The Billionaire of Coral Bay

by Nikki Logan

  His answer was to bite back down onto his snorkel’s mouthpiece and tip himself forward, back under the surface.

  They drifted on for another half-hour and she let Richard take the lead, going where interest took him. He got more skilled at the suspension of breath needed to deep snorkel, letting him get closer to the detail of the reef, and the two of them were like mini whales every time they surfaced, except they blew water instead of air from their clumsy plastic blowholes.

  There was something intimate in the way they managed to expel the water at the same time on surfacing—relaxed, not urgent—then take another breath and go back for more. Over and over again. It was vaguely like...

  Kissing.

  Mila’s powerful kick pushed her back up to the surface. That was not a thought she was about to entertain. He was a one, for a start, and he was here to exploit the very reef he was currently going crazy over. Though if she did her job then maybe he’d change his mind about that after today.

  ‘Seen enough?’ she asked when he caught up with her.

  His mask couldn’t hide the disappointment behind it. ‘Is it time to go in?’

  ‘I just want to show you the drop-off, then we’ll head back to the beach.’

  Just was probably an understatement, and they’d have to swim out of the shallow waters towards the place the continental shelf took its first plunge, but for Richard to understand the reef and how it connected to the oceanic ecosystem he needed to see it for himself.

  Seeing was believing.

  Unless you were her, in which case, seeing came with a whole bunch of other sensations that no one else experienced. Or necessarily believed.

  She’d lost enough friends in the past to recognise that.

  Mila slid the mouthpiece back into her snorkel and tooted out of the top.

  ‘Let’s go.’

  * * *

  Richard prided himself on being a man of composure. In the boardroom, in the bedroom, in front of a media pack. In fact, it was something he was known for—courage under fire—and it came from always knowing your strengths, and your opponents’. From always doing your homework. From controlling all the variables before they even had time to vary.

  This had to be the least composed he’d been in a long, long time.

  Mila had swum alongside him, her vigilant eyes sweeping around them so that he could just enjoy the wonders of the reef, monitoring their position to make sure they didn’t get caught up in the current. He’d felt the change in the water as the outer reef had started to rise up to meet them, almost shore-like. But it wasn’t land; it was the break line one kilometre out from the actual shore where the reef grew most abundant and closest to the surface of anywhere they’d swum yet. So close, the waves from the deeper water on the other side crashed against it relentlessly and things got a little choppier than their earlier efforts. Mila had led him to a channel that allowed them to propel themselves down between the high-rise coral—just like any of the reef’s permanent residents—and get some relief from the surging waves as they’d swum out towards a deeper, darker, more distant kind of blue. The water temperature had dropped and the corals started to change—less of the soft, flowy variety interspersed with dancing life and more of the slow-growing, rock-hard variety. Coral mean streets. The ones that could withstand the water pressure coming at them from the open ocean twenty-four-seven.

  Rich lifted his eyes and tried to make something out in the deep blue visible beyond the coral valley he presently lurked in. He couldn’t—just a graduated, ill-defined shift from blue to deep blue to dark blue looking out and down. No scale. No end point. Impossible to get a grip on how far this drop-off actually went.

  It even had the word ‘drop’ in it.

  His pulse kicked up a notch.

  Mila swam on ahead, rising briefly to refill her lungs and sinking again to swim out through the opening of the coral valley straight into all that vast blue...nothing.

  And that was where his courage flat ran out.

  He’d played hard contact sports, he’d battled patronising boardroom jerks, he’d wrangled packs of media wolves hell-bent on getting a story, and he’d climbed steep rock faces for fun. None of those things were for the weak-willed. But could he bring himself to swim past the break and out into the place the reef—and the entire country—dropped off to open, bottomless ocean?

  Nope.

  He tried—not least because of Mila, back-swimming so easily out into the unknown, her dark hair floating all around her, mermaid tail waving gently at him like a beckoning finger—but even that was not enough to seduce him out there. The vast blue was so impossible to position himself in, he found himself constantly glancing up to the bright surface where the sunlight was, just to keep himself oriented. Or back at the reef edge to have the certainty of it behind him.

  Swimming out over the drop-off was as inconceivable to him as stepping off a mountain. His body simply would not comply.

  As if it had some information he didn’t.

  And Richard Grundy made it his priority always to have the information he needed.

  ‘It’s okay,’ Mila sputtered gently, surfacing next to him once they’d moved back to the side of the reef protected from the churn of the crest. ‘The drop-off’s not easy the first time.’

  No. What wasn’t easy was coming face to face with a limitation you never knew you had, and doing it in front of a slip of a thing who clearly didn’t suffer the same disability. Who looked as if she’d been born beneath the surface.

  ‘The current...’ he hedged.

  As if that had anything to do with it. He knew Mila wouldn’t have taken him somewhere unsafe. Not that he knew her at all, and yet somehow...he did. She just didn’t seem the type to be intentionally unkind. And her job relied on her getting her customers back to shore in one piece.

  ‘Let’s head in,’ she said.

  There was a thread of charity in her voice that he was not comfortable hearing. He didn’t need anyone else’s help recognising his deficiencies or to be patronised, no matter how well-meant. This would always be the first thing she thought of when she thought of him, no matter what else he achieved.

  The guy that couldn’t swim the drop-off.

  It only took ten minutes to swim back in when he wasn’t distracted by the teeming life beneath them. Thriving, living coral turned to rocky old reef, reef turned to sand and then his feet were finding the seafloor and pushing him upwards. He’d never felt such a weighty slave to gravity—it was as indisputable as the instinct that had stopped him swimming out into all that blue.

  Survival.

  Mila struggled a little to get her feet out of her single rubber fin and he stepped closer so she could use him as a brace. She glanced at him sideways for a moment with something that looked a lot like discomfort before politely resting her hand on his forearm and using him for balance while she prised first one and then the other foot free. As she did it she even held her breath.

  Really? Had he diminished himself that much? She didn’t even want to touch him?

  ‘That was the start of the edge of Australia’s continental shelf,’ she said when she was back on two legs. ‘The small drop-off slopes down to the much bigger one five kilometres out—’

  Small?

  ‘And then some of the most immense deep-sea trenches on the planet.’

  ‘Are you trying to make me feel better?’ he said tightly.

  And had failing always been this excruciating?

  Her pretty face twisted a little. ‘No. But your body might have been responding instinctively to that unknown danger.’

  ‘I deal with unknowns every day.’

  Dealt with them and redressed them. WestCorp thrived on knowns.

  ‘Do you, really?’ she asked, tipping her glance towards him, apparently intent on
placating him with conversation. ‘When was the last time you did something truly new to you?’

  Part of the reason he dominated in business was because nothing fazed him. Like a good game of chess, there was a finite number of plays to address any challenge and once you’d perfected them the only contest was knowing which one to apply. The momentary flare of satisfaction as the challenge tumbled was about all he had, these days. The rest was business as usual.

  And outside of business...

  Well, how long had it been since there was anything outside of business?

  ‘I went snorkelling today,’ he said, pulling off his mask.

  ‘That was your first time? You did well, then.’

  She probably meant to be kind, but all her condescension did was remind him why he never did anything before learning everything there was to know about it. Controlling his environment.

  Open ocean was not a controlled environment.

  ‘How about you?’ he deflected as the drag of the water dropped away and they stepped onto toasty warm sand. ‘You don’t get bored of the same view every day? The same reef?’

  She turned back out to the turquoise lagoon and the deeper blue sea beyond it—that same blue that he loved from the comfort and safety of his boat.

  ‘Nope.’ She sighed. ‘I like a lot of familiarity in my environment because of—’ she caught herself, turned back and changed tack ‘—because I’m at my best when it’s just me and the ocean.’

  He snorted. ‘What’s the point of being your best when no one’s around to see it?’

  He didn’t mean to be dismissive, but he saw her reaction in the flash behind her eyes.

  ‘I’m around.’ She shrugged, almost embarrassed. ‘I’ll know.’

  ‘And you reserve the best of yourself for yourself?’ he asked, knowing any hope of a congenial day with her was probably already sunk.

  Her curious gaze suggested he was more alien to her than some of the creatures they’d just been studying. ‘Why would I give it to someone else?’

  She crossed to their piled-up belongings and began to shove her snorkelling equipment into the canvas bag.

  Rich pressed the beach towel she’d supplied to his chest as he watched her go, and disguised the full-body shiver that followed. But he couldn’t blame it on the chilly water alone—there was something else at play here, something more...disquieting.

  He patted his face dry with the sun-warmed fabric to buy himself a moment to identify the uncomfortable sensation.

  For all his success—for all his professional renown—Rich suddenly had the most unsettling suspicion that he might have missed something fundamental about life.

  Why would anyone give the best of themselves to someone else?

  CHAPTER THREE

  MILA NEVER LIKED to see any creature suffer—even one as cocky as Richard Grundy—but, somehow, suffering brought him closer to her level than he’d yet been. More likeable and relatable Clark Kent, less fortress of solitude Superman. He’d taken the drop-off experience hard, and he’d been finding any feasible excuse not to make eye contact with her ever since.

  Most people got no phone reception out of town but Richard somehow did and he’d busied himself with a few business calls, including arranging for the boat he knew of to meet them at Bill’s Bay marina. It was indisputably the quickest way to get to the gorges he wanted to see. All they had to do was putter out of the State and Federal-protected marine park, then turn north in open, deregulated waters and power up the coast at full speed, before heading back into the marine park again. They could be there in an hour instead of the three it would take by road. And the three back again.

  It looked as if Richard would use every moment of that hour to focus on business.

  Still, his distraction gave her time to study him. His hair had only needed a few strategic arrangements to get it back to a perfectly barbered shape, whereas hers was a tangled, salt-crusted mess. Side on, she could see behind his expensive sunglasses and knew just how blue those eyes were. The glasses sat comfortably on high cheekbones, which was where the designer stubble also happened to begin. It ran down his defined jaw and met its mirror image at a slightly cleft chin. As nice as all of that was—and it was; just the thought of how that stubble might feel under her fingers was causing a flurry of kettledrums, of all things—clearly its primary role in life was to frame what had to be his best asset. A killer pair of lips. Not too thin, not too full, perfectly symmetrical. Not at their best right now while he was still so tense, but earlier, when they’d broken out that smile...

  Ugh...murder.

  The car filled with the scent of spun sugar again.

  ‘Something you need?’

  He spoke without turning his eyes off the road ahead or prising the phone from his ear, but the twist of the mouth she’d just been admiring told her he was talking to her.

  She’d meant to be subtle, glancing sideways, studying him in her periphery, yet apparently those lips were more magnetic than she realised because she was turned almost fully towards him. She snapped her gaze forward.

  ‘No. Just...um...’

  Just obsessing on your body parts, Mr Grundy...

  Just wondering how I could get you to smile again, sir...

  ‘We’re nearly at the boat launch,’ she fabricated. ‘Just wanted you to know.’

  If he believed her, she couldn’t tell. He simply nodded, returned to his call and then took his sweet time finishing it.

  Mila forced her mind back on the job.

  ‘This is the main road in and out of Coral Bay,’ she said as soon as he disconnected his call, turning her four-wheel drive at a cluster of towering solar panels that powered streetlights at the only intersection in the district. ‘It’s base camp for everyone wanting access to the southern part of the World Heritage area.’

  To her, Coral Bay was a sweet, green little oasis existing in the middle of almost nowhere. No other town for two hundred kilometres in any direction. Just boundless, rust-coloured outback on one side and a quarter of a planet of ocean on the other.

  Next stop, Africa.

  Richard’s eyes narrowed as they entered town and he saw all the caravans, RVs, four-by-fours and tour buses parked all along the main street. ‘It’s thriving.’

  His interest reminded her of a cartoon she’d seen once where a rumpled-suited businessman’s eyes had spun and rolled and turned into dollar signs. It was as if he was counting the potential.

  ‘It’s whale shark season. Come back in forty-degree February and it will be a ghost town. Summer is brutal up here.’

  If he wanted to build some ritzy development, he might as well know it wasn’t going to be a year-round goldmine.

  ‘I guess that’s what air-conditioning is for,’ he murmured.

  ‘Until the power station goes down in a cyclone, then you’re on your own.’

  His lips twisted, just slightly. ‘You’re not really selling the virtues of the region, you know.’

  No. This wasn’t her job. This was personal. She forced herself back on a professional footing.

  ‘Did you want to stop in town? For something to eat, maybe? Snorkelling always makes me hungry.’

  Plus, Coral Bay had the best bakery in the district, regardless of the fact it also had the only bakery in the district.

  ‘We’ll have lunch on the Portus,’ he said absently.

  The Portus? Not one of the boats that frequented Coral Bay. She knew them all by sight. It hadn’t occurred to her that he might have access to a vessel from outside the region. Especially given he’d only called to make arrangements half an hour ago.

  ‘Okay—’ she shrugged, resigning herself to a long wait ‘—straight to Bill’s Bay, then.’

  They parked up on arrival at the newly appointed mini-marina an
d wandered down to where three others launched boats for a midday run. Compared to the elaborate ‘tinnies’ of the locals, getting their hulls wet on the ramp, the white Zodiac idling at the end of the single pier immediately caught her attention.

  ‘There’s Damo.’ Rich raised a hand and the Zodiac’s skipper acknowledged it as they approached. ‘You look disappointed, Mila.’

  Her gaze flew to his, not least because it was the first time he’d called her by her name. It eased off his lips like a perfectly cooked salmon folding off a knife.

  ‘I underestimated how long it was going to take us to get north,’ she said, flustered. ‘It’s okay; I’ll adjust the schedule.’

  ‘Were you expecting something with a bit more grunt?’

  ‘No.’ Yes.

  ‘I really didn’t know what to expect,’ she went on. ‘A boat is a boat, right? As long as it floats.’

  He almost smiled then, but it was too twisted to truly earn the name. She cursed the missed moment. A tall man in the white version of her own shorts and shirt stood as they approached the end of the pier. He acknowledged Richard with a courteous nod, then offered her his arm aboard.

  ‘Miss?’

  She declined his proffered hand—not just because she needed little help managing embarkation onto such a modest vessel, but also because she could do without the associated sounds that generally came with a stranger’s skin against hers.

  The skipper was too professional to react. Richard, on the other hand, frowned at her dismissal of a man clearly doing him a favour.

  Mila sighed. Okay, so he thought her rude. It wouldn’t be the first time someone had assumed the worst. And she wouldn’t be seeing him again after today, so what did it really matter?

  The skipper wasted no time firing up the surprisingly throaty Zodiac and reversing them out of the marina and in between the markers that led bigger boats safely through the reef-riddled sanctuary zone towards more open waters. They ambled along at five knots and only opened up a little once they hit the recreation zone, where boating was less regulated. It took just a few minutes to navigate the passage that put them in open water, but the skipper didn’t throttle right up like she expected; instead he kept his speed down as they approached a much larger and infinitely more expensive catamaran idling just beyond the outer reef. The vessel she’d seen earlier, at Nancy’s Point. Slowing as they passed such a massive vessel seemed a back-to-front kind of courtesy, given the giant cat would barely feel their wake if they passed it at full speed. It was only as their little Zodiac swung around to reverse up to the catamaran that she saw the letters emblazoned on the big cat’s side.