Two
Nine Months to Change His Life
Marion Lennox
MARION LENNOX is 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 for the Mills & Boon Medical Romance and Mills & Boon Cherish lines. (She used a different name for each category for a while—readers looking for her past romance titles should search for author Trisha David as well). She’s now had more than seventy-five romance 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!
FROM THE MOMENT they were born, the Logan boys were trouble.
They were dark-haired, dark-eyed and full of mischief. Usually ignored by their wealthy, emotionally distant parents, they ran their nannies ragged and they ran themselves ragged. There wasn’t a lot they wouldn’t dare each other to do.
As they grew to men, tall, tough and ripped, their risks escalated. Some of those risks turned out to be foolish, Ben conceded. Joining the army and going to Afghanistan had been foolish. Back in civvies, attempting to get on with their careers, the trauma was still with them.
Sailing round the world to distract Jake from his failed marriage had also turned out to be stupid. Especially now, as Cyclone Lila bore down on their frail life raft, as one harness hung free from the chopper overhead.
‘Take Ben first,’ Jake yelled to the paramedic who’d been lowered with the harness, but Ben wasn’t buying it.
‘I’m the eldest,’ Ben snapped. He was only older by twenty minutes but the responsibility of that twenty minutes had weighed on him all his life. ‘Go.’
Jake refused, but the woman swinging from the chopper was risking all to save them. The weather was crazy—no one should be on the sea in such conditions. Arguing had to be done hard and fast.
He did what he had to do. The things he said to get Jake to go first were unforgivable—but he got the harness on.
‘The chopper’s full,’ the paramedic yelled at Ben as she signalled for the chopper to pull them free. ‘We’ll come back for you as soon as we can.’
Or not. They all knew how unlikely another rescue was. The cyclone had veered erratically from its predicted path, catching the whole yachting fleet unprepared. The speed at which it was travelling was breathtaking, and there was no escape. Massive waves had smashed their boat, and they were still on the edge of the cyclone. The worst was yet to come.
At least Jake was safe—he hoped. The wind was making the rope from the chopper swing wildly, hurling Jake and the paramedic through the cresting waves. Get up there, he pleaded silently. Move.
Then the next wave bore down, a monster of breaking foam. He saw it coming, slammed down the hatch of the life raft and held on for dear life as the sea tossed his flimsy craft like a beach ball in surf.
We’ll come back for you as soon as we can.
When the cyclone was over?
The wave passed and he dared open the hatch a little. The chopper was higher, but Jake and his rescuer were still swinging.
‘Stay safe, brother,’ he whispered. ‘Stay safe until I see you again.’
A cyclone was heading straight for him. Until I see you again... What a bitter joke.
* * *
This was no mere storm. This was a cyclone, and in a cyclone there could surely be few worse places to be than on Hideaway Island.
Hideaway Island was tiny, a dot on the outer edge of the Bay of Islands off New Zealand’s north coast. Two of Mary’s friends, a surgeon and his lawyer wife, had bought it for a song years ago. They’d built a hut in the centre of the island and bought a serviceable boat to ferry themselves back and forth to the mainland. They’d decided it was paradise.
But Henry and Barbara now had impressive professional lives and three children. They hardly ever made it out here. It’d been on the market for a year, but with the global financial crisis no one was buying.
Right now, Henry and Barbara were in New York, but before they’d left, Henry had tossed Mary the keys to the hut and boat.
‘You might use some solitude until this fuss dies down,’ Henry told her with rough kindness. ‘Could you check on the place while we’re away? Stay if you like; we’d be grateful. It might be what you need.’
It was what she needed. Henry was one of the few who didn’t blame her. Hideaway had seemed a reasonable place to run.
Until today. Heinz, her terrier-size, fifty-seven-or-more-variety dog, was looking at her as if he was worried, and his worry was justified. The wind was escalating by the minute. Outside the trees were bending and groaning with its force, and the roughly built hut felt distinctly unstable.
‘We could end up in Texas,’ Mary muttered, shaking her useless radio. Had a transmission tower fallen in the wind? Her phone was dead and there was no radio reception.
At six this morning the radio had said Cyclone Lila was five hundred miles off the coast, veering north-east instead of in its predicted northern trajectory. There was concern for a major international yacht race, but there’d been no hint that it might turn south and hit the Bay of Islands. Residents of New Zealand’s north had merely been advised that the outside edges could cause heavy winds.
‘Tie down outside furniture,’