Nikki Logan - First Love, Second Chance - Friends to Forever / Second Chance with the Rebel / It Started with a Crush...

‘Since when did you become a whale rescuer?’

Not what he was expecting. And why did she sound as rattled as he was? She had the upper hand here. It surprised him enough to answer. ‘It’s part of life on the south coast. And I’m the closest trained landholder.’

‘You train for this?’

‘Through experience.’

‘How many times have you done it?’

‘Five. Two last year. This stretch of coast is notorious for it.’

‘Why here, particularly?’

Small talk killed him. Especially with the one person he’d never needed it with. This was what they were now? Maybe never seeing her again was the better option. He shrugged. ‘No one knows.’

Silence fell, thick and muddy. He slowed the vehicle and yanked the steering wheel hard to the right. They bumped off the asphalt onto a badly graded limestone track and headed towards the massive expanse of ocean. The crescent bay opened out before them like an electric-blue half-moon.

‘How long before we get there?’ she asked, voice tight.

He could practically feel her brain turning over. Her heart thumping. It vibrated off her and slammed straight into the waves of tension coming off him. ‘About one minute longer than you said you needed.’

She saw his sideways glance. Interpreted it correctly. ‘I needed to see you. To explain.’ She cleared her throat. ‘To apologise.’

Apologise? ‘For what?’

Her mouth thinned. ‘Marc …’

‘Friendships end, Beth. It happens.’ He used the casual shrug to shake free some of his tension.

Her eyes flared with confusion but then they hardened and blazed with determination he’d never seen from her. Adult Beth had some balls, then. ‘Nonetheless, I’ve come a long way to see you. I’d like to say what I need to say …’

The Land Cruiser bumped up off the track onto the small dunes and Marc manoeuvred them as close to the edge as he safely could. The white crescent shore stretched out before them, meeting the blue of the Southern Ocean. Next stop, Antarctica. Down on the sand, about twenty feet apart, two large, dark shapes rolled and buffeted in the shallows.

Two whales. Marc swore under his breath.

‘Your explanations will have to wait, Beth. I have work to do.’

BETH took one look at the scene unfolding on the beach and pushed herself into gear. It had been two years; her needs could wait a little longer. Those animals couldn’t.

Marc grabbed his satellite phone and started dialling even as he ran to the back of his vehicle, peeling off his clothes as he went. By the time he had his T-shirt and jeans off, he’d communicated their location and the number of stranded whales to someone at the Shire and asked them to rally assistance.

Beth did her best to get busy lifting items out of the car to avoid staring at him, open-mouthed. Once-gangly Marc Duncannon had spent some time in the gym, apparently. The weights section. Her belly flipped on itself in a most unfamiliar way.

He tossed the disconnected phone into the back of the vehicle and stepped into his wetsuit, hauling it up over muscular legs and then flexing his broad back as he shrugged it up over his shoulders and arms. As soon as it was secure, he snared up the first aid kit and a small bag of supplies and thrust the phone into it. He shoved a snatch-strap, rope and every ockie-strap he could rummage up in behind it. Then he threw his T-shirt, a hooded trainer and an old towel at Beth, saying, ‘You’re going to need this,’ and was off, down the dunes, racing towards the water.

Beth did her best to keep up. She stumbled several times in the thick sand and paused to kick off her unsuitable shoes, losing more ground on Marc. But she didn’t need to be near him to know what was going on; his stiff body language was as clear as a neon sign as he ran down the shore, close to the first whale.

The sleek, marble-skinned animal was already dead.

An awful sorrow washed over her: that she might have delayed Marc for the precious minutes that counted. That this enormous creature was already gull-food because of her.

Marc paused briefly, those magnificent shoulders drooping slightly, but then he kicked on, further down the beach to where the second body rolled in time with the surf. As he got closer, he slowed and took a wide approach, lifting his hands high in the air in warning. Beth instantly slowed.

It was alive.

By the time she caught up with him, he was on his second wide pass of the beleaguered mammal. It lay partially submerged in the quicksand where earth met ocean, every second wave high enough to wash gently over its lower half. But exposed parts of its upper body were already dangerously dry. Compared to the liquid mercury-looking surface of wet whale skin, the dry parts looked like the handbag she’d left in her hire car at Marc’s farm.

That couldn’t be good.

‘Put the sweatshirt on, Beth.’ He didn’t bother with a please and she didn’t expect niceties right now. But it didn’t mean she was prepared to be dictated to. Not any more.

‘It’s thirty-three degrees. I’ll boil.’

‘Better that than burn to a crisp. We’re going to be out here for some time.’ He moved to her side and relieved her of his T-shirt and the towel. Then he zipped up the wetsuit more fully over his chest, fastened the neck strap and tugged a cap down hard over his shaggy hair. ‘And you’re about to get wet. You’ll thank me in two hours.’

‘Two hours?’ They’d be out in the water for a couple of hours, with an injured dinosaur? Alone? But Marc wasn’t worried; he ran headlong into the water between the dead whale and the live one and soaked the towel and his shirt.

His five-times experience certainly showed.

By the time Beth had wriggled herself into Marc’s sweatshirt and pulled up the hood for some shade, he was already beside the dangerous giant. A false killer whale, Marc told her. The fact it was not a true killer whale didn’t fill her with any confidence. It was still big enough to send them both flying with a toss of its wishbone tail, which bore an arrow-head-shaped scar. One enormous dark eye rolled wildly at his approach. Marc slowed and started speaking softly. Steadily. Random words that meant nothing.

The eye wasn’t fooled for a minute.

But when Marc gently laid the saturated towel onto its parched skin, the eye rolled fully shut and the beast let off a mighty groan that vibrated the sand beneath Beth’s feet. Her heart squeezed. It wasn’t pain, it was sheer relief. She sprinted forward and met Marc in the water, hoping that he’d think the tears in her eyes were from the glare coming off the ocean.

‘Around the other side,’ he ordered brusquely, glancing up as she wiped a stray one away. ‘Stay up-beach from that ventral fin; it’s pure muscle.’

‘The what fin …?’

‘Underneath.’ He threw the sodden T-shirt her way and she just caught it. ‘The fin closest to her belly.’

The whale barely moved as they took it in turns draping the wet fabric over its parched skin. Within fifteen minutes, Beth’s wrists ached from wringing out the water to run down the whale’s hide and she moved to a slosh-and-drag technique instead. Brutal on the back, but the most effective way of keeping the poor animal wet. A fierce concentration blazed in Marc’s eyes, a flush of exertion highlighting the familiar ridge of his cheekbone. Familiar yet unfamiliar.

Her mind bubbled with memories of a younger Marc studying. Or whipping her butt at chess. Or listening to her dramas. That same focus. That same intensity. No question that some parts of him hadn’t changed.

Even if the rest had.

Neither of them spoke, their focus centred on the whale. Beth’s reason for coming to the south coast flitted entirely out of her head, dwarfed in significance compared to the life and death battle going on in the shallows of Holly’s Bay.