Falling for His Island Nurse
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Marion Lennox
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CHAPTER ONE
‘DOG.’
It was the first word Noah had said since they’d boarded the ferry. That wasn’t unusual—kids with Down’s syndrome were often slow to speak. Four-year-old Noah’s big dark eyes seemed to take everything in, but he seldom chatted.
And today there was so much to take in. Two days ago Dr Angus Knox and his son Noah had flown to the Birding Isles to start what Angus hoped would be a new and peaceful life. Angus’s new job was to be that of family doctor on Shearwater Island, one of the six islands that made up the Birding group.
They’d come nine months ago, at Christmas, for Angus to talk to the medical staff at the central Gannet Island hospital about possible employment, but there’d been divorce and custody issues to sort before they could come permanently. Now they’d flown here to stay. There’d been two nights on Gannet first, getting to know the regional set-up. Then the nurse who ran Shearwater’s tiny clinic—Freya Mayberry—had come to collect them. They were now on the ferry heading to their new home.
Freya was a nurse practitioner, extra training allowing her to perform some of the emergency functions usually handled by doctors. Angus had seen her credentials and been impressed, but on a personal level she seemed almost as uncommunicative as Noah.
His first impression had been that she was cute. Yeah, that was inappropriate, but there it was. The résumé he’d seen had her age at twenty-seven, but apart from her slightly shadowed eyes she didn’t look that old. She was five feet two or so, wiry and tanned. Her burnt copper hair was cropped into an elfin haircut, which accentuated wide green eyes, neatly spaced. Her nose was liberally freckled. As a nurse travelling to Gannet to meet the doctor she’d be working with from now on, she might have been expected to dress relatively professionally, but she’d obviously not read that manual. She was wearing denim shorts, a sleeveless shirt tied at the waist, and flip-flops.
So she didn’t look professional, but in her conversation she was nothing but. Her answers to his questions were brief, their conversation all about work and very much one way.
Why? Did she resent him coming? That might be a worry, as it seemed they’d be sharing a house for the foreseeable future.
Then... ‘Dog,’ Noah said again, and pointed, and Angus stopped thinking about the cute but curt nurse and followed the direction of Noah’s finger.
To what looked like some floating debris, a dark brown mass.
They were currently sitting on a bench on the ferry’s back deck—the sole passengers of the twenty-person boat. It was a special ferry-run, organised to take just the three passengers plus medical equipment. Now there’d be a doctor on the island, the aim was to equip a tiny hospital. Angus had been told a hall was being converted, and the equipment had arrived almost as he had.
So on board were desks, chairs, a couple of hospital beds, and boxes and boxes of basic equipment. The plan was that he and Freya could now take care of the minor stuff themselves, or do basic emergency work before evacuation to the bigger medical centre on Gannet Island. Or, in worst-case scenarios, evacuation to Sydney.
This meant that right now they were seated behind the mass of boxes loaded onto the back deck. The ferry-boat captain and the boat hand were upfront.
His little son was still staring intently out to the side, to that brown blob floating in the water.
Was it a dog?
‘It’s some rubbish, Noah,’ Angus told him. It looked like a floating bit of nothing. ‘Or maybe seaweed.’
But the woman beside him was suddenly on her feet, shading her eyes.
‘No.’ It was a curt snap. ‘He’s right. It just moved. Gareth!’ She was kicking off her flip-flops, yelling to the ferry skipper. ‘I’m going overboard,’ she announced. ‘Haul to and wait.’
And before Angus could begin to react, she’d climbed onto her seat, taken a fleeting moment to check out the floating blob again—and dived overboard.
It was done so fast they were all left stunned. The skipper, Gareth, a bearded guy in his forties, swore and shoved the engine into neutral. The boat hand, a kid of about seventeen, gave a whoop of excitement and leaped to the roof of the cabin to see.
‘Get to the rear and put down the swim platform,’ Gareth snapped at him, but Angus was already on it.
He knew boats. He’d grown up with them on Sydney harbour. His parents had had a luxury cruiser they’d used for entertainment. The platform at the back of his parents’ boat was set up to be lowered so guests could swim off the boat and re-board with ease.
The ferry’s platform looked as if it was used more to help load cargo than to swim from—maybe the flat-bottom boat could be backed into a beach? It was easy enough to slip the catch and hit the winch, all the while watching the slip of a girl streak across the bay towards the...dog?
He was yet to be convinced it was one. She could be risking her life for a piece of refuse.
Actually she wasn’t exactly risking her life, he conceded. They were at the entrance to the wide bay that led to Shearwater Harbour. The water was deep and clear, and it wasn’t so rough that an experienced swimmer couldn’t cope.
And she was an experienced swimmer. There was no doubting that, he thought, as he watched her streamlined figure slice through the swell towards her goal.
Noah was clutching his hand, tight, fearful. ‘Dog,’ he said again, and Angus swung him up in his arms so he could see.
But was that wise? Maybe he should take him down into the cabin, he thought. If indeed it was a dog, there was every chance that it was already dead. Dragging the body of a dead dog aboard would not be pretty.
She’d said she’d seen it move. That could be wave action. It could...heaven help them...be something feeding on a carcass.
A shark?
He should get Noah out of here.
He couldn’t take his eyes off her.
Girl and boat were floating further apart.
‘Get closer,’ he found himself yelling, and the ferry captain stopped staring in bemusement and turned back to his controls. There was another sharp command to the boat hand, which Angus didn’t hear—he was too focussed on what was happening in the water.
‘Get dog,’ Noah whispered, each syllable an effort, and he hugged him tighter.
‘We don’t know yet,’ he told him. ‘It might not be a dog.’
For Noah’s sake he should retreat, but he couldn’t tear his eyes from what was going on. Part of him wanted to be overboard as well, helping her, but there was no one to hold Noah. He could only watch.
But what to tell Noah if...?
‘She’s got it.’ He could see it for himself, but Gareth’s shout confirmed it. ‘It is a dog.’ The skipper slipped the boat into low gear, heading towards them, but he went slowly, slightly off course.
He wouldn’t want the wash, or even the propeller, hitting them.
The dog was alive. As Angus watched, Freya touched it, and he saw the mass of floating fur twist and struggle. And claw desperately towards its rescuer.
Once upon a time, Angus had had a golden retriever. Buddy had been a fantastic teenage companion, but she’d been loyal to the point of stupidity. When Angus went surfing with his mates, Buddy was fully convinced he’d drown, and if he didn’t have her secured, she’d race into the shallows to save him.
And when she reached him she’d cling. The first time it had happened he’d been twelve years old, skinny and slight, and Buddy was big. He’d been pushed under the water over and over again. Luckily he’d had mates who’d swum to help, but he still remembered the sensation of being weighed down by the lump of panicking dog.
He saw what was happening now and the memory flooded back. The dog was fighting to grip onto Freya. It’d be terrified. Desperate.
The boat hand had clambered down to the back of the boat, a bit late to let down the platform. He was standing gaping at the girl in the water. They were twenty metres or so away, and Gareth had cut the engine.
Angus had been introduced to the deck hand when they’d boarded. Mike was a big, gentle lad who had been gruffly nice to Noah, and Angus blessed him for it now.
‘Noah, I need to help the lady with the dog,’ he told him. ‘Will you stay with Mike?’ And before either of them could protest—this was too important for protests—he thrust Noah into Mike’s arms, kicked off his shoes and pants.
Fast.
‘You a decent swimmer, Doc?’ the skipper yelled back to Angus. He was still behind the wheel, watching Freya and the dog, but also aware of what was going on behind him.
‘Yes.’ No room for false modesty.
‘Then go. Mike, chuck the lifebuoys over the side. They’re on ropes. Drag one with you, Doc. Get Freya holding one of them and we’ll take over.’
‘Done,’ he snapped, and then he was over the side, grabbing the first lifebuoy Mike threw and towing it out to whatever was waiting for him.
She hadn’t thought this through.
She’d expected a half-dead dog, and that was what she had. It had been totally limp as she approached, apart from its nose, which surfaced every moment or so to gulp in air. It looked as if it was at the end of its strength—maybe even the end of its life.
It was mostly submerged, a mass of sodden black and brown fur. If Noah hadn’t pointed, if she hadn’t seen that faint movement, she would have taken it for some floating seaweed.
She’d acted on instinct, but if she’d stopped to think she’d have said she was expecting to grab a collar or a chunk of fur and tow it back to the boat. Which would have been easy. As an island kid she’d spent her childhood in and out of the water. Someone had even taught her the basics of saving someone from drowning, how to grab a frantic swimmer.
Not a frantic dog.
And that was an omission, because the moment she touched it, the dog reacted with a surge of adrenalin so fierce she was almost subsumed.
Who knew how long it had been in the water? Who knew how close to death it was? Regardless, one touch and the dog reacted as if it were suddenly in reach of dry land. It grabbed and clawed, and it did so with every ounce of strength left in its body.
This was a big dog, shaggy, huge. She’d only seen maybe a tenth of it above water, like the tip of an iceberg. Two massive, clawed paws found purchase on her shoulders and pushed her under.
She grabbed its feet, trying to break the grip. She did for a moment, managing to surface, and then the dog lunged again.
‘No!’ She screamed it but the dog was too far gone to register. Maybe if she’d been this animal she’d have lunged at anything within reach as well. She fought to back away, but the dog surged again.
And then stopped, mid surge. Caught from behind.
The dog was trying to twist, still trying to reach her, but it was being pulled further back.
A lifebuoy was thrust sideways across at her.
‘Grab!’ It was the guy from the boat. The new doctor. Angus. She hadn’t seen him come, but he was holding the dog back, fighting to restrain him, throwing curt orders at her.
She grabbed the lifebuoy. The dog couldn’t reach her. She took three gulping breaths and the panic eased.
He was still holding the dog from behind, gripping like a vice. The dog had its head above water. Its paws were still flailing but weakly in front of him. There was nothing there to cling to.
‘Are you okay?’ he demanded.
‘F-fine.’ Sort of.
How to help? But even as she thought it, her orders came, firm and sure. He’d know that she’d been held under, but he’d figure by the strength of her response, maybe by the sight of her initial swim, that she could still help. ‘Hold your buoy and grab me another,’ he instructed. ‘Mike’s thrown three into the water.’
She looked around, wildly.
‘To your left. Five metres. Go.’ His voice was harsh, loud, totally domineering.
She cast one last glance at the guy practically hidden behind the dog—and she went.
In the end it was almost straightforward. She reached the second roped lifebuoy and swam sidestroke back to man and dog, hauling the buoys beside her. ‘Come from behind me,’ he told her as she neared, and she did.
He grabbed the second buoy and swung it in front of the dog. Instinctively it clawed and clung, as if it was trying to haul itself onto the solid ring.
‘Now you grab my shirt from behind and hold tight,’ he told her. ‘Don’t let go of your lifebuoy. We need the flotation and we need it as backup.’
She was beyond arguing. She grabbed a handful of his shirt and clung.
They were a train. Dog, then Angus, then Freya.
Freya had no use for domineering men—well, not usually. Right now he was welcome to domineer all he liked.
‘Pull us in with the rope from the buoy the dog’s on,’ Angus yelled at the ferry skipper, and finally, clinging to Angus and to her buoy, Freya had a chance to see the overall picture.
Back on the ferry, the skipper had abandoned the wheel. The ferry was drifting, not an immediate risk when they were in the relatively calm waters of the wide bay entrance. The boat hand was holding Noah, both open-mouthed, shocked. The skipper was clambering down to the platform, to carefully, slowly, haul in the buoys.
Amazingly the plan made sense. If the dog let go of the buoy it was holding, Freya was clinging to Angus and she had the extra lifebuoy. Gareth could just swap the lines to pull them in. This way though, the dog’s flailing claws were still attached and chances were it would keep cling. All she had to do was hold Angus, and their little procession would be hauled aboard.
When she’d read about this doctor on social media, she’d suspected he might be a waste of space. Maybe she needed to rethink?
What a change. Two minutes ago the dog had been making every effort to drown her and she was fighting for her life. Now she was thinking about the merits of Shearwater Island’s new doctor? Gareth was pulling them in slowly—he’d realise jerking the line might have the dog release its hold—so she had time to consider.
Also to feel.
She had one arm hooked about the lifebuoy but her hands were linked under his arms, holding him close. The sodden cotton of his shirt didn’t begin to disguise his toned muscles, the breadth of his shoulders—the fact that he was very, very male.
She felt weird. Rescued. Out of control.
But out of control was something Freya Mayberry had no intention of feeling. It broke every rule in her book. And especially for this guy?
When she’d been told Shearwater Island was finally about to get a doctor she’d checked him out online. Of course she had, and what she’d found had left her appalled.
She’d found his basic qualifications, and his years of working as a family doctor in one of Sydney’s most prestigious harbourside suburbs. But it seemed as if he hadn’t been working very hard. She’d looked up his clinic hours. Five half days a week.
She’d met many part-time doctors during training, doctors who put other interests before their medicine. Some of them had solid reasons, but in this case social media said otherwise.
He personally hadn’t seemed to bother with social media much, but he’d been linked over and over to the postings of his wife. She’d seen society event after society event. Pictures of harbourside parties, events on luxury yachts on the harbour itself.
She’d seen a couple of shots of a child in the background, his face blurred, as many protective parents displayed their kids. She’d seen a gorgeous wife.
She knew judging someone by social media was a dangerous pastime, but this guy was going to be so important to her life. She’d followed the trail with increasing dismay.
Something had happened to the marriage, she assumed. This guy would be coming here to save face. Or regroup? Something.
And she was clinging to him.
‘I can let go if I want to,’ she muttered to herself.
‘Don’t you dare,’ Angus muttered back, and to her horror she realised she’d said the words aloud. ‘Just keep on holding on, lady.’
‘I’m not a lady.’
‘You feel like one to me.’ To her astonishment she heard a note of laughter in his voice. She gasped. She was holding him too tight. Her breasts were squashed against his back. Her shirt was too thin and so was his. Of all the...
‘We’re getting close. Just keep hanging on,’ Angus told her, and she had to shove away inappropriate thoughts and focus.
Finally they reached the platform, and Gareth leaned down and grabbed the dog’s collar. Angus heaved from behind and the dog slithered upward, collapsing in a tangled heap of sodden fur.
‘Help Freya,’ Angus told Gareth. He swung around in the water and grabbed her, propelling her forward.
‘I can...’
‘I know you can, but you don’t have to,’ he said, and then Gareth was leaning down to grasp her hands and Angus was behind her pushing her up, and somehow she was out of the water as well.
‘Sit,’ Angus ordered from the water. And it seemed there was no choice. Her legs suddenly buckled, and she slumped onto the platform beside the dog.
Triage. Medical imperative. She should check the dog’s breathing. She should...
She did nothing. The strength she’d had in the water had now drained out of her. She sat, feeling useless, as Angus hauled himself out of the water and headed straight for her.
‘The dog...’
‘Yeah,’ he said, ignoring the dog completely. He’d have his priorities too, she realised, and triage would say women and children first. Before dog? Of course before dog. ‘Could you have breathed in any water?’
He’d be checking for water in her lungs. She made herself think back to that first sickening lunge as the dog dragged her down. She’d been caught under its big body but she thought she’d managed to hold her breath.
‘I’m okay,’ she told him, trying to stop shaking. ‘But the dog... Please check it’s all right. I’m darned if I’ve gone to all that trouble to see it die now.’
‘Yeah, and I’m darned if I’ve gone to all that trouble to see you die as well,’ he said grimly. ‘Gareth, my bag’s under the bench on the back deck. Can you grab it for me?’
He was soaked, wearing only boxers and a torn shirt—had she done that? He squatted beside her on the deck, taking his stethoscope from his bag, listening to her breathing, then putting his hand on her shoulder in a gesture of reassurance. He was all doctor.
And his touch... It should have meant nothing, but weirdly it did. It was a warm, firm grasp, a hold that somehow made her body seem to relax. The trembling eased.
Cured by one touch of the stethoscope and one grasp of the shoulder? She had an absurd urge to laugh.
Which would have been hysterical. More nonsense.
‘Your lungs sound clear,’ Angus was saying. ‘But let’s lay you on your side.’
‘I can help. The dog...’
‘I can look after the dog. Gareth, can you find something to put under Freya’s head? Freya, lie still until you get your breath back.’
She had enough sense to submit. Yes, she’d been pushed under, and yes, she’d been terrified. But Angus had rescued her, and now she needed to stay out of his way.
Gareth was edging a towel under her head, offering her another. Fussing at the edges.
She let him fuss. She lay on her side and watched as this new strange doctor headed over to treat the dog.
It had retched. A lot. Poor thing. ‘Gareth,’ Angus said, and Gareth stopped fussing around her and looked to see what Angus needed.
This inter-island ferry was brand-new, but Gareth was an ex-fisherman, and seasickness was something fishermen often dealt with. One glance and he grabbed a hose and neatly sluiced the mess over the rail—which left Angus a clear place to work.
The dog was breathing. She could see its great chest heaving, surely faster than it should but reassuringly deeply.
Angus put his stethoscope on its chest and listened, and grunted satisfaction.
‘He’ll live. Throwing up’s the best thing he can do. Hey, fella...’ Rid of his stomach full of seawater, the dog had now lifted his head and was starting to struggle. ‘It’s okay, mate. Gareth, do you have more towels?’
He was handed a bundle. ‘More where that came from, mate,’ the skipper said, and watched as Angus started roughly towelling, using strong strokes that would both reassure the dog and maybe stir up anything else that needed to be got rid of.
‘Hey, Skip.’ It was Mike. He was still holding Noah. They’d been watching from the deck, looking down in fascination. However, Mike wasn’t quite as slow as his open-mouthed astonishment suggested, and the boat was drifting. ‘Coming a bit close to the point,’ he warned, and Gareth glanced around, swore and headed back to the wheelhouse.
‘Dog,’ Noah said again, before the noise of the restarting engine meant they couldn’t hear him.
‘Miss Mayberry saved him,’ Angus said. ‘Thanks for looking after Noah, Mike. Is it okay if you hold him for a bit longer? Noah, will you stay with Mike while I look after the dog?’
‘Yes,’ Noah said, and the boat hand grinned and firmed his hold.
‘Then let’s go up front and get the ropes ready for landing,’ Mike told the little boy. They disappeared, and Freya was left lying on the ramp with Angus and the dog.
This was like an emergency ward in a hospital, she thought suddenly, reaction starting to kick in. Two patients, one physician. She gave a choke of laughter and Angus looked at her in concern.
‘You okay?’
‘I’m thinking,’ she managed. ‘Up on deck we have hospital beds, monitoring equipment, everything we need for a well-stocked casualty department. If you could unpack fast—and maybe find yourself a white coat—we could lie here happily for a lot more than the five minutes we have left before landing.’
He smiled, but only briefly. ‘I don’t want any more than five minutes. I’d like an X-ray of your lungs.’
‘The X-ray equipment’s already on the island, but I don’t need it.’ With the drama behind her she was starting to feel euphoric. ‘I’m fine. One, two gulps of water at most, it can’t have been any more than that.’
‘I watched you. He held you down.’
‘And you saved me.’ Her smile faded. ‘Thank you.’
‘It was a stupid thing to do. If you’d waited we could have got the boat around and hauled him in.’
‘With him panicking? You know how close to death he was.’
‘Okay, you might have saved his life, but it was still stupid.’
‘No, because I got saved in return and that was very nice.’ She was still lying on her side, her head cushioned by Gareth’s towels. The sun was on her face. She was warm, relief was cutting in and she was watching Angus towel the dog with appreciation.
He was a big man. His wet shirt was clinging to a broad, toned body. He had a tanned face, strong bone structure, deep grey eyes and dark hair that looked a bit bleached at the ends, as if he spent plenty of time in the sun.
He could have been one of the surfers who frequented the surf beach at the tip of the island, she thought. Only he was older. His CV said he was thirty-six, and he looked it. His eyes were creased at the edges—life lines? Was there a hint of grey in his hair?
He looked a bit...battered.
He couldn’t be, she thought, remembering the pictures she’d seen on social media. He was a society darling, son of old money—yeah, okay, she’d delved a bit more than was appropriate, but she was going to live with him.
And that brought her up with a jolt. She was going to live with this man!
Sort of.
It had seemed so sensible when all the planning had taken place. A month ago she’d received a call from the head of the Birding Isles’ medical group and senior doctor on Gannet Island. ‘We’ve had an offer from a doctor interested in starting a medical service on Shearwater,’ he’d told her. ‘He came to check us out a few months back, and now it seems he’s ready to take on a permanent position. If you agree we’ll move heaven and earth to get equipment over to you, but he’ll need somewhere to live. Your place is close to the clinic, and you’ve set up the back of your place as self-contained accommodation for tourists. You reckon you could put this fella up until he can organise a place of his own?’
She was so astonished—a doctor for Shearwater!—that she’d said yes before she’d even thought it through. A doctor!
The population of Shearwater was tiny, but medical emergencies still happened, and she’d lost count of the occasions when she’d felt professionally helpless. As the only nurse on the island she was the go-to in emergencies. She could get backup from Gannet Island but that took time, and there were occasions when time meant consequences too horrible to recall.
Having a doctor living in the back part of the rambling house her grandmother had left her would mean he’d be right there. Apparently he’d done additional training in emergency medicine, emergency surgery. That meant in a crisis they could even operate—she could give a competent anaesthetic. In the event of something like the car crash that had happened three weeks back, or last summer when a jet ski had ploughed into a group of swimmers...a doctor on the island would have made all the difference...
Her ‘yes’ was a given.
Even later, when she’d found his obnoxious social-media presence, she’d still thought her yes was non-negotiable.
The knowledge that he was bringing his son had made her flinch—the thought of a child living in her house left her feeling shaky—but she’d talked herself around that, too. Lily Simons was a neighbour, a kindly grandma whose only son had moved off the island, and she’d jumped at the idea of a possible babysitting job. Freya told herself she wouldn’t have anything to do with childcare. The door between the two halves of the house could stay firmly closed.
Problem sorted.
Until now. She hadn’t factored in...this. Looking at Angus talking softly to the big dog, his hands firm and sure with the towel, his body stooped over while he worked, his clothes clinging...
Down, girl, she told herself and thought, are you out of your mind? You must have swallowed more seawater than you thought for your head to be heading where it’s going!
This man was a doctor taking a break from what she assumed was a failed marriage. She’d seen the sudden cut off from Deborah Knox’s posts where she’d stopped referring to ‘my husband’, and the fact that he was now here with his son spoke volumes. He was a socialite from Sydney. He’d only be here as some sort of recovery exercise.
So she did not need to be lying here in the sun letting her eyes dwell on what was, to be honest, a really sexy body.
She did not need to be thinking...what she was thinking...about a guy who was about to be her lodger.
‘Just relax until we land,’ Angus advised. ‘You’ve had a shock. Close your eyes and treat yourself as a patient for a bit.’
As his patient.
A doctor/patient relationship. She could do that for now, she decided, and after that it’d be a doctor/nurse relationship. Purely professional.
She had no choice. She lay back and tried to close her eyes but her eyes didn’t want to close.
Her stomach hurt. She must have twisted something as she fought to control the dog. She winced and he saw.
‘What’s wrong?’
‘Nothing,’ she managed. ‘Just a niggle in my side—I suspect I’ve pulled a muscle.’
‘Hardly surprising.’ He gave her a searching look. ‘How bad?’
‘Nothing. A niggle. Promise.’
‘We’ll check it out later.’
‘No need.’
‘Mmm...’ he said, non-committal, and went back to towelling the dog. He was still murmuring gentle reassurances. She wouldn’t mind him talking to her like that...
Um, not. Close those eyes, she ordered herself, but it didn’t work.
He carried on, and she tried to pretend she wasn’t watching.
Then she thought, Why even bother to pretend? Some things were just too hard.
