Marion Lennox - The Package Deal

‘So it’s still to hit?’

‘Or miss.’

‘That’d be good,’ she said, but he heard worry.

‘Is there someone else you’re scared about?’ he demanded. He hadn’t thought...all the worrying he’d done up until now had been about Jake.

‘You,’ she said. ‘You need X-rays.’

‘I’m tough.’

‘Yeah, and you still need X-rays.’

‘I promise I won’t die.’ He said it lightly but he somehow had the feeling that this woman was used to expecting the worst.

Well, she was a nurse.

Nurses didn’t always expect the worst.

‘I’d prefer that you didn’t,’ she said, striving to match his lightness. ‘I have a pile of freezer contents that’ll be fine for up to two days but then they’ll decompose. If you’re decomposing too, I might be forced to evacuate my cave.’

He choked. Only a nurse could make such a joke, he thought. He remembered the tough medics who’d been there in Afghanistan and he thought...Mary could be one of those.

The nurses had saved Jake’s life when he’d been hit by a roadside bomb. Not the doctors, they had been too few in the field and they’d been stretched to the limit. Nurses had managed to stop the bleeding, get fluids into his brother, keep him stable until the surgeons had time to do their thing.

He kind of liked nurses.

He kind of liked this one.

He ate the casserole and drank the tea she made—he’d never tasted tea so good—and thought about her some more.

‘So no one’s worrying about you?’ he asked, lightly, he thought, but she looked at him with a shrewdness he was starting to expect.

‘I’ve left a note in a bottle saying where I am and who I’m with, so watch it, mate.’

He grinned. She really was...extraordinary.

‘But there is no one?’

‘If you’re asking if I’m single, then I’m single.’

‘Parents?’

That brought a shadow. She shook her head and started clearing.

She was so slight.

She was so alone.

‘You want to share a bed again?’ He shifted sideways so there was room under the quilt for her.

She must be cold. The temperature wasn’t all that bad—this was a summer storm—but the cave was earth-cool, and the humidity meant their clothes were taking an age to dry.

She was wearing a T-shirt but he’d felt it as she’d helped him back into bed and it was clammy.

She needed to take it off. This bed was the only place to be.

She was looking doubtful.

‘It’ll be like we’re flatmates, watching telly on the sofa,’ he said, pushing the covers back.

‘I forgot to bring the telly.’

‘That’s professional negligence if ever I heard it.’ Then he frowned at the look on her face. ‘What? What did I say?’

‘Nothing.’ Her face shuttered, but she hauled off her T-shirt and slid under the covers—as if the action might distract him.

It did distract him. A woman like this in his bed? Watching telly? Ha!

He pushed away the thought—or the sensation—and managed to push himself far enough away so there was at last an inch between their bodies.

The temptation to move closer was almost irresistible.

Resist.

‘So tell me why you’re here?’ he asked. If she could hear the strain in his voice he couldn’t help it. He was hauling his body under control and it didn’t leave a lot of energy for small talk.

Mary was an inch away.

No.

‘Here. Island. Why?’ he said, but the look on her face stayed. Defensive.

‘You. Yacht in middle of cyclone. Why?’ she snapped back.

And he thought, Yeah, this lady has shadows.

‘I’m distracting my brother from a failed marriage,’ he told her. He didn’t do personal. The Logan brothers’ private life was their own business but there was something about this woman that told him anything he exposed would go no further.

Armour on his part seemed inappropriate. Somehow it was Mary who seemed wounded. She wasn’t battered like he was, not beaten by rocks and sea, but in some intensely personal way she seemed just as wounded.

So he didn’t do personal but they were sharing a bed in the middle of a cyclone and personal seemed the only way to go.

‘So Jake needed to be distracted?’ she said cautiously.

And he thought, Yep, he’d done it. He’d taken that look off her face. The look that said she was expecting to be slapped.

Smash ’em Mary? Maybe not so tough, then.

‘Jake’s a bit of a target,’ he said. ‘He came back from Afghanistan wounded, and I suspect there are nightmares. He threw himself into acting, his career took off and suddenly there were women everywhere. He found himself with a starlet with dollars in her eyes but he couldn’t see it. She used him to push her career and he was left...’

‘Scarred?’

‘Jake doesn’t do scarred.’

‘How about you?’ she asked. ‘Do you do scarred?’

‘No!’

‘How did you feel when your brother was wounded?’

The question was so unexpected that it left him stranded.

The question took him back to the dust and grit of an Afghan roadside.

They hadn’t even been on duty. They’d been in different battalions and the two groups had met as Ben’s battalion had been redeployed. Ben hadn’t seen his brother for six months.

‘I know a place with fine dining,’ Jake had joked. ‘Practically five-star.’

Yeah, right. Jake always knew the weird and wonderful; he was always pushing the rules. Eating in the army mess didn’t fit with his vision of life.

The army didn’t fit with Jake’s vision of life. It was a good fit for neither of them. They’d joined to get away from their father and their family notoriety, as far as they could.

Fail. ‘Logan Brothers Blasted by Roadside Bomb. Heirs to Logan Fortune Airlifted Out.’ They couldn’t get much more notorious than that.

‘Earth to Ben?’ Mary said. ‘You were saying? How did you feel when Jake was injured?’

‘How do you think I felt?’ He didn’t talk about it, he never had, but suddenly it was all around him and the need to talk was just there. ‘One minute we were walking back to base on an almost deserted road, catching up on home talk. The next moment a bus full of locals pulled up. And then an explosion.’

‘Oh, Ben...’

‘Schoolkids,’ he said, and he was there again, surrounded by terror, death, chaos. ‘They targeted kids for maximum impact. Twelve kids were killed and Jake was collateral damage.’

‘No wonder he has nightmares.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Did he lose consciousness?’

What sort of question was that? What difference did it make?

But it did make a difference. He’d thought, among all that carnage, at least Jake was unaware.

‘Until we reached the field hospital, yes.’

‘You were uninjured?’

‘Minor stuff. Jake was between me and the bus.’

‘Then I’m guessing,’ she said gently, ‘that your nightmares will be worse than his.’

‘I’m fine.’

‘He’s your younger brother.’

‘By twenty minutes.’

‘You’ll still feel responsible.’

‘He’s okay.’ He flinched at the thought of where he might be now. Put it away, fast. ‘He has to be okay. But tell me about you. Why are you here?’

And the question was neatly turned. She had nowhere to go, he thought as he watched her face. He’d answered her questions. He’d let down his guard. Now he was demanding entry to places he instinctively knew she kept protected.

They were two of a kind, he thought, and how he knew it he couldn’t guess. But they kept their secrets well.

He was asking for hers.

‘I’m escaping from my family,’ she said, and she was silent for a while. ‘I’m escaping from my community as well.’