Marion Lennox: Miracle on Kaimotu Island

Dear Reader

New Zealand is known as ‘the shaky isles’ for good reason. Last year an earthquake ripped apart the New Zealand city of Christchurch, leaving the city we’ve all grown to love in ruins.

My friend, fellow author Alison Roberts, was in the centre of it, back working as a paramedic, doing all she could for the city she calls home.

Afterwards we talked about the emotions such an appalling event engenders, how tragedy can so often bring out the best in us. Of course then, as romance writers, our thoughts went to What if?

An earthquake such as Christchurch’s was simply too big, too dreadful for us to contemplate writing about, but what if we took the same event in a closed community—a tiny island where the islanders need to work together, where past emotions are put aside for present need, where men and women are placed in deadly peril and by that peril discover the things that are most important to them?

In life, love can be hidden, pain can be concealed, but when the earth shakes everything is raw and exposed. Humour, courage, love…they’re the cornerstones of our lives, but often it takes tragedy to reveal it. We hope you love reading our Earthquake! duet as our heroes and heroines find happiness amid a world that’s shaken and is now resettling on a different axis.

Marion Lennox

MARION LENNOXis a country girl, born on an Australian dairy farm. She moved on—mostly because the cows just weren’t interested in her stories! Married to a ‘very special doctor’, Marion writes Medical Romances ™, as well as Mills & Boon ®Romances. (She used a different name for each category for a while—if you’re looking for her past Romances search for author Trisha David as well.) She’s now had well over 90 novels accepted for publication.

In her non-writing life Marion cares for kids, cats, dogs, chooks and goldfish. She travels, she fights her rampant garden (she’s losing) and her house dust (she’s lost). Having spun in circles for the first part of her life, she’s now stepped back from her ‘other’ career, which was teaching statistics at her local university. Finally she’s reprioritised her life, figured out what’s important, and discovered the joys of deep baths, romance and chocolate. Preferably all at the same time!

Recent titles by the same author:

THE SURGEON’S DOORSTEP BABY

SYDNEY HARBOUR HOSPITAL: LILY’S SCANDAL † † Sydney Harbour Hospital These books are also available in eBook format from www.millsandboon.co.uk DYNAMITE DOC OR CHRISTMAS DAD? THE DOCTOR AND THE RUNAWAY HEIRESS

† SYDNEY HARBOUR HOSPITAL: LILY’S SCANDAL † † Sydney Harbour Hospital These books are also available in eBook format from www.millsandboon.co.uk DYNAMITE DOC OR CHRISTMAS DAD? THE DOCTOR AND THE RUNAWAY HEIRESS † Sydney Harbour Hospital These books are also available in eBook format from www.millsandboon.co.uk Sydney Harbour Hospital

These books are also available in eBook format from www.millsandboon.co.uk

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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Dedication

To the men and women of Christchurch—

and to one amazing paramedic.

Rosie, you’re awesome.

NO ONE KNEW how old Squid Davies was. The locals of Kaimotu could hardly remember the time he’d given up his fishing licence, much less when he’d been a lad.

Now his constant place was perched on the oil drums behind the wharf, where the wind couldn’t douse a man’s pipe, where the sun hit his sea-leathered face and where he could see every boat that went in and out of Kaimotu harbour. From here he could tell anyone who listened what he knew—and he did know.

‘She’ll be a grand day at sea today, boys,’ he’d say, and the locals would set their sights on the furthest fishing grounds, or ‘She’ll be blowing a gale by midnight,’ and who needed the official forecasters? Kaimotu’s fishermen knew better than to argue. They brought their boats in by dusk.

But now…

‘She’s going to be bigger’n that one that hit when my dad’s dad was a boy,’ Squid intoned in a voice of doom. ‘I know what my grandpa said, and it’s here now. Pohutukawa trees are flowering for the second time. Mutton birds won’t leave their chicks. They should be long gone by now, leaving the chicks to follow, but they won’t leave ’em. And then there’s waves hitting the shore on Beck’s Beach. They don’t come in from the north in April—it’s not natural. I tell you, the earth moved in 1886 and this’ll be bigger.’

It had to be nonsense, the locals told themselves nervously. There’d been one earth tremor two weeks back, enough to crack a bit of plaster, break some crockery, but the seismologists on the mainland, with all the finest technology at their disposal, said a tremor was all there was to it. If ever there was a sizeable earthquake it’d be on the mainland, on the fault line, through New Zealand’s South Island, not here, on an island two hundred miles from New Zealand’s northern most tip.

But: ‘There’s rings round the moon, and even the oystercatchers are keeping inland,’ Squid intoned, and the locals tried to laugh it off but didn’t quite manage it. The few remaining summer tourists made weak excuses to depart, and the island’s new doctor, who was into omens in a big way, decided she didn’t want to live on Kaimotu after all.

‘Will you cut it out?’ Ben McMahon, Kaimotu’s only remaining doctor, squared off with Squid in exasperation. ‘You’ve lost us a decent doctor. You’re spooking the tourists and locals alike. Go back to weather forecasting.’

‘I’m only saying what I’m feelin’,’ Squid said morosely, staring ominously out at the horizon. ‘The big ’un’s coming. Nothing surer.’

PREDICTIONS OF EARTHQUAKES. Hysteria. One lone doctor. Dr Ben McMahon was busy at the best of times and now there weren’t enough hours in the day to see everyone who wanted to be seen. His clinic was chaos.

There was, though, another doctor on the island, even though she’d declared she was no longer practising medicine. Up until now Ben had let Ginny be, but Squid’s doomsday forecasting meant he needed her.

Again?

The last time Ben McMahon had asked anything of Guinevere Koestrel he’d been down on one knee, as serious as a seventeen-year-old boy could be, pouring his teenage heart out to the woman he adored.

And why wouldn’t he adore her? She’d been his friend since she was eight, ever since Ginny’s parents had bought the beautiful island vineyard as their hobby/ holiday farm and Ben’s mother had become Ginny’s part-time nanny. They’d wandered the island together, fished, swum, surfed, fought, defended each other to the death—been best friends.