The Rock Star and the Billionaire

by Demelza Carlton

  It involved getting on her knees, anyway, something she'd never do. Kneeling before a man was beneath her.

  No, billionaires did things differently. He'd said something about knowing what she wanted. Well, she did know. She wanted him. She wanted to see a little more of the spectacular landscape up here, including the rest of the Buccaneer Archipelago, and she wanted more sex with him.

  She stood, switched off the TV and summoned the helicopter pilot for a full day's charter. Not a work trip, like the flight to Lorikeet had been. This time she'd be a tourist, seeing the sights the region had to offer.

  Gaia made it halfway to Jay's villa before she chickened out. She couldn't stand to see the sneer on his face if he called her boring again, so she turned on her heel and trotted back to her house. Before she could change her mind, Gaia picked up the phone and asked to be transferred to Jay.

  The phone rang and rang, but she tightened her grip on the receiver, willing him to answer the call.

  She didn't want to do this alone. She craved company like she needed air. Until a few weeks ago, she'd never truly been alone. She'd been surrounded by security or employees and her mother's concerned presence wherever she went. Even when she travelled, Morrigan had called her most nights. But she'd never call her again. Gaia would never hear the gruff voice discussing her day, asking if Gaia was being safe, appropriately aloof, and upholding the family name, then advising her on everything from food to clothing to employee relations. Not even Gaia's brief holiday flings had escaped Morrigan's scrutiny. Her mother had always cautioned her to remain detached, knowing without even meeting the man that he wasn't good enough for her daughter and heiress.

  But her mother wasn't here now to make a judgement on Jay. Would she think he was good enough? He had enough money to make Morrigan pay attention. Money covered a multitude of sins, Morrigan had always said, but once you scratched the surface, you'd see who was common and who was her kind.

  What kind was Jay?

  "This better be good." His voice on the other end of the phone almost made her drop the receiver.

  "Jay! Oh, hello. It's Gaia."

  "I knew that. It's on the caller display. What do you want?"

  You.

  Gaia cleared her throat. "I have a day off to see the sights, and I have a helicopter booked to take me out to see some of the waterfalls."

  "Have fun."

  No! He couldn't hang up on her!

  "Wait! I want you to come with me." Gaia held her breath while she waited for his answer.

  She didn't have to wait long.

  "Why?"

  "Because I don't want to go alone." Even as the words left her lips, she knew they were true.

  Jay coughed out a laugh. "You said you have a helicopter. You won't be alone. You'll have the pilot. He's very accommodating to pretty girls, or so I hear."

  Her heart leaped in her chest. "Did you just call me pretty?" Gaia demanded.

  "Cut the bullshit, baby. If you're going to spend the whole day telling me how saintly you are because your company saves the whales and the rest of the archipelago, I'm not interested."

  She desperately wanted to defend herself. Her company did save things – it said so in their annual report. Right there in the executive summary on the first page. But Jay didn't want to listen. "I'm taking a day off," she said instead. "I don't get many holidays because I'm usually too busy working. I want to see some of the attractions out here before I fly home. The tour brochure said something about the only horizontal waterfalls in the world."

  "You're taking a tour? Where you might have to mingle with the public?"

  She scowled. "Of course not. It's a private tour. I thought you might like to share it with me. You seem to know the area so much better than I do, seeing as you live here."

  "Oh, so you want me as your tour guide now? That'll cost you, baby. I don't come cheap, you know."

  She wished she could remember how he came. Had he called her name? Said he loved her? Maybe he'd done both and was embarrassed to admit it. She'd just have to change his mind. Tonight, she promised herself. Getting him drunk worked last time. If she plied him with enough alcohol tonight, he'd surely go to bed with her again.

  "But you'll come?" She hated the need she heard in her voice.

  "Only if you ask me nicely."

  Two could play at that game. "Mr Felix, I would like to extend an invitation for you to accompany me in a private helicopter flight to Horizontal and Mitchell Falls. Refreshments will be provided. Your presence is requested – "

  "Fuck, what kind of finishing school forced you to learn that crap? You're not royalty. Just some chick who inherited a lot of money, through no effort of her own. I'm not one of your employees and I don't have to put up with your hoity-toity bullshit. Just fucking ask me like a normal person."

  "I was!" Gaia protested.

  "No one says my presence is requested unless it's coming from a lawyer. Try again."

  She felt her face growing hot. She'd forgotten how this man got under her skin. "Come to the falls with me."

  "I said ask, baby. Not issue orders while you're gritting your teeth. You're not better than me. You're begging for a favour."

  She would not beg. Not now, not ever. "Will you fly to the falls with me?"

  "Better. But you're missing the magic word."

  Gaia wanted to scream. "Please."

  "All together now. With feeling. Lead with the p-word."

  Penis. Gaia's face grew hot.

  The man was maddening, and yet his voice did things to her deep inside. Her mother would tell her not to waste her time with this rude man, to put him in his place, but Gaia didn't have to obey her mother any more. And the place she wanted him was in her bed, inside her, which meant giving in to his desires. At least, a little.

  She swallowed. "Please, Jay, will you fly to the falls with me?"

  "Knew you could do it! See, that didn't hurt, did it?"

  The bastard was laughing at her. "Are you coming or not?"

  "I never turn down a chance to do that." He chuckled, like he knew her insides heated up when she heard the double meaning in his words. "Tell me the times and I'll meet you on the helipad, baby. Figure I should see the falls. I've been here long enough."

  He took down the details and ended the call.

  He'd agreed. The receiver dropped from Gaia's nerveless fingers as she sighed in relief. That had been harder than she'd expected, but she'd still succeeded. He'd said it was his first trip to the falls, too, so this would all be as new to him as it was to her.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  "The Buccaneer Archipelago was named for an English pirate who visited them back in the seventeenth century. Name of William Dampier. Several of the bays around here are named after his ships. Cygnet Bay and Roebuck Bay. Then there's streets in town like Dampier Terrace that are called after him, too. On the east coast, they're so proud of Captain Cook, who they say was the first Englishman to explore Australia in the eighteenth century, but they're wrong. If James Cook had a hero, it was Dampier. He had copies of Dampier's journals with him on every voyage." The pilot paused to point. "If you look out that way, you'll see Cygnet Bay, where Dampier careened the Cygnet. Careening's what it's called when they haul a ship out of the water to clean all the muck off the bottom, so it can sail faster. Speed was important to a pirate ship, or they'd never catch the spice-laded Dutch ships, carrying their cargo from Batavia back to Holland. So they'd tip the ship on its side, and scrape off all the barnacles and seaweed until the hull was clean again. With the fourteen metre tides in here, they could have floated the ship in at high tide, waited a few hours for the tide to slink out, and the ship would be left high and dry. She'd be stuck there until the tide came back in, or longer, if they judged the tides wrong and ground the ship too deeply in the soft limestone sand.

  "You'd think with all our modern tide schedules, accurate charts and depth finders that wouldn't happen any more, but a couple years ago, True South, one of the b
ig cruise ships grounded on a sand bar on a really high tide. It took weeks to refloat it, because the owner wanted to make sure there weren't any holes in the bottom, and with the rough conditions we get occasionally, it wasn't safe to send divers down to check. He's learned his lesson, though, and he ran week-long charters up here in the dry season for a while. The last couple of years, the boat's been floating accommodation for the construction crew at one of the oil and gas platforms off Karratha, but that's all finished now, so last I heard, he'll be offering charters again this year. If you come back in a month or two, maybe you'll be able to book one."

  Gaia nodded at the pilot's commentary, tucking the information into her mind for a later date. Today she intended to enjoy herself. Work could wait.

  The pilot named the islands as they passed over them, pointing out the ones that had an interesting history because of explorers or World War II. The longer they flew, the more war history he recounted, until they passed close to Lorikeet Island. He didn't touch on her island's history, but Gaia wouldn't have heard it, anyway.

  Lorikeet Island drew her eye like a beacon. This was the foundation of her family fortune, and she wouldn't let it slip through her fingers. She'd promised Jay she wouldn't discuss the island today, and she wouldn't, but tomorrow she'd try again. Her fortune depended on him agreeing to her terms.

  Jay mumbled something she couldn't quite hear, so she asked him to repeat it.

  "Trippy trees," he said, pointing down. "When the tide's out, the rivers look like crazy trees with snakes."

  Gaia looked...and laughed. Jay was right. The zigzagging riverbeds resembled snags full of snakes. Angry snakes. She'd never noticed it before.

  Their flight path took them over more land than water as they headed inland. The pilot's commentary shifted from history to geology. The names of the various formations washed over her – Kimbolton, King Leopold, Fitzroy, Stokes, Talbot. All names of explorers, or wealthy people who'd financed the expeditions, sending men out to find more resources to increase their wealth. She wondered why there wasn't a Vasse something. There should be an island named after her family, at least, or a bay. Or perhaps she should petition to have the King Leopold Ranges named after her family, seeing as the man those mountains were named after had murdered millions, or so the pilot said.

  Gaia snorted. He probably hadn't killed a single man, woman or child. He was a king. He gave orders to his subordinates to create a colony for him in the Congo, and they'd done it. Killing was something they'd done, out of loyalty to their leader. Yet now he was the one with a murderous reputation, and likely to lose his mountain range because of it.

  "That King Leo sounds like he'd fit right in with your family. An ancestor, perhaps?" Jay grinned.

  Gaia refused to rise to the bait. "He's no relation at all. My family came from England as part of a group settlement scheme. Whatever you think of me or my family, we're not murderers." She turned her back on him to stare out the window.

  If only that kept his voice from reaching her ears, but the headsets made that impossible.

  "You said your grandfather was in the army during World War II. Didn't he kill any Japanese troops? Or was he too important to get his hands dirty?"

  Gaia's voice was flat. "I wouldn't know. He died before I was born. What does it matter, anyway? It was war, and they attacked our home. He enlisted to serve his country, like most men of the time. And when he came home, he did his best to provide for his family with what he'd learned in the army. He knew Lorikeet Island held enough iron ore to make his fortune, if he could find a way to mine it. He did, and now I'm trying to keep his dream alive, and his mine open."

  She was talking about work again. What else was there, truly?

  "Maybe it's time to close the mine and give the island back to its traditional owners. I heard from some of the local Aboriginal people that it was one hell of a fishing spot before your family started messing with it." Jay folded his arms behind his head. "If I wait long enough, I'll be able to buy the island off them and restart the resort with those old buildings. I might even keep that big old house for myself, so I can watch those humping whales. The whale researchers can use it when I'm not there, of course. Can't deprive the experts of the biggest live porn show on Earth."

  Gaia's heart constricted in her chest. Losing Lorikeet Island to him? No. Absolutely not. She'd never let that happen. She breathed deeply, forcing herself to stay calm.

  "I can't believe you haven't bitten my head off yet. My sister would have slapped me by now. Don't you ever get angry, baby?"

  She turned to stare. "You mean you're baiting me on purpose? It won't work. A billionaire doesn't lose control, or they lose everything."

  "So?"

  Idiot. "A broke billionaire isn't a billionaire any more. They're nobody," she informed him.

  To her shock, Jay just laughed. "Where do you get this shit? Some how-to book for stuck-up rich people? Or that ultra-exclusive private girls' school you went to that taught you to walk with your nose in the air? That's not how the world works. You can't control it. The sooner you learn that, the better. All you can do is take risks and hope they pay off. And if they don't, you pick yourself up, learn from your mistakes, and don't make them again. Fuck, I might be a billionaire now. I don't know. But I'll never be nobody. Never was, either. I was always me, with a plan and a dream and my music. Take away all the money and fame, and I'll still have that. Of course, if I lost all my money, nothing would take away the fact that I'm still a rock star. I could call my agent and have a new recording contract tomorrow, book a couple of tours and record another album, and I'd be back in business, raking it in again. Anyone who told you you're nobody without your money is fucked up."

  Gaia wondered what her mother would have said to that. Nothing, probably. Morrigan wouldn't have listened, or she'd have pretended not to hear a word of it. What did Jay know, anyway? He hadn't been studying business and wealth principles since he could talk. He wasn't born to head a billion-dollar business. No, he'd earned his money through luck and a little talent. "You don't understand."

  "I'm happy in my ignorance, baby. Hey, is that the falls coming up? It looks like the pictures we have in the hotel foyer."

  The pilot confirmed that they were approaching Horizontal Falls, the only two horizontal waterfalls in the world, or so he said. Gaia didn't care to check.

  "Fuck, you won't find anything like this anywhere else in the world. It's because we have the world's highest tides, I bet," Jay said.

  The pilot coughed. "Second highest, at fourteen metres. There's a bay in Canada that holds the record for the highest tides. Somewhere in Nova Scotia, I'm told. And while Canada's got Niagara Falls, we have Horizontal Falls, and they're unique. At their peak, ten thousand litres of water rush through them every second. Pretty powerful, seeing as the water only falls about a metre at most. All that pressure's because the gaps it has to go through are so narrow. The smallest one's only nine metres across, while the other one's just over twenty. When the tide's right, you can take a ride in a jet boat through the falls, but it's a rough ride and it's easy to ground the boat in the shallows if you don't know what you're doing. There's a tour company that specialises in that sort of thing – they keep a floating platform in Talbot Bay where they moor the boats in the dry season, when they bring tourists out here by seaplane. They leave from the air strip at One Arm Point, if you ever want to go."

  Gaia shuddered at the thought of riding that rough water – in a jet boat or a seaplane – but Jay just nodded eagerly like he couldn't wait to do it. Didn't he realise this whole place screamed DANGEROUS at the top of its lungs? Flying over it was one thing, but to be at the mercy of that strong current...

  "You up for it tomorrow, baby?" Jay asked, leaning in.

  "They won't fly for a few weeks yet. Not 'til the dry season, when there's enough tourists to make it worthwhile," the pilot informed them.

  Gaia breathed a sigh of relief.

  "I'll do a couple of low p
asses, so you can see the falls up close. It really is spectacular."

  Before Gaia could protest, the helicopter banked, headed straight for the rocky cleft where all that fearsome water poured through. She held her breath as he hovered over it for a few minutes, repeating the numbers he'd already told them, before he flew to the second horizontal waterfall and hovered in place again.

  Jay seemed fascinated by the streaming water, cascading like a waterfall that common sense told her couldn't possibly be that flat. But her eyes told her otherwise.

  "Ready to head for Mitchell Falls? They're not as unique as these ones, but I promise you, they're still a sight to see. Especially at the end of a wet season like this last one. Some of the tracks are still flooded and won't be open at the start of the dry season, at this rate."

  Wonderful. More nature that was too powerful to withstand. It was as if everything up here was trying to belittle her. "Sure," Gaia said.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  "Mitchell Falls are coming up straight ahead," the pilot said, startling Gaia out of her daydream. The monotonous landscape of red rock and scrubby trees was pierced by a new, greenish river. "Mitchell River."

  Of course it was. She wondered what the pilot would say if she told him she didn't care, and she wanted to go back to the resort.

  He probably wouldn't even try to talk her out of it. With a, "yes, ma'am," he'd turn around right away.

  But Jay...he'd be disappointed, and he'd say so. Loudly, most likely. Then call her boring or stuck-up or something else equally insulting, with a slab of swearing slathered on top. He said what he thought, that was for sure. She'd wager he had no secrets whatsoever. In a way, he belonged here, in this wide-open landscape where everything was larger than life and unique. There was only one Horizontal Falls, just like there was only one Jay Felix.

  And Gaia Vasse? Who was she, really? Billionaire heiress, mining magnate, but she was nothing compared to the forces of nature out here. One cyclone destroyed her mine before the giant tides engulfed what remained; the rain and the rocks and the red dust conspired to wipe out the mining camp before she could begin to rebuild; and this rugged land that wanted her gone had all but embraced the man at her side, enticing him out here, weaving some sort of spell over him, before handing him everything she wanted. The resort island that would be perfect for a mining camp was his, and he wasn't selling. Lorikeet Island would slip out of her grasp forever while he tightened his hold on his glorified sand cay, a heart-shaped doughnut with no resources to distinguish it from any other island in the Buccaneer Archipelago. How come he got all the luck while hers ran out?