by JD Nixon
I woke up a few times, sitting up, my heart pounding and fear in my eyes as I relived the hot box and the explosions. Every time, Heller was there for me, soothing me back to sleep with his soft kisses and his tender words, half-English, half his native language, whatever that was.
When I finally roused in the morning, it was very late, almost lunchtime. I was by myself in bed, and stumbled to the bathroom to splash cold water on my face. I examined myself critically in the mirror and decided that I looked bloody awful, deep lines under my eyes, my face too thin and sharp. I jogged down to my flat, drinking in the tranquillity. I dressed casually in jeans and t-shirt and went down to the office to check my email, noticing that my jeans were now swimming on me. Nobody was around, probably everyone had wandered off for lunch.
After three weeks away from the computer, I would have a load of spam from family and friends, let alone the usual culprits. There were so many emails in my inbox that I wanted to give up, but I patiently waded through them, deleting the bulk, responding to a few.
Dixie had sent me three pornographic photos, all of different men, so I had a furtive perv before deleting them. She’d obviously not missed me too much during my absence. My twin cousins had sent me a couple of emails from London, each one sending theirs within minutes of the other one. They did lots of weird twinny things like that.
With that chore done, I turned my attention to the in-tray on my desk, conscientiously reading the security legislation update memos. The last piece of mail was a silver envelope addressed to me in unfamiliar writing. Curiously I opened it and sat staring at an invitation to Will’s wedding, to be held in a month’s time. It must have been sitting there since I’d been gone, because the RSVP date was today.
“What’s the matter, Matilda?” asked Heller as he entered the office.
“Do you want to go to a wedding with me?” I asked, handing the invitation to him to read.
“I have forbidden you from seeing that man any more.”
“Don’t start on that again, Heller,” I warned. “This is his wedding. What do you think I’m going to do? Fuck him out the back of the church while everyone’s waiting for him? Stop insulting me.” And yes, I was deliberately crude, knowing how little he cared for bad language. It worked, his lips compressing with anger.
We were quickly slipping back into dangerous territory.
“Why would you put yourself through watching him marry another woman?”
My tone and the tilt of my chin were both defiant. “To prove to him that I don’t care.”
He sat on the corner of my desk and crossed his arms, his eyes intent. “But do you care?”
I sighed. “I don’t know, Heller. How will I know until I go and watch?”
He stood and walked to his office. “I hate that man.”
“So that’s a no from you then?” I called out after him, receiving nothing but stony silence in response.
Daniel walked in, holding a sandwich. I hit him with my most dazzling smile. “Hello, my darling Danny. Did I tell you how much I missed you when I was away? And by the way, you look wonderful today. Is that a new shirt? It really suits you.”
He eyeballed me suspiciously. “What do you want, Tilly?”
“Do you want to come to Will’s wedding with me?”
“No way! I think you should stay a million miles away from him.”
“Well, who am I going to take then?”
“Go by yourself.”
“Right! As if that’s an option. Turn up at my ex-boyfriend’s wedding by myself, just proving to everyone that I’m a loser who can’t even find a date.”
He smiled. “Well, if the shoe fits, honey . . .”
I threw my stapler at him and he caught it neatly with one hand. He brought it back to me and leaned on my desk until our eyes were level, suddenly serious. “Stay away from him, Tilly. For your own happiness. Please?”
“You don’t understand. I have to go to show him that I don’t care about him any more.”
Daniel thought about that and rolled his eyes, sauntering back to his desk. “Women! Who can possibly understand you? I think you’d show him that you didn’t care more by not going.”
“You don’t understand,” I sighed, depressed. Niq wandered in.
“Niq! My little treasure. Do you want to go to Will’s wedding with me?”
“Boooooring! Anyway, I hate him, so nah,” he said in his blunt way, not even sparing my request a second thought.
Damn! I suddenly had a good idea and approached Heller. He looked up at my knock.
“Can I ask Farrell to take me to the wedding?”
Silent, Heller regarded me for an uncomfortably long time, shards of ice virtually shooting from his eyes. Hmm, maybe it hadn’t been such a good idea.
“Guess not.” I retreated and slumped back at my desk, chin resting glumly on my palms. How could I be surrounded by men and not find anyone to be my date?
Daniel had arranged for a new phone for me with the same number I’d had previously. I had a text from Will waiting. Checking that Heller was safely occupied, I responded.
Will: r u coming to wedding? rsvp is 2day
Me: do u want me 2 go?
Will: yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes
Me: ok. consider this my rsvp plus partner
Will: good. where u been? i missed u
Me: work
Will: have u decided abt us yet?
I didn’t reply. I would have to tell Will to his face that we were definitely through, but not today. Today, I had to start writing my report about my time at The Farm, even though there was absolutely no chance of billing the clients for any further expenses. I sincerely hoped that Heller received enough money upfront to make my whole ordeal worthwhile. I sat at the keyboard and tapped away industriously, like the model employee I am. Sid and Clive arrived for a meeting with Heller.
“Hey guys! Does either of you want to come to a wedding with me?” I asked hopefully.
Sid shook his head with blistering haste and Clive’s cold, flat, hard eyes suggested that he’d rather eat a bucket of salted scorpions than do anything social with me.
“Oh, forget it!” I said angrily, and went back to pounding my keyboard. God, I was going to end up at the wedding by myself. How pathetic was that!
I briefly wondered what my brothers were doing that day, before rejecting the idea. That would be as bad as going with my father. What about Simon? No! I couldn’t turn up at Will’s wedding with someone who looked like him! That would be even more pitiable than going alone. Everybody would feel sorry for me then.
There was nothing for it but to go down to the ground floor and trap some random security guy and drag the poor sap to the wedding with me. And if none of the men voluntarily wanted to be my date, I’d force Heller to order someone to escort me. Hell, I’d even go with Elton, which only demonstrated how desperate I was becoming.
Dr Kincaid came into the office and straight over to my desk.
“You again,” he sighed heavily. “What is it with you now?”
I rolled up my sleeve to show him. He cleaned and dressed my bullet graze, pronouncing that it wasn’t very serious, which I could have told him for free. Then he gave me a general check up, firing off questions about my time in the hot box. Satisfied that I hadn’t suffered any lasting consequences, he left. Not to be unkind, but I hoped I wouldn’t see him again for a long time.
And that turned out to be an unwarrantedly optimistic hope.
Chapter 18
That night Daniel and Niq came over to my place and we had dinner together, catching up on each other’s lives during the last three weeks. We teased Daniel about his date with Anton, which was back on for this weekend.
“I want to know everything afterwards,” I insisted.
“Not everything, Tilly,” he blushed.
“Yes, Daniel. Everything. No arguments.”
After they left, my phone rang. It was Mum. She wanted me to come to dinner the following
night. I hadn’t seen my family for a while and couldn’t wait to hear all their news and to play with my little nieces again. The next day passed quickly and I pottered around happily, enjoying being back in familiar surroundings. When I told Heller my plans for the evening, he decided that I needed to be driven to and from my parents’ house by one of the men.
“I can drive, Heller. I have a licence that says so. Issued by the government, no less,” I snarked, much more confident now in a car than I’d been for months.
“I’m not ready to let you out of my sight unescorted. Don’t argue, please. There’s really no point.”
I smiled suddenly. “That means you’re going to have to find someone to take me to Will’s wedding, doesn’t it? You don’t want me driving myself there. Unescorted.”
“I’m not a match-maker, Matilda. You’re a very attractive woman. Find your own date.”
“If I can’t find anyone then you’re taking me!” I snapped. “I’m not going by myself.”
“I’m not going to that man’s wedding.” He stepped closer and placed a gentle hand on the back of my neck, smiling down at me. “Do you really think it would be a good idea for me to be there, my sweet?”
I thought about it and had to agree that on balance it would be a terrible idea. He’d probably go on a rampage, beat up Will (again) and frighten the poor bride into popping out her baby early. And no matter how I felt about everything, I would never want to be the cause of ruining someone’s special day.
“No.”
“Then let’s not bring it up again.”
And he leaned down to kiss me. It was a great kiss and I didn’t want it to end, so I slipped my arms around his neck and kept him in place, his lips on mine. His hand glided down from my neck to my waist, his other wrapping around my back. He drew me as close to him as was possible to be, our bodies pressed the length of each other. When we pulled back for air, we were both breathing more heavily.
“Stay with me tonight.”
“Yes.”
“I might be late home. Clive and I have a meeting downtown and I’m not sure how long it will take. That’s why I’m not driving you tonight.” And all business again, he checked his watch. “I have to go, my sweet. I’ll see you later tonight.”
He kissed me again and I watched him leave, thinking about the advice Simon had given me not to be afraid to love. But I was afraid to love Heller, even though I admitted to myself that it was happening whether I wanted it to or not.
Farrell was rostered to drop me off. We were careful to chat casually on the trip over. Well I chatted, he was his usual granite-like self, and I could barely tease a word out of him, let alone a smile. When we arrived, he idled the 4WD at the curb in front of my parents’ house.
“You put us all through a lot, Chalmers. Not knowing where you were,” he said quietly, clutching the steering wheel and staring straight ahead. I knew then that Heller hadn’t been the only one worried about me.
“It wasn’t really my fault, Hugh.”
“I know. It was his.” He glanced at me with his startling eyes, light gray with a black ring around the iris. His face was full of unspoken emotion before he turned away. He glanced back again and leaned over to fleetingly stroke my cheek in the most tender way. “Enjoy your evening, Tilly.”
“You too,” I said, not without regret, but not daring to touch him at all. Heller had ruthlessly crushed our budding relationship and I would never risk anything like that happening to Farrell again. He was truly one of life’s good guys and deserved better than to suffer over a terribly conflicted woman like me.
My mother and her little silky terrier, Puddles, greeted me at the door. I performed a quick two-step to avoid Puddles’ usual excited welcome, a stream of pee on my shoes. After she cleaned up the mess and gently scolded an unrepentant, tail-wagging dog, Mum finally gave me her full attention. And promptly over-reacted. “Oh Tilly, you’re so thin! What’s that lovely Mr Heller thinking, letting you become so thin? I bet you’re not eating properly and you’re working too hard. And you don’t look as though you’ve been sleeping well either.” And on and on and on she went.
“Mum . . . Mum . . . Listen . . . Mum . . . Stop . . . Listen . . . Mum,” I tried to interrupt repeatedly for a while, but decided to let her rant until she’d exhausted herself. When she stopped to take a breath, I jumped in, explaining that I’d just finished a difficult job, but was fine. And I easily proved my dedication to regaining all my weight by scoffing down her lovely roast dinner and two glutton-sized pieces of dessert cake.
My whole family was present for dinner – my parents; my grandmothers; my eldest sibling Brian, his bitchy wife Gayle, and their gorgeous daughters, Cara and Libby; and my other brother Sean and his beautiful wife Elise. It was fun kicking back on the lounge for a few hours, chatting, drinking wine, catching up with their news, and chasing after my nieces, who screamed in mock-terror as I lumbered around frightening them, showing them my best dinosaur impersonation. That should get them nicely hyped right before bedtime, I thought, smiling innocently at Gayle.
I helped Dad clean up the dishes and was seized by Elise afterwards. She needed me as a guinea pig to test some perfumes she’d developed for assessment in a course she was taking in aromatherapy. So I sat patiently while she doused me in a number of different scents, some more successful than others. One of them, which she freely admitted was an epic failure, smelt like a frightened skunk with poor personal hygiene habits, making my eyes water and clearing the room.
“I’ll think I’ll have to dump that one,” she said regretfully, watching as I scrubbed at the spot where she’d applied it. But it was hopeless – no matter how red I made my skin with scrubbing, the odour hung around me like . . . well, like a bad smell. Nobody wanted to be near me after that, and for the first time I could remember, Mum actively hustled me to the door when a horn honked from the waiting Heller’s vehicle, virtually pushing me outside and slamming the door in my face.
“Bye everyone,” I said to the closed door. It opened again and my handbag flew out at me before it was slammed once more.
My escort home was Tysen, one of the more senior Heller’s men. We had only driven to the end of the street before his face pickled and he cast me a suspicious sideways glance.
“It’s not me, it’s my perfume,” I told him in exasperation.
He wound down the window. “You need to change your perfume.”
Back at the Warehouse, every man I ran into as I climbed the stairs gave me a second glance, but not for any good reasons. I felt like Pepe Le Pew.
I went straight to Heller’s bathroom, stripped off and jumped in his shower. After lathering and rinsing twice with the girly soap he let me keep there, I started to feel cleaner. One more time, I decided, lathering up again. Covered in soap and shampoo bubbles, I turned around in the shower to rinse my hair, thinking about Daniel’s forthcoming date with Anton. I hoped that he was able to let his beautiful nature shine through any nerves he experienced. He wasn’t great with being in public, so the added pressure of being in public trying to impress someone might prove too much for his fragile self-esteem.
Hair rinsed squeaky clean, I opened my eyes again only to find Heller leaning against the wall, dressed in nothing but boxers, observing me with great interest.
“Heller!” I shrieked, covering myself with my hands as best I could. “How long have you been there?”
“Long enough for this to develop,” he smiled, nodding down to where a raging hard-on threatened to explode from his skin-tight boxers.
“Go away!” I said, turning my back on him. “It’s not right for you to be standing there watching me.”
“That’s true,” he agreed easily and I sighed with relief. Good, he was leaving me alone.
But a few seconds later, his body pressed up against my back. I stiffened. Oh God, I thought, my breath catching in my throat. He’s in the shower with me!
He swept my wet hair to one side and kissed my neck. “It
wasn’t right for me to stand there watching you when I could join you instead.” He kissed a trail up the line of my neck from shoulder to ear. “Relax, my sweet. You’re very tense. I’m not going to hurt you. Quite the contrary.”
He slipped his arms around me, taking the soap from my hands and lathering up his own hands. Carefully replacing it on the shower shelf, he commenced rubbing my shoulders with his soapy hands, his fingers gently kneading my tight muscles. He kissed me behind the ear and nibbled on my earlobe.
“Is that helping you relax?” he whispered. I could hardly breathe, every nerve on red-alert.
After a nice massage, his hands wandered away from my shoulders, down and up my arms, across my shoulder blades, down my side to my waist and hips, and up again across my stomach to my breasts. Cupping each breast, his thumbs drew circles on my nipples until they were rigid with arousal.
“You’re so beautiful, Matilda,” he whispered hoarsely. I twisted my head around towards him.
“Heller . . .” I gasped. He cut off any further words with his mouth, his lips and tongue insistent and demanding, his hands caressing and fondling my breasts while the hot water of the shower streamed over us.
I should have told him to stop. I should have told him to leave. I should have told him that he had no right to join me in the shower and start touching me. But I didn’t. I didn’t want him to stop. I didn’t want him to leave. I was glad he was touching me in the shower.
Don’t be afraid of love, Simon had said to me. I leaned backwards so that I could look up at Heller’s face. I needed to see his expression. His face was intense and serious, his eyes when they met mine full of emotions – yes, there was undeniable lust, but there were others as well, softer, more tender, needier emotions. He probably saw the same in my eyes.
We kissed again and again, each time with more passion, more urgency. Keeping one hand on my breast, he slid the other downwards between my legs, which I obligingly moved apart for him. His fingers were sure and accurate, knowledgeable about when to move lightly and when to increase tempo and pressure. I melted against him, my back on his chest, leaning my head backwards against his shoulder. I closed my eyes, revelling in his caressing strokes and the hot kisses raining down on my neck, face and shoulders, the spray of shower water only adding to the pleasure.
