Heat Wave (20 page)

The Swiss man with teeth so white they almost hurt to look at shook his hand. ‘Ja! You are half-right! It's me, the better looking twin.'

‘Of course. Great to see you, Lars,' said Tanner, clapping a hand on his shoulder. ‘But who let the delinquent in?'

‘Oi, watch it, Yank,' said a burly redhead with more freckles than pale skin. ‘Don't think that I won't kick your arse like I did that day on the jet-skis.'

They gave each other a man-hug, as Tanner responded, ‘That's not how I remember it, partner, but I'll let it slide. I can't believe you came all the way out here, Callum.'

‘Well, any excuse to get scuttered with you again, you know?'

As Tanner greeted his friends, I allowed myself to withdraw slightly, watching the happy group banter. They were so excited, genuinely ecstatic to be together again, and although I'd hoped Tanner would be pleased to catch up with the former stars of
Erotic Island
, it was even better to see how much his friends had missed him too.

‘Well, gang, I had no idea y'all would be here, but I'm mighty glad you are.' Tanner's shining face turned to me as he reached for my hand. ‘And it wouldn't have been possible without this special lady right here. I'd like everyone to meet Maddie.'

‘Hi, guys,' I said, blushing and curling into his side, like a shy little girl in a room full of daddy's business friends. ‘I'm so glad you could all make it.'

The two men greeted me warmly; the girls were more reserved, analysing me. ‘Hi, Maddie.'

A server appeared. ‘Are you ready to dine, Mr Tanner?'

‘Boy howdy. Are we ever!'

Dinner was filled with stories from the madcap adventures of our four very diverse guests. Callum had recently finished up a stint as a rehabilitation officer in an Irish juvenile detention centre, speaking with the young men about not allowing their rough start in life to define them as they grew into adults.

Hopping around the other side of the planet, Tara had been travelling between Africa, New Zealand and Australia, helping with almost a dozen charities as part of her honeymoon.

‘Chris says to say hi,' she said, her tanned face brightening as she spoke about her husband. ‘There was a coff-emergency in Melbourne, otherwise he would have been here.'

‘Tell him he owes me a cup the next time I'm in town,' joked Tanner.

Clara, I had actually heard about before. The most famous of all the
Erotic Island
contestants, the tiny pop star had almost total media saturation—you couldn't
not
know who she was. A diva, fashion icon, foul-mouthed TV star and mother, Clara had her own film crew tracking her around for the second season of her massively popular series.

The baby was ridiculously cute; I couldn't help staring at the tiny girl with her pigtails like little fountain sprays. She was as placid as her mother was agitated, sucking on her thumb with a Buddha-like calm in her wise eyes.

Clara saw me gazing at her offspring. ‘Maddie, do you want to hold? She's the coolest fucking baby in all of human history.'

‘Oh, I'm not sure, I don't know much about babies—' I started as she plopped the kid in my lap.

‘You'll be fucking fine. Maddie, meet Cleopatra.'

‘Hi, Cleo,' I murmured, allowing her puffy fist to curl around my finger. ‘Nice to meet you.'

Cleopatra gurgled happily, reaching for one of my long curls. She smelled of milk and apple paste, and despite being the child of a manic celebrity lifestyle, she was peaceful and obviously adored.

I allowed my shoulders to relax back into my chair, and looked up to re-join the conversation. Tanner caught my eyes, and his obvious elation at my tiny foray into motherhood made me smile. I'd never thought much about kids; I had a career I'd been concentrating on, and most of the men I'd dated were at least ten years away from being ready for babies.

But now, there was a beautiful man sitting across from me, one I planned to spend the rest of my days beside, and in his eyes, I could see the shadows of our future children. I shivered happily, allowing myself to be swept away in the flood of joys yet to come.

‘What about you, Lars?' asked Tara, spooning her Eton Mess into her heart-shaped mouth. ‘How is your new fiancée?'

His white-blond hair flipped from side to side as the sunny Swiss answered. ‘She is so amazing, ja? After all the drama of
The Bachelor
, it feels so very nice to just be with the woman I love.'

‘You were the bachelor?' I asked. ‘Wow, that's awesome that you're engaged.' I couldn't help but run the stats in my head; out of the thirty-plus couples spawned on the US
Bachelor
or
The Bachelorette
, only two were still together. Not great odds.

Lars seemed to agree. ‘Ja, the show was very difficult, and the girls, it was hard to know who was really there for me and who was just … there.'

Are you listening to this, Tanner?
I tried to catch his gaze, but he was still gazing at Cleo as she leaned into my chest and began to close her eyes.

‘So, in the end, I did not choose any of the contestants,' continued Lars. ‘Everybody was very mad, lots of angry Twitters, but like my Opa says, “You cannot force the love”.'

‘Or run from it,' added Tara.

‘Or bash it with a stick and burn it to the ground,' finished Clara sagely.

For two happily married women, they'd both obviously had their own dramas. I asked Lars, ‘So if you didn't fall for a contestant, who are you with now?'

A smitten expression stole over his features. ‘When I flew home, my Abigail was the flight attendant. I knew her from my childhood, and then there she was, all grown up and giving a safety demonstration like it was a beautiful waltz, just for me. I pressed my call button so many times that flight. And then I waited outside the customs gate until she walked out so I could kiss her. Sometimes, the love you want is the love you've always known, ja?'

‘Yeah, man,' said Tanner, nudging me under the table with his foot.

I blew him a kiss, my heart liquid goo inside my chest. ‘I concur.'

‘Cleo's out!' said Clara, reaching for the sleeping bundle in my arms. ‘Like a Japanese Sleeping Beauty. Fuck me, that's a beautiful kid.'

I passed her back to her mother. ‘She really is.'

There was a swift glance between Tara and Clara, the kind of silent communication I'd only ever seen between the best of friends who didn't need words to know what was what. ‘Hey, Maddie?' Tara said. ‘Do you want to come for a little walk with me?'

Suddenly, it was hard to breathe. Tanner's mother had passed years before I'd come into his life, but in that moment, I knew exactly what it must feel like to be separated from the herd for judgement by a maternal female. ‘Sure.'

‘See you bitches soon,' trilled Clara. ‘Come on, fuckers, tell me there's a bar somewhere on this third-rate rust bucket.'

Tanner smiled encouragingly at me as Tara and I left by one door and everyone else vanished out the other. I was very glad I'd fallen down the stairs earlier; surely, my bad luck was exhausted for the night and I would survive a grilling by this woman without doing anything mortifying.

We strolled out into the night air and I began to babble. ‘So, I suppose you want to ask me a bunch of questions about whether I'm for real or not, or just one of those gold-digging women who seem to flock to these shows—well, not you, obviously, even though you married the richest guy in Melbourne, and I bet you want to tell me that if I hurt Tanner, you and Clara will hunt me down and drown me in a vat of coffee beans—'

Stop! Stop talking, idiot!
The voice of self-preservation in my head was screeching at me, convinced that my offensive verbal diarrhoea was about to get me into a full-blown reality TV catfight.

Instead, Tara surprised me by laughing sweetly and looping her arm through mine. ‘Oh! I like you, Maddie.'

‘Uh … thanks?'

‘No, I don't need to ask you anything; one look at you and Beau and any idiot can tell you guys are the real deal.'

‘Then … what's up?' I shifted uncomfortably on my heels, which were starting to pinch my toes. To distract myself from the pain, I scowled at the camera crew hovering behind us. The producer was grinning in malicious delight, presumably at the thought of editing up my crazy speech to make me appear even nuttier.

Tara grabbed for my shoulders and turned my head away from the uninvited observers. ‘Ignore them.'

‘I don't know how,' I said, helplessly.

‘That's why I wanted to speak to you. I get where you're at; actually, I'm probably the only person in the world who really gets it.' She led us further along the deck, giving the crew our backs. ‘I was the girl who almost threw away the best opportunity of her life because she was so concerned with what people would think or what the cameras saw.

‘I thought I'd grown past it by telling myself that when Chris and I got home, everything would be awesome. It wasn't. People were still obsessed with us, and there are always lenses everywhere we go, even today.'

‘How did you get over it?'

We sat on a pretty wooden bench facing out to the shifting sea. Tara's hair wafted around her face like a living creature as she said, ‘I haven't. I still hate it, but I refuse to let it ruin my life, because my life is amazing. I have a husband I love, enough money to do everything I want to do, amazing friends, and so much to look forward too.'

She placed a hand on mine and gazed at me with soft eyes. ‘I see the love between you and Beau. I hope you won't let anything get in the way.'

As she spoke, a boom mic literally dropped in between our faces, making her jump. We both giggled.

‘I've let enough things come between us,' I said, batting the fluffy microphone away. ‘I think I'm finally ready to grow up and put our relationship first.'

Chapter 16

Tara and I re-joined the others, our lives intertwined by the simple knowledge that neither of us had signed up for this madness, but we wouldn't have it any other way. The six of us partied until the very wee hours, ordering colourful shots and singing karaoke in the private lounge I'd asked to be set aside for our group.

‘Cock-sucking Cowboys, mother fuck-
ers!
' yelled Clara, banging down the tray of shot glasses, her voice high on the last syllable. ‘Why do they even call them that? Hey, Beau, you tell us! Do cowboys like having their cocks sucked?'

Tanner was about to answer when I fell apart in a giggly mess, remembering the feel of his shaft against my lips only hours before. ‘You bet your private jet he does!'

Clara whirled on me, grinning fiendishly. ‘You dirty fucking ho-bag! A girl after my own heart. I like this one, Beau. You should keep her.'

‘I'm doing my best, darlin'.' He reached for my hand, but Clara grabbed it first.

‘Come on, you bucking bronco, you owe this diva a fucking song!'

She and Tanner grabbed the mic from Lars, who was singing a dreamy Swiss-accented version of ‘What Makes You Beautiful'. ‘Fuck me, no whiny pre-pubescent manufactured ear-raping,
no!'

She changed the track to ‘Mr Jones' from the Counting Crows and the two of them launched into old-school classics while the rest of us danced.

And with every song, every drink, every stolen kiss and every heartbeat, I fell a little more in love with my gorgeous cowboy. Up until that moment, everything had been surreal—the romantic meeting at the harbour, our night in his suite, this crazy show. But seeing him with his friends, experiencing a night as a real couple with people who knew and loved him—it gave me hope for a life once we disembarked from the Ship of Lust.

He was clearly feeling it too. As the night wound down, he lounged next to me, his long arm around my shoulder and his head leaning against mine. ‘This,' he slurred happily. ‘This, Maddie-girl, is all I wanna do when we get off this dammed show.'

‘Sing karaoke with your celebrity friends while drinking $300 bottles of champagne?' I asked, indicating the bottle of Cristal on our table.

‘No! Jus' this.' He snuggled into me more. ‘Hang out, have fun. Get to know each other all over again. I know yesterday threw you, all that stuff Callie knew about me.'

He had me there. ‘I just … we haven't had time yet!' I said, frustrated. ‘It's not that I don't want to know everything about you, but since you've been back in my life, I haven't even had a minute to ask you if your favourite colour is still blue, let alone check in with you on your travel history.'
Or Google you obsessively and pay a private PI to follow you around like Callie …

‘It is, Miss Maddie.'

‘What is?'

He cupped my chin and kissed my nose. ‘My favourite colour is still blue. The same colour as your beautiful eyes.'

God, he's smooth …
I let my arms curl around his neck and drew him down to my lips. We both tasted of good alcohol, and were just drunk enough to be ragingly horny while still holding onto our decorum in front of the others.

Although by this stage, the party had almost wrapped up. Callum was already snoring loudly on a lounge in the corner of the club, and Tara's pretty face was pitted with happy shadows as she approached us to say, ‘Hey, love-birds. I'm heading for bed—I've got a flight about midday from our next port, and I want to grab a few hours of sleep before then.'

Clara strode over as well, bearing a soundly sleeping Cleo in a portable carrier. ‘I'm out too, bitches. My chopper leaves this tub in twenty minutes. Toshi's meeting us in New Zealand because I need to screw his sexy brains out before my concert tomorrow night. It's just bad juju if I don't.'

‘You believe in juju?' I asked. Clara didn't seem like the superstitious type. In fact, I strongly suspected that if she ever came across an evil gypsy curse, the gypsy should be the scared one.