That stopped her. The laughter died.
‘Ryan, you can’t,’ she said uncertainly. ‘Your career…’ She shook her head. ‘Ryan, you’d be like me in the States. A fish out of water.’
‘Nope.’ He pulled her to him again and kissed her hair. ‘Not a fish out of water.’ He held her close and spoke thickly into her curls. ‘It’s all organised. Steve’s interested in my research areas. He’s bright and young and keen as mustard. Cairns is only an hour and a half away and it has an international airport. We’re going to keep on with our research. I’m going to keep on with my teaching commitments in the States-via video conferencing.
‘I’ll be working here with Steve, intermittently in Cairns and Brisbane, and twice a year I’ll have to fly back to the States for two-week stints at the hospital where I’m based now. But ninety per cent of the time I’ll be based here, Abbey Wittner. Here!’
‘But… but how?’
‘The world is getting smaller,’ Ryan told her, holding her close. ‘With video conferencing, the Internet, e-mail-hell. Abbey, I spend my life in the States on the end of a modern, talking to doctors two rooms away. Now I’ll be doing the same thing but I’ll be half a world away.
‘And I’ll keep my feet on the ground by indulging in a little general practice. As will Steve. So, between us, we’ll give Sapphire Cove three part-time doctors. You and me and Steve. And we’ll all five happily ever after.’
Then the laughter in his voice died and his eyes became a trace uncertain. Anxious. ‘How does that sound, my lovely Abbey? Will it work? Will you mind me going back to the States-leaving you for two weeks twice a year? I’ll give up my research if I must-to win you. If it’s not enough.’
‘Oh, Ryan…’
‘Tell me, Abbey.’
‘No,’ Abbey said breathlessly, and her eyes were bright with unshed tears. ‘It’s not enough, Ryan Henry. Eleven months of a year are not enough as a basis for a marriage…’
‘Abbey…’
‘I’ll only marry you on one condition, Ryan Henry,’ Abbey murmured joyfully, and she put her arms around him and held him close. So close she thought she’d never let him go again. Not ever.
‘Condition?’ Ryan’s voice was slurred by love and desire. Abbey’s body was curled into his and his hands were sliding under her wrap. Feeling the delicious contours of her body. Pulling her against him.
A man and a woman, becoming one.
‘On condition that when you go back to the States for your month every year I’m going too,’ Abbey told him. ‘Me and Jack. Your family. Whither thou goest, I go, my love. My home is your home, Ryan Henry. My heart is your heart.’
Ryan closed his eyes. In any man’s life there should be this pinnacle of joy, he told himself. This was it. This was the moment he’d been waiting for all his life, and now he was here he couldn’t believe he’d reached it.
‘You want to wake Jack?’ he asked, and his voice was as unsteady as he’d ever heard it. As unsure. ‘Tell him he’s got a new daddy?’
But Abbey was shaking her head and her hands were moving down… down… In a gesture of pure wifely possession.
‘Let’s not,’ she whispered as her fingers found what they were looking for.
‘Let’s do something else.’
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
RYAN and Abbey Henry’s honeymoon lasted one whole night before it was interrupted.
Janet and Sam, married two weeks earlier-‘we’re in our seventies: we don’t have as much time as you young things for wasting time unmarried’-were caring for Jack. Steve, walking with a limp but well on the way to recovery, was caring for the hospital. Two weeks of ‘Bliss’…
The discussion on where to go had been short.
‘You hijacked one honeymoon of mine at “Bliss”,’ Ryan told Abbey severely. ‘It’s your duty to give me another.’
And Abbey couldn’t think of a single reason to disagree.
On the first morning of her honeymoon Abbey woke late, stirred and found she was going nowhere. She was being held fast in Ryan’s arms. Ryan felt her wake. He shifted slightly so he could look down at her.
His wife.
His lovely, lovely Abbey.
The wedding had been perfect. The tiny church high on the headland overlooking Sapphire Cove… Everyone there…
Last night had been perfect. The merging of two bodies into one.
Abbey. His wife.
Ryan’s arms pulled her closer as the knowledge of Abbey as his bride-his woman for always-surged though him.
And then the phone rang. Of course the phone rang. The medical imperative!
‘If that’s an earthquake I don’t want to know about it,’ Abbey murmured sleepily, snuggling in closer against her love. But there was a sinking sensation in the pit of her stomach all the same. No one would disturb them unless it was an emergency, and one thing Abbey didn’t want for the rest of her life was emergencies.
It was a pity, then, that she was a doctor.
Ryan sighed and lifted the receiver. ‘Ryan Henry.’ Abbey could tell by the sound of his voice that he was as tense as she was.
But then Ryan smiled as he listened to the disembodied voice on the end of the line. When the voice had finished speaking he put the phone down.
‘Come on, my love,’ Ryan said, and he lifted Abbey into his arms and kissed her soundly. ‘Time to get ourselves decent. The honeymoon’s on hold for an hour or two.’
‘Oh, Ryan…’ It was a wail of dismay. Medical imperatives be damned, Abbey thought bitterly. She wanted this time alone with her love.
And then she looked more closely at Ryan’s face. His smile was growing.
‘What is it?’ she asked.
‘I’m not missing this, even for a honeymoon,’ Ryan told her, swinging his legs over the edge of the bed and reaching for his pants. ‘Come on, Abbey. Let’s go. Our turtles are hatching.’
The entire population of Sapphire Cove was on the beach.
There was no way anyone could have predicted exactly when the turtles would hatch. The experts said between fifty-four and seventy days, depending on the depth they were buried and the strength of the sun. So, apart from setting up a duty roster of guards, no one had planned for this.
But everyone was here. Abbey looked around in amazement as she and Ryan pulled to a halt. Everyone!
School had been let out. Grandmas and grandpas were arriving in convoys. The local shopkeepers and bankers and publicans had closed shop and headed for the beach.
Steve and Caroline stood hand in hand by the water’s edge, Steve leaning lightly on Caroline’s arm to support his weak leg.
There were men and women in wheelchairs and with walking sticks, and even a couple of stretcher cases being carried by volunteers. The hospital inmates had come en masse. Here were patients who were too sick to walk, but who wouldn’t miss this for the world.
Ted was here, holding a small child from Children’s ward and trying hard to keep his expression ghoulish when really he was as filled with wonder as everyone else.
Who else?
Ian Miller was here, dressed in the neat trousers and tie that denoted the professional. Sapphire Cove’s newest solicitor was taking his first holiday. Ian’s grin was as broad as his face, and his mother beside him had a matching smile a mile wide.
Leith Kinley was here, confined to a wheelchair but only just Four days ago she’d stood for the first time. She’d be going back to Brisbane soon for more intensive rehabilitation but she’d been allowed home for Abbey’s and Ryan’s wedding.
And now she was here for this. Sapphire Cove’s event of the decade.
There were two long lines of people, forming an avenue of honour from the freshly scattered mound where the turtle had laid her eggs down to the sea.
An avenue of honour for the hatchlings.
One by one they came. Tiny, tiny turtles, wide-eyed and terrified, scrambling through the sand, burrowing their way out into the open, blinking in the sunlight-and then heading for the sea.