by JD Nixon
I didn’t want to go back to my flat, but I refused to go to Heller’s as he requested. Instead I moved into Daniel’s place and slept in his empty bed, which smelt of him, while Niq stayed in the other room. I stayed there for the next few nights, until I felt strong enough to return to my place. In the meantime, Heller had arranged for my flat to be thoroughly cleaned of all signs of the attack. I think I even had a new carpet in the living area.
Days passed. I visited a specialist to have my hand properly assessed and endured a few operations to have pins inserted into the bones that hadn’t broken cleanly. The stitches were removed from my neck and those wounds healed nicely. Niq and I spent most of our time at the hospital, squeezing into Daniel’s bed with him, teasing him, entertaining him, and watching anxiously as he went through his painful physical therapy.
Chapter 30
Patricia’s trial rapidly approached and Heller and I had both been summoned to appear as witnesses, fortunately scheduled to be in the witness stand on the same day. I made sure that I looked professional and respectable, despite my broken hand, scarring and remnants of bruising, Heller and I both dressed in our Heller’s uniforms. I had learned to manage with just one operational hand and didn’t need to ask for too much assistance. I fidgeted all the way downtown to the court complex, and Heller asked me if I was nervous.
“Yes, I’m very nervous,” I confessed, trying to breathe deeply.
“You have Vanessa’s trial to get through as well,” he reminded me.
“Violet,” I reminded him. “Maybe she’ll just plead guilty and save us all the bother?” It was a vain hope and the sceptical look he threw me only confirmed that.
We waited patiently outside the courtroom and I was surprised at how many people were there. Obviously there was an expectation that the witnesses called today would be dealt with speedily.
I was sitting by myself when Heller left to buy us a coffee. I heard my name being called. I turned in surprise, and smiled delightedly when I recognised the man eagerly striding towards me.
“Bick!”
I’d hoped that he’d also been called up for today. He enveloped me in a bear hug, not caring about crushing his Select Security uniform or the curious glances we received.
“Why haven’t you rung me?” we asked each other simultaneously, then laughed.
“My boss has been working me hard. I’ve been out of town for months on an assignment. Just got back the other day. What’s your excuse, Matilda Chalmers?”
“I’ve been busy too, Bickley Barnes. A female security officer’s life is not all painting my toenails and getting my hair done, you know. Heller expects me to do some work as well now and then,” I smiled.
He noticed my hand, immediately concerned. He grasped my arm gently and examined it.
“What happened? Been beating up more men?”
I laughed. “I had a scary encounter with a bunny boiler. You can read all about it in the news in a few months when she goes to trial.”
He didn’t laugh, but frowned, grazing his fingers on my newly healed neck wounds. “This too?”
“What’s this? I leave her alone for a second only to catch her socialising with the competition,” Heller spoke from behind me. His tone was light, but his eyes were heavily guarded and suspicious as he assessed Bick, handing me my coffee and sipping from his. He was on full alert, hackles up.
“Heller, this is Bick Barnes. You’ll remember that I’ve mentioned him. We worked together on Patricia’s assignment. On different sides obviously. Bick, this is my boss, Heller.”
They shook hands firmly and sized each other up.
“I know who Heller is,” Bick said.
“Weren’t you going to send me your CV?” Heller asked.
“I plan to. I was just explaining to Tilly that I’ve been out of town for a few months on assignment.”
“So you didn’t catch Matilda’s fire heroics or her granny scandal?”
I discreetly elbowed Heller in annoyance and shot him an unamused glare.
“No! But they sound intriguing. You’ll have to tell me all about it, Tilly,” he said, flashing that lovely smile.
“Maybe not, Bick. I’m still trying to live them down,” I admitted ruefully. The courtroom door opened and the bailiff called out Bick’s name. He winked at me as he entered the courtroom, ready to take his turn on the witness stand.
“Well?” I asked Heller.
“Well what?”
“What do you think about him? Do you want to hire him?”
“Matilda, apparently unlike you, I need more to go on than just good looks and a winning smile. I want to know about his experience and skills. I’ll consider him properly when he sends me his CV.”
“But you like what you see, don’t you?”
“He’s well-built and his muscle tone is strong. He seems friendly and articulate, always a bonus in a security officer. So from what I’ve seen, yes. However I need more information.”
But I was satisfied with that response and sat back happily. Bick and I might be workmates one day. Heller was called into the courtroom next, and Bick kindly kept me company until he returned, even though his boss had given him specific instructions to get back to work as soon as he was finished. After all, he wasn’t earning his boss any money sitting in a courtroom.
“So, you still have that boyfriend?” he asked in a teasing voice.
My face fell. “No,” I said quietly.
“Oh God, Tilly. I’m sorry. I didn’t know. God, why can’t I just shut my stupid mouth for once? I’m always putting my foot in it.”
I smiled at him sadly and shrugged. “That’s life, hey?”
“That’s life,” he agreed.
When Heller finished and came out, Bick stood up and said goodbye to us, shaking Heller’s hand and giving me a quick peck on the cheek. He strode off, turning around to smile at me once before he left.
Then it was my turn. I was proud of how calm and reasonable I sounded as Patricia’s criminal lawyer took me through the time I’d spent with her, my altercations with the deceased man and my recollection of the events that unfolded. I was cross-examined half-heartedly by the crown prosecutor, but much of my testimony was unchallenged and I was soon free to leave the witness stand.
Heller took me to lunch afterwards at a cosy, rustic Italian restaurant where we ate pasta and I quaffed a glass of a lovely shiraz. At the end of the meal, he reached across the table and took my good hand in his.
“We haven’t talked about what happened at all yet. I think we really need to, Matilda. We need to talk about us as well.” Geez, since when had a man ever volunteered to do that?
“When Daniel’s completely recovered, then we’ll talk. I’ll know for sure by then that it doesn’t matter what she did, she didn’t win.”
“Okay,” he agreed. “We’ll go away together for a few days. Spend some time with each other. Just you and me, no interruptions.”
That was a huge concession from him. He was a busy, driven man running a business. He didn’t take holidays or days off. He didn’t really do leisure. So two or three days out of his schedule just to be with me showed me how much he valued our relationship.
I squeezed his hand and nodded assent, suddenly looking forward to it.
He took care of the bill while I visited the bathroom. When I came out and we left, he was smiling to himself.
“What’s so funny?” I asked.
“The waiter hoped that my wife and I both enjoyed our lunch,” he said, slipping his arm around me. “Did you enjoy it, Mrs Heller?”
“I did, Mr Heller, thank you. What a generous husband you are.”
“You do know that I’ll be insisting on my conjugal rights tonight.”
“Stop it! You know very well that men no longer have conjugal rights. It’s not the nineteenth century any more.”
“Well, that’s not fair. I didn’t even get to have any, and now they’ve been taken away from me. It’s the only reason I married y
ou in the first place.”
I rolled my eyes at him, and we made our way back home.
At the end of the trial, we learned that Patricia was found guilty of manslaughter by the jury and sentenced to prison for ten years. She didn’t receive the full sentence because the prosecution couldn’t prove intent or pre-meditation, and the judge also took into account her past history of domestic abuse. Her quiet, meek demeanour also played well in her favour. I felt very sorry for her for having to go to prison for so long, but Corella told me that she’d accepted the verdict with the same ethereal manner she’d taken in everything since her husband’s death.
I sincerely hoped that her mental health would be monitored in prison.
Chapter 31
True to his word, as soon as Daniel returned home and we knew for sure that he was going to fully recover, Heller took me away for a few days to relax and recover. Before we left, I fussed around Daniel, giving the twins and Niq strict instructions about what he could and couldn’t do and what to feed him and when he needed to sleep and what exercises he needed to do. By the end of my lengthy spiel, during which there was much eye rolling, groaning and complaining, even Daniel was pushing me towards his door to make me leave, closing it in my face.
I immediately opened the door again, and said, “Oh, and one more thing –” Only to be bombarded with cushions thrown at me and met with a chorus of, “just go away!”
As Heller and I drove up the coast to where all the beach resorts were located, I was terrified for an instant that he was going to take me to the place where Will had proposed to me all those many months ago. I breathed a secret sigh of relief as he kept driving past that particular resort, and turned to him with delighted disbelief when he turned into the premier, opulent, absolute beachfront resort that I had only ever dreamed of being able to afford to visit.
“Heller, you’re kidding me? We’re staying here?” I demanded, unable to keep the excitement from my face and voice.
“We are,” he replied solemnly. I sat back in the seat, thrilled at the thought of spending three nights here. I remained silent through the respectful and discreet valet parking, reception and baggage handling services, drinking in the extravagantly luxurious foyer with big eyes. I almost laughed when the staff politely referred to me as Mrs Heller, but I later found out that Heller had booked us in as Mr and Mrs Heller.
Hmm, I think he was becoming a little too used to that.
“Come on, Mrs Heller,” he teased, and ushered me with a hand behind my back to follow the porter to our room. He tipped generously, and the porter shut the door with deferential quietness after carefully depositing our fairly minimal luggage in the suite. After he’d gone, we were left staring at each other.
“Well, Mrs Heller,” he said.
“Well, Mr Heller.”
“What do you want to do first?”
“Jump on the bed? That’s what I always did when I was a kid. Whenever my family and I stayed to a motel.”
He smiled. “I thought instead perhaps we could head to the beach. I would love a swim in the surf.”
“Sure, but can I explore the suite first? Please?”
“You can do whatever you want to, my sweet.”
And so I very happily spent the next fifteen minutes discovering every nook and cranny, every provision, every luxury, while he watched in amusement. It was a beautifully appointed suite with direct access to the beach from a small patio leading from the living area. Everything enchanted me, until I reached the bedroom. There was only one bedroom, and in that bedroom there was only one bed. Granted, it was a generously proportioned bed, but the fact remained that there was only one of them.
“Where are you sleeping?” I asked, my eyebrows raised in query.
“Here. With you.”
“Do I have a say in that?”
He pondered for a moment. “Not really.”
I hadn’t shared a bed with him since the whole Vanessa/Violet affair. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to or not. Maybe I might be sleeping on the lounge.
After I’d satisfied my curiosity about every minute detail of our suite, we changed into our bathers and grabbed our beach towels, making our way to the patrolled beach at the front of the resort. Heller took great care to make sure I was fully covered in sunscreen, but laughingly waved away my attempt to do the same to him. He proclaimed that he didn’t need it because he was used to the sun, as if he didn’t come from a Scandinavian country and I was some underground cave-dwelling hermit who’d suddenly surfaced on earth for the first time in her life, instead of living all my years in one of the sunniest places in the world.
Obviously with my hand still bandaged, I wasn’t able to do much more than paddle at the edge of the ocean. But Heller took full advantage of the opportunity and spent an hour and a half bodysurfing, appearing to enjoy every second. I had long returned to my towel by then and spent the time alternatively reading the trashy novel I’d brought with me and scanning the water for Heller. When I could see he was okay, I went back to my book.
By the time he’d finished swimming, I was sitting up people-watching, my book cast aside. He attracted a lot of attention from the other beach goers as he made his way up the sand to me. Given he was an extraordinarily noticeable person when fully clothed, I guess it shouldn’t have been a surprise that he caused such a stir emerging from the surf, dripping wet and wearing only a small pair of tight black boxer swimmers, chest bare. I lay down swiftly on my towel and closed my eyes, not wanting him to know that I’d been watching him. Therefore, I was taken completely by surprise when he plonked himself down on top of my legs and ran his hands through his hair, flicking very cold seawater onto my nicely sun-heated body.
“Heller!” I screeched in protest, wiping the water from my face, his wet pants dripping all over my legs. He smiled down at me mischievously, then quickly assumed a full push-up position over me, looking down. I was trapped beneath him.
“Kiss me, Matilda.”
“No. I don’t want to.”
He started doing push-ups over me, kissing me lightly on the lips every time he came down close to the ground.
“Kiss me.”
“No.”
He kissed me a few more times, moving up and down, up and down. “I’m not going to stop until you kiss me back,” he threatened.
I could only imagine the attention he garnered from the beach crowd now, but I knew he’d be oblivious to it all. I tossed up making him continue doing push-ups until he collapsed in agony, but I suspected that might take hours. I didn’t want to kiss him, but I caved in and gave him a quick peck on the lips as he came down again. He rolled over onto his towel and smiled at me in satisfaction.
“Nobody likes a show-off, you know,” I censured.
He smiled again, even more smugly, before lying down on his back to dry himself in the sun, closing his eyes. And it may have been my imagination, but it seemed as though an inordinate amount of women came strolling past our part of the beach, brazenly turning their heads towards us to snatch a glance at Heller’s recumbent body. Okay, I’ll concede that it was only natural that he attracted a lot of attention – you didn’t encounter someone like him in life very often. But geez! If you’re going to perv at a man when he was with another woman, at least be more discreet about it! I couldn’t imagine how it would feel to be married to him for real and having to put up with that level of attention from other women. It would surely drive any woman insane after a while. Or make her start feeling very insecure.
He finally woke from his brief slumber and rolled over to face me, not even noticing the other women around, his arm supporting his head, his fingers gently touching my arm.
“Your skin is too hot. Let’s go before you are sunburned,” he said.
While he showered, I perused the dining options before deciding on the hotel’s famous seafood restaurant. This part of the country was renowned for its fresh seafood and I knew that the restaurant would also be an acceptable diet choice for him
.
We shared a lovely dinner, then sat in one of the hotel bars for a few hours, listening to a pianist and singer belting out soppy, broken-heart tunes that would normally have had me reaching for a bucket, but which instead made me want to reach for my tissues. I guess I wasn’t over feeling sorry for myself quite yet.
Back at the suite I eyed the lounge and compared it to the comfort of the top-quality bed, unsurprisingly deciding on the bed.
We lay on our sides, facing each other and looking into each other’s eyes in the moonlight that streamed in from the open door onto the balcony. The continual sound of the ocean was soothing and relaxing. Heller stroked my face.
“I wasn’t there when you needed me. I let you down. So many times. I can’t forgive myself for that,” he said softly.
I was silent for a while, but I’d thought about it a lot. “It’s not your job to look after me.”
“Yes, it is. There’s nothing more important to me than your welfare. I let myself be distracted by someone else and I took my eye off you.”
“You can’t spend your life keeping an eye on me.”
“Why not? It seems like a good way to spend my life. Much better than what I was doing before I met you, which was just thinking about myself. I like looking after you. You’re very important.”
“I’m not important,” I said quietly, and I believed that.
“Yes, you are. You’re very important to Daniel and Niq. And you’re very important to me. You mean so much to me, my sweet. And no matter what I do or who I’m with, that will never change.”
I was silent for a while. “You mean a lot to me too, Heller.” And then, suddenly, I wanted to touch him again.
As if sensing that, he hugged me and then kissed me, and then kissed me again and again, moving closer to me, his arm and leg thrown over my body. And we slept entwined.
When I woke the next morning I was alone. I dozed on and off for a while until Heller returned, wearing a t-shirt and running shorts, a patina of sweat on his face. He’d been for a long run on the beach, and I felt slightly guilty for my laziness. He flopped on the bed, still breathing heavily.
