Aussie Rules

by Jill Shalvis

  Al whistled. “Bet they’re flexible.”

  “Oh yeah, we got wild, dude—” Kellan broke off at Char’s glare. His wicked smile faded. “I mean, it was tender and respectful. Very tender and respectful.”

  “Enough.” Ernest gestured with his donut toward Danny. “I got a complaint. You need to stop using aerosol anything in maintenance. I found a dead araneae in there.”

  “A what?” Danny asked.

  “A spider! You’re killing them.”

  Char sighed. “Okay, let’s talk about me. I’m cranking down the AC from 78 to 68 degrees, and I don’t care how much it costs, I’m too damn hot all the time!”

  Al wisely refrained from saying a word, but he looked like he was thinking at least a few.

  No one spoke of Mel’s absence.

  Finally Bo had to ask. “Where’s your fearless leader?”

  Char looked at Al.

  Al looked at Ritchie and Kellan.

  Both of whom looked at Danny.

  Danny looked at Dimi.

  Dimi quietly sipped her herbal tea. “Hmmm? Oh, Mel. She’s running a bit late this morning, that’s all.”

  Bo would be willing to bet that Mel had never been late to anything in her entire life. Just as he’d be willing to bet she’d stayed up late going through that file he’d brought her, and was now either still formulating her response to what she’d found, or plotting his murder.

  The airport began hopping with its usual morning business. Bo himself had an appointment to look at a Douglas A-24 in Los Angeles, which he reluctantly left for, but not before pulling Dimi aside. “I want to see Mel later,” he said. “Tell her I’ll only be a few hours.”

  Dimi smiled at him noncommittally. Bo grated his teeth and piloted his flight to LA and back.

  When he returned, Mel had come in, but was now on her own charter flight to San Francisco, forcing him to cool his heels for the rest of the day, which he spent tracking down a Piper for a customer.

  Dimi kept interrupting him with phone calls—creditors, salespeople, even one person asking if they sold model airplanes.

  Finally he called Dimi’s desk. “What are you doing?”

  “My job,” she replied sweetly.

  “Do you forward all these kinds of calls to Mel?”

  “Not anymore. You’re in charge now.”

  He drew a deep breath, but patience didn’t come. “I hope you’re finding it therapeutic to take your anger out on me.”

  “Actually, not as much as I’d hoped.”

  He sighed. “Do you really give Mel this many phone calls a day?”

  “Oh, no. For her, I screen them.”

  He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Do you think you could screen them for me?”

  “Nope,” she said with that same cheer.

  “Why not?”

  “Because I don’t like you.”

  At closing time, when Mel still hadn’t come in, Bo went to Dimi yet again.

  “Oh, dear,” she said with a little smile, bracelets jangling, as she set aside a book—a book? “Didn’t I tell you? She’s going straight from San Francisco to Seattle.”

  “No,” he said through his teeth. “You didn’t mention that.”

  “Sorry.” But she didn’t look it. “You did ask me to screen your calls, remember?”

  Bo slapped his clipboard against his leg while he considered strangling her. But though Dimi had been obnoxious today, she didn’t look smug so much as…worried. Hell. Had Mel fallen apart at that file he’d left her? “Look, did she say anything about—”

  Dimi shook her head. “Not a word about anything.”

  He was not going to gain an inch here, but that didn’t prevent him from trying. “Sally hasn’t called yet, has she?”

  “Nope.”

  Really, he might as well just bang his head against the wall. “Thanks. You’ve been a big help.”

  Now her smug smile made a flashing appearance. “I try.”

  The next morning when Mel woke up she did just what she had done the one before: stared at the file Bo had brought. At the thought of what was in it, she groaned and rolled to her back, and had a new thought.

  Two days ago, she’d let Bo get her naked, finger her to an orgasm, and he hadn’t so much as lost his pants. As it had ever since, the memory made her by turns hot and achy, and hot and humiliated.

  She had to get a grip.

  Maybe the trick was simply not to look directly at him. Yeah, she’d try that. It shouldn’t be so hard now that she had something new to obsess about.

  She stared at the fat file again. God, Sally, what did you do?

  With a sigh, she got out of bed, showered, dressed, and drove to the airport and, as was the norm—except for yesterday, when she’d needed to be alone—she was the first to arrive. Unlocking the front door, she flipped on the lobby lights. As they flickered to life, she noticed the jar on the front desk. Curious, she moved close, then stopped short.

  In it sat a big, fat, hairy, spindly spider. Skin crawling, she grabbed the note next to the jar and took a big step back, reading while the spider stared at her.

  Mel,

  Here is proof why I can’t clean out the maintenance closet. This spider is a brown recluse, and they do have a bad rep, but they’re endangered. We need to preserve their environment for all of mankind.

  —Ernest

  P.S. Any more wonky e-mails you want to tell me about?

  Mel gritted her teeth. No more “wonky” e-mails but the spider was seriously wigging her out. She picked up a pen and gingerly used it to push the jar away so she could check the flight schedule beneath. When she’d looked yesterday morning, there’d been only two flights there, now four were listed as incoming, and it looked like Bo had scheduled two of those himself.

  For North Beach, that was booming business.

  “It might take awhile to make this place worth what I actually lost,” said a male voice. “But apparently I have little choice.”

  Mel whipped around to face Bo, who’d come in so quietly she hadn’t heard him. “What if you don’t ever make back what you lost?”

  “I can always sell.”

  The words stopped her heart. “I thought you didn’t have plans to do that.”

  “I don’t. Yet.” He wore a pair of black Levi’s today and a white button-down shirt, with Black Aviation’s logo on the pocket, once again half-tucked in, half not, sleeves shoved to his elbows. His hair had been finger-combed at most, falling in untamed waves. His mouth, the one that had kissed her the day before yesterday until she hadn’t known her own name, was unsmiling. He watched her with those inscrutable eyes, the ones that gave nothing away, nothing at all.

  “Is selling really a possibility?” she asked.

  He just looked at her.

  Yeah. It was. He could recoop at least a part of his losses and get revenge on Sally in one fell swoop, and they both knew it. Too bad the revenge would be on her, not Sally at all.

  “Are we going to talk about it?” he asked. “About what you thought about the records I brought you?”

  She thought her heart was breaking, how was that?

  “Or maybe we should talk about those—what did Ernest call them?—wonky e-mails.”

  Oh, God.

  “What did he mean, Mel? Because it sounds like maybe you’ve been keeping more secrets, in which case, I’m just shocked.”

  In the charged silence came the drone of an incoming engine.

  Their gazes locked.

  “Saved by the plane?” he murmured.

  She ran to the door leading to the tarmac.

  “You can run,” he called out after her. “But you can’t hide.”

  Chapter 16

  The day was busy. Mel couldn’t believe it but planes came in and out, they fueled up, and Danny had all the work he could want.

  At the end of her shift, she and Dimi together looked at the schedule on the computer, and smiled tiredly.

  “Like old times,” Dim
i said. “The advertising you’ve done has helped.”

  Some of Mel’s smile faded at that, and she slowly shook her head. “It’s not the advertising, Dimi.”

  Dimi’s smile faded, too. “Yes, it is.”

  “No. It’s Bo. He’s brought in customers. He’s got contacts we don’t, and connections. He’s doing for the airport what Sally used to do with such ease.”

  Give it life.

  She’d tried like hell, but the truth was, all she wanted to do was fly. This day-to-day managing, the handling of the employees, being the end all to everyone, the peacemaker, the mom, the shrink…She’d never really even admitted it to herself, but it was getting old. “He’s done all this. We should acknowledge that.”

  “Bite your tongue.”

  “It’s true. And…It’s a good thing. No matter what we think of him, he’s better at this than I am.”

  “No, he’s not! No one’s better than you—”

  “No. And I just hope he’s enjoying it so he keeps at it rather than selling.”

  Dimi stared at her, eyes bright. “Listen, I’ve got to get out of here.”

  Of course she did. She didn’t want to talk about this. “Hot date?” Mel asked.

  “Nah. I’m tired of hot dates.”

  Mel laughed.

  “I’m serious,” she said, and because she actually did sound serious, Mel studied her more closely.

  Dimi was dressed today in snug Bermuda shorts and a lace tank top, with a denim jacket open over the ensemble. She looked pretty, but not her usual over-the-top sexy, something Mel should have picked up on earlier. “What’s wrong?”

  “Can’t a woman just be bored with men?”

  “Well, you’d think.”

  Dimi sighed. “I’ve dated four guys this week and every single one of them had a major flaw.”

  “Such as they’re penis-carrying humans?”

  “You’re too young to be so cynical.”

  “It’s not cynicism, it’s realism,” Mel insisted. “Men are fun but they’re not everything.”

  “And planes are?”

  Mel winced.

  “Sorry,” Dimi said quietly. “I didn’t mean—”

  “It’s okay.” Mel shut down the computer. “Listen, why don’t we do something tonight—”

  “You on babysitting duty?”

  “Come on, you know you have a tendency to self-destruct when you get stressed—”

  “I’m not stressed.”

  “We’re both stressed.”

  “Okay, I’m stressed,” Dimi admitted. “But not self-destructing.”

  Mel met Dimi’s gaze and found nothing assuring. “Dimi—”

  “Look, you want me less stressed? Get Bo Black the hell out of here. Make things go back to the way they were.”

  “Which is what exactly?”

  “Easy.”

  “Honey, nothing about this life has ever been easy.”

  “Then tell me why the hell we’re doing it.”

  Mel shook her head. “Because we’ve always loved it.”

  “You mean because you’ve always loved it.”

  Mel absorbed that unexpected punch. “Wow,” she said, sitting back.

  “Damn.” Dimi shook her head. “Clearly I need to go to a corner and have a time out.” She grabbed her purse. “On second thought, I think my bed, alone, will work wonders.”

  Mel grabbed Dimi’s hand. She loved Dimi, she loved her with all her heart, she loved all of them, but she couldn’t go on doing this, keeping secrets, walking on eggshells, wondering when it was all going to come crashing down on her. “I’m going to tell him, Deem. I’m going to tell Bo the truth.”

  Dimi stared at Mel.

  “I’m going to tell him we don’t know where Sally is. That we’ve never known.”

  “Why?”

  “I can’t hide it anymore.”

  “You’ve been stronger than steel all these years, what’s changed?”

  “He’s been honest. I want to do the same.”

  “It’s too late for honesty, it was too late from the moment all those years ago when we decided to take over and run this place in Sally’s name. I mean, my God, Mel, you’re going to hand over our power, our very livelihood, and all for what? A hard cock?”

  Mel slowly stood up. “That’s not exactly fair.”

  “Really? Why not?”

  “Because first of all, I’m not sleeping with him.”

  “But you want to be.”

  Damn it, that was true enough. “And second of all,” she said, ignoring that because she wasn’t quite ready to face it. “And this is the biggie. He has the deed. He has a right to know everything.”

  Dimi let out a rough sound that perfectly conveyed her opinion on that. “Eddie forced Sally to give it up.”

  “Maybe. But Sally won’t call me back, so we don’t know that.”

  “Oh, my God. He put his hands on you, and now you believe everything he says, you believe him over Sally.”

  “Sally hasn’t said a word! Don’t you get it? We’re on our own! We’ve always been on our own!”

  “You’re not on your own, you’re with Bo.”

  “Dimi.”

  “No.” Dimi moved to the door. “I don’t want to talk about this.”

  “He brought me some bank statements,” Mel called out to her. “Early statements from North Beach.”

  Dimi turned back.

  “They show how much money Sally had over a period of five years, starting the year before Bo and Eddie came to town.”

  “So? Sally was broke.”

  “See, that’s the thing.” Mel didn’t know how to do this gently. “She wasn’t broke. She had a million dollars in the bank when she vanished.”

  Dimi’s mouth fell open. “What the hell? We’ve never had anywhere close to that much money. We never had any money at all.”

  “I know,” Mel said grimly. “But it’s there in black and white.”

  “Oh, my God.”

  “I’m going to find out what’s going on, and to do that, I’m going to ask Bo to help me—”

  “Mel—”

  “He brought me the information, Dimi. He didn’t have to do that.”

  Dimi was shaking her head. “I’m against this. His motive in coming here was to hurt us.”

  “Sally, maybe. Not us.”

  “Same thing.”

  “Why did she have all that money, Deem? She let us think she didn’t have any—”

  “Are you listening to yourself doubt her? You are truly on his side in this!”

  “No, I—”

  Dimi pointed at her. “When you get home tonight, look in the mirror. Because I swear to you, it’s all over your face.”

  “Dimi—”

  Dimi shook her head. “I can’t do this with you, not now.” And she walked out.

  Mel let out a breath and checked her e-mail before closing down. She was still going over the conversation with Dimi in her mind so the unexpected e-mail hit her like a blow to the belly, from You’reNotLeavingItAlone.

  Chapter 17

  Funny thing about wanting justice and revenge, about being so filled with grief that you couldn’t reason—it was hard to maintain that level of fury.

  In Bo’s case, it turned out he was far more human than he’d thought, and because he was, it was also harder than he’d imagined to look directly into the eyes of the person you planned on hurting.

  Especially now that he’d kissed Mel, touched her. Yeah, she was still keeping secrets—a white-hot poker stabbing into his chest—but he dreamed about her. Dreamed about more than just kissing, about what would have happened the other night if they’d both been naked, if they hadn’t been interrupted. He’d have had her on that soft couch, on the floor, in her bed.

  A loud crashing noise woke him. It was the hangar doors sliding open, which sent sharp sunlight slanting across his face, completely eradicating the erotic dreams.

  He blinked, realizing he’d fallen asleep t
he night before while snooping through more boxes in the hidden storage area. Sprawled on the cold floor, he looked up at the outline of a woman above him in the doorway, the obnoxious sun behind her throwing her body in bold relief.

  A hot body that kick-started his for the morning.

  Mel came down the stairs. He would have have known it was her just by the sheer attitude of her boots as they clicked, clicked, clicked toward him.

  She came to a stop and stood, hands on her hips. “Still snooping?”

  He closed his eyes against the glare and cleared his throat. “Yeah. It’s what happens when the people around you keep their thoughts and secrets to themselves.”

  She muttered something, then vanished, and he lay there, still a little undone by his graphic dreams, and then his not-so-graphic reality.

  He was hard.

  Then the boots clicked again, and a hot mug of coffee was set before him. He turned his head and stared at it.

  Was he dreaming again?

  Mel crouched at his side. Her hair was lit like fire as she looked him over from head to toe and back again, her gaze slowing at his thighs, and in between—skidding to a halt there. Her pupils dilated slightly, and unconsciously, or maybe not so unconsciously, she licked her lips. “You find anything else?” she asked a little hoarsely.

  It took him a moment to go from thinking about sex to why he was here in the first place. “Not yet. There’s a lot to look through.”

  She nodded, her gaze again landing on the button fly on his jeans as if she couldn’t help herself. “Yeah, it’s hard—um, tough work.” Her face went beet red. “It’s tough work going through all this stuff.”

  He couldn’t help it. He grinned. “You said hard.”

  And she put her hands to her cheeks. “Did not.”

  “Did.”

  She whirled away. “I don’t know why I try with you.”

  “Really? You’re trying?” With a groan, he rolled to his feet. “I must have missed that part.”

  She began to walk to the door, but he pulled her back around.

  “You’re so good at annoying me I nearly missed it,” he said, staring into her tight face. “What’s wrong?”

  She was quiet for so long he figured she wasn’t going to speak. “I’ve received three e-mails,” she finally said. “One from LeaveItAlone, one from BackOffOrElse, and the last this morning, from You’reNotLeavingItAlone. Happy now?”