‘I’m quite sure! A bit of rest, just liquids and plain food for a while and I’ll be fine.’
She saw some indecision chase through his eyes and she put her hand over his. ‘Really. And I have a remedy I always carry but it’s in my luggage back at the resort.’
He came to a decision. ‘All right. Do you think you can talk on the phone long enough to tell the resort it’s OK to release your vehicle and your luggage to me?’
‘Yes.’
Several hours later, she was starting to feel better and Jack McKinnon couldn’t have been a better nurse to add to all the other things she admired about him.
He’d made her as comfortable as he could with clean sheets on the bed and a clean nightgown from her luggage. He’d darkened the bedroom section. He’d made up an electrolyte drink for her to replace the minerals she might have lost, and some clear, plain chicken soup. He was as quiet as possible so she could sleep.
And by four o’clock in the afternoon Maggie felt quite human again.
He brought her a cup of black tea and sat on the bed while she drank it.
‘I’m too excitable,’ she said ruefully. ‘That’s what my mother puts it down to.’
He gazed at her. She was still pale, but her eyes were clear and she’d brushed her hair into two ponytails tied with green bobbles.
She could have been about sixteen, he thought, a lovely, volatile child. Yet a brave one who’d matched his ardour in anything but a childlike way until she’d made herself sick.
‘I may have been at fault,’ he began.
‘No. Well—’ she smiled faintly ‘—you could be too good a cook.’
He grimaced. ‘What about the rest of it?’
‘The way we made love?’ She breathed deeply. ‘I could never regret a moment of that.’
‘Neither could I, but—’
‘You’re wondering if this is going to happen every time you make love to me? It won’t,’ she assured him. ‘These last few weeks have been—’ she gestured ‘—quite turbulent for me. It was probably bound to happen sooner or later, but I’m feeling—’ she chewed her lip ‘—much more tranquil now.’
He shook his head as if trying to sort through it all.
‘But—lonely,’ she added softly, ‘in this vast bed all on my own.’
‘Maggie—’
‘If you could just put your arms around me, that would be the best thing that’s happened to me today.’
He stared at her and she thought he was going to knock back her suggestion, then he changed his mind.
She sighed with sheer pleasure as he lay down beside her and gathered her close.
‘How did the perfume go?’ she asked drowsily.
‘Your sarong smells lovely, but there was nothing to wring out of it—not enough dew.’
She chuckled. ‘We may have to move to India.’
He stroked her hair.
But although they slept in the same bed that night, and although she drew strength and comfort from his arms and it was a magic experience on its own, that was all that happened until the next day when she could demonstrate she was as fit as a fiddle again.
The day after that, on what should have been their last day at Cape Gloucester but they’d made a mutual decision to stay on for a few days more, it all fell apart.
She had no intimation of the drama about to unfold when they swam very early that morning, naked and joyfully.
‘This adds another dimension,’ she told him as he lifted her aloft out of the sea. She put her hands on his shoulders with her arms straight and her hair dripped over his head. Her skin was covered with goose-bumps and her nipples peaked in the chill of it all.
‘Know what?’ He tasted each nipple in turn. ‘If we hadn’t just made love, guess what we’d be doing as soon as we got back? You taste salty,’ he added.
She flipped backwards over his encircling arms and wound her legs around him. ‘No idea at all!’ she said as she floated on her back and her hair spread out on the water like seaweed. ‘This water is so buoyant.’
‘And you’re particularly buoyant this morning, Miss Trent,’ he teased. ‘Not to mention full of cheek.’