Marriage & the Mermaid (Hapless Heroes)

by Cusack, Louise

  She snatched the card out of his hand. “And how am I supposed to get home with no car?”

  “You won’t. I’ll be back this afternoon with an arrest warrant, and if you don’t want to be the girl returning to Bundaberg in handcuffs, you’d better make sure Dalrymple is here.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “Never let it be said that the older generation is lacking a sense of humor.”

  “It’s selective,” he said, then he left her on the front stairs and headed for his car, eager to get back into mobile range so he could phone Waikeri. Things were finally starting to look up.

  Chapter Thirty–Five

  Baz knew there were a million other things he should be doing, but as he lay on a picnic blanket staring up the palm fronds waving gently overhead, he didn’t give a rat’s arse about the rest of the world. His solicitor could work out what to do about Randolph Budjenski, his father could look after himself for a change, and Betty Boop could spill cleaning fluid on the regency rugs for all Baz cared.

  While Wynne Malone’s hand was tucked warmly into his, the world was a happy place.

  “You hungry yet?” she asked, and let go of his hand to come up onto one elbow.

  Baz squinted up at her and she smiled, then she moved her head to block the sun for him. Her lips were mere inches from his.

  “Is that better?” she asked.

  “Yeah. And I am hungry,” he said.

  She grinned. “But not for food.”

  He smiled back. “You’re psychic.”

  “No.” Her smile softened. “I just know you.”

  “You do, don’t you?” he said. “How do you know me?”

  She shrugged, embarrassed. “I’ve had a crush on you for a while.”

  “Miss Malone!” he said, grinning, and the happiness that had warmed his chest spread to other areas. “You know what they say about business and pleasure.”

  “We’re not at work now.”

  He nodded again and they kept on looking into each other’s eyes. “So, if you want to do something about that crush,” he said, “this would be a good time to seduce me.”

  “Oh.” A pretty blush spread across her cheeks. “And how would I do that?”

  “Well … you’d start by kissing me.”

  “Would I?” She glanced away at the surf foaming onto the beach.

  “Sure. You’ve pinned me down. I’m vulnerable.”

  She smiled and looked back. “And what sort of kiss would that be, do you think?”

  “A very soft kiss,” he replied, looking deep into her eyes.

  “Like this …” She leant down and brushed her dry lips against his, then she pulled back for a second and the next touch was moist, as if she’d licked her lips. Baz wanted to groan. The taste of her mouth, the warmth of her breath against his lips had him instantly hard, and he wanted nothing more than to roll her onto her back and grind himself against her, to smear her lipstick everywhere and lick every shred of makeup off her face.

  But this was Wynne.

  “You’re really turning me on,” he said instead when she pulled back.

  She blinked and looked down into his eyes from close range. “Oh. That’s good then, isn’t it?”

  Baz nodded, but a part of him was registering that she was frowning. Wasn’t she turned on? Maybe she was nervous, or … “Can I kiss you now?” he asked.

  She smiled shyly. “Well, you let me, so …” That didn’t sound like eagerness to Baz. In fact, she sounded almost reluctant.

  “Can you lie back down?” he asked, and she did, the frill on her halter neck sundress ruffling prettily along the edge of her cleavage. Then he raised himself onto one elbow to look down at her. “Comfortable?” he asked, and brushed a fallen leaf off the blanket onto the sand.

  She nodded, then nervously licked her lips. “Ready and …”

  “Willing?” Certainly not eager.

  “Yes. That.” Her fingers, at her sides, fiddled with the floral skirt of her dress, as if she was worried that it wasn’t straight, and her smile was strained. Baz didn’t get it. They’d had the discussion about him making up Venus’s name for the police, and Wynne had eagerly embraced Baz’s suspicion that either Matt or his dead brother had tried to rape her in the water. Wynne had even praised his cleverness in lying to keep Venus at Saltwood where Matt couldn’t get to her. So that wasn’t the cause of her discomfort with him.

  Maybe it was something physical, like … his kiss didn’t excite her. After all, it was one thing to have a crush on someone, but how often did reality live up to expectations? And considering Baz had no idea what Wynne’s expectations were, he was probably in fairly deep trouble.

  “So how would you like me to kiss you?” he asked, hoping for a clue.

  “Ummm.” If she’d blushed he would have thought this was all nerves, but she instead she looked … uncomfortable. “You could kiss me as if,” she blinked, “you were in love with me.”

  “In love. Okay.” Now it was Baz’s turn to feel uncomfortable. He had no idea how to kiss someone as if you were in love with them. Was this some secret women’s fantasy? The love kiss. Christ, how did you do that? “Okay,” he said again, then, “Here goes.”

  Wynne closed her eyes and her lips parted gently. So maybe her body wanted him. Maybe it was only her mind creating barriers. He leant down and the sweet scent of her breath stirred him again. He reached across to brush her fringe off her forehead and he kissed her gently there, just above one eyebrow. Then he kissed the eyebrow itself, along its line until he was at the edge of her eye. It seemed a natural progression then to kiss the soft eyelid itself, which seemed to tremble under his lips.

  “You’re really turning me on, Wynne,” he whispered.

  She caught her breath. “Am I?”

  “Oh God yes,” he said, and kissed her other eyelid. “If I get this hard kissing you, I’m likely to have a heart attack if we ever make love.”

  Her lips curved into a smile just at the moment he reached them and Baz decided that maybe soft wasn’t the way to go. So he rolled his hips down far enough for her to feel him, threaded the fingers of one hand into her stiff hair to hold her head still and then he kissed her. Really kissed her. None of your sweet, gentle nibbles. Baz had her mouth open and his tongue inside it faster than you can say painful erection.

  For about five seconds Wynne simply allowed his onslaught, then she kissed him back and Baz went into overload. Some time later he was on his back with her straddling him, both her hands deep in his hair while she kissed him senseless, her gorgeous little butt writhing around as she ground herself against him.

  Baz put his hands on it to hold it still, to catch his breath, and was shocked to discover there was nothing under that pretty frilled skirt. He gasped a breath and she pulled back, grinning.

  “Miss Malone!” he panted.

  “Mr Wilson,” she replied, gazing down at him like the cat that got the cream.

  Baz was lost. Wynne had captivated him completely, from her shy smile to her patience with his father, her protectiveness of Venus, and now… to discover she’d come out on a picnic with him wearing nothing but a flimsy dress. She was every dream he’d ever had, and some he’d never imagined.

  “Marry me, Wynne,” he pleaded. “I know you deserve to be romanced properly, but you said you had a crush on me and —”

  “The magic word?”

  He blinked, knowing this wasn’t the time to be dense. “Love?” he said and she smiled. “Wynne Malone, I am desperately in love with you,” he blurted. “You’re kind and sweet and indescribably sexy. Please be my wife and have my babies.”

  Wynne was panting softly as well, but that didn’t stop her getting dewy eyed. “I’ve dreamt of you asking me that since the moment we met,” she said. “And …” Baz waited with his heart in his throat pounding an anxious tattoo. “… I’d be honored to be your wife.”

  “Thank God.” He pulled her down into a hug and closed his eyes on a sigh of relief that melted e
very inch in his body — well, almost every inch. “I love you so much, Wynne,” he whispered, and knew he couldn’t say it enough.

  He felt her breath brush his neck as she sighed and said, “Me too.”

  So she loved him and he wasn’t alone any more. Ever. This was absolutely, without exception, the very best day in his life. So between making love and eating lunch in a very creative way, neither of them gave Saltwood another thought until it was well after dark and the winds started freshening, heralding the storm that had been brewing all day.

  Chapter Thirty–Six

  I’m busy,” Traci said, blocking Moore’s way into the reception area, arms crossed over a faded green tee that said Cetacean’s Rule.

  “Dr Knowles, I need your help.” Moore was stuck on the veranda, struggling to keep things professional and not beg to be given a second chance, which was exactly what he wanted to do. Although, whether to have the scale sample tested or to apologize, he wasn’t sure.

  “It’s six pm. That’s one hour past our official closing time,” she said, and uncrossed her arms to reach for the sliding door handle.

  Moore propped his foot in the door. “I know I was rude to you last time I was here. I’m sorry about that.” A breath of air–conditioning wafted past her onto the stiflingly hot veranda and Moore tried to soak it up. To cool down. His stuffy four wheel drive had been a sauna on the way back. It was brewing up for another storm and the humidity was brutal, the sort of weather when you hallucinated beer. Not that Traci would be likely to offer him one.

  “No is no,” she said, proving his point.

  Moore removed his foot from the door. He knew he could ask her if her Nobel Prize meant more to her than the truth. But she wasn’t stonewalling him because of that. “I know it’s late,” he said reasonably, “but this could be a breakthrough in the case. A dead man’s brother is relying on us for justice. He won’t find closure until we sort out exactly how his brother died.” Moore was hoping to tug on her heartstrings.

  Instead her eyes narrowed. “Is that bullshit?”

  Moore shook his head. “The murdered man was Steven. His brother is Matthew. They were here on holiday from central Queensland. Matthew won’t go home until the case is closed.”

  She observed him a moment longer, then said, “You’re trying to manipulate me,” looking him straight in the eye.

  “I’m just trying to find out the truth,” he replied. “I thought you wanted that too.” He gave her a minute to assimilate that, then he offered her the plastic packet.

  She looked at it, then took it out of his hand and turned away to hold it up to the fluorescent reception light. “Is this off your female suspect?” she asked.

  “It was found in her shower. So we think so, yes.”

  She let him sweat for ten seconds before she turned on her heel and marched down the hallway to the lab.

  Moore followed her, feeling the perspiration in his hair cool in the icy air–conditioning. “For a start, I need to know if there’s glue on it. And secondly I need to —”

  “See if it matches the sample off the victim.” She sat down at a table with a microscope almost as big as she was and slanted him a glance. “I’m the one with the PhD, remember?”

  No cracks in that armor. “I’ll wait here,” he said and pointed to a chair near the door.

  She grunted and got on with it, removing the scale from the bag with a pair of fine tweezers before placing it on a glass slide. “No glue,” she said a minute later. “In fact it’s fresh. Looks like it’s only been off the… creature it belonged to for a couple of hours.”

  “Then it must have come off the girl.”

  Traci nodded but Moore could see it was taking her a couple of seconds to let that Nobel Prize go. At last she said, “I’ll check if it’s a match.”

  That took longer but Moore waited patiently, contenting himself with watching the way she gnawed the inside of her cheek when she was concentrating. The flick of her eyelashes viewed from side–on was pretty, and her hands. She had short unpainted fingernails but the digits themselves were long and elegant, whether she was making minute adjustments to her microscope settings or punching keys on her computer. He couldn’t help wondering how she would touch a man with those hands, and felt sad now that he’d never find out.

  At last she finished and came to stand over him. “Purely on visuals, this new scale is identical to the sample taken off your shark attack victim,” she told him. “It won’t be conclusive until we check the DNA, but I believe they’re off the same creature. Or at least the same species of creature. So, if you got this off a girl’s fingernail, then… she’s a mutant.”

  Moore let out a breath. “Thank you,” he replied. “Could you put that in writing and email it to Waikeri straight away. He’ll need it get an arrest warrant.”

  “And I need to tell the QUT team as well. If the shark is a mutant, it may not behave the way they expect it to. They won’t tell anyone else.”

  Moore nodded his permission and stood to leave. “Listen, I appreciate what you’ve —” he started to say but she cut him off.

  “Don’t you imagine you’re leaving without me,” she said and turned back to her computer. “Five minutes to type the reports and I’ll be ready.”

  “Ready… ?”

  “To find the mutant girl,” she told him. “Someone is going to have to work out what she is, and I’m the trained scientist who identified the scale. I get the glory on this one.”

  Moore had never heard her so demanding, but her hands were shaking again and he realised this was as close to a soft underbelly as he was ever likely to see. “I’ll wait out front,” he said quietly, and went out into the reception area to phone Waikeri while she knocked out the reports. The big Maori sounded breathless over the phone, but when Moore asked if he was okay, Waikeri said it was indigestion and to leave him alone.

  “Done,” she said five minutes later, coming into reception with a backpack slung over one arm. “Cameras and testing equipment,” she explained in response to his querying glance.

  “Fair enough,” Moore said. “Waikeri’s going to meet us at Saltwood with a couple of arrest warrants. Did you speak to the QUT team?”

  “Just then,” she admitted. “The shark is headed back down the coast towards us. They’re finally closing in on it.”

  Moore led her out to his battered four wheel drive and held the door open for her. She got in silently and said nothing for the first ten minutes of their trip. Moore had to force himself to be silent. To wait for her to talk.

  Finally she glanced at him and said, “I didn’t want to see you again,” Just laying out the fact.

  “I know.” Moore replied solemnly, but he felt the first flicker of hope. She’d used past tense. Did that mean she’d changed her mind?

  “I’m disappointed that its not a natural mutation,” she added. “But the genetic tampering will still be an important discovery. Just not as important as it could have been.” Clearly not Nobel Prize worthy. She frowned and looked out the window. “Oh, and I accept your apology.”

  Moore felt his death–grip on the steering wheel loosen, but he deliberately kept his voice light. “I hope so. I’ve transferred the booking at the Bayside Bistro to tomorrow night and I hate to eat alone.” He held his breath while he waited for her reply.

  She seemed completely absorbed in watching the passing trees, but finally she said, “Me too.”

  At last.

  A crack in the Plexiglas.

  Chapter Thirty–Seven

  Randolph swallowed down the last of the whisky in his glass, hoping the alcohol would give him clarity. As a child he’d managed to run away from home, cheat, steal, survive prostitution and navigate the dark corners of the Valley where every low–life had tried to bleed him. He’d run his own life and never been outsmarted, yet this old man’s doddering unpredictability was consistently deflecting his carefully–laid plans.

  “Could we see your study now, Theodore?” h
e asked. Being in the same room as the paperwork might give him the opportunity to get it finalized. “You’ve told me so much about it. I don’t want to miss the opportunity to see it for myself.”

  “Yes, yes.” Ted nodded eagerly and even stood and took a couple of steps away from the dining table before he turned back frowning. “Did we have our tea?” he asked.

  Rand, who had also risen, leant back over the table and picked up his empty glass. “We had a drink,” he said. “It was most refreshing.”

  “Oh yes. That’s right. And dinner?” Ted wavered from side to side, his mad hair sticking out at all angles, his cardigan buttoned askew over unironed tweed pants and a flannelette pajama shirt. His hands clasped and unclasped in front of him.

  “Betty made us a chicken salad,” Rand reminded him. “It was delicious.”

  “Good girl, that Betty,” Ted said, nodding his approval. “And pretty too. You could do worse than ending up with a girl like that, Randolph.”

  Ted had a point. Betty was gold, but Rand doubted the old man knew her talents probably lay in thievery. He’d seen that shifty–eyed glance often enough to recognize it.

  But instead of commenting on that, Rand conjured a smile. “You’re embarrassing me now, Theodore. She’s too pretty for me.”

  Ted barked a laugh. “Good looking young man like you?” He shook his head. “You must be swamped in women.”

  “Well, I do have a special friend,” Randolph said, deliberately being ambiguous in case the old guy had been expecting him to be gay. With a bit of luck, that would be the end of the matchmaking. There’d been enough distractions already in the last couple of hours. Gardening, old movies, chess. Rand wanted to get into the study. The groundwork had been laid. It was time to nail the deal.

  “Sly old dog,” Ted said. “You never told me!”

  “Well, a gentleman doesn’t discuss his private life, Theodore. You know that.”

  Ted laughed and let Rand walk him to the dining room door. “I do indeed,” he said. “But it’s refreshingly rare to meet someone of my son’s generation who has some discretion.”