up the beach.
‘Dr Angus Stuart, prominent epidemiologist, leaving the bio-hazard lab on Wallaby Island.’
‘There were flashes of light last night—a photographer,’ Beth muttered. ‘The figure in white in the rainforest—he or she has been here for a couple of days. Who knows what photos we’ll see?’
The news report showed more shots of the island, taken from a helicopter, zeroing in on the medical centre.
The next switch was one that surprised them all.
‘That’s Charles,’ Grace whispered. ‘And Jill and Lily when she was still in hospital—how did someone get that shot?’
It was definitely inside the hospital, but could have been taken through a window, and it showed two desperately anxious adults—parents? It certainly looked that way, with one of them on each side of a little girl lying still in a big hospital bed.
Beth was silently cursing the fact that she and Angus hadn’t done more to find the figure in the bushes, or found someone to track him or her down, when Grace gave a hoot of laughter.
‘Oh, look, there’s you!’
Grace’s comment diverted Beth and she looked at the screen again, then shook her head in disbelief. The sweet peas on her pyjamas had come out beautifully, as had Garf, but it was the condom drooping out of his mouth that caught the attention, and in case no one recognised it for what it was, the label of the well-known brand was clearly visible on the torn packet. There she stood, knee deep in the bushes, fighting an unlikely-looking dog for the wretched condoms, while a voice over prattled on about her being the doctor in charge of the medical centre.
‘Oh, no!’ she whispered, unable to believe this was happening. Even Grace had stopped laughing and was looking at her sympathetically. The impression given by the broadcast was that if this was the person in charge, no wonder there’d been an outbreak of bird flu, somehow insinuating further that by having such a person running the medical centre everyone on the island, including vulnerable children, would be put at risk. ‘I can’t believe it!’
‘It doesn’t mean anything,’ Grace said, but Beth could hear the phone ringing in the office already and knew there’d be an avalanche of calls, not only from the press but from anxious parents.
Needing to escape, she went in to see Robbie, who was sitting up in bed, playing with a small hand-held computer game.
‘Hey, Dr Beth, come and see my score. I beat my last one.’
Beth stared at him. Was this the child who’d been so sick? She went over to the bed and sat down to check his score, then asked him how he felt, although the question seemed unnecessary.
‘I’m better, a bit tired, but can I go back to camp? Jack went back, and Lily.’
Beth checked his chart.
‘Maybe later,’ she told him, thinking of the times they thought he’d been recovering and then he’d relapsed. ‘I’ll come and see you after lunch.’
She wasn’t on duty until that night but she checked on Susie—Alex and his daughter, Stella, were both in the room, one on each side of Susie’s bed, each holding one of Susie’s hands. Susie was going to be all right.
Beth closed the door, not wanting to intrude on what was obviously a private time for all three of them, and made her way to the office. Cal Jamieson was there.
‘So, what’s happening, apart from the doctor at the new medical centre appearing on TV in her pyjamas?’
Cal smiled at her.
‘Quarantine’s lifted. Mike’s airlifting a lot of the Crocodile Creek staff back to the mainland today and I imagine the resort is putting on extra boat and helicopter trips to take their guests back. Luke’s still rostered to be here this week with you—you’re on tonight, aren’t you?’
Beth eyed him doubtfully.
‘If you still want me as the doctor here,’ she muttered. ‘The way the TV made me look, it might be easier to ride out the waves that follow
the bird-flu scare with someone else in charge.’
Cal gave her a stern look.
‘Do you think we haven’t all been caught in our pyjamas, or in some equally embarrassing situation some time in our lives?’ he said, then he smiled. ‘Though I’d love to hear the story of the condoms some time.’
Beth felt a blush rising from her toes.
‘I didn’t want any of the kids walking past there and finding them in the bushes, then Garf came along and he thought it was a game,’ she said, stumbling over the words in her haste to get them said.
‘Of course,’ Cal said, still smiling.
The door opened behind Beth, and Gina breezed in.
‘Have you asked her about the condoms?’ she demanded of her husband.
‘Of course,’ Cal told his wife. ‘She didn’t want any of the kids finding them in the morning.’
‘Oh, really!’ Gina’s eyebrows rose but her smile was warm, and filled with fun. ‘Poor you!’ she said to Beth, giving her a big hug. ‘If I were you, I’d go hide somewhere until tonight. The story will soon get stale, the press will vanish back to wherever they come from, and the island will return to normal.’
She released Beth, then added, ‘And I just loved the pyjamas!’
Beth had to laugh, which was much better than wallowing in mortification.
She still had a job, and Gina was right—the press would go and the island would get back to normal.
Though it might never be the same again for her…
CHAPTER NINE
HIDING worked for Beth until lunchtime, when Sam came looking for her.
‘I did catch a fish and it wasn’t a king but an emperor, a red emperor. You have to come and look at it before Grubby and Bruce cut it up so we can have it for our dinner. Come on!’
He grabbed Beth’s hand and led her towards the back of the dining room, Beth wondering just what Angus had meant by ‘later’ and whether, by going on this expedition to meet an emperor, she would miss him.
Which could well be for the best. After seeing herself on television that morning, all the great maturity she thought she’d managed to achieve seemed to have wilted, and she felt as raw and insecure as an intern.
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