Marriage & the Mermaid (Hapless Heroes) (17 page)

Baz stopped piling the pies onto his father’s plate and turned his attention to Wynne. Stuff the old man. He could get his own food.

“Sometimes those things just slip out,” Wynne said diplomatically, not quite looking at anyone.

“Well I hope you don’t swear,” Ted replied, gesturing with the hand that held a half–eaten, crumbling pie. “There’s nothing uglier than a bad–mouthed woman.”

“That’s terribly sexiest, Mr Wilson,” Wynne replied, surprising Baz who’d expected her to dish out some conciliatory pap. “I don’t think it’s any worse for women to swear, than for men to.”

Ted eyed her carefully as he munched into his pie, spraying pastry crumbs in all directions. “You’re a firebrand,” he said at last, nodding his head at her. “You’ve got spunk.”

Wynne turned to look at Baz as she replied, “Oh, I’m sure I’m not the only firebrand, Mr Wilson. I’m sure Balthazar is full of… spunk. Aren’t you Baz?”

Baz paused with the tongs in mid–air. Despite the loud perfume, the lacquered hair and the epileptic eyelashes, the way she was looking at him had managed to turn him on. He could feel the stirring low in his body, and unlike the painful embarrassment of his inappropriate, drug–induced attraction to Venus, this was loose and warm and deliciously sinful. Wynne, an adult, was talking sex at the table in front of his father and that pushed Baz’s buttons in a way he’d never anticipated. She was initiating foreplay with his mind, and he liked it. A lot.

“Yeah. I am full of spunk,” he replied, smiling a smile his father would never be able to interpret. But Wynne did, and she returned it.

“I thought so,” she said softly and lowered her head, smiling at her plate as she daintily cut up a party pie and forked a morsel into her mouth. She chewed delicately and then swallowed. Baz couldn’t stop staring. When she licked her lips, he licked his own, then realised he was breathing through his mouth. Loudly.

He forced himself to look down at his plate and realised he had no appetite at all. Well, not for food.
Wow. I like Wynne …
that
way.
He glanced at her again and realised she was genuinely sexy. The tilt of her head, the sweep of her eyelashes, the curve of cleavage deep in that halter top. How had he missed that?

“Are we watching a movie tonight?” Ted asked and clunked his glass of milk back down onto the table before reaching for some garlic bread.

“A movie?” Wynne said brightly, turning to Baz, her eyes lit up.

“Sure,” he said and dropped his gaze to her lips which seemed to be mesmerizing him, although he wasn’t sure how that transition had happened. They were still thin, but somehow he found that incredibly sexy. “We’ll let Wynne pick.” Ted opened his mouth but Baz shot him a quelling glance. “She’s the guest.”

“Fine, fine,” Ted grumbled, “but I like old movies. Cary Grant, Humphrey Bogart.”

“Me too,” Wynne said. “Although Dirk Bogarde is my favorite.” Her head turned slightly and she looked at Baz from the edges of her luxuriant lashes. “He has the most soulful brown eyes, and such a sexy smile.”

“I’m not sure if
sexy
is swearing,” Ted said around a mouthful of garlic bread. “But I don’t like it.”

“I do,” Wynne whispered, lowering her eyelashes on those sideways glancing eyes. Baz was completely captivated. She was talking about him, and his father had no idea. She was flirting. And it was definitely turning him on. “There’s nothing nicer,” she said in a louder voice, turning to Ted, “than sitting comfortably in the dark watching a good romance unfold.”

“Oh, you like a romance?” Ted asked.

Baz was eating food he couldn’t taste, thinking about
sitting in the dark
with Wynne.

“We’ve got
The Spanish Gardener
with Dirk Bogarde,” Ted said. “That’s a love story.”

Wynne swallowed her mouthful and said, “That’s wonderful, Mr Wilson. I love that movie.”

“Oh, call me Theodore,” Ted said, clearly forgetting her potential to be a ‘bad–mouthed woman’.”

Wynne gave him a genuine smile then, and said, “Thank you, Theodore. And please call me Wynne.”

Ted nodded and went back to his food but Baz had stopped eating. He was completely won over by her smile and wanted desperately for Wynne to smile at
him
that way. But she went back to cutting tiny pieces of party pie and forking them into her mouth, that delicious little cavern he suddenly couldn’t wait to explore.

Christ, what had happened in the last half hour? When he’d picked her up from her room he’d been put–off completely, and now he was busting his shorts to sit next to her and watch some crappy old black–and–white movie.

“Aren’t you hungry, Baz,” she asked, glancing at his barely touched plate before meeting his eyes.

“Not for food,” he admitted softly, gazing right back at her.

Across the table Ted snorted and said, “Then why don’t you eat grass?”

Wynne smiled and that and went back to her dinner. “You have Irish ancestry, then?” she asked innocently.

“Bovine more like,” Baz replied, nodding at his father who was chewing away, bits of pastry poking out each side of his mouth. “More party pies, dad?” he asked, lifting the tray.

Ted shook his head and bits of pastry showered down onto the crisp white tablecloth. “Do you see my roses?” he said to Wynne, pointing with a half–eaten pie at the vase.

She stifled a smile. “Beautiful, Theodore. Scarlet Henry, aren’t they? And … Iceberg?”

“Snow White,” he corrected.

Baz was impressed. “You know roses?”

“My mother adores them,” Wynne said.

Baz glanced away as a shaft of grief sliced through him.
Mine too,
he thought, but he said nothing, shocked by the sudden appearance of pain. What had happened to his emotional cocoon? Talking about mothers didn’t normally affect him. Was it because he was at home? Or had Wynne done something to loosen his armor.

“May I have another pie?” Wynne asked, holding out her plate.

Baz obliged, and then dished up another two for his father despite his objections, along with more garlic bread. If he filled the old man up he might fall to sleep when the movie started, which of course would leave Baz and Wynne figuratively alone. In the dark.

Venus was asleep so he could forget that problem for a few hours to concentrate on Wynne. For all he knew the police would arrive tomorrow and the proverbial would hit the fan. Tonight was his window of normality. Necking was normal. He wanted to do that. And Wynne was flirting with him so she probably did too.

“We’ve got ice–cream,” he told Wynne, “if you want any dessert.”

She licked her lips. “Maybe later,” she said.

Baz nodded. They were definitely on the same page.

“I want my ice–cream now,” Ted butted in, and Baz glanced up to find him reaching for the last party pie on the plate, his trembling fingers not quite able to grasp it.

“Caramel topping?” he asked, transferring the pie to his father’s plate.

“And nuts,” Ted demanded. “Two spoonfuls.”

Baz grinned at Wynne who stifled her own smile and merely started stacking plates back onto the tray. “I’ll help you with this,” she said and shot him a glance before he could refuse. “I’d like to see the kitchen.”

“Sure,” Baz said easily, but deep in his gut he felt a kick of excitement. Was he going to kiss her there? Would they even make it as far as the movie? “You could help me make coffee.”

“I have tea,” Ted said, stuffing the last piece of pie in his mouth.

“As if I could forget, dad,” Baz replied.

They sat waiting as Ted finished, then Baz loaded that plate onto the tray and after excusing themselves, left Ted to find his own way to the media room to set the movie up while they walked in silence to the kitchen.

“It’s in here,” Baz said, nodding at the swinging door to his left.

Wynne click–clicked ahead and held it open while he came through with the tray. “Wow, it’s big,” she said.

“Well, it’s meant for a bigger family than dad and I.”

Wynne walked over to the window and looked out on the now–moonlit rose garden. She stood studying it for the longest time while he loaded the dishwasher. When she turned back to face him a small frown had formed on her forehead. “This place is much bigger than it looks from the front,” she said. “Your dad must be rich.”

Baz shrugged. “Inherited money.”

“But, that means you’ll inherit it,” she said, and if Baz had harbored any thoughts that Wynne was a gold–digger, her worried tone disabused him of the idea. “You’ll be rich yourself.”

“Maybe,” he said, ever mindful of Budjenski, although when her frown deepened, he added, “Not soon though. Dad will live to be a hundred just to spite me.” He smiled but she wasn’t smiling back.

Instead she shook her head. “I thought you were just a science teacher.”

“Just?”

His lame attempt at humor fell flat.

“You could have anyone.” She sounded almost accusing, as if he’d deliberately tried to trick her.

Baz wanted to laugh at how ridiculous the idea was, but Wynne was frowning in earnest now.

She pointed at him. “Look at you. You’re gorgeous, well dressed, intelligent, funny, and now rich.”

Baz felt a tug inside himself then. The vulnerability on her face was touching him and he couldn’t pull away from it — didn’t want to. Instead he walked over and took her hands. It was way too early to be talking about such things but Baz suddenly didn’t care to be obtuse. “Wynne, money isn’t important in relationships, except that it makes your life comfortable because you don’t have to argue about it.”

She thought about that. “My parents are always arguing about money,” she admitted, “and the lack of it.”

“Being rich doesn’t make you happy,” he told her, remembering the bickering between himself and Beth. “I’ve seen that first hand.”

“Just comfortable,” she said and he nodded.

“It can make your life easier,” he told her, “if you don’t go mad trying to protect it.” And then he smiled wryly, which encouraged her to smile back, albeit briefly.

“Okay. If you put it that way,” she said.

He squeezed her fingers reassuringly before letting them go. “Coffee,” he instructed, and pointed down the servery. “The percolator and grinder are down there. I’ll get the beans out of the fridge.”

Her smile was coming back. “No problem,” she said, and turned to obey. Baz had a good view of smooth, bare back as she clicked down to the other end of the room, and the way her halter dress clung to her backside was enticing enough to keep him watching for a couple of seconds longer. Then he turned towards the fridge.

So, they hadn’t kissed, but he’d just covered more emotional ground with Wynne than he had in his whole marriage to Beth. That was a good start. Or, at least, Baz felt good about it. And true to his recent policy of not projecting too far ahead, he opened the fridge with a completely clear mind, thinking only of which coffee beans to select and how he could convince his father that one scoop of nuts was actually two.

Chapter Nineteen

R
and would have whistled to keep himself company if he hadn’t been taught to be silent and invisible at night. He was on his way home to Poss, enjoying the moon and the good luck he’d created for himself.

Though he was two hundred dollars poorer, he’d temporarily placated “The man”, and the inevitable had been postponed. Poss lived to smoke another day. Not only that, Rand had sat across the desk from the suit at Legal Aid and bled her for the procedure to gut the Wilson estate. As easy as picking a mark’s pocket while you were sucking his dick.

File a copy of the signed Power of Attorney with the Magistrates Court, make sure the son never found out, then have a GP declare the old fart mentally incompetent.

After that, start writing checks…

The only problem was Rand’s age. He didn’t turn eighteen for another week, but if he could get the old man’s signature on the papers first, then sign and lodge them on his birthday, the rest should fall into place.

Living in the lap was getting closer by the day, and Rand could almost taste that morning fruit platter. Sunshine on glistening sand, an ocean view, clean towels every day, clean
sheets!
It was like imagining what heaven would be like: the smell of fresh laundry.

Only, as he walked down a stinking back alley to their squat, Rand’s thoughts drifted away from those luxuries to Possum. Rand had returned that afternoon to find the kid had blown the twenty as expected, but there was no whisky bottle to prove Poss’s claim that he’d drunk the dough. So he’d spent the money on something else. But what? And why lie about it?

A gust of wind blew a newspaper up onto Rand’s arm and he shook it off, squinting against the dirt flying around. Someone had crapped in the alley and it stunk, but Rand preferred the stink to the street. Well–lit areas were a magnet for cops who got off on intimidation, and although it would be a test of his skill to pick a cops pocket while being frisked, Rand knew that would be suicide. They’d be looking for him then. Better to be just another indistinguishable street kid scuttling away.

Better for Poss too, which was why Rand was happier to leave him at home. The kid had a big mouth that had already drawn the wrong kind of attention, but Rand was paying out that debt. Another thing tying them to the Valley. Money would free them from that. Money fixed everything.

The alley ended in a gust of fresh air and Rand sucked it up before glancing around the corner and darting across the street into the next alley. It stunk of piss, and half way down Rand discovered why – a bum asleep in a pile of soggy newspapers, a port bottle at his side.

Rand kicked the bottle over on his way through. He didn’t hate drunks — they were mostly benign — but their addictions made them lazy and Rand knew the best way to get them up and walking, thinking about food, was to remove their grog. Otherwise they had no self–respect and were happy to stagger around in pissy clothes.

The one time Poss had pissed himself, Rand had taken him out the back and hosed him. That wasn’t the only time Rand had hosed Poss, but when he’d been pissy Rand had made noise about it, waking their neighbors, letting everyone see Possum’s humiliation. Middle of winter, shrunken balls weather, and the kid had hated it. But like a puppy being housetrained, he’d respected Rand’s authority after that and got changed whenever he disgraced himself — well, as soon as he regained consciousness after his binge.