The coarse, dark crystals of the beach reminded Maggie of brown sugar, but the water lapping the beach was calm, crystal-clear and immensely inviting, especially at high tide. She spent an hour on her first evening sitting on the beach, watching fascinated as ripple after little silvery ripple raced along, tiny imitations of waves breaking on the beach.
Then she caught her breath in amazement as two strange ducks skimmed the water’s edge—ducks that looked as if they were wearing leather yokes when in fact it was a strip of dark feathers on their creamy necks and chests. Burdekin Ducks, she was told, when she enquired.
There was only one other couple at the resort and she ate dinner with them before using a long drive as an excuse for an early night. In fact it was nervous tension making her yawn, she thought as she strolled back to her cabin. Had she done the right thing? Was he even here in his beach house tucked away amongst the trees beyond the resort? Why hadn’t she gone to find out straight away?
‘I’ll be better in the morning,’ she told herself. ‘More composed. Less conscious of the fact that this is a man I’d pegged for the kind women rode off with into the sunset because they couldn’t help themselves—and what’s going to make me any different?’
She shook her head and went to bed.
The sun came up at six-fifteen. Maggie was walking along the beach at the time.
Gloucester Island was dark with its southern outline illuminated in gold; trees, beach and rocks were dark shapes pasted on a gold background as the sun hovered below the horizon. Then it emerged and light, landscape and seascape fell into place and fled away from her—and the tall figure walking along the beach towards her carrying a fishing rod was unmistakably Jack McKinnon.
Maggie took a great gulp of air into her lungs and forced herself to walk forward steadily, although he stopped abruptly.
When she was up to him she held out her hand. ‘Dr Livingstone, I presume?’
He didn’t reciprocate.
‘OK, not funny—’ Maggie dropped her hand ‘—but I nearly didn’t find you, which brought to mind the Livingstone/Stanley connection, I guess. Are you not going to say anything?’
He took in her bare legs and feet, her white shorts, her candy-striped top and her pony-tail, and spoke at last. ‘How did you find me?’
‘That’s classified. But if you were to offer me a cup of coffee, say, I’ll tell you why I went to all the trouble I did.’
‘Are you staying here?’ He indicated the resort down the beach.
‘Yep, although I’ve told no one why. Your secret is safe with me, Mr McKinnon.’
‘Maggie,’ he said roughly, then seemed to change tack. ‘All right, since you’ve come this far the least I can do is a cup of coffee, I guess. Follow me.’
His house was only a five-minute walk away and from the beach you’d hardly know it was there. It was wooden, weathered to a silvery grey, two- storeyed, surrounded by trees and covered with creepers. A smart, fast-looking yacht under a tarpaulin was drawn up the beach on rails.
She followed him up the outside steps to the second storey and gasped at the view from his top veranda. Not only the Gloucester Passage lay before her, but also Edgecumbe Bay towards the mainland and Bowen, with its rim of mountains tinged with pink and soft blues as the sun got higher.
‘You sure know how to pick a spot,’ she said with genuine admiration. ‘This is so beautiful.’
‘It also used to be a lot further from the madding crowd before the road was opened,’ he said.
‘Including me?’ She swung round to face him. ‘What exactly is so maddening about me?’ she asked tautly. ‘Correct me if I’m wrong, but I thought a lot of our differences and misapprehensions about each other got sorted when we were trying to get out of the shed?’
He put the fishing line down and checked that the colourful lure with its three-pronged hook was tucked into a roundel on the rod out of harm’s way. ‘There are other differences you don’t even know about, Maggie.’
He straightened and pushed his fingers through his hair. He wore khaki shorts and an old football Guernsey with the sleeves cut off above the elbows. He was brown, as if he’d spent quite a bit of time in the sun, and his hair was streaked lighter by it, and was longer, as if he’d forgotten to get it cut.