Second Chance Island Read online

  Second Chance Island

  Jenny Schwartz

  www.escapepublishing.com.au

  Second Chance Island

  Jenny Schwartz

  She’s escaped to a tropical paradise, but her past is going to find her.

  Laura Robertson is working at a tropical resort on the Great Barrier Reef, biding her time and nursing her wounds when her ex-lover Phil Cooper arrives on Topaz Island. She’s betrayed him, broken his trust, and shamed herself. And yet it seems that he’s the one man she can’t let go.

  She’s spent her whole life fighting to save the reef, and her time on Topaz Island fighting for her self-respect. Does she have enough fight left to fight for a second chance?

  About the Author

  Jenny Schwartz is a West Australian author of coastal romances that celebrate the joy of falling in love and the freedom of choosing to follow your heart. Her website is http://authorjennyschwartz.com and she loves chatting with readers.

  Contents

  About the Author

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Bestselling Titles by Escape Publishing…

  Chapter 1

  ‘It’s a slice of bread, Laura.’

  Phil Cooper’s too-patient tone grated across Laura’s nerves even as his well-remembered voice sent a sensual shiver down her spine. Not that she had time for shivers. She was too furious. ‘Would you shut up?’ Not polite, no. Not respectful of a Topaz Island guest. But Phil wasn’t just a guest.

  ‘Make me,’ he said.

  For an instant she was tempted to do exactly that. She pictured herself lunging across the flat deck of the tourist boat and pushing him overboard to splash in the shallow waters of the Great Barrier Reef.

  ‘It really doesn’t matter. See, I’m putting the bread away.’ Sweet Mrs Janet Glendinning, eighty-seven years old and proud of it, tucked the slice of bread she’d brought with her from the lunch buffet back into her patchwork bag. ‘All gone. I’ll just look at the pretty fishes.’

  She and the other members of her senior citizens’ group stared determinedly at the coral wonderland visible through the glass-bottomed boat, although they gave plenty of interested peeks at Laura and Phil’s confrontation.

  He stood with his back against the railing, ignoring the view of the reef to focus on Laura. A faded cap shaded his eyes. He wore the casual T-shirt and shorts of an Aussie guy on holiday, but he wore them with his characteristic air of controlled recklessness. He was a pirate masquerading as an ordinary man; tall, dark haired with dark eyes, and a sensuous mouth that could both command and seduce.

  Laura forced her gaze away from him and addressed the group. ‘A number of tourism operators do allow visitors to feed the fish. It encourages the fish to congregate in the area. However, at Topaz Island, we take the view that the least disruption to the natural rhythms of the ecosystem, the better.’

  ‘Still putting animals ahead of people,’ Phil said.

  She flinched. ‘Not at all.’ Echoes of their last desperate argument rose up to condemn her. Four years and she hadn’t forgotten, hadn’t forgiven herself.

  Apparently, nor had Phil.

  She hoped she was wiser now, more disciplined. For instance, instead of continuing this argument, she let it go. ‘Everyone hold on. I’m going to motor the boat over to where the octopi hang out. They’re fairly shy, but sometimes we have a lucky sighting.’

  Everyone took his or her seat, except Phil, but since he was perhaps fifty years younger than everyone else on the tour, she didn’t object.

  The Gemstone II slid quietly over the water. The solar panels on its roof charged the battery and the electric motor had no emissions. It was perfect for the quiet waters around Topaz Island.

  As always, she loved the feel of skippering a boat, the gentle rocking of the waves and the openness of the sea. Her dad was a fisherman down in Sydney and she’d grown up with a love and respect for the ocean. Going to university to study marine biology had been a no-brainer. Unfortunately, the coral reef protection project she’d been working on had lost its government funding. Hence this casual job at a friend’s private resort. She’d had to re-start her life.

  But by what hellish chance had Phil also washed up here in tropical north Queensland at a time when her confidence had taken such a direct hit? If they’d ever had to meet again, she’d have liked to have been established in a successful career, in a loving relationship — visibly different from the naïve, undisciplined girl he’d known. Instead, that girl was screaming and bashing at the veneer of mature indifference that Laura held onto so desperately. That girl remembered being passionately in love. Laura remembered viciously, recklessly hurting the man in front of her.

  Never again.

  She recalled his look of stunned pain, and her stomach twisted.

  Even then, four years ago, he’d swiftly hidden his devastation, replacing it with anger. Now he was older, tougher and his expression showed only sardonic detachment. He stood apart from the group, his body moving easily with the slight rocking of the waves, all lean muscle and effortless control.

  A school of bright blue surgeonfish flashed past and she hastily pointed them out, slowing the boat. There were no octopi today, but in amongst the waving anemones were the instantly recognisable clownfish, with their cheerful orange and white stripes. Angelfish in an array of colours kept the tourists oohing and ahing. Some of the men bragged about their aquariums.

  Head tilted, Phil frowned at the scene visible through the glass viewing-pane. Corals in vivid, varied colour created a unique environment, and art had always been his thing. He saw the world differently, focussing on the unexpected and the beautiful.

  She wondered what he was thinking. He ought to be out diving or snorkelling. The leisurely tourist boat seemed too tame for him.

  He looked up and caught her watching him.

  She kept her face impassive, grateful for the sunglasses that meant he couldn’t be sure it was him she studied. She turned her head a fraction, as if she were looking back at the resort.

  Topaz Island was a green jewel set against the shimmering blue heaven of sky and sea. Its white beaches encircled a lush rainforest centre. Human habitation had been carefully designed for minimum disturbance of the environment. The resort occupied the western cove and was sympathetically constructed out of wood, with steel beams to survive the cyclone season. On the other side of the island, remote and private, was the lodge, a self-sufficient house Phil had rented for the next two months.

  She shuddered. She couldn’t survive two months feeling like this.

  ‘Time to head back,’ Laura said, forcing cheerfulness as she assessed the diminishing enthusiasm of her passengers. ‘We’ll be in time for afternoon tea.’ It would be taken on the resort’s wide veranda overlooking the cove, with ceiling fans swishing and Bucky, the resort’s tame parrot, providing commentary.

  ‘Ooh lovely,’ Mrs Glendinning said. ‘I’d murder for a cuppa.’

  Laura laughed and as everyone settled in their seats, she swung the boat in a broad, gentle arc and headed home.

  Since the Gemstone II had a shallow bottom she could run it almost onto the beach, and did so. Two other resort staff waited to help the tourists down the ramp, through mid-calf-high water and onto the sand. Phil stayed and helped, half-carrying Mrs Glendinning, who beamed her delight.

  As Laura helped steady another elderly lady, she watched the fabric of Phil’s T-shirt shift with the ripple of his muscles. Her mouth went dry.

  ‘Land ahoy,’ Mrs Glendinning cried as she was set on her feet.

  Phil turned back to the boat, a hint of a smile on his face, and c
aught Laura staring. Again. Their eyes held.

  Her pulse thudded. How much was she giving away? How vividly had she revealed her confused emotions to this familiar stranger who’d once been the most attentive, skilful lover, that now, despite her all her doubts, her body was softly, greedily ready to make love to?

  She panicked.

  ‘Everyone safely ashore?’ Not waiting for an answer, she made sure her guest was steady, then splashed back to the boat. She secured the ramp and motored on out of there.

  A glance back at the beach showed Phil heading east, presumably returning to the lodge, his rented home.

  ‘Whew.’ She took off the hat she wore, lifted her ponytail off her neck and generally tried to chill. Zen. She could be Zen. She removed the strands of long blonde hair that had caught in the slight breeze and clung to her face, which was faintly sticky with salt spray and sunscreen.

  Thankfully, the mooring was out of sight of the picturesque main beach and that gave her a few precious minutes while gliding around to the dock and tying up, to cool the flush in her cheeks and school her expression. As bad as the situation was, it would be worse if anyone on staff became curious and started questioning her.

  This was between Phil and her.

  Fortunately, she had a good mask to hide behind. The classic tropical look of the resort uniform worked for her. With her white shirt tucked into her khaki shirts and her tanned legs on display, she knew she looked good. She looked competent. She just had to act it; cool, confident and indifferent. She detoured to her room to exchange her wet shoes for a dry canvas pair. If only other mistakes in life were as easily handled.

  Phil had taken up a cancelled booking and would rent the lodge for two months, which was as long or longer than she expected to work on Topaz Island. Somehow or other she had to come to terms with seeing him every day.

  She kicked off her wet shoes. An old saying of her granddad’s seemed apt. ‘If it wasn’t for bad luck, I wouldn’t have any luck at all.’

  ***

  It wasn’t a lucky chance that found Phil sharing a tropical island paradise with the one woman he’d never been able to forget. Being here on Topaz Island had required investigative work (questioning some of his old university friends), bribery (how else to acquire the reservation for the Topaz Island lodge during peak tourist season?) and completely ignoring the voice in his head that declared him an idiot.

  Idiot or not, he’d had to do something, or Laura Robertson would haunt him forever.

  They’d met at university. She’d been a nineteen-year-old second-year science student, beautiful, bright and incredibly naïve. He’d been three years older, with those three years spent working at the mines and saving every dollar he earned. It had been a hellish life underground, and one he’d put up with only because he had plans. He’d needed the money for university.

  Even as it was, he’d worked throughout his degree. Worked to cover the rent and to run a car, for daily expenses, and in response to the knowledge that he was on his own if things went wrong. There was no family to rescue him.

  His dad had taken off when he was a kid and his mum hadn’t coped. A couple of years later, she’d caught an infection at the hospital where she cleaned, and although the doctors cured it, she’d never recovered her health. When he was seventeen, she’d died. Pneumonia. The doctors had blamed cigarettes. He hadn’t bothered to assign blame.

  A friend’s family had rented him a room, enabling him to finish high school, although, in a blur of grief and loneliness, he hadn’t done so well. Working at the mines had saved him. Food, accommodation, a schedule, and then the realisation that he wanted more from life. That he was going to get it.

  Laura had been that ‘more’.

  He had loved her, taken her for granted, fought with her, treasured her and envied her loving family. Theirs hadn’t been a calm romance.

  But after Laura, every other woman seemed…lacking.

  He wouldn’t cheat a woman and offer her second-best love. He was nearly thirty. He needed to see Laura, to talk with her, to convince his damn stubborn subconscious that it wasn’t Laura but the passion of his early twenties that made their relationship dazzle in memory.

  Or he needed to make Laura his.

  Phil stripped off his shirt, dropped his shorts and dived into the sea from the lodge’s extended deck. The water was almost warm, kissing his skin with sensuous pleasure. He swam fast, cutting through the transparent blue sea and trying to burn out of his brain the image of Laura in her resort uniform and how he’d wanted to undo each button on her white shirt to reveal the bra just visible through it, flick it open as he’d done so many times before and…

  He’d seen glimpses of her for the past three days. Enough to know that he’d have to force a meeting, which he’d done by signing up for the reef tour that afternoon. The tension had strung taut between them.

  He and Laura needed to talk.

  ***

  ‘We need to talk.’ Laura practiced the phrase as she walked the winding path across the island to the lodge on the eastern bay. Dinner had been served, the dishes cleaned, and the guests had settled to their own evening pursuits — most were watching an old Cary Grant movie. She was free.

  Free to be brave.

  If only her knees weren’t wobbly.

  Insects chirruped and frogs peeped or boomed, depending on their size. The rainforest at the centre of the island buzzed with activity. Overhead, through gaps in the canopy, the stars were bright, appearing low enough to reach up and touch.

  The path veered right, coming out of the rainforest and almost to the edge of the island. She paused a moment, flicking off the torch as the moonlight illuminated the scene. Up ahead, the lodge was visible, light glowing from a couple of windows.

  She’d changed out of uniform and wore her favourite dress. The soft cotton in faded blue was sleeveless and cool. The skirt swung freely around her knees, shifting with each step. White embroidered daisies decorated the two patch pockets. She dropped the small torch in one as she left the path and climbed the couple of steps up to the lodge’s back veranda. Her sandals scuffed on the wooden decking.

  Her heart beat too fast, and at this point she didn’t even try to decipher her scrambled emotions. If she thought too much, she might turn and run. She followed the veranda around to the front of the lodge where it overlooked the private bay.

  The veranda turned and opened to the front deck. She stopped.

  Phil lounged in a cane chair, his gaze on her. His shirt was open, pulled on over a lean, tanned body. A citronella candle flickered on the veranda railing beyond him. It and the glow from the living room window cast an uncertain light on his expression. A sketchbook and pencil lay discarded on the table beside him. He said nothing.

  In the daunting silence, she walked forward. Her dress whispered against her skin. The faint fall of her footsteps sounded unnaturally loud; portentous, like a music score in a movie with the sea in the background murmuring a mysterious harmony. She took the second chair at the table, angling it so that she sat like him, with her back to the house and with a view of the horizon. To their left, the deck stretched a long arm out over the bay. If ever there’d been a picture of romance, this was it. Moonlight laid glamour on the sea, turning it silver, while the stars were diamonds and the beach was a tourism poster idyll.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. Four years ago, she’d said the same words. Sobbed them. Phil’s response then still haunted her: ‘So am I.’

  Now, he ignored her apology. ‘Would you like a drink?’

  She shook her head. ‘Phil.’

  Palms rustled in the wind and the candle flame on the railing danced. The flickering light hid his expression. ‘I forgive you, Laura. I did years ago.’

  Her hands trembled in her lap and one knocked against the torch in her pocket. She took it out and set it on the table where it rolled in a half circle before coming to rest. ‘You could have told me.’

  The candle flame steadied.
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  ‘You could have guessed.’

  She stared at him, resentment stirring. ‘You were always so damn sane. Rational.’

  ‘Not always.’ A pause. The firm line of his mouth held secrets. ‘Not when we made love.’

  The unexpected comment detonated a series of shockwaves through her body, deep pleasant pulses of memory. No, he hadn’t been in control then. Nor had she. They had loved recklessly.

  She had lived recklessly. Selfishly. Although at the time, she’d considered herself totally selfless. Her life at university had been about saving the world. She’d been going to save the whales and the rainforests, the Antarctic and the earth. She’d signed up to every cause — and she’d expected Phil to sign up with her. He never had, but she’d ignored that bit of reality, believing he shared her concerns even if he didn’t act on them.

  Graduation had come as a devastating wake-up call.

  In their final semester, Phil had been given a chance to present a marketing proposal to a New York-based public relations guru who’d been a visiting friend of Phil’s professor. Everyone in the class had prepared their best work. Phil had slaved for weeks.

  Laura had buried her resentment of the time he’d devoted to the project — a mock campaign to sell nuclear energy to the Australian public. There had only been a few weeks left before their lives would change with graduation. She’d wanted to spend that time with him.

  Even she’d had to admit that the final proposal was slick and effective, but that professionalism had disturbed her. She’d accused Phil of selling out, of putting profit before principle.

  She’d been aching for a fight; aching to have all of his attention — not that she’d have confessed to such ignominious reasons back then. No, she’d been all about her own high-mindedness, scathing of his pragmatism.

  On the night before he was to submit the proposal, they’d fought. Usually their fights were exhilarating, ending in sex or laughter, or both. Only in looking back did she understand that this was because in their other fights, Phil hadn’t fought. He hadn’t cared. But this time he’d been protecting his future.