Aussie Rules (28 page)

Want him.

“Is this the first e-mail since the last one you showed me?” he demanded.

“Yes.”

His gaze scanned her face. Looking for honesty, no doubt, but then he let out a breath. “Either you're getting better at lying, or I'm going soft on you, but I actually believe you.”

“You're…going soft on me?”

“Jesus, Mel, you can't tell?”

“I like words,” she said carefully. “There's less misunderstanding with words.”

He opened his mouth, but before her eyes, his own shuttered, and his smile was strained and humorless. “You're trying to distract me from your incoming mail.”

“I'm not.”

“Prove it. Show it to me.”

“I will. But you should know, Matt just called me. He unearthed four more aliases for Sally. The last one, the most recent…She was married, but her husband died. Suspiciously.”

They looked at each other. “Now Sally's wanted for questioning,” she added softly, and clicked on the new e-mail, gasping at who it was from: Tara Louise.

“Let me guess,” Bo said grimly. “One of those aliases is Tara Louise. Probably the one with the dead husband.”

“Bingo, you win the prize,” Mel murmured, still in shock.

“If it's you on a platter, count me in.”

“This is serious, Bo.”

“Yes, I'm serious as a heart attack. Mel, look at me.”

She lifted her head. He was close enough to kiss. Close enough to look into his eyes and see the utter honesty there for her to take. He wanted her. But she already knew that much, he'd made it abundantly clear. Her body mesmerized him.

Well, they were even there.

The problem? More than just his body mesmerized her.
Yeah, don't go there
. She leaned in to read the e-mail, but cupped her face and held her gaze.

“We're scaring her. You know that.”

“She can join the club, then.”

He slid his fingers into the hair at her temple, his eyes unusually solemn. “She's on the run, she's scared and she's pissed. She's going to blame us. Me, I'm more than ready for the face-off. You—”

“She won't hurt me.”

“Mel, she's threatening you. She's threatening you because of me, because I came back and dug all this up. I'm the catalyst, not you.”

“No—”

“I'm not going to let anything happen to you,” he said fiercely.

“Nothing's going to happen to me, she's long gone now.” With that, Mel clicked open the e-mail.

Bo leaned in farther, his jaw actually brushing her as his fingers pushed hers aside and started clicking on the keyboard.

“What are you doing?” she asked, watching as he opened her browser, and pasted something from the e-mail on to the page. Then his fingers were clicking over the keys, far faster than she could type, and she couldn't follow what he was doing.

“Fuck,” he said softly, and straightened away from her.

“What?” she asked, but he was already running. Leaping up, she grabbed ahold of his shirt at the door. “Bo.”

“That e-mail,” he grated out. “It came from within the airport. It came from one of your computers right here on the premises.”

W
ith Mel on his heels, Bo went running through the lobby, skidding to a stop at the front desk's computer so fast that she plowed into the back of him, hard.

He could smell her shampoo as her hair slapped him. And if he closed his eyes, he could still feel the way it'd stroked his throat and chest when she'd straddled him, when she slid down his body, her silky hair and mouth driving him to the edge of sanity.

Focus, mate
.

Dimi sat behind the front desk, a pair of reading glasses perched on her nose, legs crossed, holding a ledger, which she dropped at the sight of them.

Leaving in her hands a paperback novel that she shoved behind her back. Bo didn't care what she was reading, it was her computer he wanted to see, and he moved around the desk, turning her screen to face him.

“Hey,” she protested. “Paws off.”

Ignoring her, Bo clicked on a few keys, then looked up at Mel and shook his head.

“Of course not,” Mel said in quick defense of Dimi.

“Do we have any customers onsite?” Bo asked.

Dimi shook her head. “No. But what—”

“I'll be back to tell you,” Mel promised. “Hurry,” she said unnecessarily to Bo, then pushed ahead of him to run out of the lobby, along the tarmac toward the maintenance hangar.

And the computer there.

Danny was at that desk, leaning back, feet up, flipping through a manual while sipping a Big Gulp soda. “Hey, guys, I found a new distributor, with cheaper—What are you doing?”

Bo had leaned right over him to hit a few keys.

The computer stayed dark.

“It's not on.” Danny eyed them both with a growing frown. “It froze up a few hours ago and I shut it off. I didn't need it right now so I never turned it back on. What's happening?”

“Someone just e-mailed me,” Mel said. “From inside North Beach.”

“Must have been one hell of an e-mail,” Danny said quietly, taking in their tension.

Mel looked at Bo. “Yeah, a hell of an e-mail. That's it, Bo, except for Ernest's old laptop that we use as a backup, but—”

“Wait.” Bo stared at her, it was all sinking in. The only common denominator and they hadn't seen it. Christ, they'd been stupid.
“Ernest.”

Again they went running, this time with Danny on their heels.

Ernest wasn't in his office.

And neither was the laptop.

“What does it mean?” Mel gasped, trying to catch her breath. “What does it all mean?”

Bo looked at her, and he saw the instant she got it.
“Sally was here,”
she breathed. “But why now, why after all this time?”

“Because she needs us to shut the hell up. She's facing some unpleasant jail time with me showing up and stirring the old news. She can't risk us finding out exactly what we did—that she's a career con.”

“Where's Ernest?” Danny asked. “What's his part in this?”

“That's a bit complicated, actually.”

They all whirled to face Ernest in the doorway. He looked grim. That is, grimmer than usual. In his hands he held the big ring of keys that would open any door within North Beach.

Shit,
Bo thought.

“Ernest,” Mel said softly. “What's going on?”

“You already know.” He looked pale. Very pale. “You know everything, you just didn't put it all together in time.”

“Sally sent me an e-mail from your computer,” Mel said.

Ernest shook his head. “I sent the e-mails.”

They all stared at him as if he'd grown another head, and he sighed. “Sally came to me weeks ago and asked me for help.”

Weeks, Bo thought. Right around the time he'd first shown up.

“I tried to scare you off,” Ernest said to Mel. “You began digging, and Sally got nervous. She asked me to make sure you didn't find…”

“Find what?” Bo glanced at the keys in Ernest's hand. “Something that would implicate her,” he guessed. “Something she needed to stay hidden.”

Ernest nodded.

“You two go way back, don't you, Ernest?” Bo asked. “She knew you were someone she could trust.”

Ernest looked at Mel. “Yes. We go way back. All the way back.”

“You've been in contact with her all along?” Mel asked, shocked. “All this time?
Years?
When I needed her, you were talking with her and didn't tell me?”

Another nod, jerky now.

Mel looked as if she could be knocked over with a feather. “And do you know what she did?” she demanded. “Do you know how she ruined people's lives?”

Ernest stared down at the keys, his usually placid face a mask of pain. “I thought she was the most beautiful, wonderful, compassionate woman on earth. I thought she was amazing. I thought…”

“You were in love with her,” Mel breathed.

Ernest fumbled with the keys and said nothing.

“You were as fooled as we were, weren't you?”

“She changed,” he said tightly. “It's my own shame that I didn't see that before. Soon as I did…” He met Mel's gaze helplessly. “I stopped helping her. I was still trying to scare you off, though, but by then it was so that you wouldn't get hurt.”

“Where is she now?” Bo asked.

Ernest shook his head.

“You don't know, or you won't tell?”

“I've been covering for her all these years without knowing it,” Ernest said quietly, looking at Bo. “I've been fooled, the same way your father was, the same way the others were. But no more. Here.” He thrust out the key ring, with one key in the forefront. “This is yours. It should have been yours this whole time, and saying sorry doesn't seem good enough, but I am. It's been waiting here for you.”

Bo took the key, eyed the number on it. Number thirteen. “Ironic,” he murmured and turned and left the hangar. He knew the others were following him, with Mel immediately on his heels. He could feel her dismay, her anger, and when she set her hand on his back, her
support
. Damn if that didn't mean far too much. They moved along the tarmac to the rental hangars, stopping at the second-to-last one.

Ernest's.

Bo unlocked the side door and came face-to-face with the same stacks and stacks of old boxes he'd seen before. But Ernest reached out and pushed at them, and they fell over. “Empty,” he said.

“Nice cover.” But Bo didn't feel amused as they flipped on the lights to find…more boxes. He shoved those out of the way as Ernest had. Like the others, they fell easily aside, revealing—

“Holy shit,” Bo breathed at the sight of the Beechcraft.

His father's first plane.

Mel gasped at the sight of the antique aircraft. It'd clearly been neglected, but was probably still worth close to three quarters of a million dollars as is.

“Right under our noses,” Danny said, and let out a low whisper. “Christ, she's a beauty.”

Bo didn't say a word,
couldn't
say a word as he walked up to the plane and stroked the steel.

 

Mel covered her mouth at the stunned, almost overwhelmed look on Bo's face as he reverently touched the Beechcraft. She still couldn't quite believe it. All these years, it'd been right here. How was that even possible…?

But it made sense. Perfect sense. Sally had been keeping tabs on them. She knew Bo had never shown up.

God, it was all so amazing, how it'd worked out. Mel thought back to how Bo had been when he'd first arrived: ready to take on all of them to get back his father's good name, not to mention what had been rightfully his. She knew Bo now, knew him better than she'd ever meant to. Yes, he was cocky and sarcastic and far too good looking for his own good. But he was also fiercely loyal, passionate, and utterly honest, bluntly so at times.

And he'd never lied to her.

He never would.

There was comfort in that, unbelievable comfort. It was a shame that she hadn't given that comfort back to him. She hated regrets, but now she moved to Bo's side and stared her biggest woe right in the eye. “I didn't know it was here,” she said softly.

“He loved this damn thing—” His voice was rough with emotion, his hand still on the plane as if he couldn't bear to stop touching it.

“Bo.” She turned him to face her. “I swear it. I didn't know.”

His gaze went suspiciously bright when he nodded. “I know.”

Not thinking, simply reacting, she pulled him into her arms.

He resisted for a half a second, then with a roughly muttered “fuck,” fisted his hands on her shirt at her spine and held on tight, burying his face in the crook of her neck. “I miss him, Mel. I still miss him.”

Words failed, so she just nodded and held on tighter.

After a minute, he lifted his head and looked at her from those gorgeous green eyes that always stopped her heart. “A piece of him is here.” He glanced at the plane. “Which means me coming here was the best thing that could have happened out of all this.”

“Because you can sell it?” Ernest asked. “And be rich?”

“Megarich,” Danny added.

Mel knew what the money would do for Bo. It'd give him the nest egg he needed to get the restoration business off the ground. It'd give him a down payment on land in Australia, where he could run an airport like North Beach if he wanted. It'd give him freedom to go anywhere, do anything. And she found herself holding her breath as he eyed them each in turn, finally his gaze landing on her for the longest beat of her life. She managed to smile at him, through a throat so thick she could scarcely breathe.

“Whatever you do,” Danny said, pulling out his cell phone, “we need to call the police.”

Ernest went green. “We do?”

Bo looked at the older man. “Yeah, we do. The paperwork is in Sally's name, right?”

Ernest nodded.

“I want to get this all straightened out. It's going to be a mess.”

“I didn't really do anything illegal, you know,” Ernest said.

Mel narrowed her eyes, but before she could open her mouth, Bo said, “It's not you I'm after.”

Ernest nodded but still didn't look happy, knowing he could end up in jail.

It didn't take the police long to arrive, and they all had a long chat, spilling everything they knew, from the beginning. By the time that was over and Mel got into her car to drive home, she was exhausted.

But not sleep exhausted.

Heart exhausted.

She parked outside her place and sat there for a long time. She looked down at her passenger seat, at the signed lease lying there. She'd never given it to Bo, but now seemed as good a time as any.

So she started her car again, heading to the condo Bo rented. It was dark outside. As she got out of the car, she could hear the waves crashing onshore in rhythm, a soothing sound. Still, her chest felt too tight, her heart squeezed into too small a space as she knocked on Bo's door.

He answered wearing a pair of shorts and nothing else. She could tell by his tousled hair and sleepy eyes he'd been lying in bed.

“Um…hi,” she said. “Is it too late?”

“Depends. Too late for what?”

 

Bo waited for Mel's answer. His brain was still befuddled from lying on his bed, sleepless, tossing and turning, thinking of the woman now right in front of him, the woman with the biggest heart of any he'd known, with a smile that could melt him at one hundred knots.

It was as if he'd conjured her up from his fantasies, except in his fantasies she didn't have on a pair of jeans and a tank top, she had nothing on but a sexy smile as she dropped to her knees in front of him and—

Instead, she slapped the signed lease against his bare chest. She was trying not to look at him, but her gaze kept dropping to his chest in a way that made him extremely grateful to be a man.

He loved that she lusted after his body. He'd love for it to be more than lust as well, and was banking on talking her into that with some more time.

“I took your deal,” she said. “I know you're probably halfway out the door, and I just wanted to say good-bye. Alone. Just you and me.”

“Mel—”

“No.” She stepped over the threshold and slid her arms around his neck. “I don't want to talk. I don't even want to think. Okay?”

Not thinking worked for him. He'd done so much thinking his brain hurt; about his father, about the past, about what the fuck to do with himself now that he'd come here with destruction on his mind but instead had ended up actually enjoying himself.