All The King's Horses: A Tale Of Eternal Love (2 page)

It had been difficult for him when she had been diagnosed with leukemia. She was his only child. He himself had been an only child. So if he lost her he would be all alone, and she knew the fear of that gnawed away at him more than anything else.

He had always said she was the only worthwhile thing he had ever done apart from marrying her mother, and she had no doubt he would be totally lost when she was no longer around.

He had been such a sad man when her mother had died. The only time he ever smiled was when he was remembering some happy event from his marriage, or when she was growing up.

Because he had never had much in the way of family he had thrown everything into creating his own and had succeeded. But how was he to know that his wife would be taken from him just before her forty-ninth birthday by a virulent strain of meningitis. Christy had been twenty-two at the time and newly married to her high school sweetheart Mike Lane. In one fell swoop she had lost her mother, friend, and confidant. For Jack, he had lost his soul mate, and now all that mattered to him was his daughter. A daughter he couldn’t accept was dying a slow death.

“How are we doing?”

Christy broke free of her thoughts as the duty nurse bustled into the room to check on her. “I’m doing fine.” She looked at the woman’s name tag. “Julie…I was wondering about the gentleman who pulled me out of the water.”

“No, sorry,” Julie said, anticipating what Christy’s next question was going to be. “Nobody got his name, and he hasn’t been in touch with the hospital.”

Her heart sank. She really had hoped to be able to thank him. If she had died out there this morning her father would have been devastated, and then there was no telling what he would have done. This mystery man had saved her from creating a world of pain.

“I did hear he was a good-looking feller though,” Julie said, with a wink in Christy’s direction. “The ambulance staff wouldn’t shut up about him.”

Christy managed a smile. “I must confess, even though I was busy expelling seawater from my lungs at the time I did manage to notice he was easy on the eye.”

“Well, if he’s a local Paihia lad you’ll no doubt run into him when you’ve been discharged.”

“I hope so.”

“I’m sure you will. There are not many places you can hide in a place as small as Paihia, and I doubt he’s gone into hiding.”

Christy thought about what she had said after she left. Paihia was a small place. It couldn’t have more than fifteen hundred residents, although it did swell considerably during the tourist season. He shouldn’t be too difficult to track down. She would feel like a real goose when she did come face to face with him though. She had put the poor man through a real ordeal this morning and she was ashamed of herself because of it.

A smattering of the events was coming back to her. She could remember him standing over her as she recovered. He had no shirt on she clearly recalled that, and what a fine body he had too. He was muscular, but not overdone like those silly sports stars that spent hours at the gym. No, he was nicely muscled.

She could remember him shivering too because he had given her his shirt to wear. He must have gone home without it too as it was neatly folded up on the small table beside her bed with her other belongings.

She had an excuse to search him out now. Not just to thank him, but to return his shirt to him.

He had soft brown eyes. That suddenly came back to her. How she could possibly have noticed that when she had been retching pretty well most of the time he was there she didn’t know. But she had noticed it, and it had been stored quietly away in her memory bank until now. They were a lovely soft brown, and they were gentle eyes that had looked down on her with compassion. She reached over and scooping up the shirt held it to her cheek. If there was one thing she was determined to do it was to track down the owner of those eyes.

CHAPTER TWO

It had been a long night with a particularly awkward client, and Kent was whacked. What was it with high flying businessmen that they always expected Kent to perform impossible feats with the boat? The Japanese the night before had been bad enough, but this fellow had been diabolical. Never satisfied with any of the fish he had caught he was constantly demanding that Kent move him to a new fishing ground. It was almost always dangerously close to a reef or rocky shore. He wasn’t polite about it either, and that’s what grated on Kent the most.

As Kent passed the spot on the beach he had saved the young woman he wondered how she was doing. He really must get over to the hospital this morning to wish her well. He was running late though, his picky client had seen to that, and so he quickened his pace towards home.

Three hours later Kent pulled up outside the hospital and walked into reception with a big bunch of flowers in his hand. “I wonder if you could help me,” he said, to the smiling blonde behind the desk. “A young woman was brought in yesterday morning by ambulance. A near drowning, I wonder if you could tell me what ward she’s in?”

The blonde looked down at the flowers and her smile widened. “You must be the guy who saved her. And now you’ve brought her flowers. How sweet is that?”

“Yes, I am the person who pulled her out of the water,” Kent admitted sheepishly. “I would like to give her these if I could.” He held the flowers up so she could get a better look.

“They’re beautiful, but I’m afraid Christy’s already gone home. Her father picked her up half an hour ago.”

Kent’s face fell. “That’s a shame. I was hoping to meet her under happier circumstances than the last time.”

“Sorry, you’ve only missed her by thirty minutes too. I’m sure she would’ve been pleased to see you.”

Kent looked at the flowers in his hand for a moment. “You couldn’t give these to one of the patients who a little cheering up could you?”

“Of course,” she took the flowers from him and laid them on the counter. “There’s an old lady with no family who came in last night. She’ll be thrilled to have them.”

Kent walked morosely back to his car. He shouldn’t be feeling this disappointed over someone he had only met briefly, but he was. In fact, he was very disappointed. The ordeal yesterday morning must have affected him a great deal more than he had at first realized. Meeting up with the young woman would have brought a sense of closure to the whole episode. With that taken away from him he was feeling more than a little empty.

Unlocking the car door he slipped into the driver’s seat and pushed the key into the ignition. With his hands resting on top of the steering wheel he stared through the windscreen at the light rain that had begun to fall.

What name had the receptionist called her? Christy? That was it. He hadn’t thought to ask her for her last name too. No matter, she was probably already heading back down south with her father by now. She was definitely an out-of-towner, and having just gone through that ordeal she would be eager to get back home again.

He turned the key and the engine burst into life. It would be best to put her out of his mind. He had a busy week ahead of him and was in serious need of some sleep, so turning the wheels away from the curb he shifted gears and headed for home.

He gave some thought to his future as he drove through the rain to Paihia. His charter boat business wasn’t exactly thriving. In fact, in the past six months he had only just met the mortgage payments on the boat by the skin of his teeth. If things didn’t pick up soon he ran the very real risk that the bank was going to recall the loan, and that meant he would lose everything he had worked so hard to achieve.

As he drove into Paihia he pulled into the beachfront and sat behind the wheel watching the waves crashing along the beach. He wouldn’t be taking anyone out in a sea that rough. According to the forecast there was a good chance this weather was settling in for the next five days or so. That meant no income until it had passed. He couldn’t help worrying. That charter boat was his whole life, he didn’t have anything else. If they took it off him he would be starting at the bottom again, and at thirty-one he didn’t fancy that at all.

He had come up with the deposit for the boat with what he had saved deck handing on a crayfish boat eight years running. That plus the money his dad left him when he had passed away got him to the two hundred thousand dollars he needed for the most beautiful boat he had ever laid eyes on, but the thought of their years of hard work being all for nothing made his blood run cold.

He brought his hands down savagely on the steering wheel. “I will not fail,” he said firmly.

The rain was beating down with even greater ferocity on the windscreen now, completely obscuring the beach from view. “I won’t let you down, Dad,” he said, in a more subdued tone.

A strong gust of wind suddenly buffeted the car, and his thoughts suddenly went back to the boat. He hoped it was securely fastened to its mooring. If this weather got any rougher, then a lose boat being driven onto rocks or into another boat would be his worst nightmare come true, especially since he had tried to save money by not insuring it for its full value.

Yes, he had staked everything on that boat, all that he had owned, all his youthful energy and the only woman he had ever loved had been sacrificed so his dream of owning a charter boat could become a reality.

He had been sorry when Jocelyn Holwood had walked out on him. She was no ordinary woman that was for certain. She had taken a fancy to him right from the moment they had met at the annual swordfish club awards dinner, and had done all the chasing. Kent had never been much good at that sort of thing. He had always been one of those quiet types who didn’t push himself forward when it came to women.

But Jocelyn had been quietly determined to have him. Not that he could claim that he put up much of a fight. She was a good-looking woman, and he had been only too happy to have her on his arm.

But she couldn’t handle the hours that he worked. He had only just got the boat and was sometimes gone for several days on end. Eventually she gave him the ultimatum. It was either her or the boat. He chose the boat. That was three years ago now, and he hadn’t seen her since. She had left Paihia to live in Auckland, and he had heard along the grapevine that she had taken up with a wealthy property developer. He often wondered if he had done the right thing. She was a good woman, and he had got on exceptionally well with her.

Really, it had been a case of bad timing. If he had met her in a few years time he might have his mortgage under control and things would have been different.

Kent started up the car and headed for home. There wasn’t a thing he could do about Jocelyn or this weather, so he might as well catch up on some much needed sleep.

♥

Jack stared out the ranch sliders at the wild scene outside. “The weather might be atrocious but Paihia is still a very beautiful place,” he noted, as he watched wave after wave roll off the bay and crash headlong into the beach.

“Yes, it is, and I was fortunate to be able to rent this place with such a magnificent view,” Christy said, handing him a cup of coffee.

He took a tentative sip at the hot liquid before continuing his study of the bay, “so where to from here then?”

“I’d like you to stick around for a week or so. Just for me to show you around. Then I thought maybe we’d head back to Auckland together.”

He turned to look at her. “You hate Auckland, all that congestion and noise. A place like this is where you belong.”

“I’m going to get worse, Daddy. I’m going to need you around when that happens.”

He turned back to silently stare out the window again.

“You can’t just pretend I’m not dying you know. Refusing to talk about it isn’t going to make the cancer go away.”

“Some people do pull through,” he said quietly.

“I think we both know that’s not going to happen.”

“I need to have some hope,” he answered testily. “Don’t take what little I have away from me.”

She slipped her arms around him and rested her chin on his shoulder. “I love you, Daddy.”

“And I love you too, Baby Girl, more than you could ever know. That’s why I need you to fight this thing, if not for yourself then for me.”

“Alright, Daddy, I’ll try.”

“Perhaps it would be best if I moved up here to live. I always did want to live by the sea. My grandpa was a fisherman you know. I can remember going out on his boat with him when I was a boy. They were happy days.”

Her face lit up. “I would love it if you came to live in Paihia. Summers only a few months away, and we would have a wonderful time together.” She could feel her spirits lifting. “When I was a little girl it was always you taking me places. There’s so much to see in the Bay of Islands, and so now I can be the one taking you.”

He smiled. “It will be like old times. If only your mum could be here with us it would make everything complete.”

“I miss her to, Daddy. But we’ve still got each other. Let’s make a deal. We’ll both promise to do everything we can to make this summer the best summer we’ve had in years.”

“It’s a deal,” he said, grinning from ear to ear. “Now, how about getting your old man something to eat, I’m starving.”

That night as she lay in bed gazing through the window at the lightening illuminating the stormy sky, she thought about how close she had come to making the biggest mistake of her life. If she had ended everything in the sea yesterday she never would have had the opportunity to spend this coming summer with her father, to reconnect with him in a way she hadn’t done so since she was a child. She actually felt a growing sense of excitement about it. Her father had been all the family she had since her husband died. She would never forget breaking the news to him that Mike had been killed in a head on collision on the motorway. He had enveloped her in his strong arms and they had cried together. But since she had been diagnosed with leukemia she had distanced herself from him, and she saw with astonishing clarity how wrong she had been to do it. If that stranger hadn’t pulled her to safety yesterday she would have gone to her grave alienated from the only person she loved, and that would have been a greater tragedy than the drowning itself.

Reaching over and pulling the shirt from her bedside table she held it close, its masculine scent immediately bringing his face to mind. Yes, he had been a nice looking man, and he had saved her life at great peril to his own. She must find him. She must thank him for his act of selflessness.