Or maybe even his breathing as he slept.
I might go crazy.
“Seriously? Are you sure that’d be all right? It’s not like San Nouveau has a tourist industry to necessitate hotels, so I was, in fact, up a creek, as you Americans say. I’d planned to just go back to the mainland tonight after a good look around at some properties and come back out in the speedboat tomorrow.”
“Oh, don’t do that. It’s such a long ride, and that sea spray. It’s terrible for the skin.” She curled her hand a little and let the backs of her fingers slide down his cheek’s stubble. My stomach roiled.
“I like the water.”
“Oh, but going back and forth, what a waste of your valuable time. You couldn’t! Please, be my guest. Make yourself at home. Don’t be a stranger.” This was going pretty far, even for Mo-No. I figured she viewed him as the extremely satisfying consolation prize for her loss of her hunting trip today, as if the universe had plopped him in her lap. “In fact, stay for lunch. It’s December, I know, but after lunch, the pool is heated. We could go for a swim. Don’t worry if you forgot your suit.”
Oh, my lands. Was this what she was like with everyone? Sylvie could not be left in her clutches in this state. She didn’t need a new hot, rich husband, she needed medication.
“I’m afraid I’ve got other plans.”
“Cancel them. I’ll turn on the jets in the hot tub. They work wonders for washing away jet lag from the trip to London. I’ve used them myself every time I’ve flown internationally. I’m quite cosmopolitan, you know. Just like the magazine.”
I walked by just in time to see her rub her bare foot up and down his leg.
I’d never been so glad a guy was wearing a pair of dark wash jeans in my life. I turned away again before I let out a cry of foul play.
“That’s very caring of you, but I’m afraid my lunch plans can’t be changed. I’m committed to play in a charity golf matchup. It starts at one o’clock sharp, so I’ve got to get cracking on.” Golfing for charity! Good cover. She’d never check up on that excuse. Mo-No never spent much time anywhere outside, even taking Chachi for walks on a doggie treadmill rather than opting for the dog park. Outside had insects.
His boots made a clunking as he crossed the floor. I dodged out of her line of sight as she trailed after him, a puppy dog carrying her dog. Her tongue practically hung out, and I was pretty sure I could hear her panting.
“But you’ll still plan to stay at the guest cottage.”
“If I don’t find other accommodations.”
“What do I have to do to entice you?”
“Just stay your beautiful, caring self.”
And he shut the front door behind him.
Dang! I thought he wanted to be closer in proximity to her so we could work our plan. How could he go off and leave that offer to stay in the guest cottage unused?
I walked in just in time to see Mo-No sink in a heap onto the foyer floor, right on the cold, December tile.
“I might have just found what I’ve always wanted.” She expelled an enormous sigh, as if she was someone who never got what she wanted and deserved it this time at last.
But then she looked my direction, and her eyes shot poison darts at me. “Strike two.”
“I notified you the very moment Chachi went missing, and if you’ll recall, she was returned within seconds.” My logic fell on stone deaf ears. The poison darts reloaded and relaunched.
“Seconds is too long.”
“Look, was Chachi harmed? I think not. In fact, it worked out well for you, if you ask me. Chachi may have been led by angels to bring that man to your door.”
The mention of angels and Henry in combination with her dog as matchmaker seemed to dial down her ire, so I lobbed my best logical volley in my defense.
“If there was no harm done, I think we could consider a compromise. A half-strike.”
“There are no half-strikes when it comes to Chachi.” She buried her face in Chachi’s fur and nuzzled him. “Now, tell me where we store my golf clubs.”
Golf clubs? Oh, dear.
“You’re golfing today?” I swallowed the half-cup of sand that had appeared in my throat. “Do you golf?”
“No, but I look attractive in golf gear. You’ll be my caddy. Get ready.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I heard myself say, but terror struck my soul. Henry had instinctively guessed the perfect cover for how to get away from her, but it looked like we were going to get nailed on it. I got a sick feeling—for a lot of reasons.
One, I didn’t see why he’d tried so valiantly to get away from her. He could have sealed the deal and we would have been done with the experiment by end of the day. He’d have his phone and be on his merry way to call his geneticist or his overseas contacts or whatever nutty thing he wanted. Now he was pulling away from Mo-No instead of letting her reel him in. I blanched at the thought of her losing interest before we’d accomplished our mission.
Worse, the island didn’t have any charity golf game scheduled for today. At least none I knew of. And if we showed up at the golf course and found none, Mo-No would instantly raise her BS antennae and start asking questions about Henry.
And worst by far, chances were next to zero that Henry Lyon, owner of the bus station, had a grasp of the game of golf, a rich man’s game if ever there was one. He’d never be good enough to fool even Monique-Noelle.
I had to scramble for some solution to this potential debacle. Henry’s little addition to the plan had set us up for a serious fall.
ACT II: Scene 9
The Rain in Spain Stays Mainly in the Plain
[The Wind in San Nouveau Stays Mainly at the Golf Course]
SAN NOUVEAU ISLAND, CALIFORNIA CHANNEL ISLANDS
Wherein our hero proves himself to be a formidable force, and our heroine starts finding her own ramparts less impervious to that force.
“I’ll load all your equipment into the golf cart and meet you at the clubhouse, Monique-Noelle.” I tried to keep my tone measured, but inside I was in full freak-out mode. If I found Henry and got him to the links fast enough, maybe we could at least have time to go over a few golfing pointers before Mo-No arrived.
I needed to buy us some time.
“So, I’m sure you’ll want to fix your hair and choose just the right thing to wear.”
At this, Mo-No turned to me in alarm, her eyes flashing open as if she might choose the wrong outfit and ruin everything.
Oh, brother.
“I’ll be getting ready. Do you think it’s too cold for a miniskirt? Probably, but I could buckle a cute trench over it that would highlight my waistline, and…”
I left her to her wardrobe selection and jammed my way out into the yard where I saw Henry relaxing on a roadside bench a few yards down the way.
“Now who’s a brilliant wool-puller?” He laced his hands behind his head and leaned back with a satisfied grin, tipping the hat over his eyes. The perfect white teeth shone forth and tripped me up, but I gathered wits quickly this time. Mostly.
I grabbed his hat off his head. “What on earth did you let her off the hook for? You could have been canoodling, or whatever, in her hot tub by now, sealing the deal.”
“But then what would that accomplish?” He took the hat back and planted it on his head. “She’ll want me more if I seem unattainable, at least at first.”
I saw. So he’d dangled the bait. I could see that. Good strategy—until I factored in the whole golf club-shaped monkey wrench he’d thrown into our plan.
“We have a problem, Houston.” I paced back and forth in front of the bench. “Monique-Noelle is heading to the imaginary charity golf game, and she’ll be there to see you play.”
Henry looked up with bright eyes. “All right! That’s just what I’d banked on. That’s beauty.”
I halted in my tracks.
“Beauty!” I may or may not have mocked his Australian pronunciation of the word beauty. “It’s a disaster. We have exactly one ho
ur and thirty-eight minutes for me to teach you how to play golf well enough to hold your own in a game, plus well enough to pull the wool, as you say, over Mo-No’s eyes. A game which we still have to arrange, at a club I don’t belong to, no less.”
“I love that you call her Mo-No.” He snorted. “I’ve been to Tokyo a few times, and I picked up a little Japanese. You know the word mono in Japanese means thing. She’s The Thing, as far as you’re concerned.”
It fit, her being the equivalent of the namesake starring-role of a horror movie.
“We don’t really have time to be yukking it up here, my friend.” Yeah, my friend who claimed he’d traveled to Tokyo a few times. Right. Those trips probably occurred between his watching nonstop rerun episodes of Dingo Nights on TV to perfect his Australian accent, like Polly had theorized to his face and he hadn’t denied. Like every other red-blooded American male he’d developed a crush on Mindi Dresser, the star of the night-time soap opera, and caught the accent like most people caught the common cold.
“I can’t think of how we’re going to fix this.” I had started pacing again.
“Calm down.” He reached out and grabbed my hand to stop my relentless back and forth strides in front of the bench. It shot electric pulses up my arm, but I blinked them away. Sort of.
“What do you think I was doing all the time you were entertaining that dog this morning painting its toenails—again? Trust me, I wasn’t spending the whole block of time trying on cheeky grin after cheeky grin in the mirror to get the right one.”
He flashed me a practiced but still slaying smile. Its cheekiness only melted me a third of the way.
“Okay, then, what were you doing while I played doggie beauty shop?”
“Me, I moseyed over and hustled up a round of golf with a few guys who were already in the bar hiding from their wives. They were more than happy to let me make a friendly wager with them.”
“But you told Mo-No it was for charity.”
“It is. She’s the charity case.” He leaned up and punched me in the arm, as if this was a good idea and now I’d realized that fact.
I hadn’t. No way did this guy know how to golf. We were dead. Toasty dead. Ready to dry up and blow away in the next stiff breeze that hit San Nouveau dead.
And the penniless wonder had just made a wager he couldn’t win. Who was going to pony up the cash when he lost to the wealthiest men on the planet?
My throat dried out, and I thought I might faint.
However, at this point, we were in too deep to back out. The only way out was through.
“We’re wasting time. Come on. You have now,” I checked the clock on my phone, “an hour and thirty-one minutes to learn to golf.”
***
For all the windless calm of the morning’s weather, a fair breeze had picked up for the afternoon. Henry and I stood at the edge of the unique, one-of-a-kind golf course only a place like San Nouveau could create, my toes sinking into the spongy Bermuda grass on the fairway of the first hole.
“That is what they call the rough.” I pointed to the scraggly area of St. Augustine grass flanking the mild curve in the run about thirty yards yonder. “Do whatever you can to avoid it. This course, being on the bad spot of ground it is, has the worst rough of any eighteen holes in current use. They actually brag about it. It’s a draw for some people who think they can aim their shots so straight they won’t ever go into the rough.”
Henry licked his thumb and stuck it in the air.
“I’ll guess what they don’t bank on is the wind, though, right? The way it blows across a rocky island is going to be gusty and unpredictable.”
For a guy who was homeless yesterday and ranting about coyotes and rivers, he seemed to have good common sense on the links. For a brief moment, I scraped together a small pile of hope.
But then his first shot sent him straight into the rough, and so did the second. And the third. And so on. My small pile of hope got scattered like so many raked autumn leaves in a squall.
We were running out of golf balls.
“It’s almost as if the green doesn’t exist for you.”
“Maybe I need some hands-on training.” He flashed me those teeth. The come-on was a resurgence of the blatant flirting of last evening, when I was showing him how to work the shower at Pickering Place.
The flirting type of girl would have batted her eyelashes and told him, in a coquettish tone, that he was getting fresh. I batted away his come-on instead.
“Cool it, cowboy. We don’t even have time for me to tell you you’d better hit another five dozen shots until you get it right.” A glance at my phone’s clock told me there was no such luxury.
“I’d do better if I was coached, you know.” Again with the teeth, my kryptonite.
Much as I hated to agree, his flirtatious suggestion unfortunately looked like our only option, given the time constraints.
“Fine. Come here.” I grabbed our third-to-last practice ball from the tee. “We’ll practice without a ball for a few swings. This is what you do. Show me your grip.” I inspected the way his hands lined up with each other on the leather of the club’s shaft. “That’s not bad. How did you learn?”
“I saw it on that golf movie. You know, the one with Matt Damon.”
I knew the movie, but I didn’t remember any part of the show with a tutorial on grip. Whatever.
“Good. Now show me your swing.” I came and stood behind him to watch how his arms moved, how his torso twisted, how his back muscles rippled…
“That’s almost there.” I cleared my throat and pulled myself together.
Usually I didn’t get nearly this flustered by attraction to a man. It had to be pheromones, crazy bus station pheromones. Or maybe I’d been like a spigot rusted in the off-position all these years, and Henry came along with steel wool and loosened things up, because all of a sudden my hormones were like a tap that wouldn’t shut off.
“Uh,” I spluttered, “I think you lack straight follow-through. Let’s try it with a real ball. I’ll guide you as you make the motions.”
He gave a nod and set a ball back on the tee.
Stepping forward, I placed my chin on his shoulder, looking over him, my hands around his back and on the shaft of the club so that I could swing the one wood driver along with him. But his torso was a lot broader than I’d bargained on. As we pulled back to the right, my torso pressed against his back, he turned and whispered, “Believe me, I’m not lacking in follow-through.”
I choked. Our swing sent the ball veering at an angle twice as far into the rough as any Henry had projectile-launched on his own.
“See?” I said, stepping away and patting the hotspot on my neck with the back of my hand. “You’ve got it. Good tips. Let’s get you back to the clubhouse to make your tee time.”
My pulse was pounding and my face was ablaze, and I couldn’t do this anymore. Not with any dignity remaining. I made a quick dash for the golf cart loaded down with Mo-No’s clubs.
We arrived at the clubhouse and met up with Henry’s new golf buddies just as Mo-No came sashaying in.
“Oh, there you are.” She came up and draped herself across Henry’s shoulders, giving him one of those kiss-hellos that rich or foreign people always did. “Lovely to see you, Henry.” She turned to the others. “I’m Monique-Noelle. MacDowell Bainbridge is my husband. We live on San Dorado Street, next door to the Dancies. You know the Dancies—they’re in jet engines.”
The men gave a grunt or two of acknowledgment, mostly ignoring Mo-No and quickly refocusing on a conversation they’d been having before she interrupted, something about a stock market in Asia.
“Henry, dear. Have you hired anyone to help you cart your clubs around? Because I’ve just canceled my tee time. Instead, I’d love to watch your game, cheer for you with my darling and polite golf-clap.”
“That sounds great.” It sounded like grite. “And no, I haven’t hired anyone to help me. I figured I’d manage on my own.” His shoul
ders definitely had the strength for it.
Oh, shush up, traitorous thoughts.
“Well,” it was Mo-No’s well-practiced come-on voice. “If you let me tag along on your game, I’ll loan you my caddy. She’s a whiz with knowing which club to use. Then you’ll owe me a favor.”
I did not like to think about any of those implications.
Besides, now Monique was offering me as his caddy. It wasn’t as bad as loaning me out to be her friend’s nanny, but still. Come on.
I leveled a glare at her, and when no one else was looking, she gave me an imperious gaze. So this was my punishment for losing Chachi: humiliating me and treating me like yet a new kind of servant.
“You’re here without your dog. Where did you leave Chachi?” I whispered, perhaps as a hiss.
“With a responsible sitter.” Her eyes were slits, just wide enough to send out lasers of shame at me.
Henry reached out and shook my hand, my palm roughing up against his skin. Those calluses again. I loved and hated them so much.
“There’s nothing I’d love more in the world.” Henry slid his golf bag toward me and offered Mo-No his arm. “I think a good caddy, who can coach in detail on a swing’s follow-through, is worth his or her weight in gold.” He said this gold part with a gaze leveled right at me.
My temperature spiked. I had to turn away.
“I couldn’t agree more.” Mo-No sidled up to him, not having seen his glance in my direction.
“However,” Henry said, “I believe in this game, we’re acting as our own caddies. It’s more athletic that way.” He turned to the businessmen who were shouldering their own golf bags. “More sporting. And we’re here for the challenge.”
They grunted a yes and headed out onto the grounds. Mo-No’s lower lip went into full pout.
“But does that mean we can’t trail along?” She demonstrated her little golf clap, batting her eyelashes. “I mean, at least me?” She must have realized she’d inadvertently invited me too.
He asked the men, and they once again gave a communal grunt. If I hadn’t heard them talking markets, I’d wonder if they spoke English or Caveman.
My Fair Aussie: A Standalone Clean Romance (Millionaire Makeover Romance Book 3) Page 11
