A Child To Open Their Hearts

A Child To Open Their Hearts
Marion Lennox

A child in need…When Nurse Hettie de Lacey saves orphaned Joni from drowning, she sets her heart on adopting him. This is her last chance to be a mom… But to keep him she needs Dr. Max Lockhart by her side.Max has returned to Wildfire Island with a heavy heart, and he's completely unprepared for the powerful desire he feels for Hettie. His life is already in turmoil, but how can he walk away when everything about Hettie and Joni compels him to stay?Wildfire Island DocsWelcome to Paradise!

Praise for Marion Lennox (#ulink_943c9786-3cfc-57af-ba1c-b93a969b51a5)

‘Marion Lennox’s Rescue at Cradle Lake is simply magical, eliciting laughter and tears in equal measure. A keeper.’

—RT Book Reviews

Dear Reader (#ulink_2d983fcd-e7ce-52b3-90ae-d8e79b686e06),

This is the sixth romance in the Wildfire Island Docs series, and it marks the end of one of the most dramatic, exotic series I’ve ever been involved in. Wildfire Island is a tropical paradise. Our heroes and heroines are our ideal lovers, the most skilled, the most gorgeous and the most fun doctors, nurses and paramedics … Oh, and did I mention the most sexy?

Meredith Webber, Alison Roberts and I have loved co-creating our characters, our worlds, our romances. Each is a stand-alone love story, but together we believe they’re awesome. Linked stories push our creative boundaries, and they deepen our friendship in the process.

Max and Hettie’s story tugged on my heartstrings as I wrote it, and I hope you’ll be as touched by it as I’ve been. I love how much they deserve their happy ending. Let me know if you enjoy it—write to me at marion@marionlennox.com (mailto:marion@marionlennox.com). If you love it as much as we do … who knows? We may be recruiting more medics for Wildfire!

Meanwhile, happy reading.

Marion

MARION LENNOX has written over a hundred romance novels, and is published in over a hundred countries and thirty languages. Her international awards include the prestigious RITA

Award (twice) and the RT Book Reviews Career Achievement Award for ‘a body of work which makes us laugh and teaches us about love’. Marion adores her family, her kayak, her dog, and lying on the beach with a book someone else has written. Heaven!

A Child to Open Their Hearts

Marion Lennox

www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)

My books in this series are dedicated to Andy, whose help and friendship during my writing career has been beyond measure. I’ve been so proud to call you my friend.

Contents

Cover (#u50a04c6c-655f-5b2d-914a-8e114f299aa1)

Praise (#ud9baf5dd-23c5-5560-904b-aa81994e160e)

Dear Reader (#udb788efc-6d2f-5748-a27c-151147d55606)

About the Author (#u26c3d127-85e0-5805-a741-5569f6e774d5)

Title Page (#u556d47cf-d064-5b7e-aae2-ac285c3fbb85)

Dedication (#u3f9890d6-87e4-51b9-a91b-3f50a1dcfbcb)

CHAPTER ONE (#uaf42b7af-6611-55e7-8ba1-036126fa9765)

CHAPTER TWO (#u379ffc9a-8594-5371-bca3-34dd8f0653ff)

CHAPTER THREE (#u569ccee2-c8a3-5b17-9b96-ad770aa40173)

CHAPTER FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER SIX (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)

EPILOGUE (#litres_trial_promo)

Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_ad0fe3aa-8594-5b6a-a13c-26d1a87d6427)

THIS COULD BE a disaster instead of a homecoming. He could be marooned at sea until after his daughter’s wedding.

Max wasn’t worrying yet, though. Things would be chaotic on Wildfire Island after the cyclone, but the weather had eased and Sunset Beach was a favourite place for the locals to walk. If the rip wasn’t so fierce he could swim ashore. He couldn’t, but eventually someone would stroll to the beach, see his battered boat and send out a dinghy.

Max Lockhart, specialist surgeon, not-so-specialist sailor, headed below deck and fetched himself a beer. There were worse places to be stuck, he conceded. The Lillyanna was a sturdy thirty-foot yacht, and she wasn’t badly enough damaged to be uncomfortable. She was now moored in the tropical waters off Wildfire Island. Schools of tiny fish glinted silver as they broke the surface of the sparkling water. The sun was warm. He had provisions for another week, and in the lee of the island the sea was relatively calm.

But he was stuck. The waters around the island were still a maelstrom. The cliffs that formed the headland above where he sheltered were being battered. To try and round them to get to Wildfire Island’s harbour would be suicidal, and at some time during the worst of the cyclone his radio had been damaged and his phone lost overboard.

So now he was forced to rest, but rest, he conceded, had been the whole idea of sailing here. He needed to take some time to get his head in order and ready himself to face the islanders.

He also needed space to come to terms with anger and with grief. How to face his daughter’s wedding with joy when he was so loaded with guilt and sadness he couldn’t get past it?

But rest wouldn’t cut it, he decided as he finished his beer. What he needed was distraction.

And suddenly he had it. Suddenly he could see two people on the island.

A woman had emerged from the undergrowth and was walking a dog on the beach. And up on the headland...another woman was walking towards the cliff edge.

Towards the cliff edge? What the...?

As a kid, Max and his mates had dived off this headland but they’d only dived when the water had been calm. They’d dared each other to dive the thirty-foot drop. Then they’d let the rip tug them out to this reef, where they’d catch their breath for the hard swim back. It had kept them happy for hours. It had given their parents nightmares.

For the woman on the headland, though, the nightmare seemed real. She was walking steadily towards the edge.

Suicide? The word slammed into his head and stayed.