A Miracle For The Baby Doctor. Meredith Webber

he explained.

      ‘And a bit of medical knowledge,’ Fran added, feeling unaccountably pleased by the young man’s words.

      After handing over the shirt and sandals, the backpacker offered Steve a pair of board shorts.

      ‘Might not be your style, mate, but better dry than wet,’ he said cheerfully. ‘You can keep them. I’m heading home and I could use a bit more space in my backpack.’

      Obviously pleased by the offer, Steve stripped off his wet shorts, revealing a pair of lurid boxer shorts.

      ‘Staff joke,’ he explained as he pulled the dry shorts over them, then finished dressing with his shirt and sandals.

      He turned to Fran, his arms out held.

      ‘So, teammate, I might not be quite the picture of sartorial excellence you expected to be dining with, but will I do?’

      ‘Definitely!’ she said, then wondered why she felt there’d been a double meaning in her answer.

      They finished the walk to the restaurant in companionable silence as if their brief response to the young man’s drowning had somehow drawn them together.

      ‘This is wonderful,’ she said, as the waiter seated them at an outside table. ‘And across there?’

      She pointed to a small island with a row of thatched huts along the water’s edge.

      What she’d really wanted to know was how the young man might be faring, but common sense told her to leave that little interlude alone and not to make too much of it.

      ‘One of many resorts,’ he explained. ‘Vanuatu’s a tourist destination now. But that island over there, tiny as it is, has been settled for a long time. One of the colonial governors had a house there, and bits of it remain.’

      ‘And it’s only accessed by boat?’

      Steve nodded. ‘Look, the little boat is crossing now. It’s about a five-minute trip but it does make that resort seem a bit special.’

      A waiter interrupted them with menus and offers of drinks.

      ‘Light beer for me,’ Steve said. ‘Fran?’

      ‘I’d like a white wine, just a glass,’ she told the waiter, who then rattled off a list of choices.

      ‘Pinot Gris,’ she said, getting lost after that in the list. And by the time their drinks arrived, they’d settled on their meals—steak for Steve and swordfish for Fran.

      ‘Cheers,’ he said, lifting his glass. ‘And here’s to a pleasant stay for you in Vanuatu. Hopefully you won’t be called upon to save any more lives, although I must say you handled the situation enormously well.’

      ‘Anyone would have done the same,’ she said, ever so casually, although the compliment pleased her.

      She touched her glass to his bottle, and echoed his ‘Cheers’ then took a sip of the wine, and nodded appreciation.

      It was all Fran could do not to gulp at the wine.

      Somehow, it seemed, the simple act of working together to save the young man had formed a bond between them.

      Or maybe that was just her imagination! Running riot because the walk to the restaurant had set her nerves on fire?

      The walk had certainly been fascinating, Steve pointing out special places, telling stories of the early European settlement, but it had been his presence—the nearness of him as they’d walked side by side—that had unsettled nerves she’d forgotten she had.

      Oh, she’d been out with other men since her divorce, but none of them had made something—excitement—thrum along her nerves.

      Maybe there was something in the richly perfumed tropical air—a drug of some kind—that heightened all the senses.

      Or maybe seeing his broad, tanned chest, water nestling among the sparse hairs on his sternum, had stirred long-forgotten lust!