Shipwrecked with Mr. Wrong

chapter FOUR



THE following morning, Rob was nowhere to be seen. Even after she’d finally tumbled into exhausted sleep, Honor remained hyper-attuned to his return to camp and now she wondered where he had gone after she’d quarantined herself in the tent.

Damn him! He’d already upset her routine after less than one day on the island. She usually rose with the sun but, after her restless night, the island wildlife had been up for hours ahead of her.

She had work to do.

Grumbling, she pulled cut-off jeans and a tank top over her underwear, slapped on a liberal dose of sunscreen, slipped into comfortable tennis shoes and climbed out into the daylight. She ferreted out a muesli bar and bottle of water from her stores and picked up her logbook from the table, where she’d dropped it the previous night, then headed straight out towards the inland lagoon.

She crept around a crowded pisonia bush, which sagged under the weight of dozens of juvenile birds. They were entirely unconcerned with Honor’s quiet passing as they practised launching on the gusts of wind blowing over the lagoon. They dipped and flapped and showed off for each other, reminding Honor of a group of teenage skater boys hanging out at the mall.

She spotted one of her markers up ahead and cross-referenced with her logbook notes. Then she sat in the sand and turned her attention to the inland lagoon.

Her turtle watch would start tonight. The eggs in the earliest of the nests she was monitoring would be eight weeks old and could hatch any night. Then she’d swap her daytime bird monitoring to a nocturnal turtle watch, so these notes might well be her last intensive observations before she became a creature of the night for two months. She wondered whether that might not be a good thing, given her unexpected guest.

Avoidance was one way of dealing with the problem.

A hundred birds drifted lazily around on the current overhead. They were playing, not hunting, dipping in and out of the airflow, swooping on each other and free falling, only to pull up at the last moment. It was leisure time they wouldn’t have again until next breeding season. Once they got back to the serious business of survival, it would be a strict routine of hunt-eat-recover.

Honor knew how they felt. Her contract only required her to be on the island for six months of the year and it allowed her to base herself at the nearby Cocos Island township and boat out every day of that contract. Someone else probably would have. But someone else wasn’t trying to put themselves in the most northerly point in this stretch of water as they possibly could. Someone else wouldn’t crave the peace and quiet that only the cacophony of nature could bring.

Her eight months here every year was her own version of sanctuary. She only left the island for monsoon season—so some part of her must still value life—and she returned the moment it blew out for the year. If she could think of a way to stay here year round, she would.

She closed her eyes and breathed in a lungful of clean, salty air. She no longer smelled the guano from thousands of birds or the rotting vegetation and seagrass from the lagoon, but she knew they were there. Knew, without a doubt, it would be what a newcomer to the island smelled when they first arrived.

Like Rob.

She’d worried herself, last night, when she’d realised how her enjoyment of life had dulled. She had thought she was making a good recovery after all these years, finding ways to dribble joy into her greatly changed life, doing things that mattered to her. Staying focused on the end-game. It took a charismatic shipwreck hunter to shake things up and he’d only been here for twenty-four hours. Just one day to start unravelling all her carefully laid structures and boundaries. It galled her that she was questioning the life she’d been living perfectly happily for four years.

Perfectly? Nothing was perfect.

Honor dropped her eyes. His manner, his clothing and his attitudes had hinted at a lifestyle that she’d been quick to trivialise. He might be irritating and smug but she suspected Robert Dalton lived far more than she ever had.

In her four months in the civilisation of Cocos’ Home Island, she would keep very much to herself. People there knew her but not many people knew her. What friends she had left on the mainland had eventually given up trying to get her to come home and her family kept a carefully measured remote communication. The exception was her mother who—after months of fights and tense silences—had eventually taken herself and her pathological optimism far away to a town thousands of kilometres north of Honor’s home town. The irony was they were nearly neighbours now—Broome in Western Australia’s far north was the closest Australian town to Pulu Keeling.

If you called two thousand kilometres close.

She couldn’t remember anyone except her mother fighting particularly hard to keep her in Perth after the accident. Had they all made it too easy for her to become a recluse? Honor thought back to the woman she had been before the accident and looked at the woman she was now. Maybe. Then again, if she thought even further back, she remembered a young woman she could barely find inside her today.

Barefoot. Carefree. Wild.

She looked around her island and wondered how much of that she was unconsciously trying to recapture. You couldn’t get more wild than this, and more often than not she was barefoot. But carefree...?

Not even close.

She looked up from her aimless shuffling and realised she’d covered nearly the full one and a half kilometre circumference of the tiny island without coming across him.

Not that she’d been searching.

* * *

‘Would you like to see the hatchery?’

She found him in the next bay and extended an olive branch. The island might be small but he knew how to make himself scarce. It suddenly dawned on her that he’d been giving her space. That surprised her and threw her a little bit.

The welcoming warmth in his smile finished the job.

His changeability kept her on edge. One minute he was confident, sexy and every inch the playboy. Then the mask came off and he was considerate, funny and devastatingly serene. Or was serene Rob the mask?

I don’t think so.

‘The turtles? Sure.’

Honor refused to be pleased that he so instantly remembered her research focus. I went gaga over his century-old warship yesterday. It’s the least he can do. She led him around the inland lagoon and through a nondescript clutch of trees. She could see his disorientation and smiled. She knew Pulu Keeling like the back of her hand and didn’t need markers to tell her where she was. They emerged onto the beach about one hundred metres north of the Emden memorial from yesterday. Not that he would know it. To the uninitiated, there would be nothing telling, but to Honor the signs were as good as a road map.

The shore was less shingly here, rather more sand than the usual eroded coral rocks. The lower beach had been cut away over time by rough waves, even inside the relative protection of the atoll, forming a ledge of sand over a metre high. It looked as if part of the shore had sunk away from the rest. Up above the high-tide mark there were marks in the sand, the telltale paired pattern of green turtle flipper prints, where both fins wedged into the sand and then hauled the weight of the rest of its body forward. Slow and hard all the way up the dunes to the edge of the trees.

Honor stopped, glanced at the chop-and-drag pattern and waited for his appreciation. Rob just stared. Then he looked at her blankly.

‘This is it,’ she said.

‘What?’

She looked back at the distinctive grooves in the dune edge. How could he not see it? ‘There—those trails up and over the ridge of sand. A female climbed the dune right there last night to lay her eggs.’ She stepped closer, not risking going too close to the turtle-only zone. ‘They’re so graceful underwater, but it’s exhausting for them to get to the island in the first place and then to drag their weight up the beach. Then they have to dig a massive hole using just their flippers and lay more than a hundred eggs into it. But there’s no rest yet; they have to fill it all in again—’

‘With just their flippers...’ His smile told her he was teasing.

‘Exactly...and do the whole trip in reverse, back out to sea. It’s really quite amazing.’

He didn’t look amazed, Honor thought peevishly, but he did look interested.

‘They leave their young? Don’t they stay to sit on the nest?’

‘The warmth of the deep sand acts like an incubator, so they leave the nest as soon as it’s filled in. In fact...depending on how warm it gets will determine whether the young are males or females.’

That earned an eyebrow raise. ‘What’s your role?’

‘I monitor the laying, how many hatch, how many dig out, how many make it to the ocean. After that, they’re on their own.’

‘How do you know how many are laid?’

‘I dig the nest out and count them.’

One dark eyebrow shot up at that. ‘You’re a raider?’ Her own words flung back in her face. She didn’t like it but had to give him points for wit. So, he wasn’t just a pretty face. The thought pleased her.

‘I’m a researcher. I count quickly, then rebury the nest. Then I mark out and label the nest site and I watch it for the next ten weeks until the eggs are due to hatch.

‘Do you help them?’

‘No, never.’

‘Never?’

‘Ever. First rule of scientific research. Observe, don’t intervene.’ No matter how hard it is. Honor had watched birds and crabs pick off the vulnerable little hatchlings and done nothing; had watched one tiny reptile scrabble towards the inland lagoon—and four thousand predatory beaks—and left it to its fate. She simply recorded it all in her ever-present logbook. Detached. Intentionally numb.

A lot like her life, really.

They moved above the dunes and she pointed out dozens of nesting sites, marked out in green fluorescent tape.

‘How do you know where they’re going to nest?’ he asked.

‘I don’t. I wait for them to show me. I watch every night and then mark the nests.’

His eyebrows shot up. ‘Every night?’

She laughed. ‘You think there’s something more I should be doing with my evenings? Hitting Pulu Keeling’s top night spots?’

He did it again. Blushed slightly and then turned his head to avoid her seeing it. Why was that so appealing?

‘All these nests were filled by turtles laying in October and November. There may have been others before and there will be many others after, but my study period is for eggs deposited in those two months of each year only. My job is to make sure I’m here when the October turtles touch land, then there’s eight weeks until the first hatchings are even possible.’

‘And then?’

‘And then I pretty much live on this side of the island, counting hatchings.’

‘Until Mum comes back and digs them up?’

She looked at him curiously. Had the man not heard of the Discovery Channel? ‘The mothers never see them again. The young dig themselves out—the strong ones, anyway. It doesn’t pay to be the first turtle out of a nest.... Too much sand and too little energy.’

He was silent for a moment and then spoke. ‘It seems kind of unnatural, a mother abandoning her young. Isn’t her job to see they survive?’

A brutal whiplash tore through her gut and Honor had to struggle against the need to bolt into the trees. ‘Her life is valuable too. She half kills herself getting here and giving them life.’ He looked taken aback at her passionate response but she rushed on. ‘One mother turtle can lay five hundred eggs in a season and she may not have another season for a decade. If she puts herself at risk by staying onshore longer than a few hours, then she may never give life to any of those little offspring at all.’

It was a poor defence. The reality was that out of one hundred eggs only a handful would survive the dig-out, the race to the ocean and then the many, many marine predators waiting for an inexperienced little turtle to happen past. It was the law of the wild. The lower you were on the food chain, the more offspring you had—to increase the chances of a few surviving to take your genes forward.

It was also what made the non-intervention policy so incredibly hard to stomach. The wholesale loss of young lives.

She sighed, turned away. She was coming across as a complete fanatic; certainly it was what Rob must think. She’d given him nothing else to think, after all. He didn’t need to know where her real anger came from.

That was for her alone.

* * *

Rob trod gently above the high tide line behind Honor, conscious there could be hundreds of tiny little lives cooking away in the sand beneath his feet, but Honor stomped into the trees faster than he could follow if he didn’t match her pace.

What had all that been about? He was hoping for a rather different reaction, was counting on her appreciating the brilliance of his informed questions. To make up for all the insensitive and idiotic things he’d done since arriving. He was trying to have a conversation, for crying out loud.

And that was something new for him.

Rob Dalton didn’t start conversations. He didn’t have to—conversations found him. Centred around him quite often. He’d always thought it made him a great conversationalist.

It had certainly worked for his father in land development. There was a man who could talk to anyone, about anything, any time. It was an art form. Rob Junior had seen, first hand, the way it transformed people. How his dad could turn a crowd around until they were eating out of his hand. Just by chatting with them. Rob knew exactly how his father felt about half the people he worked with and watched him turn on the smile and ask after their children and talk about their trips to Hong Kong as though he gave a damn. To very good effect.

Yep, little Rob had learned at the heels of the best.

Now, he wasn’t so sure. What if he cultivated interest for something someone was saying? Probed a bit and found out what made them so interested. That was what his question to Honor had been about. He wanted her to keep talking about turtles and eggs and fluorescent marker tape just to hear her talking. To watch her talking. To watch her come alive.

The woman lived and breathed her work. As though it were all she had. But he’d made a strategic error somewhere, said the wrong thing and she’d sucked all the passion back into herself like a sea anemone and then bolted off into the trees, leaving him in hot pursuit.

They approached a small clearing in the shore trees, leading to yet another little beach alcove. Honor stopped in front of him and he caught up. She put her hand out behind her to stop him from passing. It brushed his hip but she rested it there, oblivious. He smiled and let it sit, enjoying the unexpected sensation of her slender fingers on him. For as long as it lasted.

Ahead on the dune edge was a small white ball of fluff sitting miserably in the sand. Its little black face turned from the afternoon sun and its black eyes blinked, peering around defiantly.

‘It’s a red-footed booby chick.’

‘I’m guessing you’ve seen a heap of those in four years?’ Why was this one so special?

She looked up into the trees around them. ‘It’s fallen from that nest. Its parents won’t come for it.’

The solution seemed obvious. ‘Let’s just put it back.’

Her hair swung sadly. ‘We can’t. The non-intervention policy.’

‘Can it survive?’ It was so tiny, he guessed it would be very fragile under the explosion of wispy white feathers.

‘No. It will die.’

He took her elbow. ‘Well, let’s go, then. You don’t need to see that.’ He wasn’t overly keen himself.

She shook her head and squatted. The chick had noticed them and shuffled out further onto the beach, increasing its exposure to the afternoon sun. Rob dropped down too and they both backed up a little.

‘You won’t help it?’

She shook her head.

‘But you won’t leave it?’

The setting sun caught a momentary glint from her lashes as she shook her head again. She was going to sit here until it died. He looked at her hard. ‘Honor, why?’

When she finally answered, her voice was soft. ‘So it’s not alone.’

Ordinarily, he would have rolled his eyes and scoffed at such sentimental rubbish, but there was something about her voice, the stillness of her body, which gave him pause. This wasn’t a vapid, doe-eyed princess being soppy about a fluffy puppy. This was Honor. Cranky, sarcastic, passionate and tough. If she wanted to stay, there had to be a good reason.

‘Do you want your logbook?’ She’d dropped it in the sand next to her. She shook her head again.

Not work, then?

The woman was a mystery.

Eventually, Rob decided to stop making a fool of himself by trying to guess her thoughts and to wait it out. What else was there to do, after all? Whatever her morbid fascination, it was bound to pass soon enough. He felt less welcome than ever as she started a private vigil. He settled in the sand behind her, hooked his arms around his hunched knees and waited.

* * *

He hadn’t expected to wait half the night. The moon was high and full and drenched the tropical beach in beautiful moonlight. He was on his feet again—he’d been up and down several times as the hours ticked by—and Honor’s water flask had run out. He was thirsty. But she wasn’t leaving and so neither was he.

The chick had, eventually, grown accustomed to their presence and lurched back towards the protective shelter of the tree line. It showed some common sense, at least. Rob thought its death would have been faster if it had stayed out in the sun, perhaps mercifully. Even so, the chick hadn’t moved for quite some time now. Neither had the woman watching.

‘Honor?’ His voice was croaky after hours of silence. She turned her head slightly. Awake, then. ‘Shall I go and check it out?’

Around them, birds slept peacefully in ramshackle nests barely off the ground, in paltry divots scraped from the earth or out on the bare jungle floor. There was either no significant predators on this island or they were all nuts. Judging by the numbers, it had to be the first. Most perched on eggs, or supervised those perched on eggs. At least one pair of boobies would have no offspring to care for this night.

Honor paused a moment and then nodded, straightening with obvious stiffness.

Rob stepped past her and moved towards the still chick. He caught himself when he would have nudged it with his toe, conscious of Honor’s watery gaze. He squatted and lifted it gently from the sand. Dead and cool, it weighed nothing.

Her shoulders sagged when she saw it and he worried a moment about what to do with the little corpse. Then he tucked its body beneath a small scrappy dune plant, assuming it would feed the prolific crabs that swarmed all over the island. She didn’t protest.

Finally a right move from me.

He looked at Honor. The moonlight lit her perfectly and she looked wretched. This was not about a bird. He burned to ask but knew he had no right. He didn’t know what to say but was desperate to say something to alleviate her obvious misery.

‘It wasn’t alone, Honor.’

Her eyes spilled over and she sagged to the rich blanket of decomposing leaves and branches on the forest floor.

Crap! No, this wasn’t about a dead bird but, whatever it was, she was about to relive it right here. Concern made him careless. He reached down and pulled her to her feet, into his arms, hoping to comfort her. Immediately, she fought him and he had to tighten his arms around her. Hours in the gym had given him much more than dozens of phone numbers and he held her easily despite her pathetic physical protest.

She cried into his shoulder for a heartbreaking minute, then, as soon as she quietened, he let her pull away. The bright moonlight did nothing to hide the embarrassment that flushed her already blotchy face. He wanted to make a light remark, to ease the discomfort they were both feeling, but he breathed in her distress and remembered how careful she had been not to make light of his blood sensitivity. He owed her that much at least.

‘Ready to go now?’ There was nothing but gentleness in his words.

‘I have to monitor the turtle nests,’ she said, stepping away. ‘Camp’s back through there. Just follow the tree line to the right when you get through and it will take you back.’

‘Don’t you need anything? A torch? Supplies? How will I know you’re all right?’ Come back with me.

Rob cringed the moment the words left his mouth. Of course she would be all right. She was more a creature of nature than of man’s world. This island was her domain. He waited for the sarcastic lash to fall.

But her voice was soft. ‘We’re only a few minutes from camp. If I need anything I can come back.’ She stepped further into the trees, pointing towards camp so he could follow.

He turned and looked at the blanket of trees where she’d pointed and when he looked back at her she was gone.