Two Weddings and a Fugitive (The Chanel Series Book 4) (4 page)

For a second he looked disappointed, and then Bianca appeared at his side with another beer. ‘Bruce thought you looked thirsty.’ She bent far lower than was entirely necessary as she placed the drink on the table.

I had a sudden urge to take down a fleeing criminal and beat the shit out of him. It was definitely time to go. I stood up and plucked my handbag off the floor.

‘You going girlfriend?’ Bianca had a concerned look on her face. I knew she didn’t mean to annoy me, but my feelings where Billy was concerned were convoluted.

‘Early start.’ I pasted a wide smile on my face and turned to go, but then I remembered I wouldn’t see her for a while. I didn’t want to part like that. I swung back and caught her in a hug. ‘Going to miss you,’ I said.

‘You off again?’

I nodded. ‘Bruce is looking after Cocoa. Make sure he doesn’t feed him too much.’

She pushed my hair back behind my ear. ‘You be careful, you hear.’

‘As careful as I ever am.’

She raised an eyebrow. ‘That sort of comment don’t fill me with much confidence.’

‘I’ll be with him.’ I pointed at Billy. ‘What can go wrong?’

If I had known the answer to
that
question, I would have sat right back down on that barstool and ordered a couple of extra-strong cocktails. Then I would have kept drinking till I was too hung over to catch the plane the next morning.

Billy was there right on time, but he wasn’t alone. Mum and Harry sat in the back of the cab holding hands.

‘They’re coming?’ I said.

‘Managed to get seats on our planes.’

I took a deep breath and let it out. It’s not that I didn’t love them, but being around them when they were so caught up in each other only added to my misery. I was a bad, bad daughter.

I slid into the back next to them, leaving the front for Billy so he would have more leg room.

Mum chattered on about the last minute accommodation they had managed to get, and the new bikini she had acquired, and I found myself unable to give her any feedback. She didn’t notice but I felt my silence weighing heavily on my shoulders.

We arrived at the airport, checked into our flight and then, as a family, we made our way to the café closest to our gate. A cappuccino later, we boarded our first flight. Mum and Harry sat across the aisle from Billy and me, but as soon as the plane had finished its ascent I put on my headset and pretended to be engrossed in a movie.

I didn’t know if I could do this. Didn’t know if I could smile and pretend I was happy Billy was my brother. I felt sick whenever I thought about it, my feelings still caught in a time warp –
before
I knew he was Harry’s son. Before I knew the truth.

My reaction the night before had made it clear to me that I still had feelings for him. I was sick. Sick, sick, sick. They locked people like me up.

I wanted to reach into my brain and rip out the part of me that couldn’t let him go. But I couldn’t. And instead, I had to pretend we were all one big happy family.

The flight landed and we made our way to another café to wait out the hour before we boarded our connecting flight. My mood seemed to have affected Billy. He slumped into the seat across from me and picked up a drink coaster. Holding it between the thumb and first finger of one hand, he twirled it with the other while he stared off into the distance.

‘Well, you two are a fine pair,’ Mum said. She sounded annoyed that we weren’t sharing her high with her.

I flicked my eyes to Billy and met his gaze. He stared at me for a second before looking away again. I resisted my urge to put my head on my arms. I wanted to go to sleep for a decade. Surely by the time I woke up from a sleep like that I would be over him.

‘Want to go for a walk, Pumpkin?’ I started at the feel of Harry’s hand on my shoulder.

‘Sure.’ I jumped to my feet.
Anything
was better than sitting there opposite Billy.

I followed him to a newsstand and we stood next to each other while we pretended to peruse the magazines. Well, I know
I
was pretending to, and I doubted very much that he was as interested in the House and Garden section as he was making out. I could only surmise that he wanted to talk to me.

‘I’ll get over him.’ I blurted it out before he could say anything.

‘I need to tell you something.’

‘I promise.’ I could feel tears welling in my eyes. ‘It was just the shock of seeing him again yesterday, I wasn’t prepared for that.’

‘Ah Sweetie.’ He pulled me into his arms.

‘I’m sick, I know.’ I sniffled. ‘I keep trying, but I can’t see him as my brother.’ I lowered my voice to a whisper. ‘When I’m with him, I want to be
with
him. I need shock treatment or whatever else it is they do to sickos like me.’ I pushed away from Harry and looked him in the eyes. ‘Do you hate me?’

‘Chanel,’ he said, ‘you’re not sick.’

‘So this is normal?’

‘No. None of this is normal.’

I lowered my eyes. ‘If you want me to go I will.’ I would take myself away from all of them. Go live in the middle of Australia somewhere where they couldn’t find me. I would…

‘He’s not your brother.’

I could feel my mouth hanging open as I stared up at him. ‘Exsqueese me?’

‘I’m not his real father.’ His eyes were sad as he observed me.

‘How do you know?’ Was he just trying to make me feel better?

‘When Billy was nine he fell out of a tree and ended up in hospital. He lost a lot of blood and needed a transfusion. He was B positive. Both Cindy and I are A.’

I was still clueless as to what he was trying to tell me.

‘Blood type is inherited. For me to have even had a chance of being his father, at least Cindy had to be the same blood type as Billy.’

I thought back to the story Mum had told us the night after the police raid in Las Vegas. ‘Dick,’ I said.

He nodded his head. ‘I confronted Cindy about it and she confessed. Don’t hate me for agreeing not to tell him, but I really liked being his Daddy.’

‘You thought that would change if he knew?’

He shrugged his shoulders.

‘You
still
think it would change things.’ The forlorn look in his eyes told me that.

‘You never know how somebody will react to news like that.’

Oh God. My possible happiness relied on Harry’s possible unhappiness. For me to have a chance with Billy, Harry had to risk losing him as a son. That wasn’t a fair swap.

‘I think just knowing that,’ I said, ‘is enough.’

‘You’d be fine pretending to be his sister?’

‘Knowing that I wasn’t a sick pervert for ogling him all the time? Yeah. That would be a great start.’ I let out a weak laugh. He
wasn’t
my brother. The relief of that knowledge flowed over me.

Harry shook his head. ‘That’s not enough. I’ve seen how you watch him. How miserable you’ve been since we got back. I’d like you to have a shot at finding what your Mum and I have.’ He reached out and grasped my hand. ‘I
will
tell him. But can we have this holiday together first? As a family?’

Exuberance bubbled up inside me and I stomped it back down. The sacrifice Harry was prepared to make was too much. The price too high. But I knew I was going to let him do it. The least I could do was smile and pretend everything was hunky-dory. ‘Of course,’ I said.

I bought a Vogue magazine for Mum and then we wandered back to where we had left them. Mum sat by herself, staring at her phone with a look bordering on fanatical. She jumped as Harry pressed a kiss to the top of her head.

‘I’ve found them,’ she said. ‘Look.’ She held her phone out to him.

‘Found who?’ I sat down next to her, trying not to worry about where Billy had gone.

‘Liss and Thor.’

‘Oh.’ I leant over so that I could see the phone screen. It was a Facebook page. A woman with strawberry blonde hair was looking up at an enormous man. Her blue eyes shone with affection and the corners of her lips curled up. His massive arms held her protectively and he had taken
her
look and returned it with interest.

‘It’s them all right.’ Harry looked up at Mum. ‘You were right about where they would be. The Canary Islands.’

She nodded her head. ‘She always said that’s where she would go if she won the Lotto. I sent her a friend request.’ She reached across the table and took Harry’s hand.

He lifted it to his mouth and kissed her knuckles.

Urghhhhh. The looks they were exchanging were a nine on the puke-inducing scale.
Nearly
as bad as their post-coital looks. Time to go find Billy.

‘Any idea where Billy went?’

‘Hmmmmm?’ Mum dragged her eyes from Harry’s and looked at me.

‘Billy?’

‘Oh.’ She smiled and turned her gaze back to Harry. ‘He went to get a drink.’

‘Might find him.’ It wasn’t just how pathetic they were being. Before, being near Billy had hurt. Now,
not
being near him hurt.

It didn’t take me long to find him. He sat in the nearest bar, a partly drunk beer in front of him while he twirled another bar coaster.

‘You okay?’ I took a seat next to him.

He started and his eyes refocused from whatever far-away place he had been looking at, to me. ‘Are
you
okay?’ he said. ‘You got all quiet and I didn’t know what to do about it.’

Oh boy.

I reached out and took his hand – I mean sisters were allowed to do that right? He didn’t seem to mind. His wrapped all the way around my much smaller one, but it felt perfect. The last of my tension melted away, leaving me feeling a million pounds lighter.

‘I am now,’ I said. We stayed like that for a minute more before I let go of him. ‘Might have one of them as well.’ I nodded my head at his beer.

I waited till my beer had arrived before I said, ‘So what happens when we land?’

‘We go to our accommodation. Salindra and Nick will meet us at a bar near there.’

‘And then game on?’

‘Game on.’ He nodded his head and clinked his bottle of beer against mine.

***

‘This is huge,’ I said to Billy as I pushed open the door to our accommodation.

‘We’ll all be staying here, so we needed something with four bedrooms. Only one bathroom unfortunately.’ He shook his head as if he couldn’t understand why someone would design a four bedroom apartment with only one bathroom. I was wondering the same thing.

The glass wall on the far side of the lounge looked out over a deck to the ocean. A couple of small islands dotted the vista.

I tore my eyes away from the view and poked my head into the nearest room. It was a bedroom. A queen-sized bed with an aqua cover looked out through floor-to-ceiling glass. The azure of the ocean glowed in the distance.

‘I’m in this one,’ I yelled, dumping my bag on the bed.

Billy appeared in the door a few second later. ‘Mine’s identical,’ he said, looking around.

‘What about the others?’

‘Well one of them,’ he smirked, ‘has to sleep in the room with the bunk bed.

‘You snooze you lose,’ I said. ‘Do we need to leave straight away?’

‘Yep.’

I sighed. It would have been nice to sit on the deck for a while. ‘I’ll just get changed.’

‘Why? You look beautiful.’

I felt a blush start up my cheeks as I unzipped the top of my bag. He obviously meant that as a brotherly compliment. ‘It’s a little warmer here.’ Then I noticed that he had already changed into a t-shirt and khaki cargo shorts. I shook my head and pulled a dress out of my bag,

When I emerged he was standing by the front door with a satchel in one hand. He led me around the side of the apartment to a small carpark full of golf buggies. He checked a key in his hand and then strolled to one of the closer buggies.

‘Your chariot awaits.’ He held his arm out towards it.

‘So, no cars?’

‘No cars,’ he said. ‘We could catch the shuttle bus if you prefer. There should be one along shortly.’

‘Golf buggy is good,’ I said, climbing into the front passenger side.

‘And look,’ he said, ‘there’s even a drink holder.’

‘Yes, but what’s its top speed?’

‘How fast can you walk?’

‘I don’t know. Maybe five kilometres an hour.’

‘It can go faster than that.’ He stuck it in reverse and we zipped back out of the car park. ‘Just.’

My phone rang as we were trundling towards the waterfront. It was Martine. I had left last night without saying goodbye to her, so I was guessing she wasn’t happy with me. For a few seconds I considered not picking up, but then I decided it was best to get it over and done with.

‘Hey Martine.’ I tensed, waiting for her to launch into an hysterical tirade about how she had thought I was dead.

‘He’s coming,’ she whispered.

‘What? Who’s coming?’

‘Boris.’

‘Are you okay?’ How had she found out about that?

‘I spoke to Crusty.’

‘Oh, how’s Boo Boo?’ I missed that big, shaggy orangutan. I could have really done with his companionable silence over the last couple of months.

‘He’s good. But that’s not the point.’ She was barely audible over the noise in the background.

‘Martine, I can hardly hear you.’

‘I’m in a queue at the airport.’

‘Where are you going?’

‘Through security. I’ll ring you back.’

She cut out a second later.

Huh.
What was she up to?

Our buggy zoomed down the hill towards the waterfront and a line of restaurants and shops. A marina sat to the left of them.

‘We’re meeting them there.’ Billy pointed to an Italian restaurant overlooking the water.

I followed him in and took a seat at a table on a small wooden deck. The rest of the tables were empty. My stomach growled at the smells coming from the kitchen.

Billy broke my contemplation of the menu. ‘This will be them.’ He pointed to a boat with ‘Whitsunday Water Police’ written on the side. It was heading towards a dock.

A few minutes later the boat pulled in next to the landing and two people carrying small suitcases jumped to the shore. The taller one also held what appeared to be a briefcase. The boat immediately backed up and headed back out to sea.

I turned to look at Billy. ‘You’re kidding, right?’

His grin told me he wasn’t.

Salindra and Nick strode towards the restaurant. Well Salindra, with her long, lean legs strode. Her blonde hair flowed out behind her in the breeze and her black dress fitted her I’m-an-Olympic-athlete physique as if it had been sprayed on.

Nick scampered along beside her on his short, bowed legs. His overly large head made him look more like a caricature than a real person. Salindra was well over a foot taller than him.

‘You get the swimwear model,’ I pointed at Salindra, ‘and I get the circus freak.’

We stood up as they rounded the corner to the restaurant and came through the front door.

‘Well you worked quite well with the last circus freaks.’

‘They were clowns,
not
midgets,’ I hissed.

Salindra gave Billy an appraising look up and down, a slow smile breaking out on her stunning face at what she was seeing.

‘Oi Toots,’ Nick said from across the room. ‘I am
not
a
midget
.’

Toots?
‘Oh please,’ I said, ‘you’re what? Four foot six? I know a little person when I see one.’

He marched up so that he was well within my comfort zone, put his hands on his hips and craned his head back to look me in the eyes.

‘I’ll have you know, I’m five foot.’

‘When you borrow your Mummy’s high heels.’