Marion Lennox - A Child To Open Their Hearts

He couldn’t.

She was dead. Let her go.

He couldn’t do that, either. A part of him was still standing at his son’s gravesite.

A part of him was remembering burying his wife, all those years ago.

Somewhere, someone loved this woman. To not have a chance to say goodbye... It would have killed him.

Holding on to her might kill him. He couldn’t keep fighting for both of them.

Despite the strength of the rip, the water he was in was relatively calm. He was fighting to get across the current but he paused for a moment in his fight to get a bearing. To see...

And what he saw made him rethink everything. The woman he’d given the child to still held him, but they were drifting fast, so fast they’d miss the atoll. They were being pulled to the open sea.

The woman didn’t seem to be panicking. She had the child in the classic lifesaver hold. She seemed to know her stuff, but she wasn’t strong enough. In minutes she’d be past the atoll and she’d be gone.

A woman and a child, struggling for life.

A woman in his arms, for whom life was over.

Triage. Blessedly it slammed back. For just a moment he was a junior doctor again in an emergency room, faced with the decision of which patient to treat first.

No choice.

He gave himself a fraction of a second, a moment where he tugged the woman’s body around and faced her. He memorised everything about her so he could describe her, and then, in an aching, tearing gesture that seemed to rip something deep inside, he touched her face. It was a gesture of blessing, a gesture of farewell.

It was all he could do.

He let her go.

* * *

She’d never reach it. Her legs simply weren’t strong enough to kick against the current.

She was so near and yet so far. She was being pulled within thirty yards of the atoll and yet she didn’t have the strength to fight.

If she was swept out... If Max didn’t make it... How long before they could expect help?

The child in her arms twisted unexpectedly and she almost lost him. She fought for a stronger hold but suddenly he was fighting her.

‘Joni, hush. Joni, stay still...’

But he wasn’t listening, wasn’t hearing. Who knew what he was thinking?

She was being swept...

And then, blessedly, she was being grabbed herself by the shoulders from behind. She was being held with the swift, sure strength of someone who’d been trained, who knew how to gain control.

Max?

‘Let me take him.’ It was an order, a curt command that brooked no opposition. ‘Get yourself to the atoll.’

‘You can’t.’

‘You’re done,’ he said, and she knew she was.

‘S-Sefina?’

‘She’s dead. We can’t do anything for her. Go. I’m right behind you.’

And Joni was taken from her arms.

Relieving her of her load should have made her lighter. Free. Instead, stupidly, she wanted to sink. She hadn’t known how exhausted she was until the load had been lifted.

‘Swim,’ Max yelled. ‘We haven’t done this for nothing. Swim, damn you, now.’

She swam.

* * *

He could do this. He would do this.

Too many deaths...

It was three short weeks since he’d buried his son. The waste was all around him, and the anger.

Maybe it was Christopher who gave him strength. Who knew?

‘Keep still,’ he growled, as the little boy struggled. There was no time for reassurance. No time for comfort. But it seemed to work.

The little boy subsided. His body seemed to go limp but he reached up and tucked a fist against Max’s throat. As if checking his pulse?

‘Yeah, I’m alive,’ Max muttered grimly, as he started kicking again against the rip. ‘And so are you. Let’s keep it that way.’

* * *

Rocks. The atoll was tiny but she’d made it. The last few yards across the rip had taken every ounce of her strength, but she’d done it.

She’d had to do it. If Max and Joni were swept out, someone had to raise the alarm.

She wasn’t in any position to raise any alarm right now. It was as much as she could do to climb onto the rocks.

She knew this place. She’d swum out here in good weather. She knew the footholds but her legs didn’t want to work. They’d turned to jelly, but somehow she made them push her up the few short steps to the relatively flat rock that formed the atoll’s tiny plateau.

Then she sank to her knees.

She wanted—quite badly—to be sick, but she fought it down with a fierceness born of desperation. How many times in an emergency room had she felt this same appalling gut-wrench, at waste, at loss of life, at life-changing injuries? But her training had taught her not to faint, not to throw up, until after a crisis was past. Until she wasn’t needed.

There was a crisis now, but what could she do? She wasn’t in an emergency room. She wasn’t being a professional.

She was sitting on a tiny rocky outcrop, while out there a sailor fought for a toddler’s life.

Was he Max Lockhart?

More importantly, desperately more importantly, where was he? She hadn’t been able to look back while she’d fought to get here, but now...

Max... Joni...

She was a strong swimmer but she hadn’t been able to fight the rip.

Please... She was saying it over and over, pleading with whomever was prepared to listen. For Joni. For the unknown guy who was risking his life...

Was he Max? Father of Caroline? Owner of this entire island?

Max Lockhart, come home to claim his rightful heritage?

Max Lockhart, risking his life to save one of the islanders who scorned him?

So much pain...

If he died now, how could she explain it to Caroline? For the last three days, when the cyclone had veered savagely and unexpectedly across the path of any boat making its way here from Cairns, Hettie’s fellow nurse had lost contact with her father. She’d been going crazy.

How could she tell her he’d been so near, and was now lost? With the child?

Or not. She’d been staring east, thinking that, if anything, he’d be riding the rip, but suddenly she saw him. He was south of the atoll. He must have been swept past but somehow managed to get himself out of the rip’s pull. Now he was stroking the last few yards to the rocks.

He still had Joni.

She’d been out of the water now for five minutes. She had her breath back. Blessedly, she could help. She clambered down over the rocks, heading out into the shallows, reaching for Joni.

She had him. They had him.

Safe?

CHAPTER TWO

FOR A WHILE they were too exhausted to speak. They were too exhausted to do anything but lie on the rocks, Joni somehow safe between them.

The little boy was silent, passive...past shock? Maybe she was, too, and as she looked at Max collapsed beside them she thought, That makes three.

‘S-Sefina,’ she whispered.

‘Neck,’ he managed, and it was enough to tell her what she needed to know.

Oh, God, she should have...

Should have what? Cradled Sefina yesterday as she was cradling Joni now?

Yes, if that’s what it would have taken.

If this had happened at a normal time... But it hadn’t. Sefina had been admitted into hospital, bashed almost to the point of death, while the cyclone had been building. With the cyclone bearing down on them Hettie hadn’t had time to do more than tend to the girl’s physical needs.

Afterwards, when there’d been time to take stock and question her, Keanu, the island doctor on duty, had contacted the police. ‘I want her husband brought in. With the extent of these injuries it’s lucky he didn’t kill her.’

It’s lucky he didn’t kill her...

She remembered Keanu’s words and her breath caught on a sob.

Hettie de Lacey was a professional. She didn’t cry. She held herself to herself. She coped with any type of trauma her job threw at her.