Wildfire Island Docs. Alison Roberts
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and his determination to do nothing more to hurt his already shattered mother.
Caroline discovered why Harold hadn’t met the plane. He was in the front garden of the house, arguing volubly with his wife, Bessie. It had been Caroline’s great-grandfather, autocratic old sod that he must have been, who’d insisted that all the employees working in the house and grounds take on English names.
‘You come inside and help me clean,’ Bessie was saying.
‘No, I have to do the yard. Ian will raise hell if the yard’s not done, not that I believe he’s coming back.’
Watching them, Caroline felt a stirring of alarm that they had grown old, although age didn’t seem to be affecting their legendary squabbles.
‘Nor do I but someone is coming. Some other visitor. We saw the plane on a day when planes don’t usually come, and anyway it was too small to be one of our planes.’
‘Might be for the research station. Plenty of people coming and going there,’ Harold offered, but Bessie was going to have the last word.
‘In that case you don’t need to do the yard.’
Caroline decided she couldn’t stand behind an allemande vine, wild with shiny green leaves and brilliant yellow trumpet flowers, eavesdropping any longer.
‘Bessie, Harold, it’s me, Caroline!’
She passed the bush and came into view, expecting to be welcomed like a prodigal son—or daughter in her case—but to her utter bewilderment both of them burst into tears.
Eventually they recovered enough from their shock to rush towards her, arms held out.
‘Oh, Caroline, you have come back. Now we have you and Keanu back where you belong, everything will be good again.’
Wrapped in a double, teary hug, Caroline couldn’t answer.
Not that she would have been able to. Although she knew he was here—knew only too well—hearing Keanu’s name knocked the breath out of her. But it had been the last part—about everything being good again—that had been the bigger shock.
But it also gave her resolve. If the trouble was so bad the islanders thought she, whom they’d always considered a helpless princess, could help, things must be bad.
She eased out of their arms and straightened up. Of course she had to help. She didn’t know how, but she certainly would do everything in her power to save the islanders’ livelihood and keep much-needed medical care available to them.
Enough of the doormat.
M’Langi was her home.
‘But why are you working in the house, Bessie? What happened to the young woman Dad appointed after Helen left?’
With Keanu, a voice whispered, but she had no time for whispering voices right now.
‘That was Kari but from the time that Ian got here we thought it would be better if she kept her distance,’ Bessie explained. ‘Ian is a bad, bad man for all he’s your family. In the end I said I’d do the housework. I mind Anahera’s little girl too, but she’s no trouble, she plays with all your toys and loves your dolls, dressing and undressing them.’
Caroline smiled, remembering her own delight in the dolls until Keanu had told her it was girl stuff and she had to learn to learn to make bows and arrows and to catch fish in her hands.
‘Anahera?’ she asked, as the name was vaguely familiar.
‘Vailea, her mother, worked as the cook at the research station while we were caretakers there. But there’s all kinds of funny stuff going on there too, so now she’s housekeeper at the hospital and Anahera—she’s a bit older than you and went to school on the mainland; her grandmother lived there—well, she’s a nurse here so I mind her little one.’
It was hard to absorb so much information at once, so Caroline allowed herself to be led up to the house, where a very small child with dark eyes, olive skin and a tangle of golden curls was lining up dolls in a row on the cane lounge that had sat on the veranda for as long as Caroline could remember.
The cane lounge, potted palms everywhere, a few cane chairs around a table, once again with a smaller pot in the middle of it, and the swing she and Keanu had rocked in so often—this was coming home …
‘This is Hana,’ Bessie said, leading the little girl forward. ‘Hana, this is Miss Caroline. She lives here.’
Caroline knelt by the beautiful child, straightening one of the dolls.
‘Just Caroline will do,’ she said, ‘or even Caro.’
Caro.
No one but Keanu had ever called her Caro, but now wasn’t the time to get sentimental over Keanu, for all he looked like a Greek god, and had sent shivers down her spine just being close to him.
She was here to …
What?
She’d come because she was unhappy, seeking sanctuary in the place she’d loved most, but now she was here?
Well, she was damned if she was going to let things deteriorate any further.
But first she had to find out exactly how things stood, and whether whoever ran the hospital would give her a job, and most importantly of all right now, she had to find the steel in her inner self to work with Keanu …
‘Are you being paid, Bessie?’ she asked, thinking she had to set her own house in order first.
Bessie studied her toes then shook her dark, curly hair.
‘Anahera pays me for looking after Hana, but it’s been a while since Harold got a wage.’
Caroline was angry. She knew their fondness for the Lockhart family and gratitude for what her father had done for the islands would have kept them doing what they could whether they were paid or not.
Knew also that the couple wouldn’t be starving. Like all the islanders, and many people she knew on acreage on the mainland, they had their own plot of land around their bure—the traditional island home—and Harold would grow vegetables and raise a few pigs and chickens, but that didn’t make not paying them right.
‘Well, now I’m here we’ll shut off most of the rooms and I’ll just use my bedroom, bathroom and the kitchen. I can pay you to keep them clean and I’ll vacuum through the rest of the place once a fortnight.’
Bessie began to mutter about dust, but Caroline waved away her complaint.
‘Lockharts have been eating dust since the mine began,’ she said, ‘so a little bit on the floor of the closed rooms doesn’t matter. And now,’ she announced, ‘I’m going down to the hospital to ask whoever runs it for a job. Even if they can’t pay me, they can surely find me something to do.’
She left her case and headed back down the way she’d come. Work would give her the opportunity to find out what was going on. Even small hospitals were hotbeds of gossip.
Although …
Of course she could work with Keanu. She didn’t know the man he’d become so she’d just treat him like any other colleague.
Male colleague.
Friendly, but keeping her distance …
Definitely keeping her distance, given how the accidental touches had affected her …
Lost in her muddled thoughts, she was halfway to the hospital when she remembered the only people there had been Keanu and an aide. What had he said? Hettie and Sam were on a clinic run? Caroline knew the hospital ran weekly clinics on the other inhabited islands of the group and today must have been one of those days.
That was probably the only reason Keanu had accepted her help with the injured man earlier.
She walked back up