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April bit her lip at the sight of the chaos—the walls were drenched and the lounge barricades hadn’t held up. Debris and splintered wood daubed the floor. The lounge was wrecked—the windows completely shattered, everything a sodden broken mess—and the bedroom had fared little better, though the heavy bed remained intact.
For a second sadness pierced her that the idyllic single dwelling a man had made for the woman he loved had come to this.
Yet as she gazed outside it seemed almost impossible to believe. The blue sky was studded with white clouds and the newly risen sun promised a day of heat and balmy breezes.
‘Listen.’
A sound drifted in through the glassless window space: the unmistakable drone of a helicopter.
‘Come on.’
April followed Marcus as he strode across the sand towards the helipad, where a craft bearing the royal crown was coming into land.
A pilot waved and soon alighted. ‘Are you OK?’
‘We’re fine. How bad is the damage?’
‘Bad. The Prince and Princess-to-be are out with the emergency services, but His Highness ordered me to come out here as soon as it was safe to fly, in case you were in trouble.’
‘We’re fine, but we need to get back so this is much appreciated. We’re ready to go.’
‘Um...’ April hesitated. ‘I know it’s important to get back fast, but could we check to see if the food is salvageable? Obviously the food in the freezer will have defrosted, and there is a lot of it. If we took it back we could hand it out...’
Perhaps it was foolish—with Marcus’s wealth he could afford to buy the contents of the freezer a hundred times over. But somehow the idea of leaving food to decay in the heat seemed wrong.
Half an hour later they were airborne. April looked down on the island where she’d experienced so much and a jolt of wonder shot through her. So many emotions had come into play—so many sensations she’d thought she’d never feel again. Even now her skin still hummed with the afterglow of pleasure, even as she braced herself for the aftermath of the storm.
Marcus dropped his phone onto the seat beside him. ‘The community centre got hit—it stood up to the storm, but...’
April felt her blood run cold. ‘Was anyone hurt?’
‘Yes. Mia and Charlie. Gemma and Blake rescued them; they realised they hadn’t been evacuated and went back in. The kitchen wasn’t properly secured; a window had been left open and the gale had shot in and swept things off the shelves. Mia got hit and was knocked out, and Charlie, left to his own devices, crawled off.’
Rubbing her hands up and down her arms, April shivered despite the glare of the sun through the chopper windows. ‘Are they all right?’
‘Yes. Still in hospital for observation, but there is no cause for concern—thanks to Gemma and Blake.’
‘That was brave of them—to go back in.’
‘Yes, it was.’
April frowned—there was pride in his tone and in his stance, but there was something else as well. Pain and bleakness and a flash of self-loathing. Which didn’t make sense unless...
‘If you had been there you would have gone in, but you couldn’t be there.’
‘I know.’
April frowned. He clearly wasn’t beating himself up over his absence. So what was he beating himself up for?
A few phone calls later he said, ‘We’ll go to the community centre first, then visit the hospital, and then we’ll go wherever we’re most needed.’
‘It’s a plan.’
A good plan, that would keep them busy. Already Eden Island had begun to take on a dreamlike quality against the backdrop of how the storm had affected Lycander.
Once they’d arrived at the centre Marcus strode from the chauffeured car and then slowed. For a moment they watched, unobserved.
The building gave off an aura of business and purpose. Groups of teens were busy at restoration tasks, someone had set up some music, and it seemed clear that the community had come together to restore the centre.
