by JD Nixon
I wasn’t really sure of the plot, but it seemed to involve the two of them taking off their clothes frequently and indulging in certain physical recreational activities that would have got your sorry arse instantly fired, or even worse, if you worked at Heller’s. Besides the female security officer getting it on with her colleague, she also managed to bang every client she had, sometimes with her colleague, sometimes on her own. Something, I thought ruefully, that would also get you fired from Heller’s business, especially if your name was Tilly Chalmers.
I discerned some side-story about a well-hung villain who liked to make violent adult movies. He almost had his evil way with the female security officer before the male one, and the couple’s boss, a giant blond man who apparently didn’t mind participating in a threesome with his staff in his spare time, rescued her.
I couldn’t wait to turn it off and eject it from my player. Visiting Miss Petunia seemed positively wholesome after watching that. A light knock on my door had me hurriedly shoving the DVD under one of my cushions, afraid it was Niq visiting. I opened the door cautiously before relaxing. It was Daniel.
He frowned. “What’s the matter? You look a little green.”
I retrieved the DVD from under the cushion and handed it to him. He read the blurb on the back and turned to the front again to eyeball the cover, laughing. “You have to admit, that’s pretty funny.”
“It’s not funny at all. It’s embarrassing and appalling.”
He laughed. “It’s a tribute. You’ll be able to show it to your family.”
“As if! My mother would keel over if she ever saw anything like that. And as for my father . . . I dread to think what this would do to his heart.”
“Fair enough. You should let Bick watch it though. He is one half of the . . . um, er . . . inspiration for this extraordinary work of art.”
“No way! He might get ideas and that will just get him into terrible trouble with Heller.”
He waved the DVD in my face. “Speaking of Heller, is the boss mentioned in the blurb anything like him?”
“He sure is, but his accent is shocking. Heller would be furious. Imagine him with a weird hybrid Cockney-German accent – in other words one nothing like his.” Daniel threw the DVD onto the table. “I honestly don’t know why these kinds of movies can’t have better acting.”
“Ha! People don’t watch them for the acting,” he smiled. “And I guess it’s hard maintaining your acting face when you’re having huge things inserted inside you.”
I shuddered. “I would be happy to never watch someone having huge things inserted inside them again.”
“You better not look in the mirror when you’re getting it on with Heller then.”
“Oh, ha, ha. You’re hilarious.” I fell on to the lounge with a huge sigh. “What do you think he’s doing while he’s away?”
He shrugged. “I have no idea. It was as much a surprise to me when he told us as it was to you.”
“I saw that on your face. Your surprise was genuine. Clive’s wasn’t. Do you think he knows where Heller is? Do you think he’s in contact with him? I tried to ring Heller last night and the phone company said his mobile was out of range.”
He shrugged again. “Again, I have no idea. If he does know where Heller is and is in contact with him, he’ll never tell you. The man’s a clam. A hyper-loyal clam. Heller is his . . . I don’t even know how to describe it.”
“His idol?”
“Not quite. Maybe his redeemer, his saviour? He will follow Heller anywhere and serve him unconditionally. He’s the perfect soldier in that respect.”
“Sid told me something similar a while ago. It almost sounded like a warning from him.”
Daniel regarded me warily. “Sid told you that?” I nodded. “Those twins are tight. It’s hard to imagine Sid saying something like that about Clive.”
“Sid told me to be careful.”
Daniel jumped up, flustered. “I’m really uncomfortable talking about this, Tilly. I’ve said too much. I feel like I’m being disloyal to Heller discussing him like this. I’ve done many dishonourable things in my life, but disloyalty to Heller . . .” He shook his head. “I can’t do that. He saved my life and he saved my soul. He gave me a home and a family. I owe him everything, but especially my loyalty.” He looked down at his scarred wrists for a good thirty seconds, before flashing me a brief, tight smile. “I guess I can understand Clive in that way. Heller is my saviour too.”
“You’re all so close. I’m really the outsider in this family,” I said with a touch of bitterness. “I’ll never really belong.”
Daniel smiled fully, leaning down to cradle the back of my head and kiss my lips. “You are the key to this family, Tilly. You make Heller happy like none of us can, and I truly believe you bring him peace for probably the first time in his life. He may have received physical pleasure from screwing around so much and avoided inconvenient emotional attachments by doing that, but,” he patted his chest, “there was nothing in there. He felt nothing for those women. Now he feels a mountain load of emotions because of you. And I think they’re growing every day you’re together.” He half-smiled. “I’m not very good at saying this mushy stuff, but that’s honestly how I feel. You’re more important to him than you realise.”
“That’s really sweet, Danny. For someone who’s not so good at mushy stuff, you do a damn good job.”
“I’m just describing what I’ve noticed. We have emotions about your relationship as well as you.”
That threw me. I’d never thought of that concept before. But when I recalled how upset I was about how Dixie had treated Bick, I guess that a person could be emotionally invested in other person’s relationship, whether it was to keep them together or break them apart. And they’d lived with Heller for so long, it was only natural they cared about any new deep attachments he forged.
Daniel hadn’t even noticed he’d dropped a self-awareness bomb on me and continued speaking. “Niq’s desperate for you to marry Heller and live happily ever after, while Clive’s probably the opposite. Sid’s very neutral about the whole matter, but is very happy to have you in the family.”
“What about you?” I asked, trying to digest all this.
“Me?” The smile faded from his face. “I don’t want Heller to hurt you and I don’t want you to hurt Heller. If you no longer want to be together for whatever reason, I want it to be an mutual, amicable separation where you continue to live here with us.” Anguish flooded his face. “I couldn’t . . .” He took a moment to compose himself, taking a deep breath. “I couldn’t handle an ugly breakup between you. It would tear me in two. It would be impossible for me to have to decide between two people I love so much. I suppose that’s why I spoke so sharply to Heller when he upset you so much and wouldn’t just leave you alone.”
I jumped up to hug him. He squeezed me hard and we held each other, feeling each other’s tears dripping on our shoulders, soaking through the material of our clothes, dampening our skin. But I also felt a weight of responsibility. I loved this beautiful, damaged man and to think that me leaving here might push him over the edge that Heller and I had literally saved him from a few months ago, would haunt me for the rest of my life.
When we separated, we gave each other small watery wry smiles.
“Harden up, Tilly,” he said.
“Harden up, Danny.”
“Good advice for both of us.” He sniffed, wiping his eyes with his palms. “I should go do some work. Before he took off, Heller left me a to-do list as long as Santa’s. I’m going to need a couple of elves to help me get through it. What are you planning on doing today?”
“I was going to return to that store and try to convince the owner to give me an interview. She seems like a bitch, but I can’t really be fussy.”
“You do need to eat,” he said with a touch of irony. He poked my waist. “Not that you couldn’t survive for a couple of weeks on your own body’s reserves.”
“Be quiet, y
ou. I’m just naturally curvy.”
“There’s generous curves and then there’s an overabundance of curves. Unfortunately, you have the latter, especially that bit hanging over the top of your jeans.”
I looked down at my slight muffin-top sadly. “I really need to go to the gym. But Heller said . . . Hey! He’s not here. I can do whatever I want now!” I stood for a moment, almost breathless, my eyes shining, reflecting on the sheer wonder of that fabulous feeling of freedom. “I’m going to use the gym again while he’s gone. He’ll never know.”
“Tilly. Think.” Daniel’s voice of reason broke through my euphoria. He didn’t need to say any more. We looked at each other.
Of course Heller would know. He knew everything that went on here. He’d probably left special instructions about me during his absence. For all I knew, there may be someone following me everywhere. The thought repulsed me – I’d never signed up for that.
I made a couple of decisions of my own. “I’m going to use the gym anyway. I’ll deal with him when he returns. And I’m definitely going to visit Miss Petunia.”
“I’m not going to stop you. You’re allegedly an adult and it’s your neck on the line. I was just trying to point out the obvious flaws in your plan.”
“Thanks for your support,” I said drily.
At the door, he turned to me, his face serious. “Thanks for yours, Tilly. Always.”
I dressed and did my hair as nicely as possible, and for the second time that day, I made my way to the garage. Problem – my car still had no petrol. Geez – where was the magical petrol fairy when you needed them? I raced down the stairs to find two Heller’s fleet vehicles parked in their bays. I badly wanted to use one, but knew Heller would do a volcano on me if I took a 4WD needed by one of his security teams.
Forced to wait patiently, that’s exactly what I did – wait. And then I waited some more. I was deeply engrossed in perving on a naked picture of Dixie’s latest guy on my phone when I heard the unmistakable tread of a couple of pairs of heavy feet descending. I hurriedly switched off my phone, shoving it back in my handbag. The two men who appeared eyed me askance.
“You all right, Miss?” one asked.
“Yep, I sure am,” I said, quite dishonestly. In truth I was rather bored. Particularly of waiting.
The men climbed into one of the 4WDs. I raced over to stop the driver from leaving. “Are there any more teams coming down for the other car?”
“Nope. We’re the last to leave for today.”
I would have sung a song of joy, except I knew I didn’t have a great voice and it wouldn’t be a treat for anyone. Instead, I casually loitered until the puzzled men drove off and out of sight.
My next hurdle – and really it shouldn’t ever be this difficult to ‘borrow’ a car from an unsuspecting owner, I thought resentfully – was to access the key. I knew from experience the precious key hung tantalisingly close, but behind the locked doors of a strongbox inset into the wall. It could only be opened with a swipe of a Heller’s staff card – the very thing I’d had to relinquish to Clive when I’d been suspended.
I tugged tentatively on the door. It was no surprise to find it locked and unmoving. This was a security business, after all.
Maybe I could crack the lock? I thought optimistically, despite the fact that I had no equipment or the first clue about how locks worked. But I’d watched Ocean’s Eleven twelve times, so that had to count for something. Unfortunately for me though, no amount of fiddling in the lock mechanism with my emergency metal nail file made those thrilling clicking noises happen. I needed explosives, not something I normally carried around in my handbag. I bet Heller had some, I thought, remembering his small armoury on the floor above. Maybe I could . . .?
I gave myself a mental shake. That idea was patently ludicrous. As if the armoury would be more accessible to me than the key box. The armoury wasn’t a place for being casual about security, and as I knew only too well, Heller was a careful man. And anyway, what I knew about explosives was even less than I knew about lock mechanisms. I’d probably blow myself up – or even worse, the whole Warehouse.
Undeterred by this obstacle, I moved on to Plan B – breaking the key box open. The major problem with that plan was I had nothing to use. I doubted my nail file would cause much damage. I was in a classic catch-22 situation. I needed a tyre lever to open the key box, but I needed the key to open the 4WD to access the tyre lever.
I hunted around for something to use, my eyes lighting on the fire extinguisher bracketed on a wall nearby. In movies, people managed to break open locks by banging them with a fire extinguisher, so it must be possible to do. But when I lifted the extinguisher off its bracket, the first thing I noticed was that it was frigging heavy.
A mental picture of myself right at that moment flashed into my mind. Are you out of your mind? I asked myself. I then reminded myself of the repercussions I’d face for breaking into Heller’s property, even given the generous chance that I’d succeed. Reluctantly, I replaced the extinguisher. In a last act of desperation, I took out my ‘key’, the card I used to enter both the Warehouse and my flat, and swiped it in the key box.
It opened.
Someone must have been careless and neglected to remove my access to it when I was suspended. Not that I was complaining, mind you. I snatched the last pair of keys off its hook and hared over to the 4WD.
It took a while for me to find a free spot at the shopping centre. I drove around for ages, frustration levels rising with every second. Luckily for me, I managed to drive towards a car pulling out. Seeing another driver coming from the opposite direction also eyeing it off, I planted my foot and the reversing car barely had time to clear the spot before I screeched into the spare space. The other driver honked their horn at me and made a very rude finger gesture, which I ignored. Some people are just bad losers.
My experience at the centre was vastly different to the previous day. Almost nobody paid me any attention, and if they did it was men checking me out. When I reached Miss Petunia’s Boutique, I loitered out the front for a few minutes, pretending to look at the window display. I was unsure if I could handle being evicted a second time. But I hadn’t come all this way, and dressed up, to chicken out. Steeling my backbone, I stepped inside.
The same saleswoman who worked in the store yesterday was busy serving a client while Miss Petunia hunched over some paperwork at the counter. She looked up as I approached the counter.
“Good morning. How are you today?” she asked with one of those tight smiles that indicated she couldn’t really care less about how I was today. “May I help you with anything?”
That flustered me. I hadn’t been expecting a polite welcome. “Um . . . I’m here about the interview?” I said, somehow turning a statement into a question.
“Certainly,” Miss Petunia replied, a little more animated. “Come through to the back.”
She bustled around the small office/store room, whisking a pile of clothes from the guest chair, dumping them on top of one her filing cabinets. I tentatively perched on the edge of the seat, while Miss Petunia pushed a box of assorted necklaces, earrings and bracelets to one side of her desk.
“I must say that I’m very grateful to have another candidate to interview. The applications so far have been poor.” She tittered again in that annoying way. “You should have seen the one who came in here yesterday. Good God, what a sight she was! I kid you not, her skin was orange.” She shuddered vigorously. “Hideous.”
And though I thought that was a harsh judgement, a major lightening bolt hit me – she didn’t recognise me. Granted that today I had kept my hair down and loose and I no longer looked like a giant Oompa-Loompa, but she must truly have been averting her eyes yesterday, not catching a good look at me. This was going to be far more awkward than I’d imagined.
“Perhaps she was just having a bad skin day?” I offered weakly as an excuse.
“I almost had to call security before she’d leave. Quite
an obnoxious young lady.” She shuffled some papers around. “Let’s have a chat about your experience . . . Oh, do pardon me. I haven’t even asked you your name yet.”
I couldn’t tell her my name – she’d surely remember that from yesterday. I blurted out the first thing that come to mind, “Matilda Heller.”
“Matilda? A lovely name. It’s just the sort of name I like my girls to have.” She ran her finger down a list. “Hmm, that’s odd. I don’t have you listed as one of my interviewees.”
“You don’t?”
“No.” She shook her head and tsked. “One of my girls must have taken your phone call and has neglected to write you down on my list. Never mind. Here you are.”
“Here I am.”
She leaned back in her chair. “Tell me about your retail experience.”
I’d already told her over the phone all my credentials. I couldn’t reiterate all that without arousing her suspicion, so I just made jobs up, enthusiastically detailing each fabricated achievement, impressing myself in the process. I truly was an absolute retailing prodigy.
When I stopped to take a much-needed breath, she jumped in. “Would you be willing to work here for the rest of the day as a trial? Gratis, of course.”
“Of course,” I said, trying to hold my sarcasm at bay. It seemed as though she hadn’t quite grasped the concept of paying people for their honest, hard work.
“Excellent. Come with me while I show you the ropes.”
I received a cursory five-minute induction, interrupted by another customer entering the shop. Miss Petunia shoved me gently in the back. “Go and serve her,” she whispered.
I spent a fair amount of time with the customer, proud when she happily left having purchased two new dresses and a necklace.
“Not bad,” conceded Miss Petunia. “But you could have persuaded her to buy that suit set too. She spent ages looking at it.”
“It really was the wrong style for her and the colour didn’t suit her at all.”
“That colour doesn’t suit anyone. I don’t know what the designer was thinking about when he chose it. Every lady who’s tried it on so far looked jaundiced wearing it. But the lesson today is that the customer is always right, Matilda. She wanted that suit, but was unsure. She only needed that one little push from you to convince her into adding it to her purchases.”
