Maid for the Rock Star

by Demelza Carlton

  They reached the beach, only to discover that the tide was in and there wasn't enough dry sand to lay a towel.

  "Is there anyone in Villa Penguin?" Serge asked, staring at the waves trying to lick their feet.

  Audra snorted. "That's a weird name for a pearl. You can't be serious. I don't believe there's a Villa Penguin."

  "Sure there is. It's the little one with a private jetty. If you haven't found it yet, I guess no one's booked it." Serge led the way along the path to the Pearl Villas.

  The houses were all dark as Audra and Serge crossed the compound, the flip-flopping thongs on their feet lit up by the glowing path-side lamps. Jungle abruptly ended and the cobbled path gave way to wooden boardwalk, extending out into the water.

  "Villa Penguin's private jetty," Serge said, pointing to the sign that proclaimed just that.

  Audra laughed softly and shook her head as she led the way along the boards. The scrape and thump of Serge's footfalls behind her was the only sound above the sibilant splash of waves on the jetty. Spreading the towels out at the very end, she settled on one and stretched her toes out over the edge.

  Serge sat down beside her and flipped open the cooler box. "Smokey or Pearlers?"

  Audra shrugged and reached for the nearest bottle. It was too dark to see the label. With the aid of Serge's bottle opener, the caps tinkled to the deck and they both drank. She tasted the bitter notes as she swallowed – then almost choked as it burned down her throat, as if she'd drunk whisky and not beer. "What the hell was that?" she gasped, squinting at the bottle. By the dim glow of Serge's phone, they read the label. "Chilli beer? What kind of sadistic bastard makes beer out of chilli?"

  Serge switched his beer for hers. "Only in Broome. Have mine. It tasted like some sort of tropical fruit."

  Not wanting to be caught out again, Audra checked the label first. "Lychee. Yeah, that's fruit. Fruit beer. Only in Broome, all right." When she felt the alcohol warming her from the inside, she lay back and stared up at the Milky Way, spanning the sky in the sort of glorious display she'd never see in the city at home. "I'll be dreaming of stars tonight."

  "Me, too." Serge lay down beside her. "What else do you dream of?"

  For a moment, she wondered if he was asking about her night-time dreams. No way in hell was she telling him about her fantasy involving Chris Hemsworth, a packet of Tim Tams and a jar of Nutella. Admittedly, lately Jay had taken his place in her dreams, along with an extra jar of hazelnut spread, but she wasn't going to tell Serge about that, either.

  As if he'd sensed her confusion, he added, "You'll think it's silly, but what I dream of most is having a secure job. One where I don't need to worry about the weather or the economy or anything. A job where I can earn enough money to live off, and never have to worry about being laid off as long as I do my job right. And then I spend a day working for a bloke with a toothache and realise I want more. I want a steady income, yeah, but I also want my own gym. In the city, not near my family's farm. One where everyone gets one-on-one time with a personal trainer and a wrist tracker, to help them monitor their goals. And small classes, where the instructor's not just up the front, but making sure people do the moves right and get the most benefit they can out of it. With a meal service to help people who want to lose weight or improve their nutrition, too. A one-stop shop." He laughed softly. "That'll only ever be a dream, though. The amount of money I'd need to start my own gym and always have enough to live off...I'll need to win the lottery, I guess."

  "Good luck. There are worse dreams than wanting a stable job." Like dreaming of a rock star you couldn't have. Especially when you had to reject his daily offers to make your other dreams come true. "It's one of those things you take for granted until it's taken away without warning." Audra hesitated, then ploughed on, "I'd like to work at a remote weather station in a place like this one. Seeing things few people get to, taking observations for posterity, but most of all...alone, I guess."

  "You don't like people?" Serge sat up in surprise. "I wouldn't have thought that about you."

  Audra bit her lip. "It's not that. I do like people. I've lived most of my life in the city, in a household with five kids where you barely get five minutes to yourself. I...you'll laugh at me when you hear this. Annette warned me about the accommodation here, saying it was just like a minesite with single rooms and all, but I almost squealed in delight when I saw it. It's the first time in my life that I haven't had to share a room with someone else. I love my family, but they always seem to need help with something. For as long as I can remember, I've done the laundry for all seven of us, just to make sure I had clean shirts for school and then for work. Cooked most nights that I was home, because Mum just never had the time or the energy by the end of the day. Is it a dream to want to only have to worry about myself?"

  "Nah, I know what you mean. When I'm on the farm, Dad always worries about the price of wine and grape yields and who's been bought out by the big wineries. Whether he'll get enough workers for the harvest or the pruning, and whether drought or fire or hail will ruin this year's crop. Whether he's better off selling the whole crop to another winemaker, or going to the trouble of pressing the vintage himself. My brothers all went to uni, did agriculture or viticulture or courses in how to make sheep cheese, and now they're all planning on getting married and having kids, to Mum's delight. I'm the youngest and Dad damn near disowned me when I said I didn't want to go to university. As for getting married...I was more interested in health and fitness, not wine. Family...shit, I love them, but they're not the ones living my life. That's me. I have to make my own choices." Glass clinked. "Want another beer? I think these are both normal ones. No fruit or vegetables this time."

  Audra accepted the drink and hugged her knees to her chest as she stared out over the dark ocean. "Thanks. Yes, I love my family. But it feels like I do less work out here, even when I'm still on laundry duty. I have time to myself. Almost makes working here feel like a holiday." She laughed. "Don't tell Annette I said that. When we're fully booked and I've had to clean a record number of rooms in less time than it takes to drive here from town, sometimes I vacuum so many rooms and scrub so many showers that I can still hear the hum of the vacuum cleaner at dinner, or I wake up with my fingers cramping around an imaginary spray bottle in the middle of the night."

  "Why don't you have a job at a weather station? I haven't finished my qualification yet, but I thought you said you'd graduated."

  Audra sighed. "Yeah, I graduated earlier this year. Most of the meteorology jobs in Australia are through the Commonwealth Bureau of Meteorology. They have one graduate intake a year." It still hurt to think about it.

  "Did you miss out last year?"

  She thanked her lucky stars that it was too dark for her to see the sympathy on his face. Or for him to see the tears escaping from her eyes at the memory of Leon's mangled car and him lying in hospital in a drug-induced coma, like an ad for why seventeen-year-olds shouldn't own V8s, drive fast and drink alcohol. "Sort of. I didn't get my application finished before the deadline. So they didn't accept it and I had to wait another year."

  "When's the deadline?"

  "In two weeks. My application's mostly written, but I want it to be the best it can be so that this time next year, I'm cleaning a cup anemometer, not some VIP's carpet. So every day off between now and then, I'll be picking through the words, trying to put them together better, practicing responses to interview questions...the best applicants get the best locations, or that's what I've heard. And I've never been outside Western Australia before."

  Serge clinked his beer against hers. "Then good luck. To you achieving your dreams, because they sound like they're a damn sight closer than mine. Mine are up there with those stars somewhere." He waved at the Milky Way.

  "Thanks." Audra drained her beer.

  "Want another one? The last two are mango and ginger, I think. Guess I saved the best for last. Here's the mango one."

  Just like she'd had that night w
ith Jay. Audra reached for it and her wristband beeped. The LED illuminated the name of Jay's villa. Had he read her thoughts? "Shit."

  Serge dropped the bottle back into the ice. "I'll keep them for you until you come back."

  Book club with the rock star. Good thing she wasn't sober. "No, don't wait up. Who knows what the VIP wants this time. You enjoy them, or save them for another night." She rose and dusted off her shorts. "Can you drop the towels in the laundry on your way back?"

  Serge nodded. "I'll save the last beers for the night you find out you've got the job, managing your own weather station in paradise."

  "You mean when I get sent to the arse-end of nowhere." Audra laughed. "Wherever. You're on."

  FOURTEEN

  The swish of waves on the shore still permeated the jungle as Audra headed for the only illuminated villa on this side of the lagoon. Once again, work won over any chance of enjoying herself. Was Serge right – would her life one day hold something different? Or would she just work herself to death, without getting to enjoy any of life's pleasures the way normal people did?

  Jay hadn't drawn the blinds, so skirting his villa was oddly voyeuristic as she watched him check his watch and glance at the door every few seconds, clenching a book in his hands. He looked like the poster boy for money's inability to buy happiness. She and Jay could be miserable together, then.

  Audra swiped her wristband and waited for the door to slide open as the intercom announced her arrival. The sound of tumbling glass greeted her as she entered the lounge room – what hadn't been visible from the window were the empty bottles lined up on the tiles at Jay's feet. She leaped into action, grabbing as many as she could before she had to clean up broken glass instead of just beer-basted bottles.

  Two armloads later, she'd filled the recycling bin in the kitchen. Audra eyed the tiles critically. "Do you want me to mop that now or wait 'til morning? It's only a few drops and I'd hate you to slip..." Her beer-befuddled brain caught up with her mouth. "But a fresh-mopped floor would be slippery, too. Morning's probably best."

  Jay nodded, his unfocussed eyes making her wonder if he'd even understood her question, let alone her dilemma.

  "You paged me. Was there something else you wanted me to help you with?" Audra wet her lips. "Or did you just want me to clean up the bottles?"

  "Your rock star romance books don't help," he slurred, throwing them down on the sofa.

  Audra eyed the pink book and one with a couple on the front. "How so?" she asked lightly.

  Jay waved at them. "These are about girls still hung up on their high school crush, who never noticed them, until they're rock stars and suddenly they do. If I was a chick who wanted to seduce a rock star, fine, but I'm the fucking rock star."

  Audra rubbed her fuzzy eyes, wishing she could do the same to the inside of her head. He wasn't making any sense. "I thought you said the girl you've been pining over since high school is a rock star, too. Your guitarist...isn't that what you said? You're out here sulking, all sad and lonely, because she's thrown you out and you're trying to find a way you can crawl into her good graces again so she'll take you back?"

  "Fuck no!" Jay roared. "Rock stars don't sulk and they don't crawl for uppity chicks, either."

  Audra tried to hide her scepticism. "So why are you hiding out here?"

  "I'm not hiding!" With what appeared to be considerable effort, he lowered his voice to a more normal volume. "I'm planning. Regrouping. Taking some much-needed time to consider my future. The next stage in my career."

  Rock stars had to make career choices? She'd never really thought about it. They wrote and recorded albums, performed the songs at concerts, while millions of fans screamed their names, bought their music and obsessed over them. But the wrong choices could end his career just as surely as they could hers. And while she could always find another job somewhere else, cleaning hotel rooms or serving food, that wasn't an option for a rock star whose meteoric rise had turned into a freefall that could only end in a crash to Earth. Did he mean he had to decide on which country to tour next or what style of music to write for his next album? Sobriety descended on Audra like a cold shower. It wasn't his career future he was considering – it had to be the girl he denied having feelings for. Career angst didn't create chaos with your emotions the way love could. Jay wasn't just a rock star – he was a man, too.

  "What are you going to do next?" she asked softly.

  It seemed like his macho mask slipped away and she saw genuine fear in his eyes. "I don't fucking know."

  Silence hung between them for a moment. In two strides, Audra crossed the room and hugged him. One minute she was safely, dispassionately ensconced on her own seat, the next she had her arms around a slab of miserable man-muscle and she didn't want to let go. She had no idea how to disentangle herself from the crazy situation, but she knew her wristband would record every word she said.

  His arms encircled her far less awkwardly, though no less firmly. He emitted a muffled "thank you".

  Then he lifted his head and his eyes met hers. His mouth was so close and still slightly open, as if preparing to kiss her. Audra's lips parted to take a shaky breath before she surrendered to her desire for Jay.

  "You know what'd make me feel even better?" Jay began, looking hopeful. "If you got your tits out. Then we could – "

  Thank God his rock star ego had broken the moment.

  "No. I'm sorry, Mr Felix, but we can't." Audra took that as her cue to retreat a few steps before collapsing into her chair again, relieved to be on the other side of the coffee table from the mess of contradictions that was Jay Felix.

  "Bugger." His pause was barely perceptible. "Want a beer, then?"

  She nodded silently. Better to wrap her lips around a bottle than do anything dangerous with them.

  FIFTEEN

  Morning light stung Audra's eyes and she cursed. She must have fallen asleep with the blinds open. She forced her eyelids up and blinked away the bleariness. This wasn't her room. It looked like...Maxima.

  Uncurling her stiffened limbs, she rose from the armchair that had cradled her all night, it seemed, as Jay's recounting of the all-too-familiar plots of those two romance novels had made her nod, then close her eyes, until finally...she guessed she'd drifted right off into la-la-land. Well, she could cross one thing off her bucket list that she'd never expected to achieve: she'd spent a night with a rock star. Jay Felix, no less. And hadn't she hugged him for a moment, too?

  She ran her fingers through her hair, hoping to smooth it out enough so that no one would know where she'd spent the night. Though sneaking out of Maxima at this time in the morning would probably give her away, anyway.

  Audra almost made it to the door before she met Jay carrying a covered tray.

  "I ordered you breakfast!" He seemed really proud of himself and not put out at all that she'd passed out on his couch.

  "I'm sorry – " she began.

  He waved her into silence. "Nah, you looked wrecked last night. I asked if you wanted me to read you to sleep and you sort of nodded, so I cracked open that last – " he coughed " – romance book you got me and started reading aloud. Haven't done shit like that since I was at school. Got to admit, it was a bit of a relief when you started snoring. Doesn't do much for my rock star reputation, reading romance books." His eyes strayed to the sofa where he'd been sitting last night and Audra felt a little smug to see that the book lay face-down, open at a page well past the middle. So much for his reputation, if this ever got out.

  Audra sighed inwardly. It wouldn't get out – it was her job to protect the VIPs' privacy, no matter how many ridiculous things they did. Romance novels were barely a blip on the radar, from some of the whispered stories she'd heard in the staff dining room.

  Speaking of which..."I'd best grab some breakfast. Busy day of work ahead." She moved purposefully toward the door again.

  "But I got you breakfast! Look, look!" He uncovered the tray and held out a sandwich on a plate. "It's for you!
"

  Audra smiled politely and continued backing away.

  "You can't say no to a bacon sandwich! Breakfast of rock stars!" Jay started to look desperate.

  "Sorry, I don't like bacon. And I'm expected in the staff dining room." Audra escaped, jogging down the path until she knew she was out of sight of the villas. Only then did she take a deep breath.

  Bacon. Her kryptonite. Actually, any sort of pork. Ever since that field trip for uni, checking out the ventilation and odour management systems for the abattoir, and watching the live pigs get slaughtered and sliced and...

  She dropped to the ground, hoisting her knees up until she could wedge her head firmly between them. Breathe. Smell the brine and the ocean and the sand and the jungle and the...had someone burned breakfast again? If Penny didn't leave that poor sous-chef alone, he'd lose his job for sure. Better burned cinnamon than bacon, though.

  Rising to her shaky feet, Audra continued on to the dining room. If she finished first, she might get a few extra minutes in the communal showers before one of the other girls tried to beat down the door. Hey, she could hope. Warm water caressing her skin for a few more minutes was the best she could hope for, after all.

  SIXTEEN

  Jason climbed into the helicopter, irritated and intrigued and itching to get off the island. Hence the helicopter. Not that he was flying it; he left the difficult stuff to other people like the pilot. He knew the press release would go out today, telling the world about Chaya's farewell tour. His days as a hot rock god were numbered and it fucking pissed him off.

  And that girl...refusing him like he was a nobody already. Who did she think she was? She was a hotel maid, for fuck's sake. Not a rock star or a doctor or even the hotel manager, but the girl who cleaned the floors and took out the rubbish. He wanted some solace from normal girls. The sort that swooned at his feet. Not made him read fucking romance books full of shit no rock star would ever do. Cook a girl breakfast? Put her pleasure before his own? Tell her stuff no self-respecting rock star would ever admit to feeling when there was enough alcohol in the house to deaden it? Shit, he needed a drink just thinking about all that emotional crap. The stuff crazy people told their shrink.