Shipwrecked with Mr. Wrong

chapter FIVE



ROB woke early the next morning from a heated, sleep-deprived dream in which a golden-haired mermaid nibbled her way up his legs, over his thigh and onto—

‘Son of a—!’

He flung himself upright from his loosely dug out groove in the beach sand to find a dozen small crabs with seashells for hats crawling across his body with nippers at the ready. They were the advance guard for a battalion of red hermit crabs that marched swiftly, diagonally down the shore like some kind of shared consciousness towards the dawn sea. And he was lying right in their path. He scrambled to his feet and they swarmed around him, uncaring and fixated on their watery goal.

Their intensity and determination made him laugh out loud as they spread over the shore like a blood tide and until the last, late marcher scurried desperately into the ocean and was gone. It was his second night spent on the beach and he was surprised at how natural it felt to wake there.

A man could get used to this.

Tired or not, he was desperate to see the Emden up close. He had been since their second visit late yesterday. His plan this trip had just been to find the marker and do some bearing work but now he’d seen the memorial and, knowing how close he was and how much time he had up his sleeve, he struggled to keep the sunken enigma out of his mind. She was like an elusive beauty frozen in time that he was desperate to meet.

He imagined what she must look like now, a hundred years on, covered in sea life. Eternal. How many things in this life were for ever? But wrecks...they just lay there, hidden, waiting for their shot at immortality. And he wanted to give that to them. Find them and make them eternal. He’d seen pictures, of course, but photos and video was never close to the real deal. The wreck had called him for a good portion of yesterday and she started up again as soon as he woke. He knew he had hours before Honor would wake from her night shift. What better way to spend it than with the other woman in his life?

He smiled. He hadn’t thought of Honor in...minutes. It was a sad day when a rusty old cruiser could push a gorgeous woman from the forefront of his thoughts—albeit a complicated, brittle woman.

Things hadn’t gone to plan that first night. He’d made an idiot of himself by stripping off in front of her, trying to put her at ease. She hadn’t been eased, she hadn’t laughed and she certainly hadn’t grown any less outraged. But she had called him Rob and that tiny slip gave him a sliver of hope. That she didn’t entirely hate his guts.

None of his trademark moves were having the slightest impact on her. If anything, they were making her more tense. And he was getting entirely rattled. What did he have if not his repertoire of moves? Certainly no scintillating personality to fall back on. He’d grown up entirely clear on where his worth lay. His business acumen and his face. Not necessarily in that order.

The rest were optional extras in the Dalton household. Not valued and not required.

His only consolation was that, after last night, he and Honor were equal on the humiliation front. He knew she would be mortified to have broken down in front of him.

He wandered the island for three hours, exploring, examining, discovering. Honor was tucked up in her little tent sleeping off her night shift, so he didn’t have to worry about accidentally running into her. He took his seventh pass by the Emden memorial and looked out to the reef for evidence that the wind had shifted offshore. The seas would be too rough to dive in until they did.

He raised his binoculars and looked out beyond the visible reef. The whitecaps that had been steadily coming straight towards him had shifted east-west.

Perfect.

He’d waited half the morning for this. He turned and hurried back to camp, eager to get out in the water, back where he felt confident and in control. He’d already towed his diving gear back out to The Player in anticipation. But there was a catch.

Only an idiot would dive an unfamiliar wreck alone in a boat with a hairline fracture in its hull. He needed Honor’s help.

And asking would kill him.

* * *

He found her, just woken, at the campsite and he grabbed the bull by the horns. ‘I need a favour.’ Her single raised eyebrow told him he’d grabbed too hard. He swallowed some pride. ‘I need to ask your help.’

It wasn’t much better but at least she deigned to tilt her head in enquiry.

‘Would you come out with me on The Player and be my second while I dive the Emden?’

He prepared himself for what hurdle she would undoubtedly put in his way. Then she surprised him.

‘No.’

No excuse. No explanation. Just no.

‘Why?’

‘I’m working.’

Rob really couldn’t think of birdwatching as work but knew it would be suicide to say so. ‘Can’t you take a break?’ He needed this dive. ‘I’d be...grateful.’

She looked at him flatly. No, not entirely flat, he saw as he really looked. Carefully flat. Engineered flat. His eyes narrowed.

‘Can’t you go later?’ she hedged.

‘No. The wind’s perfect right now. I don’t know how long it will last.’ Come on, lady. I’m not going to beg.

She stared at him. Eyes empty.

‘Please.’ That shamed him, but seemed to be effective.

She looked out to sea between the trees and then back to him. Quiet and dignified but incomprehensible. ‘I don’t do boats.’

Rob’s pulse hammered out his confusion. ‘You’re living on an island!’

‘I take one trip in and one out again and that’s it.’

‘But you love to swim...?’

Her chin was determined. ‘Only the shallows.’

‘Honor, please. I may not get another chance to see her up close. You don’t need to dive, just monitor from up top. We’re talking an hour of your life.’ It galled him to have to grovel like this.

‘I’m sorry, Rob. No.’ She turned back to her breakfast, though it was lunchtime. Disappointment made his heart pound. Or was it anger? Then he turned and stalked away. So much for all the rapport he’d hoped they’d built last night.

She wasn’t going to help him and without a dive buddy he wouldn’t be seeing the Emden this trip. Maybe ever.

* * ** * *

‘How can it be safe to take The Player out to dive if it’s not safe to run the twenty-five kilometres back to Home Island?’

He was angrily stripping and repacking his gear on the boat when Honor appeared on the coral behind him and called her question out to him on deck.

He turned. ‘You changed your mind?’

She stared at him, desperately eager to swim back to shore but determined to face this demon. ‘I figured I owe you one.’

For last night. She didn’t need to spell it out—he’d sat with her half the night. And then held her as she’d blubbed her heart out. Her being his second today was a fair trade—as far as he knew.

Because he knew nothing.

He nodded and thanked her but the waves breaking on the atoll drowned it out. ‘You didn’t answer my question,’ she called.

‘We’ll only be three hundred metres offshore. Even if she starts taking on water we can be back here long before things get critical.’ Honor knew that was not the case further out to sea. From experience.

‘What will I have to do?’ She shifted uncomfortably on the reef, a large rock in her stomach.

‘Just monitor the tug-rope and the air gauges, and second-check the dive-time.’ He looked at her as though he expected her to turn and swim off in panic. She would not panic.

‘Okay.’

There was no way he could have heard her tiny assent, but he must have got the message loud and clear from her body language. A delighted smile broke across his face and he exploded into action.

‘Stay there,’ he called, moving to the wheel. ‘I’ll get closer.’

He started the motor, hauled in both anchors and motored closer to the coral edge, countering the swell as it came and went.

Honor knew the routine. It had been a long time, but she and boats used to have a good relationship. Some things you just didn’t forget. As Rob swung The Player’s stern towards her, she leaped lightly onto its drop ladder and then nimbly stepped into the boat.

If he was surprised at her boat sense, he didn’t show it. He shoved The Player into gear and roared out to sea before she could change her mind.

She sank onto a padded seat and gripped the rail behind her where he couldn’t see. She fixed a smile to her face like rigor mortis but she was determined he wouldn’t see anything but her teeth each time he looked at her. She’d faked it for four seasons of drop-offs and pick-ups with the supply vessel; she could fake it now.

He did look at her a couple of times, but just briefly, and Honor saw how changed he was at the helm of his boat. He looked so much more comfortable in his skin there, focused on the waters ahead, accurately reading the surface indicators. This was his element. Where he belonged. Yet another reason he was bad news for her.

Rob steered The Player around to the south of the island and lined up with the memorial on shore. Honor had no idea how the outer reefs were shaped, so she hoped his boating skill was a match for the treacherous waters. Still, she could see shore in the distance and knew she could swim the three hundred metres in if she had to.

Scant comfort.

She reached one hand over the side into the ocean as he slowed the boat. Let him think it was the saltwater that made her hands damp and cold. He moved to the bow and tossed both anchors out. Honor cringed once again on behalf of the coral far below as metres of coiled chain unravelled. Reef was tough, but not indestructible, and every human contact had the potential to damage it. The anchors snagged and The Player stretched with the tide against them, its stern swinging towards shore.

That was probably good. That way, she could keep her eye on land.

It took Rob no time to gather his dive gear and pull it on. He’d done this a million times, judging by his quick efficiency getting into the sleeveless dive skin and shrugging on the air-tank, regulator, weight belt and fins. He pushed his dive mask up onto his head. She wasn’t so terrified that she didn’t notice how the rubber suit moulded to every bulge and ripple in his body. But she was too frightened to appreciate it.

He showed Honor a couple of dials on a small digital screen.

‘This is a wireless monitoring feed,’ he explained. ‘It gives you a GPS readout of my location and air levels. It also shows my depth. I’ll ping you every so often so that you know I’m okay.’

‘What do I do if you’re not?’ She had never dived; knew she’d be useless to him up here in an emergency.

He took her icy fingers and placed them on a blue button. ‘This will ping me back. Ping three times if you think there’s a problem. I’ll surface.’

If you can. ‘What kind of problem?’

‘Air. Shark. Monsoon.’ He smiled reassuringly. ‘These waters are relatively shallow so even if there is a problem I can offload my gear and swim up on lung-air alone.’

That was good news and settled a few of Honor’s nerves. Having a job to do also helped her focus and ignore where she was. Bobbing out on open ocean.

Rob stood and moved to the edge of the boat. She looked over at the dark shadows deep below. His voice brought her eyes back to his. They were warm and intense.

‘Thank you, Honor. This means...’ He seemed lost for words. ‘Thank you. See you soon.’

He pulled the mask down over his face, fitted the regulator into his mouth, sucked in a few test breaths and tumbled backwards over The Player’s starboard side. Honor looked over the edge and watched him descend. There was a flurry of splashing and bubbles and then...

Silence.

* * *

The last thing Rob saw as he hit the water was Honor’s pale face watching him drop. He didn’t understand how a woman who studied marine creatures for a living could have an aversion to boats, but her nerves were obvious on their short trip around to the south-east corner of the island.

Maybe that was why she had a thing for terrestrial marine creatures, he thought as he descended slowly into the colder water below the surface.

He checked all his gauges and straps and then looked around him. He could see the looming darkness of the drop-off towards shore, the outer edge of the same coral band he’d first met Honor on. But it was wider on the south side of the island and the drop-off was sheer. That was how the Emden’s besieged captain had been able to scuttle his own ship. He’d quite literally sailed from deep water right onto the reef two feet below the surface. As the Emden had broken apart in rough weather, the densest parts had slid off the drop-off and sank away out to sea before coming to rest on the sea floor.

He approached that floor now and the water turned from indigo to a richer, less earthly colour. The Emden didn’t lie so deep that natural light couldn’t filter down to it, but it was far enough that the light quality changed as it descended, becoming a strange, ethereal blue. He knew without looking his skin would be a sickly, translucent colour for the same reason.

The local fish had specialised for this unique light. Their colours were vibrant and complementary as they darted around the unexpected human arrival. Dark shapes on the ocean floor came into focus. Rob was excited, but forced himself to slow his breathing and his pace and remembered, guiltily, to ping the remote monitor. He swam on. If Honor called him back now he knew he’d have a hard time making good on his promise to return.

The wreck spread over some distance. Massive parts of it had completely broken apart, caking the sea floor with corroded residue. Nothing rusted down here; in the absence of air, it all just...dissolved. The densest parts survived the longest and Rob had no trouble making out the pointed bow of the SMS Emden. It was battleship grey no longer, caked now with golden corals, brain-shaped clusters and microscopic marine life. Sponge fingers waved in the gentle floor current and blue-lipped clams bonded to the old steel, filtering goodness from the water all around him.

It was just like the photographs and nothing like them.

He remembered to ping again.

He rounded the Emden’s bow and saw two enormous Mickey Mouse ears sticking out of the sand in the distance. His heart kicked out and the number of bubbles leaving his mask doubled. He swam towards the visible part of the Emden’s giant propeller, crusted over with barnacles and limpets. The other half had become sea floor.

Ping.

Fish continued to dart this way and that, braver now he’d shown them no harm. One or two became his undersea chaperones, following him with interest as he drifted around. He slowed to a stop and held his breath. Not the smartest thing to do while diving but he risked it for a chance to take in the otherworldly silence of the ocean floor.

Not silence, though. Any more than Honor’s island was silent. The water carried magnified noises to his exposed ears. The last of the bubbles floated off with his expelled breath and with them their distinctive and relentless bub-a-lub. The dense silence surrounding him was broken by the strange creaks, pops and squeaks of undersea creatures.

He saw a looming shape in the distance. Too small to be a shark, too big to be a fish. A ray, maybe? As it neared, its shape resolved into one of Honor’s green turtles. It glided effortlessly through the water, its bulk and weight meaningless in the low gravity environment. On shore, it would be a different story. He immediately thought of Honor and how excited she would be to see one in its natural underwater environment.

Honor...

Ping.

The hour passed all too quickly. Rob swam over the entire wreck, memorising the detail, examining everything and touching nothing. His mind buzzed with unanswerable questions about what he’d seen. Did he have the patience to wait until he was back on the Australian mainland? His body was energised and hyper-sensitive; his heart hadn’t felt this light in months. Since his last new dive. At last, he noticed his air was below half, which meant his time was up. He turned his face to the surface and ascended, taking care to equalise every ten metres to get back to Honor safely.

He broke surface, blinked in the glare of the above-sea world and spat out his regulator. She wasn’t peering over the edge waiting for him. He was crazy to have harboured the expectation, even subconsciously, but he knew a tiny moment of disappointment.

Pulling his full weight into the boat was near impossible after the relaxation of complete buoyancy. He shed his weight belt and tank, hauling them ahead of him into the boat, but still he felt as if he weighed hundreds of kilograms. Like one of Honor’s turtles out of water. He peeled off his fins and chucked them ahead of him onto The Player’s deck, then pushed his whole body upwards with powerful arms and legs.

He saw Honor sitting near the helm of the boat, the monitor still tight in her hands. She didn’t look up at him.

He pulled off the mask and dropped it with his fins. Then he turned to speak to her.

And froze.

She sat, trembling and ashen-faced, huddled in the doorway to The Player’s forward hatch.

* * *

Was the nightmare over?

Soothing warmth seeped into Honor’s numb skin, not from the gentle hands rubbing her back but from the bare chest pressed tightly against hers. Intense heat radiated, soaking in, warming her frigid muscles. It should have taken just a split second for her to imagine how it would feel if his heart beat naked against hers, but the thought had to battle through the choked mire of her clouded mind. Shock still ruled and it lingered aggressively.

Breathing deeply, she lifted her stinging eyelids and Rob slowly came into focus. He’d peeled his wetsuit half down at some point on their return to The Player’s mooring and he enveloped her in his powerful arms and sea-salt smell. Safety had never felt—or smelt—so good.

His lips were working; Honor was mesmerised by the movement, but the words were an incoherent thrum in her ears. His hands moved in reassuring circles over her back, under her cotton shirt, against her bikini, all warm and toasty against her frosted skin. The whooshing started to recede, to sound more like words, and then finally those words impacted on her brain. He was reciting Paterson.

‘...and upward, ever upward, the wild horses held their way, where mountain ash and Kurrajong grew wild...’

‘Wide.’ Was that pathetic croak her voice?

He stopped and looked into her face. Deep blue relief flooded into his eyes. ‘Hey. Welcome back.’ He gently brushed her hair away from her damp face. ‘What’s wide?’

‘The Kurrajong grew wide, not wild. Common error...’

His smile was entirely placating then. He wasn’t about to argue with the crazy lady. ‘How do you feel?’

Embarrassed and shaky, but warm, with his arms back around her. ‘How long was I...away?’

‘The whole ride back around the island and two-thirds of The Man from Snowy River.’

She shifted shakily away. Not because she wanted to—leaning into his safe arms was the most natural thing she’d done in years—but because the spectre of appropriateness suddenly floated up between them as conscience floated back with consciousness. She tried to make light of what had just happened and failed abysmally. ‘You know the whole thing?’

He smiled, putting some space between them. She mourned the loss of closeness but appreciated the courtesy. ‘I can’t promise I didn’t make parts of it up...’ His quiet humour thawed her even more. ‘Can you get to shore, do you think?’

She looked over to her familiar lagoon. She knew this water intimately and it held no fear. Immersing herself in the warm, familiar waters would give her the privacy and clarity she craved. And it would be off this damn boat. She nodded.

She stepped shakily onto the reef when he pulled the boat around and then waited for him to secure it and join her. He shadowed her the whole way into camp.

‘You get dry,’ he ordered as soon as they were back on shore, and his voice still echoed a bit in her ears. ‘I’ll make some tea.’ Honor responded immediately to the authority he’d assumed. She was too drained to argue. She stumbled into the tent and sank down onto her swag, nausea threatening. Bad enough to have lost it so publicly out on the water; how much worse would it be having to face the inevitable pity in his face when she explained?

And she knew she must. He’d been unexpectedly silent about last night—the whole chick thing—but there was no way he would ignore this one. Or could.

Finally, she emerged. He thrust a hot cup of herbal tea into her shaking hands and gently pushed her into the camp chair.

‘I put sugar in, for the shock.’

Honor didn’t even know she had sugar. Although she’d realised by now that she had shock. She accepted the chamomile tea and sipped it. The heat pooling outwards met the warmth soaking inwards from where he’d rubbed and finally she started to feel somewhat normal again. Her heart rate began to ease.

He watched her without speaking. Those eyes were steady and patient. She wished he’d speak so that she didn’t have to, but his quiet witness only reminded her that it was her responsibility.

‘I’m sorry I ruined your dive.’ The truth was too hard, too confronting.

His eyebrows raised and his eyes burned. ‘Don’t. Don’t apologise for something I did. I’m so sorry I pressured you into coming.’ He squatted next to her. ‘You tried to tell me you were frightened of boats. I was too wrapped up in my own needs. I just had to make the dive.’

‘Not just any dive.’ Her voice was small.

‘No, not just any dive. But not worth that either.’

They fell to silence. His vehemence told her exactly how badly she’d lost it. She watched his jaw tightening, saw the colour flushing at his neck. He was taking too much on. She knew then she’d have to explain; she just didn’t know where to begin. A deep breath steadied her.

‘It’s not your fault. I used to love sailing and spent hours at sea with my husband.’

Surprise showed in his face and his glance dropped to her left hand. She flexed her fingers under his gaze. ‘I don’t wear it...any more.’

She stalled by sipping her soothing tea. ‘Our son inherited his father’s passion for the ocean.’

Rob’s eyebrows lifted. His hand slipped over Honor’s as sudden tears filled her eyes. ‘Justin was a regular little water-baby. We’d just bought a new yacht, a forty-two-footer. Nate loved a maiden voyage. Justin loved any voyage. Especially on the new boat.’

She took several swallows of tea, not knowing how to proceed. Rob read her hesitation and slid his other hand under hers. It seemed to disappear inside his large ones. ‘What happened?’

She stared into empty space. ‘It was our third day out in the...’ She still couldn’t bring herself to call the yacht by its name. ‘We sailed up to Exmouth and then struck a course for Christmas Island. The current was high one morning but the wind was low so we’d switched over to motor. It was perfect dolphin weather. Justin saw the pod and he...’ Her eyes stung. ‘He knew not to but...he just...jumped.’

In her mind, she saw his little sneakers tipping off the back of the cursed boat, a thousand kilometres from shore. His excited squeal. The awful flash of bright orange as his life vest hit the water.

‘I leaped in right off the back after him.’ Blue eyes shifted to her scars. ‘He missed the propeller, but I didn’t. The stabiliser guard sliced through my shoulder.’

Rob closed his eyes as her voice failed.

‘I held onto him for as long as I could with only one arm.’ Her voice rose with the agony of retelling, begged him to understand. Tears caught in her throat. ‘He drifted away. I clung to the ladder with my good arm and Nate jumped in and swam out to him. He tied his life vest to Justin’s and tried to swim them both back towards the boat, but the swell was so strong...’ The tears flowed freely now. The pain, the terror of that awful day clawed in her gut.

Rob’s nostrils flared and he wrapped both his hands around one of hers. ‘Don’t. I don’t need to know, Honor. Don’t relive it for me.’

She had to keep going. She didn’t understand why, after all this time, she needed him to know, but she did. Her voice cracked as she continued. ‘There was blood everywhere and I was terrified of attracting sharks, not for me but for Justin in the water. I don’t remember doing it but somehow I crawled back into the boat and activated the emergency beacon.’

Rob swallowed hard twice.

‘I could see them, the orange of their life vests, as they clung together in the water further and further away. I tried to stand, to motor the boat to them, but then I slipped in my own blood...I fell onto my bad arm and passed out.’

Her voice was faint. She could hear the silence of that day, broken only by the sound of the sea and her own agonised moans as she lay on deck, rocking with the swell. She made the same sound now. Rob’s eyes glittered as he stared at her.

Her voice now was hollow, exhausted. ‘They sent a chopper from the military base in Exmouth. I lost a third of my blood before they found me. I came to a week later in Darwin hospital and I hated the doctors for saving my life. They wouldn’t tell me, but I knew.’

She dragged her eyes up to his. ‘Justin and Nate were gone.’