The Girl in the Hard Hat (43 page)

She changed into a fresh pair of jeans, new underwear and a shirt. The dry clothing against her skin made her feel like a million dollars. It was almost a luxury.

As she stepped out of the toilet she thanked the guys and was about to move back to the desk she’d set up at the back of the gym when a shadow crossed her path. Its owner was the very last person she wanted to see.

‘Mike.’ Her acknowledgement was tight and unwelcoming. She refused to attach the word ‘uncle’ to his name. ‘
Now
is not the time.’

‘I just want two minutes,’ he pleaded. ‘Two minutes to explain.’

‘I have too much to do.’

‘
Please
.’

Something in his voice stopped her. Desperation perhaps – the sound of a man on the verge of tears. He pointed at a sports equipment storeroom near the toilets. ‘We’ll have some privacy in there.’

Reluctantly, she inclined her head. They walked into the room and the smell of worn rubber assailed her senses. Surrounding them were several plastic bins of balls, mitts and bats. They didn’t close the door because there were no windows in the room and so no light. But it was enough to keep them away from prying eyes and ears.

‘Talk quickly,’ she said flatly.

‘Firstly I want to say how glad I am to see you.’ A hand reached towards her, which she quickly stepped back from. ‘The cyclone was so bad. I . . . I thought I’d lost you.’

Wendy lifted her chin. ‘You lost me twenty-nine years ago, Mike, long before there was any cyclone in the picture.’ She sighed. ‘My mother was wrong about a lot of things but she was right about you. You’ve never been interested in me. So why guilt should suddenly prick you now is mind-boggling.’

‘I was trying to do the right thing by my brother. I wanted to ease the pain I had caused him,’ Mike said tightly, his bald head beading with sweat. The man did look rather sick with his own self-loathing. It was the only reason Wendy waited impatiently for the rest. ‘I didn’t want to complicate his life any further. I’d done a very, very selfish thing and I was trying to make up for it by exiling myself.’

‘What about me?’

‘I didn’t allow myself to think of you. In my mind, you were not my child. You were his child. It didn’t matter about DNA. I had no right to you, as I had no right to Helen. It wasn’t personal.’

‘You know what,’ Wendy tapped a finger to her palm, ‘I just don’t get it why the lot of you think that once you’ve revealed to me that I was just a bargaining chip in your little love triangle that that’s supposed to make me feel better. Am I supposed to say, no worries, guys, it wasn’t personal, you were too busy fighting amongst yourselves to be bothered about me.’ She gritted her teeth. ‘I’m a person, damn it! And I’ve been pushed from pillar to post my whole life because the three of you couldn’t stop playing your stupid mind games. I have never felt wanted or loved or special to anyone . . .’

She hung her head.
Except – maybe – to Gavin.

His name resonated with the beat of her heart. But she firmly pulled her thoughts away from that can of worms and refocused on Mike. ‘It’s over now. I don’t want any of you in my life any more. This time,
I’m
moving on.’

‘But you don’t understand,’ Mike rushed out. ‘I realise all that. I realise that what we did was wrong. Shameful in fact! That’s why I couldn’t tell you I was your father. I knew you would shun me like this. But please, if there is any chance –’

‘There is
no
chance,’ Wendy cried, before grasping at what self-control she still had. ‘Now, if you don’t mind, we’re in a state of emergency here. And I know you don’t care about anyone but yourself, but I do.’

Fury shot up her throat like an electric current as she exited the storeroom. It was a full five minutes before she regained the ability to think straight.

As it turned out, that was not a second too soon.

The men were just finishing their hot dogs when the front entrance of the gym burst open again and in walked Carl, Gavin, Dimitri, Lena, Dan and three police officers. It took all Wendy’s strength not to do an Annabel George and race across the room to throw herself into Gavin’s arms.

‘Is everyone all right?’ she demanded, noticing that Lena was limping. Dan was supporting her.

‘Fine.’ Lena smiled at Wendy reassuringly. ‘Just a slight accident.’

Wendy came over and quickly embraced her friend. ‘Where were you? Why didn’t you come back to the school?’

Bulldog grimaced. ‘We sort of got stuck in a bathroom. But it held. So we were lucky.’

‘A bathroom?’ Before she could ask them anything further Carl interrupted.

‘Is that fuckin’ hot dogs I smell? Where is my fiancée?’

After these questions were answered, it didn’t take him or Dimitri long to excuse themselves.

‘Ma’am,’ one of the police officers addressed Wendy, ‘is there a private room in this building where we can take witness statements from this couple?’

‘Um . . .’ For a moment Wendy’s mind went blank and then she remembered the storeroom. ‘Yes, the storeroom. Take a couple of torches with you.’

She grabbed two red ones that were lying on the far side of her makeshift desk. Lena and Dan hobbled away with the law enforcers. She was finally alone with Gavin.

He grinned at her. ‘I thought they’d never leave.’

This time, Wendy did not resist the urge to throw her arms around his neck. ‘Thank goodness you’re back. I’ve been worried sick. I’m trying to do my best here but I can’t concentrate with my mind still on you and that man . . .’ She swallowed hard. ‘Skinner.’

He gently pulled back a little and said softly, ‘Well, I had to come back, didn’t I? That game of poker is long overdue.’

She dropped her arms and put some distance between them. ‘I’m not playing games with you any more, Gavin. I’m done. I want the truth. All of it. Now.’

He scratched the back of his neck. ‘It’s difficult to know where to start.’

‘How about your real name. Or did your case officer, Janet, let you keep that?’

‘My real name is Gavin Rusman. We only changed my surname to Jones.’

She leaned back on the desk, arms and legs folded, waiting for him to continue.

His lips twitched. ‘I’ve been in witness protection for the last five years because I put Skinner’s brother away for murder. He’s been after me ever since. You can understand why I had to keep that a secret, right? I signed an agreement with the government.’

Her limbs loosened a little. ‘Okay, so you weren’t just being an arse with all those secrets on purpose.’

‘Thank you for the concession.’ He inclined his head. ‘I take it it’s not a very large one?’

‘You’ve been nothing but a ratbag since I met you!’

‘I was actually trying to protect you. I didn’t want you to get messed up in all my problems. Look at what happened to Dan and Lena.’ Some of the bravado left his face. ‘They found that green Mitsubishi, you know.’

Wendy’s hand covered her mouth. ‘You’re kidding.’ Thank God she already knew they were safe. Still, her stomach flipped over. ‘When we all went off to find you, none of us were thinking straight.
Especially me
. I just knew I had to get to you and I put everyone in danger. How could I have thought a cricket bat would be any match against a
druglord
?’

‘Well,’ Gavin conceded, ‘turns out Bulldog didn’t actually go with your plan.’

‘He didn’t?’

‘Not that it was a bad one.’

‘Get real, Gavin.’

‘All right,’ his eyes twinkled, ‘it was shocking. But who am I to complain?’ He came towards her, cupping her cheek and causing a full-body tingle. ‘You and Chub saved my life.’

She pushed his hand away. ‘Stop trying to distract me from this story. What did Bulldog do?’

‘The Mitsubishi was parked outside a house, a rental property, I assume. Dan and Lena had all their PPE in the back of the ute. So they got fully kitted out, took a couple of clipboards and went and knocked on the door.’

‘Okay,’ she frowned, still not quite sure where he was going with this.

‘When one of Skinner’s men opened the door, Bulldog said they were contracted by FESA to check the safety of the property before the storm hit.’

Clever.

‘So they went in and pretended to check the property while looking for me. In fact, everything was going really well until one of Skinner’s men who was at the camp recognised Lena in the garden. She was calling my name softly.’

A chill ran down Wendy’s spine. ‘So then what happened?’

‘They decided to take them hostage and locked them in the bathroom.’

‘Aah,
the bathroom
.’

‘Skinner’s guys thought it would be uncomfortable, but as you know it’s the strongest room in the house.’

‘And . . .’

‘The rest of the house . . . wasn’t so strong.’ Gavin shrugged. ‘When the police got there they found two bodies in the living room. One was Skinner’s and the other – one of his men. The third man, I believe, got away. Lena and Dan were still in the bathroom and absolutely fine. Lena actually hurt her ankle tripping on debris on the way out.’

Despite the fact that there was definitely no love lost between her and Skinner, Wendy couldn’t stop her throat closing up. Having just been through the cyclone herself, she knew his death must have been awful. And yet still, she had to ask: ‘What happened?’

‘They didn’t have cyclone shutters on the windows. The ones in the living room imploded and basically they got glassed. Looks like Skinner was fatally wounded in the neck by a huge shard.’

Wendy cringed and looked away. ‘You know, I almost feel sorry for him.’

‘But not quite?’ It was a question more than a statement.

‘No.’ She looked back at him, suddenly shy. ‘After what he did to you . . . I can’t even forgive a dead man for that.’

He watched her silently for a moment, hands buried in the pockets of jeans that had long since dried.

He looked a mess. The shirt he was wearing was crushed and dirty. The buttons were out of sync, so that one side appeared to be longer than the other. His hair was not just tousled, some of it was standing on end, and the shadow along his jaw showed how badly he needed a shave.

All in all, he looked delicious.

Bloody delicious.

Nothing could ever disguise Gavin’s healthy virility or the sparkle in his eye that was always her undoing. A lump formed in her throat as the moment she had been dreading finally arrived.

‘Listen, about what happened in the storeroom last night . . .’

She pushed off the desk, hoping to give herself more strength by standing rather than slouching. Still, she couldn’t resist trying to stem some of the coming pain. ‘Look, don’t worry about it. It’s all right. You don’t have to explain. I get it.’

‘Giving me a get out of jail free card, are you?’ he asked quietly.

‘Well, I wouldn’t put it that way exactly.’

He ignored this remark. ‘What if I don’t want one?’

‘I don’t understand.’ Her voice faltered.

‘I haven’t told you the truth yet. At least not the truth I’ve owed you for a long time,’ he began, a certain vulnerability she had never heard before suddenly entering his voice. ‘You’re right. There should be no more games between us.’

‘No more games.’ She nodded, not daring to say more.

‘The truth is, Wendy,’ he lifted his eyes to hers and they blazed like fire, ‘I love you.’

Her heart stopped.

‘I think I loved you from the moment you slapped me in the face. You were a real wake-up call for me in every way.’ He grimaced. ‘Not that I didn’t fight it.’ His head bowed as he struggled with the explanation. ‘I will admit my original intentions weren’t exactly honourable, but it didn’t take long for things to change. Of course, I knew we couldn’t be together, at least not like that.’

‘Why not?’ Her voice was a breathless whisper.

‘I didn’t want you to be in danger by being associated with me. Turns out, I did a very poor job of protecting you.’ He looked away. ‘Can you forgive me?’

She stared at him for a moment and then, licking dry lips, said, ‘Already have.’

‘Really?’ He met her eyes quickly, his expression hopeful.

‘Oh, for goodness’ sake!’ She laughed, holding up her arms. ‘Just shut up and kiss me.’

There was that cocky grin she knew and loved. ‘I thought you’d never ask.’

He put both hands on her waist and pulled her to him, taking her mouth as soon as their bodies met. Her arms wrapped around his neck and she soaked him in like sunshine, glorying in the peace that she only found in Gavin’s arms.

He pulled back just a breath. ‘You do love me, right?’

‘What do you think?’

He groaned and kissed her again. For a moment they were lost in their own little world. Nothing else mattered except the fact that they’d both finally found home.

The sound of a throat clearing cut through the magic. They broke contact but only enough to turn their heads towards the intruder, cheek to cheek.

It was Chub, eyebrow raised, foot tapping. ‘Something you want to tell me, little mate?’

Wendy grinned at his impersonation of her from earlier, and shrugged. ‘What can I say? Turns out we have a lot in common.’

The days that followed were difficult but Wendy’s heart was not heavy.