Jill Shalvis - Aussie Rules

He hadn’t expected a red-carpet welcome, but this hostility was getting old bugger quick. “Okay,” he said easily. “Let’s get this out in the open.”

Twin glares.

“I don’t have a beef with either of you,” he tried calmly. “I just want to see Sally.” Or wrap his fingers around her neck and squeeze…

“Sally isn’t available,” Dimi said.

Mel had one leg swinging jerkily from her perch, revealing her irritation. As if he couldn’t see it all over her face.

Irritated himself, Bo put his hands on the desk and leaned in closer. “When will she be available? Tomorrow?”

Mel blinked once, slow as an owl, and didn’t answer.

Dimi stared down at her fingers, which were fisted and white-knuckled.

“In a week?” he asked with what he thought was great patience.

Nothing.

Shit. He took a deep breath. “A month?”

Neither woman moved, just Mel’s leg swinging, swinging, swinging. He eyed them both a long moment, then forced himself to relax, because he had two things on his side. One, a boatload of patience, and two, nothing else was more important than this. “I can wait as long as it takes,” he warned.

“You don’t have a job?” Mel asked.

“At the moment, I’m doing a bit of chartering.”

“With the Gulfstream.”

“Yep. And I’m getting back into antique-aircraft restoration.”

“Like Eddie.”

The mention of his father’s name never failed to deliver a rush of memories and nostalgia, and now was no different. Bo found his voice softer when he answered this time. “Like my father, yes.”

Dimi bit her lower lip, looked at Mel. Mel gave her a slight shake of her head, telling Bo what he needed to know.

Mel was the one in charge.

“So what are you going to do?” Mel asked. “Stand around and watch us run the place until Sally shows up?”

Bo made a show of looking around, at the decided lack of customers, at the slightly shabby look to the interior of the lobby, at the nerves leaping off of the two of them that could together provide enough electricity to run a small Third World country. “Seems to me you could use some help around here.”

“We’re fine,” Mel said tightly.

“Fine? Maybe. But who’s got the deed, Mel?”

Myriad emotions crossed their faces at that: horror, dismay, frustration.

“Yeah, think about that,” he suggested, then whistling beneath his breath, he straightened and walked away.

Mel stared at his strong, sleek back as he headed across the lobby toward the hallway that led to the private offices in the back and felt her stomach sink.

“What is he doing here?” Dimi hissed.

Mel leaned in and grabbed the phone. “You heard him.” Her gaze was still locked on Bo as she punched in the number she’d memorized years ago: Sally’s cell. “He wants to talk to Sally. He’s not sure the deed is authentic any more than I am.” While she waited, listening to the phone ring God knew where, Ernest walked by again, sans cart this time. Mel felt like growling at him, but that would serve little purpose other than to tweak his curiosity, so she managed to control herself.

Sally didn’t pick up the phone, but then again, she rarely did. In fact, it had been nearly a year since they’d last talked, not that anyone knew that, because Mel and Dimi had perpetuated the image that they’d talked to Sally a lot more often. It kept the calm, and Mel liked calm.

She got Sally’s voice mail. “Sally,” Mel said at the beep. “Call me.”

Dimi shook her head. “Is he going to tell everyone?”

“Not if I have a say.”

“How did he get that deed in his name?”

“It wasn’t in his name. It was in his father’s.”

“Eddie Black.”

The man never failed to thrust Mel back in time, to the summer after freshman year. She’d been learning her way around an airplane engine, thanks to Sally and her mechanic at the time, Don, a cankerous old guy with a cigarette always hanging out one corner of his mouth and a beer at the ready. For whatever reason, he’d taken to Mel, maybe because she’d made it her business to know the difference between a Beech and a Piper, and he liked that in a kid.

Dimi had filed and answered phones in between flirting with the linemen and any customer who happened to possess a penis. She and Mel hadn’t exactly been friends; Mel having come from the trailer park across the tracks, while Dimi ran with her rich-bitch crowd. But that summer they’d shared one catastrophic event that had changed things forever: Mel’s mother running off with Dimi’s father. The remaining parents soon vacated as well, each by different means. Dimi’s mom had chosen prescription meds, which ended up killing her. Mel’s father’s escape of choice…booze.

And so the unlikely alliance of Mel and Dimi had begun. Not sisters, not friends…just two very different girls stuck together by happenstance.

Not so oddly, Sally’s world had become their world. Sally, with her big smile, bigger heart, a magnet for men, usually the wrong men. Every year had been a different guy, but that year it’d been Eddie Black.

Something had seemed off to Mel and Dimi from the start, though it hadn’t been until later that they’d figured the Aussie for what he was-a con man. And they included in that his laid-back, sweet-talking, sexy-as-hell teenage son, Bo.

Eddie and Bo had parked it at North Beach all that long, hot, lazy summer, and by September’s end, Sally had been stupid-in-love, with Eddie calling the shots.

Then something had happened, and Eddie and Bo had gone back to Australia. And Sally had vanished.

She’d called the next week to let Mel and Dimi know she was on a road trip looking for Eddie because-the girls had been right-he’d conned her.

What they didn’t know until later was that all Sally’s accounts had been emptied, leaving North Beach in a world of hurt. Mel and Dimi had stayed on, running the show for Sally, trying to keep things afloat for when she came back.

Only she hadn’t come back. Eddie had driven his van off a bridge and died. Whether devastated or just furious, Sally had stayed gone, letting the girls send her money as they could, mere kids trying so hard to be grown-up.

Sally’s calls slowed, coming less and less frequently, then hardly at all. In fact, the past two times they’d sent her money, she’d not even responded, though they pretended otherwise.

In retrospect, with the 20/20 hindsight of dubious maturity, Mel and Dimi probably shouldn’t have ever pretended to be in constant contact with Sally, but it had kept the calm then, and the status quo. Besides, dwelling wasn’t Mel’s style. Nor were regrets. She’d lived with the decisions they’d made back then.

Now Bo would have to do the same. “If that deed’s legit,” Mel said, “as Eddie’s only child, Bo is his heir.”

“God. I need more tea.” Dimi started going through her basket of tea bags, bracelets jangling. “Something calming.”

It’d take a planeload of good meds for Mel to feel calm. “It’s going to be okay, Dimi.”

Dimi shot her a wry glance. “Really? How?” She shook her head. “No, don’t answer. There is no answer for that. But it’d sure help if he was ugly, you know?”

Yeah. Mel knew.

“Seriously. Before I realized who he was, I could have just gobbled him right up.”

“You gobble up all men.”

“Hey.” Dimi caught a glimpse of her perfect self in the reflection of the mirror, and laughed. “Look, I realize you’re programmed differently than me, and that you actually think before you act, but try and tell me your every hormone didn’t stand up and do a tap dance at the sight of him, gorgeous as sin. And that sexy accent-”

“The accent is no big deal.”

“You really suck at lying, you know that?” Dimi studied her with a knowing smirk. “Your eyes go all squinty…”

“Fine,” Mel said, trying to relax her eye muscles. “He looks…fine. Okay?”

“Honey, fine would be a nice glass of Chardonnay. Fine is a pretty blue sky. That man is so far off the charts from fine you can’t even see fine.”

Mel tossed up her hands. “And we’re having this conversation why?”

“Right.” Dimi sat back down, waved her away, crystals tinkling together. “Listen, go kick his Aussie ass out of here, this place is ours.”

Mel found a way to smile. “I thought you dreamed of walking away from this place.”

“I’ll walk away because I want to, not because some bastard takes over.”

That was Dimi. Stubborn to a beautiful fault.

“Unfortunately, he’s not going anywhere. At least not until he talks to Sally.”

“But that’s not going to happen. We can’t-”

“We have to.”

They stared at each other for a long, uncomfortable beat.

“You really think you can con a con?” Dimi finally whispered.

“We have to,” Mel repeated.

Dimi leaned close. “You and I both know, he’s the son of the very best, he’s-”

“Yeah.” Mel hopped off the desk and tossed back her shoulders and the stray strands of hair from her face. “I know what he is. Now let’s find out what he isn’t.”

“Mel.”

“Wish me luck.”

“Luck. You’re going to need it.” Dimi jumped up and hugged her hard, then pulled back, hands on Mel’s face. “We’re bad. We’re tough. We own our world.”

Mel found a smile. It was their old motto, from when they’d been young, scared, and on their own. They were still on their own, but not so young.

And maybe only a little scared.

“Do whatever you have to,” Dimi said quietly. “Just get him out of here.”

Yeah.

Whatever she had to…

At the thought of what that might entail, goose bumps rose on Mel’s skin, and not necessarily the bad kind.

Mel headed across the lobby, mind occupied by her singular mission: Get rid of Bo Black.

She passed by the café. Charlene stood behind the counter, scrubbing down the scarred tile, singing along to Metallica. “Mel!” she cried, gesturing her close, looking around them before whispering conspiratorially, “So?”