My Fair Aussie: A Standalone Clean Romance (Millionaire Makeover Romance Book 3)

by Jennifer Griffith

Henry wrinkled his brow at her.

  “Never.” It came out nevah, like he was European. Mo-No would like a European. I shushed the inner voice tempting me with its wickedness. Mo-No would fall all over herself to date a blond European with broad shoulders and great teeth.

  No. Shut up. Mo-No cared nothing about teeth. She cared about bank accounts. Solid and liquid assets. She had one gleam in her eye alone, and it was shaped like a dollar sign.

  “So no marijuana, no heroin, no methamphetamines?”

  “Polly. Let the guy eat in peace.” I kicked her under the table.

  “What? We have to ask. If he’s going to do this, we have to ask.” Before I could protest more, she turned to him. “Do you have a middle name, Henry? And how many states have you been in? I’m not referring to mental states.”

  Oh, my goodness! I about choked up my water with lemon.

  “It’s Shaw.”

  Polly kicked me under the table, her eyes alight with excitement “As in, George Bernard Shaw?” She fluttered her hands, apoplectic, as if this was a sign from the heavens that this was our guy.

  “Uh, I guess so. No relation, as far as I know.” Henry barely looked up during Polly’s complete departure from common sense.

  I struggled to keep my fury at Polly from rising up my throat while I attempted to think of a way to deflect the rude topic, but she was too fast for me with her next question.

  “And Lyon is L-Y-O-N, right? Not as in the animal lion, rawr.” She did one of her stage roars, and all clinks of forks and knives in the restaurant stopped momentarily.

  He—stunningly—obliged her request, spelling it for her, and telling her that it came from French, but at the moment he was deeply absorbed in draining the dregs of my bowl of seafood stew. Maybe his radar for rudeness had been switched off by his starvation. Or by his circumstances in life.

  “How long ago did the tour bus give you the beef stroganoff?” I went back to the earlier topic, in hopes Polly would drop the interrogation. This topic was meant to seem more friendly, and to give me an idea of how long he’d been hungry. My parents would ask this type of thing, I knew.

  Besides, it wasn’t like I was going to let her move forward on our terrible scheme, anyway. She had to be realizing that soon, as she pulled out her phone.

  “Be right back.” She was already dialing as she left me at the table with Henry Shaw Lyon. “Don’t go crazy on that tartar sauce. There’d better be some when I return.”

  She was a sucker for a good sauce like I was a sucker for straight teeth. Part of the reason she said yes when her sailor proposed was he could whip up a variety of delicious sauces in the kitchen; life is better with sauce was her mantra.

  Life is better with nice teeth—my mantra.

  Since Polly was gone, I asked him again about the time frame since the stroganoff.

  “I don’t know. I’ve come so far since then.” His scratchy, low voice was sonorous, and I sank into it as he talked. It was like he was a storyteller, relating a long yarn. “I walked a lot at first. The helicopters didn’t spot me, even when I waved a white flag. They wouldn’t come down and help me.”

  “That must have been awful.” No sense refuting his story, I just listened and reacted as though I believed every word.

  “All I could do was keep walking. The river was so far down, I couldn’t get down to get a drink.”

  The river. The helicopters. The tour bus. It reminded me of back when my great uncle had suffered with dementia. When he’d say something particularly outlandish, I’d call him on it, and then he’d get defensive and sad.

  I didn’t want Henry to be either, poor fellow.

  “How did you survive?” I prompted him to finish his story. It was the polite thing to do. And somebody had to counterbalance the impoliteness of Polly Pickering today. Geez, what was with her?

  “A lorry picked me up.”

  “Lori?”

  “Yeah. She was a truck, I guess. I would still be out there with the coyotes, otherwise.” He tore into a breadstick with his teeth, those very white teeth. And I thanked heaven for the Lori who saved him, wherever she was, so I could see and bask in the beauty that was these teeth, even if it was just for an hour of my life.

  “All clear.” Polly came back and plopped down. “Hey, you saved me the sauce. Thanks.” She dipped her broccoli tops into the bowl and popped a floret in her mouth. Then she leaned closer so only I could hear. “No criminal record.”

  No wonder she was getting the guy’s full name and its spelling; she was background checking him.

  Henry took a long draw of the glass of water. He’d drained four already. Then he sat back with a sigh of relief. “Good fish.”

  “You like fish?”

  “Don’t eat much of it at the station.”

  “Oh? What do you eat at the station?” I asked.

  “Quit encouraging him.” Polly elbowed me.

  “Steaks or a roast on the weekend, like everybody. A burger is the usual.”

  Maybe I’d missed a fast food place here in the bus station as we walked in. There had to be a faster place than this sit-down restaurant for travelers to get food during stopovers, or whatever stops on a bus journey were called. I’d never taken a bus anywhere except across town on a trip to San Francisco once during college. My farm upbringing had included trucks, trucks, and more trucks.

  “Your accent. It’s not European.” What with all his monosyllabic responses, I hadn’t heard enough of it to place it yet, even though with my master’s degree this should have been cake.

  Maybe completing a dissertation in linguistics was necessary for placing accents instantly. I sighed at yet another side effect of my failure.

  “Not European. Nope.” He seemed a little more coherent now that he’d eaten. Sleepier, but less confused. “Aussie,” he said, pronouncing it ozzy.

  Australian! Oh, that should have been so obvious. I could have kicked myself for being so dense. Beyond just the failure of my education being on full display, I’d watched my fair share of The Man from Snowy River and Quigley Down Under for family movie night in my day. My mom loved all manner of westerns, especially the ones from a land down under, which meant I had zero excuse for missing these clues. The way his don’t sounded like doin’t, and the way no went to no-i-eh, I almost did a facepalm right there beside the neon Fresh Fish sign.

  “You watch a lot of Aussie TV, do you?” Polly asked, taking a completely different tack than I’d have expected. “Is Dingo Nights your favorite, too? After watching that, I’ve been working on my accent, too. It’s so contagious. After three episodes, I’m all calling my fiancé a larrikin for acting like an idiot when he’s with his sailor buddies, and—”

  They fell into a discussion of their favorite television programs while I writhed in my own personal self-examination. No wonder I was failing to impress my Ph.D. committee. My little police tracer for pinpointing his accent had failed spectacularly—and on the simplest of tasks. Australian accents should have been obvious to a person with any training, and I’d made it all the way to a master’s degree and still couldn’t manage it. What a lame-o. Honestly, I’d never be good enough at this to finish my doctorate and get a job in the field.

  I’d be a nanny forever.

  I’d be working for Mo-No and her brand of integrity vampires forever, probably falling into thinking she and her friends were normal, or worse—morally correct with their focus on materialism and fame.

  My spiral through my doomed future screeched to a halt as Polly’s words hit me like a truck named Lori.

  “We have a proposition for you.”

  I snapped to attention and started to wave my hand to stop her, but she was Polly Pickering, and in my weakened condition I was powerless against her force.

  “Have you ever seen the movie My Fair Lady?”

  ACT II: Scene 4

  Deliciously Dirty

  STILL DITHERING AT THE BUS STATION, LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA, USA

  Wherein ou
r heroine comes to a momentous decision, based on a false assumption.

  No, no! Polly couldn’t do this. Not to Henry Lyon. He seemed perfectly nice. My life choices might not have been my parents’ favorite, taking on the Ph.D. challenge and then dropping it to be a nanny for a complete puff-piece like Mo-No, but at least to this point I could say that I had never intentionally hurt anyone, not in all my born days.

  “Polly.” I had to stop her. “I don’t think—”

  “Why?” Henry asked, bypassing my interruption. “Is there a showing of it nearby? That’s nice and all, but I really do need access to an international phone. This place only has a pay phone that calls locally, and I need to make an overseas call, and—”

  “How about this, Henry?” Polly rubbed her chin as if she were an old man stroking his beard in thought. “We need someone to do a project with us for two weeks.”

  Two weeks! I spluttered beside her, not knowing how to stop this fast-moving freight train. Did she even know what she was saying?

  “At the end of two weeks, if you can accomplish what we need you to do—all of it being totally legal and above-board, I promise—I’ll make sure you get an international phone.”

  “Two weeks…” Henry frowned. He didn’t have the confused look of earlier, but he didn’t seem to be rejecting it. “What exactly are we talking about?”

  “Oh, it will be fun. Lots of fun. You’ll get to dress in nice clothes, meet wealthy people, go to at least one nice party.”

  I’d rather work for Mo-No forever than hurt this guy who was worrying about the helicopters and the water in the river and his fanciful realm of reality-forged-of-imagination. For as whacked as it was, his crazy worldview definitely did seem harmless, sweet almost. And his Australian accent, now that it quit plaguing me as I tried to decipher it, was totally engaging.

  We could not set him up.

  However, Henry didn’t look appalled; he looked intrigued, if that was possible, through the grime. “My Fair Lady. I get it. But in this case, I’m the lady.”

  “You saw the movie?” I asked stupidly, as if it mattered, and almost slapped myself for it. “Look, you don’t have to do this, Henry.”

  “I’ve already missed my big meeting with the geneticist.”

  Geneticist! My heart lurched.

  “Are you ill?” This was getting worse and worse. He had a chronic illness, and we were taking advantage of him while he was down and weak, and—

  “No. Healthy as a horse, especially now that I’ve had some good seafood. Why?” But he didn’t wait for my answer, even though I was about to explain that geneticists are for sick people, and—

  He’d turned back to Polly.

  “What’s the point of this exercise? In the movie there was a wager.”

  “No bets, I swear it.”

  Oh, I was on the verge of betting, believe me—betting that I would kill Polly before I let her get away with this.

  “All you have to do is clean up and act charming for two weeks. I’ll make sure you get enough to eat. Steak every day like it’s a weekend, if you like. Then, a phone.”

  “An international phone. Although, at this point, any phone would do. I need to call the geneticist, too.”

  “But you’re not sick, even though you need to talk to a doctor?”

  “No, right as rain. Besides, my geneticist isn’t a human doctor, anyway.”

  This whole thing was rolling forward so quickly, a tremendous boulder gathering speed as it coursed toward the horrific drop-off at the end of the slope. Polly and Henry were shaking hands, and I couldn’t figure out how to stop it.

  My phone rang. “Oh, no.”

  “Mo-No?” Polly asked.

  “What’s a mono?” Henry asked, as if we were all the sudden pals who shared details about phone calls from employers with each other.

  “It’s—er,” Polly faltered, “a woman we want you to meet. She’s beautiful. Eliza works for her.”

  “Eliza, huh?” His eyes raked over me once, and I almost felt them tangibly caress my curves, and then they landed at my face to rest in approval.

  My face blazed. Up to now, I hadn’t even given him my name, and my best friend had just hired him to play an elaborate prank that would require him to spend two weeks of his life at my side in San Nouveau. With those gorgeous teeth, and that confident swagger.

  Oh, and his rattling mind.

  I bit my lip in worry. Being on the island would take Henry away from his precious station, where he might worry about the river or the helicopters of his mind—especially considering that helicopters were the main form of transportation to and from San Nouveau. Oh, this terrible idea just got worse.

  “Eliza Galatea. I should have given you my full name earlier.” My blush deepened when he reached out and took my hand. Wow, nice calluses. I was a sucker for a guy’s hardworking hands.

  Dang it.

  Because if Henry was at San Nouveau for the next two weeks, he’d be in my close, personal company. And those eyes that made my face blaze and the teeth that made me think unclean thoughts, would be there right along with him.

  “I know it’s crazy, girls,” Henry said, smiling for the first time and making my knees go a little weak. “But I think I’ll take your little deal. Polly, Eliza, I’m in. I’ll do it.”

  “No, Henry. I’m sorry. I have to stop this whole thing.”

  My phone buzzed a text. I’d missed Mo-No’s call. She probably just couldn’t find her Jimmy Choo kitten heel sandal and needed me to tell her to look in the closet. I ignored it because I had a runaway freight train to stop here.

  “Henry, you have no obligation to do this. I’ll figure out how to get you an international phone. In fact, just tell me the number you need to call for your geneticist right now, and…”

  Polly kicked me hard under the table.

  “No, a deal’s a deal, Eliza.”

  When he said my name, it had a hint of Elizer to it. My heart fluttered around like a pile of autumn leaves in an eddy of wind. Stupid Australian accents. American women were powerless to them. Why, I had no idea. What was it about the difference between Eliza and Elizer that made my name sound so sexy, instead of just a little old fashioned? That deserved more study. Just not with Henry Lyon as my study subject. That wouldn’t be safe.

  “We can’t ask you to do this, Mr. Lyon.”

  “No, I insist. I’m not the type to take a handout.” He looked at his four empty dishes. “Current meal aside, I mean. Severe hunger in time of desperation is different.”

  Right. Of course. Now that he’d eaten, his demeanor had brightened so much I hardly recognized him as the pitiful mass he’d been before. His sunburn almost looked like a healthy glow at this point. He had dignity. We could not rope him into this tawdry little prank.

  “No, no. I insist. In fact, I’ll head to the store right now and get you whatever you need.” I don’t know what I was thinking with that little offer of charity there. Getting a phone like he was asking for might take what was left in my bank account, considering I’d paid my tuition for this semester, despite my lack of progress on my dissertation. “International, you say? North American continent, or further?” There might be a difference. People from L.A. called Mexico all the time, no big deal. It might be as simple as grabbing a phone card from a convenience store if he just wanted North America.

  My phone buzzed again. Mo-No. And I saw six texts had come in since she last called three minutes ago.

  PICK UP YOUR PHONE.

  PICK UP.

  PICK UP NOW.

  IF YOU DON’T PICK UP YOU ARE FIRED.

  I’M CALLING WITH YOUR LAST CHANCE.

  Fine.

  “Hello?” I cringed, knowing I’d caved to the demands of a spoiled thirteen-year-old in a thirty-year-old’s body.

  “Eliza. I have been trying to get a hold of you for the past five minutes. You’re impossible.”

  I refused to respond to that point. “What do you need, Monique-Noelle?”


  “I need to tell you that Sylvie’s father” —she spat this term, as if she weren’t married to MacDowell Bainbridge by her own volition— “has exercised his parental rights to change Sylvie’s schedule. She will be gone until Friday, at which point you will pick her up at the helipad at eight a.m. Not one second later.”

  Holy cats. That gave me the week off, unless Mo-No had other plans to control my schedule as if I were her personal servant, or that of her friends.

  “Friday?” I asked, tentative at the dangled carrot of hope.

  “Oh, I see. You thought I meant next week.”

  She meant tomorrow. My heart flopped into my boots.

  “And what are your plans until then?” I asked, bating my breath. Surely she couldn’t expect me to return to the Bainbridges’ mansion tonight. Even under normal circumstances when Mo-No wasn’t adulterous-affair-hunting, I couldn’t bear to be there without the breath of fresh air that was Sylvie.

  Still, usually when Sylvie went with her father, Mo-No needed my help finding her shoes or making her special vegan gluten-free lunch sandwich or unloading her shopping bags. It rankled. After all, Mo-No also employed a whole bevy of other staff, from a personal chef to a twice-weekly cleaning service. However, the pay was killer—enough for tuition, which I had to keep paying each semester to keep my dissertation hopes alive—so I’d been gritting my teeth and enduring the tantrums.

  “I know what you’re getting at, but I won’t be needing you for personal assistance for today’s events. I’ve got that hunting excursion planned on the mainland with my bestie Dreena.” She obviously knew I saw right through that euphemism for attempted cheating on their husbands. “We don’t need any tagalongs.”

  “No tagalongs. Right.” Ah. So that’s what I would be if coerced to follow them into their sordid world. More like a hostage, I’d call it. “Good to know you won’t need me along.”

  Even better, I was free to not be in her company, and in fact I’d be free from her texts and demands for a few hours to hopefully get some serious progress on my dissertation research.

  How wrong I was.

  “Oh, I didn’t say I won’t need you.” Mo-No hadn’t completed her pronouncements. I’d jumped to a happy conclusion far too quickly. “I’ll just need you here to take care of Chachi. How soon can you arrive?”