Kitabı oku: «First Love, Second Chance: Friends to Forever / Second Chance with the Rebel / It Started with a Crush...»

For the Garvey clan (two-legged and four). Thank you for your years of friendship and your tolerance of my weird writerly ways.

To Liz for setting the bar so inspirationally high.

And to Rachel for keeping me sane and on the right path with this one.

PROLOGUE

Ten years ago, Perth, Western Australia

‘MARC, have you got a minute?’

Beth Hughes caught up with her best friend between classes and steered him away from the teenage throng doing a fast book change between fourth period and fifth. The rock that had taken up residence in her gut since she’d spoken to his mother seemed to swell in size.

Marc looked at her in surprise. Understandable, given the past few weeks of slow retreat on her part. If he’d refused point-blank to go with her she would have understood. A weak part of her wished he would. That would be easier all round.

‘Three minutes, Duncannon.’ Tasmin Major swanned past, a friendly smile on her Nordic face, tapping her watch. ‘Geography waits for no one.’

‘I’ll be there, ‘ Marc threw after her, trailing Beth around behind the water fountains, tension rich in his deep voice. She ducked between the back wall of the library complex and some badly pruned shrubs into a rubble-filled clearing she’d never visited before. The place others came to do their smoking. Their deep-and-meaningful conversations. Their making-out.

The location got Marc’s attention completely. His steps slowed.

‘Beth?’

Her pulse beat thick and fast, high in her throat, reducing even further the space for her breath. She sucked in a few mouthfuls of air and forced them down as she turned to face him in the privacy of the little space.

‘What are we doing, Beth?’ His face was cautious. Closed. She curled her fingers into a ball behind her. ‘Does your boyfriend know you’re here?’

She stared at him, forcing air past her lips, hating how he’d taken to saying the word boyfriend. ‘Damien’s in fifth period.’

‘Where we should be. Or do grades mean less to you now that you hang with the beautiful people?’

Her eyes fell to the dirt he scuffed at his feet, heat invading her cheeks. ‘I needed to see you.’

‘You see me every day.’

In passing. ‘I needed to speak with you. ‘ She lifted her focus. ‘In private.’

A grey tinge came over him. His body straightened even more. Not for the first time, Beth noticed how broad he was getting. Those shoulders that had made the swim team captain seek him out a few months back. The way his jaw was squaring off. As if a switch had flipped on his sixteenth birthday and a man had started breaking out of the scrawny exoskeleton she knew as Marc. Maybe she’d left this too late …

Her stomach tightened.

‘You have to hide out to talk to me these days?’

She could have pretended to misunderstand but Marc knew her too well. ‘I don’t want to make trouble with you and Damien.’

‘I’m pretty sure McKinley’s already aware that we’re friends, Beth. I’ve known you since fourth grade.’

‘I don’t want … He might read into it.’

‘Then you might want to choose another location for this conversation. You do know what The Pit gets used for, right?’

Beth swallowed hard, her eyes dropping to his lips for a second. She forced them up. ‘I just wanted privacy.’

The second bell rang and urgent footsteps sprinting into classrooms petered out. Everything around them fell silent. Marc widened his feet and crossed his arms across his chest. ‘You got it. Every other student at Pyrmont High is now in class.’

‘I’m changing streams,’ she blurted before she lost her nerve. ‘I’m switching to B.’

Marc stared at her, his nostrils flaring. ‘You’re changing out of the classes we’ve been taking all year? Into McKinley’s stream?’

‘Not because of Damien—’

‘Right.’

‘I want less science. More arts.’

‘Since when?’

‘Since now.’

‘B-stream is soft, Beth.’

‘It has Literature and Philosophy in it. They’re unientrance subjects.’

‘You’re switching to avoid me.’

The rock in her gut doubled in size. ‘No.’

Yes.

‘Why?’

A throbbing started up behind her eyes. ‘This has nothing to do with you—’

‘Bull. You’ve been backing off from me since term started. What’s going on? No room for a mate in your busy new social schedule, Ms Popularity?’

‘Marc—’

‘I may not be as smart as you, Beth, but I can see which way the wind is blowing. Is McKinley threatened by me?’

She shook her head. Damien’s field of vision was far too narrow for him to notice how Marc was filling out, growing up. He had way too much going on in his life, in his world, to worry about what some science geek was up to. It never occurred to him that Beth would see Marc as anything other than a buddy. An old buddy. The expendable buddy she’d had until he came along.

And now Damien just expected that she’d switch camps. Just like she switched streams. But since that fed right into what she knew she had to do …

‘So that’s it, huh? That’s what you wanted to tell me—that you’re switching classes?’

Beth struggled to take in a breath. He made it sound so minor. But still so ugly. Her words grew tight. ‘It means we’re only going to have one class together.’

‘I know. The best thing about B is that it means only seeing McKinley once a week.’ He glared at her. ‘You’re that desperate to get away from me?’

She would like nothing more than to have Marc Duncannon in her life for ever. But, as it turned out, that wasn’t going to work. Guilt tore at her insides and thick shields shot up into place. ‘The world revolves around the sun, Marc, not you.’

His face paled and the guilt turned inward, digging into the flesh around her heart. The truth was Marc Duncannon revolved around Beth Hughes and always had. Or, more rightly, the two of them rotated in a complicated, connected orbit. Something both their parents felt was unhealthy.

For him.

If it was just his nut-job mother who thought it, Beth wouldn’t have given it another thought. But her own mother agreed and so did her father. And Russell Hughes was never, ever wrong. After a long and tearful conversation, Beth gave him her word that she’d cool things down with Marc for a while. See what happened. And she’d never broken her word yet.

‘If you’re not doing it to be closer to McKinley and you’re not doing it to be away from me then why are you doing it?’

‘Why can’t I just be doing it for me? Because I want to?’

‘Because you don’t make decisions like that, Beth. You never have. You plan stuff. You commit.’

‘So I’ve changed my mind. It happens.’

Not to you. It was written loud and clear all over his face. Could he tell she was lying?

‘What about uni? Biology?’

A fist squeezed deep in her chest. Damn him for not just letting her go. Why was he pushing this so hard? Forcing her to hurt him more. ‘That was your dream, not mine.’

He blinked, then stared. ‘After all this time? You’ve been on board with that for three years.’

She shrugged, faking ambivalence she absolutely did not feel. ‘Seemed like a good enough idea at the time.’

‘Until something better came along? Or should I say someone?’

‘This is not about Damien. I told you.’ He stepped closer and Beth retreated towards the library wall. When had he grown that big?

‘I know what you told me. I just don’t believe it.’ He towered over her. ‘We’ve been friends for eight years, Beth. Half our lifetimes. And you just disappear the moment a popular guy comes sniffing? Are you truly that desperate for affection?’

The library wall pressed into her back. She knew he’d be hurt, and she knew he lashed out when he was hurt. She’d seen him do it with his mother. ‘People change, Marc. We all grow up. Maybe we’ve just grown apart?’

‘I know you’re changing, Beth. I’ve watched you.’ His eyes glazed over, a deep russet brown, and skimmed her, head to toe. She’d never been more aware of the changing shape of her body. Then he sneered, ‘I just never expected you’d change into such a cliché.’

‘I’m just … I just need some space. We’ve lived in each other’s pockets for so long we don’t even know how to be around anyone else. Or who we are if we’re not together.’

Lies, lies …

His snort was ugly. ‘Don’t dress this up as self-discovery. This is about the school jock making a play for the school tomboy. And you’re falling for it hook, line and sinker.’ He slammed two hands either side of her face and leaned into her.

She flinched and her heart raced at his closeness. No, this is about your mother asking me to cut you loose. Begging me to. She wanted to scream it into the face that she knew as well as her own. But she couldn’t. It would kill him to discover what his only surviving parent thought he was worth.

‘You could be anything you want, Marc. You don’t need me to be it with you. There’s a whole world for us to discover.’

He leaned in further. The tightening in her body where he touched it wasn’t fear. Marc was the only person on the planet she trusted implicitly never to hurt her.

‘What’s wrong with us discovering that together?’ he ground, his chest heaving with restraint. ‘We have history. A bond. What does McKinley have that I don’t have?’

No rock-tight bond. No complicated history. No parents pressuring her to put some distance between them.

‘I’m only asking for space, Marc. What’s wrong with that?’

His face twisted and he swore. ‘I’ve been giving you space for two years, Beth. Maybe if I’d done this back then I wouldn’t be standing here now getting the brush-off from my best friend.’

And then suddenly his mouth was crushing down on hers, his body pressing her into the hard limestone of the library wall behind her. Shock stiffened her against the hardness of his chest as his hands slipped down to tangle in her hair and hold her face still for the assault of his lips. She swam in his scent, in his angry heat, in his perfect, practised kiss. The unfamiliar slide of a blazing hot mouth over her own and the furious press of his body. And then the dizzying sensation of their flesh melding into one, his enormous hands sliding around to protect her head from the lumpy wall behind her, his mouth shifting and softening on hers.

And then—somehow—she was kissing him back. Her own mouth moved tentatively against his and her body pressed forward. A choked whimper cracked deep in her throat and Marc worked his tongue past her uncertain lips coaxing them open. His furnace-hot tongue twisted and danced around hers, intensity pooling around her, engulfing all. Her body whoofed to flaming life, hormones tangling and exploding like kindling around them.

Overwhelming and unfamiliar, something she’d never allowed herself to dream. To want.

Marc.

Suddenly Beth was free and Marc staggered back against the force of her desperate shove. She held up a shaking hand to stop him coming closer. His face darkened as he looked at her.

‘Does McKinley know you kiss like that?’ His chest heaved.

How could he know? They’d never kissed. She’d never kissed anyone. Until today.

She dragged her fist across her lips. ‘Don’t ever—’ do that again, make me feel that again ‘—touch me again.’ Her voice was husky and low and appallingly unfamiliar.

‘Beth …’

A world of emotions surged up and spilled over. ‘Don’t speak to me … again.’

His frown doubled. ‘You don’t mean—’

She lifted tortured eyes to him. ‘Why does it have to be all or nothing with you? I just wanted some space, Marc. Room for us both to discover who we are. That’s all. Did you think you could keep me all to yourself for ever?’

‘I know who I am. And I thought I knew who you were. But I guess not. ‘ He crossed the little clearing in two steps. ‘You want space, Elizabeth? Fine. Take as much as you need. If you’re that desperate, then have a good life with McKinley.’

And then he was gone.

Her best friend.

Like a kite in a wild wind, she’d tried to give him some rope, some height, but instead he’d ripped completely free and was gone. Her fingers trembled as they touched her swollen lips and she slid down the rough library wall until she huddled in a tearless, emotionless, empty heap.

CHAPTER ONE

Ten years later, south coast, Western Australia

WHO knew silence came in so many shades?

There was the deep, black silence late at night, under the West Australian stars, miles from anywhere. The earthy green silence of Beth’s shambolic warehouse studio, only broken by the splashes of colour from her latest artworks. There was the newly discovered, beige-coloured silence inside her head, where voices and thoughts used to clamour but had now all eased into a comfortable hum.

And there was this one …

The simmering red silence of a man who was not particularly pleased to see her. Not that Beth had imagined he would be. It was why she’d put this off for so long. The awful sound of nothing echoed through the heartbeat thumping past her eardrums. She cleared her throat.

‘Marc.’

He may have been half a house larger than the boy she remembered, but Marc Duncannon had two trademark giveaways and one was the way he stood when he was on guard, legs apart as if readying himself for a physical assault.

Muscular arms stole up to cross in front of a broad chest as he continued to stare wordlessly at her. Twisted humour raced in to fill the aching void inside where she wasn’t letting herself feel. While he’d grown a kick-butt chest in ten years, she was no bigger in that department than when he’d last seen her. Yet another disappointment for him.

Coming here suddenly seemed like a spectacularly bad idea. ‘Are you not even going to say hello?’

He nodded briskly, his lips tight, resenting opening at all. ‘Beth.’

One stony word, but loaded with meaning and breath-stealing in its timbre. More than she’d had from him in over a decade. A total contrast to the way he used to say her name. Beth. Betho. Bethlehem. They’d had their short lifetimes to come up with stupid nicknames for each other. He’d only called her Elizabeth once. The day he’d kissed her.

The day she’d ripped out his heart.

She swallowed past the lump threatening her air supply. Past the welling excitement that she was here—with Marc—again. ‘How are you?’

‘On my way out.’

Okay … She’d prepared herself to be unwelcome but it still felt so foreign radiating from him. ‘I just needed … I’d like a couple of minutes. Please?’

His hazel eyes darted away briefly but the miracle of any part of him moving seemed to thaw the rest of him out. His whole body twisted and he resumed loading equipment into his four-wheel drive. Beth risked closing the gap, but her breath got shorter with her distance from him, until she either stopped advancing on him or took her last living gasp.

Seeing him again would almost be worth it.

He threw words out like a shark net to entangle her before she got nearer. ‘You could stand there gawping or you could help me load the Cruiser.’

Beth scrambled to help, stunned by the gift of so many words in a row. It wasn’t friendly. But it wasn’t silence. And, given it was possibly the only chance she was going to get, she took it.

‘I went to your old house. Your neighbours told me where you were, ‘ she started to jabber. ‘I heard about your mum. What happened? You two were so close.’

Oh-so-familiar eyes lifted below hooded lids and glared at her. Intense and intensely … adult. ‘That’s what you’ve come all this way to ask?’

Her heart lurched. Marc didn’t do sarcasm when they were kids but it seemed he’d perfected the fine art in the years since she’d seen him.

‘No. I’m sorry …’ It was lame but what else could she say?

He turned to face her and straightened, frustrated. ‘What for, Beth? For turning up unannounced or for dropping off the face of the earth for a decade?’

How could she have forgotten what a straight shooter he was? She took a shaky breath. ‘That’s why I’ve come. I wanted to explain—’

He moved off again. ‘You’ll have to explain some other time. Like I said, I’m on my way out.’

She watched as he tossed a few final items into his dusty black Land Cruiser. A satellite phone. A first aid kit. A wetsuit. She frowned. ‘Where are you going?’

The hard glare he shot her from under the broad ridge of his brow should have had her quailing, if not for the fact that she’d developed immunity long ago, from exposure to much worse. Courtesy of her husband.

‘We’ve had a report of a stranding out at Holly’s Bay. I’m going to check it out.’

‘Stranding?’

‘A whale, Beth. It needs help. I don’t have time to entertain you.’

She fought the bristle his unkind words inspired. She was here to help her healing process, not to pass the time. Would she have put herself through this otherwise? ‘I just need a minute …’

He ignored her and moved around to the driver’s side door and yanked it open. ‘The whale may not have a minute. You’ve already slowed me down.’

She made her decision in a blink. It had cost her too much to come here today; she couldn’t let him just walk away from her. Who knew if she’d find the courage to try again? She sprinted around to the passenger side of the four-wheel drive and leaped in as he started it. Up close and in the confines of a cabin, he was bigger even than he’d seemed at a distance.

‘Get out, Beth.’

His voice certainly fitted the new him. Deep, rough. But still essentially Marc. That part tugged at her. ‘I need to talk to you. If I have to do that on the move, I will. Whatever it takes.’

He practically growled, ‘You’re wasting time.’

Anger finally broke through her carefully constructed veneer. ‘No, you are, Marc. Drive!’

Marc Duncannon concentrated on keeping his hands glued to the steering wheel, cemented there harder than clams on a reef. The tighter he held them, the less likely they were to shake, to give him away. He didn’t want her getting the slightest clue about how thrown he was.

Beth Hughes.

She was still the same lean, athletic build she’d been as a kid. It still suited her, even if it made him wonder how long ago she’d had her last meal. Same high brows, straight nose. Full coral lips. He would have recognised her even if she hadn’t spoken and he hadn’t heard again the soft tones he’d given up as a memory, but there was something very worn out about the way she held herself. The way her long dark hair hung, defeated, from a dead straight parting. As if she was doing her best not to stand out. Very un-Beth. She’d always been such a show pony.

Now she looked a little too much like his mother’s tormented appearance the last time he’d seen her. He clenched his jaw and leaned on the accelerator harder, flying down the long track leading from the homestead to the coastal highway.

His vehicle now reeked of Beth’s particular scent. That skin cream that, clearly, she still used after all these years. Coconut something. Chemical free. Cruelty free. The scent he associated with summer and beaches and bikinis … and Beth. The scent that would take weeks to fade from his upholstery.

The way it had taken months to finally force her from his mind. Or not, he realised as every bit of him tightened. Seemed it had only lain dormant. Buried deep. Two seconds in her presence and half a childhood of memories came flooding back.

So much for moving on.

He concentrated on the road ahead.

From the corner of his vision, he saw her twisted mouth, teeth chewing on her full lips. The old habit socked him in the guts. She used to do that when she was problem-solving or trying to outfox him. But back then she couldn’t sustain it and they’d break apart into one of her heart-stopping smiles. Not today. Her lips opened and she took a deep breath, ready to hit him with whatever it was she wanted.

‘Since when did you become a whale rescuer?’

Not what he was expecting. And why did she sound as rattled as he was? She had the upper hand here. It surprised him enough to answer. ‘It’s part of life on the south coast. And I’m the closest trained landholder.’

‘You train for this?’

‘Through experience.’

‘How many times have you done it?’

‘Five. Two last year. This stretch of coast is notorious for it.’

‘Why here, particularly?’

Small talk killed him. Especially with the one person he’d never needed it with. This was what they were now? Maybe never seeing her again was the better option. He shrugged. ‘No one knows.’

Silence fell, thick and muddy. He slowed the vehicle and yanked the steering wheel hard to the right. They bumped off the asphalt onto a badly graded limestone track and headed towards the massive expanse of ocean. The crescent bay opened out before them like an electric-blue half-moon.

‘How long before we get there?’ she asked, voice tight.

He could practically feel her brain turning over. Her heart thumping. It vibrated off her and slammed straight into the waves of tension coming off him. ‘About one minute longer than you said you needed.’

She saw his sideways glance. Interpreted it correctly. ‘I needed to see you. To explain.’ She cleared her throat. ‘To apologise.’

Apologise? ‘For what?’

Her mouth thinned. ‘Marc …’

‘Friendships end, Beth. It happens.’ He used the casual shrug to shake free some of his tension.

Her eyes flared with confusion but then they hardened and blazed with determination he’d never seen from her. Adult Beth had some balls, then. ‘Nonetheless, I’ve come a long way to see you. I’d like to say what I need to say …’

The Land Cruiser bumped up off the track onto the small dunes and Marc manoeuvred them as close to the edge as he safely could. The white crescent shore stretched out before them, meeting the blue of the Southern Ocean. Next stop, Antarctica. Down on the sand, about twenty feet apart, two large, dark shapes rolled and buffeted in the shallows.

Two whales. Marc swore under his breath.

‘Your explanations will have to wait, Beth. I have work to do.’

CHAPTER TWO

BETH took one look at the scene unfolding on the beach and pushed herself into gear. It had been two years; her needs could wait a little longer. Those animals couldn’t.

Marc grabbed his satellite phone and started dialling even as he ran to the back of his vehicle, peeling off his clothes as he went. By the time he had his T-shirt and jeans off, he’d communicated their location and the number of stranded whales to someone at the Shire and asked them to rally assistance.

Beth did her best to get busy lifting items out of the car to avoid staring at him, open-mouthed. Once-gangly Marc Duncannon had spent some time in the gym, apparently. The weights section. Her belly flipped on itself in a most unfamiliar way.

He tossed the disconnected phone into the back of the vehicle and stepped into his wetsuit, hauling it up over muscular legs and then flexing his broad back as he shrugged it up over his shoulders and arms. As soon as it was secure, he snared up the first aid kit and a small bag of supplies and thrust the phone into it. He shoved a snatch-strap, rope and every ockie-strap he could rummage up in behind it. Then he threw his T-shirt, a hooded trainer and an old towel at Beth, saying, ‘You’re going to need this,’ and was off, down the dunes, racing towards the water.

Beth did her best to keep up. She stumbled several times in the thick sand and paused to kick off her unsuitable shoes, losing more ground on Marc. But she didn’t need to be near him to know what was going on; his stiff body language was as clear as a neon sign as he ran down the shore, close to the first whale.

The sleek, marble-skinned animal was already dead.

An awful sorrow washed over her: that she might have delayed Marc for the precious minutes that counted. That this enormous creature was already gull-food because of her.

Marc paused briefly, those magnificent shoulders drooping slightly, but then he kicked on, further down the beach to where the second body rolled in time with the surf. As he got closer, he slowed and took a wide approach, lifting his hands high in the air in warning. Beth instantly slowed.

It was alive.

By the time she caught up with him, he was on his second wide pass of the beleaguered mammal. It lay partially submerged in the quicksand where earth met ocean, every second wave high enough to wash gently over its lower half. But exposed parts of its upper body were already dangerously dry. Compared to the liquid mercury-looking surface of wet whale skin, the dry parts looked like the handbag she’d left in her hire car at Marc’s farm.

That couldn’t be good.

‘Put the sweatshirt on, Beth.’ He didn’t bother with a please and she didn’t expect niceties right now. But it didn’t mean she was prepared to be dictated to. Not any more.

‘It’s thirty-three degrees. I’ll boil.’

‘Better that than burn to a crisp. We’re going to be out here for some time.’ He moved to her side and relieved her of his T-shirt and the towel. Then he zipped up the wetsuit more fully over his chest, fastened the neck strap and tugged a cap down hard over his shaggy hair. ‘And you’re about to get wet. You’ll thank me in two hours.’

‘Two hours?’ They’d be out in the water for a couple of hours, with an injured dinosaur? Alone? But Marc wasn’t worried; he ran headlong into the water between the dead whale and the live one and soaked the towel and his shirt.

His five-times experience certainly showed.

By the time Beth had wriggled herself into Marc’s sweatshirt and pulled up the hood for some shade, he was already beside the dangerous giant. A false killer whale, Marc told her. The fact it was not a true killer whale didn’t fill her with any confidence. It was still big enough to send them both flying with a toss of its wishbone tail, which bore an arrow-head-shaped scar. One enormous dark eye rolled wildly at his approach. Marc slowed and started speaking softly. Steadily. Random words that meant nothing.

The eye wasn’t fooled for a minute.

But when Marc gently laid the saturated towel onto its parched skin, the eye rolled fully shut and the beast let off a mighty groan that vibrated the sand beneath Beth’s feet. Her heart squeezed. It wasn’t pain, it was sheer relief. She sprinted forward and met Marc in the water, hoping that he’d think the tears in her eyes were from the glare coming off the ocean.

‘Around the other side,’ he ordered brusquely, glancing up as she wiped a stray one away. ‘Stay up-beach from that ventral fin; it’s pure muscle.’

‘The what fin …?’

‘Underneath.’ He threw the sodden T-shirt her way and she just caught it. ‘The fin closest to her belly.’

The whale barely moved as they took it in turns draping the wet fabric over its parched skin. Within fifteen minutes, Beth’s wrists ached from wringing out the water to run down the whale’s hide and she moved to a slosh-and-drag technique instead. Brutal on the back, but the most effective way of keeping the poor animal wet. A fierce concentration blazed in Marc’s eyes, a flush of exertion highlighting the familiar ridge of his cheekbone. Familiar yet unfamiliar.

Her mind bubbled with memories of a younger Marc studying. Or whipping her butt at chess. Or listening to her dramas. That same focus. That same intensity. No question that some parts of him hadn’t changed.

Even if the rest had.

Neither of them spoke, their focus centred on the whale. Beth’s reason for coming to the south coast flitted entirely out of her head, dwarfed in significance compared to the life and death battle going on in the shallows of Holly’s Bay.

‘You need a break.’ Marc’s voice was reluctant enough and firm enough to cut through the hypnotic routine of slosh-and-drag … slosh-and-drag. But it was also dictatorial enough to get Beth’s hackles up.

‘I’m fine.’

‘You’re parched. Your lips are like prunes. Stop and rehydrate. You’re no use to either of us if you collapse.’

Either of us. Him or the whale. Beth didn’t want to see the sense in that but he was right; if his focus was on rescuing her, the whale could die. She straightened and used the sleeve of his sweatshirt to wipe at the sweat streaming into her eyes.

‘I could use a swig of water myself,’ he said, clearly hoping she’d fall for the incredibly juvenile ploy, but she barely heard him, focusing only on four little letters.

Swig.

Her body immediately picked up and ran with the evocative image: an icy bottle straight from the cooler, the hissing sound the cap made twisting off. The clink of the cap hitting the sink. Her near favourite sound in the world. Second only to the breathy sigh of a cork coming out of a good bottle of Chenin Blanc.

A sound she hadn’t heard for two years. Since she’d stopped drinking.

Her mouth would have watered if it hadn’t been so dry. Like Pavlov’s dog, just the thought of a particular spirit could still make her saliva flow. Despite everything she’d done to put it behind her, her body still compromised her from time to time. When she least expected it. It sure was not going to be happy with what was about to cross its lips.

She moved up the beach and hauled a two-litre bottle of still water out of one of Marc’s supply bags and then cracked the cap. She suddenly realised how thirsty she was, but she was determined not to let Marc see that. She stood and jogged back to his side of the whale and passed him the bottle first. He glared at her meaningfully, but took it and helped himself to a deep, long draw of purified water. His Adam’s apple bobbed thirstily with each long swallow.

‘Once this is gone we can use the bottle to help wet the whale, ‘ she said.

Marc shook his head. ‘We’re going to have to make this last. I only have one more.’

Four litres of water. Between two people, on a blistering Australian day, with reflected light bouncing up off the surface of the salty, salty water.

Oh, joy.

He finished drinking and passed the bottle straight back to her. Beth’s pride had limits and watching the way the clean water had leaked down his throat had stretched it way too far. Every fibre of her being wanted to feel liquid crossing her tongue.

If that had to be water, so be it.

She didn’t guzzle, though she well could have. At least AA had taught her something about restraint. Greedily sculling their precious water supply was not something she wanted Marc to witness. And a small part of her was afraid that once she started she might not stop.

She made herself lower the bottle after a few restorative swallows and, buoyed by the wetness coursing into her body, she jogged lightly back through the beach sand and knelt to slide the bottle into the shade of Marc’s supply bag. As she did, she dislodged the other occupants. The satellite phone. First aid kit. A clutch of muesli and chocolate bars, a small hand-wound torch. The second container of water. And a—

Beth leapt back as if burned.

A large seventies-era silver hip flask tumbled out onto the sand. Ornate, neatly stoppered and probably his father’s before it was Marc’s, one of the few remembrances he might have of the man who had died when Marc was nine. The sort you kept whisky in, or vodka, or just about any liquor you didn’t care to advertise. Beth didn’t need to pick it up to know it was full of something bad. He wouldn’t have thrown it in the emergency pack for nothing.

She shoved it back into the bag and rose to her feet, shaking. She hadn’t worked this hard for two years to blow it now. She glanced at Marc to see if he’d noticed, but he was too busy gently rubbing the wet towel over the whale’s bulbous face to notice.

She’d finally hardened herself against facing her demons on every street corner in the city. Every billboard. Every radio commercial. To encounter liquor on a remote beach in the middle of nowhere. In front of Marc. What kind of a sick karmic joke was this?

She stumbled as her feet sank back into the loose shore sand and water rushed into the twin voids around her ankles. As she went down onto one knee, a wave came in and soaked her to her middle, her pale blue jeans staining instantly darker with salt water, the cold assault shocking her mind off the hip flask and what it held.

But her sunken perspective was how she noticed something else. The whale’s ventral fin was partly underwater, even after the wave washed back out. The one that had been high and dry a couple of hours ago when they’d arrived.

She scrambled to her feet, nearly falling across the whale in her haste.

‘Marc …’

He looked up at her, fatigue in his face, and something else. Fierce determination. This whale was not going to die while he breathed.

‘Marc … the tide’s coming in.’

He turned his eyes heavenward and closed them briefly in salute. His lips moved briefly.

‘Is that good?’

Hazel eyes lowered back to hers, clear and honest, as if they’d forgotten she was an unwelcome blast from the past. ‘That’s very good. Maybe we can refloat her.’

‘It’s a her?’

‘You can tell by her short, curved dorsal fin.’ His head jerked in the direction of the other whale. ‘I think that one might have been her calf.’

The unfamiliar stab of grief slid in under her ribs and washed over her with another shove of the waves. This mum had followed her baby in to shore. Maybe she’d stranded herself trying to save her little one. Was that why her eyes kept rolling around—was she trying to find her calf? Empathy for the animal’s loss nearly overwhelmed her, stealing the breath she desperately needed to keep her muscles working. But she embraced the pain and almost celebrated it. Two years ago, she wouldn’t have felt such sorrow. Two years ago, she wouldn’t have felt much of anything.

Her eyes fell back on the suffering whale. Her ire—and her voice—lifted. ‘Where are they?’

He kept up the rhythmic sloshing. ‘Who?’

‘The rescuers. Shouldn’t they be here by now?’

The sloshing stopped. He stared. ‘We are the rescuers, Beth. What do you think we’ve been doing for the past three hours?’

‘I meant others. People with boats. Shovels. Whale-rescue devices.’

The sun must have been causing a mirage … That almost looked like a smile. The one she’d never imagined she’d see today.

‘Oh, right, the whale-rescue devices.’ Then he sobered. ‘A big group of volunteers is about fifty clicks to the west, helping with another stranding. As soon as they have that situation stabilised they’ll be out to help us. Our solo whale doesn’t stack up against their entire pod, unfortunately.’

‘A whole pod stranded?’ Beth cried. ‘What is wrong with these creatures?’

If not for the tender way she ran the dripping T-shirt across the whale’s skin, taking unnecessary care to avoid its eyes, Marc would have read that as petulance. But he squinted against the lowering sun and really looked at her strained face. Much paler than when they’d started. Despite the blazing sun. Back to the colour it had been when she’d first climbed out of her rental car back at his property.

Beth was tired. Emotionally and physically spent already, and they’d only been out here a couple of hours. She looked as wretched as his mother when she was coming off a particularly bad bender. The bleached cheeks and shadowed eyes had the same impact on him that his mother’s had.

Used to. Before he shut down that part of him.

Beth had much worse to get through yet. The rescue was only just beginning. Maybe he should have shoved her out back at the homestead. Done her a favour and sent her packing. If he’d left just five minutes earlier he would have been out here alone, anyway, so what was the difference if she left now? He had enough supplies to get him through the night.

Water for life. Food for strength. Potassium for cramps. Whisky and wetsuit for warmth. Enough for a day, anyway. Hopefully by then backup would have arrived.

‘It often happens this way,’ he said, taking pity on her confusion. ‘There’s nearly forty volunteers at the other stranding, apparently.’

Beth stared at him between refreshing her whale-washer in the ocean and leaning towards him over the animal as the water ran down over it. ‘Forty! Couldn’t they spare us a couple of people?’

‘Anyone spare is already on their way to other isolated strandings that the aerial boys identify along this stretch of coast. They know we’ve got this one in hand.’

Beth laughed a little too much and waved her paltry, dripping T-shirt around. ‘This doesn’t feel very in hand.’ Marc dived forward and covered the whale’s blowhole to protect it from the cascading water. The whale feebly blew out at the same time. At least she could still do that much.

He found himself suddenly possessed of very little tolerance. ‘Hey, if you want to go, knock yourself out. I’ll do better without your negativity anyway.’

Beth lifted her head and glared, the first sign of fire in those bleak eyes since they’d got out of his Land Cruiser. ‘I’m not negative; I’m terrified. I don’t know what I’m doing.’

The raw honesty spoke to some part of him a decade old. It triggered all kinds of unwelcome protective instincts in him. This really was more than she’d bargained for when she came cruising down his drive, looking all intense.

He sighed. ‘You’re doing fine. Just keep her body wet and her blowhole dry. It’s all we can do.’

They fell to silence and into a hypnotic rhythm in time with the wash of the ocean, the groans of the whale and the slosh … slosh of their wet fabric. Marc did his best to ignore her, but his eyes kept finding their way back to her. To features drawn tight that had once shone with zest. Trying to work out why she’d come. Part of him was curious—the part that had always wondered what the heck had happened all those years ago. But the other part of him wasn’t into lifting lids off unknown boxes any more. And he’d done far too good a job of driving Beth Hughes clear out of his memory. Until today.

‘Do you need to contact Damien? Tell him where you are?’

Frosty eyes lifted to his. ‘I’m not required to report in.’

‘I didn’t say that. But I figured he’d be concerned about you.’ She looked as if a stiff breeze would send her tumbling. I’d be worried if you were mine to worry about.

Whoa. Thank God for inner monologue. Imagine if that little baby had slipped out. A blast well and truly from the past.

Beth dipped her head so the hood shielded her face from his view. ‘He won’t be.’

There was something in the way she said it. So final. So cold. He couldn’t help himself, although he really didn’t want to have any interest in her life ‘Why not?’

Slosh … slosh. Silence.

‘Beth?’

Even the whale seemed to flinch at the sudden outburst of skinny arms to its right. ‘We’re not together any more, okay? I no longer answer to anyone.’

Her marriage was over? The King and Queen of Pyrmont High were no more? A nasty imp deep inside him badly wanted to smile. But there was nothing satisfying about the pain on her face.

‘I’m sorry, Beth.’

‘Don’t be,’ she mumbled from down the tail end of the whale. ‘I’m not.’

She moved like a car wash up and down the three metres of the whale’s body, sloshing as she went. The animal was relaxed and trusting enough now to let her do it without fussing. Her hand trailed along the marbled mercury of its skin as she went and every now and again it shuddered as though ticklish. He empathised completely. There was a time he would have given just about anything to have her hands touch him like that.

He slammed a door on that memory.

So she’d married McKinley young but now she was single again. And hot on the trail of her old pal Marc. A light bulb suddenly came on in his mind. ‘I hope you’re not expecting to pick up where we left off, Beth?’

She froze and looked up at him. ‘Excuse me?’

Ooh. He hadn’t forgotten that arctic look. The ice princess. There was a masochistic kind of pleasure in having it levelled on him again after so long. ‘Because as far as I’m concerned we were done that day behind the library.’

Even under the hood of her oversized sweatshirt he could see her nostrils flaring. About as wildly as the whale’s blowhole. ‘You think I’m here to come on to you?’

‘I’m still waiting to find out why you’re here. You came a long way for something. Go ahead and say what you wanted to say.’

Permission seemed to paralyse her. Her mouth opened and closed wordlessly several times. Whatever she was going to say, it wasn’t easy.

Her hands stilled on the whale. ‘I hurt you back in school and I wanted you to know I’m very sorry,’ her soft voice began.

Every part of him stretched sling-shot taut. He cast her a sideways glance. ‘You didn’t hurt me.’

Her pretty face folded. ‘That can’t be true. I was there, I remember.’

‘What do you remember?’

She blew air out of full lips. ‘How you looked. How we left things.’

How badly he’d handled himself? He shrugged. ‘Like I said. Friendships end.’

‘Not usually like that. You kissed me, Marc.’

Right on cue, he got a flash of the wide-eyed awakening on her face. The coconut taste on his tongue as her mouth had parted with surprise. As he’d sunk into the heaven of her lips. He clenched his teeth against the bittersweet memory. Forced it back down deep where it belonged. His muscles clamped up again. He calmed himself for the whale’s sake. It was stressed enough for all of them.

‘That wasn’t a kiss, Beth. I was trying to make a point.’

Confusion marred her pale skin. ‘What point?’

A lip-searing, unforgettable point. A friendship ending point. ‘That you would have kissed anyone offering at that point.’ That you didn’t need McKinley for that.

She disguised her sharp intake of breath behind loudly dumping her whale-washer in the drink and then she bought herself some recovery time by wringing the life out of his old T-shirt. For one second he felt like a heel for hurting her. But he pushed that away too. Best course now—like back when he was a kid—was not to let himself feel anything at all for Beth Hughes. Time had passed. They’d both moved on. In a couple of hours she’d be gone.

‘It’s been ten years. It’s not like I’ve been sitting around obsessing about it.’ At least not for more than a few months. ‘What else is there to say?’

Slosh … slosh. Her eyes glittered as she measured what he’d said. ‘Other than “Good to see you, Beth”.’

Her tight words cracked and his stomach flipped fully over. He was still a sucker for those big brown eyes if they were awash. Either she was a master manipulator or this really was a big deal for her. But it was for him too, after years of not letting himself think about her. Good to see her?

‘We never lied to each other before.’

Her face grew pale beneath his hoodie and he turned his attention back to the whale, unable to stomach her expression.

They worked silently for another twenty minutes until Marc couldn’t stand the quiet. ‘If you want to take the Cruiser back to my place, that’s fine. I’ll get a lift back when reinforcements come.’

She lifted tired eyes. ‘No, thank you.’

No? ‘Why are you still here? You’ve said what you came for. You’re sorry for the hurt you imagine you caused. ‘ He made his shrug much more casual than he felt. ‘Doesn’t that mean we’re done?’

It should. If it was the real reason. He could see in her eyes it wasn’t.

They flicked away and back in a blink. ‘You haven’t accepted my apology yet.’

That stopped his hands and he slowed his bend to re-wet his towel. ‘Is that a requirement?’

Her eyes held his. ‘I’d like you to.’

Which meant the apology was more about her than him. Why does that surprise you? Just acknowledge the woman’s apology and get her the hell off this beach! Yet something in him couldn’t do it. ‘I don’t see you for ten years and then you turn up looking for absolution?’ Uncertainty filled her eyes. ‘Why would you expect it?’

‘Because … ‘ Her pale face scrunched up, confused. As if she hadn’t thought about that until now. ‘Because you’re Marc.’

He had to take two steps back from the whale for that one. In case it felt his surging anger through his touch. ‘That might have been our dynamic as kids, Beth, but a lot has changed in the years you’ve been gone. I’m not a gutless boy any more.’

She seemed shocked. ‘You were never gutless, Marc. You always went straight for what you wanted.’

Not always. He struggled to get his temper under control, his hands back on the whale. ‘Bully for me.’

‘You don’t believe me?’

‘I don’t believe that’s why you thought I’d fall for your apology.’

Her colour started to rise. ‘I just want to know that you forgive me for what I did.’

And here we go … ‘Ah, now we’re getting to it. So, in addition to accepting your apology, you want forgiveness? What is this, some kind of twelve-step programme?’ He’d studied up on those back when he was researching his mother’s condition. Back when he still gave a damn. ‘Make good for all the people you’ve burned in life?’

It was Beth’s turn to sway away from the whale. He crashed onwards, too worked up to give much care for her enormous eyes. ‘Where did I fall on the list, Beth? How did I fare against your other screw-ups in life? I hope I was at least in the top half.’

Her eyes blazed and it was beautiful and awful at the same time. Now that he was faced with opportunity, hurting her was not quite as satisfying as he’d imagined back when he was seventeen and holding all those feelings close to him.

She stood and stared, her head tilted, her eyes glittering magnificently. ‘Thank you, Marc. This actually makes it easier.’

He was already frowning into the sun too much to do it further. ‘What?’

‘In my head you were still the old Marc—gentle and concerned about people. I was really anxious about facing that man. But the new Marc is just a sarcastic pig and much easier not to give a stuff about.’

He snorted. ‘Story of my life.’

She shook her head, disgust all over her face. ‘Oh, boo hoo …’

Only one person on this planet had ever spoken to him like this—cut-throat honest. Getting straight down to the bones of an issue. And here she was again.

He gave as good as he got. ‘Last time I saw you, Beth, the only thing you wanted from me was a goodbye. Well, you got it. Don’t kid yourself that I’ve been mooching over that all these years. It was a good lesson to learn so early in life. It toughened me up for the real world. It drove me to succeed at school and in life.”

She forced her tiring body to scoop up more water and sloshed it all over the whale, but never took her eyes off him. ‘Fine. Here it is, Marc. I’m sorry that I hurt you back in high school. I made the wrong decision and I’ve come to regret that in my life. I’m sorry that I bailed on our plans for uni, too, and that I might have contributed to you not going—’

Pain lanced through him. ‘Don’t flatter yourself.’

She persevered. ‘But most of all I’m really sorry that I came to find you today. Because, up until now, you were the person I held in my heart as the symbol of everything I wanted to be. Clever, loyal, generous. I’ve spent years wishing I was more like you and—finally—I see the truth. Beneath all those new muscles you’re just an angry, bitter, small man, Marcus Duncannon. And I’ve been wasting my energy feeling so bad about what I did.’

She stood up straighter and looked around her. This was where she should have stormed off. He could see she was dying to—making that kind of spectacular scene just wasn’t complete without a flounce-off. But she had nowhere to go and a whale to save.

He blinked at her. There was absolutely nothing he could say to an outburst like that, which was fine because he was having a hard time getting past one small part of the significant mouthful she’d just spewed. It clanged in his mind like a chime.

You were the person I held in my heart … Every part of him rebelled against the impact of those words on his pulse rate. His mouth dried up and he could feel his heart beating in his throat.

Ridiculous. Unacceptable. She didn’t even know she’d said it.

But it burned like a brand into his mind.

They stood staring at each other, chests heaving equally. Then all the fight drained out of him. ‘Don’t dress it up, Beth. Tell me what you really think.’

She glared at him but couldn’t sustain it. The tiniest of smiles crept through. ‘It’s taken me a decade, but I’ve learned to say what I think. I don’t pull any punches these days.’

‘You never had any trouble with confidence as far as I remember. You were always brash, always willing to go headlong into something with me. With anyone.’

But particularly with me … Those days were some of the best in his life. Back when Marc Duncannon and Beth Hughes were interchangeable in people’s minds. There was nothing she wasn’t willing to try once.

Fearless.

Marc frowned on the realisation. No, she hadn’t been fearless. There were things that had definitely scared the pants off her, but she’d done them. With him by her side.

She looked up at him earnestly. Pained. ‘That is not something I count under my virtues, Marc. Being an enthusiastic follower is not the same as thinking for yourself.’

He snorted. ‘You’re not trying to tell me you were an innocent accomplice?’ He wasn’t ready for another woman in his life blaming everyone around for her problems.

‘I was a completely willing accomplice. I lived to follow you into trouble. I was fully up for any crazy idea you had.’

‘Then what.?’

‘I hadn’t learned yet to ask for what I wanted. To put myself first.’

His stomach sank. McKinley. ‘Don’t tell me. You developed that sense right around the final year of school.’

She stared at him. Hard. ‘On the contrary. It took me nearly a decade.’

Somewhere in there was some hidden meaning he should probably have been seeing. He felt like he always used to with Beth, as if he was operating on seven second delay. Always the last to get it. Always needing things spelled out. He’d forgotten what that felt like. He used to think that he was just not bright enough for her but now, with adult eyes, he wondered if it wasn’t just that she tended to be cryptic.

He blew out a breath. ‘Okay, as much as I’m enjoying our little trip down memory lane, it’s not helping this whale. I want you to take over on the wetting; I’m going to try something.’

‘Wait! What?’

‘You’ll see.’

Beth shifted nervously. ‘No, I… Will it take long?’

‘Probably. Why?’

‘I need to … ‘ She looked around. ‘Despite the heat …’

Understanding hit him. ‘Oh. Well, you’re in the ocean. Go here.’

The look she gave him was hysterical. ‘I’m not going to pee in the water while you’re standing in it. And while a whale’s lying in it.’

‘What do you reckon the whale does, Beth?’

‘I’m not a whale!’

True enough. She was slight enough to be the krill that whales liked to feast on. ‘Look, the tide’s running diagonally from the south, so if you go over there—’ he pointed to a spot about ten metres away ‘—then the whale and I will be safely upstream.’ He grinned. ‘As it were.’

Beth turned and looked at the spot, then back at him. ‘I can’t.’

‘Bashful bladder?’

‘You’re not helping, Marc.’ She started to search around the shore for another alternative.

‘Before you even suggest it, the dunes are not safe. Tiger snakes. Up beach might be okay but it’s a lot more exposed and it’s probably safer if we stay fairly close together.’ If you stay close to me. ‘Besides, a swim first will cool you off.’

‘Oh, my God … ‘ She looked around one more time, desperately, as if a Portaloo might materialise on the beach if she willed it hard enough.

It was difficult not to find that panicked expression endearing. Despite everything. He tightened his jaw. ‘Come on, Princess. When did you get so precious? The quicker you get out there the quicker it’ll be over.’

‘Are you laughing at me?’

He forced his face into a more neutral expression. ‘I wouldn’t dream of it.’

‘I’m sure you’d have the same concern if you were in my situation.’

‘I was in your situation, Beth. About an hour ago. I just didn’t make a fuss about it.’

It took her about two seconds to realise he hadn’t left the water. Or his wetsuit. She lurched away from the whale—and him—and waded hastily away. ‘Oh, my God. Men are so disgusting!’

He just grinned at her, the years falling away. ‘It’s human,’ he cried after her as she kept striding up-beach, slowly into deeper water. He kept poking, in the painfully reasonable tone he knew she hated the most, calling after her fleeing shape. ‘We all do it.’

Her cheeks had flamed from a heap more than windburn. Watching the mighty fall should have brought him more satisfaction. But Beth’s prudishness only served to remind him of the vast gulf that lay between them. That always had. In school, she’d always had an aura about her, a subtle kind of quality that set her apart from everyone else. Definitely from him. Her brains certainly had. She was by far the brightest person he’d known, but she didn’t hang out with the brains. Or the geeks. Or the beautiful people—until the end—though it was where she and her luminescence had truly belonged.

She’d pretty much hung out with him. Rain, hail or shine. And he’d pretty much lived for that back then.

When he was younger, he hadn’t thought to wonder about it. It wasn’t until he was about fourteen and some helpful jackass had pointed out the social differences between poor Marcus Duncannon and rich girl Elizabeth Hughes that it had started to niggle. But she’d been unwavering in her friendship, uncaring about the condition of his mum’s ancient car, the shabby hems on T-shirts he’d been wearing for two years. Or the fact that she had to ride buses to hang out with him. Some deep part of him had feared she might bail on him like everyone else when his father’s life insurance money had run out. But she hadn’t.

Not for three years. On the other side of that day, it had all looked more sinister. Maybe slumming with the poor fatherless kid gave her some kind of weird social cachet, some intrigue. Maybe he propped up her ego daily with his sycophantic interest. Maybe she was just biding her time until someone better came along.

Or maybe she just outgrew him. She’d said as much. He just never would have picked McKinley as the sort of chump she’d grow towards.

At seventeen he’d thought about ditching school immediately. Lord knew his mother needed the extra income back then. And he certainly could have done without the daily taunts of the beautiful people that his Beth was now one of them. McKinley’s Beth, in fact, but always his Beth deep in his heart.

And now the Princess of Pyrmont High was peeing in the ocean. In public.

There was a certain satisfaction in that. No matter how belated. He hadn’t let himself go over these memories for years. Call it a self-preservation thing. He didn’t like the person he’d become in those final months of school.

Beth’s discomfort at being so debased only birthed a raw, shining affection deep in his gut—a feeling he hadn’t allowed for a long, long time. He laughed to dislodge the glow deep within, to sever the golden filaments that threatened to re-establish between them.

He laughed to save himself from himself.

Then he locked his jaw and forced his attention back onto the only female out here who deserved his sympathy.

The ocean was full of water. What were a few drops more? And Beth was incredibly overheated. The idea of taking a quick swim before. Well, it wasn’t the worst idea in the world.

She waded out into the deeper water, waist height, and peeled off Marc’s oversized fleecy sweatshirt before bundling it high above her head to keep it dry. Then she slowly lowered her body up to her neck in the cold Southern Ocean. The frigid kiss of liquid on parched skin made her shiver. Cool ocean water rinsed away dried sweat. She tipped her head all the way back until cold water washed around her ears.

Bliss.

‘Turn around!’ she shouted back to Marc, onshore. Yes, it was pointless but it felt very necessary. He complied, busying himself with the whale, but she was sure his whole body was lurching with laughter.

Sure, laugh at the spectacle. Nice. Her humiliation was probably a gift to him.

She swapped the sweater into a raised hand, carefully unfastened her jeans with the other and tugged them down single-handed, muttering the whole time. There was no way she was going to repeat Marc’s wetsuit trick. She may have done some low things in her life but there were some barrel bottoms even she wouldn’t scrape.

Getting her jeans down single-handed was one thing but getting them back on when she was finished, wet and underwater.

‘Oh, no.’ Beth looked urgently between Marc and the great expanse of nothing around them and realised there was no way—nowhere—she was going to be able to get out of this water with dignity.

‘Come on, Beth. I’m doing all the work here,’ Marc complained from his side of the whale.

For crying out loud! She wriggled left and then right and eventually stepped free of her adhesive jeans, trapping them on the ocean floor between her feet and standing fully up. Then she slid Marc’s enormous hoodie back on over her cotton blouse. Its thickness cut out some of the sun’s glare and pressed her wet blouse more tightly to her, cooling her even more. With one hand, she held the sweater high of the waterline and then she hooked her jeans up out of the water with a foot, into her free hand.

Then she started wading back to shore, barelegged. Her underwear was no worse than a bikini bottom, after all. Just because it was flouncy …

Just because it was Marc.

Her heart fluttered wildly, imagining his reaction to her stick-thin legs. The last decade and the abuses she’d put her body through really hadn’t done her any favours. She stiffened her spine and trod ashore as though this had been her plan all along, letting his sweater slip back down to mid-thigh, and then laid her wrecked jeans out to dry on the sand high above the tide mark next to their bag of supplies. Her eyes instinctively fell on it, knowing what lay within, pulsing like a dark heart. And what lay within what lay within.

Walk away.

The thickness of the sand hid the unsteadiness of her gait. Not that Marc would have noticed; he was looking everywhere but at her long bare legs. The whale. The horizon. The sky. The extra delay probably irritated him if he couldn’t even meet her eyes.

That didn’t help her mood any. ‘Okay. I’m back. What was so urgent?’

He waited until she got behind the whale before letting his eyes rest back on her. Then he cleared his throat. ‘I’m going to try and dig a trench around her,’ he said, indicating the now dangerously still whale. ‘If I can get my snatch-strap around her, maybe we can drag her out a bit further.’

‘Will it hold?’

‘It pulls my Land Cruiser; it should tow a small whale.’

Beth frowned. ‘Is digging under her safe?’

‘I’ll trench in front, then we’ll try and saw the strap through the sand beneath her.’ His hands mimicked the action, the cords in his wrists and forearms flexing with the motion. It briefly flitted through her mind that those bulging muscles could probably tow the whale to sea all by themselves.

Beth shook her head. ‘No way. She must weigh half a ton. That sand will be too compressed.’

For a tiny moment he looked at her with a hint of admiration. Pleasing him had always pleased her. Even now. The slightest of glows leached out from somewhere deep inside her. But then he dropped heavy lids down over his eyes and the connection was lost.

‘I’ve been thinking about that. If we can time it with the suck of the wash back out to sea it might loosen the sand just enough. It’s worth a try. But we need to be ready for high tide.’

‘What happens then?’

‘We try and refloat her.’

‘By ourselves?’ Her voice sounded like a squeak, even to her.

‘If we get lucky, the cavalry will arrive with a boat to tow her back out.’

‘And if we don’t?’

Steady eyes regarded her. ‘If we don’t, I hope you’re stronger than you look.’

CHAPTER THREE

SHE wasn’t. Not nearly. But she was getting better.

It had been a long, uphill road recovering from being Mrs Damien McKinley, but she’d found the strength to try. And it appeared that strength begat more strength, because she’d found extra to come here today. To face Marc. Even though ninety per cent of her whispered not to bother. Not to risk it. The ten per cent of her that disagreed was noisy and shovey and refused to be ignored. It remembered Marc. It trusted him.

Looked as if it had just learned a powerful lesson.

Marc Duncannon was not the man she remembered. He’d grown up in so many ways and while his physical changes were an unarguable enhancement, she couldn’t say the same for his personality. Then again, after the decade she’d endured, she was no prize either. Maybe losing his father so young had damaged him irreparably. So close to losing his best friend. And apparently then his mother.

She frowned. ‘So, you didn’t tell me what happened with your mum. You two were so close.’ Each was all the other had left. Even if Beth had really struggled to like Janice by the end.

Marc’s whole body straightened and turned to stone, halting his digging. His mouth set. His eyes darkened dangerously. ‘Did you imagine I’d still be living at home with my mother at this age?’

Scorn like that would have hurt a lot more once, before she calloused up at Damien’s hands. Still, the fact that it still managed to slice down into her gut said a lot about how she still felt about Marc. She took a controlling breath. ‘Obviously I expected you to have moved out of home but I never expected you to have moved out of her life.’

The blizzard in his eyes reached out and lashed at her. ‘You still like to research before you travel, obviously.’

The one trip they’d taken together, when Marc had got his driving licence at the start of their final year in school, had been an exercise in military precision, thanks to Beth’s aptitude for planning. Anything to take her mind off the fact that she and Marc were going to be camping. Out in the sticks. Alone. Right about then, her awareness of him as anything other than her best mate had crashed headlong into adolescent awareness of him as a mate. As in biological. That had been an awkward, confusing feeling that had never quite diminished.

‘I had to start somewhere to find you. Your neighbour remembered me.’ The woman had been very kind and given Beth the information she needed to track Marc down. Albeit with a slight lift to one eyebrow. She tried again. ‘I thought. because Janice was all you had …’

Marc resumed his powerful digging, the chop and slide of his body adding emphasis to his curt words. ‘I hope you’re not trying to convince me that you had warm feelings for my mother. I remember how fast you used to like to get in and out of my house.’

Beth flushed. She hadn’t realised how poorly she’d been covering her dislike of Marc’s mum back then. It hadn’t always been that way. It was just that as Marc grew older, Mrs Duncannon seemed to grow more hostile. Almost jealous. Until that last day.

Marc stood in his trench and eyed her. ‘After school I spent some time up north on the trawlers. When I got back, I thought it was time to get my own space,’ he said. ‘She liked the city, I wanted the country. It’s as simple as that.’

Right. And this whale was made of Jell-O. But if he didn’t want to talk about it.

On a non-committal uh-huh, she let her focus drop back to where her hands continued to slosh the whale with a T-shirt that was now mostly shredded fabric. Ten years was a long time. One-third of their lives. What else could have injured him in that time? A woman? He didn’t have a ring—not even a tan mark; she’d checked that out while he was choking the life out of his steering wheel earlier. But there was no doubt he was harbouring some wounds.

The thought brought her a physical pain that somehow rose above the ache in her lower back. That anyone would have hurt him like that. Bad enough what she’d done.

She dragged a deep breath in and concentrated on what her hands were doing. But silence wasn’t an option either. ‘Ask me a question.’

‘About what?’

‘Anything other than Damien or that day at school.’ Or what I’ve been doing for the past ten years.

He waved his whale-washer in the air and then complied, plucking a question from nowhere. ‘Favourite colour?’

‘Still green. Moss-green, nothing too limey. My whole studio is painted that colour.’

‘You have a studio?’

‘Sounds more glamorous than it is. It’s a partially restored old warehouse belonging to my father. I suspect I’m not supposed to be living in it. Council rules.’

‘What do you do there?’

‘I paint. Oils. My work is all around me.’ For better or worse. The images from her abyss period were dark and dismal. But powerful. Lately, new brighter themes had started emerging. ‘When I changed to B-stream it gave me an art double and I discovered I loved it. And I’m good at it.’

Two confused lines folded across his brow. ‘That’s good. I’d like to—’

… see them? The way he cut himself off made her wonder. They fell to silence. ‘Ask me about my first car,’ she eventually said.

Cars. The great equaliser. He smiled slightly and shook his head. ‘What was your first car, Beth?’

‘Toyota. Right after school. God, I loved that beat-up piece of junk. First thing I bought and paid for myself.’ Until she’d stopped driving it because of the drinking.

‘First kiss?’

She shook her head. ‘Nope. Not talking about that day.’

Marc’s eyes flared. ‘Hold on, sidebar for just one second. That was your first kiss?’

She stared at him. ‘You were my best friend. You don’t think I would have told you the second someone kissed me?’

His eyebrows rose in apparent disbelief. ‘No one ever tried?’

Beth shrugged; the hurts that had meant so much when she was younger were insignificant in the light of everything that had happened since. ‘Guess I wasn’t all that sought-after in school.’

He opened his mouth to say something, thought better of it and then changed tack. ‘Until McKinley.’

‘Right. But that topic’s off-limits too.’ Then something occurred to her. ‘Wait—it wasn’t your first kiss?’ Marc dropped thick lashes down between them. Her mouth fell open. ‘Seriously? Who was it?’

He had to know she was going to keep nagging until he told her.

‘Tasmin Major.’

‘Olympic Tasmin?’ Her voice rose an octave.

‘She was only state level then.’

But a twice Olympic freestyle diver since then. Tasmin was one of the classmates Beth thought of when she was counting her own many failings. Pretty. Gentle. Athletic. Olympic. And now she’d been Marc’s first kiss, too. Maybe more? That thought bit deep down inside. Right down deep where she always considered their kiss behind the library to be special. Even if it had led to the end of their friendship.

Her throat tightened up. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ More importantly, how could she have not noticed? She’d been so attuned to Marc’s every breath.

He sidestepped her outrage. ‘Why would I tell you? It was just a kiss.’ Beth gave him her most penetrating stare, straight out of childhood. ‘Okay, a bunch of kisses, but it’s not like we were dating or anything.’

‘I hope not, because that would mean I really was oblivious to everything going on around me.’ Curiosity got the better of her. ‘Why were you kissing Tasmin if you weren’t dating?’

Marc dragged his eyes off to the horizon. Back to the whale. Anywhere but on hers.

‘Marc?’

He hissed and tossed his hands up. ‘She volunteered.’

Beth blinked. Several times. ‘Tasmin Major volunteered to kiss you? Did I miss some kind of recruitment process?’

Cautious eyes met hers briefly. ‘Actually, we volunteered with each other.’

Beth’s stomach compressed into a hard ball. An insane jealousy surged through her as she realised what that meant. They wouldn’t have been the first kids in school to do it. ‘You went to her for kissing practice? Why?’

The look he gave her took her back a decade, too.

‘Okay, other than practice, obviously. I can’t believe you went to Tasmin. I mean she’s nice and all, but … What was wrong with me?’ And why on earth was this hurting so much?

That brought his head up instantly. Hazel eyes blazed sincerity. ‘Nothing was wrong with you, Beth. But we were friends.’

She thought of all the girls at school who turned their snooty noses up at Marc because of the way he lived and dressed. As if they would ever find a finer person. Her estimation of Tasmin rose a notch because she wasn’t one of them, even if it also meant that she’d spent half their childhood with Marc’s tongue down her Olympic throat.

Then something else hit her. ‘Who were you practising for?’

He tipped his face back down to the whale, sloshed harder. Resolutely ignored the question. Beth waited. Silently. Her heart pounded. How far had she truly come if she was this frightened of finding out?

‘It’s old news, Beth. Hardly important now.’

Her frown threatened to leave permanent grooves between her eyes, encrusted in the salt. ‘I thought I knew everything about you back then, Marc. It’s thrown me.’

He waved his shredded towel. ‘I just wanted to get the whole first kiss thing out of the way, Beth. Can we just leave it at that?’

She looked at the tightness of his lips, the shadow in his gaze. She softened her tone. ‘That library kiss was pretty accomplished. You guys must have practised a lot.’

The corner of his mouth lifted. ‘Good times.’ Then he looked back up at Beth, his eyes guarded. ‘Anyway, I thought that day was off-limits. Moving on …’

Right. Moving forward. The past was in the past. ‘Next question.’

It took Marc nearly two hours to hand-dig a deep enough trench a metre on-shore of the whale and reinforce it with driftwood to hold back the collapsing sand. In that time, the blazing afternoon sun dipped its toes into the ocean on the horizon and the most magnificent orange light coated everything around them. Her artist’s eye memorised the colour for future use. Beth sighed as much as the whale did as the scorching heat suddenly eased.

In the dying light of dusk, Marc laid the strap out and then asked Beth to take one eyeleted end. She mimicked his bent stance, her prune-skin hands pressed down to the shallow ocean floor and her back screaming its protest. Then they started sawing the strap under the sand, towards the whale.

Push. pull. Push. pull. A slow, agonising rhythm.

Beth felt the moment they got close to her because, exactly as she’d suspected, the sand compressed into a rock-hard mass under the whale’s weight. But Marc’s idea worked, though slowly. With every wave that ran in, the suck of the water rushing back out between every one of a million grains of sand loosened it just a tiny bit and they were able to saw the strap, inch by agonising inch, beneath the giant mammal. The tide had crept in so much and they bent over so far that Beth’s lowered face was practically touching the rising water. Her muscles trembled with exhaustion, screamed with frustration, but she wasn’t about to complain to Marc, even though every part of her felt as if she’d been hit by a truck.

Her back. Her skin. Her feet. Her arms. Even her head thumped worse than any hangover she’d ever earned.

Marc grunted as loud as she did. The whale did nothing but blow the occasional protest out of its parched blowhole. Finally, just when tears of utter exhaustion pricked, he called a halt.

Standing upright nearly crippled Beth after the abuses of the day and she cried out as her muscles went into full cramp, stumbling back onto her knees in the rising water, wetting the bottom half of Marc’s fleecy sweatshirt. It galled her to go down in front of him, but how much did he expect she could take? She caught herself before she sank completely down onto her bottom but she was incapable of getting back up. She froze in an odd kind of rigor where she was. Her hands shook as if they were palsied. Her head drooped.

Marc was with her in seconds, his strong arms sliding around her middle to keep her up out of the water. ‘Beth, grab on to me …’

Tears came then. Angry. Embarrassed. Relieved. It had been so long since she’d last felt any part of Marc against her and it felt so right now. Safe and strong. Welcome and long-missed. Where she was bone and long hollow muscles, he was solid and smooth and rooted to the earth. Even in the water.

And he was her friend. At least he had been. Once.

He might have been stronger but he was just as tired as she was, it seemed. He needed her cooperation to get her back on her feet. Hours ago, he could have lifted her single-handed. ‘Come on, Beth, pull yourself up,’ he said, low against her ear.

If she turned her head just a bit she could breathe in his intoxicating scent. ‘I’m sorry …’ Her vision blurred.

His strong fingers tucked around her waist, burned there.

‘Don’t be. You did well. We got the strap around her.’ His voice was tight as he steadied her back onto her feet but she let herself lean into him until the last possible second. He smelled of salt and sweat; an erotic, earthy kind of scent that elicited all kinds of tingling in her. Nothing like the over-applied, cheap colognes Damien liked to mask himself with.

She turned her face more closely into Marc and breathed in deep.

He pulled her out of the water, supported her long enough that they got up on the beach to where the supplies were. She collapsed down onto the sand, knowing she might never get back up but knowing she couldn’t keep standing.

Even for him.

‘Take a break, Beth. We’ve been at this for seven hours. No wonder you’re exhausted.’

He didn’t join her on the sand. Instead, he snagged up the supply bag and fished around in it until he retrieved two muesli bars, a chocolate bar, a banana and an unfamiliar packet of powdered mix. He offered her a choice. As hungry and tired as she was, the thought of putting food in her stomach did not appeal. There was only one thing in that supply kit that had her name on it. And she wasn’t letting herself have that, either. She pushed his hand away.

‘You have to pick one, Beth.’

She shook her head.

‘Fine.’ He tossed the chocolate bar at her. ‘This will give you immediate energy and potassium for the cramping, but in one hour I want you to have this.’ He waved the pouch of powder.

‘What is it?’

‘Sports mix. Endurance athletes use it. Just mix it with water. You need the fats and carbs if you’re going to last.’

Was that a comment about her weight? ‘I thought men liked women skinny?’

He looked at her, appalled.

Mortification soaked through her. Oh, God, Beth. Don’t speak. Clearly, she was too tired to think straight. She shook her head again, incapable of an apology that wouldn’t make things worse. Her mind’s eye slipped to what was left in the supply bag. How had she dealt with this sort of moment before? She couldn’t remember. Excruciating comments didn’t feel so bad when you were blind drunk and so was everyone around you. You sure had less to regret that way.

Had she forgotten even how to feel shame?

‘The powder’s slow release energy, Beth. It’ll get you through the next few hours.’

If she could just get through the next few minutes she’d be happy.

Marc crammed a muesli bar into his mouth on a healthy bite. Where Beth nibbled, he practically inhaled. Then he took one of the endurance pouches and filled it with water, shook and consumed it in a drawn-out swallow. Beth was too tired to drag her eyes off the long length of his tanned throat. How could even a throat be manly? But here she was, ogling it for the second time today.

She forced her eyes down to the half-melted bar in her hands. Chocolate was one of those foods she tried to avoid. Something she liked a little bit too much. Something that challenged her hard won willpower. But Marc was ordering her to eat it, and she was feeling so weak, so. what to do …?

She took a small bite.

She forced herself to go slow, not to wolf it down, although her blood and her brain screamed at her to. It was part of her process. If she gave in on something small, then what chance did she have over something big?

This was where the downward slide began. Her eyes went to the pack of supplies.

‘Okay, come on.’ Marc stretched out his hand to her, mumbling around the last crumbs of his muesli bar. ‘If you don’t get up again, you’ll seize up and be here all night.’

The thought of rising was horrible. She groaned and stared at his extended hand. ‘I can’t …’

‘She needs us, Beth.’ His gentle words pushed every guilt button she had. Beth looked over to the dark mass half-submerged in the even darker waters of dusk. It may be cooler now that the sun had set—significantly cooler—but the whale wasn’t in a position to wet her own skin. Or drag herself back out to sea.

And maybe taking a break was actually the start of the slide—insidiously disguised?

Beth forced herself over onto her side and then pushed painfully to her knees. It was the least elegant thing she could remember doing. Marc took her hand in his callused, strong one and pulled her the rest of the way to her feet. She stumbled against his neoprene hardness before steadying herself and pointlessly shaking the worst of the beach sand off her soggy sweatshirt.

His hands were high on her bare thighs, brushing more sand off before either of them realised what he was doing.

A rush of heat raged up her skin where his fingers touched and she leapt back with a speed she couldn’t have found if he’d begged her. Marc stiffened and a pink flush showed itself above the collar of his wetsuit. God, that was one hundred per cent habit from the good old days. The days before gender was an issue. Now, having his hot hands on her icy skin was absolutely an issue. For both of them.

It had to be.

‘Okay,’ he said, clearing his throat and straightening to his full height. ‘Back in the water.’

Beth willed her legs to follow him back down to the surf. How many hours had passed since she’d stumbled down the dunes this morning? As bad as she felt—and she couldn’t remember a time she’d felt worse, even in the depths of her withdrawal—they’d achieved a lot. The whale was still alive, its skin was in reasonable shape, and they had implemented the first part of Marc’s plan to refloat her.

Sure, tensions were high between them and, yes, maybe she’d rather be curled up by an open fire right now watching reruns of Pride and Prejudice, but she was hanging in there. She felt vaguely hydrated now that the scorching sun had eased off and the chocolate was doing its job and feeding energy directly into her cells. Their conditions could be much, much worse. That thought gave Beth’s spine the tiniest of reinforcement.

And then the sun set.