We loaded Chachi into the car and I took a drink from my water bottle, which seemed to put the final nail in the coffin of my little episode. I felt healed from that panic attack at last.
Henry had saved me.
“You want me to drive?” Henry asked.
“Actually, that would be nice,” I said initially, but then woke up to reality. Did this guy I picked up at the bus station even have a driver’s license? If Mo-No found out I’d let a vagrant drive one of the Bainbridge fleet, she’d roast me on a spit. “But that’s okay. Thanks to you and your help getting myself back together, I’ve got it.”
We pulled out onto one of San Nouveau’s many winding, rock-lined roads, taking a different route than we’d come, so that Henry could see a little more of San Nouveau. It was a good day for it, cloudless, the salt air tangy and fresh.
Chachi started a bark-fest.
“Don’t mind Chachi. She’s a barker. It’s not personal.”
“The person you’re working for doesn’t seem to have her priorities right.” Henry turned around and eyed Chachi. “Don’t get me wrong. Like you say, dogs are great. I thought I couldn’t live without Cujo once. However, doesn’t the woman also have a daughter?”
“You were listening.”
“Your phone is turned up loud, and this is a small car.”
“Can you see why my boss needs a wakeup call?”
“After the first phone call, I knew things were bad for your little girl.” Henry scrubbed his cheek with the back of his knuckles. “But now I’m beginning to realize that was just the tip of the iceberg.”
“I’d never ask you to help me if it weren’t for Sylvie’s sake.”
“I mean, if you were just trying to pull the wool over the eyes of some random rich snobs, you would have been reenacting the celebration scene from My Fair Lady after last night’s movie premiere.”
“Celebration scene?”
“The one that goes on and on with the two men singing, ‘We did it! We did it!’ and leaving the guttersnipe out, like she’d done nothing herself.”
“How do you know Polly and I didn’t do that after you went to bed?” After the event last night, I’d fallen into bed, and Polly hadn’t been home yet from seeing Geordie off to war, and we’d left before dawn this morning. Yeah, there was no victory dance in the end zone. Maybe there should have been, considering our effort had been an unmitigated success. But it wasn’t the success we were aiming for yet, as Henry was busy pointing out.
“Because you didn’t.”
I sighed. “Yes, I want to put Mo-No in her place, but I’m also driving her car, sleeping at her guest cottage, entrusted with her child—and let’s not forget the dog. For Mo-No, that means everything.
“I just want her to get knocked down a little. Not a lot, just enough to where she’s able to see more of what’s important in this world. Because, as you can tell, she is pretty blind.”
“At first I thought you were in it for some kind of game, trick, or otherwise. Revenge of the Nannies, or some such. And I like a game, myself, so I was in so long as it harmed no one. Then when you said you wanted to stop her from cheating on her husband, I could see some merit in that. I’m all about fidelity in marriage. But now that I’ve heard that woman’s voice more than once, I get the sense all your motives are in the right place. She needs a massive wakeup call. This may or may not work. But I’m game for helping you with everything that’s in me because you’re not in it to harm someone, you’re in it to protect someone.”
His words soaked into me, making my fingertips tingle on the steering wheel. I glanced over at his earnest face, and I recalled how his arms had felt around me a few minutes ago. So comforting. So strong. He’d smelled nice too, even without the cologne from the chauffeur’s shopping trip. Something earthy and real and masculine.
“Thanks. I would never want to hurt anyone.”
“I get that. Which is why I have an idea.”
“An idea.”
“Well, it might be an idea.”
“Or it might not.” My skepticism crept up. A guy who thought coyotes were salivating over him in the night might have a violent idea. “Am I the one who gets to decide whether this notion merits idea status? What exactly do you have in mind?”
He craned his neck around to look at Chachi for a moment, and then he lowered his voice.
“A dog-napping.”
ACT II: Scene 8
Ding Dong the Bells [Police Sirens] are Gonna Chime
SAN NOUVEAU ISLAND, CALIFORNIA CHANNEL ISLANDS
Wherein the hero’s terrible, illegal plan is implemented (spoiler!), and comes to fruition in the best and worst way imaginable. Oh, our poor heroine. She doesn’t know quite what she has wrought.
“Dog-napping!” That definitely did not merit idea status. “Absolutely not.”
If I wanted to simultaneously get fired from the best-paying job I could get without a law degree from Oxford, and potentially leave Sylvie at the mercy of someone who didn’t care about her, yes. Then it was a perfect idea.
“Not happening.”
“No, no. You don’t get it. Stay with me.”
“I’m not stupid. You heard her. She already gave me ‘one strike’ for not being at the helipad within one second of Chachi’s arrival. Having Chachi stolen on my watch? I’d skip from strike one to strike one million. In fact, she’d probably find a way to put me in prison.”
“There would be no actual dog-stealing.”
“We’re on thin ice even mentioning this.” In fact, I couldn’t say for certain whether she didn’t have Chachi’s collar bugged so she could hear everything we were saying right now.
“Hear me out. You want me to win her trust, right? So then you can pull the rug out from under her when you tell her I’m not some kind of cattle baron from Australia. That’ll put her in her place. But to accomplish that, you’ve got to introduce us.”
“Yeah,” I said, “but at the country club, where someone she fawns over tells her she has to meet this charming Aussie, not by having you go stealing her dog. On my planet, that does not instill trust. Ever. Unless it’s some kind of Stockholm Syndrome, which we just don’t really have time for.”
Didn’t sympathizing with the captor have to take place over time? How long was Beauty hanging out at the Beast’s castle before she started thinking he was a little bit of all right? It was at least all winter, if I remembered my Charles Perrault fairy tale correctly.
“The operation I’m thinking of can happen so fast, your boss won’t even have to suffer.”
“Believe me. She’ll suffer.” If she thought for even five seconds that something was wrong with Chachi, Mo-No’s heart would come leaping out through her throat via her murderous scream.
“All I ask is that you hear me out. You owe me that much.”
“Fine.” I did owe him. Not only was he basically kidnapped by me at the moment—for two weeks—and being held captive at the ransom price of a cell phone, but he had also saved me from a deathly panic attack on the cliff a few moments ago. “I’ll listen. But I make no promise I’ll agree.”
“Good. Okay, so we heard her say she’s coming back at eleven this morning, right? So, at ten-thirty, you text her you’re doing something special with Chachi.”
“Something special.” There were so many special things in Chachi’s life, it was hard to choose which one. “Like, say, a play date with Daisy Duke, the Yorkshire Terrier next door. That’s not usually on Chachi’s agenda because Daisy’s owner usually lives at Lake Como, Italy.”
“Perfect. Something fairly normal, but also where there’s an opportunity for Chachi to momentarily disappear.”
“I do not want to get fired, Henry. I don’t know if you can begin to imagine how vital this job is to me right now.” For my tuition’s sake, as well as Sylvie’s. Would any other nanny even care that Sylvie could be abandoned as a toddler, let alone work up an elaborate scheme to stop it?
“Vital, eh? Why so?”
“I’ve already told you about Sylvie, but it’s more than that. I haven’t completed my Ph.D., despite years of effort and utter boatloads of cash for tuition. Most of all, I can’t get a job in my field of study if I don’t complete it.”
Plus, if I never got a job in my field of study, my parents would continue to question my life choices from now to the end of the Lord’s millennial reign. Or longer.
I didn’t want to tell Henry that part. Even saying it to myself, I knew it sounded like weak reasoning. Nevertheless…
“I want to finish. I’ve worked too hard, come too far, to give up on that degree now.”
“I see.” As he said, see, his white, straight teeth flashed at me, and he hung on the long e, as if he was processing what I’d said, but what I took from it was that Henry Lyon was actually listening to me as we drove along. I didn’t remember having any guy do that before, at least not for a long time.
Henry Lyon was really different.
Of course, he thought he owned the bus station, so that should go without being said.
“I hadn’t realized you’re also taking school classes, in addition to being this woman’s personal slave.”
“I’m All But Dissertation for a Ph.D. in linguistics. All my class hours are complete, but I have to pay tuition every semester until my research is finished and my full project has been submitted if I want to keep myself in line for completion.”
“What’s your project?”
How could I tell him I’d proposed six and had been rejected every time?
“Still working on that.”
“Fine. But look here, Elizer. You’re not going to get fired. Nothing of the sort. You’ll just blame it on the dog park. Your boss can’t retaliate against the dog park.”
“You do not know her.” Her vindictiveness knew no bounds. “No way can I call her at ten-thirty with reports of the dog’s disappearance. That’d be a full half-hour of total Chernobyl.” I recalled Mo-No’s text chain from yesterday, wherein she nearly fired me for not texting back within a three minute span. “In fact, anything beyond a couple of minutes of Chachi’s being in danger is going to be a total conniption fit. The shrieks will be so fierce I can already hear echoes of them from the future.”
“Fair enough. We’ll make it five minutes.”
“Four.”
“Fine, four. At exactly four minutes to eleven, you’ll call her to ask whether she has possession of Chachi. She freaks out momentarily, and at eleven she comes streaking home, like a long range missile.” He had a way of painting an accurate visual.
“Trust me, that missile will be armed. Possibly with a nuke.”
“But just as she is about to detonate, at eleven o’clock on the dot, I ring the doorbell to return Chachi.”
I frowned. This could go so wrong.
“Trust me.”
Was it possible to trust someone and still be terrified?
***
“What!” Mo-No’s eyes bulged on the video-chat screen, almost like she’d suddenly turned on the fish-eye camera application. Next, the primal scream that emerged from her throat rattled my dangle-earrings against my neck. “You let Chachi out of your sight?”
If I’d delivered the news in person rather than over the cell tower, I was pretty sure she would have reached her talons around my neck and choke-stabbed my jugular. Seconds later, her car screeched into the driveway, and Mo-No burst into the kitchen, her whole body a conflagration of fury.
But before she could shriek strike two, the doorbell rang.
“Maybe that’s Chachi!” I intercepted the screech, hurling the possibility of Chachi’s return out there as a shield against her murderous attack on my person. Not a human shield, but a dog’s name shield. How wrong was that?
“Chachi!” She raced to the door and flung it open, as if Chachi herself could have rung the bell to be let in.
“G-day, beautiful lady. Is this by chance your dog?”
“Chachi!” Mo-No lunged at the dog and pried her from his arms. “You found her. You saved her.”
Henry did his best Aussie aw shucks, shuffling his boot across the doormat. I’d redressed him in a hot cowboy getup for this morning’s role.
He looked better than any guy, homeless or mansion dwelling, ever looked. Ever.
And I mean ever ever.
I had to touch my forehead to see if I was perspiring.
“She wasn’t far from here. I found her near a gate, with her leash tied up, but I didn’t want anyone to take her. She’s such a gorgeous dog, anyone would see that and maybe carry her off.”
“They wouldn’t. They couldn’t.” Mo-No was smothering Chachi with kisses. “Not my baby. Not my little baby.” After an uncomfortably affectionate interval, Mo-No looked up. “You rescued her. I owe you—I owe you everything.”
“Not necessary.” He wore his cowboy charm like a well-fitting glove. It also meshed really well with that blasted cowboy swagger that I’d been so distracted by earlier. Now, Henry had changed into boots, some dark wash jeans, and a straight-fitted plaid shirt open a button too low for normal wear but perfect for the cover of a hot Aussie cowboy romance novel. On his head was one of those leather hats you see guys wearing in Outback Steakhouse commercials.
He was a cowgirl’s fantasy, come to life. At least one cowgirl’s. I fanned myself with the feather duster.
“I’m just glad to see Chachi is loved. I saw her name and address on her collar, so I knew right where to bring her.”
Mo-No’s eyes focused on him at last, and her posture softened. Then, in almost no time, it morphed into her come-on pose.
I’d seen this stance on her quite a few times when potential prey crossed her path while we were at the park or the golf course or the beach. She’d always shove Sylvie aside, and sliding her blouse so it went off her shoulders, she’d shaken back her enormous blond hairstyle and gone in for the kill. Time and again, she’d pounced.
To date, as far as I knew, she’d always gotten her man.
Why did that thought make me so sick to my stomach today, considering that was the whole purpose of this charade was to get her to throw herself at Henry?
Because I was an idiot, that was why. And I was totally losing my wager with myself.
Looking at Mo-No, I knew in her mind Henry officially wore a flashing neon sign: dead meat.
“Well, aren’t you charming. Are you from England? I didn’t know there were British cowboys.” She pronounced the word British with a hitch after the first syllable: Bri’ish. Stepping aside, she beckoned Henry to enter the mansion. “Come on in. Forgive me for not being as neighborly as possible before. Are you here on San Nouveau newly employed by one of the residents?” She gave one of her laughs suffused with lust. It echoed from the white tile floor to the beamed cathedral ceiling as she led him to the living room and started pouring him a drink.
“Thank you,” Henry said, accepting a cold drink. I shuddered as Mo-No’s fingers caressed Henry’s during the handoff of the glass. This might be more difficult to witness than I’d bargained on.
“I bet it’s Ruelle Dancie. Am I right? She always has the finest taste in gardeners and pool boys.” With another fluffy shake of her hair, Mo-No planted him on one of the overstuffed sofas. Then she placed her long, mostly-bare legs across the distance between where he was and where she sat herself. I saw him glance down at the spray-tanned limbs appreciatively.
No, that twinge of jealousy shouldn’t have pricked me. I knew that. He had been king of the bus station just yesterday afternoon, hello.
I had to turn away. Watching this exchange at close range might not be good for my psyche. It felt like one of those When Lionesses Attack! documentaries. Those always ended up in gore and two weeks of nightmares for me, so I busied myself dusting, ironing and other chores that kept me within earshot.
“I’m not working for Mrs. Dancie, er…” He lingered on the syllable as if asking for her name.
“Monique-Noelle.” She la
id it on thick. “Just Monique-Noelle.” The flirtatiousness could have been squeezed out of it like grease from a taco at a bad food cart in Santa Monica.
“Pleased to meet you. Henry Lyon. At your service.”
At that, I could just picture her swooning. Good line, Henry. He’d have her eating out of his hand in no time if he kept this up. Good show so far.
Blast it.
“If you’re not working for Mrs. Dancie, where are you staying, at least?”
“Looking out for a place. Haven’t quite settled myself yet.”
“Settled? Oh, so perhaps you’re buying property on San Nouveau?” I could hear the dollar signs whirring in her mind. Only those approved, vetted, and invited to do so were offered a spot on the island, and only the insanely rich made that list. “I imagine you’ll need somewhere to stay in the meantime,” Mo-No purred.
I made the mistake of glancing into the sitting room from the kitchen right then. Mo-No had gotten up and sat herself too close beside him on the white leather sofa. Henry ran a finger around the collar of his shirt.
“In apology for my initial lack of neighborliness, I’d love to make amends. You can stay here. With us. I mean, with me. I’ve got an extra room or ten here in the mansion. It’s got loads and loads of amenities.”
Glutton for punishment that I was, I couldn’t peel my eyes from watching her lift her hand and begin to toy with the hair just behind his ear.
“Oh, that wouldn’t be—”
Proper? Was he going to go all gentlemanlike on me? I may have swooned just a tad. Either that or else he was going to recycle his line about not taking handouts. Either way, there was something pretty awesome about this Aussie. Frankly, every woman in a half-mile radius should be wearing the neon dead meat sign.
“If you’re not comfortable in the mansion proper, then at least take the guest cottage.”
That was right next to my servants’ quarters cottage. If he said yes, he’d be so near I’d be able to hear his television at night.
My Fair Aussie: A Standalone Clean Romance (Millionaire Makeover Romance Book 3) Page 10
