Heiress On Fire

by Kellie McCourt

  ‘It was Richard’s,’ I said, then realised, they were all Richard’s. ‘I mean, he wore it. Every day. Except that day. I, I’m, I’m not sure why.’

  Or did James already know that? I suddenly felt very stupid playing this silly game, collecting chocolates.

  ‘Really?’ asked James examining the watch. ‘Every day?’

  I walked over to him and sat down. ‘You didn’t know?’

  He shook his head, no.

  I peered at him, puzzled.

  ‘Then why were you so shocked just now,’ I asked gently, ‘if you didn’t know it was his favourite?’

  ‘The inscription,’ James said and flipped the watch over. ‘DRIVE CAREFULLY, ME’.

  ‘Yes. I thought your father gave it to him, when he got his driver’s licence.’ Even though that was not what I thought anymore.

  He smiled ruefully at me.

  ‘No. Not likely. This watch belonged to Paul Newman. The inscription was from his wife Joanne Woodward. He liked to drive race cars. Fast. This,’ he indicated to the Rolex, ‘is one of the most collectible watches in the world.’

  Cogs ticked over inside my brain.

  ‘Oh my God! Didn’t Joanne Woodward die in a terrible car accident?’

  The watch was cursed.

  ‘Ah, no, I think you’re thinking of Natalie Wood. She died in a boating accident. Drowned. She couldn’t swim as it turned out,’ he said in a tone that did not hold any mocking that I could detect. ‘Didn’t your da …’ He stopped.

  ‘Didn’t my father die in a car accident?’ I finished his sentence for him. ‘Yes, he did. He liked fast cars too. Turns out he wasn’t a terribly safe driver.’

  Well, at least where his own life was involved. The Sports Illustrated twins survived. To be fair I think the salmon was dead before it got in the car.

  I looked down at my own wrist to the Patek Philippe.

  ‘This was my father’s watch.’ I showed him. ‘He was wearing it when he died. I gave it to Richard last year. Technically you could say it was a part of his collection. I suppose it belongs to you.’

  He stared at me in astonishment in the half-light. ‘You’d hand that to me?’

  I swallowed. Not really. This was my father’s watch. It was only on consignment to Richard. I suppose I could offer him something in exchange. Maybe he would like the box of chocolates back?

  ‘Well, I suppose …’ I said.

  Keeping his eyes on me he gave a deep, evocative laugh and shook his head. ‘Don’t worry lovely, it belongs with you. Besides, imagine all the bad chocolate karma I’d get taking a family heirloom off you in this place? Certainly not worth it.’

  I smiled at him in the half-dark and pointed to Richard’s/Paul Newman’s Rolex.

  ‘Do you think things can be cursed?’

  James wedged the watch between his thigh and the top of his upturned wrist.

  He shrugged his shoulders and shook his head lightly from side to side. ‘I don’t know about curses,’ he said as he fastened the watch to his wrist. ‘But I do know you make your own luck.’

  Then he leant over and kissed me.

  Richard had been a studied kisser. It was fine, but if kissing Richard was the artistic equivalent of painting by numbers then being kissed by James would have been like a Monet. Soft but firm, warm but cool, passionate but controlled. A kissing contradiction. A master.

  I would most certainly have to have ended such an incredible kiss very quickly before the inevitable happened and I ended up on the floor. However, I did not have to resolve that conundrum, because he kissed me on the cheek.

  So how can I tell from one cheek kiss that he was a Monet Kisser? I have a lot of cheek-kissing experience. I have been cheek-kissed by everyone from David Gandy (the world’s first male supermodel) to Barack Obama to Harry Styles and Bradley Cooper. You will just have to trust me that I know cheek kisses and he was a Monet.

  James Smith was a warm sticky date muffin covered in liquid hot toffee and cold double cream.

  ‘You’ve one space left,’ he whispered, breaking my reverie, and the silence. ‘How about a whisky and chocolate gelato? It’s my favourite.’

  ‘I’m not a whisky person,’ I said. ‘But if they make a Frangelico chocolate chip cookie dough, I would be willing to find a few more things to trade. I have about 1000 slightly singed, salvaged model trains.’

  He leant back and smiled. ‘I think those trains might be a bit worse for wear.’

  I took a bite of the lime and toasted coconut. It was amazing. ‘Not really,’ I said between bites. ‘The paint is certainly problematic but they’re amazingly hardy, for toys.’

  ‘Really?’ he said, arching a brow at me and starting on his whisky gelato chocolate. ‘Those trains are like Easter eggs, you leave them in the sun too long and they melt. Not that Richard ever left his in the sun. That was me.’

  ‘Oh, they are not hollow,’ I said, finishing off my chocolate. ‘They are like these,’ and I pointed to the chocolates all around us, ‘they’re solid.’

  He looked at me in the half-light, a shadow of a puzzled expression on his face. ‘Solid?’

  ‘Yes. They were so heavy they had to use one of those trolley-truck things to wheel them in. Goodness only knows what I am going to do with them.’

  He casually ate a lime and toasted coconut in one mouthful. ‘I’ll take care of them for you—’ He paused. ‘If you like.’

  I nodded in agreement while stifling a yawn and then shook my head. ‘That is a very kind offer, but no, thank you, I can do it.’

  I had planned on dumping the trains in the recycling bin, but I was unsure about the recycling bin etiquette of melted trains. Were they allowed? My back-up plan had been foisting the disposal job onto Esmerelda.

  He looked at his new, old, possibly cursed Rolex. It was well after 1 am. ‘I’d better get you home.’

  ‘Thank you, James, but I have a car,’ I said standing, only slightly wobbly from my dinner/nightcap of Frangelico and chocolates. It was half true. I had a car. It was just not my car.

  ‘No, no. I’ll take you,’ he said standing.

  ‘No, really, I am absolutely fine,’ I said, and faltered slightly on my heels. Darn my addiction to beautiful, towering shoes.

  He attempted to stabilise me by putting a firm hand to my waist. Bless my addiction to beautiful, towering shoes.

  A wave of lust shot through me from the hip down. His other hand moved to my other hip. More waves of lust. Some of them did not have to travel far. Our eyes locked. Oh no. This was not good. I was feeling very warm again. Maybe it was just the Frangelico? Or had the air-conditioning stopped in here too?

  I was not going to wait around to find out. Without another word I unglued my eyes from his and slid them to the floor. I walked out of his stabilising hip-hand embrace and strode, head down, with as much dignity as I could to the elevators (clutching my gold chocolate box). I stabbed the ‘down’ button about five times and mercifully the elevator appeared almost instantly.

  Despite years of deportment training and Grandmother training, screaming inside my head Never look at the floor!, I kept my eyes glued to the shiny marble tiles on the elevator floor. What a lovely colour they were. Very clean. Very shiny. I was not looking up. I was desperately trying to avoid any more touching. Or God help me, another cheek kiss. Who knew when my head might begin acting autonomously and make an unexpected geographical turn, moving my lips into my cheek position by mistake?

  Mercifully the doors began to shut. All I could see were the tops of his shoes, shadowing the outside of the elevator. Wait. Was he wearing Tom Ford shoes?

  What kind of train did James Smith drive?

  CHAPTER 25

  FIRE TRAIN

  The Toyota 4WD something was waiting for me in the hotel driveway with Esmerelda asleep at the wheel. I tapped on the driver’s side window. ‘You waited for me?’

  I was touched. And a little surprised.

  ‘Okay, yeah, sure,’ she said
uncurling.

  I hopped in the passenger’s seat, put my seatbelt on and looked at her expectantly. Nothing.

  ‘Well?’ I said. ‘Let’s go.’

  I was startled by a knock on my window. It was the concierge. ‘Your keys, madam,’ he said, dangling the car keys in front of me.

  I turned to Esmerelda. ‘Why don’t you have the keys?’

  ‘Dude. It’s like fifty bucks an hour to park here!’ She shook her head and looked highly insulted. ‘Who’d pay that?’

  I shot her a glowering frown I hoped said, Ah, everyone?

  ‘Frig,’ she said. ‘And I’m the criminal.’

  I ignored her, powered down the window and began searching the glovebox. Where did Patricia keep her emergency glovebox credit card?

  The concierge waved me off. ‘It’s been taken care of, madam,’ he said, pointing back to the hotel and handing me the keys.

  I turned and saw James Smith standing by the hotel entry. He tipped his head to me, gave a small salute and walked back inside. He was a puzzle for another day. A day far, far, Phi Phi far away. Until I worked it out I did not want to be alone in a room with him. It would not be safe for him. Or me.

  I was pretty sure I would go to relationship purgatory if I made out with Richard’s brother. For all I knew I was going anyway for just thinking about it.

  For reasons unknown to me, and because my mind was occupied fighting off lusty thoughts for the first ten minutes of the trip, Esmerelda insisted on a bizarre route through inner city Surry Hills, slowing down to look at a famed Italian restaurant along the way. So what if their gnocchi was incredible? So what if the gelato shop next door was amazing? It was almost 2 am! They were both closed!

  Having put up with the detour I insisted on the Cross City Tunnel. Paying $7 to drive 800 metres under the city was, in Esmerelda’s book, ‘criminal’, but we were home in ten minutes.

  My plan of sneaking in and sinking quietly into bed was shattered when I heard a familiar, yet rare cry that, years after its inception in my childhood, and softened by a billion hours of meditation, still rang a chill up my spine: ‘Indigo-Daisy-Violet-Amber! Come in here please!’

  How much trouble could I be in? I was a widow fulfilling my dead husband’s wishes, not a teenager ‘borrowing’ her mother’s new Gucci wedges for a yacht party. Not that I ever did that.

  I stopped mid tread in the hallway and circled back to Mother’s voice which was emanating from the kitchen.

  I peeked in to find Mother was not alone. Kill me now. It was the fireman. They were sitting together at her 400-year-old karri wood breakfast island, having a cup of tea. Fear not—the karri wood was salvaged from an ancient Margaret River church pew.

  The fireman smiled at me. Mother waved me in. She was a soft shade of scarlet.

  ‘Sweetie,’ she said, her voice not conveying much sweetness, ‘darling, where’ve you been?’

  ‘Nowhere,’ I said hovering at the doorway. ‘Just at the Four Seasons.’

  ‘Oh, really? Lovely, well, this is Jed. You might remember him?’

  ‘Yes, Jed, of course,’ I said smiling brightly, entering the room, right hand out front, ready for gratuitous hand shaking of person I really should have thanked long before now.

  Damn. I had not sent him a basket yet. I just could not make up my mind! What do you send a giant fireman who saves your life? Candy corn? Belgian beer? Fresh pineapple? Pit suite tickets for the Grand Prix?

  ‘How lovely to see you. I must thank you for your bravery, I owe you quite a debt.’

  Frankly I had not thought I would ever see him again. I had plans to leave the country. And now he was in my (okay her) kitchen at two in the morning. Jed was just as enormous as I remembered. The man was a tree. A karri tree. A karri tree forest.

  He stood and closed the distance between us in a few strides. I tried to put the image of a lumberjack out of my head, but it was a struggle. He was bigger than Michael Jordan. Okay, so maybe he was the same size as Michael Jordan, but he was giant.

  He took my hand enthusiastically and shook it. ‘It’s lovely to see you again Indigo. The boys and girls and I were quite worried about you for a while there.’

  ‘Oh, yes, well, here I am Jed. Just fine,’ I smiled and then eyed Mother. What was I supposed to do now? Why was this guy here?

  ‘Jed would have gone home several hours ago, except Patricia seems to have misplaced his keys. You haven’t seen the keys to a new RAV4, have you?’

  I looked at him. Really? This guy? In a RAV4? How on earth would he fit … oh, wait. I get it. We did not borrow Patricia’s little Toyota 4WD something. It was Jed’s Toyota 4WD RAV-something. I was a car thief. Well, technically Esmerelda drove it, so she was the … oh wait, I see, stealing a car cannot be good for a parolee like Esmerelda. Could she go back to jail? That was not going to work for me.

  As the increasing danger of the situation dawned on me, Mother nodded her head and widened her eyes in encouragement.

  ‘Yes, I think I saw some keys,’ I said, catching on. ‘Yes, I think for some reason I accidentally put them in my purse when I left. I thought they were my keys.’ I thumped myself on the forehead. ‘I am a little you know, cuckoo, since the fire. All the smoke!’

  ‘I hear you,’ Jed said.

  I quickly fished out the key fob which I had accidentally left in my purse after it was handed to me by the concierge. I handed it over. ‘I feel so silly. I have kept you up all night. How can I make this up to you Jed?’

  It was going to be difficult to give this guy anything since I did not own anything in this house. ‘I don’t suppose you like model trains, do you?’ I laughed. ‘I have quite a few, only very slightly melted ones, down in the pool house!’

  ‘I think there’s a tub or two in the pantry too!’ Mother chimed in laughing, her most beautiful smile on display.

  ‘That’s very kind of you,’ said Jed. ‘But we’re not allowed to accept any kind of gratuity.’

  ‘This again,’ said Mother. ‘People don’t send you thank you baskets? Flowers? Chocolates? Muffins?’

  Rolex gift certificates.

  He was on my list, honestly, ask Esmerelda, I was going to send flowers or chocolates or tickets or muffins or Byron Bay things. Just as soon as I decided what to send. Granted, I had absolutely no plans on delivering anything in person but I was absolutely going to have someone send something.

  ‘Not as often as you’d think,’ he said without malice, the fob swallowed in his enormous fireman hands.

  By this time Mother, a little miffed on Jed, Searing and all emergency service people’s behalf about the no-gratuity thing, was in full swing taking the train joke on a trip of its own. She was in and out of the walk-in pantry in seconds, a mangled model train in hand.

  ‘You can’t think of this as gratuity. It’s not worth anything!’ she said, handing the roasted train to Jed. ‘Think of it as a souvenir for a job well done.’

  Jed eyed the lump of a train. Its entire rear end had its paint melted off. He juggled it up and down in his palm. Each time the train landed with a thud.

  ‘It’s really heavy,’ he said.

  ‘Do you know about model trains?’ I asked.

  Jed’s giant hand opened and closed around the train several times. ‘Not much. But I know they’re not usually solid. And they’re usually made of steel or aluminium.’

  He held the train between his oversized thumb and forefinger and brought it close to his eye. ‘Have you got a crème brûlée torch?’

  ‘Yes!’ called Patricia’s voice from another room.

  Mother and I watched with fascination while Patricia set Jed up with the crème brûlée torch. He seemed to know an awful lot about cooking custard. That was not going to win Mother over, since she no longer ate foods that started with the letter ‘C’ (excusing and excluding yesterday’s momentary lapse and accompanying solitary carb-filled doughnut bite).

  Jed flicked the culinary blowtorch on, held the train aloft in a pair of
kitchen tongs and began roasting. Very professional. It really looked like he knew what he was doing. I suppose it should not have been that much of a surprise that he was so good with fire. He was a fireman.

  After about thirty seconds he turned the torch off. We all gathered around to look at the results. How disappointing—apart from flambéing the paint from the front end of the sad little train, it looked the same.

  ‘Huh,’ said Jed. ‘I’ll be damned.’

  We all looked again at the silver block in the blackened tongs, trying to divine what had prompted such a reaction. Crickets.

  ‘See,’ he said, pointing to the still-silver train. ‘It hasn’t changed. Most metals, like steel or aluminium, will blacken when burnt. This didn’t discolour. See, no oxidisation.’

  We all looked again. He was right. It started off silver and it stayed silver. So?

  ‘So, it’s made of silver?’ Mother hesitated a guess.

  ‘Close,’ said Jed with the patience of a devoted Year Five science teacher. ‘It’s made of platinum.’

  Mother and I exchanged looks.

  ‘Isn’t that quite valuable?’ said Patricia.

  Jed nodded. ‘Yep. It is.’

  ‘How valuable?’ I asked, now finding some interest in Richard’s ridiculous train set and platinum in general.

  ‘I don’t know exactly,’ said Jed, placing the non-blackened train and blackened tongs into the sink.

  I turned and looked around. Where was Esmerelda and that dreaded device when you needed her? ‘Esmer—’ I began.

  A voice from somewhere deep in the house shouted, ‘Fifteen hundred an ounce!’

  We all stared expectantly at Jed who turned the cold tap on the train. So how much did each little train weigh?

  ‘Well?’ said Patricia.

  ‘Oh yes, right, well,’ said Jed. ‘I’d say, and this is just a guess, that this train weighs about 10 ounces.’

  Patricia got the kitchen scales out. Jed was good. The train was 10.05 ounces. We all studied the sad little wet train while attempting silent maths.