Blame It on Paradise (9 page)

“He must’ve hit the rocks pretty darn hard,” one of the Aussie medics said as he probed the boy’s neck with his fingertips. “I’ve got a weak pulse and I’m starting CPR,” he told his partner. “Radio ahead to the medical center and tell ’’em we’re en route as soon as we get this boy stabilized.”

Jack slowly stepped back into the crowd, watching the swift and effective actions of the paramedic team. The boy was soon breathing on his own and hooked up to an IV line. “He’s stable,” one of the medics said. “I’ve cleaned the blood from his head but there’s no wound. Kid got lucky. I don’t know why they never heed the warnings to stay out of the water.”

“Maybe the rock’s what bled when the kid hit it,” the other medic joked dryly as he helped his partner load the gurney into the van.

Fresh panic bloomed in Jack’s chest. “Lina.”

He raced back the way he’d come. The wind off the ocean whipped at his hair and damp clothing as he fought against it to reach Lina, who lay motionless in the sand. Jack fell to his knees beside her. The sand around her told the story of her collapse as Jack pulled her onto his lap. She’d taken a few steps from the place where she had dragged the boy, and the sand was dark with blood where she had fallen.

Jack gripped her chin and brusquely turned her face to his. “Sweetheart, wake up for me!” Getting no response, he curled over her, clapping his ear to the wet fabric molded to her chest. Her heartbeat was loud and strong, but Jack couldn’t rouse her. He sat back up to find the palm of his hand covered in blood. “Help me!” he yelled toward the remaining medical van. “I’ve got an injured woman here!”

He scooped Lina’s boneless form into his arms and frantically hurried toward the remaining medical van, which met him more than halfway. “She went into the water after that kid,” Jack breathlessly explained to the paramedic tending to Lina. “They hit the rocks before she pulled him out. It was her blood on him, not his.”

“Thanks, mate,” the paramedic said distractedly as he peered into Lina’s eyes with a penlight. “Her pupils are responsive but sluggish.” His fingers moved through the salty hanks of her hair. “I’ve got a laceration at midline, approximately three inches long, and profuse bleeding. We gotta get her in.”

The medical team wasted no time prepping Lina’s wound and boarding her into the medical van. As dozens of people looked on, the medics moved with the cautious haste Jack would have expected an injured head of state to receive. He would have been impressed, had he not been so worried.

He moved to the back of the van and had one foot on the rear bumper ledge, ready to boost himself into the cabin when the medic stopped him. “No passengers allowed, mate, sorry. We’re taking her to Waurutangua Medical Center. They’ll take good care of her and you can catch up with her there.”

“Will she be okay?” Jack asked, stepping out of the way to allow the medic into the van.

“Don’t know, mate,” he said. “You never can tell with head wounds.”

CHAPTER 7

“I’ve been standing here for twenty minutes and no one’s been able to tell me a thing.” Jack spoke between gritted teeth. He forced himself to remain polite when all he wanted to do was pitch a few potted palms through the plate glass windows of the medical center’s lobby. “A woman was brought here a little while ago, and she was injured quite badly. I need to see her. Would you please tell me where she is?”

“I’m sorry, sir,” said the fourth smiling desk nurse Jack had encountered since his arrival in the overly pastel reception area. “What’s your name again?”

“Jackson DeVoy!” Jack hollered. “Everyone in this damned hospital knows my name because I’ve given it to you people a hundred times! Give me the name of your superior. You can’t possibly have final say as to who sees who and when.” He gave the front of the counter a sudden, sharp kick. “I want to see Lina, and I demand to see her now. I’m an attorney, and I won’t leave here until I get some answers! Do you understand me?”

The nurse scowled in a moment of deep thought before her face suddenly broke into a smile. “I get it,” she laughed airily, clearly unimpressed with Jack’s occupation and show of temper. “
Terms of Endearment
. You scare me into helping you. You’re almost as good as Shirley MacLaine, Mr. DeVoy. Now, who are you here to see again?”

Jack closed his eyes and counted backwards from 100. He reached 89 before he calmly said, “Her name is Lina. I don’t know her last name.”

The nurse’s eyes roamed over his tousled hair and rumpled, blood-smeared clothing. “No? She must not be a very close friend.”

Jack slammed his palms down on the counter separating him from the nurse. “She’s my—” He stopped short. She was his what? His lover? His fling? His…what exactly? “Please,” he started as benevolently as he possibly could. “Please tell me how she is. She…” He paused to clear the sudden tightness in his throat. “There was a lot of blood, and I couldn’t wake her. I need to know if she’s going to be okay.”

The nurse’s black eyes softened before she lowered them to her clipboard. Her finger moved across a piece of paper with print too small for Jack to read upside down. “We’ve had three emergency drops tonight, a sixty-year-old man, a thirteen-year-old boy and a twenty-nine-year-old woman, but no one by the name of Lina.”

“Lina could be a nickname,” Jack suggested. “That woman who was brought in tonight, she had a head injury, didn’t she? It was a three-inch laceration along the midline. How could I know that if I wasn’t with her when it happened?” He bunched the front of his shirt up in his hands and showed it to the nurse. “This is her blood.” His voice softened. “I held her in my arms after it happened. The paramedic said he couldn’t tell how seriously she was hurt, but I need to know how she is. If she’ll be all right.”

“I understand your concern, but I can’t disclose patient information to you, Mr. DeVoy, unless you’re family,” the nurse said gently. “I’m sorry.”

He sighed heavily. “I know. I apologize. I’m just…she’s…I’m worried about her, is all.”

“Perhaps you should have a seat,” the nurse suggested. “We’ve placed a call to her next of kin. I’m sure they’ll be along soon, and perhaps they could help you.”

“Thank you.” Wearied by worry and frustration, Jack retreated to one of the light blue molded plastic chairs lining the front window. He slumped heavily into it, knocking his head against the plate glass. He started to bring his hands to his face, but then he noticed the blood caked in the creases of his palms and around the beds of his fingernails. He stared at it, half hoping that Lina’s blood could imbue him with the same uncommon strength and determination that had driven her into the treacherous waters of an angry ocean to save someone he had neither heard nor seen.

She had given no thought to her own safety or survival. She had dropped everything and acted only in the best interest of someone else, had risked her own life for that of a stranger.

Jack leaned back in the chair and closed his eyes, ashamed of the certainty that he was incapable of that level of selflessness.

* * *

Jack’s nostrils twitched. A second later, his right hand batted blindly at an annoying tickle near his right ear. He bolted upright in his uncomfortable plastic chair when the tickle moved to his left ear.

“What the hell…?” he started.

A little girl dressed in nothing but a grass skirt squatted on the chair to his right. A bit too slowly, she hid a long piece of grass from her skirt behind her back. Her round brown belly jiggled as she giggled at Jack’s expression of surprise and irritation.

It could be worse,
Jack thought grudgingly.
It’s definitely better than being awakened by a bum pissing on your leg on the Red Line.
He squinted against the bright sunlight framing the little girl as he rose and went to the reception desk.

“Good morning, Mr. DeVoy,” greeted a fresh desk nurse, who leaned around the young woman she was helping. “I have a message for you, from last night’s duty nurse.”

He excused himself as he reached past the young woman, who had the same brown skin and sweet smile as Jack’s tickling alarm clock. He took the note and retreated to read it.

Mr. DeVoy:

Your friend was released against medical advice at three this morning. She’s gone home.

Jack crumpled the note in his hand, pressed his fist to his eyes.

Lina was at home.

“So where the hell is that?” he asked himself in a loud whisper.

He turned back toward the reception desk. But sure that the nurse wouldn’t give him any personal information on Lina, he instead started for the glass double doors of the exit. He began walking down the main road, toward the center of town. The hospital couldn’t reveal Lina’s address, but he knew Levora could. The question was, would she…

* * *

Worry, fatigue and impatience had clouded Jack’s thoughts as he’d spoken with Levora. She’d seemed surprised that he didn’t know Lina’s address, almost as surprised as he’d been when she directed him to Marchand Manor. For a fleeting instant, he’d felt betrayed, positive that Lina had indeed been a distraction sent by the mysterious J.T. Marchand to keep him too busy to chase down the exclusive rights to Darwin mint tea. But then Levora had told him that Lina lived in a small house behind the estate, and Jack’s suspicions had faded.

Levora’s directions were good, and as he rounded the sprawling, two-story brick mansion, Jack paid little attention to its whitewashed columns and the smooth, blacktop driveway curving through the emerald lawn to the front door. No one stopped him as he traveled through the estate, although gardeners and other employees cheerfully waved at him.

He paused when he came to a stand of nikau well out of sight of the estate. Three of the enormous palms supported a treehouse built approximately thirty feet from the ground. The circular floor and roof were connected by 10-foot panels made of polarized one-way glass. The walls were so well made that they appeared to be a single seamless cylinder of glass. A wide porch with a retractable roof and a bamboo railing ringed the treehouse, completing the whimsical domicile. A gated stairway winding around one of the outer palms granted access to the treehouse.

Jack carefully looked around. This was the only house behind the estate. The gate was open, so he invited himself up.

At the top of the stairs, he saw her. Her slender form was curled up in the middle of a giant hammock that swung in a gentle arc between two fat branches of nikau. A rattan rocking chair was at the railing surrounding the treehouse, and beside it sat a wicker basket full of yarn and a pair of knitting needles, which led Jack to think that Levora had been acting as nursemaid.

Jack grabbed the chair by its wide armrests and quietly carried it to Lina’s side. The sturdy bamboo planking beneath his feet kept silent as he sat down and examined her in the clear light. A long white bandage covered the place above and behind her right ear where she had split open her head, but her sleeveless white slip dress did little to hide the bruises and abrasions she had sustained against the rocks.

Blotchy patches of purple-black and blue-green decorated her upper arms, and Jack winced at an especially nasty-looking scrape peeking from under the hem of her sheer dress, which had ridden up to the middle of her thighs. He ached deep inside at the sight of the ugly injuries marring her gorgeous skin. But the ache lessened, and the tension in Jack’s face vanished when his eyes landed on Lina’s feet. She wore a pair of white anklet socks. The image was so sweet, Jack’s stomach turned as he thought of how easily her beautiful body could have been broken against the rocks.

His elbows propped on his knees, he dropped his face into his hands and began taking deep, quiet breaths, instinctively practicing the yoga techniques he relied on in moments of stress and anxiety. Once his head and chest cleared, he raised his head to see Lina’s sleepy eyes fixed on him.

“You look tired.”

Her soft voice soothed away the last bits of worry clinging to his heart, and he leaned over her. “I didn’t sleep well last night,” he explained.

“There’s blood on your shirt.” She was looking at his shirtfront, which was covered in splotchy reddish-brown stains.

“It’s not mine.” He reached for her, to cup her face, but at the last second he closed his hand and ran his knuckles along her jawline.

“Levora told me that you slept at the hospital.” Lina turned onto her back, grimacing slightly in pain. “She saw you in the lobby when she and Errol came to pick me up this morning. I’m afraid I didn’t notice much of anything when he carried me out. In fact, I barely remember him carrying me out.”

“I was worried about you.”
And Levora could have awakened me,
he thought to himself.

“I’m fine,” Lina yawned. “But thank you.” She took in his rumpled clothing, the golden stubble covering the lower half of his face and the weary wrinkles under his eyes. “You should get some rest.”

“Yeah,” he agreed on a gruff sigh. He was working up the energy and will to leave when her hand lighted on his. Whether she meant it as such or not, Jack took her gesture as an invitation to join her in the hammock. Jostling her as little as possible, he eased onto the hammock, careful not to overbalance it and send them both spinning onto the floor.

“You’re shivering,” he said as she nestled into his embrace. “Are you cold?”

“It’s a side effect of the painkillers,” she explained.

He impulsively kissed her forehead and her temple. “You amaze me. You didn’t hesitate. You ran right into that water and got that kid out.” He held her closer and pressed kisses to the top of her head.

“You amaze me, too.” Her words warmed a spot on his neck. “Just by being here.”

“I’m an idiot. I didn’t even ask how the kid was doing when I was at the hospital.”

“He’s stable. They’re keeping him another day for observation. He took in a lot of water.”

“Is he related to you?” Jack asked.

“No. Why?”

“The hospital wouldn’t give me any information about your condition because I wasn’t family,” Jack explained. “I was just wondering how you know so much about the boy’s condition.”

“I made it my business, Jack. I try to take care of everyone on my island.”

“Well, that kid was lucky that you do. How did you see him out there?”

“I didn’t. I heard him,” she said. “I don’t know how. I was incredibly distracted at the time.”

“I don’t know if I should be embarrassed at how easily you overcame my ability to distract.”

She rested a hand on his chest. Her fingers lightly danced at the base of his throat as she said, “Jack, if you were any better at what you were doing, that boy would have died.” She shifted her head to meet his eyes. “I might have, too.”

He clasped her fingers, maybe a bit too hard, and brought them to his lips. He kissed them before tenderly cupping her chin and kissing her lips with a reverence that surprised her as much as him. He watched the light play in her eyes until their lids drifted shut. Jack gently repositioned her to rest her head on his chest. In slumber, her arms went around him, and Jack’s heart surged so strongly, he feared the force of it would awaken her.

* * *

Jack jogged up the walkway of his homestay and burst through the front door, his sandals leaving part of the dirt road on the floor as he made his way into the bedroom. He’d left Lina asleep in the hammock, and he wanted to shower, change and return before she woke up and missed him. Telling himself that he was probably being presumptuous to assume that she would miss him, he had stripped off his shirt and started the water in the shower before he noticed the well-dressed figure squatting at the edge of the lagoon.

Jack threw open the sliding screen doors and stepped onto the patio. “Can I help you?” he asked the trespasser.

“Nice place you have here.” Edison Burke smiled, his chemically whitened teeth blazing beneath his long nose as he stood to face Jack. “It’s not the Ritz-Carlton, but I suppose it’ll do in a pinch.” His gaze wandered over Jack, scrutinizing him as though he were an item up for auction. “I see it didn’t take you long to go native. Interesting.”

Jack glowered at Edison, unsure as to whom he was angrier with—Burke, just for being Burke—or himself. From the moment he’d seen Lina dancing at the beach party, he hadn’t thought of Coyle-Wexler, Reginald or the tea. And now, here stood Edison Burke, the most bitter reminder of why he’d come to Darwin in the first place.

“Aren’t you going to ask me why I’m here?” Burke said brightly.

“No.”

Burke recoiled at Jack’s short snap of an answer, but he continued to enjoy the moment. “When Rex couldn’t reach you by phone or e-mail in the past two days, he sent me down on the corporate jet. I’d never been in the Gulfstream before,” Burke giggled. “Ever had a personal masseuse work the kinks out of your sacroiliac at six thousand feet, DeVoy?”

Jack seethed. “After the hundredth time, it’s pretty much the same as getting a rub on the ground.”

“Well then, your return trip won’t be all that much fun, will it?” Still smiling, Burke pushed past Jack and into the bedroom. He picked up the briefcase Jack hadn’t noticed before, opened it, and drew out a thin sheaf of papers. He dropped them on the foot of the bed as Jack came back inside. “This is your travel manifesto. The Gulfstream is waiting for you in Christchurch. Rex wants to see you, ASAP.”