Shipwrecked with Mr. Wrong - By Nikki Logan Page 0,17

would know it. To the uninitiated, there would be nothing telling, but to Honor the signs were as good as a road map.

The shore was less shingly here, rather more sand than the usual eroded coral rocks. The lower beach had been cut away over time by rough waves, even inside the relative protection of the atoll, forming a ledge of sand over a metre high. It looked as if part of the shore had sunk away from the rest. Up above the high-tide mark there were marks in the sand, the telltale paired pattern of green turtle flipper prints, where both fins wedged into the sand and then hauled the weight of the rest of its body forward. Slow and hard all the way up the dunes to the edge of the trees.

Honor stopped, glanced at the chop-and-drag pattern and waited for his appreciation. Rob just stared. Then he looked at her blankly.

‘This is it,’ she said.

‘What?’

She looked back at the distinctive grooves in the dune edge. How could he not see it? ‘There—those trails up and over the ridge of sand. A female climbed the dune right there last night to lay her eggs.’ She stepped closer, not risking going too close to the turtle-only zone. ‘They’re so graceful underwater, but it’s exhausting for them to get to the island in the first place and then to drag their weight up the beach. Then they have to dig a massive hole using just their flippers and lay more than a hundred eggs into it. But there’s no rest yet; they have to fill it all in again—’

‘With just their flippers...’ His smile told her he was teasing.

‘Exactly...and do the whole trip in reverse, back out to sea. It’s really quite amazing.’

He didn’t look amazed, Honor thought peevishly, but he did look interested.

‘They leave their young? Don’t they stay to sit on the nest?’

‘The warmth of the deep sand acts like an incubator, so they leave the nest as soon as it’s filled in. In fact...depending on how warm it gets will determine whether the young are males or females.’

That earned an eyebrow raise. ‘What’s your role?’

‘I monitor the laying, how many hatch, how many dig out, how many make it to the ocean. After that, they’re on their own.’

‘How do you know how many are laid?’

‘I dig the nest out and count them.’

One dark eyebrow shot up at that. ‘You’re a raider?’ Her own words flung back in her face. She didn’t like it but had to give him points for wit. So, he wasn’t just a pretty face. The thought pleased her.

‘I’m a researcher. I count quickly, then rebury the nest. Then I mark out and label the nest site and I watch it for the next ten weeks until the eggs are due to hatch.

‘Do you help them?’

‘No, never.’

‘Never?’

‘Ever. First rule of scientific research. Observe, don’t intervene.’ No matter how hard it is. Honor had watched birds and crabs pick off the vulnerable little hatchlings and done nothing; had watched one tiny reptile scrabble towards the inland lagoon—and four thousand predatory beaks—and left it to its fate. She simply recorded it all in her ever-present logbook. Detached. Intentionally numb.

A lot like her life, really.

They moved above the dunes and she pointed out dozens of nesting sites, marked out in green fluorescent tape.

‘How do you know where they’re going to nest?’ he asked.

‘I don’t. I wait for them to show me. I watch every night and then mark the nests.’

His eyebrows shot up. ‘Every night?’

She laughed. ‘You think there’s something more I should be doing with my evenings? Hitting Pulu Keeling’s top night spots?’

He did it again. Blushed slightly and then turned his head to avoid her seeing it. Why was that so appealing?

‘All these nests were filled by turtles laying in October and November. There may have been others before and there will be many others after, but my study period is for eggs deposited in those two months of each year only. My job is to make sure I’m here when the October turtles touch land, then there’s eight weeks until the first hatchings are even possible.’

‘And then?’

‘And then I pretty much live on this side of the island, counting hatchings.’

‘Until Mum comes back and digs them up?’

She looked at him curiously. Had the man not heard of the Discovery Channel? ‘The mothers never see them again. The young dig themselves out—the strong ones, anyway. It doesn’t pay to be the first turtle out of