Heller’s Decision

by JD Nixon

“None of mine.” It was only a half-answer. His face was bland and emotionless, impossible to read. But he didn’t seem worried about Brian’s witness in the slightest, standing and pulling me up by my hands.

  “You need to sleep,” he insisted and I couldn’t disagree, gratefully falling into his bed.

  As if sensing my inner turmoil about everything that had happened tonight, especially his involvement in it, his lovemaking was tender and considerate. And though it troubled me that I agreed to sex with him after such an experience, perhaps losing myself in the sheer sensuousness of him moving inside me, his warm lips and hands on my body, was the best comfort of all.

  Chapter 15

  I’d worried I would have nightmares, but I didn’t, though I did have a very vivid dream. I woke up late in the morning to find Heller still asleep next to me – a rare event. I lay in bed pondering my dream for a while, leaving him to sleep. I couldn’t make up my mind if it had any significance or not.

  He stirred and opened his eyes, slowly stretching his muscles, but not budging from the bed. I loved times like this when he displayed signs of being human, lazing in bed instead of bounding out, instantly alert and all cylinders firing. The night’s events must have taken more of a toll on him than I’d realised too.

  “Good morning, my sweet,” he said, kissing me gently.

  “Morning.” I hesitated over telling him, but it was only a dream, after all. “I had a dream last night.”

  He smiled indulgently. “Not another dream about Vikings?”

  “No. This dream was about you and me.”

  “Wasn’t the Viking dream about us?”

  “Who knows?”

  “Was this new dream sexy?”

  “No.” He seemed disappointed. “I don’t know whether to tell you about it or not.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t know. It was a very personal dream. I’m not sure what it means.”

  “Just tell me about it, Matilda. You weren’t trying to kill me in it, were you?”

  I smiled. “Of course not.” I paused, a bit embarrassed. “We got married in my dream.” His eyebrows shot up. “In the registry office where Clarrie and Kitty were married. It was incredibly detailed. My family and friends were all there, and so were all the men. I wore a lovely, but simple, cream dress. Not really a wedding dress, but more of an evening dress. I had my hair done up with some beautiful white flowers entwined in it. Dixie was my maid-of-honour, and for some reason you had Farrell as your best man. You wore a dark gray suit with a blue shirt that matched your eyes.”

  “Did you run away at the last minute?” he teased.

  “No.”

  “Did I?”

  “No! I stayed and you stayed and we got married in front of everyone. I can still remember how it felt to be holding your hands and looking into your eyes, making my vows, and to hear you making yours to me. And signing the papers afterwards.” I laughed self-deprecatingly. “It feels like a memory, not a dream. I had to check my finger when I woke up to see if I wore a ring or not. Isn’t that strange?”

  “I knew you secretly wanted to marry me,” he smiled, teasing me again. “But fast-forward to the honeymoon. That’s the part I’m interested in.”

  “Stop it! Well, we did have a honeymoon, actually. We went to an island resort for a few weeks.”

  “You said there were no steamy bits.”

  “I lied. Of course it was steamy.”

  He moved closer to me. “Did I do this on our honeymoon?” And he did something exceedingly naughty to me.

  “Heller! Stop it.”

  “Or this?” Something equally naughty.

  “Heller,” I gasped in protest, but rather more weakly this time. I didn’t really want him to stop, it felt so good. Too occupied to talk for a while, we didn’t return to my dream until we’d finished. He lay on his side, arm propping up his head, tracing around my lips with his finger.

  “Obviously, your dream is not a memory. I think I’d remember marrying you.”

  “Hmm, maybe it’s a premonition?”

  “Of you marrying?” I noticed he didn’t say ‘us’.

  “Who knows?”

  “Someone needs to make an honest woman of you,” he teased.

  “But not you?” A tinge of sadness crept into my voice.

  He rolled out of bed. “As you say, my sweet, who knows?”

  I reclined back on my pillow and looked up at him. “Heller, are you already married?”

  He leaned over the bed to kiss me again. “That’s one question I’m happy to answer. No, I’m not.”

  “Really?”

  “Really. Nor have I ever been.”

  “Nor do you ever want to be?”

  But he’d answered one question and clearly wasn’t going to answer any more. He yanked the covers off me. “Out of bed, lazy. Don’t you have a job to go to?”

  “I’m taking a sick day. I deserve it. Trent can survive without me for one day.”

  “You’re not sick.”

  “I’m tired and traumatised. That’s good enough for me.”

  “What will you do?”

  “I’ll take Dixie to visit Bick. I promised her.”

  “I’m going to visit the clients to make sure they’re okay after their ordeal. Why don’t you come with me and I’ll drive Dixie to the hospital. We can spend the day together and you know I always feel better when you’re not out there by yourself.”

  “I won’t be by myself. I’d have Dixie with me.”

  “That hardly fills me with any confidence,” he said drily. “You’re coming with me.”

  I opened my mouth to argue, but he held up his index finger in warning. And that was all he needed to do to have me closing my mouth again, my words unsaid.

  We rushed through a shared breakfast and a shared shower. I rang Trent to advise him of my pretend illness and then Dixie to fill her in on our plans. Curious, I trotted down to the security section to check the damage from the previous evening. A couple of the men looked somewhat worse for wear after their exertions. We slapped hands and I gave them the good news about Bick. We chatted about the fire. Nobody mentioned the burnt bodies and I didn’t know who already knew about it, so kept quiet myself.

  “That wasn’t the worst effort I’ve ever seen,” Clive conceded to me, his voice its usual gravelly flatness. “Securing the clients and removing Barnes from the scene. Not bad.”

  And I guess that was about as much praise as I could ever expect from him in a lifetime. He unexpectedly slapped me on the back, in what he probably thought was a friendly, congratulatory manner, but which sent me stumbling forward. I tripped over one of the men’s bloody-huge sized boots into a different man. He staggered backwards, falling across a desk and I toppled on to him in a very compromising position.

  And naturally, Heller took that moment to walk through the door. The poor man trapped underneath me scrabbled to push me off, standing red-faced and nervous, watching Heller with wary eyes – as did everyone in the room, all holding their breath.

  “I assume there’s an innocent explanation for that?” he asked mildly, his eyes unmoving from the unfortunate man. And having been at the pointy end of one of those glacial stares, I knew what the poor guy was going through.

  “I fell on him by accident,” I rushed to explain, earning myself a grateful glance from the man.

  Heller sighed. “Of course you did.” He nodded his head to Clive. “A word for a moment? And Matilda, you can go down to my car.”

  As I obediently walked to the door, Farrell hesitantly approached me, mindful of the curious stares of the other men.

  “You okay?” he asked gruffly in a low voice, looking away as if he didn’t care one way or another.

  “Yes, thanks, Hugh,” I said coolly, bending down unnecessarily to retie the shoelace on my runner. It didn’t need it. I flashed him a significant look as I stood up which he reciprocated. Heller wouldn’t have been the only one worried about me the previous night, uns
ure where I was or what was happening to me.

  “Boss nearly hit the roof when we located your vehicle and you weren’t there. And then we noticed the bullet hole. That made him really angry. It must have come close.”

  “Yeah, it did. I tried to drive off, and the guy showed us he wasn’t messing around.”

  “Nasty bunch of fuckers.”

  “You’re not wrong, Hugh. Are the clients okay?”

  “Hope so, Chalmers. They were a mess last night. I had to stay with them for a while.”

  “Heller and I are going to see them today. To make sure they’re all right.”

  He nodded and turned away as Heller left Clive’s office, shooting us both a sharp glance. He took the time to say a few words to each of the men involved in the action last night, leaving behind a trail of beaming men, always proud of any personal thanks from their hardarse boss.

  “Ready, Matilda?”

  “Sure.”

  We picked up Dixie, who waited on the footpath outside her dump of an apartment block. She bounced into the back seat and I wasn’t sure if it was the thought of seeing Bick or Heller again that made her so excited.

  “Hello, Heller,” she trilled in a voice so unnaturally sweet I instantly piled on another two kilograms. “Thank you so much for driving me to the hospital.”

  Oh brother! I turned around to roll my eyes at her. She gave me the finger, which was much more like the Dixie I knew.

  “Hello, Dixie,” Heller replied, looking in the rear view mirror at her.

  “How’s work, Dix?” I asked.

  She groaned, dropping her new saccharine personality in a blink. It must have been killing her to maintain for even that short period. “Fucking awful. The only gig I’ve had for two weeks was as a jury member in an episode of Objection Overruled.” A locally made weekly show, it was ostensibly about a busy courtroom, but in reality was merely an excuse for showing as much sex and nudity as the station could get away with at that time slot. Who’d have thought judges were so randy?

  “Did you get to speak?”

  “Yes,” she said glumly. “That’s what I got to say – ‘yes’. One fucking word. Big deal. And I had to say it with the rest of the jury. And they hardly gave me any screen time. I think you did the right thing to find another job, Tils.” She thought for a moment. “I don’t suppose you have any jobs going right now, do you, Heller?”

  “Dixie, the thought of my business having both Matilda and you as employees frightens me intensely,” he said.

  “Aw. Oh well. I guess acting has its bright side too. I did get to shag the guy who played the head juror at the back of the set one night after filming. He was pretty cute.”

  “You won’t be shagging anyone else now you’re with Bick.”

  She took entirely far too long to answer that for my liking and then was a little vague. “I wouldn’t say I’m with him. He’s fun, but we’ve only been out a couple of times. It’s not like we’re married or anything.”

  My heart sank. I had a horrible feeling a nice guy was going to have his heart trampled on by my promiscuous best friend. Maybe I should say something to him? But then that wouldn’t be loyal to Dixie who I’d known since school. Oh God, why did I ever introduce them? They’ll probably revoke my public service award for doing so.

  At the hospital, Heller went to sort out some paperwork for Bick’s private hospital room, which his business was paying for, while Dixie and I visited Bick. He was sitting up in bed, a bit pale and less ebullient than normal, a dressing covering a wound over his right eye.

  His face lit up when he saw us. “Tilly! Dixie! What a lovely surprise.” I went over, kissed him gently on his forehead and hugged him. I was so happy to see he would recover.

  “I thought you were dead, Bick. You were lying on the floor, totally motionless, face down, arms and legs thrown out. I thought you’d been shot. It was awful.”

  “Farrell told me you dragged me out of that building by yourself in the middle of the fighting. You saved my life.”

  “Don’t be silly. One of the men would have gone back for you. And maybe those PRON men might not have been able to abduct you all with me there as well.”

  He shook his head firmly. “Nah, wouldn’t have made any difference. They had guns and were organised. We didn’t stand a chance. They knocked me out cold in the carpark. That made it easier to take the clients. And they did it right out in the open, just like when they snatched you. Audacious as anything. Actually, I’m glad you weren’t there. It meant at least someone worrying about us straight away. Did you find my wallet? I managed to drop it in the struggle, hoping you’d find it and realise something was wrong.”

  “I did find it. It was good thinking, because I knew something was immediately wrong.”

  Dixie butted in then, having impatiently waited her turn. “Don’t let the door hit you on the way out, Tilly,” she said bluntly.

  That stung a little. “Okay,” I huffed. “I can take a hint. See you both later.”

  And as I closed the door, I heard Bick saying to Dixie, “I can’t believe you came to visit me,” sounding as happy as I’d ever heard him.

  Heller, not one for observing social niceties at the best of times, didn’t care if they wanted privacy. He strode straight into Bick’s room after finishing the paperwork, interrupting the tongue-locked couple, not caring for their discomfiture (not that Dixie could ever be embarrassed by anything). He visited with Bick for five minutes, before abruptly indicating that we had to leave – a man without time to waste in life.

  “They were getting along well,” commented Heller with a smile as he drove.

  “Now you can stop worrying about Bick and me.”

  “You do like him a lot though, don’t you?”

  “Of course I do. He’s very likeable.”

  “You like Farrell a lot too, don’t you?”

  Dangerous territory. “Yes. Farrell’s a great guy. I’ve said that before.”

  “What were you talking about back in the security section?”

  I rolled my eyes. “God, Heller, are you going to keep asking me that every time I talk to him? Because it’s getting real old, real fast.”

  “Just tell me.”

  “He was asking me if I was okay. There! That’s the whole story and now you know it. And I really don’t understand why, if you don’t trust him, you seem to be making him part of your team with Clive more and more.”

  He threw me an enigmatic glance, then returned his eyes to the road ahead. “Who said I don’t trust him with most things?”

  “Just not with me, right?” I asked, becoming rather snappy.

  “Right. Don’t think I haven’t noticed he still has feelings for you, no matter how hard he tries to hide them.”

  “I think you’re imagining things.” But I knew he was only speaking the truth.

  “If anything ever happened to me, would you go to him?”

  “What do you mean ‘go’ to him? He’s already at the Warehouse.”

  “Don’t pretend to be obtuse, Matilda. I meant would you be lovers with him again? Let him look after you?”

  “I don’t know what to say to you, Heller,” I told him honestly. “Firstly, nothing’s going to happen to you. And secondly, I don’t need ‘looking after’. I can look after myself. I’m an adult, not a child.”

  He smiled and said lightly, “I notice you didn’t comment on the lovers part of my question.”

  “What would be the point? If I said no, you wouldn’t believe me. And if I said yes, you’d probably beat him up again.”

  “I think you’ve told me everything with that answer.”

  “I think I’ve told you nothing with that answer, because I’ve never considered the question before. I don’t want anything to ever happen to you.”

  He smiled again and reached over to squeeze one of my hands. “Now that’s the correct answer I was seeking.”

  I couldn’t help but laugh. “You’re so silly sometimes.”

>   He raised his eyebrows. “That’s not something I’m called very often.”

  “Well, you just are.” I leaned over and kissed his cheek.

  We found Barb and Roger smiling, and looking surprisingly relaxed in casual clothes while they planned out their next few days as tourists in the city. Heller filled them in on Bick’s condition and they assured him that after a good night’s rest, they were now even more determined to keep fighting against companies such as PRON. I admired their fighting spirit and their dedication to their cause.

  We stayed with them for a while, consuming two cups of coffee each before finally saying goodbye. Though we discussed the previous evening, we all skirted around the uncomfortable topic of the fate of the PRON men. At the door, the couple shook Heller’s hand and thanked me again for arranging the interview with Trent, but I couldn’t help think they were as glad to see the back of us as we were of them.

  Heller took me to a restaurant for lunch, a rare outing for us as a ‘couple’. The eyes of every woman in the place tracked him across the room as we were shown to our table. While we ate, there seemed to be an endless stream of women using the facilities, necessitating a walk past our table. I noticed a couple of them going back and forth a few times. Unless they had a problem with their bladders, I thought they were violating the rules of sisterhood by ogling another woman’s man while she was present.

  “Don’t you get tired of it?” I asked Heller, a little cranky at the unwanted attention.

  “Tired of what, my sweet?”

  “People, women, staring at you all the time.”

  “Do people stare at me?” he asked with mock innocence.

  “You know they do, Heller, so don’t pretend you don’t. They do it all the time.” I rested my chin on my palm and assessed him. “I stared at you too when we first met.”

  “I didn’t notice. I was too busy staring at you.”

  I smiled. “That’s so sweet.”

  “Yes, you were quite a sight with blood running from your nose accompanied by a spreading bruise. Who wouldn’t stare?”

  “Heller! I thought you were being sweet.”

  He smiled and took my hand in his. “You’re the one who’s sweet in the relationship, Matilda, not me.” He checked his watch. “Now, hurry up and finish your lunch. I have many things to do this afternoon.”