Heiress On Fire

by Kellie McCourt

  KELLIE MCCOURT has worked as a national and international television scriptwriter, anchor, producer and reporter. Kellie is also an experienced print journalist and magazine editor.

  She has a double BA in Journalism and Creative Writing from Curtin University, studied journalism in SE Asia and completed a postgrad scholarship program at UNSW. Alas, her mother is still waiting for her to ‘get a real job’, like a lawyer. Or an accountant.

  Kellie had a misspent youth as a wayward socialite, and loves shoes, friends, reading, shoes and baked goods.

  Kellie is passionate about creating entertaining, gender empowering stories. She lives in Sydney with her two amazing young daughters, and two poodles.

  www.harlequinbooks.com.au

  To my incredible, amazing, talented girls.

  I hope you love reading this book

  (once you’re old enough to read this book).

  CONTENTS

  Chapter 1: Living in the Pool House

  Chapter 2: Silverwater

  Chapter 3: Heiress on Fire

  Chapter 4: The Chesterfield of Doom

  Chapter 5: The Snap Hat

  Chapter 6: Diane Von Neuvo and the Deadly Blow Fish

  Chapter 7: Bar Run Bombshell

  Chapter 8: Signing Bonus

  Chapter 9: Orphans and Widow

  Chapter 10: Yes. Sure. Definitely. Absolutely

  Chapter 11: Almost Certainly Legal

  Chapter 12: The Fine Print

  Chapter 13: The Bankstown Boutique

  Chapter 14: Vehicular Heiress

  Chapter 15: Heiress for Hire

  Chapter 16: Heiress Undercover

  Chapter 17: Naked in a Bathtub

  Chapter 18: Bananas

  Chapter 19: Training

  Chapter 20: Broken Air Conditioners

  Chapter 21: Excitable Cheeky Leprechauns

  Chapter 22: Bank on It

  Chapter 23: Back Door

  Chapter 24: Front Doors

  Chapter 25: Fire Train

  Chapter 26: The Crown Jewels

  Chapter 27: The Funeral

  Chapter 28: Mother Lover Wife

  Chapter 29: Tonight’s Special

  Chapter 30: Gun Girl Gorilla Vanilla Coke

  Chapter 31: The Cat Jones ‘C’ Diet

  Chapter 32: Lights

  Chapter 33: Coconuts

  Chapter 34: Water Slides

  Chapter 35: Phi Phi

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  CHAPTER 1

  LIVING IN THE POOL HOUSE

  It is exactly 11.10 am on a glorious, sunny summer day, in a glorious house. Well, a glorious pool house in the same compound as a glorious main house. But what is important here is that I have a glorious bottle of perfectly chilled Shaw & Smith sauvignon blanc in my hand. It is not my first for the day and it certainly will not be my last. Who knew a $50 bottle of wine could taste so good?

  I will admit I am slightly mortified that I have been wearing the same pair of mismatched silk boxers and camisole for at least four days. And I have officially run out of clean knickers.

  I am also not super thrilled that I am not in my own home, a recently completed penthouse in Sydney’s Double Bay, because, well, it burnt down.

  And yes, I am drinking cheap wine and living in my mother’s pool house, because I am completely devastated that last week—I think it was last week, it might have been the week before, I am not one hundred per cent sure what day it is—I blew up my husband, Dr Richard Bombberg MBBS FRACS.

  Not on purpose you understand. Absolutely by accident. I did not set fire to the penthouse on purpose either. Both things: Absolutely. By. Accident.

  I mean, after all, no one educated at Sacred Heart St Ignatius Ladies College (SILC), the most exclusive private girl’s school in Sydney’s Eastern Suburbs, would kill their husband on purpose if he were a surgeon, right? Maybe if they had accidentally married an accountant or something. But not a surgeon. And certainly not a plastic surgeon. And absolutely, certainly not a first-class plastic and reconstructive surgeon.

  Sadly, judging by the frequency of their visits, I have a feeling the police do not feel the same way.

  My name is Indigo Hasluck-Royce-Jones-Bombberg. In addition to now being a widow-heiress kind of heiress, I am also the heiress to the Hasluck-Royce fortune. The latter of which makes me a billion-heiress.

  And in another recent addition to my social portfolio, I’m apparently also a stone-cold killer. Getting front row seats at Fashion Week this year could be a problem.

  As you may have noticed, I am a hyphen person—not one, not two, but three hyphens. That is what happens when big egos marry big portfolios. And in truth my first name is not actually, technically Indigo. It is Indigo-Daisy-Violet-Amber. No, no one ever calls me that. God—at least I hope not.

  I am able to consume multiple bottles of wine and remain upright thanks to the wonderful genes of my father, the late, great William David Hasluck-Royce. Known to his friends as Lucky Bill.

  Lucky Bill died when I was fourteen under what we would politely call somewhat dubious circumstances. That is to say he wrapped his Ferrari around a telephone pole in Central Park and was killed instantly.

  Not so scandalous if you ignore the fact that alive and well in the back seat, along with a crate of Cristal Champagne, a whole, raw, pink salmon, an ounce of a white powder in a plastic zip-lock bag and a green velvet sack with exactly twenty-eight green marbles, were nineteen-year-old identical twins from Thailand, Mia and Tia.

  Please, don’t ask me what the marbles were about. I don’t know and I don’t want to know. They concern me more than the fish.

  Mia and Tia had recently graced the cover of Sports Illustrated together. And Dad had a thing for models.

  In fact, I think he just liked beautiful things. You cannot fault him for that. Shoes. Handbags. Shiny new appliances. Who doesn’t like beautiful things?

  Few items can match the splendour of a pair of Jimmy Choos or a new Smeg toaster.

  I cannot believe my whole shoe collection went up in smoke. That alone should convince the police I did not do it on purpose. If I was going to kill my husband by blowing him up I would do it far, far away from my Choos.

  From my father I also gained my green eyes (which I like) and my brown hair (which is too dark and too thick for my liking). My skin is not pale enough to be English rose and not dark enough to be exotic. It is however, mercifully (and thanks to some medical and pharmacological assistance) smooth and meticulously maintained.

  My mother is, of course, beautiful. But not just ordinary beautiful. Model beautiful. And not just model beautiful, but supermodel beautiful. I am the daughter of Her Supreme Highness, the supermodel nine out of ten other supermodels recommend, the most beautiful woman in the universe: Catherine ‘The Cat’ Jones.

  You might think this sounds like a good thing, being The Cat’s daughter. It is not.

  I am five foot nine inches tall (almost) and a size 10. Okay, maybe a size 12. Which is perfectly lovely and wonderful until you stand next to your mother who is six foot and a size 6.

  While it’s possible that she’s now a size 7 or 8 she’s still without line, flaw or grey hair. I doubt I will be so fortunate.

  And because as a child I was constantly referred to as—and mercilessly teased for being constantly referred to as—‘Cat’s Little Kitten’.

  I have a name. And it is not Kitten.

  So, I was hiding in Mother’s pool house, avoiding the police, Mother, Grandmother, the media, Mother’s manager, Grandmother’s lawyers, Richard’s lawyers, insurance companies, impending lawsuits and the world at large. It was working. Sort of. I had no clean undergarments and Mother was knocking at the pool house door.
/>   ‘Indie?’

  I could order new underwear online from La Perla and continue to pretend I was not in residence at the pool house, but these were not long-term solutions.

  Knock, knock. Harder this time.

  ‘Indigo?’

  I needed Richard. Richard would have known what to do. But Richard is not here. He’s gone, I killed him and I miss him and everything is confusing.

  Bam, bam, hard enough to chip a nail.

  ‘Indigo-Daisy-Violet-Amber! Open this door!’

  Okay, so some people call me Indigo-Daisy-Violet-Amber. I pushed myself up from the bed and stumbled over the wreckage strewn across the soft, creamy bedroom carpet: discarded designer clothes and their tags, a variety of damp towels, wet bathers and their tags, empty Shaw & Smith bottles, used wine glasses and half-eaten Happy Meals.

  Happy Meals make me happy. They always have. I have not eaten anything but Happy Meals since I woke up in the hospital. God—I hope no one ever finds out I have a Happy Meal habit.

  I staggered into the highly polished hallway, knocking into a vintage end table and a large potted plant. I made it to the front door and opened it. She winced. So did I. I had been parted from the sun for too many hours.

  Through the white light I could see she was dressed in a floating vintage Dior skirt and a white stretchy singlet. No shoes. No bra. Her still ultra-thick blonde hair falling in waves down her back.

  ‘I bought you a Happy Meal.’

  I shielded my eyes with one hand and held the other out for proof.

  She placed the happy red box on my outstretched palm. It was still warm.

  The box and I weaved our way down the hall into the kitchen. I prayed she would not see the bedroom.

  ‘Oh my God!’

  Damn. Should have closed the bedroom door.

  At least the kitchen was still clean. It’s all high white ceilings, cream marble surfaces and shiny green appliances. I just love appliances. I do not know how to use them, with the exception of the toaster and the kettle, but I am attracted to their sparkle.

  Mother looked ashen when she entered the kitchen.

  ‘I just need the maid to do a tidy-up,’ I said.

  ‘Tidy-up? I’ll need a high priest to perform an exorcism when you leave,’ she said.

  I headed to the fridge and selected another bottle of wine. ‘Not necessary,’ I said flourishing the bottle, ‘I am never leaving.’

  Her mouth fell open when she saw the inside of the refrigerator—it was lined shelf after shelf with bottles of Shaw & Smith. I’d found a dozen boxes of the wine in the storage room and was steadily making my way through them. At least the refrigerator was neat and clean.

  ‘Indigo-Daisy, honey, you can’t go on like this. You have to come out and face the world.’ She paused to qualify: ‘At some point. In some form. Eventually.’

  I began picking though the cupboards looking for a clean wine glass. ‘No.’

  ‘Please.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Your grandmother’s lawyers have done their best to shield you, but they’ve pushed their luck as far as they can. This Detective Burns says if you don’t agree to a meeting tomorrow, they’re going to arrest you.’

  Damn.

  I gave up on finding a clean glass, sat down at the kitchen table and opened the Happy Meal. I took out the burger and checked. ‘Extra pickles?’

  She nodded.

  It must have killed her to buy fast food.

  She poked a manicured finger at my happy red box and placed a disappointed look on her face. ‘You might as well let them put you in prison if you’re going to live on that.’

  She eats dried cranberries and raw almonds. And likes it. It is often hard to believe we are related.

  ‘I was thinking about what you said yesterday,’ she said, giving one last disgusted glance to my burger.

  I looked across the table at her blankly. I was possibly a little drunk yesterday and could not quite remember what I said.

  She gazed at me expectantly. ‘About your brain being like the Tiffany’s counter at Christmas?’

  ‘Busy?’ I guessed.

  She nodded her head in excitement. ‘Yes! And how there were so many people waiting to be served you didn’t know what to do. You couldn’t possibly ever see to them all. So no one ended up getting their jewellery.’

  I nodded. She understood. There were just so many things I needed to do, so many people I needed to face, I did not know where to start. Hence my hiding in the pool house. Plus, I did not want to go to prison for blowing up my husband, and a woman I am pretty sure was a drug addict. Being an heiress has not exactly prepared me for a life of dealing with these types of things.

  Lawyers, stockbrokers and employees. That is Grandmother’s department. She is the Hasluck-Royce matriarch, my dead father’s mother, and since his departure, she has allowed me to live a life relatively free of scary decisions. Once a month she sends me papers to sign and I sign them. The next day money appears. Easy.

  Richard was a lot like that too. He took care of things. He gave me papers to sign, I signed them. I gave him bills to pay, he paid them.

  It’s not like I did nothing. I organised our social lives around his work schedule, which was not easy; Richard was often overseas expanding his cosmetic surgery empire. And helping all those poor disfigured children.

  I have many valuable skills: I know which shows to attend at which fashion weeks, which screenings to attend at which film festivals, which plays and operas to attend, which charities to support.

  But police? Lawyers? Richard’s Sydney Plastics staff? Insurance companies? Funeral arrangements? The surviving guests from the cocktail party? No.

  My go-to person after Richard was my best friend Anna Del Rico. Anna knows more about handling scandal than anyone else I have ever met. However, Anna was currently in hiding from her family after marrying her third (possibly fourth, I have lost track) very young, very pretty husband. While the rumour mill placed her in rehab in Costa Rica, I knew she was on an island in the Bahamas with no communication with the outside world bar a fortnightly fishing boat bringing nothing but food, alcohol and birth control. I had sent an SOS in a bottle of Bollinger but was not holding my breath. He was only nineteen. They could be there for months.

  ‘Indie! Indie!’ Mother was shaking me, a frightened expression on her face. ‘You went somewhere far away.’

  ‘I wish I was somewhere far away,’ I said.

  She hugged me to her. ‘You can stop worrying so much. I got you a personal shopper, to help you serve all the problems at your Tiffany’s counter.’

  I stared blankly at her. How would a personal shopper cure my inability to hold on to any coherent thought long enough to formulate an intelligible plan of action?

  ‘A personal shopper?’

  ‘She’s perfect for you Indie! A gift from the universe,’ she said excitedly. ‘She’s going to look at all your jobs and things to do, and help you deal with them, fix them, one at a time.’

  The woman was a genius. Why hadn’t I thought of it?

  ‘A personal assistant? That is what you mean, right Mother? A personal assistant?’

  She nodded. ‘Uh-huh, a personal assistant, personal shopper person.’

  We bounced up and down together. I am not a bouncer but I was awash with joy, hope and relief.

  ‘Where did you get her from? Did you steal her?’

  She went red. ‘No, Indigo! I swear she was already on parole.’

  ‘You mean she was on probation at a firm? Or did you sneak her out from an internship? Who did you steal her from? Google? Amazon?’

  I was getting my very own super-organised, fleet-footed, sharp-minded helper. Praise the Lord and all things Chanel.

  ‘MIT?’ I continued, ‘Harvard? Oxford? Cambridge?’

  ‘No, Silverwater.’

  Silverwater. It sounded familiar. Why did I know that name?

  ‘Is that a finishing school?’

  Mother
shook her head up and down and then side to side. ‘No, well, yes, of sorts.’ She pulled an iPhone from her bag and tapped in a text message.

  Thirty seconds later into the kitchen sauntered a tall (my guess would be five foot ten), slim, Chinese, possibly Vietnamese, woman. She had high cheekbones, flawless tanned skin and full lips. She could have been twenty-three or thirty-two. Her long, black hair was flecked with light brown sun-made, non-salon streaks. She had honey-brown eyes, long, thick black lashes and a sculpted, athletic body that was probably a B cup on a good day. Her alert intensity was palpable.

  She was a frightening cross between a Doberman and a Ferrari.

  She looked around the disheveled but still lavish and somewhat shiny marble kitchen and despite her torn, sprayed-on skinny black jeans and what had to have been a discount store T-shirt (and God forbid, were those sneakers?) she did not seem impressed.

  ‘Here she is,’ said Mother hurrying over to her. ‘Esmerelda I’d like you to officially meet my daughter, Indigo-Daisy-Violet-Amber. Indigo.’

  Esmerelda crossed the kitchen, her walk runway-model-meets-FBI agent-sweeping-a-room-for-armed-suspects. She held out her hand. The instant her hand touched mine her eyes softened, her mouth curved into a grin and the Doberman turned into an excited puppy.

  ‘Dude!’ she said in tones of Bill and Ted awe.

  I went from feeling terrified to calm to confused in seconds.

  ‘You’re the Heiress on Fire, right? This is the shit! Like, wow. You’re a legend or something.’ She was vigorously shaking my hand.

  Who was the Heiress on Fire? I peeked over my shoulder to see if she was speaking to another heiress, who might have somehow snuck into the room.

  ‘Me?’ I said pointing at my chest. ‘Me?’

  ‘Yeah! Totally you,’ she said, looking and sounding remarkably like a female Keanu Reeves. ‘You’re so famous! I mean, like you were a bit famous before, but now you’re like YouTube famous!’

  ‘I’m on YouTube?’

  She pulled an overgrown iPhone out of her back pocket and pressed play. ‘Fuckin’, I mean friggin’ A—144 million views. Like literally a billion people saw you crawl out of that fire dude.’