Vivian's Return Read online

  Vivien put her hand over her mouth, trying to hold in the gasp. She moved quickly to Morris’ side and grasped the back of his chair, staring at the radio.

  Morris spared a glance at her before turning back to the set. “Okay,” he said into the microphone. “What are your chances of getting back?”

  “So far the engine’s only coughed a couple of times and I’m almost halfway home, now. I’m about fifteen, twenty minutes out of Geraldton. You figure out my odds, Morris, I’ve got my hands full. I’ll check back in five minutes—if I’m still up in the air.”

  “Five minutes,” Morris confirmed. He sat back in his chair and blew out his breath hard.

  Vivien had to clear her throat to speak. “If his fuel’s impure, he’s not going to know the engine will cut out until it does. He won’t have a warning.” Her voice sounded strange even to her.

  Morris shot a glance at her. “He’s already had a warning, girl. He’s still up there.” He spoke gruffly and she knew he was worried. The tight band that had settled around her chest grew tighter. Her heart was laboring under the constriction.

  Stiffly, she walked over to the picture window that gave a view stretching past the helipads to the sea. When Paul came into sight, he would appear from that direction. If he made it.

  Behind her, she heard Morris dial up a number on the telephone on Jenny’s desk, his big finger stabbing down onto the buttons. His call was answered quickly, for he spoke almost straightaway. “Jimmy, boy, it’s Morris. We’ve got a problem out here and it could be dirty fuel. Jack filled the Gazelle up out there at the airport, so can you check the tank?” The reply was short. “From the drums? Then I’d say our guess is right. Those damned drums have all sorts of crap lying at the bottom of them. Thanks. Quick as you can.” Morris hung up with a small bang.

  Vivien found herself twirling the pen through her fingers again, staring out to sea, where the sun was dancing on the surface in silver flecks. She strained to sight a black speck on the horizon that might be Paul flying back, despite the knowledge that he couldn’t possibly appear for another five minutes or so.

  In her mind’s eye, she was watching Paul going through all the motions that would help the helicopter stay up in the air. Decreasing the fuel feed, selecting the best altitude, maintaining an exact compass heading so that rescue boats could find him if he went down. Nursing the craft home. His face would be impassive, the eyes glittering with concentration and his mind racing, busy thinking up ways out of danger for every eventuality.

  If anyone was skilled at survival, Paul Levissianos was, she told herself. He had been running against the odds for so long, fate had given up on him. He would get his way. He would make it back.

  It was an old chant, devised during other times just like this and the words came back to her accompanied with all the fear and pain of those other times. While Morris went about the few small tasks he could complete to assist Paul, Vivien stood at the window in a silent still vigil, waiting for the first sight of the helicopter.

  The last time she had stood at this spot, seven years ago, the sea had been churned up into gigantic peaks and troughs by the power of a spring storm, moving restlessly under a thick gray sky.

  She had just turned twenty-three and was the radio operator for the company—the position Jenny now held.

  Paul had been flying a small two-man helicopter, providing an aerial marker for the rescue boats beating their way out to a ship that had gone down in the heavy seas. Beneath him had been two life rafts full of survivors. By rights, he should have had a co-pilot with him but he had flatly refused to let her fly with him when she had asked him before he left. She had tackled him in the kitchen as he had been putting together a fast sandwich before flying out.

  His refusal was curt. “You’ve never done rescue work.”

  “You’ve never let me.”

  “You’ll be in my way.”

  “I’ve had my license for four years now and you still keep telling me no.”

  He shook his head, busy with pouring coffee into a thermos. “What sort of help do you think you’ll possibly be out there?” he asked over his shoulder.

  “You can’t fly out in this weather by yourself,” she shot back. “With the cross winds and buffeting, you’ll have both hands on the controls all the time. How are you going to coordinate the rescue boats on the radio? What if something else crops up that needs another hand?”

  “I’ll manage,” Paul replied grimly.

  “I can help.”

  He shook his head. “No.”

  Vivien felt her temper give. “Damn it! Why do you do this to me? I’m a good pilot! I can help and you know it.”

  The flaring of her temper caught his attention. Paul grinned at her. “God, I love it when you get angry. You’re so beautiful.”

  He meant every word but Vivien knew he was trying to distract her. If he made her angry enough, she would walk away, fuming and leave him the victor of the field. From experience he knew that telling her how beautiful she was when she was angry was one fast way of making her too furious for words.

  She gritted her teeth and hung onto the scraps of reason. Not this time. This time she had to make him see her side of it. It had gone on too long for her to tolerate much longer.

  “I’m going over to Harbor patrol and volunteering myself. Maybe they will appreciate my help,” she told him.

  “You’ll do no such bloody thing!” he roared back.

  Vivien shook her head. “You can’t stop me. Not really,” she told him.

  “You make one move out of this office and I’ll hogtie you to the verandah post and leave you there until I get back.”

  “That’s just like you!” she cried, losing a little more of her control. “Brute force—just because you’re physically stronger than me.”

  “Yes and that’s what makes me the better man for the job.”

  She turned for the door, intending to head for the headquarters of the harbor patrol, who were coordinating the search and rescue but had only gone three steps when Paul’s hands came down upon her arms and spun her around. “Where are you going?” His eyes were glittering, narrowed.

  “Where do you think?”

  He shook his head. “Over my dead body.”

  “Which is just what it will be one of these days—and I’m not going to be standing here waiting for them to bring your body back to me!” She heaved in a deep breath. “I won’t be waiting, you hear?” She could feel tears pricking her eyes and hated herself for showing that weakness. Paul saw the tears too and all his own impatience and anger drained from his face.

  “I hear,” he said quietly. “But it won’t be today, so rein in your temper, Vivvy and resign yourself to waiting for today. I won’t let you out there, where I have to worry about you.”

  “You don’t own me,” she’d whispered back.

  He smiled and cupped her cheek in his large hand. “No. But I do love you, so humor me, huh?”

  And so she had waited and listened to the alarmed, overlapping mish-mash of radio calls as his helicopter had gone down into the sea, dropped by an air pocket created by the cyclonic gale. She had waited while they searched for him and pulled him out of the sea.

  He had returned on a stretcher, brought back by the rescue boats and carefully loaded into an ambulance, which raced him to hospital. Vivien had watched his transfer to the ambulance from the back of the crowd that had gathered, unable to get any closer in the crush.

  She had left Geraldton a week later but the memory of his unnaturally still body, gored, bruised and bloody, had had the power to shock her into stillness for years afterward.

  And now, seven years later, here she stood, looking out over the sea, waiting for his return. Again.

  The radio buzzed into life behind her. “I can see land,” Paul’s voice spoke. “Five minutes, I guess. The engine is still coughing but holding in there.”

  “Paul, the airport has confirmed that the drums Jack filled up from are conta
minated,” Morris replied.

  Vivien had been so caught up in the memory of that other night, that she hadn’t heard the return phone call.

  “Right,” Paul confirmed. “See you when I get there. You should sight me in the next couple of minutes.”

  “Vivien is watching out,” Morris replied.

  There was no reply.

  Morris appeared next to her. “Here,” he said, holding out a powerful pair of binoculars.

  She shook her head, mute, and lifted her gaze back to the view. She doubted her arms would have the strength to lift and hold the binoculars steady. Apart from the tight constricting band around her chest, the rest of her body was numb. She had the power to stand, if she remained very still, propped up by locked knees and balance.

  Morris peered through the binoculars, scanning the horizon. “That sun’s bright,” he murmured. “Hang on....” he said hopefully. Then, after an endless minute, he added, “Yes. There he is.”

  Vivien peered, her vision dancing because she was afraid to blink and she narrowed her eyes against the reflected glare on the water. Morris pointed, a little to the left of where she had been looking and she watched for the small black dot that would be her first glimpse of the helicopter. Then she saw it and a soundless sigh pushed past her lips. She focused on the small dot and watched it gradually grow larger and closer.

  Morris lowered the binoculars. “He’s revved right down,” he murmured. “Nice and slowly does it,” he added.

  Vivien whirled away from the window and raced across to the door that led to the helipad, pushed her way outside and around the corner of the building to the edge of the landing pad, quickly spotting the approaching helicopter again.

  He was nearly to the harbor now and the sound of his approach reached her ears. The engine sounded smooth and untroubled but even as she listened she heard it misfire and her heart leapt up to her throat and she caught her breath, holding it for the endless moment until the sound of the engine came back across the water again.

  She gave a little moan in the back of her throat. The constriction around her chest was hurting, the tight muscles aching and she knew that if the tension didn’t ease soon, she would throw up.

  The helicopter scudded across the harbor, staying low and Vivien turned to follow it as it passed her, swinging around to watch as it lowered onto the pad, dropping down undramatically. The engine switched off, leaving the rotors to slow down through their own inertia, swishing through the air in the sudden quiet.

  Vivien put her hands out behind her, pressing them against the wall of the building for support as her whole body turned to jelly. Slowly, she slithered down to the concrete, her knees folding up against her chest, as her heart thumped painfully inside the cage of her ribs, now free of the constriction.

  Paul climbed out of the helicopter and strode across the concrete to meet Morris halfway, where he’d rushed out to greet him. They shook hands and Vivien saw Paul’s easy smile and laugh. He stood half a head higher than Morris. The trousers and epaulette shirt with its civilian air-stripes were still immaculate. They were speaking but the words weren’t clear and her hearing was muffled by the frenetic thud of her heart. She was too busy dealing with her own revelation.

  Morris had been right. The past wasn’t going to keep its place. It had reared its ugly head once more and snared her in all the old pain and misery she thought she had left behind seven years ago. The last week had been the calm before the storm, ice filmed over the turbulent water beneath. Had she really fooled anyone else but herself?

  She still loved Paul, had never stopped loving him. Distance and time had ceased the provoking reminders, given her a vacuum in which to convince herself she had forgotten him and she had been so successful in fooling herself, it had taken a week for her true feelings to crash back through the barrier and then they’d only managed it when danger had added its weight.

  She loved him.

  Vivien forced herself back up onto her feet before the two men standing on the pad could notice her unorthodox posture and come to investigate. She gazed at Paul, exploring the feelings in her as if they were new and fresh, instead of the despairing emotions of old that had sent her flying from him before. She loved him and this time she did not even have the right to ask him to hold her and tell her that he was all right, that he had cheated fate one more time. Even that small crumb of comfort was denied her.

  They were walking toward the building. Vivien forced her feet into moving her toward the door too, trying to act naturally. The two men paused at the doorway, waiting for her. Paul smiled at her as she reached them. “Well, I made it,” he said.

  She wanted to rest her hands against his chest, to feel his heart beat and reassure herself that he was alive and warm and unhurt. Instead she clenched her fist tightly against her thigh and cleared her throat. “Pure luck,” she said. “I shall be looking into this incident. It is appalling that an operation like yours, which is supposedly a professional one could possibly fall foul of such a simple thing as contaminated fuel when the precautions against it are so easy to carry out. I don’t believe it will reflect well upon you when I come to write my report for Coastwatch.”

  Paul’s face grew wary and she thought she could detect a flicker of surprise in his eyes. “That’s a hell of an assumption to make. No one will know how it happened until it is investigated.”

  “The evidence is very clear what the problem is,” Vivien replied coldly, surprising even herself. What did she think she was doing? She loved this man, yet she was growing angrier by the second.

  Paul shifted his stance, so that his weight rested equally on both feet, facing her squarely. “You’re turning this into an official issue?” he asked quietly.

  “I am the official assessor of your proposal to Coastwatch.”

  “You’re pulling rank on me?” he asked and Vivien could hear the thread of astonishment in his voice. She was astonished at herself but the part of her mind that was shouting at her to stop it, at once, wasn’t in control of her mouth. The part that was controlling what she said was angry—a cold, bleak anger that wanted to hit out at him for the anguish she had just suffered one more time because of him. The only way she could do that was with the one thing that was more powerful than Paul—her authority as an assessor.

  “Safety procedures don’t clock off after business hours,” she replied. “My brief is to assess all your practices and business procedures. An emergency situation has occurred that should never have happened. Are you suggesting that I don’t report it?”

  Morris turned to Paul. “Leave it until Monday, Paul,” he said levelly. “You’ve done enough for today. Let’s go and get that drink, huh?” He put a placating hand on Paul’s arm but Paul shrugged it off, his gaze remaining steadily upon Vivien.

  “You lied to me,” he said quietly. His tone was even but there was an expression in his eyes that Vivien didn’t want to interpret, because superficially it resembled disgust. “No ill feelings, you said. A neutral assessment? You deliberately accepted this assessment because you knew that it was the one way you could get back at me. You know that we get called in to help with an emergency at least once a week here. You knew that all you had to do was wait and the perfect opportunity to hit back at me would present itself. That’s why you came back, isn’t it? This is how you’re going to make me pay for screwing up our relationship.”

  Vivien could feel her eyes growing round with surprise and the indignant anger circulating through her turned to dry ice in her veins—still smoking but suddenly deathly cold. “You’re wrong,” she wanted to say but even as she tried to form the words, Paul had turned away and her chance to protest was lost.

  “I’ve never lied to you,” she managed to call out to him, as he led Morris to the door.

  “No?” He turned to look at her again. She recognized the cool expression from their conversation on the end of the breakwater at the beginning of the week. He was controlling his reactions again. “Well, you’d
have to say that, of course. But you’ve forgotten Tarcoola Beach.”

  He turned away again and Vivien stared at his broad back as he walked away, dismayed.

  She had forgotten about Tarcoola Beach—their shorthand means of referring to the first day they had met.

  On that day, nothing she had said had been the truth.

  Chapter Three

  ”She wouldn’t do it, would she?” Morris asked for the fifth time. He was almost wringing his hands. Paul patted him on the shoulder and opened the office door for him.

  “Don’t worry about it, Morris. I’ll take care of it.”

  “If she makes a negative report we’re dead in the water. Word’ll fly around we didn’t pass the Coastwatch safety assessment...we’ll never get a lick of work anywhere after that.”

  “I know.” It was his company that would belly-up if they didn’t get the tender. He knew the facts as well if not better than Morris. “She’s just bluffing. I’ll talk to her.”

  “It’s not like Vivien to bluff like that...are you sure?” Morris looked into Paul’s face hopefully.

  “As sure as I can be.” Paul glanced at the clock on the wall. The propeller blades were both hovering around the four. “Listen, why don’t you take off? There’s nothing more constructive we can get done here today.”

  “Yeah. Maybe I will.” Morris grimaced. “I need that drink. You coming?”

  “Soon. There’s something I have to do first. What if I meet you at the Murchison?”

  “‘Kay.” He dug into his trouser pocket for his key ring. “Later, then.”

  Paul waved him off, then went through to the staff kitchenette and the tiny bathroom behind it. He shut the door and carefully locked himself in. Then he leaned back against the cool brick wall and slowly slid down until he was sitting on the floor, his legs bent. He wrapped his arms around his legs, already feeling the tremors build.

  He let his mind go back to the endless minutes he had spent nursing the Gazelle home, hearing the engine misfire and each time waiting for the death-heralding silence to follow. He let his imagination take over. If the engine had failed, he would have had to crash dive into the sea. He’d had to do that once before, years ago and he still carried the legacy of that crash dive on his shoulders and thigh.