Fern felt sick to the stomach. Her world was no longer tilting. It had shrivelled into something puckered and ugly and somehow…somehow tainted…
Numbly Fern gathered her bloodstained clothes from the night before and bade Jessie farewell.
This was where she bowed out.
She should go back to Sydney, she thought bleakly as she made her way out of the hospital, but her aunt was still desperately ill. There were fine strings of duty holding Fern to the island.
Not duty, Fern acknowledged at last, feeling the pain she had been trying to avoid since her family were killed.
She loved her aunt. She couldn’t leave. The bonds of duty had become bonds of love.
She loved Quinn!
‘I do not,’ she said savagely to the silence as she started the long walk back to her uncle’s farmhouse. Fern’s car was still down at the harbour from last night and to have asked one of the hospital staff-or Jessie-for a ride would have choked her.
It was a half-hour walk. Fern kept off the road, knowing that Quinn would return this way from the airstrip.
She didn’t want to see Quinn Gallagher ever again.
Quinn might be able to take his marriage vows lightly but if he did that…If he did that then how much truth was there in what he told her?
Somehow she had given her heart to a base cheat who was playing with the emotions of two women.
Two?
Who knew? There might even be more. Who knew what was causing those shadows under Jessie’s eyes?
The girl looked haunted.
Fern thought back to the night before and mentally cringed. Quinn hadn’t even let Fern go when Jessie walked in on them and he had put Fern to bed with all tenderness while Jessie was forced to watch.
‘She doesn’t have much time for people,’ Quinn had said of his wife and Fern was starting to see why.
‘He’s a toad!’ she said savagely to a lone cow peering over a fence. ‘Toad, toad and double toad.’
The cow, heavy with calf and sleepy with the midday sun, closed her eyes and swayed as though she was in complete agreement.
How to get through the next few days?
How to persuade her aunt to leave the island?
There were no easy answers. Fern cleaned the house yet again for her uncle and then tackled his dry garden. The drought meant that there was no water for luxuries like watering the lawn so the front garden was a brown and dismal sight, but digging in the caked dirt was work suited to Fern’s bruised soul-no matter how useless.
Finally, towards evening, when her uncle had disappeared again to visit his wife Fern donned her bathing suit and headed to the beach.
Beneath the house was a tiny cove. ‘We had it put there just for you,’ Fern’s uncle had told her when Fern had first come to the island, and it was such a magic place-and so private-that Fern had almost believed him.
A tiny strip of soft white sand ran down to the water’s edge. Out to sea a shelf of rocks deflected the worst of the surf so what had formed was a huge, natural swimming pool. Fern never swam alone. There were masses of glittering subtropical fish swimming beside her every stroke she took.
There was usually other company and tonight was no exception. Out to sea a pair of dolphins rolled lazily in the swell and then nosed their way in to find out who was intruding in their territory. The presence of the dolphins meant that sharks kept well away and the fluorescence of the leaping dolphins in the moonlight was enough to make Fern almost weep with their beauty.
Even the dolphins couldn’t work their magic tonight, though.
Fern had come down here and swum and swum in the months after her parents’ death, searching for some comfort in the steady rhythm of surf and sea and the companionship of the same two dolphins who seemed to use this cove as their permanent base. They had soothed her finally-but it had taken years.
Would it take years now?
Fern swam for what seemed an hour, until the sun was just a flickering memory of fire on the horizon.
Finally, reluctantly, she turned to shore.
Quinn was waiting.
How long he had been there she couldn’t tell. He was sitting on the sand beside her towel, watching her with eyes that knew trouble when they saw it. His open-necked shirt was rippling in the soft night breeze, his jeans were rolled to the knees and his feet were bare.
His eyes never left Fern as she walked up the beach toward him.
Amazingly, there was compassion behind those dark eyes.
‘I thought you’d turn to a prune,’ he said gently, as she faltered and stopped. He stood and held out her towel. ‘You and Lizzy…You’re like fish…’
‘Why are you here?’
It was a flat accusation and it cut across the night like a whip.
‘I wanted to see you.’
‘Well, you’ve seen me,’ Fern snapped, snatching her towel from his hands and wrapping it round her wet bathing costume in a childish gesture of defence. ‘Now leave.’
‘What’s wrong, my Fern?’
‘I am not your Fern!’ Fern turned away from him and stalked two yards up the path toward the house but suddenly she stopped, fury surging. She wheeled back to face him, green eyes flashing fore. ‘How dare you make love to me, Quinn Gallagher? With Jessie present, even…How dare…?’
‘I know why I dared,’ Quinn said softly. He was watching her as a man might watch a dearly loved time bomb. He loved what he was seeing but he just knew that she was going to self-destruct.
So let her self-destruct…
‘You’re married to Jessie.’ As explosive as any bomb, Fern’s words shattered the peace of the cove. They echoed round and round them, awful in their truth.
There was a deathly silence.
‘That’s right,’ Quinn said finally, as though confessing to something he had no part of. ‘But that doesn’t
‘Doesn’t mean what?’ Fern asked in fury. ‘Doesn’t mean you can’t have a bit on the side-and I’m the bit? And is Jessie supposed to sit back and watch? No wonder she looks like she has ghosts haunting her, Quinn Gallagher. With you as a husband, who needs ghosts?”
‘Fern, you don’t understand.’ Quinn took a step towards her but Fern took a hasty step back. And another. ‘It’s just a marriage of convenience. Jess and L…We need to be married for all sorts of reasons-reasons I can’t explain- but we’re free to lead our own lives.’
‘Well, from where I stand,’ Fern said grimly, ‘that looks like a really, really good deal for Quinn Gallagher. And a lousy one for Jess. But it doesn’t matter, anyway, Dr Gallagher. I’m not the least bit interested in another woman’s husband-even if I was interested in you in the first place. You’ve made me feel dirty. Jessie’s lovely. She doesn’t deserve my betrayal-as well as her husband’s. You touch me once more and I’ll scream sexual harassment so loud you’ll hear it from the mainland. Now get off the beach before I start screaming.’
‘Fern, you don’t understand.’
‘No?’ Fern mocked, her anger building to the point where it was due to explode. ‘You’ve got your lines wrong, Dr Gallagher. It’s supposed to be “my wife doesn’t understand me”. Not “my latest floozie doesn’t understand me”.’
‘“Floozie”…’ Quinn’s voice was blank.
‘“Floozie”,’ Fern said through gritted teeth. ‘Woman of ill repute. The sort of woman who makes love to others’ husbands while wives are cringing in pain and mortification…’ Fern took a deep breath.
‘I can’t apologise deeply enough to Jess for what I let happen between us. But I’m telling you now, Quinn Gallagher, whatever I feel-whatever I felt-nothing is going to happen between us again. Ever.’
‘“Ever”, Fern?’ Quinn’s voice was suddenly almost as desolate as hers.
There was real pain in his voice.
It took an iron will not to step towards the pain in Quinn’s tone but somehow she found it.
