The Package Deal: Nine Months to Change His Life / From Neighbours...to Newlyweds? / The Bonus Mum

She left, taking Heinz with her, and he wanted to go with her so much it almost killed him. Only practicalities stopped him. His leg would impede them both. He did need her to go right round the island. He did need her to check the shore.

Just in case.

But she was right. Harnesses didn’t fail. Jake would be safe. He was being paranoid.

And now, on top of his worry for Jake, another worry was superimposed. Mary, pushing her way through debris, navigating a cyclone-devastated island...

What if she fell?

She wouldn’t. What had she said? She was little and quick and smart.

She was, too.

His warrior woman.

He smiled. Mary. He owed her so much. How could he ever repay her?

Do something about her appalling family?

What?

He threw a couple more logs on the fire and thought about the sequence of events leading to the coroner’s verdict. Had she employed a lawyer? He bet she hadn’t. A lawyer would have cross-examined, produced times and witnesses outside the family, talked about pre-existing family conflict.

Would Mary allow him to push for a rehearing? Would she allow him to do that for her?

He suspected not. He could hear the defeat in her voice, but also the loyalty. Somewhere there was a father she still loved, and these appalling women were his wife and daughters.

What else? He’d never felt so helpless.

She’d been gone for half an hour, far too early for her to return, yet already he was imagining worst-case scenarios. There’d been trees ripped, maybe landslides from so much rain. So many hazards...

Things on the beach.

Jake...

In desperation he picked up the papers she’d been writing on. He’d watched her, half asleep, and seen the intent look on her face. It had seemed like this was something that took her out of her current misery.

‘None of your business.’ She’d said it loud and clear.

It was none of his business. He owed her privacy but he was going out of his mind.

He hauled himself outside to sit in the sun, acknowledging as he did just how swollen his leg was; how impossible it was that he do anything useful.

He stared out over the storm-swept island, at the flattened trees, at the mountain of debris washed up on the beach.

Jake.

Mary.

It was too much. He hauled himself back inside to fetch the papers.

It was none of his business. He acknowledged it, but he started to read anyway.

* * *

Negotiating the beach was a nightmare. The cyclone had caused storm surges and the water had washed well up the cliff face. She looked at the new high-water mark and shuddered. If she hadn’t found Ben when she had...

Don’t go there, she told herself. It made her feel ill.

Surely no one else could have survived, but she had to check. The debris washed up was unbelievable—and some of it looked as if it had come from the yacht fleet.

Every time she saw a flash of something that shouldn’t be there, a hint of colour, waterproof clothing, shattered fibreglass or ripped sails, her heart caught in her mouth. No bodies, she pleaded as she searched. No Jake? He had to have been rescued.

What sort of people manned those rescue helicopters? she wondered, thinking suddenly about the woman who’d been dangling in a harness with the unknown Jake. There was a prayer in her heart for both of them—indeed, for anyone who’d been out there.

But even before she’d found Ben, the radio had said people had died.

She searched on and stupidly, weirdly, she found herself crying. Why? Tears wouldn’t help anyone. She was Mary, the practical one. Mary, who didn’t do emotion.

Mary, who’d just spent twenty-four hours in a stranger’s arms?

She didn’t feel like Mary any more. Over the past months she’d been blasted out of her nice, safe existence, first by the death of her stepsister’s baby, then by a storm—and now by a man holding her as if he cared.

He was shocked and frantic about his brother’s safety. He’d been using her body to forget.

‘And I was using him,’ she told Heinz. She was sitting on a massive tree trunk washed up on the beach, retrieving her apple from her backpack.

But he’d held her as if he cared. No one did that. Even her father...

Don’t go there. She’d loved her father as much as she’d loved her mother. Her mother’s death had been unavoidable.

Her father’s marriage to Barbie had meant desertion and she’d never truly trusted anyone since.

She stared down at her apple, but she didn’t feel like eating. What was she doing, dredging up long-ago pain?

She wanted, quite desperately, to be back on the mainland, surrounded by her roller-derby team. She needed a fast, furious game where she could pit her wits and her strength against skills that matched hers—where she had no room to think of anything beyond the physical.

As she’d been when she’d lain in Ben’s arms?

Only there’d been room for more than the physical with Ben. It had felt like there was far more.

And there wasn’t. She didn’t need anyone. Hadn’t her whole life taught her that?

‘So get over it. Get over him.’ She crunched her apple with unnecessary force. Heinz looked at her with worry, and she bit off a piece and offered it.

He wasn’t interested. He headed back into the kelp. Here be dead fish and stuff. Here be something better than apples.

‘That’s what I get for hauling your dog food to the cave,’ she retorted. ‘Some dogs would be grateful for apple.’