Nine Months to Change His Life

by Unknown

  He wasn’t interested. He headed back into the kelp. Here be dead fish and stuff. Here be something better than apples.

  ‘That’s what I get for hauling your dog food to the cave,’ she retorted. ‘Some dogs would be grateful for apple.’

  Her words caught her sense of the ridiculous and she managed a half-hearted smile. It was only half-hearted, though. She truly was discombobulated. In the last couple of months her world had been blasted apart, and the cyclone seemed the culmination.

  Wrong. Ben seemed the culmination.

  * * *

  He was a fast reader but sometimes he slowed. Sometimes he wanted to soak in each word.

  He’d desperately needed an escape from his worry about Jake. Last night Mary had been that escape. Now the manuscript in his hands was giving him a lesser one.

  His dark, shadowed eyes, grey and mysterious, seemed to bore into parts of her she hadn’t even known existed. They seemed to see the wolf within.

  He got it. He was grinning with delight as he recognised himself. She’d gone back and crossed a few things out in the backstory. His build, his eyes, his physique, were superimposed on...her hero?

  This man was supposed to be a twin? Heaven help her if there were two of them. One was enough to make a werewolf run for cover.

  He read on, entranced. Escape... That’s what this woman was all about, he thought, and she was very, very good at it. Her writing was part of her. The whole was entrancing.

  * * *

  She rounded the entire island. She found storm-blasted birds, some dead but most simply stunned and battered, hunkering down while they recovered.

  She—or rather Heinz—found dead fish. Heinz let the birds be but not the fish. How much fish could one dog eat? Mary was past caring.

  Thank God, no bodies.

  Finally she made her way inland to check on the hut. But what hut? The base of the fireplace was all that was left. The tin roof was scattered through the bushland. The timber walls had crumbled. Her friends’ possessions were sodden and ruined. There seemed nothing left for her to save.

  ‘And we’ve probably ruined the quilt as well,’ she told Heinz.

  ‘I’ll fix it.’

  Ben’s voice in the stillness made her jump. She turned and he was sitting on a fallen tree at the edge of the clearing, watching her.

  ‘You shouldn’t have come,’ she said, shocked. ‘You should be resting your knee.’

  ‘You’ve been gone for four hours,’ he said pointedly. ‘A man’s allowed to get worried. Two stout walking-sticks and I managed.’

  ‘How did you know where to come?’

  ‘There are two paths from the cave. One leads to the beach. I figured the other led here, and I figured this was where you’d end up. I’m up there with Einstein,’ he said proudly.

  She managed a smile. He looked astonishing. His face was battered, the shirt and pants he was wearing had the odd rip, he’d wrapped his one bare foot in a ripped towel to form a makeshift shoe, but he looked...healthy?

  Maybe more than healthy, she conceded. He looked more tough, rugged and good-looking than any man had a right to look.

  Especially when a woman had to be sensible.

  Think about something else, she told herself desperately. Focus. She gazed around the clearing at the mess.

  Nothing occurred. She just wanted to look at him.

  ‘I’ll have the quilt cleaned,’ he told her. ‘Restored if necessary. I’ll have this cottage rebuilt if insurance doesn’t pay for it. I’ll do anything in my power to pay for what you’ve done for me. Starting with the quilt.’

  ‘How did you know the quilt’s important?’

  ‘I’ve seen homes destroyed in Afghanistan. I’ve seen women who’ve lost all their possessions, and I’ve seen what a tiny thing can mean.’ He smiled at her, but his smile had changed. All the compassion in the world was in that smile. ‘After you left I had a chance to take a good look at that quilt. It’s amazing.’

  ‘Barbara’s grandmother sewed it for her trousseau.’

  Some time during the last twenty-four hours she’d told him about Barbara and Henry.

  Some time in the last twenty-four hours she’d told him almost everything.

  ‘There’s not a lot here we can salvage,’ he said, and she didn’t reply. There wasn’t any need.

  ‘The boat?’ he asked, without much hope.

  ‘Smashed.’

  ‘You didn’t think to put it somewhere safe?’

  She flashed him a look.

  He grinned. ‘Yeah, I know. Lack of forethought is everywhere. I should have put my yacht in dry dock in Manhattan.’

  ‘The world’s full of should-haves.’

  ‘But on the other hand, I brought crackers, cheese and chocolate with me from the cave,’ he said, and she looked up at his lopsided hopeful expression and she couldn’t help smiling. He was playing the helpful Labrador.

  And suddenly she thought... Cellar.

  Henry had told her about the cellar, almost as an aside, when he’d been describing the house. ‘There’s a dugout under the washhouse,’ he said. ‘Accessed by a trapdoor. I keep a few bottles there if you’re desperate.’

  Did this qualify as desperate?

  She left Ben and headed for where the washhouse had been. She hauled a few timbers aside and after a couple of moments Ben hobbled across to help.

  ‘We’re looking for?’

  ‘Desperate measures,’ she said.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Desperate times call for desperate measures. I’ll make it up to Henry somehow.’ She hauled the last piece of timber aside and exposed a trapdoor with a brass ring.

  Ben tugged it up. It was a hole, four feet wide, maybe three feet deep.

  ‘You could have hidden in here during the storm,’ he said.

  ‘Yeah, right. Four feet by four feet, filled with a hundred or so bottles of wine.’

  ‘After the first twenty you wouldn’t have noticed you were squashed.’ He lifted out the first bottle and stared. ‘Wow. Your friends have good taste.’

  ‘It’ll take me a month’s salary to pay them back but this might be worth it.’

  ‘I told you, I’m paying.’ He lifted the next bottle out and eyed it with reverence. ‘I’ve been trying to think of the perfect wine to go with crackers, cheese and chocolate. I think I’ve found it.’

  ‘You think we dare?’

  ‘I know we dare,’ Ben said. ‘My leg hurts. This is for medicinal purposes, if nothing else. And, Mary, I suspect you’re hurting, too,’ he said, and suddenly his voice gentled again. ‘Carting me up that beach was no mean feat. You must be aching, and inside there’s probably almost as much hurt as I’m carrying. I think we need this wine, Nurse Hammond. I think we both need all the help we can get.’

  * * *

  They sat on a sun-drenched log, looked out over the battered island, ate their crackers and cheese, and drank amazing wine.

  The cheese was a bit dry and the glassware left a bit to be desired. Every glass in the cottage had been broken but a couple of ancient coffee mugs had survived the carnage.

  It didn’t matter. The food tasted wonderful. The wine—stunning even in different circumstances—couldn’t have tasted better if it was drunk from exquisite crystal.

  They didn’t talk. There seemed no need.

  They were perched on a ledge overlooking the entire west of the island. Every tree seemed to have been shattered or flattened. The beach was a massive mound of litter. The sea still looked fierce, an aftermath of the storm, but the sun was on their faces. The world around them had been destroyed but for now, for this moment, all was peace.

  Heinz had been lying at Mary’s feet. He suddenly stood, staggered a few feet away—and brought
up half a fish.

  ‘Nice,’ Ben said.

  ‘I reckon he ate about six,’ Mary told him, grimacing. ‘There may be more to come.’

  ‘He might have chewed them before he swallowed.’

  ‘He was a stray when I found him. He eats first and asks questions later. Even essential questions, like “Can I fit it in?” or “Is it edible?”’

  ‘Really nice,’ Ben said, and then, when Heinz looked wistfully down at his half-fish, he stirred, grabbed a stick, gouged a hole in the sodden earth and buried it.

  Then, at the look on Heinz’s face, he shoved the stick deep in the ground and tied a piece of ripped curtain at the top.

  ‘X marks the spot,’ he told Heinz. ‘Come the revolution, you know where it’s buried.’

  ‘Nice,’ Mary intoned back at him, and their eyes met and suddenly they were laughing.

  It felt...amazing.

  It felt free.

  And Mary thought, for all the drama and tension of the last couple of days, she was feeling better than she’d felt for months.

  Or years?

  Because she’d made abandoned love to a guy she hardly knew?

  But she did know him, she thought. She watched the laughter in his eyes, she watched the way he fondled Heinz’s floppy ears, she saw the tension in his face that could never be resolved until he knew his brother was safe, and she thought...she did know this man.

  Somehow in the last twenty-four hours he seemed to have become part of her.

  And that was crazy, she told herself. Any minute now the world would break in, and part of her would disappear back to Manhattan.

  Besides, she didn’t do relationships. She’d trusted her father with her whole heart and he’d turned his back on her. His back was still turned. How did you walk away from something like that?

  ‘I read your book,’ he said, and she froze.

  ‘You read...’

  ‘Werewolves and dragons—and me.’ He grinned. ‘Entirely satisfactory.’

  She was on her feet but feeling like the earth was opening under her. Her writing... It had always been her escape. This man had read it? ‘You had no right...’

  ‘I know,’ he confessed. ‘But I was bored. Do you mind?’

  ‘I don’t show my writing to anyone.’ It was part of her, the part she disappeared into when life got too hard. That he’d seen it...

  ‘You should. It’s great.’

  ‘It’s fantasy.’

  ‘I suspected that,’ he said gravely. ‘I haven’t exactly learned how to handle a six-pronged sword in real life.’

  She closed her eyes.

  ‘Mary, I really am sorry,’ he said. ‘You look like... It seems important. I shouldn’t have intruded. I shouldn’t have looked.’

  He shouldn’t have looked into her? What was it about this man? He was seeing...all of her.

  She opened her eyes again met his gaze. Straight and true. Where had that phrase come from?

  He was a man to be trusted?

  Maybe she had no choice. She’d already exposed so much.

  Deep breath. What would a normal...writer...say if someone had read their work? ‘You think it’s over the top?’ she tried, cautiously, and he seemed to relax.

  ‘It is over the top and it’s great.’ He grinned. ‘A few more thousand words and the publication world awaits.’

  ‘Don’t mock.’

  ‘I’m not mocking,’ he said, and there was that look again. Straight and true. ‘Mary, it’s awesome.’ Then his face changed, to an expression she could hardly understand. ‘I think you’re awesome,’ he added. ‘I wish there were some dragons I could slay on your behalf in real life.’

  This was doing her head in. Any minute now she’d step forward and take this man and hold him.

  She didn’t do relationships. She didn’t trust.

  She could trust this man?

  ‘M-meanwhile, we need to figure how to get off this island,’ she managed, and heaven only knew the effort it took to get the words out.

  ‘We do,’ he said ruefully. ‘Fantasy’s great, but the real world awaits us.’

  ‘It does,’ she agreed, and then she muttered an aside. ‘I just need to keep remembering it.’

  CHAPTER SIX

  THE REAL WORLD broke in half an hour later.

  Helicopters appeared in the distance, buzzing out over the islands but mostly out to sea.

  ‘The yacht race was a disaster,’ Ben said as they watched them. ‘That’s who they’ll be looking for. The race was full of idiots like us, in expensive boats but not enough skills to cope.’

  ‘How many sailors have the skills to cope with a cyclone?’

  ‘We could have done better. I never questioned the seaworthiness of the life raft. The salesman told me it was state of the art. I knew how to set it up but it never occurred to me that it was little more than a giant beach ball. I just hope other yachts had better equipment.’ He shaded his eyes, watching a couple of dots of helicopters flying out on the horizon. ‘If they’re still searching, I hope whoever they’re looking for had a better life raft than ours.’

  ‘They’re probably looking for you.’

  ‘Or Jake.’

  ‘Let’s face probabilities, shall we?’ she said astringently. ‘At last report, Jake was being winched to safety. You, on the other hand, were drifting in a beach ball. So they’re looking for you. Driftwood. Matches, fire, smoke. Stat. We need to get smoke up there fast before the weather closes in again.’

  ‘Is the weather closing in?’

  ‘Who knows? I hope someone, somewhere is working frantically to restore a transmission tower but nothing’s coming through on my radio. Or my phone.’ She flicked her cellphone out of her pocket. ‘Dead.’

  ‘Is it charged?’

  ‘You tell me to try turning it off and on again and I’ll tell you where to put it, tech-head.’ She tossed him the phone. ‘Here. You play with the on and off buttons, then make your way back to the cave at your leisure. I’m off to try a less tech-heavy form of communication.’

  ‘Mary...’

  She’d started to turn away but she stopped and looked back at him. ‘Yes?’

  ‘Thank you,’ he said simply, and they were a mere two words but all the power in the universe was behind them. He looked at her, just looked. Their gazes held for a long, long moment, and in the end it seemed to tear something when she had to turn away.

  ‘My pleasure,’ she managed, but as she headed back to the cave she felt those stupid tears slipping down her face again.

  What was wrong with her? Smash ’em Mary was turning into a wuss.

  There was a part of Smash ’em Mary that didn’t even want the helicopter to come.

  * * *

  Only the helicopter did come. The fire took hold and she covered it with green leaves. Smoke billowed upwards, the chopper changed course and headed toward them.

  Ben had made his way back by then, limping heavily, using his sticks for support. She should have moved slowly, staying to help him, but rescue had seemed more important.

  Of course it was.

  They stood in silence as the chopper approached. There seemed little to say, or maybe there was lots to say but neither of them could think what.

  There was no way the chopper could land. The island was hilly, and the beach, normally a possible landing place, was a mess. The chopper came in low, assessing the situation, and then someone came down a rope.

  A guy, Ben noted. Neither was it the chopper that had taken Jake away. Why not? His stomach clenched, thinking of the chopper in that wild weather. Surely if it had survived...

  ‘That’s called catastrophising,’ Mary said. ‘Stop it.’

  ‘How did you know...?’

/>   ‘Your face is like an open book. Just because this isn’t the chopper that took Jake, it doesn’t mean Jake’s at the bottom of the sea. I know you think New Zealand’s tiny compared to the US, but we do run to more than one helicopter.’

  He managed a smile and then the guy on the rope landed near them, and she headed forward to help.

  Ben stayed where he was. He’d pushed too hard. His leg seemed like it was at the end of its useful life. He’d never felt so useless.

  Jake...

  ‘Take Ben first,’ Mary was saying.

  He roused himself and thought, What?

  ‘She tells me you’re injured, sir,’ the paramedic said. ‘Do we need to splint your leg before we move you? Any other injuries?’

  ‘I don’t think he wants to be stretchered up,’ Mary said, and she was smiling.

  He wasn’t smiling.

  ‘My brother...’ he said, and the paramedic’s face grew grim.

  ‘You’re one of the race crew?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘We’re very pleased to see you,’ he said. ‘There are still crew members missing.’ He turned to Mary, obviously forming a question, but she answered before he could ask.

  ‘I’ve searched the beach and found no one.’

  ‘Could someone have made their way inland?’

  ‘If they were capable of getting inland they’d have found the remains of the hut. It’s the obvious high point.’

  ‘It’s probably worth sending a team over to look more thoroughly,’ the guy said, ‘if this one’s washed up.

  This one. This victim.

  Ben was going out of his mind.

  ‘Do you know if my brother’s safe?’ he demanded. ‘Jake Logan. He was pulled up on a chopper before the cyclone hit.’

  ‘That’ll have been a New Zealand crew,’ the guy told him. ‘We’re Australian. I don’t know who they did and didn’t pull off.’

  ‘The choppers are all safe?’

  ‘I don’t know that either,’ he said apologetically. ‘This is our first run. Please, our time’s short.’