A Child To Open Their Hearts

* * *

She’d never reach it. Her legs simply weren’t strong enough to kick against the current.

She was so near and yet so far. She was being pulled within thirty yards of the atoll and yet she didn’t have the strength to fight.

If she was swept out... If Max didn’t make it... How long before they could expect help?

The child in her arms twisted unexpectedly and she almost lost him. She fought for a stronger hold but suddenly he was fighting her.

‘Joni, hush. Joni, stay still...’

But he wasn’t listening, wasn’t hearing. Who knew what he was thinking?

She was being swept...

And then, blessedly, she was being grabbed herself by the shoulders from behind. She was being held with the swift, sure strength of someone who’d been trained, who knew how to gain control.

Max?

‘Let me take him.’ It was an order, a curt command that brooked no opposition. ‘Get yourself to the atoll.’

‘You can’t.’

‘You’re done,’ he said, and she knew she was.

‘S-Sefina?’

‘She’s dead. We can’t do anything for her. Go. I’m right behind you.’

And Joni was taken from her arms.

Relieving her of her load should have made her lighter. Free. Instead, stupidly, she wanted to sink. She hadn’t known how exhausted she was until the load had been lifted.

‘Swim,’ Max yelled. ‘We haven’t done this for nothing. Swim, damn you, now.’

She swam.

* * *

He could do this. He would do this.

Too many deaths...

It was three short weeks since he’d buried his son. The waste was all around him, and the anger.

Maybe it was Christopher who gave him strength. Who knew?

‘Keep still,’ he growled, as the little boy struggled. There was no time for reassurance. No time for comfort. But it seemed to work.

The little boy subsided. His body seemed to go limp but he reached up and tucked a fist against Max’s throat. As if checking his pulse?

‘Yeah, I’m alive,’ Max muttered grimly, as he started kicking again against the rip. ‘And so are you. Let’s keep it that way.’

* * *

Rocks. The atoll was tiny but she’d made it. The last few yards across the rip had taken every ounce of her strength, but she’d done it.

She’d had to do it. If Max and Joni were swept out, someone had to raise the alarm.

She wasn’t in any position to raise any alarm right now. It was as much as she could do to climb onto the rocks.

She knew this place. She’d swum out here in good weather. She knew the footholds but her legs didn’t want to work. They’d turned to jelly, but somehow she made them push her up the few short steps to the relatively flat rock that formed the atoll’s tiny plateau.

Then she sank to her knees.

She wanted—quite badly—to be sick, but she fought it down with a fierceness born of desperation. How many times in an emergency room had she felt this same appalling gut-wrench, at waste, at loss of life, at life-changing injuries? But her training had taught her not to faint, not to throw up, until after a crisis was past. Until she wasn’t needed.

There was a crisis now, but what could she do? She wasn’t in an emergency room. She wasn’t being a professional.

She was sitting on a tiny rocky outcrop, while out there a sailor fought for a toddler’s life.

Was he Max Lockhart?

More importantly, desperately more importantly, where was he? She hadn’t been able to look back while she’d fought to get here, but now...

Max... Joni...

She was a strong swimmer but she hadn’t been able to fight the rip.

Please... She was saying it over and over, pleading with whomever was prepared to listen. For Joni. For the unknown guy who was risking his life...

Was he Max? Father of Caroline? Owner of this entire island?

Max Lockhart, come home to claim his rightful heritage?

Max Lockhart, risking his life to save one of the islanders who scorned him?

So much pain...

If he died now, how could she explain it to Caroline? For the last three days, when the cyclone had veered savagely and unexpectedly across the path of any boat making its way here from Cairns, Hettie’s fellow nurse had lost contact with her father. She’d been going crazy.

How could she tell her he’d been so near, and was now lost? With the child?

Or not. She’d been staring east, thinking that, if anything, he’d be riding the rip, but suddenly she saw him. He was south of the atoll. He must have been swept past but somehow managed to get himself out of the rip’s pull. Now he was stroking the last few yards to the rocks.

He still had Joni.

She’d been out of the water now for five minutes. She had her breath back. Blessedly, she could help. She clambered down over the rocks, heading out into the shallows, reaching for Joni.