Marion Lennox: Hijacked Honeymoon

© 1998

Dear Reader,

Far north Queensland and Australia’s Great Barrier Reef combine to make one of the best, most romantic, most exotic and just plain fabulous holiday destinations in the world.

Just ask met My husband, my children and I love it. After every visit I return to my desk sandy, sunburned and gloriously happy I’m ready to write more romances, but there’s always a trace of “I wish I could have stayed longer.”

This year, as we were waiting in Cairns airport for our flight south and back to work, a honeymoon couple arrived on the inward flight. They were obviously very much in love, they were weighed down with beach gear-and he was just gorgeous! So all the way south I sat and scowled. What if I hijacked her honeymoon…

And the lovely thing about being a romance author is-that I just did! And I hope you enjoy it.

SAPPHIRE COVE, Australia, was definitely the loveliest place in the world for a honeymoon.

Pity about the bride.

Dr Ryan Henry eased his foot from the accelerator and gazed across the headland. What he saw was magic.

The sea below was the sapphire blue that gave the town its name. A yacht with white sail and crimson spinnaker stood out against the distant islands. The wind was warm and laced with salt and sunshine, and tropical growth surged between coconut palms all along the roadside.

Magic, indeed.

His mother hadn’t thought so.

‘Sapphire Cove is the end of the earth,’ Ryan’s mother had told him when she’d taken him to the States seventeen years ago. Ryan had been fifteen years old and his parents’ marriage had collapsed. ‘Don’t ever let your father talk you into coming back.’

His father had never tried, and Australia was no longer part of Ryan’s life. But the idea of Far North Queensland for a honeymoon appealed to Felicity, and the fact that Ryan hadn’t seen his father for seventeen years intrigued his intended bride.

‘Ryan, I didn’t know you still had Australian citizenship. Hey, I have a conference in Hawaii in November. What if we meet in Australia straight afterwards? We can marry and honeymoon there, and maybe you can visit your father before I arrive.’

‘We should arrive there together,’ Ryan insisted. ‘If I make my flight the day after your conference ends…’

Felicity arched her beautifully pencilled eyebrows and decided to humour him. Well, why not? Ryan Henry was certainly worth humouring. Tall, dark and drop-dead handsome, as well as being one of the country’s most promising young surgeons, Ryan was a hunk in any woman’s eyes.

‘Scared of meeting your father on your own, then?’ she teased. ‘OK, Ryan, I’ll come with you.’

But she hadn’t. Ryan might have known she wouldn’t. Emotional family reunions weren’t Felicity’s scene. Ryan had landed in Cairns this morning to be met by a message from Felicity. She was still in Hawaii.

‘There’s a post-conference meeting it’s imperative I attend. Ryan, these people are so important careet-wise. I’ll join you when I can. Go on to Sapphire Cove and I’ll meet you there.’

Yeah, great…

‘Damn you, Felicity,’ Ryan said savagely. The beauty of his home town faded in the face of his anger, and he shoved his foot on the pedal with more force than it deserved.

Mistake.

A bicycle flew out from a gravel side road straight across his path. Ryan hit the brakes hard, but he couldn’t stop in time.

The bicycle ended up right beneath his car.

The world stopped.

There are some moments so awful that to replay them in memory or to try and describe them is unbearable. This was one of those moments.

For two seconds Ryan sat, stunned and frozen, while the sound of metal against metal faded to nothing. It seemed a lifetime that he sat there. In fact, it was two whole seconds.

Then he was out of the car and launching himself around the front of the bonnet to find the unimaginable horror that lay beneath.

There was a bike-or what had been a bike. A tangled heap of metal was buckled right under his car. For one awful moment Ryan thought the rider must be there too-beneath the twisted bike.

He wasn’t. No. She wasn’t. Dear God…

The rider-a girl-was crumpled and motionless on the verge of the road. She’d been thrown clear.

She was… dead?

As white as a ghost himself, somehow Ryan moved to see, and as he did the girl stirred and moaned.

The moan was a tiny sound. Her stirring was a tiny movement. But it was enough to shove Ryan back into medical mode-to lift him out of the nightmare a little, back to a mental framework where he’d been trained to cope. A medical emergency.

‘Don’t move,’ he snapped urgently, and knelt down beside her on the gravel. His strong hands moved swiftly to press the girl back on the verge to stop her from rising. If her spine was fractured… Or if she had head injuries…

He removed her bike helmet gently, half-afraid of what he might find To his relief, the short, dark curls were unbloodied. Then he put all the authority he could muster into his voice in a vain attempt to override his shock. ‘Don’t try to move.’

Silence. The girl did as he ordered and lay absolutely still. Or maybe that initial movement had been his imagination.

At least she was breathing. Ryan ran his hands over her body to check her, his eyes taking her in. The girl’s eyes were closed. She was young but not a child-maybe twenty or so. Slight. Five feet four or five. Black curly hair, close-cropped and shining. Finely boned with a wide, generous mouth and a neat little nose. In other circumstances she might be described as lovely. Very lovely. Wearing shorts and a T-shirt that said NO FEAR.

The slogan wasn’t appropriate. Ryan was so fearful he could hardly breathe himself.

There wasn’t a vestige of colour on the girl’s face. She had a faint smattering of freckles across her nose and they only made her lack of colour look worse.

He had to see what damage there was. But to turn her…

‘Do you think I might move just a bit?’ a voice said cautiously. ‘There’s gravel sticking into my cheek.’

Ryan practically yelped.

Then he grinned, relief washing over him like a tidal wave. No brain damage here, then.

There were other sorts of damage.

‘Wait a bit…’

‘I think my spine’s intact, if that’s what you’re worried about.’ Still with her eyes closed and still motionless, the girl’s voice seemed somehow disembodied. ‘I can feel everything.’

The girl’s voice wasn’t as sure now as it had first sounded. It held a distinct tremble. And Ryan found himself putting medical imperatives aside and moving to touch her face. To comfort her.

‘Hey. It’s OK.’ He stroked the soft, black curls as one might have reassured a frightened child. ‘You’re OK. I’m a doctor. You’ll be fine.’

She opened her eyes at that, and stared straight up at him.

And he knew her.

Ryan Henry would have known those eyes anywhere. They’d taunted him as a child. Haunted him for years.

Abbey Rhodes had been eleven years old when he’d left Sapphire Cove. She was four years younger than he and his mother had hated her. ‘White Trash’ his mother had termed Abbey, and when she’d seen Abbey, trailing home alongside Ryan, she’d let loose with both barrels.