Marion Lennox - Falling For Her Wounded Hero

She was deeply asleep. Her soft brown curls were splayed out over the pillows and one of her hands was out from under the sheets, stretched as if in supplication.

She hadn’t closed the curtains. In the moonlight her look of appalling fatigue had faded.

She looked at peace.

He stood and looked at her for a long moment, fighting a stupid but almost irresistible urge to stoop over the bed and hold her. Protect her.

It was because she was family, he told himself, but he knew it wasn’t.

Impending tragedy? Not that either, he thought. In his years as a country doctor he’d pretty much seen it all. Experience didn’t make him immune. When this community hurt, he hurt, but he could handle it.

He wasn’t sure he could handle this woman’s hurt.

And it wasn’t being helpful, staring down at her in the moonlight. It might even be construed as creepy. Like father, like son? He gave himself a fast mental shake, backed out and closed the door.

He headed to his study. Tasha had handed her medical file to him diffidently back at the surgery. ‘If you’re going to be our advocate you need to know the facts.’

So he hit the internet, searching firstly for the combination of the problems in Emily’s heart and then on the background of the paediatric cardiologist who had her in his charge.

The information made him feel ill. He was trawling the internet for hope, and he couldn’t find it.

He rang a friend of a friend, a cardiologist in the States. He rang another in London.

There was no joy from either.

In the end he headed back out to the veranda. This was a great old house, slightly ramshackle, built of ancient timber with a corrugated-iron roof and a veranda that ran all the way around. It was settled back from the dunes, overlooking the sea. The house had belonged to his grandparents and then his mother. It was a place of peace but it wasn’t giving him peace now.

This child was what...his half-niece? He’d scarcely known Paul and he’d only just met Tasha. Why should this prognosis be so gut-wrenching?

He couldn’t afford to get emotional, he told himself. Tasha needed him to be clear-headed, an advocate, someone who could stand back and see the situation dispassionately.

Maybe she should find someone else.

There wasn’t anyone else—or maybe there was, but suddenly he knew that even if there was he wouldn’t relinquish the role.

He wanted to be by her side.

Her image flooded back, the pale face on the pillow, the hand stretched out...

It was doing his head in.

It was three in the morning and he had house calls scheduled before morning’s clinic.

‘That’s the first thing to organise,’ he said out loud, trying to find peace in practicality. At least that was easy. Mary and Chris were a husband-and-wife team, two elderly doctors who’d moved to Cray Point in semi-retirement. They’d helped out in an emergency before and he knew they would now.

‘Because this is family,’ he said out loud, and the thought was strange.

The woman sleeping in his guest room, the woman who looked past the point of exhaustion, the woman who was twisting his heart in a way he didn’t understand...was family?

CHAPTER TWO

Eighteen months later...

THE SURF WAS EXTRAORDINARY. It was also dangerous. The wind had changed ten minutes ago, making the sea choppy and unpredictable.

The morning’s swells had enticed every surfer in the district to brave the winter’s chill, but a sudden wind change had caught them by surprise. The wind was now catching the waves as the swell rolled out again, with force that had wave smashing against wave.

Most surfers had opted for safety and headed for shore, but not Tom. There were three teenagers who hadn’t given up yet, three kids he knew well. Alex, James and Rowan were always egging themselves on, pushing past the limits of sensible.

As the wind had changed he’d headed over to them. ‘Time to get out, boys,’ he’d told them. ‘This surf’s pushing into the reef.’

‘This is just getting exciting,’ Alex had jeered. ‘You go home, old man. Leave the good stuff for us.’

They were idiots, but they were kids and he was worried. He’d backed off, staying behind the breakers while he waited for them to see sense.

Maybe he was getting old.

He was thirty-six, which wasn’t so old in the scheme of things. Susie was coming to dinner tonight and Susie was gorgeous. She was thirty-seven, a divorcee with a couple of kids, but she looked and acted a whole lot younger.

If she was here she’d be pushing him to ride the waves, he thought, instead of sitting out here like a wuss.

He glanced at the kids, who were still hoping for a clean wave. Idiots.

Was it safe to leave them? He still had to walk up to the headland before dinner, to take this week’s photograph for Tasha.

And that set him thinking. He’d promised the photographs but were they still needed? Was anything still needed? She didn’t say. He tried to write emails that would connect as a friend, but her responses were curt to the point of non-existent.

Maybe he reminded her of a pain that was almost overwhelming.

Maybe he was doing it for himself.

For Tom had stayed at Tasha’s side for all of Emily’s short life and it still seemed natural to keep tending her grave. In the few short days he’d helped care for the baby girl, she’d twisted her way around his heart.

But if Emily’s death still hurt him, how was Tasha doing? She never said.

Suddenly, lying out behind the breakers, overseeing idiots taking risks, he had a ridiculous urge to take the next plane and find out.

Which was crazy. He was Tasha’s link to her baby, nothing more, and she probably no longer wanted that.

But then he needed to stop thinking of Tasha.

A massive swell was building behind him, and the wind was swirling. He glanced towards the shore and saw the wave that had just broken was surging back from the beach. It was almost at a right angle to the wave coming in.

But the teenagers weren’t looking at the beach. They were staring over their shoulders, waiting for the incoming wave.

‘No!’ He yelled with all the power he could muster. ‘It’ll take you onto the reef. No!’

The two boys nearest heard. Alex and James. They faltered and let the wave power under them.

But Rowan either hadn’t heard or hadn’t wanted to hear. He caught the wave with ease and let its power sweep him forward.

It was too late to yell again, for the outgoing wave was heading inexorably for them all. For Tom and Alex and James it was simply a matter of head down, hold fast, ride through it. For Rowan, though... He was upright on the board when the walls of water smashed together.

The reef was too close. Rowan was under water, caught by his ankle rope, dragged by the sheer force of the waves.

He was on the reef.

Tom put his head down and headed straight for him.

* * *

There was no email.

Every Sunday since she’d returned to England Tom had sent an email, and there wasn’t one now.

At first she wasn’t bothered. Tom was a lone medical practitioner. Things happened. He’d send it later.

He didn’t...and so she went to bed feeling empty.

Which was stupid.

It had been eighteen months since Emily’s death. She’d left Australia as soon as the formalities were over, desperate to put the pain behind her. She hadn’t had the energy to head back to her work with Médicins Sans Frontières. Instead she’d taken a job in an emergency department in London and tried to drown herself in her job.

Mostly it was okay. Mostly she got to the end of the day thinking she could face the next.

And Tom’s emails helped. He sent one every Sunday, short messages with a little local gossip, snippets of his life, his latest love interest, any interesting cases he’d treated. And at the end he always attached a photograph of Emily’s grave.