by Ash Harlow
“If we weren’t at the yard with several sets of eyes trained like snipers upon us...”
He left his incomplete sentence for me to fill. I made a sound back at him. Not a word but a little noise that suggested I went along with his idea.
“It would be foolish,” he said.
“It would.” I agreed.
“Good, glad we’re on the same page.”
With that he opened his door and did that quick skirt around the car he had done at the Lodge, reaching my side and opening the door by the time I had my seatbelt released. I could get used to that move, and his manners.
The automatic doors to the reception area opened in a whisper and his hand on my lower back steered me in the right direction, drawing a raised eyebrow from an older, smartly dressed woman who was talking to the receptionist.
The older woman was Oliver’s PA, Gail. She greeted me warmly. “You have no idea how pleased I am to have you here.”
“Gail was left to pick up the pieces when your predecessor left,” Oliver explained.
“Unfortunately, I dumped them into a big box labeled ‘Ignore’, so I hope you enjoy a challenge.”
“I certainly do,” I told her.
“Great, I’ll come and see you shortly.”
Oliver took me along the hall past various offices, pointing out a room with a kitchen and various tables, chairs and sofas. He threw open a door to an office with a million-dollar view of the river, down to the marina and out to the islands. The tide was high, the river the deepest emerald shade. A stately pōhutukawa tree reached out across the water, twisted and bowed as if someone had tried to extract its secrets. Soon its deep crimson flowers would signal the arrival of summer and the Christmas season.
Today I was getting a fresh outlook on my home country and I’d forgotten how iconic the tree was to a Kiwi summer. The childhood memory of a swing under a tree just like the one I looked at settled the butterflies in my stomach.
“Your office,” he said. “I hope it’s suitable.”
I thanked him. It was stunning. “I hope the view won’t be too distracting.”
Oliver cast me a look that said the view from the window was the least distracting thing around here at the moment. He cleared his throat, the first time there’d been any indication he might not trust his gorgeous voice to perform, and explained Gail would be setting me up on the technical side of things.
I spent the rest of the day sorting out my actual duties. Gail turned out to be an efficient no-bullshit type which I appreciated. Her sense of humor was dry, and she expertly handled the abundance of men who worked for Tradewind. She had a whole bunch of reports from the previous year’s event for me to go through, and she handed a stack of files over with something that could only be described as relief.
It was so good to be back on a job that gave me some self-worth and a reasonable salary. I spent the afternoon listing ideas for promotion, ticket sales and companies to go to for products for the auction. As long as what happened in Australia stayed there, my summer was shaping up way better than I’d hoped.
The only bug in the process would be my attraction to Oliver but I felt certain after a couple of weeks the ridiculous infatuation would pass.
Six
Oliver
I’d been on the patio nursing a scotch for twenty minutes. Luther was due to arrive and I knew he would be pissed with me because giving the contract to Darcy was like taking a pointy stick and giving fate a hefty ass-reaming.
Darcy had lived in Sydney these past two years. So had more than four-and-a-half-million other people. Luther would point out the long shot that the two people who seemed hell-bent on destroying my business also lived in Sydney. He would deduce that Darcy was a new arrow launched my way.
There was that pointy stick again.
I didn’t need Luther to bring any of that to my attention. The previous night I’d woken just after 2.00 a.m. That’s a shitty time to lie in bed, alone with my irrational thoughts, which meant I’d arrived at Darcy’s house yesterday with a dose of paranoia fully primed
I felt Luther’s approach behind me because his energy was like that of a pack alpha about to dish out a paw-smack to a recalcitrant adolescent. I fucking loved him like this, containing his fury, letting small amounts out to sting you, before closing off his pressure valve, holding it all in because if he released all that pressure he might deflate. Lose his game. Not going to happen but it was a habit and the thing he used to drive himself.
It’s what made us the perfect pairing on the rugby field at college, though neither of us had the balls or the inclination to carry on with the game once we’d graduated. We were tired of being hammered by the extraordinarily large and physically mature Polynesian guys. Luther would get riled by the opposition insulting him about his light stature, I’d back them up by saying he’d stepped up a grade for this game because we were a player short, and that would give him enough motivation to make elegant, angry try-scoring set-ups. What he lacked in bulk he made up for with sheer speed and cunning.
He carried an envelope which he threw square into my lap with customary precision. “Annabelle was on your stepfather’s payroll in Sydney. The evidence is in there—”
“You’ve told me this already, Luther.”
“Read it.”
“Fuck off.”
“Your selective naïvety makes you such an easy target, Oli. A beautiful stranger arrives in town—from Sydney no less—and ends up living a few houses along the road from you. Not only that, but by some incredible coincidence she has the exact qualifications we need to fill a contract vacancy because the person who’d initially taken the contract suddenly decides she doesn’t want to do it. And you’re all, step this way, sweetheart, the job’s yours.”
I tossed the peanut I was toying with at him but he snatched it from the air before it made contact with his head and in a reflex move, flicked it skywards and captured it in his mouth.
“Listen up, Oli. You’re a good businessman and you’re almost as good at building magnificent boats as your father. But one thing your father had that you don’t is the good sense to pay attention when his lawyer tells him he needs a bit of protection. Your father never questioned Dad when he suggested putting Tradewind into a trust before he married. That is the reason you had one of the most respected boatyards in the world to inherit. To me, Darcy looks and walks like a duck. I’m only suggesting you let me find out whether she quacks.”
“Believe me, she’s no duck.” I grinned at him. “You’re more paranoid than I am.”
“I’m the one who has to mop up the mess when this thing goes tits-up. Not to mention the damage to my liver from the nights I’ll have to spend consoling you with a bottle of scotch. Which brings me to my next question; is that whisky poisonous?”
I pushed a glass and the bottle in his direction and Luther added a couple of generous fingers of Laphroaig.
“If she’s clean, you have my blessing.”
Luther and I have been friends since kindergarten. He’s also one of the partners in the Lodge, and acts as my lawyer, the same way his father acted as my father’s lawyer. We enjoy tradition. There’s not much he doesn’t know about me, my business dealings, finances or the way I like to fuck. When he’s pissed with me, he doesn’t hold back so I braced myself for an expletive-filled tirade that would finish with diminishing insults until one of us offered to get the next drink.
“Do you think the Alberinis are still after the boatyard?” I asked.
My mother was a selfish bitch who followed the money. When she left Dad for Ant Alberini, his main business rival with a boatyard based out of Australia, it broke Dad’s heart. But Dad wasn’t as naïve as my mother and her new boyfriend hoped. Once my parents divorced Mother received half of sweet-fuck-all which meant Alberini was no closer to the superyacht contracts he had bid for, and lost.
The same contracts Tradewind had bid for and won.
Unbeknown to any of us, Dad had tied Tradewi
nd up in a trust that took it out of the marital property portfolio in a legal sense. Luther’s father had successfully convinced my father that when it came to marriage, loyalty seldom figured in the equation.
I had no time for my greedy mother, or any other woman with designs to access my assets. Ironically, I’m a generous person, but I prefer to choose where my money gets distributed.
“A cocktail of Aussie pride and Latin machismo means Alberini will never give up. Accept it.”
“Fine.” I tipped some more scotch into my mouth and let it heat and tease my tongue, all the while wondering what Darcy was up to.
“Stop thinking about her,” Luther snapped.
That was a lucky guess. “I’m not.”
“Bullshit. Come to Auckland with me on Friday. We’ll hook up with a couple of women and go to a club.”
“I don’t do that anymore.”
“You need to.”
“I need to eat. Come inside, Angus dropped in a couple of lobsters.” Angus ran the boats at the Lodge. He spent most of his time underwater, and everyone joked he’d developed gills. His hunting abilities were legendary and he could rustle up lobster with a mere whisper.
After dinner we were back on the patio. I’d lit the outside fire because although it was spring, the sun had gone down taking the temperature with it. Over dinner dismantling lobster I steered Luther off the subject of Darcy, but she sat there as a topic ready to be revived at any moment.
“Did you check her CV?” Luther asked.
“Let me guess, Darcy’s CV, right?”
He threw me a look that worked better with soon-to-be ex-wives than old mates. I’d planned to give her details to my HR person at the boatyard to check her references and qualifications. “Sure, she’s fine. Probably overqualified.”
“Give me her details. I’ll run a background check on her.”
He was a terrier when he needed to be. “That’s probably overdoing it,” I suggested
“There are four of us partners in this, Oli.” He stabbed a finger at his chest. “This partner wants her checked out.”
I raised my hands in surrender. He had every right to demand a more thorough background check and I had no idea why I didn’t want that done. Perhaps because the thought that my stepfather might be coming after me again was fucking annoying. And if he was using a beautiful woman to do it, like he had with Annabelle, that simply added another level of stupidity to his war.
I pulled up Darcy’s CV on my tablet and passed the device to Luther. It felt like a betrayal even though I scarcely knew her. I certainly didn’t want to analyze the feeling driving that emotion.
Luther did whatever it was he did and minutes later placed the tablet on the table and reached for his wine. “So, Auckland, Friday?”
I shook my head. “I’m staying here this weekend. Going to show Darcy around the area, make sure she’s kept busy so that she doesn’t get bored and bolt.”
“You’re so full of shit, Sackville.”
I waited for him to say I was a Sackville of shit the way he usually did, but I could tell he was concerned. That should have troubled me more than it did.
“How long is it since you last came to Auckland with me?” he asked.
“I went up when you visited Rachel last month.”
“That’s right. I visited Rachel, and you did what, exactly?”
“I visited Rachel, too.”
“Precisely. You’re a long time out of the game. You’re denying who you are. Come to Auckland, it’ll do you good.”
“I have better arrangements.”
“You fancy the fuck out of her, don’t you?”
“If she’s my enemy, Luther, I plan to keep her very close. I’ll spend so much time in her company there won’t be a thing about her I don’t know. There’s chemistry between us, and the fact that I ‘fancy the fuck’ out of her, as you so eloquently put it, means this will be anything but a hardship.”
Luther drained his glass and spent a moment peering at the sediment that remained. “You should have decanted the wine, Oli.”
“You were in a hurry to fill your glass.”
He shrugged. “Let me put a goon onto the case and we’ll know all about Darcy in a week.”
“Don’t do that, Luther,” I warned.
He shot me a pitying look. “Oh, Christ, you’ve got it bad.”
Seven
Darcy
After four days of meeting people and getting a feel for my new hometown I was ready for that drink with Maraea and her friends. The HR guy at Tradewind had asked for my bank details and I discovered half of my monthly contract fee deposited in my bank account the following day.
I tried to thank Oliver who waved it off in the same manner as the new hot water tank I now enjoyed. He claimed it was in my contract. It wasn’t, I’d checked, but I was also cash-strapped and ridiculously grateful. Hot water and money. Life was on the up.
I made another trip to the second-hand clothes store I’d found down a side road just off the town’s main center to expand my wardrobe. Somebody around the same size as me had decluttered their wardrobe and I was totally impressed with their dress sense and the size of their clothing budget because there were a number of excellent pieces they’d discarded for charity. My own wardrobe was growing more respectable.
For a small town, Waitapu had a variety of bars and the one Maraea had suggested we meet at for drinks was Solar, at the top end of the main beach. It was modern with lots of white paint, bleached timber and glass. It also enjoyed a lively mix of young patrons. The table where we sat gave us a view down the beach in one direction and the ferry wharf in the other.
“Sitting here,” Maraea said, “we get to scope the male talent no matter where they appear from.” One of her girlfriends was due to arrive but we’d started without her. “We’ve got to welcome you to town properly, and I need to give you the low-down on that bunch of deviants you’re working for.”
“Deviants, huh?” I sipped my wine.
Maraea grinned. “Around town the Lodge is often referred to as the Lair.” She leaned forward using a faux conspiratorial whisper. “It’s said that any woman who enters the Lair never returns the same, if you know what I mean.” She straightened and winked. “Therefore, the gang of four who own the place are known as The Lairds.”
“Will I escape unscathed?”
Maraea replaced the glass on the table. “Doubt it. I’ll give you a rundown on each of them. It’s not gossip, because it’s all public record and in winter, when things go a little quiet around town, feeding the myth of the Lairds gives us something to do. First and foremost, they’re all single but they’re not fanny rats.”
I nearly choked. “What the hell is a fanny rat?”
“You know, man-whores. Rather, the Lairds seem to be commitment phobes. Oh, except for Oliver who managed to get engaged but even he didn’t make it to the altar. And he was the one to call it off, a couple of weeks before his date with the preacher, so I guess he slots pretty well into that commitment phobe folder. Not that it bothered me he called off the wedding. Annabelle, his fiancée, was not someone I looked forward to having around.”
Maraea looked around the bar, maybe to check who might be listening. “You’ve met Cole, who runs the Lodge. He’s American. Then there’s Beck, or Doctor BAD, as we like to call him. Beck Ainsworth Dalgleish. He’s not around here much because he works in Auckland. He’s a pediatric cardiologist, and a total bad boy. Stay away from him.”
“Doctor BAD is bad. That should be easy enough to remember.”
“Oh, and of course there’s Luther—”
“No, not Luther, where?” A red-haired woman had joined us at the table pulling the stool out beside me. She offered me her hand. “Hi, I’m Ginger,” she announced with the sort of smile that wrapped around you.
“Darcy,” I replied, taking her hand.
“Nothing at all to do with the hair,” she explained. “It’s short for Virginia. When I was a kid, my o
lder sister reckoned I was fiery and wild. She used to call me Ginger and it stuck.” She turned to Maraea. “Sorry I’m late, what are you all drinking?”
“We’ve got a bottle of wine here, grab yourself a glass.”
As Ginger filled her glass she asked, “So, what’s the gossip about Luther?”
“I’m choking back an eye-roll, here, Ginger.” Maraea turned to me. “She’s been crushing on Luther since about kindergarten, but she won’t make a move on him.”
“What’s the point? I’m invisible to that guy. And, hello, big-shot lawyer versus total loser from the shitty part of town. Like he’s going to look at me?”
“You’re right, because he won’t if you keep putting yourself down. I was filling Darcy in on the Lairds. She’s coordinating the January fundraiser.”
Ginger took my hand. “You have no idea what you’ve walked into. They’re all heart-and-soul suckers. Come February 1, you’ll be nothing but a carapace bleaching out on the sand. Run while you can.”
They couldn’t all be that bad. “Really?”
Ginger’s eyes went wide as she nodded slowly. “Really. Check the beach, it’s covered in Laird cast-offs.” Then she smiled. “Okay, back to Luther, what’s the news?”
Maraea lowered her voice. “The news, girls, is that the Lairds have just entered the bar.”
Ginger slumped across the table. “What are they doing here? They usually go to Bang Bang on a Thursday. I can’t look. Is Luther with them?”
“Oliver heard me invite Darcy out for a drink. He’ll be checking to see that I’m not leading her astray. As if. Sit tall, Ginge, they’re heading our way.”
The men approached our table at the same time as what seemed like every woman’s head in the bar swivelled to watch them.
“Ladies,” they said almost in unison as they passed by.
“Virginia, everything good with you, Hot Spice?” Cole asked.
