Wildfire Island Docs: The Man She Could Never Forget / The Nurse Who Stole His Heart / Saving Maddie's Baby / A Sheikh to Capture Her Heart / The Fling That Changed Everything / A Child to Open Their Hearts

‘I’ve already told you, it’s fenced off. Visitors to the resort won’t be bumped along a rocky track—they’ll travel down there by helicopter.’

‘They can’t have fenced the whole place. Not the beach and the reef and that rockfall around the corner of Sunset Beach.’

‘So?’

‘We’ll just have to find our way either around or over this fence and see what’s happening for ourselves. We’ll go down to the beach for a start, and walk to the rockfall then figure it out from there. We’ve swum around it in the past, but it might be low tide. We should at least go and have a look.’

She was twelve again and grinned at him.

‘Come on, Keanu, it will be an adventure, just like old times!’

Keanu studied the beautiful, smiling woman in front of him and knew that while her features might have changed as she’d matured, her determination obviously had not.

He heard his mother’s voice, back when they’d been young, saying look after Caroline—words to a child that were now coming back to haunt him. He’d have to go along on this ridiculous escapade because there was no way he could let her go alone. The very thought of her prowling around down there made his blood run cold, not to mention what might happen if she tried to climb the rockfall on her own.

Apart from which, he had to admit, he would like to know what was going on at the northern end of the island, and he could check out if they’d rebuilt the longhouse and if it would be suitable for Alkiri’s funeral feast—should they get permission to use it.

‘Are you going like that?’ he asked, looking at the short shift dress she wore.

‘Of course,’ she replied. ‘It’s faded so much it almost looks like camouflage, although I didn’t choose it for that—just pulled it out of the cupboard. I’ll slip on some soft dive boots in case we have to swim.’

He hoped like hell they wouldn’t have to swim, because the thought of seeing that shift wet and clinging to her body was already causing a definite stirring in his lower abdomen.

The thought of helping her down the cliff path, taking her elbow on a tricky bit, touching her at all, had been bad enough, but the wet shift image was torturous.

Yet he’d seen Caroline naked often enough, when they’d shucked off their clothes to swim in the lagoon by the house—but that had been boy-girl stuff, kid stuff—and she hadn’t had breasts then …

Dear heaven, was he losing his mind?

He knew his mother had had good reason for leaving the island—Ian Lockhart had made sure of that—but he wondered if she’d also been thinking of what might happen as he and Caroline went through puberty? Feeling as she did about Ian, his having a relationship with Ian’s niece might have been too much …

Caroline was back, soft dive boots—more like ballet slippers—on her feet and a small backpack on her back. She passed a second one to him.

‘A camera with a long-distance lens,’ she announced. ‘Apparently, Ian didn’t know of Dad’s interest in photography or he’d have found them and sold them off as he seems to have done with everything else of value in the house.’

Keanu thought of the beautiful pieces of porcelain Caro’s grandmother had collected—and Caro had loved—and knew without asking that they’d be gone.

Well, he hadn’t been able to save her treasures, but he sure as hell was going to do everything he could to keep her safe in her mad quest to save the island. At least in that quest they’d be partners once again.

He slung the backpack over his shoulder and reached out to take her arm.

‘Let’s go,’ he said. She moved away from his outstretched hand, but undeterred he added, ‘It will be like old times!’

Except all his senses were on full alert, his body buzzing just being near her, so who the hell knew what would happen if she actually swam!

CHAPTER FOUR

THEY WALKED SWIFTLY to the clifftop, muscle memory in their feet remembering the path possibly better than their brains did. Above them, in the thick rainforest, birds were settling down for the night, rustling among the leaves. Then down the rocky track with its views out over the reef to the ocean beyond. The path they took was now overgrown in places as if it had been rarely used since two adventurous children had left the island.

‘How long have you been here?’

Caroline, following him with one hand on his backpack, asked the question.

‘Three weeks.’

The answer came easily. Three weeks of shock as he’d tried to accept the island as it was now and work out what had happened.

‘Have you seen the Blakes?’

Keanu shook his head.

‘They were long gone when I got here. The old man, your grandfather, appointed Peter not long before he died and your father was happy to leave him in charge of the mine when you were born and he had to take Christopher to the mainland for constant medical supervision.’

‘Dad liked the fact that Peter was an engineer as well as having practical knowledge as a miner, and he was as honest as they come.’

‘Probably too honest for Ian,’ Keanu said. ‘He decided he could do the job better and sacked Peter. Then, with Peter gone, Ian announced he’d take over the running of the mine as well as everything else on the island.’

‘No wonder it’s run-down,’ Caro said tartly. ‘Ian couldn’t manage his way out of an open door.’

‘Harsh!’ Keanu said, turning to take Caro’s hand and help her over a particularly tricky bit of the path.

‘Well, you know he couldn’t. The only things he was ever interested in were money and women and gambling, although I imagine the order changed according to the situation.’

And even in the dim light of early evening reflected off the sea she saw the pain on Keanu’s face, the stricken look in his eyes. She remembered something strange that Bessie had said about it being better if Kari kept her distance from Ian, and started to connect the dots …

‘Oh, Keanu, not your mother?’ She reached for his shoulders and pulled him close, wrapping her arms awkwardly around his body. ‘Is that why you left? Why didn’t she tell my father? Or the elders? Or the police? Do something to get him stopped?’

Keanu eased out of her grasp and looked down at her, his face now wiped as blank as she’d ever seen it.

‘He didn’t assault her, if that’s what you’re thinking,’ he said. ‘What he did was worse.’

Bitterness as harsh and hurtful as Caroline had ever heard leached from every word so each one was a separate prick of pain—into her skin, through her flesh and into her heart.

But worse than rape?

What could she say?

Much as she longed to know more, she knew by the cold finality in Keanu’s voice that the conversation was finished.

He had turned and was moving on and although she longed to ask him if that’s why he’d never contacted her, she knew she wouldn’t—couldn’t. In fact, she knew the answer.

Somehow or other, a Lockhart had hurt his mother—an unforgiveable sin.

They stumbled their way down to the beach then, staying in the shadows of the fringing coconut palms, made their way to the rockfall.

The tide was in, the small ripples of water inside the reef splashing up against the rocks.

‘So we swim,’ she said brightly, wishing they could get back to the not easy, but easier atmosphere they’d shared as they’d started down the cliff. ‘But I doubt Dad’s camera’s waterproof so what if I go around first then climb up on the lower rocks on the other side and you pass it to me, then you swim around?’

‘Haven’t changed much, have you? Bossy as ever!’ Keanu muttered, and Caroline hid a smile—the old Keanu was back with her again, if only temporarily.

It was far worse than he’d expected, Keanu realised as Caro, the thin wet shift clinging to every curve of her body, appeared on the other side of the rockfall, reaching up and out for the rucksack.

He’d taken off his shirt but his shorts would be wet as he clambered ashore, so his reaction would be obvious, though it was darker now and maybe she wouldn’t notice …

Well, he could hardly leave her alone on the other side of the rockfall—not with his mother’s order, the ‘take care of Caroline’ one, still echoing in his ears.

He swam, emerging from the lagoon and flapping at his shorts to conceal the evidence of his reaction.

‘We’d better move into the shadows of the palm trees,’ he said, deciding it was time to take charge. ‘And walk quietly. You don’t know who might be around.’

‘What, like fierce Alsatian guard dogs that will rip us to pieces without a second thought?’ Caroline muttered. ‘I wonder if I can still shin up a coconut palm.’

Keanu smiled at the image, although he was thinking more of the darkness the shadows would provide. At least in the shadows beneath the palms he wouldn’t be able to see the way her full breasts were outlined by the wet shift, or the way it was indented into her navel, and raised slightly over the mound of her sex.

He had to stop thinking about wet shifts and sex and concentrate or they’d be caught for sure.

As they approached the first of the bures that had once housed visiting scientists they heard voices, but not close.

‘That sounds like people over beyond the kitchen where the little staff bar used to be,’ he murmured to Caroline.

The helicopter pilots, back when there had been three or four and so they’d had more time off than other staff, had always frequented it, not by creeping down the cliff and swimming around the rockfall but by walking down the track from the airfield—the track now fenced off, guarded and gated.

A lone light shone in the first of the bures, but even from outside Keanu could see the place had had a lot of money spent on it. Stone walls where mud had been, a marble deck with a deep spa bath shaded by thick vegetation.

‘This isn’t accommodation for visiting scientists,’ Caro whispered to him. ‘It’s luxury accommodation for the very wealthy who want absolute privacy and can afford it. See how each bure has been separated from the next by a thick planting of shrubs, most of them scented, like that huge ginger plant over there.’

‘But what of the laboratories and the communal kitchens and dining rooms?’ he argued. ‘Surely people paying the kind of money they’d pay to stay here aren’t all going to eat together?

‘Let’s see.’

Keanu took her hand, ignoring the shock of excitement such an impersonal touch had caused. He led the way towards the kitchen area, although always off the path that, even in the dark, looked freshly raked and would show their footprints.

What had been the kitchen and adjoining open eating area seemed shrouded in scaffolding, until they crept closer and realised the old longhouse had been included in the renovations. It was now a longer, wider building, still open at the sides to catch the breezes, exactly like the meeting halls on the other islands, where feasts were held and elders met to make rules or administer judgment. Only better—fancier …

The kitchens must be behind it, but so was the bar because the noise was louder now.

‘We can’t go farther,’ Keanu said firmly. ‘We’d be caught for sure. We’ll have to rely on Sam to report on the laboratories when he’s able to go back to work in them. And there’s no way we can take photographs, the flash would alert someone for sure.’

He half expected Caro to argue—she’d always been the one more willing to take risks—but to his surprise she turned back into the bushes.

‘Come on, we’ll go back the way we came before someone finds us.’

Caroline smiled to herself, realising Keanu was now as intent on this expedition as she had been.

But holding Keanu’s hand was distracting, and he was pulling her along, far too close to his body, which was beyond distracting. She began to tremble and suspected it wasn’t nerves or cold, although he stopped in a particular dense patch of shadow and pulled her into his arms.

‘You’re cold,’ he whispered, folding her against his body, the action making her tremble even more. His bare skin was warm against hers, his body hard where hers was soft. And her reaction to it was so startling she probably would have done something stupid like kiss him if he hadn’t been rubbing his hands up and down her arms, obviously trying to warm her, although the trembles had nothing to do with the cool night air.

A boulder—it confirmed her suspicions. No matter what weird reactions she was having to this reunion—to his closeness, his body—he was feeling nothing for the woman trembling in his arms.

A rustle in the bushes broke them apart, and although it was only an inquisitive lyrebird, it was enough to remind them of where they were and the inherent danger of being caught there.

But red flags of warning of another kind waved in Caroline’s head as they crept back to the beach. Her reaction to Keanu holding her had to be a rebound thing. Devastated by Steve’s rejection and reunited with her childhood friend, she’d really only wanted comfort.

Right.

So why was her body throbbing with what felt very like desire, not to mention an even deeper regret that the kiss hadn’t happened?

Ridiculous! A relationship between them just couldn’t happen. Not only had her uncle Ian done all he could to blacken the Lockhart name among the islands’ population but he’d—what?—assaulted Keanu’s mother?

Although he’d said worse than assault …

Little wonder Keanu had broken off all contact with her—and probably distrusted anyone who bore the Lockhart name.

At which stage she fell over, making enough noise as she landed in a baby palm tree to awaken the ghosts of the dead.

‘What is wrong with you?’ Keanu growled, hauling her to her feet. ‘You’re blundering along as if you’ve got your eyes shut.’

She could hardly tell him the line her thoughts had been following so she got back onto the edge of the path and resumed walking quietly along it.

‘Tomorrow night we could walk along the fence,’ Keanu said, breaking a silence that had stretched a little tautly between them.

‘I might be on duty. I haven’t met Hettie yet, let alone get a roster from her.’

‘Come to think of it, you probably will be on duty,’ Keanu told her. ‘Anahera does extra day shifts so she can be at home with Hana in the evenings. Besides which we probably wouldn’t see much—the plantings are too thick.’

‘On duty all night?’ Caroline ignored his fence conversation because she was interested in the set-up at the short-staffed hospital, although she’d get back to him ordering her around some other time. They’d been a pair, a partnership, in all the right and wrong things they’d done, and now here he was, giving orders …

‘No, three to midnight. We have a couple of local nurses’ aides who share the night shifts between them.’

‘And who supports them?’

Keanu sighed.

‘It’s a small hospital, Caro, and either Sam or whatever doctor is here is always on call. Hettie, too, for that matter. The staff quarters are just at the back of the hospital and it takes exactly two minutes to get from one of our apartments to the wards.’

‘You’ve timed it?’

They’d reached the beach and paused beneath the palm trees, talking quietly while they checked that no one else was taking a midnight stroll.

‘I’ve done it,’ Keanu told her. ‘More than once. The aides are good, but they know what they can handle and what they can’t. The system could be a lot better but it works.’

It didn’t seem right to Caroline that Hettie was the nurse always on call, but until she knew more about the hospital, there was nothing she could do.

She was concentrating on hospital staffing issues because Keanu’s use of her childhood name—his casual use of ‘Caro’—had started up the disturbances the warming hug had caused.

‘It seems quiet, let’s go,’ she said, and led the way across the sand to the shadow of the rockfall.

To Keanu’s relief the tide had gone out far enough for them to wade around the rocks. Given the effect that holding her had had on his body, he didn’t think he could handle seeing the wet shift again.

He had no idea why Caro had returned to the island, certain her coming to help because she’d heard it was in trouble wasn’t the whole story.

What had happened to that sleazy-looking guy called Steve who was always with her in the society pictures?

Had he dumped her?

Keanu shook his head, angry with himself for even thinking about Caroline’s private life, but angrier for feeling sorry for her. It was bad enough he’d become involved in tonight’s escapade, but to have held Caro in his arms, felt her body pressed to his …

He must have been moonstruck!

They were scaling the rocky cliff path now and he paused to look around for a moon but failed to find one.

‘Are you grunting?’ Caro asked. ‘I know it’s steep but I thought you’d be fitter than that.’

‘I was not grunting,’ he told her, voice as cold as he could make it.

‘Wild pigs, then,’ Carol said cheerfully, although he knew she didn’t for a minute believe it.

Though would she have believed he’d been grunting at his own stupid thoughts?

‘Bright lights ahead,’ the woman he shouldn’t have held in his arms said cheerfully, and he locked away the past and moved himself swiftly into the present.

Bright lights indeed.

‘The helicopter must have brought in a patient from an outer island,’ he said, lengthening his stride so he passed Caro as he hurried towards the scene of the action.

Hettie had one end of the stretcher they were unloading, Jack, the pilot, holding the other end. He could see Manu, their one remaining hospital orderly, running towards the airstrip, Sam not far behind him.

‘Tropical ulcer gone bad,’ Hettie said as Manu took over her end of the stretcher and Sam and Keanu arrived. ‘I’m actually dubious about it. I think it might be worse than that.’

‘A Buruli ulcer?’ Sam queried, and Hettie shrugged.

‘We’ll need to test it.’

She spoke quietly but Keanu knew they were all feeling tension from the words she’d spoken. Tropical ulcers were common enough and in many cases very difficult to treat, but the Buruli was a whole other species, and could lead to bone involvement and permanent disability.

‘Is it common here?’

He’d forgotten about Caro but she was right behind him, so close that when he swung around to answer her his arm brushed against her breast.

And restarted all the thoughts he was sure he’d locked away.

‘Not as common as in some islands in the west Pacific,’ he told her, then he caught up with Hettie, who was following the stretcher up the slight incline to the hospital.

‘I’ve got a new recruit for you here,’ he said. ‘Sam’s probably told you Maddie and the FIFO nurse weren’t coming in today, but Caroline dropped from the skies yesterday and she tells us she’s a nurse.’

He ignored the glower Caro shot at him as she stepped past him to introduce herself to Hettie.

‘Caroline Lockhart,’ she said, holding out her hand, while Keanu watched the meeting with some trepidation.

‘Of the hilltop mansion Lockharts?’ Hettie demanded, ignoring the proffered hand.

‘Yes, and proud of it,’ Caro said quietly but firmly. ‘And I’d rather be judged by my work than the house I live in.’

Hettie pushed errant bits of hair off her forehead and sighed.

‘Fair call,’ she said softly, and this time, to Keanu’s relief, she held out her hand. ‘It’s just been too long a day trying to work out how to replace a resident clinic nurse on Raiki Island.’

‘What happened to her?’ Caroline asked, and Keanu knew the answer was going to hurt her.

‘Apparently she went off with your uncle Ian—she and all the drugs.’

‘She what?’ Caroline swung towards Keanu. ‘Does my father know all that’s been going on? Know his brother’s stooped so low as to rob an island of their drugs, not to mention their nurse?’

‘It was only discovered yesterday.’ Hettie answered for him, and her voice was gentle. ‘And as Ian’s gone off in his yacht to who knows where, there’s very little your father or anyone else can do about it.’

Keanu read the pain on Caro’s face as she realised exactly why the Lockhart name was mud. The harm Ian had done reached out across all island life and all the islanders.

Following the little procession up to the hospital, Keanu felt deeply sorry for her, sorry for the pain the slights against her family must be causing her.

But the Caro he’d known would have pushed away any offer of comfort and tossed her head to deny any pain.

He glanced towards her and saw her chin rise.

This Caro wasn’t so different. She’d take them all on and prove all Lockharts weren’t tarred with the same brush.

And seeing that chin tilt—reading it—his heart cramped just a little at the sight of it. The woman she’d become wasn’t so different from his Caro after all.

‘A Buruli ulcer?’

Caroline had caught up with him so the question came from his right shoulder.

He glanced towards her and even in the poor light on the track he could see the remnants of her hurt.

He wanted to put his arm around her shoulders and pull her close. Comfort her as he had when she’d been a child, hurt or lonely or bewildered by her motherless, and usually fatherless, situation.

But with all the new disturbances she’d caused in his body, giving her a comforting hug was no longer an option.

Professional colleagues, that’s all they were.

‘It’s not that common but it’s a nasty thing if left untended, as this one may have been. Often it starts as a small nodule, hardly bigger than a mosquito bite, so the patient just ignores it, but the infection can lead to a bigger ulcer forming, destroying skin and tissue. If it’s left too long there can be bone involvement, even loss of a limb.’

‘Sounds like a similar infection to leprosy.’ She was frowning now, no doubt thinking back to her years of study.

‘Spot on,’ he told her. ‘The bacterium causing it is related to both the leprosy and tuberculosis bacteria.’

‘Can you test for it here or do you have to send swabs to the mainland? Wouldn’t that take days?’

Hettie answered for him.

‘We’re fortunate in that Sam is an avid bacteriologist in whatever spare time he has. Although the research station’s closed at the moment, he still loves poking around in the little lab we have at the hospital and breeding who knows what in Petri dishes. If anyone can test it, he can.’

Caroline realised she’d have to rethink the laid-back, handsome doctor who ran the hospital. He obviously had hidden depths because even the simplest of biological tests was painstaking work.

They’d reached the hospital and, unsure of her part in whatever lay ahead, she followed the troop inside.

The patient was young, maybe just reaching teenage years, from French Island, so called, Caroline knew, because a French square-rigged sailing vessel had once foundered there, the sailors staying on, intermarrying with the locals, until rescued many years later.

Caroline concentrated on the now instead of on the past. The boy, Raoul—French names still being common—had been lifted onto an examination table, and Sam, assisted by one of the nurses’ aides who had been waiting at the hospital, was carefully removing the light dressing Hettie had used to cover the wound.

Caroline swallowed a gasp. This was no small nodule like a mosquito bite but a full-blown leg ulcer, the edges a mess of tattered skin and deeper down, tender, infected flesh.

‘I’m going to take a swab,’ Sam was saying to the patient, ‘but even before I test it, I’m going to start you on antibiotics.’

‘It generally responds well to a combination of rifampicin and streptomycin,’ Keanu explained quietly. ‘If that doesn’t work, there are other combinations of drugs we can use, usually with the rifampicin. The other combinations haven’t been fully tested but the options are there.’