Cinderella And The Billionaire. Marion Lennox
up. She’d seen him pat Boof and then snuggle into the side of the man beside him.
And she’d seen Matt look as if he was about to cry.
What was it between the pair of them? What was a Manhattan financier doing carting a kid down into the Southern Ocean to dump him on Garnett Island?
Except the guy now looked as if he’d cracked wide open. He cared. Something had shifted inside him, and when he’d smiled at her...
Um...not. Let’s not go there. This was a seriously good-looking guy being nice to an orphan, and if that wasn’t a cliché for hearts and violins nothing was.
But that smile...
Was nothing to do with her. She was doing a job, nothing else.
They were getting close to Garnett now. She could see its bulk in the distance. There were a couple of uninhabited rocky outcrops in between, the result of some long-ago volcanic disturbance. She needed to watch her charts, watch the depth sounder. Not think about the pair behind her.
And then, suddenly, she had something else to think about. Bertha coughed.
Or that was what it sounded like, and after a lifetime spent at sea Meg was nuanced to every changing engine sound. She checked the dials.
Heat?
What the...? She’d checked everything obvious. How could the engine be heating? And almost as she thought it, she caught her first faint whiff.
Smoke.
SMOKE?
Oh, dear God.
Meg had a sudden flashback to a couple of days back. She’d been bringing in a fishing charter and she’d seen Graham, Charlie’s son, coming out of the inlet. He’d been in this boat.
Rowan Bay was a marine reserve, a fish breeding ground. It was tidal, shallow, full of drifting sand and water grasses. It was a good place to add to your catch for the day—if you weren’t caught by the fisheries officers.
And if you didn’t care about your boat.
She was suddenly hearing her grandpa’s voice.
You go in there in anything bigger than a dinghy, you’re an idiot. Operating in murky waters can cause blockages in the cooling-water intake. That can lead to engine overheating.
Graham was an idiot.
But now wasn’t the time for blaming. Almost instinctively, she shut the motor down, grabbed the fire extinguisher and headed below.
The whiff of smoke became a wall.
Meg O’Hara was not known to panic. There’d been dramas at sea before. She’d swum to shore when a motor died. She’d dived overboard to clear a fouled propeller. She’d even coped with a punter having a heart attack as he’d caught a truly excellent bluefin tuna.
But fire at sea, this far out...
Fire extinguishers had limited volume. It was useless to simply point it at smoke and pull the trigger. But how to get to the seat of the fire?
She hauled her windcheater over her face and tried to open the hatch over the engine...
Flames.
‘Get out.’ The voice was harsh, deep, and then repeated, a roar of command. She hesitated, shoving the extinguisher forward, trying desperately to see...
‘Now!’ And a hand hooked the collar of her windcheater and hauled her upward.
She dropped the extinguisher and went. He was right. The speed of this fire...
There was a bag at the entrance to the galley. Heavy. Lifesaving. She grabbed it and lugged it upward.
‘Let it go,’ the voice roared, and the hand on her collar was insistent.
Pigs might fly, she thought, clinging like a limpet as the hand hauled her higher. And then she was out on the deck, clinging to her precious bag.
‘The tender...’ A condition of charters in these waters was that a lifeboat was with them at all times and she’d checked the inflatable dinghy before she left. Thank God. The deck was now a cloud of smoke. If the fuel went...
She had to get the tender into the water and get them all into it. Now!
She grabbed the lifeboat’s stern pulley. Matt was beside her, seeing what she was doing, matching her at the bow. Lowering it with her.
It hit the water. Almost before it did, she grabbed Henry and thrust him into Matt’s arms.
‘In. Now.’ She grabbed one of the lines from the tender and thrust it into his hand. ‘Don’t let go. If you fall in, shove the tender away from the boat and pull yourselves in.’
‘You take him,’ Matt snapped.
‘Don’t be a fool.’ The engine could go up at any minute. ‘Take care of the kid. Go.’
She copped a flash of concern but the decision was made. Henry had to be his first priority. He lifted the stunned Henry onto the side of the boat, steadied for a moment and slipped downward.
Thank God she had them both in lifejackets. Getting into an inflatable from a wallowing boat was fraught at the best of times. But he had Henry in, tucking him into the bow. Then he was standing, holding on to the boat. ‘You!’
It was the kind of order her grandfather would have made. A no-nonsense order, the kind you didn’t mess with, but she still had stuff to do.
‘Boof!’ she yelled and the big dog was in her arms. She thrust him downward and somehow Matt caught him.
‘Get down here,’ he yelled.
She could no longer see him. The smoke was all around her.
One last thing...
She grabbed her bag and slid over the side. Strong hands caught her, steadied, but she allowed herself a mere half a second for that steadying. Then she was at the tiller of the tender. The little engine purred into life. Thank You, God.
Without being asked, Matt was shoving with all his might, pushing the tender as far from the boat as he could.
Into gear... Full power... Away.
And maybe twenty seconds later the fuel tank caught and Bertha erupted into a ball of flames.
She kept the tender at full throttle. The danger wasn’t passed yet. Burning fuel could spread across water.
A minute. Two. The distance between them and the flames was growing. She could breathe again.
Just.
She did a quick head count. Not that it was necessary but she needed it for her sanity.
Matt. Henry. Boof. Bag.
They should survive.
* * *
‘Wow, that was exciting. We’re safe now, though, Henry. We’re okay.’
He couldn’t think what else to say. Matt sat in the bow of the little boat and held Henry. Tight. He was giving comfort, he told himself, but the feel of the child against him, the solidness of the little body, the safeness of him... It was a two-way street.
The charter boat was now a smouldering wreck. The flames were dying. It was already starting to look skeletal.
They’d been so lucky. From the time he’d seen Meg’s head jerk around, heard her cut the engine, from the time he’d caught the first whiff of smoke himself... A minute? It must have been more but it didn’t feel like it.
He felt stunned to numbness.
They