Shipwrecked with Mr. Wrong - By Nikki Logan Page 0,18

a nest.... Too much sand and too little energy.’

He was silent for a moment and then spoke. ‘It seems kind of unnatural, a mother abandoning her young. Isn’t her job to see they survive?’

A brutal whiplash tore through her gut and Honor had to struggle against the need to bolt into the trees. ‘Her life is valuable too. She half kills herself getting here and giving them life.’ He looked taken aback at her passionate response but she rushed on. ‘One mother turtle can lay five hundred eggs in a season and she may not have another season for a decade. If she puts herself at risk by staying onshore longer than a few hours, then she may never give life to any of those little offspring at all.’

It was a poor defence. The reality was that out of one hundred eggs only a handful would survive the dig-out, the race to the ocean and then the many, many marine predators waiting for an inexperienced little turtle to happen past. It was the law of the wild. The lower you were on the food chain, the more offspring you had—to increase the chances of a few surviving to take your genes forward.

It was also what made the non-intervention policy so incredibly hard to stomach. The wholesale loss of young lives.

She sighed, turned away. She was coming across as a complete fanatic; certainly it was what Rob must think. She’d given him nothing else to think, after all. He didn’t need to know where her real anger came from.

That was for her alone.

* * *

Rob trod gently above the high tide line behind Honor, conscious there could be hundreds of tiny little lives cooking away in the sand beneath his feet, but Honor stomped into the trees faster than he could follow if he didn’t match her pace.

What had all that been about? He was hoping for a rather different reaction, was counting on her appreciating the brilliance of his informed questions. To make up for all the insensitive and idiotic things he’d done since arriving. He was trying to have a conversation, for crying out loud.

And that was something new for him.

Rob Dalton didn’t start conversations. He didn’t have to—conversations found him. Centred around him quite often. He’d always thought it made him a great conversationalist.

It had certainly worked for his father in land development. There was a man who could talk to anyone, about anything, any time. It was an art form. Rob Junior had seen, first hand, the way it transformed people. How his dad could turn a crowd around until they were eating out of his hand. Just by chatting with them. Rob knew exactly how his father felt about half the people he worked with and watched him turn on the smile and ask after their children and talk about their trips to Hong Kong as though he gave a damn. To very good effect.

Yep, little Rob had learned at the heels of the best.

Now, he wasn’t so sure. What if he cultivated interest for something someone was saying? Probed a bit and found out what made them so interested. That was what his question to Honor had been about. He wanted her to keep talking about turtles and eggs and fluorescent marker tape just to hear her talking. To watch her talking. To watch her come alive.

The woman lived and breathed her work. As though it were all she had. But he’d made a strategic error somewhere, said the wrong thing and she’d sucked all the passion back into herself like a sea anemone and then bolted off into the trees, leaving him in hot pursuit.

They approached a small clearing in the shore trees, leading to yet another little beach alcove. Honor stopped in front of him and he caught up. She put her hand out behind her to stop him from passing. It brushed his hip but she rested it there, oblivious. He smiled and let it sit, enjoying the unexpected sensation of her slender fingers on him. For as long as it lasted.

Ahead on the dune edge was a small white ball of fluff sitting miserably in the sand. Its little black face turned from the afternoon sun and its black eyes blinked, peering around defiantly.

‘It’s a red-footed booby chick.’

‘I’m guessing you’ve seen a heap of those in four years?’ Why was this one so special?

She looked up into the trees around them. ‘It’s fallen from that nest. Its parents won’t come for