Marriage & the Mermaid (Hapless Heroes) (36 page)

“Thank you,” Wilson said, releasing Moore’s hand. Beside him Wynne Malone tried to smile a goodbye, but it wavered and fell. She went back to her whisky.

“Dr Knowles,” Moore said, keeping up the professional front. “I’ll take you back to Bundaberg now.”

Traci dragged her gaze away from the whisky glass and pinned it onto Moore. She swallowed. “That… girl swam away. We have no proof.”

Up to this point, nothing had been said of the inexplicable sight they’d witnessed in the water. To save himself a life of ridicule, Moore wanted to keep it that way. “We’ll talk about it in the car,” he told her and came around to pull out her chair.

She rose slowly and looked from young Wilson to his fiancé. “I saw her,” she said. “We all did.”

“Wynne didn’t,” Baz replied, giving Moore a pointed glance.

“Dr Knowles,” Liam said again, taking her arm and nodding a goodbye to the new owner of Saltwood and his subdued fiancé. “We’ll be in touch,” he said, then he led Traci out of the house and across the driveway to buckle her into the four wheel drive. She sat there like a pliable doll.

Baz Wilson wasn’t the only one suffering from shock.

“You can sleep if you want to,” he said.

She just stared out the windscreen at the house, so he fired up the car and drove away.

When they’d pulled off the driveway onto the track that would return them to the coast road she said, “I’m glad to be away from there.”

Moore flicked a glance at her but she was staring out the windscreen. “People in town think Saltwood is cursed,” he told her, remembering stories he’d heard about reclusive owners, acts of passion and suicides.

“She came in with that shark,” Traci said. “They came in from somewhere, and then they went back.”

“To where?”

“I’m going to find out,” Traci said. She turned to look at Moore. The car hit a bump and her hair fell from behind her ear. She tucked it back in. A sign of normality. A welcomed change from her recent vacant glances. “She was a mermaid,” Traci added. “A real live mermaid.”

Moore remembered the flashes of silver when the girl had blinked, but still he frowned. “I don’t know exactly what we saw —”

“A mermaid,” Traci reiterated. Loudly. “The same mermaid whose scales I examined in my lab.”

He wasn’t sure what to say to that.

“I’m a marine biologist,” she went on, some of her old fire returning. “And I know what I identified from that clifftop. A fish with a human female upper body.”

“We can’t be sure of that,” Moore said, but she was gaining momentum.

“It’s my job to be sure,” she snapped, and this time he heard hysteria lurking at the edges of her surety. “I identify marine life and I report what I see.”

Moore lowered his voice. “Still chasing a Nobel prize?”

She stared at him hard but didn’t reply, and after a while her breathing slowed. “I know what I saw,” she said, so softly Moore had to strain to hear over the whine of the engine.

“I saw it too,” he admitted.

They glanced at each other, then the car bounced and Traci tucked her hair behind her ear again. “Are we going to pretend it didn’t happen?”

Moore nodded. “We’re not going to announce it to the world,” he replied softly, “because we have no proof. But you and I can talk about it any time you want.”

“I see.” She regarded him silently for a moment, then said, “That, Liam Moore, is the offer that just bought you a relationship.”

Two months later

Chapter Forty–Five

R
and stood motionless on the busy Brisbane footpath, a solitary figure in a sea of moving pedestrians. He tilted his head up, squinting at a building that looked like a futuristic vampire lair, a spooky thirty story monstrosity of darkly tinted glass and batwing extensions. Obviously meant to intimidate.

He dropped his gaze as the huge sliding glass doors at the base parted and a cream–suited glamazon emerged, all blond backswept messy–bun and celebrity dark glasses. She stalked down the impressive black marble stairs into the throng who seemed to recognize her superiority and parted to let her through. She strode past Rand in six inch heels as if he didn’t exist, and he supposed his years of trying to blend in, to become invisible, had finally paid off.

A gust of cool air hit his legs and he turned to see a limo door close behind him, shielding her from the stifling heat faster than you could say ‘wilting makeup’.

Rand knew he should get out of the sun too, but he wasn’t ready to go inside yet.

So instead he returned his attention to the printed–out email in his hand.
Mr Budjenski … request the pleasure of your company … news about a mutual acquaintance … ten am on the morning of the eighth.
It was signed on behalf of Mr Balthazar S. Wilson by a solicitor who had offices on the fourteenth floor. Rand looked back at the building and counted floors. The fourteenth looked just the same as the others, except, maybe the windows were shinier up there.

Wasting time Budjenski and it’s already nine forty–five.

He glanced back at the building’s doors, reminding himself that he should be able to stroll in there and be perfectly safe. Betty was convinced it was a trap, but she didn’t know what he knew. Because he hadn’t told her. And he doubted Wilson had told anyone either. About their ‘mutual acquaintance’. The
bikini bimbo,
Betty called her, saying she was damned if she’d have that
slut
anywhere near her men — plural — but Betty really only owned Possum who she led around like he had a ring in his nose. Rand had made it blindingly clear that he was unavailable to Betty, and she’d got the message.

Possum was in sex–heaven, but Rand didn’t feel envy. He only wanted Venus, but she was completely unavailable to him for twenty years, irrevocably removed from his life, although that didn’t stop him thinking about her every day. When water came out of a tap he remembered where she lived. In the shower — oh yeah, the fantasies in the shower. Even the smell of fish gave him a hard–on now, and that was plain scary.

But she hadn’t been, scary. She’d been more open and honest about sex than any woman he’d ever met. And the wonder of seeing her in the water like that… wow, it just wouldn’t go away. He only had to close his eyes and he was right back there, the breath locked in his lungs, skin prickling with awe as she’d looked up through the water at him. He’d never seen anything like it in his life, and he really,
really
wanted to see it again — to see her — before he died.

Surely Wilson must feel the same way. That must be why he’d sent for Rand. He wanted a reunion, like war buddies who gathered together to affirm that what had happened to them on the battlefield was real. This wasn’t about stolen silverware or the old man dying. It was about fairytales coming to life.

So he should go up there, instead of standing on the street in front of the building as if he wasn’t sure what to do. He was here, so he must intend to go in, and without giving himself more time to think he set off and was through the pedestrian throng and up the black marble stairs before second–thoughts could intrude. One step onto a beautiful sculptured mat activated those massive tinted doors and they slid across, releasing a wave of cool air that seemed to caress his skin and then draw him into the building. He went with it, his Doc Martens silent on the pristine red carpet.

The uniformed lobby attendant nodded as he strode past, which surprised Rand. He imagined it wasn’t every day they had torn denim shorts through the lobby. But manners were manners. Rand nodded back, then he was inside the lift listening to Pavarotti. On the fourteenth floor a stunning blond receptionist — who Betty would probably also hate — showed him into an impressive book–lined office, and he went straight to the window and caught his breath gazing down on the winding Brisbane River, surprised that it actually looked majestic from up high. All he’d ever known of it was the bad quarter: mud and beer cans and mangrove stench.

Someone came in behind him and Rand turned, nerves catching up with him finally, but he managed to say, “Wilson,” and nod in acknowledgement of his former nemesis.

“Budjenski,” Wilson replied, politely enough. He was sporting a shiny gold ring on his left hand and a fresh tan at the edges of his expensive suit. Honeymoon? “Please, sit,” he said, gesturing to the coffee table between two couches in the corner. There was a tray on it with cups and cakes and a coffeepot. They sat opposite each other and Wilson poured himself a cup but Rand shook his head. Nervous stomach.

They were alone at least, which confirmed Rand’s suspicions that this was therapy, and not the heavy hand of the law descending, but Wilson’s hospitality seemed overly polite. It made Rand’s butterflies dance. “Is this about Venus?” he asked, cutting to the chase.

“In a way,” Wilson replied and sipped his coffee, then he glanced at Rand and said, “You took some valuables from my house when you left.”

Rand looked into those unreadable brown eyes and felt the butterflies turn into lead. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been so wrong. He was about to go to jail, and the only reason Betty would visit him to be to say
I told you so.
Then Poss’s ex–pimp would ‘repossess’ the kid and put him back to work. Fuck! So much for learning
trust.
“What sort of things?” he asked Baz, and glanced at the door, wondering if there were police on the other side of it now.

“Nothing of importance to me,” Wilson replied, and Rand glanced back at him, surprised.

“What?” he asked, not quite daring to hope.

“I’m just establishing facts,” Wilson replied and put his cup down. “So, let me see if I have this straight.” He raised a hand and started counting off fingers. “First you make contact with my father under false pretences in an unsuccessful bid to gain ownership of my inheritance, then you arrive at my home and make love to my virgin housekeeper, before capturing and threatening my father with a gun you brought with you, then you handcuff him to a wall inside a cave, after which you steal my cleaning lady and my silverware and leave. In a stolen car. Have I missed anything?”

“Sounds really bad when you say it like that,” Rand replied, feeling an inappropriate surge of pride at his list of accomplishments. “And I didn’t give your father to Venus —”

“I know,” Baz said, then he glanced away, as though still coming to terms with the fact that his father was dead. A few seconds later he met Rand’s gaze again and said, “He got himself free and went after Venus.”

“She got away okay?” Rand had leant forward on the seat, his heart racing now in a way that it hadn’t when he’d thought his own liberty was threatened.

“I’m sure she’s fine,” Baz said, and there was nothing in his expression that wasn’t open and honest.

Rand nodded at that and sighed, relieved.

“I’d like to put all that behind us,” Baz said, and Rand could only nod in agreement. Especially the criminal sections. “I have something to discuss with you, Randolph,” Baz said. “May I call you Randolph?”

“Well, I’d prefer that to what you called me in your father’s study,” Rand replied, remembering the old man’s indignation
All this fuss over a simple manly hug.
It still sent chills through Rand, realizing the whole ‘doddering old man’ thing had been an act. He was very glad that fucker was dead. Although it might be best not to mention that to his son.

“Venus is coming back in twenty years,” Baz said.

Rand instantly sat forward on his seat again, cursing the way his dick woke up as well. “Do you believe that?” he asked, not really daring to hope, and at the same time wondering why it meant so much to him, why
she
meant so much to him, and had done even before he’d found out about… her tail.

“I have no reason to doubt it,” Baz said. “Her sister came to us twenty years ago, to the day, that Venus arrived. So unless something happens to her wherever she is now…” He shrugged.

“She said she’d be back.”

“Then she will.”

“I want to be there,” Rand said.

“I thought so.” Baz relaxed back on the couch, watching Rand. At last he said, “You want to be the first person she sees when she bellies up onto that beach as a human, don’t you?”

“Oh yeah.” Rand nodded.

“And you’ll do anything to have that opportunity.”

“Just tell me who I have to kill,” Rand quipped, but the moment the words were out of his mouth, he realised what he’d said. “Sorry. We’ve been there.”

“Yes we have,” Baz replied quietly, and they looked at each other for so long the suspense started eating at Rand. At last Baz said, “So you’re prepared to wait?”

“Absolutely,” Rand answered truthfully. “There isn’t going to be anyone else like her.”

Baz nodded. “If I hadn’t fallen in love with Wynne, I might be fighting you for that weekend.”

“You’d lose,” Rand said, hot jealousy stomping all over commonsense.

“Perhaps,” Baz replied, “But that’s irrelevant now. What
is
relevant to me is that you saved her life when you could have taken my father’s money.”

Rand relaxed enough to smile. “The old bastard would have shafted me if I had.”

“Probably,” Baz agreed. “But I’m different to my father,” he said, and leant forward, lowering his voice. “Like you, I believe people are more important than money. And Saltwood is full of bad memories for me. I don’t want to live there.”

“That sucks,” Rand said politely, while he wondered where the conversation was going.

“So that’s why I wanted to see you,” Baz said. “Because, unlikely though it might seem, I have a business proposition for you …”

Twenty years after that fateful weekend…

Epilogue

R
and stood in the driveway of Saltwood, waving goodbye to his ‘family’ as they drove off: Henpecked Possum, Bossy–boots Betty and their tribe of delinquent teenagers. Their black Humvee crunched up the drive and stopped just beyond the white wrought iron gates, bordered by flowering jacaranda trees. Betty jumped out and locked the gates, gave Rand another wave, then set up the sign they put out at this time every year:
Saltwood historical homestead is closed for the weekend.