Heller's Punishment (27 page)

“Well, who am I
going to take then?”

“Go by
yourself.”

“Right! As if
that’s an option. Turn up at my ex-boyfriend’s wedding by myself,
just proving to everyone that I’m a loser who can’t even find a
date.”

He smiled.
“Well, if the shoe fits, honey . . .”

I threw my
stapler at him and he caught it neatly with one hand. He brought it
back to me and leaned on my desk until our eyes were level,
suddenly serious. “Stay away from him, Tilly. For your own
happiness. Please?”

“You don’t
understand. I have to go to show him that I don’t care about him
any more.”

Daniel thought
about that and rolled his eyes, sauntering back to his desk.
“Women! Who can possibly understand you? I think you’d show him
that you didn’t care more by not going.”

“You don’t
understand,” I sighed, depressed. Niq wandered in.

“Niq! My little
treasure. Do you want to go to Will’s wedding with me?”

“Boooooring!
Anyway, I hate him, so nah,” he said in his blunt way, not even
sparing my request a second thought.

Damn!
I
suddenly had a good idea and approached Heller. He looked up at my
knock.

“Can I ask
Farrell to take me to the wedding?”

Silent, Heller
regarded me for an uncomfortably long time, shards of ice virtually
shooting from his eyes. Hmm, maybe it hadn’t been such a good
idea.

“Guess not.” I
retreated and slumped back at my desk, chin resting glumly on my
palms. How could I be surrounded by men and not find anyone to be
my date?

Daniel had
arranged for a new phone for me with the same number I’d had
previously. I had a text from Will waiting. Checking that Heller
was safely occupied, I responded.

Will:
r u
coming to wedding? rsvp is 2day

Me:
do u
want me 2 go?

Will:
yes
yes yes yes yes yes yes yes

Me:
ok.
consider this my rsvp plus partner

Will:
good.
where u been? i missed u

Me:
work

Will:
have u
decided abt us yet?

I didn’t reply.
I would have to tell Will to his face that we were definitely
through, but not today. Today, I had to start writing my report
about my time at The Farm, even though there was absolutely no
chance of billing the clients for any further expenses. I sincerely
hoped that Heller received enough money upfront to make my whole
ordeal worthwhile. I sat at the keyboard and tapped away
industriously, like the model employee I am. Sid and Clive arrived
for a meeting with Heller.

“Hey guys! Does
either of you want to come to a wedding with me?” I asked
hopefully.

Sid shook his
head with blistering haste and Clive’s cold, flat, hard eyes
suggested that he’d rather eat a bucket of salted scorpions than do
anything social with me.

“Oh, forget
it!” I said angrily, and went back to pounding my keyboard. God, I
was going to end up at the wedding by myself.
How pathetic was
that!

I briefly
wondered what my brothers were doing that day, before rejecting the
idea. That would be as bad as going with my father.
What about
Simon?
No! I couldn’t turn up at Will’s wedding with someone
who looked like him! That would be even more pitiable than going
alone.
Everybody
would feel sorry for me then.

There was
nothing for it but to go down to the ground floor and trap some
random security guy and drag the poor sap to the wedding with me.
And if none of the men voluntarily wanted to be my date, I’d force
Heller to order someone to escort me. Hell, I’d even go with Elton,
which only demonstrated how desperate I was becoming.

Dr Kincaid came
into the office and straight over to my desk.

“You again,” he
sighed heavily. “What is it with you now?”

I rolled up my
sleeve to show him. He cleaned and dressed my bullet graze,
pronouncing that it wasn’t very serious, which I could have told
him for free. Then he gave me a general check up, firing off
questions about my time in the hot box. Satisfied that I hadn’t
suffered any lasting consequences, he left. Not to be unkind, but I
hoped I wouldn’t see him again for a long time.

And that turned
out to be an unwarrantedly optimistic hope.

Chapter
18

That night
Daniel and Niq came over to my place and we had dinner together,
catching up on each other’s lives during the last three weeks. We
teased Daniel about his date with Anton, which was back on for this
weekend.

“I want to know
everything afterwards,” I insisted.

“Not
everything
, Tilly,” he blushed.

“Yes, Daniel.
Everything. No arguments.”

After they
left, my phone rang. It was Mum. She wanted me to come to dinner
the following night. I hadn’t seen my family for a while and
couldn’t wait to hear all their news and to play with my little
nieces again. The next day passed quickly and I pottered around
happily, enjoying being back in familiar surroundings. When I told
Heller my plans for the evening, he decided that I needed to be
driven to and from my parents’ house by one of the men.

“I can drive,
Heller. I have a licence that says so. Issued by the government, no
less,” I snarked, much more confident now in a car than I’d been
for months.

“I’m not ready
to let you out of my sight unescorted. Don’t argue, please. There’s
really no point.”

I smiled
suddenly. “That means you’re going to have to find someone to take
me to Will’s wedding, doesn’t it? You don’t want me driving myself
there. Unescorted.”

“I’m not a
match-maker, Matilda. You’re a very attractive woman. Find your own
date.”

“If I can’t
find anyone then you’re taking me!” I snapped. “I’m not going by
myself.”

“I’m not going
to that man’s wedding.” He stepped closer and placed a gentle hand
on the back of my neck, smiling down at me. “Do you really think it
would be a good idea for me to be there, my sweet?”

I thought about
it and had to agree that on balance it would be a terrible idea.
He’d probably go on a rampage, beat up Will (again) and frighten
the poor bride into popping out her baby early. And no matter how I
felt about everything, I would never want to be the cause of
ruining someone’s special day.

“No.”

“Then let’s not
bring it up again.”

And he leaned
down to kiss me. It was a great kiss and I didn’t want it to end,
so I slipped my arms around his neck and kept him in place, his
lips on mine. His hand glided down from my neck to my waist, his
other wrapping around my back. He drew me as close to him as was
possible to be, our bodies pressed the length of each other. When
we pulled back for air, we were both breathing more heavily.

“Stay with me
tonight.”

“Yes.”

“I might be
late home. Clive and I have a meeting downtown and I’m not sure how
long it will take. That’s why I’m not driving you tonight.” And all
business again, he checked his watch. “I have to go, my sweet. I’ll
see you later tonight.”

He kissed me
again and I watched him leave, thinking about the advice Simon had
given me not to be afraid to love. But I
was
afraid to love
Heller, even though I admitted to myself that it was happening
whether I wanted it to or not.

Farrell was
rostered to drop me off. We were careful to chat casually on the
trip over. Well I chatted, he was his usual granite-like self, and
I could barely tease a word out of him, let alone a smile. When we
arrived, he idled the 4WD at the curb in front of my parents’
house.

“You put us all
through a lot, Chalmers. Not knowing where you were,” he said
quietly, clutching the steering wheel and staring straight ahead. I
knew then that Heller hadn’t been the only one worried about
me.

“It wasn’t
really my fault, Hugh.”

“I know. It was
his.” He glanced at me with his startling eyes, light gray with a
black ring around the iris. His face was full of unspoken emotion
before he turned away. He glanced back again and leaned over to
fleetingly stroke my cheek in the most tender way. “Enjoy your
evening, Tilly.”

“You too,” I
said, not without regret, but not daring to touch him at all.
Heller had ruthlessly crushed our budding relationship and I would
never risk anything like that happening to Farrell again. He was
truly one of life’s good guys and deserved better than to suffer
over a terribly conflicted woman like me.

My mother and
her little silky terrier, Puddles, greeted me at the door. I
performed a quick two-step to avoid Puddles’ usual excited welcome,
a stream of pee on my shoes. After she cleaned up the mess and
gently scolded an unrepentant, tail-wagging dog, Mum finally gave
me her full attention. And promptly over-reacted. “Oh Tilly, you’re
so thin! What’s that lovely Mr Heller thinking, letting you become
so thin? I bet you’re not eating properly and you’re working too
hard. And you don’t look as though you’ve been sleeping well
either.” And on and on and on she went.

“Mum . . . Mum
. . . Listen . . . Mum . . . Stop . . . Listen . . . Mum,” I tried
to interrupt repeatedly for a while, but decided to let her rant
until she’d exhausted herself. When she stopped to take a breath, I
jumped in, explaining that I’d just finished a difficult job, but
was fine. And I easily proved my dedication to regaining all my
weight by scoffing down her lovely roast dinner and two
glutton-sized pieces of dessert cake.

My whole family
was present for dinner – my parents; my grandmothers; my eldest
sibling Brian, his bitchy wife Gayle, and their gorgeous daughters,
Cara and Libby; and my other brother Sean and his beautiful wife
Elise. It was fun kicking back on the lounge for a few hours,
chatting, drinking wine, catching up with their news, and chasing
after my nieces, who screamed in mock-terror as I lumbered around
frightening them, showing them my best dinosaur impersonation.
That should get them nicely hyped right before bedtime
, I
thought, smiling innocently at Gayle.

I helped Dad
clean up the dishes and was seized by Elise afterwards. She needed
me as a guinea pig to test some perfumes she’d developed for
assessment in a course she was taking in aromatherapy. So I sat
patiently while she doused me in a number of different scents, some
more successful than others. One of them, which she freely admitted
was an epic failure, smelt like a frightened skunk with poor
personal hygiene habits, making my eyes water and clearing the
room.

“I’ll think
I’ll have to dump that one,” she said regretfully, watching as I
scrubbed at the spot where she’d applied it. But it was hopeless –
no matter how red I made my skin with scrubbing, the odour hung
around me like . . . well, like a bad smell. Nobody wanted to be
near me after that, and for the first time I could remember, Mum
actively hustled me to the door when a horn honked from the waiting
Heller’s
vehicle, virtually pushing me outside and slamming
the door in my face.

“Bye everyone,”
I said to the closed door. It opened again and my handbag flew out
at me before it was slammed once more.

My escort home
was Tysen, one of the more senior
Heller’s
men. We had only
driven to the end of the street before his face pickled and he cast
me a suspicious sideways glance.

“It’s not me,
it’s my perfume,” I told him in exasperation.

He wound down
the window. “You need to change your perfume.”

Back at the
Warehouse, every man I ran into as I climbed the stairs gave me a
second glance, but not for any good reasons. I felt like Pepe Le
Pew.

I went straight
to Heller’s bathroom, stripped off and jumped in his shower. After
lathering and rinsing twice with the girly soap he let me keep
there, I started to feel cleaner.
One more time
, I decided,
lathering up again. Covered in soap and shampoo bubbles, I turned
around in the shower to rinse my hair, thinking about Daniel’s
forthcoming date with Anton. I hoped that he was able to let his
beautiful nature shine through any nerves he experienced. He wasn’t
great with being in public, so the added pressure of being in
public trying to impress someone might prove too much for his
fragile self-esteem.

Hair rinsed
squeaky clean, I opened my eyes again only to find Heller leaning
against the wall, dressed in nothing but boxers, observing me with
great interest.

“
Heller!
” I shrieked, covering myself with my hands as best
I could. “How long have you been there?”

“Long enough
for this to develop,” he smiled, nodding down to where a raging
hard-on threatened to explode from his skin-tight boxers.

“Go away!” I
said, turning my back on him. “It’s not right for you to be
standing there watching me.”

“That’s true,”
he agreed easily and I sighed with relief. Good, he was leaving me
alone.

But a few
seconds later, his body pressed up against my back. I stiffened.
Oh God
, I thought, my breath catching in my throat.
He’s
in the shower with me!

He swept my wet
hair to one side and kissed my neck. “It wasn’t right for me to
stand there watching you when I could join you instead.” He kissed
a trail up the line of my neck from shoulder to ear. “Relax, my
sweet. You’re very tense. I’m not going to hurt you. Quite the
contrary.”

He slipped his
arms around me, taking the soap from my hands and lathering up his
own hands. Carefully replacing it on the shower shelf, he commenced
rubbing my shoulders with his soapy hands, his fingers gently
kneading my tight muscles. He kissed me behind the ear and nibbled
on my earlobe.

“Is that
helping you relax?” he whispered. I could hardly breathe, every
nerve on red-alert.