Marriage & the Mermaid (Hapless Heroes) (31 page)

Just then the door swung wide and Wynne
click–clicked
in on her delightfully impractical stilettos. “Venus!” she said, although why she would be startled to find a housekeeper in the kitchen, Venus wasn’t sure. “Does Baz hide whisky in here?”

Venus pointed at the cupboard near the window and said, “I’m going into the ocean and I need to say goodbye.”

Wynne opened the cupboard and pushed a bottle aside to reach behind it and take a smaller squat one out. “Chivas. The perfect thing to cool heated tempers. Baz and his father are having a meltdown about some boy —”

“I’m going,” Venus said. “Tonight. Forever.”

“Forever?” Wynne repeated absently as she glanced around the kitchen, then strode over to the cabinet where the glasses were kept. “You’re going tonight forever?”

Venus frowned. She’d expected Wynne to at least pretend to be sad. “You have Balthazar all to yourself now,” she said.

Wynne turned back, balancing a bottle of whisky and three glasses in her hands. “Baz?” she repeated and frowned. “Sorry, what did you just say?”

“I’m leaving,” Venus said. “Aren’t your ears working?”

“Leaving?”

Wynne put the bottle and glasses down on the kitchen table and clicked over to stand in front of Venus. “Why are you leaving? Did Baz tell you… about us.”

“No. What about you?”

Wynne smiled then, and it was the strangest smile Venus had ever seen, part–embarrassment, part–smirk, and very sexy. “We’re getting married. It’s a surprise really. Although, not totally unexpected. But it happened so quickly. I’m just…”

“Not hearing properly.”

Wynne’s smile widened. “Yes. That.” Then she went on to tell Venus about their wonderful picnic and the romantic way Baz had proposed and their plans to be married at Saltwood the following month. Venus was sure Wynne had left some parts out, because she’d faltered and blushed at one point, then raced on with talk of fabric and flowers and ‘seating plans’, none of which Venus understood or cared about. But she liked watching Wynne so animated and excited, licking her lips between sentences, jiggling from one foot to another so her body was always in motion. All of which only made Venus want Wynne more, but she had sense enough to know that wasn’t going to happen now. Wynne was marrying Baz and Venus was going.

At least she’d managed to fuck Randolph, so the trip wasn’t a complete waste.

“… and I can’t wait to be Mrs Balthazar Wilson,” Wynne gushed.

“Theodore will be your father,” Venus replied, and pulled a face. She wouldn’t wish that on anyone. Cranky old man.

Wynne’s smile faded. “That’s not the part that I’m focusing on right now,” she said diplomatically, and glanced towards the door, perhaps remembering she’d been on a mission to get whisky.

Venus shrugged. “Maybe he’ll die soon,” she said.

Wynne turned back and her mouth fell open, then she shut it again and lowered her voice, “I’m going to miss you, Venus Dalrymple, or whatever your name is,” she said and pulled Venus into a hug. “I wish you were staying long enough to be my bridesmaid.”

“I wish you’d been my lover, Wynne,” Venus against her hair, stupidly wondering if there might still be time, if Wynne was distracted enough by her wedding plans to lower her guard and have one last fling. “I’d been so looking forward to undressing you…” she said, and let her hands slide down from Wynne’s back to her pert little behind.

“Venus!” Wynne hissed, then giggled as she broke free.

Click.
A sound from the door.

“… and licking every inch of you,” Venus went on, reaching forward to catch Wynne close again, enjoying the sensation of the smaller woman’s breasts against her chest, “all the way from your pretty peach toenails right up to the tips of your — “

“Let … her …
go
!”

Venus felt pressure against the side of her neck and her eyes snapped open. Ted stood beside her, holding something cold that pressed into her skin.

“Theodore!” Wynne squealed, and back–pedaled out of Venus’s arms. “What are you doing with that gun?”

Gun?
Venus had been about to pull back, but decided to stand still instead.

Wynne banged back into a chair and snatched behind herself for support. “Is this a joke?”

Ted’s eyes, when he glanced at Wynne, were slow and assessing. “Does it look like a joke?” he asked.

Venus saw Wynne swallow hard, and the fear in her eyes was contagious. “Where’s Baz?” she asked in a small voice.

“Busy with Randolph,” Ted replied. “Perhaps you could join them. I have business with…
Venus.
“ He said the name as if he knew it wasn’t hers and Venus suddenly wondered if he knew who she really was. Not Venus. Someone he obviously didn’t like. From the corner of her eye Venus saw Wynne back out of the kitchen, then the door swung shut and the only thing breaking the suspenseful silence was the
click–click–click
of Wynne’s heels as she ran away.

Leaving Venus alone with a deranged gunman.

She hoped Wynne was going to get Baz.

Ted leant in disgustingly close and sniffed at Venus, then he nodded. “You all smell the same,” he said in a voice that sent a prickle of unease down her spine. “I know what you were trying to do to Winifred,” he said, staring straight into Venus’s eyes. “You find her more attractive than Balthazar, don’t you?”

“Exactly,” Venus said, hoping that would be the end of it. But no, the gun pressed even harder as he gritted his teeth.

“Your kind should be purged,” Ted told her, and Venus was surprised at how different he looked, how mean.

“My
kind?
“ she said, thinking she should have gone while she had the chance. Ted was going to lock her up and she’d never escape.

“I know what you are,” he snarled, confirming her worst fear. Then he made a guttural growling sound and stabbed the gun into her neck.
Concentrate,
she told herself.
You’re stronger than he is.
But if she moved he might shoot her and then she wouldn’t make it back into the ocean. And she ached to be there. Still, he hadn’t shot her, which meant he either didn’t want blood on the kitchen floor, or he was bluffing.

Perhaps he merely wanted to frighten her away from Wynne. If so, that had certainly worked. She would gladly leave now without touching another person, not even Randolph. Perhaps she should tell Ted that.

But before she could, he snarled, “I think I’ll blow your brains out of your skull right here.”

So he was clearly not worried about the kitchen floor.

From beside Ted, a girl materialized and said, “If I’d known you were going to turn mental I wouldn’t have given you that.”

Venus slid her gaze sideways.

A young woman in shiny pink clothes stood watching them. She flicked her blonde ponytail and added, “I don’t think your young friend would approve of you using his gun to kill someone.”

Venus opened her mouth to say
Randolph?
then snapped it shut again, remembering that Randolph had told her to pretend they hadn’t met.

Ted glanced at the pink girl. “You didn’t give me the gun. I took it off you, Betty, while you were stealing it.”

“What can I say? The briefcase fell over. The gun fell out.”

Ted smiled grimly. “I hope Randolph didn’t have anything else in that briefcase that he wanted to keep.”

Venus frowned. Who was Betty? And then she opened her mouth to say that
she’d
knocked Randolph’s briefcase over in the cabana and it hadn’t opened, but… there was that pesky pretending–they–hadn’t–met promise again.

“But of course he’d have a gun,” Ted said. “Resourceful boy.” He turned his attention back to Venus. “Were you going to take Winifred to the secret cave?” he asked, “where your kind lures their prey?”

“No,” Venus said. She hadn’t enjoyed the cave. She would have taken Wynne to her room. “But I’m leaving tonight —”

“Yes, you’re finished here,” he spat.

The pink girl said, “I’m not staying around to watch you top someone. Just give me the money and —”

“You’ll put my valuables in your car and go?” He shook his head. “You’re not going anywhere, young lady. I saw you take the rotor out of Randolph’s convertible, but you couldn’t find his keys, could you? They weren’t in the briefcase. So you can’t steal his car, and neither can you take your own car because that young constable has your rotor.”

The pink girl narrowed her eyes.

“I’ll give you Randolph’s when I’m ready to let you go,” he said. “So you’d better do as I say.”

“Do what?” she snapped.

Ted turned back to look at Venus, but he continued speaking to Betty. “Keep my son busy and send Randolph down to me so we can conclude our business transaction. The cave is twenty paces north of the stone stairwell. It has a hidden entrance.”

Venus took a slow breath and tried to relax. If Randolph was coming to the cave, he would save her from Ted, wouldn’t he? Or would the fact that he was more interested in money than sex mean he’d do as Ted asked? It would be up to Venus to rescue herself then. Because she really had to get into the water.

Ted pulled Venus’s arm and gave her a shove towards the back door. “It’s time to for me right the wrongs of the past,” he snarled.

“What past?” Venus turned back to face him. “I haven’t been here before?” What had her sister done?

She stayed just inside the doorway, not wanting to leave the brightly lit kitchen with its floor that Ted didn’t want bloodied. While she stalled she struggled to remember something about guns, but could only recall that they fired bullets. Unless they were empty, in which case people sometimes used them as an empty threat. Could that be what Ted was doing?

“Does that gun have bullets?” she asked, pointing, because if it didn’t —

He aimed away from her and pulled the trigger. Glass shattered over the cream colored double sinks and Venus’s ears rang with the blast. “Yes it does,” he said, and pointed it at her chest again. “Betty, hand me that lantern.”

Betty whistled soft and low. “You are one mad old coot,” she said, then she hurried to obey.

Chapter Thirty–Nine

A
loud bang halted conversation, and the library became still. Rand felt the skin on the back of his neck prickle. That hadn’t been thunder. That had been a gunshot. Baz’s girlfriend, who had just run in babbling, closed her mouth and put her both her hands over it.

“Wait here,” Baz snapped, maybe at both of them, but when he left the girlfriend followed him out.

The moment the door was shut behind them Rand dived for the French windows that led onto the veranda and shoved them open.

The shot had come from the east side of the house so he ran that way, to the end of the veranda where he plastered himself against the house to look around the corner. What he saw hit him like a kidney–punch. Ted had a gun pointed at Venus, and he was forcing her along the garden path. Rand remained perfectly still, watching, but inside his chest his heart was thundering and that was trouble.

Venus had become his ‘people’ and that meant he had to protect her. From Ted. The moment he’d felt a twinge of empathy after they’d had sex he’d wondered if this might happen. He’d hoped like hell that it wouldn’t. But it had, and there was nothing he could do about it.

It wasn’t a rational decision. You didn’t use logic to work out who your ‘people’ were. It was something that just happened. In his short lifetime Rand had fucked hundreds of women, and only two of them had ever become his people. Both had been prostitutes. One had OD’s and the other had been beaten to death by a drunk Rand had found and subsequently castrated.

All he had left now was Poss, lying badly beaten at Lillbit’s, and Venus, possibly about to be shot.

Baz Wilson’s unimaginative accusations of five minutes ago were suddenly irrelevant. It didn’t matter that Rand had felt clever in the face of them, knowing Theodore Tiberius Wilson had required far more finesse to sway than a simple blow job. Being seen as the ‘injured innocent’ had immediately raised Rand in Theodore’s estimation and lowered Balthazar to the bottom of the stack. It had been exactly what Rand had needed to clinch the deal. To win.

But none of that mattered if Theodore shot Venus.

None of it.

So he padded along the veranda behind them and out into torrential rain that immediately plastered his hair to his head and ran down the collar of his suit jacket and stuck his shirt to his back. His beautifully shined shoes sloshed through puddles as he trailed Ted through the rose garden and then down a stone staircase onto the beach.

Rand kept far enough back to ensure the old man never saw him, and that worked perfectly until Rand reached the bottom of the stairs and first Venus, then Ted, melted into a solid wall of rock and disappeared.

No way!

They’d only been ten meters ahead of him, and now they were gone. He ran over the wet sand, keeping close to the cliff face and wary of the tide that appeared to be rising. At one point, a foaming wave almost reached the sheer stone cliff and he had a heart–beat’s hesitation, wondering if he’d be trapped. But he kept running, right up to the place where they’d disappeared.

Rain lashed his face and the roar of the ocean at his side was terrifying. Then thunder met lightning directly overhead and the combination of blinding light and deafening sound tore along his nerves like cocaine.

Where was she?

He felt along the wall, searching the shadows. Then he saw a faint illumination that quickly disappeared. He took two steps forward to where he’d seen it and slid his hand along what appeared to be a straight section of cliff, but the shadows were deceptive. There was a gap that led behind, perhaps to a cave, and he followed his hand to slip inside.

Miraculously, the sound of the tempest outside dulled. Rand knew it was there, but it was no longer an assault on his senses. Reprieved, he stood perfectly still in the inky darkness and tried to catch his breath.

The brief glow of illumination he’d seen was no longer there, but he knew that somewhere ahead of him Theodore had a gun on Venus. He wondered what the old man intended to do to her, then realised it didn’t matter. Rand just wanted her away from the threat.