Ryan was for now.
He swung her round and round the room, his kiss intensifying as he whirled. Abbey was laughing and dizzy and so madly in love her feet wouldn’t have touched the ground even if she’d been standing.
There was only Ryan. There was only this love.
And finally-somehow-they were in her bedroom, falling onto the soft covers. And Ryan’s mouth left off claiming hers. He lay with Abbey in his arms and he pulled away so he could see her. His hand reached up and switched off the bedlight and there was only the light from the full moon, glimmering onto the land and through the open window from the sea.
‘Woman, you are driving me crazy,’ Ryan groaned. ‘You know that? Five days… Five days since I’ve seen you and I haven’t had you out of my head for one minute. Abbey, you must marry me. To save my sanity, you must… ’ And he hauled her tighter to him, tighter-until his need was her need and the world was fusing in a mist of love and desire and the coming together of two people who were right for each other.
But they weren’t. They couldn’t be.
Somehow Abbey made herself push away. She held Ryan at arm’s length and she looked into his eyes in the dim light. And what she saw there told her that she was truly loved.
But it wasn’t enough.
In the next bedroom lay her little boy. And there was a hospital five minutes down the road that depended on her. And Janet?
No. Janet had sorted out her own loneliness. But there was no way Abbey could find the same happiness.
‘Ryan, this is crazy. We can’t…’ Her breath broke on a sob. ‘I can’t…’
‘You can.’ Ryan’s hand held her and he smiled-a smile that made her heart do crazy things inside her breast. ‘Abbey, for the past five days I’ve been thinking. Really thinking. Leith’s injury…’
‘Leith…’
‘It’s touch and go whether she’ll walk again.’ Ryan told her. ‘She needs expert rehabilitation. More than just swimming lessons now. And I thought, if I went back to the States I’d never know that it was done properly. I’d walk away and it would be up to others to see that she had the right treatment.’
‘But-’
‘Hush,’ he told her. ‘Listen. Over the past five days, I’ve been seeing Sapphire Cove at its best. I’ve watched how surrounded Leith’s parents have been.
‘And Steve… He’s down there in Brisbane and he has no family at all but I don’t think there’s a family in Sapphire Cove who haven’t sent him flowers or chocolates or fruit or something! The local primary-school children have sent him pictures to decorate his walls. His bedroom’s packed, he’s touched to the core and he wants to come back.
‘Steve’s been a loner all his life, trying to find roots, and he’s found them here. He wants to work here.’
‘What-permanently?’
‘Yes. He wants to marry Caroline and stay here.’
‘Are you saying I could go because of that?’ Abbey asked slowly. ‘Go with you? To the States?’
‘No.’ He kissed her then, lightly, on the nose. ‘I’m not. At first that’s what I thought but then… the more I thought about it the more jealous I grew. Jealous of Steve. His decision seemed so right. To stay here with the woman he loved. To live long term in a community like this. To bring his kids up where they could hunt for turtles.’
‘S-so?’
‘So, if it’s OK with you, I’ll rearrange my life,’ Ryan said seriously. ‘Steve and I have it figured.’
‘Steve and you…’
‘Steve and I. And my co-researchers in the States. The reason I’ve come here so late is that this is the only reasonable time I can talk to New York and I’ve been trying to organise everything so I can hand you a deal on a platter.’ He hauled her close again and kissed her.
‘A deal, Abbey Rhodes. Abbey Wittner. Abbey soon-to-be-Henry. You want to hear my deal? It’s taken me days and days to organise it so it’s worth a listen.’
And he kissed her again, so deeply that there was no way in the wide world that she could hear anything at all.
Then he managed to pull away. Ryan was laughing down at her in the moonlight, triumphant and loving. And Abbey’s heart was turning somersault after somersault, so fast she could hardly breathe.
‘Want to hear?’ he demanded again, and Abbey managed a shaken laugh.
‘Oh, Ryan, of course I want to hear. Of course.’
‘My plan is this.’ He held her at arm’s length and groaned. ‘Hell, Abbey, stop looking so damned beautiful. I can’t make myself think here.’
‘Think,’ she told him severely. ‘You need a bucket of cold water, Ryan Henry.’ Then she reached out and touched him on the lips with her finger. And laughed with joy. ‘I need a bucket of cold water myself. Tell me fast, Ryan,’ she begged. ‘Fast.’
‘I’m moving here to live. Permanently.’
That stopped her. The laughter died.
‘Ryan, you can’t,’ she said uncertainly. ‘Your career…’ She shook her head. ‘Ryan, you’d be like me in the States. A fish out of water.’
‘Nope.’ He pulled her to him again and kissed her hair. ‘Not a fish out of water.’ He held her close and spoke thickly into her curls. ‘It’s all organised. Steve’s interested in my research areas. He’s bright and young and keen as mustard. Cairns is only an hour and a half away and it has an international airport. We’re going to keep on with our research. I’m going to keep on with my teaching commitments in the States-via video conferencing.
‘I’ll be working here with Steve, intermittently in Cairns and Brisbane, and twice a year I’ll have to fly back to the States for two-week stints at the hospital where I’m based now. But ninety per cent of the time I’ll be based here, Abbey Wittner. Here!’
‘But… but how?’
‘The world is getting smaller,’ Ryan told her, holding her close. ‘With video conferencing, the Internet, e-mail- hell. Abbey, I spend my life in the States on the end of a modern, talking to doctors two rooms away. Now I’ll be doing the same thing but I’ll be half a world away.
‘And I’ll keep my feet on the ground by indulging in a little general practice. As will Steve. So, between us, we’ll give Sapphire Cove three part-time doctors. You and me and Steve. And we’ll all five happily ever after.’
Then the laughter in his voice died and his eyes became a trace uncertain. Anxious. ‘How does that sound, my lovely Abbey? Will it work? Will you mind me going back to the States-leaving you for two weeks twice a year? I’ll give up my research if I must-to win you. If it’s not enough.’
‘Oh, Ryan…’
‘Tell me, Abbey.’
‘No,’ Abbey said breathlessly, and her eyes were bright with unshed tears. ‘It’s not enough, Ryan Henry. Eleven months of a year are not enough as a basis for a marriage…’
‘Abbey…’
‘I’ll only marry you on one condition, Ryan Henry,’ Abbey murmured joyfully, and she put her arms around him and held him close. So close she thought she’d never let him go again. Not ever.
‘Condition?’ Ryan’s voice was slurred by love and desire. Abbey’s body was curled into his and his hands were sliding under her wrap. Feeling the delicious contours of her body. Pulling her against him.
A man and a woman, becoming one.
‘On condition that when you go back to the States for your month every year I’m going too,’ Abbey told him. ‘Me and Jack. Your family. Whither thou goest, I go, my love. My home is your home, Ryan Henry. My heart is your heart.’
Ryan closed his eyes. In any man’s life there should be this pinnacle of joy, he told himself. This was it. This was the moment he’d been waiting for all his life, and now he was here he couldn’t believe he’d reached it.
‘You want to wake Jack?’ he asked, and his voice was as unsteady as he’d ever heard it. As unsure. ‘Tell him he’s got a new daddy?’
But Abbey was shaking her head and her hands were moving down… down… In a gesture of pure wifely possession.
