Staying up here had much more appeal over going down to the huge tents they were setting up on the cricket ground-trying to sleep where everyone would be wanting to talk to her. And to sleep knowing that Grady was nearby…that the responsibility had been lifted from her shoulders… It was an unlooked-for blessing and she could no sooner refuse it than fly. She glanced uncertainly across the table at Grady, and the hand touching hers moved so he was covering her hand entirely.
‘I can’t take your bed,’ she told Hubert, forcing herself to concentrate on something other than the feel of Grady’s hand.
‘It’s already taken,’ Hubert told her. ‘Don’t be daft. I’ve spent half my life sleeping in fishing boats, sometimes on bare deck. The bairn’s already asleep. Don’t argue.’
But… ‘Can we stay here?’ she asked.
Grady was watching her, his face calm. He saw what she was thinking, this man. Of course. He’d always been able to see.
‘I think we can,’ he said gently. ‘Hubert’s idea is excellent. I’ll radio in and let my team know what’s happening. If we’re wanted, they’ll call us. But you’re exhausted, close to dropping. We all need to sleep. There’s nothing else to be done until dawn.’
‘How can I sleep in Hubert’s bed?’
‘Hey, I put clean sheets on,’ Hubert growled. ‘Elspeth’s even warmed your side up. Why can’t you?’
Because he was her patient, she thought, torn between tears of exhaustion and a sudden inexplicable need to laugh. This afternoon she’d been treating him. To have him suddenly rise from his deathbed and say, Here, I’ve put clean sheets on the bed; you take a turn…
‘Hey, and deathbed or not, you’re not allowed to die in it either,’ Hubert told her, and he grinned. It was the first time she’d seen a smile since the wave had struck, and it felt good. Like the world was finally starting to settle.
Grady was smiling too, the smile she remembered so well from all those years ago, a smile that twisted her heart.
‘Go and find Robbie, Morag,’ he said, in the gentle tone she remembered him using with her once before. But this time was different. This time she grasped the comfort of his tone and she held on. It was warmth in a world where there wasn’t warmth. It was hope.
‘Go and sleep,’ he said gently. ‘Hubert and I will be right here, watching over you. You’ve done the work of a small army today. Now let someone else take care of you for a change.’
‘But-’
‘Goodnight, Morag. Go to sleep.’
Grady lay on the camp stretcher beside Hubert, but sleep wouldn’t come.
The camp bed with no mattress was as hard as nails but he didn’t mind that. It wasn’t discomfort that was keeping him awake. There’d been one mattress, which he’d insisted the old man have. ‘For heaven’s sake, man, I’m trained to sleep in a harness hanging off a cliff face if I must,’ he’d told him, and it was the truth.
He’d trained himself over the years to snatch any sleep that was available. He needed sleep now. Jaqui knew what he was doing up here was important, and he’d organised that he take first break. He’d relieve her at three a.m., they’d decided, and then he’d be back here by six when the cottage occupants woke up.
He needed to sleep now.
Hubert snored softly beside him, and Elspeth wuffled and moaned. That wasn’t disturbing Grady. Grady could sleep in a force-ten gale. He’d done it often.
He’d never done it while thinking of Morag.
The sight of her today had knocked him sideways.
He’d known she was here. Always in the back of his mind he’d known Morag was on Petrel Island. For a while he’d toyed with the idea of staying in contact, but…
But it was an exercise in futility. Morag was beautiful and intelligent and funny and she was fully, absolutely committed.
And it wasn’t just commitment to her nephew. It was the commitment to a community that he found so incomprehensible. For Grady, whose life had been spent moving from parent to parent as they’d shifted from one dysfunctional marriage to another, the idea of ties was abhorrent. Ties hurt. His parents had wealth and influence and if there was a problem they paid to have it sorted. They never got involved. He’d learned early that detachment was a way of survival. You showed care and concern when it was appropriate, and then you moved on.
And Morag… She’d excited him four years ago. In Morag he’d recognised the same hunger for excitement. The same ambition. She had been one of the youngest surgical registrars ever to qualify at Sydney Central. She’d thrived on the adrenaline of demanding cases, life-threatening events. When he’d first met her, he’d thought she was gorgeous.
She was still gorgeous.
But she was very different now, he conceded as he stared up at the moonlit ceiling. Her smart little designer suits and jeans, her perfectly shaped curls, they were all things of the past.
In the shock of the news of the tsunami he hadn’t thought of Morag. And when he’d seen her…
She’d been wearing ancient jeans that must have been ragged even before the shattering events of the afternoon. She’d worn an oversized man’s shirt, and her tangled curls had been bunched back with a piece of crimson ribbon, like a child’s. He tried to remember the last time he’d seen her four years ago, the way every curl had known its place. He remembered her sophistication. Her sureness.
She didn’t look so much worse now, he conceded. Maybe…maybe even better.
But sophistication? Purpose? Ambition?
Hell, what was he doing, lying in the dark thinking about what a woman looked like? Where a woman was going in life?
Morag…
She was nothing to him, he told himself as he tossed on the hard little bed and tried to force himself into sleep. He needed to sleep. There were still huge medical needs on the island, and the way to operate at less than his best was to allow his mind to wander when it should shut down in sleep.
Morag…
She was just the other side of the wall.
Yeah. In bed with a nine-year-old. Shouldering the responsibilities of a shattered community. Treading a path he knew they could never share.
But…
The briefing he’d had before leaving played over in his head. It had been harsh, fast and to the point.
‘Petrel Island is a logistical nightmare, even without the tidal wave,’ he’d been told. ‘We’ve offered the locals reimbursement if they’ll resettle on the mainland. It’s too early to say but let’s not focus on rebuilding too early. Let’s see what happens.’
If Morag could be persuaded to leave the island… If the community dispersed, there’d be no real choice.
Maybe then…
Maybe he needed to go to sleep.
Finally he succeeded. Finally he fell asleep-but Morag was in his dreams.
He’d dreamed of Morag before.
But this was the Morag of now. Not the Morag of yesterday.
CHAPTER FIVE
SHE woke with the first glimmer of dawn.
For a moment Morag didn’t know where she was. She only knew that she was warm, the first rays of sun were falling across her face and Robbie’s small body was curved into hers.
And then another thought. Somewhere close was Grady.
Grady.
