Reunited with his ex-wife...

...and her secret son!

In this Bondi Bay Heroes story, when doc Luc Braxton is called to a collapsed shopping mall the last person he expects to rescue from the rubble is his fiercely independent ex-wife, Dr. Beth Carmichael—and Toby, the little boy he never knew she had. But to keep them in his life, Luc must learn to love Beth the way she needs him to...

MARION LENNOX has written over one hundred romance novels, and is published in over one hundred countries and thirty languages. Her international awards include the prestigious RITA® Award (twice) and the RT Book Reviews Career Achievement Award for ‘a body of work which makes us laugh and teaches us about love’. Marion adores her family, her kayak, her dog, and lying on the beach with a book someone else has written. Heaven!

Also by Marion Lennox

Stranded with the Secret Billionaire

Reunited with Her Surgeon Prince

The Billionaire’s Christmas Baby

Bondi Bay Heroes collection

The Shy Nurse’s Rebel Doc by Alison Roberts

Finding His Wife, Finding a Son

And look out for the next two books

Healed by Her Army Doc by Meredith Webber

Rescued by Her Mr Right by Alison Roberts

Available September 2018

Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk.

Finding His Wife, Finding a Son

Marion Lennox

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ISBN: 978-1-474-07524-4

FINDING HIS WIFE, FINDING A SON

© 2018 Marion Lennox

Published in Great Britain 2018

by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF

All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.

By payment of the required fees, you are granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right and licence to download and install this e-book on your personal computer, tablet computer, smart phone or other electronic reading device only (each a “Licensed Device”) and to access, display and read the text of this e-book on-screen on your Licensed Device. Except to the extent any of these acts shall be permitted pursuant to any mandatory provision of applicable law but no further, no part of this e-book or its text or images may be reproduced, transmitted, distributed, translated, converted or adapted for use on another file format, communicated to the public, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher.

® and ™ are trademarks owned and used by the trademark owner and/or its licensee. Trademarks marked with ® are registered with the United Kingdom Patent Office and/or the Office for Harmonisation in the Internal Market and in other countries.

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Version: 2020-03-02

MILLS & BOON

Before you start reading, why not sign up?

Thank you for downloading this Mills & Boon book. If you want to hear about exclusive discounts, special offers and competitions, sign up to our email newsletter today!

SIGN ME UP!

Or simply visit

signup.millsandboon.co.uk

Mills & Boon emails are completely free to receive and you can unsubscribe at any time via the link in any email we send you.

To Liz and Graham

With thanks for your support and love over so many years.

Should we come and build more shelves?

Love you both

Marion

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

About the Author

Booklist

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

Extract

About the Publisher

CHAPTER ONE

‘I COULD USE an emergency.’

Dr Luc Braxton perched himself on the end of Harriet’s bed and snagged a chocolate from her stash. He was bored. Harriet was also bored but with more reason. She’d smashed her leg during an abseiling training exercise some weeks back. The break was horrific, there’d been complication after complication and she was struggling to regain any strength at all.

‘That’s not a kind thing to say to me,’ she retorted, but she managed a smile. Yeah, she was bored, but Luc took boredom to a whole new level.

Luc and Harriet were both members of Australia’s crack Specialist Disaster Response team. They were based at Bondi Bayside Hospital, and while not wishing disaster to fall on the community at large, Luc was edgy when it didn’t.

Disaster response was what Luc lived for. Harriet’s accident, with its possible long-term consequences, had left him gutted, but even the damage to his friend hadn’t taken the edge off his addiction to adrenaline.

‘Was the conference boring then?’ Harriet asked, trying to sound sympathetic.

‘Who could be bored in New York? And, no, the emergency medicine component was great. I learned a lot. But I did spend most of my time on my butt, listening, and twenty-four hours sitting on the plane either way. And then to get home and find the team doing another disaster drill off in the Blue Mountains without me...’

‘Which is why you’d better hope there’s no emergency,’ Harriet told him, but there was sympathy in her voice. Harriet was a specialist intensive care nurse. Luc was an emergency medicine physician. Neither was good at doing nothing. ‘The team can be recalled fast but it’ll take an extra couple of hours to bring them back to base,’ she said. ‘And you know they need to do it. Our last was the disaster when I was hurt, and they’ve been trying to get back there ever since. They return tomorrow. Let’s hold emergencies until then.’

‘So you’re not bored?’

‘Of course I am.’ Harriet glowered and winced as she tried to move her leg. ‘Give it a break, Luc. I’m likely to be bored for a very long time. At least you can do something about it.’

She eyed Luc with speculation. ‘Hey, maybe it’s about time you thought about your love life. Word is that cute little nurse you’ve been dating threw you over before you left. Seems you stood her up for one date too many.’

‘Gotta love the hospital grapevine,’ Luc said equitably. ‘It knows my love life better than I do.’

‘You give it fodder. How many’s that this year? Three? Isn’t it time you thought about settling? Babies and a mortgage and washing the car on Sundays? Not interested?’

‘Not in a million years.’

‘Word is you were married.’

‘Yeah.’ He pushed himself off the bed and headed for the door. Personal discussions weren’t something he did. ‘Eight years ago. I’m not going back there in a hurry.’

‘So why the serial dating?’ Bored and interested, Harriet wasn’t letting him off the hook. ‘What are you looking for, Luc? Someone cute, smart, sexy, willing to have nine out of ten dates cancelled because of crises, happy for her guy to dangle from a rope mid-air while the rest of the world thinks he’ll break his neck...’

‘Harry...’

‘Hey, I know, it’s none of my business.’ She was starting to enjoy herself. ‘But you need to quit it with working your way through the hospital staff—it’s getting messy. How about you join a proper dating site? I’ll help you fill in your profile. What do we have? Six foot two, tall, dark, ripped and just a touch mysterious—or at least he likes crime novels. Yeah, I’ve seen you reading them between jobs. Super fit. Pulls a great wage. You might need to buy yourself life insurance to cover security issues but, wow, Luc, wait and see how many hits you get. You’ll make some girl a wonderful husband.’

‘I have no intention of being a husband, wonderful or otherwise.’

‘But you’ve already been one,’ Harriet said thoughtfully. ‘Want to tell Aunty Harry what happened? Where is she now?’

‘And I have no intention of telling you about my marriage, even if you are bored,’ Luc retorted through gritted teeth. ‘It’s past history. I have no idea where she is now. I’m heading down to Emergency to see if I can find someone to treat.’

‘The nurses are saying there’s nothing doing in Emergency. There doesn’t seem to be anything interesting happening in this whole hospital. Like your love life.’

‘You want to talk about yours? How are you and Pete?’

She winced again. ‘Yeah, okay, stalemate. But seriously, Luc... My offer of planting you in the middle of a dating site still stands. It might even be exciting.’

‘I have enough excitement in my life,’ he said, and gave her a hug, snagged another chocolate from her oversupply and left.

Harriet was left staring thoughtfully after him.

‘You know,’ she said, to no one in particular, ‘I’m pretty sure you don’t. I’m pretty sure there’s not enough excitement in the universe to keep Luc Braxton happy. And I’d love to know what happened, and where that wife of yours is now.’

* * *

Dr Beth Carmichael was so tired all she wanted to do was sleep. Today had been once crisis after another. She was finally free to head home, but heading home with a toddler and a briefcase of medico-legal letters didn’t promise the sleep she craved.

There’d even been a drama when she’d gone to pick Toby up from childcare.

‘Beth, would you mind looking at Felix Runnard? He’s been listless all day and now he’s developed a fever. His mum’s not due to pick him up until eight tonight and her boss gives her a hard time if she has to leave early. We’ve popped him into isolation but...what do you think? Should we ring his mum?’ Margie Lane, the childcare supervisor, was a sensible woman who didn’t fuss but she’d sounded worried.

So Beth had put aside her longing for home and sat down with the little boy on her lap.

A slight fever? The staff had taken his temp an hour ago but now he was burning. He was also arching his head and crying when she touched his neck.

Fever. Sore neck. No sign of a virus. Alarm bells had rung.

‘Check his tummy for me,’ she’d told Margie as she cradled him, and Margie had lifted his singlet and removed his nappy.

The beginnings of a rash.

Meningitis?

The childcare centre was in the shopping plaza, as was the clinic Beth worked from. She sent someone to the clinic for antibiotics and injected a first dose straight away. She could hope her tentative diagnosis was wrong, but she couldn’t wait for confirmation. If she was right, immediate antibiotics could make all the difference.

An hour later Felix and his parents were in the med. evacuation chopper on their way to Sydney. Meningitis hadn’t been confirmed but Beth wasn’t wasting time doing the tests herself. If the infection was moving fast, Namborra wasn’t where he needed to be. It was better to bail out early, maybe even terrify his parents unnecessarily, than risk the unthinkable.

Even after he’d left, there’d been things to do. She’d cleaned herself with care, then organised for parents to be contacted, with antibiotics ordered for anyone who’d been in contact with Felix. Finally she’d stripped again—one thing a country GP always carried was a change of clothes. She’d then hugged her own little Toby and carried him out through the undercover car park.

He was whinging because he was tired. She was also tired, but Toby didn’t have meningitis and right now she felt the luckiest mother in the world.

‘Let’s have spaghetti for tea,’ she told Toby, and his little face brightened.

‘Worms.’

‘Exactly. How many worms would you like?’

‘One, two, a hundred,’ he crowed, and buried his head in her shoulder.

She hugged him tight and headed toward the entrance. Doug, her next-door neighbour, would be waiting to pick her up. Bless him, she thought, not for the first time. Doug was in his seventies, a widower who spent his days making his garden and his car pristine. When she’d first started working at Namborra he’d noticed the number of taxis she was using and tentatively made his offer. At first she’d been reluctant—her hours were all over the place—but she’d finally accepted that Doug’s offer filled a need for him as well as for her.

Giving was lovely. She’d realised that a long time ago. It was the taking that was the hardest.

So now...she’d kept Doug waiting for over an hour but she couldn’t hurry. The light was dim and she had trouble making out the pillars. Grey on grey was her worst-case scenario.

Sometimes she even conceded a cane would help.

‘Yeah, a toddler in one arm, a holdall and briefcase in the other plus a cane...where? Not going to happen...’

And then she paused.

There was a roaring from above, the sound of a plane.

The town’s small airstrip was close. It wasn’t so unusual for planes to fly overhead, but the approaching roar was so loud it was making the building vibrate.

What the...?

She had a fraction of a second to clutch Toby tighter and duck because that was what she always did when she sensed trouble. Keep your head out of the firing line...

All of her was in the firing line. So was all of the Namborra Plaza.

* * *

Luc had finally found something to do. A kid playing hockey after school, no shin pads and a ball hit with force. He’d been bleeding impressively as his teacher had tugged him through the emergency doors. The dressing they’d hopefully taped to his lower leg wasn’t doing it.

The kid was ashen and feeling nauseous, mostly from the sight of blood rather than the pain, Luc thought, but eight stitches, a neat dressing and a promise of a scar had him restored to boisterous. ‘You’re sure it’ll scar?’ he demanded.

‘Just a hairline,’ Luc told him.

‘You can’t make it bigger?’

Luc grinned. ‘You want me to re-stitch, only looser?’

The kid chuckled. A nurse appeared with soda and a sandwich and the kid attacked them as if there was no tomorrow.

‘Shin guards from now on,’ Luc told him, and then the beeper in his pocket vibrated.

The hospital used his phone—or the intercom—to page him. The vibrating pager was used for members of the Specialist Disaster Response.

Three buzzes, repeated.

Code One.

Yes!

Or...um...no. He shouldn’t react like this. Code One emergencies meant the highest level of need. It meant that somewhere people were in dire trouble. He should hate it, and a part of him did. After a multiple casualty event, he made use of the SDR’s debriefing service and sometimes even that didn’t stop him lying awake in the small hours, reliving nightmare scenarios.

But this was what he was trained for, and in a way it was what he needed.

One of the team’s more perceptive psychologists had had a go about it once, and for some reason—the nightmares must have been bad—he’d let her probe.

‘Your childhood was traumatic and your mum depended on you?’ In typical psych. fashion she’d put it back on him. ‘How did that make you feel?’

And for some reason he’d let himself think about it.

His mother had walked out on his father when he’d been a toddler. She’d gone from one tumultuous relationship to another, one crisis to another. His earliest memories... ‘Is there anything in the fridge? Go next door and ask Mrs Hobson for something. Tell her I’d kill for a piece of toast. And aspirins. Go on, Luc, Mummy will hug you if you get her an aspirin...’

More dramatically, he remembered a drunk and angry boyfriend tossing them out at midnight. He remembered his aunt arriving and scolding him. ‘What are you doing, boy, standing round doing nothing? Go back inside and demand he give your mother her belongings. Go on, Luc, he won’t hit you. Can’t you see your mother needs you? You’re no use to anyone if you can’t help.’

He’d been seven years old. Somehow he’d faced down his mother’s bullying boyfriend. He’d pushed what he could see into a suitcase and his aunt had reluctantly taken them in.

And then there’d been his cousin...

Don’t go there.

‘So you’ve always associated love with being needed?’ the psychologist had asked, but it was too close to the bone and Luc had ended the sessions.

Did he associate dependence with love? There was a germ of truth, he acknowledged, and maybe that’s why he and Beth...

But this was no time to think of his failed marriage. His pager was still buzzing.

Don’t run in the hospital.

His long-legged stride came close.

* * *

After the massive roar of the plane, the shock of impact, then the domino effect as the slabs of concrete smashed down around them, there was suddenly silence.

And then the car alarms started, reacting to the fall of debris.

Beth was on the ground—at least she thought it was the ground. Her back was hard against a pillar.

There was rubble all around her, almost head-high.

Something was across her leg. Something...

The pain was unbelievable.

But worse... Toby was silent.

The air was so thick she could hardly breathe.

Toby.

She was still cradling him against her chest. His little body was curved into hers.

His stillness...

‘Toby...’ Her voice came out as a strangled, dust-choked whisper. ‘Toby?’

And he moved, just a fraction, to bury his face deeper into her breast. A whimper...

Thank you. Oh, thank you.

Her hands were moving over him, searching, pushing away rubble.

No blood. No more whimpers as she ran her fingers over his body.

She was good at this, assessing in the dark. Too good. But her skill was useful now. Her fingers were telling her there seemed no damage. Her arms had been around his chest and his head. He seemed okay.

But for herself...

There was no damage to her hands—maybe scratches but nothing serious. But her leg...

She tried to pull it free from the rubble, and the pain that shot through her body was indescribable.

But Toby was her priority. She was wearing a T-shirt, the one she’d changed into in a rush after treating Felix. Somehow she managed to put Toby back from her, enough to wiggle the hem of the T-shirt up to her neck. Then she pulled it down again, all the way over Toby, turning it into a cocoon to protect him from the dust.

Still he didn’t move. The noise, the shock, the darkness must have sent him into panic and for most toddlers the reaction to blind panic was to freeze.

‘It’s okay,’ she whispered, but it wasn’t.

Breathing seemed almost impossible. Her mouth was full of grit. The dust wasn’t settling.

Toby was safe under her T-shirt, but what was the rule? In a crisis, first ensure your own safety. You’re no use to anyone if you’re dead.

Okay, Toby had come first but now she needed to focus on herself.

The leg... She needed to...

Breathe. That was top of the list.

She was cradling Toby with one arm. With the other she groped and found the canvas carryall she’d brought from crèche. The clothes she’d just taken off were in a plastic bag on the top. Maybe they were contaminated with meningitis virus but now wasn’t the time to quibble.

Oh, her leg...

Somewhere close by, someone started to scream.

There was nothing she could do about it.

First save yourself.

She’d been wearing a blouse when she’d treated Felix and it was at the top of the bag. She tugged it free and a flurry of concrete rubble fell into the bag as she pulled it out.

Was there anything around her likely to fall? How could she tell?

The darkness was total. Her phone had a torch but her phone was at the bottom of her purse and where was her purse? Not within reach.

No matter. She was used to the dark.

Toby wasn’t, though. He was whimpering, his little body shaking.

There was nothing she could do until she had herself safe.

She had the shirt free. She shook the worst of the dust out, knowing more was settling every second. Then she had to let Toby go while she wrapped and tied the shirt around her face.

The whimpering grew frantic.

‘It’s okay.’ And blessedly it was. The shirt made breathing not easy but at least possible.

She took a moment to cradle Toby again, hugging him close, blocking out the messages her leg was sending her.

‘Stay still, Toby, love,’ she whispered. ‘I need to see if I can get this...this mess away from us so we can go home.’

Fat chance. She wasn’t going anywhere soon.

Oh, her leg...

Was she bleeding? She couldn’t tell and she had to know.

Carefully she manoeuvred Toby around to her side, though he clutched her so hard she had to tug. Thankfully the neck of her T-shirt was tight so he was safe enough in there. He wasn’t crying loudly—just tiny terrified whimpers that did something to her heart.

But her leg had priority. With Toby shifted to the side she could lean down and feel.

There was a block of concrete lying straight across her lower leg. Massive. She couldn’t feel either end of it.

She was bent almost double, fighting to get her fingers underneath, fighting to see if there was wriggle room.

Her fingers could just fit under.

No blood or very little. She wasn’t bleeding out, which was kind of a relief.

The pain was...was...there were no words.

She went back to clutching Toby. If she just held on...

She was awash with nausea and faintness. The darkness, the pain, the fear were almost overwhelming and the temptation was to give in. She could just let go and sink into the darkness.

But that’d mean letting go of Toby. He was being so still. Why? She didn’t have room in her head to answer. He was breathing, his warm little body her one sure thing in this nightmare.

The sound from the car alarms was appalling. The screaming from far away reached a crescendo and then suddenly stopped, cut off.

There was nothing she could do. Her world was confined to dark and dust and pain—and Toby.

There was nothing else.

* * *

Even without the emergency code, Luc would have known there was trouble the moment he walked into the Specialist Disaster Response office. Mabel, the admin secretary, was staring at the screen and her fingers were flying over the keyboard. This was what she was trained for.

Mabel sensed rather than saw him arrive, and she didn’t take her eyes from the screen as she spoke.

‘Plane crash into shopping centre,’ she said over her shoulder. ‘Cargo plane. Pilot on board but hopefully no passengers. It’s smashed into the side of the Namborra Shopping Plaza. You know Namborra? Five hours’ drive inland, due west. It’s the commercial centre for a huge rural district. Hot day, air-conditioned shopping centre, Tuesday afternoon. There’s no word yet but guess is multiple casualties. It seems the undercover car park and a small section of the plaza itself have collapsed.’

‘What resources are on the ground?’ Luc asked.

‘There’s a small local hospital but anything serious gets airlifted here, so there are few resources. I’m bringing the team back, field hospital, the works, but it’ll take time to get them there. Luc, I’m trying to sequester med staff from the rest of the hospital but they’re not geared up like you are. The fire team’s already notified and the first responders will go with you. The chopper’s on the roof. Gina’s refuelling and ready to go. Resources will follow at need but I want you in the air ten minutes ago. Go!’

And ten seconds later he was gone.

CHAPTER TWO

‘MESS’ DIDN’T BEGIN to describe what was beneath them.

From the air Namborra looked what it was, a small, almost-city situated in the middle of endless miles of wheat fields. There was a railway line and station, and a massive cluster of wheat silos. A group of commercial buildings formed the town centre, with a mammoth swimming pool and sports complex to the side. But Luc’s focus was on the largest building of all—a vast, sprawling undercover shopping plaza.

The scene of disaster.

The plane seemed to have skimmed across the rooftop, bringing part of the roof down and then smashing into the sports oval next door. That was some consolation, he thought, but not much. He couldn’t see the plane—what he saw was a smouldering mess.

And the plaza... There was a local fire engine on site, with men and women doing their best to quench a small fire smouldering a third of the way across the smashed roof. There were two police cars.

There were locals, visibly distressed even from where Luc gazed from the chopper, some venturing out onto the collapsed roof, others clustering around people on the ground. Some were simply clutching each other.

They circled first. Gina, the team’s pilot, knew the drill. Even though seconds counted, there was always the need to take an aerial assessment. Calculate risks.

‘Hard hats. Full gear. You know the drill,’ Kev, the burly chief of the SDR fire crew, barked. ‘Anyone going in under that mess, watch yourself.’ He was including Luc in his orders. SDR medics were supposed to stay on the sidelines and treat whoever was brought to them but it often didn’t work that way. In truth firefighters often ended up doing emergency first aid and the medics often ended up digging or abseiling or whatever. No one asked questions—in a crisis everyone did what they had to do.

‘Obey orders and keep your radios close,’ Kev ordered as the chopper landed. ‘Back-up’s on its way but it’ll take time. For now there’s just us. Okay, guys, let’s go.

* * *

Toby was recovering from the initial shock. Blessedly he didn’t seem hurt. One little hand wriggled free, up through the neck of her T-shirt. Tiny fingers touched her neck, reaching up to her cheek. She wiped the grit away as best she could. Toby was making sure it was her.

‘M-Mama...’

There were car alarms sounding all around her, a continuous screaming she couldn’t escape from, but she heard...or maybe she felt him speak. Toby had been calling her Mama for two months now and every time she heard it her heart turned over. Now, in the midst of noise and pain and fear...no, make that noise and pain and terror, it still had the capacity to ground her.

This little person was the centre of her universe and she wasn’t about to let a crushed leg and a shopping centre fallen down around her make her forget that.

‘It’s okay, Toby, love.’ Could he hear above the cacophony? She had to believe he could. Maybe like her, he could feel her voice. She fought to fumble her way into her bag, until her fingers closed on a scrappy, chewed rabbit.

Robert Rabbit was incongruously purple, so garish that even Beth could usually make him out in dim light. She couldn’t make him out now—the darkness was absolute—but she felt his scrappy fur and he gave her inexplicable comfort.

She’d be okay. They’d be okay.

If only her head didn’t feel...fuzzy. If only the noise would stop and the waves of pain would recede.

She pushed them away—the pain and the faintness—and focussed hard on Toby. And Robert. She put the scraggy rabbit into the little hand and tucked both hand and rabbit back down her T-shirt.

There was one blessing in all this. Because she’d been delayed at childcare, one of the women had given Toby warm milk and changed him into his pyjamas. She’d intended to heat spaghetti at home. Toby would have eaten a few ‘worms’ and then he’d have crashed. He didn’t really need the spaghetti, though. He’d had a full day of childcare. It was dark, he was well fed and he was tired. With luck he’d sleep.

‘Heydee, heydee-ho, the great big elephant is so slow...’

The simple child’s song was one she used to settle him in the middle of the night, rocking him, telling him all was well in his world, all was well in her world. She forced herself to croon it now.

The car horns were blaring but he must be able to feel her singing. He was so close. A heartbeat...

‘He swings his trunk from side to side, as he takes the children for a ride...’

Her throat was caked with dust but somehow she managed it. And she managed to rock, just a little, with both hands cradling Toby.

‘Heydee, heydee-ho...’ Oh, it hurt. Dear God... If she fainted. ‘Heydee...’

And blessedly she felt him relax. This had been scary for a few moments but now...maybe it was no worse than being put into his own cot in his own room. He had his mama. He had his rabbit. He was...safe?

If only she could believe that.

Toby snuggled deeper as she held him and tried to take comfort in him. The shards of pain were growing stronger. The faintness was getting closer...

Do not give in.

‘Heydee...’

* * *

He needed his team!

There was a local paramedic team onsite, plus another from a small town twenty minutes’ drive away, but they didn’t have the skills, equipment or know-how to try and go underneath the mess. There seemed to be only one available local doctor. She was working flat out in the nearby hospital. That meant triage and immediate life-saving stuff was up to Luc.

A café at the outer edge of the plaza had collapsed, with a group of senior citizens inside, and that’s where the firefighters centred their early rescue efforts. One dead, two injured. Luc was in there until the café was cleared, crawling under the rubble to set up intravenous IVs and pain relief.

He was filthy. A scrape on his cheek was bleeding but as the last gentleman was pulled from the rubble he was already looking around for what needed doing next.

There were still no-go areas, smouldering fires, a mass of collapsed tiles where the plaza proper started.

Where to start...

‘We’re going into the car park.’ Kev had been supervising the final stages of freeing the senior cits and he was now staring out at the flattened roof of what had been the undercover parking lot. It was a mass of flattened sheets of corrugated iron and the remains of concrete pillars.

‘How the hell did that collapse?’ Luc muttered, awed.

‘Minimal strength pillars,’ Kev commented. ‘Concrete that looks like it’ll last for ever but turns to dust. The plane’s gone in across the top and they’ve come down like dominoes.’

‘Any idea how many under there?’

‘We hope not many.’ At Luc’s look of surprise he shrugged. ‘Tuesday’s not a busy shopping day. It’s too late for after-school shopping, too early for the place to be closing. Most were either in the plaza itself or had gone home. The locals pulled a couple out from the edges but there’s reports of a few missing. Don and Louise Penbroke, mah-jong players extraordinaire, had just left the café when it hit. Bill Mickle, a local greyhound racer. One of the local docs...’

‘A doctor...’ It shouldn’t make a difference. It didn’t, but still...

‘Young woman doctor, works at the clinic,’ Kev told him. ‘Just picked her kid up from childcare. Her driver was supposed to meet her at the entrance—he’s yelling to anyone who’ll listen that she’s trapped under there. So that’s four definites but possibly more. Hell, I wish we could get those car alarms off. To be stuck underneath with that racket...they won’t even hear us if we yell.’

* * *

Her world was spinning in tighter circles where only three things mattered. Taking one breath after another. That was important. Cradling Toby’s small warm body. If he wasn’t here, if she’d dropped him, if she couldn’t feel his deep, even breathing, she’d go mad. And the pain in her leg...

But she would hold on. If she fainted she might drop Toby. He might crawl away. He was her one true thing and for now she was his.

Dear God, help...

Please...

* * *

The firefighters were lifting one piece of iron after another, working with infinite care, taking all the trouble in the world not to stand where people might be lying underneath, not to cause further falls, not to cause dust that might choke anyone trapped.

They found Don and Louise Penbroke first. The third sheet of iron was raised and the elderly couple looked like the pictures Luc had seen of petrified corpses from Pompeii, totally still, totally covered, the only difference being they were covered in concrete dust and not ash.

But as the first guy to reach them touched a debris-coated shoulder there was a ripple of movement. Still clutching each other, the couple managed to sit up. Louise had her face buried in Don’s chest and Don’s face was in Louise’s thick white hair.

Within seconds Luc had their faces cleared. They still clutched each other, their eyes enormous.

‘Th-thank...’ Don tried to speak but Luc put his hand on his shoulder and shook his head. And smiled.

‘You two should thank each other. That’s the best way to survive I’ve seen. What hurts?’

But amazingly little did. They’d been by the ramp leading up to the car park, protected by the concrete sides. They were both shocked but fine.

One happy ending.

A couple of the firies steered them out into the afternoon sunshine where they were greeted with tears and relief.

The firies—and Luc—worked methodically on.

There had to be some way to turn those damned car alarms off, Luc thought. There were fractions of time between the blaring but never enough to call and receive a warning.

At least batteries were starting to fail. The barrage of sound was lessening.

Another sheet came free.

Hell.

This guy hadn’t been so lucky. A sheet of iron had caught him. He’d have bled out almost instantly, Luc thought, and wondered how many others were to be found. They were waiting for proper machinery to search the crumpled part of the plaza itself. How many...?

And then...a cry?

The sound was from their left, heard between car sirens.

Kev demanded instant stillness. The sound had come from at least three sheets of iron across. If they went for it, they risked crushing others who lay between.

They waited for another break in the alarms. Kev ordered his team to spread out to give a better chance of pinpointing location.

‘Call if you can hear us?’ Kev yelled.

‘H-here.’

A woman’s voice. Faint.

A roofing sheet was pulled up, the rubble lifted with care but with urgency. It revealed nothing but crushed concrete. These pillars were rubbish.

Someone’s head would roll for these, Luc thought. They looked as if they’d been built with no more idea of safety standards than garden statuary.

He was heaving rubble too, now. By rights he should be out on the pavement, treating patients as they were brought to him, but with the local doctor working in the nearby hospital he’d decided the urgent need was here. If there was something major the paramedics would call him back.

All his focus was on that voice. That cry.

‘Stop,’ Kev called, and once again he signalled for them to stand back and locate.

And then... The voice called again, fainter.

This area held the worst of the crushed concrete. Sheets of roofing iron had fallen and concrete had crumpled and rolled on top. They were working from the sides of each sheet, determined not to put more weight on the slab.

‘Please...’ The sirens had ceased again for a fraction of a moment and the voice carried upward. She must be able to hear them. She was right...here?

Others had joined them now, hauling concrete away with care. Half a dozen men and women, four in emergency services uniforms, two burly locals, all desperate to help.

‘Reckon it’s the doc.’ One of the locals spoke above the noise. ‘Hell, it’s the doc. We gotta get—’

His words were cut off again by the car alarms, but the urgency only intensified.

And finally the last block of concrete was hauled clear. The sheet of iron was free to be shifted.

Willing hands caught the edges. Kev was there, taking in the risks, assessing to the last.

‘Lift,’ he said at last. ‘Count of three, straight up...’

And the iron was raised and moved aside.

Revealing a woman huddled underneath.

Luc was underneath before the iron was clear. He was stooping, feeling his way in, reaching her. He was lifting a cloth she’d obviously used to protect her face, wiping her face free, clearing her airway. He had a mask on her almost instantly. The initial need was clean air, more important than anything else.

She was matted with grey-white dust. Her eyes were terrified. ‘My...my baby...’

And then she faltered as she stared wildly into his eyes. Even with his mask, even with the dust, she knew him.

‘Luc?’

* * *

He felt as if all the air had been sucked from his body.

Beth!

His wife.

Not his wife. She’d walked away eight years ago. For a while he’d tried to keep in touch but it had been too hard for both of them.

‘Stay safe.’ That had been Beth’s last ask of him. ‘I know you can’t keep out of harm’s way but, oh, Luc, don’t you dare get yourself killed.’

And she’d touched his face one last time, and climbed aboard a train bound for Brisbane.

Stay safe. What a joke, when here she was, trapped by a mass of rubble, so close to death....

The nearest car alarm stopped abruptly. In reality its battery had probably died, but to Luc it felt like the world had stopped. Instinctively his hand came up to adjust his own mask, a habit entrenched by years of crisis training.

His mask was fine. His breathing was okay.

And he wasn’t hallucinating.

Beth...

‘Leg trapped,’ Kev at his side murmured, and just like that, the doctor in Luc stepped in. Thankfully, because the rest of him was floundering like a stickleback out of water.

‘You’re going to be okay,’ he told her, in a voice he could almost be proud of. It was the voice he was trained to use, strong, sure, with a trace of warmth, words to keep panic at bay.

He needed to get the whole picture. He leaned back a little so he could see all of her.

She was slumped against the remains of a pillar. There was a mound under her shirt, and she was cradling it with both hands. A slab of concrete had fallen over her left leg. Her right leg was tucked up, as if she’d tried to haul back at the last minute, but he couldn’t see her left foot.

His gaze went back to her face, noting the terror and the pain, then his gaze moved again to the mound at her chest. A child?

He put a hand on the mound and felt a wash of relief as he registered warmth and deep, even breathing. He slipped a hand under her T-shirt and located one small nose. Clear. Beth had managed to protect the airway.

Beth’s child?

This was sensory overload, but he had to focus on imperatives.

‘Your baby?’ he said, because the fact that a child was breathing didn’t necessarily mean all was well.

‘T-Toby.’

‘Toby,’ he said, and managed a smile. ‘Great name. Beth, was Toby hit? Do you know if he’s been hurt?’ He lifted the mask a little to let her speak.

‘I felt... I felt the fall.’ Her voice was a hoarse whisper, muffled by the mask. ‘I crouched. Toby was under me. He seems fine. He’s fallen asleep and I’m... I’m sure it’s natural. It’s been...it’s been a big day at childcare.’

‘Huge,’ he agreed. He was acting on triage imperatives, taking her word for the child’s safety for the moment as he moved his hands down to her leg. The dust was a thick fog the light was having trouble penetrating. He winced as he reached her ankle and could feel no further.

‘It’s...stuck...’ Beth managed.

‘Well diagnosed, Dr Carmichael,’ he said, and she even managed a sort of smile.

‘I’m good.’

‘I suspect you’ve been better. Pain level, one to ten?’

‘S-Six.’

‘Honest?’

‘Nine, then,’ she managed, and then decided to be honest. ‘Okay, ten.’

And she wouldn’t be exaggerating. He looked at the slab constricting her leg and he felt sick. She’d been under here for more than an hour. Maybe two. What sort of long-term damage was being done?

There was no use going down that road. Just do what came next.

‘Relief coming up now,’ he said, loading a syringe. There were workers all around them now, shoring rubble. Kev was making his workplace as secure as he could, but Luc was noticing nothing but Beth. If he couldn’t block out fears for personal safety then he shouldn’t be here. ‘No allergies?’ He should know that. He did but he wasn’t trusting memory. He was trusting nothing.

‘N-no.’

‘What else hurts, Beth?’

‘I... My back...’

She was sitting hard against concrete, as if she’d been slammed there. She had full use of her arms and fingers, he could see it in the way she cradled the bundle on her breast. But what other damage?

First things first.

He should get the child... Toby...away to where he could be examined properly, where he was safe, but for now she was clutching him as if her own life depended on that hold. She was holding by a faint thread, he thought, and he wasn’t messing with that thread.

His priority was to do what he must to keep her safe.

And suddenly he was enveloped by a waft of memory. Ten years ago. He and Beth were newly dating, med students together. She was little, feisty, cute. Messy chestnut curls. Big brown eyes. Okay, maybe cute wasn’t a good enough description. Gorgeous.

He’d asked her out and couldn’t believe it when she’d said yes—and a month later they’d spent a weekend camping.

A week after that she was in hospital with encephalitis, a mosquito-borne virus.

The day he most remembered was a week after that. She was still in hospital, fretting about missing her next assignment. He’d brought her in chocolates and flowers—corny but it was all he could think of. He was twenty-two years old, a kid, feeling guilty that she was ill.

But she was recovering. She was laughing at one of his idiotic jokes. Opening the chocolates.

And then, suddenly, she was falling back on her pillows.

‘I can’t... Luc, I feel so dizzy... My eyes...’

It was optical neuritis, a rare but appalling side-effect of encephalitis. It had meant almost instant, total blindness.

For weeks she’d had no sight at all, and his guilt had reached stratospheric proportions.

Beth’s parents were...absent, to say the least. Suddenly Beth seemed solely dependent on him.

The next few weeks had been a nightmare, for her and for him. His carefree existence was finished. He’d dated her because she was gorgeous, vivacious, funny. Now she was his responsibility.

Blind and bereft, with no other options, she’d agreed to come home with him. He’d cared for her, protected her...and loved her? He still wasn’t sure where care ended and love started but her need filled something inside he hadn’t been aware was missing.

Her sight gradually returned, not fully but enough to manage. If she was careful. If she was protected.

And as the months went by their relationship had deepened. She’d lain in his arms and he’d known she felt safe and loved. That felt good enough for him. He’d lost sight of the carefree, bubbly girl he’d dated but in her place he had someone who’d need him for ever.

They’d married. And here she was, half-buried in this mess—with a child who wasn’t his.

Was there a husband? Was someone else doing the protecting?

This wasn’t the time for questions.

He was pushing memory away, years of training putting him on autopilot. Beth was leaning back, her eyes closed as he inserted an IV line.

‘This’ll make you sleepy,’ he told her. ‘Relax into it, sweetheart.’

‘Toby...’

‘You want us to take Toby? Beth, I swear I’ll take care of him.’

‘How do I know you mean that?’ She even managed a smile. ‘Of course you will.’

‘How old is he?’

‘Twenty months.’

‘Is there someone we can call who he’ll trust?’ Someone to sign papers if he had to be treated? Someone like the baby’s father?

She wore no wedding ring. That didn’t mean anything. Did it?

And once again his heart did this stupid lurch. This was Beth. His Beth. He wanted to gather her into his arms, hold her, keep her safe...

Which was exactly why she’d walked away from him eight years ago. Into...this.

‘Margie,’ she managed. ‘At the childcare centre. Toby trusts...’

The childcare centre at the plaza? He was pretty sure it had been safely evacuated, but he couldn’t be sure of every individual. Right now he could only focus on one trapped woman—a woman who was also his wife.

Ex-wife.

But no matter who she was, she was in trouble and she had no need to be worried by anything else.

Her voice was starting to drag and Luc thought the time for Beth to make decisions was over.

‘Right,’ he said, firmly and surely. ‘Let’s get Toby out of here, Beth, so we can concentrate on freeing your leg.’

‘You’ll look after him? If Margie can’t?’ Through the haze of pain and drugs, her voice was still fierce. ‘Luc, swear?’

‘I swear,’ he said, and something inside him hurt. Badly. That she could still ask this of him... That she could still trust him...

He’d wanted this, so much, but to happen here, in this way...

And despite the pain and the fear, Beth must have sensed it. Her hand caught his and held.

‘Luc, I swore I’d never need you again but I need you now. Thank you...’

His throat was so thick he couldn’t speak, and it wasn’t from the dust. He squeezed her hand back and then carefully lifted the sleeping child away from her breast. The little boy snuffled against Luc, recoiling a little as his face hit the repellent fabric of Luc’s high vis jacket, and then relaxing again as Luc hauled a cloth someone handed him around the little boy’s face. Luc tucked it in, giving him a soft place to lay his head as well as protection from the dust.

There were hands willing, wanting to take him, to carry him to safety, and Luc’s priority had to be with Beth. But still he took a moment to hold, to feel the child’s weight in his arms, to feel the steadiness of his breathing, his sleeping, trusting warmth.

He would take care of him. He’d take care of them both.

He must.

* * *

The next hour passed in a blur of medical need. The rest of the team was here now, with Blake in charge. They were panning out through the ruins, removing the need for Luc’s attention to be on anything but Beth. Still trapped, she needed constant monitoring.

She was semiconscious, drugged to the point where pain and her surroundings were a haze.

Finally, moving with infinite caution, aware that a break in the concrete over her leg could mean parts of it would topple and cause more damage, the slab was lifted. Finally Beth was extricated.

She’d been wearing pants and leather boots. That had been a blessing—it had stopped lacerations that might well have been serious enough for her to bleed out. There was no doubt there were fractures, but blood still seemed to be getting through. Luc knew the greatest danger was the fact that the leg had been compressed for so long.

He accompanied the stretcher across the debris to the makeshift receiving tent the team had set up.

‘Status?’ Blake Cooper, ER consultant, had been working on an elderly man as Luc brought Beth in. The sheet drawn up over the man’s face told its own story, as did the slump of Blake’s shoulders.

‘Lacerations, bruises, but priority’s a broken ankle and crushed lower leg,’ Luc told him.

Blake cast him a fast, concerned look. His voice was thick, Luc realised, and it wasn’t from dust. ‘Do you need me to assess?’ He and Blake had worked together for so long they trusted each other implicitly. Luc knew Blake wasn’t asking about Luc’s ability, it was all about what he could see in Luc’s face.

He shook his head. The stretcher was set down on the examination bench and almost unconsciously Luc’s hand slid into Beth’s and held it.

Blake saw, and the concern on his face grew, but there was no room for explanation.

Neither was there room for evasion, from Blake or from Beth herself. It would be great to say, Beth’s ankle’s broken. We’ll fix it in no time, but the one thing he and Beth always had was total honesty. Sometimes it had broken them in two but it was something he couldn’t change. He knew she was listening through her haze of medication. Her medical degree meant she’d recognise sugar coating and he had to say it like it was.

‘I’ve given a peripheral nerve block,’ he told Blake. ‘There’s definitely fracture and dislocation of the ankle, and we need to check for compartment syndrome.’ Compartment syndrome had to be considered here. It was caused by extended crushing of the lower limb, forcing build-up of pressure in one section and loss of pressure in another. The long-term damage of sustained crushing was...unthinkable.

‘Do what you have to do,’ Beth said weakly, and Blake looked down into her face.

‘Hi,’ he said. ‘I’m Dr Blake Cooper. You are...’

‘This is Beth,’ Luc said hoarsely, and then he added, because it seemed absurdly important for Blake to know. ‘Blake, Beth’s a doctor. She’s also...my ex-wife.’

There was a moment’s stillness while Blake took that on board. He searched Luc’s face and Luc could see him reassemble priorities. And then it was business as usual.

‘I’m very pleased to meet you,’ Blake said, smiling down at Beth. ‘Though I could wish the circumstances were different.’ He took her wrist and felt her pulse, his face set in the lines of someone accustomed to triage, priorities. And Luc knew Beth was a priority. The risk of delayed treatment with compartment syndrome meant the possibility of a lifetime of pain, numbness or even amputation.

‘We need to get the pressure in your foot checked now,’ he said to Beth. ‘You know what’s going on?’

He’d accepted Beth’s medical background without question. ‘I... Yes,’ Beth managed.

‘Okay, I’m taking over,’ Blake told her, with another fast glance at Luc. And Luc knew the glance. It was an order.

Step away, Luc. You’re now a relative, too close to be objective and you need to let me take things from here.

‘Beth, we need Luc on triage,’ he told Beth. ‘You know there’s a small hospital here? I’m taking you through into Theatre. If I think there’s pressure differential—and by the look of it I suspect that’s inevitable—then I’ll make an incision to decompress. Your ankle will need to be stabilised. That can be done in Sydney but the pressure needs to be taken off now. Is that okay with you?’

‘I... Fine,’ Beth managed. ‘But... Toby?’

Blake looked a question at Luc and Luc managed to haul his attention from Beth to answer.

‘Toby’s Beth’s son. Twenty months old. He was brought out half an hour ago.’

Some of the tension on Blake’s face eased. ‘A toddler. I saw him. Sam did the assessment and he’s fine. He woke as she was examining him, demanding someone called Wobit...’

‘Robert,’ Beth said faintly. ‘Rabbit.’

‘Hey, we guessed right.’ Blake smiled down at her. ‘Apparently he was dropped, but one of the paramedics remembered and scooted over and rescued him.’

‘We’ve also found your bag and purse,’ Luc told her, still trying to keep his voice steady. ‘How good are we? But now... Is there anyone we can call to look after Toby?’

‘He has to come with me,’ Beth managed. ‘If I need to go to Sydney, Toby comes too. Luc, please... I need you to promise... I need...’

And something settled deep within.

‘It’s okay,’ Luc said, and touched her face. ‘I’ll take care of him. I’ll take care of you.’

And she managed a smile.

And then something odd happened. It was almost as if a ghost had touched him on the shoulder. He was looking down into Beth’s grimed, dust-caked, filthy face, but all he saw was the smile. And in that smile...strangely this wasn’t the Beth he’d remembered for the long years of divorce, the Beth who’d been his wife, the Beth he’d cared for for so long. Despite the filth, the fear, the pain, somehow this was Beth as he’d first seen her—a fellow med student laughing at him over a bench in the pathology lab. Her eyes had been sparkling with mischief. Someone must have made a joke. He couldn’t remember what it was now. All he remembered was how he’d been caught in that smile, almost mesmerised.

He’d forgotten, he thought. In all those years of need and care, and then the long separation, he’d forgotten what a beautiful woman she was. Stunning.

How could he be remembering now? What the...?

‘I’ll take it from here,’ Blake told him, looking at him strangely.

‘Thanks, Blake.’

He had work to do. He had to leave—but heaven only knew the effort it cost him to move away.

From...his wife?

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.