by Munt, S. K
Ivyanne sat up, eyes opening. A small line appeared between her brows. ‘A date?’
‘Yes well, I would like to have a chance to get to know you better-outside of a guest/ employee scope. Plus, I need to save face after the embarrassing incident at the coffee shop yesterday morning.’
‘You so do.’ Ivyanne smiled briefly, but her expression became sombre instantly. ‘But Tristan I don’t know... a date seems like a really bad idea.’
Tristan laughed. ‘If you can find one girl who’s ever gone on a date with me and thought it was a bad idea in hindsight, I’d be surprised.’
He expected Ivyanne to scowl at him, but she smiled. ‘Yes well I must say, I’m intrigued to see what it is you do on a date that gets everyone so worked up. And I guess you’ve travelled this far.....’ She stood up. ‘Tomorrow is my day off. We can hang for a while, if you’d like. And if that goes okay, we have a cook-out on the beach that night. It’s for the staff, but Remi’s bringing Michael...’ she offered her hand and pulled him to his feet. ‘If you haven’t driven me around the bend by then, you can come with me.’
Tristan grinned. ‘Really?’
She held a finger up to his face warningly. ‘If you haven’t driven me around the bend.’ She eyed him. ‘And if you can keep your hands to yourself.’
‘Yes m’am.’ He saluted her and then grinned. ‘I swear my shirt will be on and my hands in my pockets.’
‘Wait-where did this fully-clothed rule come from?’ she teased, darting her eyes back to his stomach before winking sassily.
Tristan’s entire face went hot and he was at a loss for a snappy comeback. But he didn’t need one. Ivyanne grinned at him and headed for the door.
‘Thanks for the kicks, Loveridge. And I’ll see you Monday.’
She shut the door behind her. Tristan flopped back onto the bed and grinned, allowing the butterflies in his stomach to flutter uncontrollably. Damn...he needed a swim.
⁓
By Sunday afternoon, Lincoln was so tired that he decided to take Ivyanne’s advice and book into the spa for the following day before the staff party.
He’d been nervous, checking in for the appointment, but the moment Aubrielle had him on his stomach, rubbing oil into his aching muscles, Lincoln checked out into a beautiful, near coma state. He was in there for what felt like hours. He lost count of the treatments she put him through, deciding to sleep through most of it- a feat made easy by the way Aubrielle melodically hummed under her breath.
At one point, he awoke, wrapped in seaweed, his face burning. But before he could grow too alarmed, Aubrielle was there, wiping it off and smiling at him happily.
‘Perfect,’ she said happily, stroking his hot cheek. ‘Just enough.’
‘Do I look like Brad Pitt yet?’ he joked.
She laughed. ‘You’ll be red and puffy for awhile. Go back to your room and have a sleep, okay? When you wake up, you’ll feel like a new man.’
Lincoln doubted that. But he had enjoyed the experience thoroughly. He thanked Aubrielle and went back to his room, surprised to see Adele reading a magazine on the hammock on his porch, waiting for him.
‘Hey babe,’ he said as he approached, hearing the sleepy slur in his voice. He leaned down and kissed her cheek. ‘Whatcha reading?’
Adele recoiled. ‘Lord, don’t ever let me go down there, okay?’
Lincoln frowned. Not the reaction he’d been hoping for. ‘Problem?’
‘I thought you went down there to get pretty. But it looks like she tortured your head. And you smell like mud and....Macadamia?’
‘Sounds about right.’ Lincoln joked, resisting the inclination to be offended. Besides, Aubrielle’s attentions had left him feeling frisky. He was about to suggest she come into the room and help put him to sleep, when Adele suddenly bolted upright in her chair, gaping at something behind him.
‘No way!’ she exclaimed.
Lincoln, still bent over her, followed her gaze to the hilt of the hill, and noticed Tristan and Ivyanne, walking side by side in front of the restaurant, talking. They didn’t look like two people in love, but the awkwardness which had been present between them a few days before had apparently dissipated. Lincoln felt a tug of jealousy in his chest as he watched Ivyanne laugh at something Tristan had said, and forced himself to look away.
‘So?’ he asked Adele, who was still watching the couple. ‘Guests are welcome to date the staff-especially the ones paying what he is a night!’
Adele blinked, then looked back at him. ‘Lincoln that was Tristan Loveridge.’
Lincoln didn’t get it. ‘Should that mean something to me? He checked in Thursday night.’
‘I didn’t know that!’ Adele looked back down the beach.
‘Well I’ve noticed that he gets room service a lot.’ Lincoln shrugged. ‘What’s the big deal?’
Adele rolled her eyes. ‘Tristan Loveridge, Lincoln. He’s like, famous in the social scene in Sydney.’
‘Ah yes, well you know how I keep tabs on the Sydney elite.’ He joked.
Adele was watching the couple again. ‘He invented that solar panel thing made out of recycled materials. I met him in April at the Clean Harbor Ball. He’s filthy rich and a major player.’
This was news to Lincoln. ‘Filthy rich?’ he repeated. ‘He’s just a kid!’
But Adele shook her head. ‘He’s close to thirty. He just happens to look incredibly good for his age. Your typical greenie- you know. Vegetarian, doesn’t drink or smoke, health nut.....’
Lincoln felt immediately inadequate compared to Captain Planet. But as he turned to Adele to point out that Ivyanne already knew him, he realized that his girlfriend was practically purple. He glanced at the couple, then back at Adele’s narrowed eyes, feeling his heart sink. ‘Adele?’
‘Yeah?’ She didn’t look his way.
Lincoln wet his dry lips. ‘How do you know so much about him?’
Adele stiffened. Her blue eyes blinked slowly, then looked down at her lap. She opened her mouth to say something, then closed it her ramrod-straight posture sagging. She then turned to Lincoln. Her cringe said it all.
Lincoln felt his stomach roll. He actually clutched it. ‘Oh...no. Do not say it.’
Adele dropped her eyes again. ‘You’ve had other lovers too, you know.’
Lincoln dropped his head into his hands, gaping at her. ‘You slept with him?’
‘Just once.’ The words were whispered. ‘It was a one night stand.’
‘A one night stand?’ He repeated. ‘In April? As in, the month you called our engagement off?’
Adele uncurled from the hammock and came to him, kneeling between his legs, her expression anguished. ‘Link, don’t flip. It meant nothing.’
Lincoln breathed into his palms, feeling woozy. He’d been struggling to make his peace with seeing Tristan all over Ivyanne, but knowing the smooth, golden-haired philanderer had managed to nail his girlfriend prior to all of this was too much. He couldn’t believe this was happening to him. He looked up, feeling cold. ‘Was he good?’
Adele reeled back. ‘What?’
‘Was he better? Than me?’ He could feel the acid in his tone on his tongue.
‘Lincoln no. How could it be? There was nothing intimate about it. I barely knew him.’
‘Did you come?’ Lincoln directed the question at her while staring directly into her eyes. She was pale, so the flush of crimson in her cheeks was unmistakable. He felt his heart sink. ‘How many times Adele?’
She got up and turned away. ‘I am not discussing this with you. It’s irrelevant.’
Lincoln’s blood boiled with jealousy-driven rage. Adele was harder to please between the sheets then any other woman he’d ever been with. Usually, he saw it as a challenge in the biological sense, and didn’t take it personally. In fact, it had made his successes even sweeter. But now it was glaringly obvious that she’d been satisfied by Tristan in one shot, and that knowledge sliced through him, striking first heart, then lung,
then ego.
‘Fine. Not gonna talk? Then neither will I!’ Lincoln got to his feet and attempted to stomp past her. But she reached out and caught his sleeve, yanking him to a halt.
‘You can’t just leave it there!’ She cried. ‘Baby, please-I don’t want you mad again when you’ve just forgiven me. Tell me how to fix it.’
Lincoln turned, scowling down at her as his insecurities from the previous year and her desertion boiled over and scalded him. ‘Why bother? That guy and I are nothing alike. If he’s your type, then what are you after me for? I’ll never be a Sydney power player like him and your parents, Adele. This resort is as good as it gets for me. So if his bank balance and tofu make you wet then-’
‘This resort is paradise.’ Adele interrupted, pressing herself against him and holding his face. ‘And I want you because I love you! You’re handsome and successful and kind and nothing like the private-schooled bores I grew up with. Girls sleep with guys like Tristan, I’ll admit it. On paper he’s fantastic.’ She brushed her lips against his. ‘But guys like you are the ones we want to marry when we come to our senses. Which I have. Which is why I’ll do anything to fix this.’
Lincoln stared down at her, trying to assess how genuine her little speech was. It seemed sincere, and it touched him, but he couldn’t help but think that the damage was done. She’d kicked up so much dust in the name of ‘settling’ down that he couldn’t see more than a foot into their future now. And the brilliant glow coming off Ivyanne was beckoning him down a new path. But he couldn’t forge ahead in either direction, with Tristan’s shadow obscuring his vision of both women. ‘Adele I just don’t know if I can forgive all of this…’he began, trying to be honest.
‘Please, try harder to.’ She implored him. ‘What will it take to make you feel better?’
That was a no-brainer. He wanted Loveridge gone. ‘You’ll do anything?’
She nodded eagerly. ‘Of course!’
He nodded towards Tristan. ‘I want him out of here. I can’t move past the break-up while your past is on my damn doorstep.’
Adele looked perplexed. ‘But you’re the owner’s son Lincoln-if you want him gone-you’re the one with the power to do it.’ She held her hands up. ‘And I won’t mind. In fact, I’ll applaud you. I don’t want to see him either!’
But Lincoln knew he couldn’t ask Tristan to leave. It would make him look jealous and petty in Ivyanne’s eyes. And she’d be right. Besides, Adele was such a socialite, so accustomed to schmoozing guys like Tristan, that Lincoln would enjoy seeing her push one away and embarrass herself somewhat on his behalf. And if Ivyanne happened to witness the scene, well, there was no downside to that.
‘Oh I can march him out Adele, but I’d much rather that you were the one to make him feel unwelcome.’
She raised a thin brow. ‘And if he stays anyway?’
Lincoln smiled. ‘Then he’ll have unwelcome coming at him from more than one direction. I’ll make damn sure of that.’ His eyes flickered over his girlfriend, and he tried not to scowl at her as he said: ‘Anyway you think about it. In the meantime, I want to sleep for awhile.’
‘Okay. Honey….I love you.’ He could hear the shake in Adele’s voice as her hand ran down his back tentatively. ‘What’s past is past, okay? All of it. I’ll fix what I can but you have to believe that you’re the only man I want now.’
‘I’ll believe it when I see it.’ Lincoln shut the door on her and her past, wondering if he had just shut one door to his future.
12.
‘Okay our Norfolk house is booked out for another week.’ Ardhi’s mother said, hanging up the phone and going about clearing their lunch dishes off the table. ‘We can go back then if we want to.’
Go back? To Norfolk? Ardhi’s insides tightened. He was lying on the couch in their beach shack at the Cape, staring up at the stained ceiling morosely, bored and anxious and missing his sister’s cooking for the hundredth time since the start of his summer. No! That’s too far away from here!
‘Nah.’ His father said. ‘I’d rather try somewhere new darling. How about Cairns?’
No no no! Ardhi thought, glaring at the ceiling. He was annoyed at his parents for even suggesting that they leave the area. What if Ivyanne needed him?
‘I don’t know... it gets quite monsoonal this time of year..’ His mother sighed. ‘Hawaii, perhaps? Gosh I don’t know. I’m so used to spending the summer on Bracken now. I feel strange, not visiting them every day.’
‘Out of favor.’ His father agreed.
Ardhi’s face went hot and he wondered if they were looking at him. The Kayu-Api’s and The Courts had been neighbors since the end of the last decade, when Ardhi’s mother and father had set themselves up with a jewelry shop in Airlie Beach. His mother Eka made exquisite pearl jewels-every piece one of a kind-and that allowed them to maintain a lifestyle- neither Ardhi or his father had to work, so they didn’t. Pintang didn’t have to either, but she chose to because she simply liked the company of humans, which Ardhi didn’t understand.
Usually his family spent the first half of the summer on Norfolk Island, and the second half on the Cape which looked across to Seaview so they could be close to Pintang. That meant spending Christmas and New Years with Ivyanne’s family at their nearby home on Bracken Island-which pleased his mother. As matriarch of the family, she prided herself on having cultivated a close relationship with the queen. In her eyes, it compensated for their family’s slightly tarnished reputation.
However Ardhi didn’t believe that his mother and Vana were as close as Eka liked to tell people. To Ardhi, it had always felt like the queen was tolerating their company instead of embracing it. And that was his mothers fault-sometimes she tried so hard to make a good impression that she embarrassed him.
He was the ‘in’ and he knew that-his friendship with Ivyanne was his mother’s meal ticket to social affluence, but Vana seemed relieved to have the ties temporarily broken. The way the queen had reprimanded him for proposing to Ivyanne and ‘risking’ their friendship had solidified that theory. He was Marked and Ivyanne’s age-why the hell wouldn’t he step up? And why wasn’t he good enough for her daughter? Because the Wood and Fire families had interbred one hundred years ago? Big whoop. At least his parents had three heirs to show for it! And other things, things Vana wouldn’t find out about until she’d earned Ardhi’s respect.
The phone rang again. ‘Hello? Oh hello darling! Yes! Yes he’s right here!’
Ardhi sat up eagerly and saw his mother cupping the receiver and looking in his direction. ‘Ivyanne?’ he hissed.
But she frowned and shook her head. ‘It’s Pintang.’
Ardhi took the phone. ‘What?’ he asked, still annoyed from her call the previous week.
‘Ardhi hey,’ Pintang’s voice sounded small. She exhaled shakily. ‘Look... about what I said the other day...’
‘Yeah?’ Ardhi asked, darting a look at his parents and seeing them trying their hardest to hide the fact that they were listening. ‘What about it?’
‘I was wrong. You need to come back and fight for her.’
Ardhi wriggled further up the couch, alarmed. ‘What? Why?’
‘Tristan’s here.’ Pintang’s voice was low. ‘He checked in on Thursday night.’
Ardhi saw red. In his hand, the phone line crackled, and died.
‘Hey! What happened to the power?’ His mother cried. ‘The T.V just went out.’
Ardhi grimaced and threw the useless phone to the couch as he got to his feet. He knew. He’d caused it. And it was about time people found out how. Starting with the princess.
⁓
The sky was painted with long, slender streaks of pink and mauve and blue which made the calm sea look a warm shade of periwinkle. The islands were tiny grey smudges in the distance, and a thin fog had settled over them, distorting them so Ivyanne couldn’t even tell which was home. The fire, constructed of thick branches of driftwood, was only just catching on, the flames blue and gr
een licking up the kindling, growing larger and more vivid with every passing second. It was a hot day, the kind where the air was so thick with humidity that you could almost clench it in your hands. Instead of adding to that heat, the flames seemed to break it, leeching the moisture out of the air whenever they jumped.
Rain is coming, she thought idly. She saw a small crab on it’s back and stooped, flicking it over and smiling as it scurried away. ‘Off you go boy.’ She whispered.
It was high tide so the bonfire had been built on the upper edge of the beach, nestled amongst the dunes where the sand was thick and white because it escaped the rolling tide.
There were already a few staff sitting around the fire, two guys she didn’t know were tapping a keg while Remi and her husband Michael snuggled up across from them, writing in the sand and laughing. Ilsa, the fair-skinned brunette from reception was watching the spit rotate, as if entranced by the twirling pig while Marcus, the head lifeguard, was frowning at one of the other boys who had just torn the shrink wrap off his cigarette packet off tossed it thoughtlessly on the sand. Marcus shook his head and bent to retrieve the cellophane, pocketing it.
Ivyanne had known Marcus when she was younger, he’d looked to be in his late twenties then-and easily passed for mid twenties now-so he was probably around sixty. He had been the head lifeguard who had trained Lincoln, and that concept made Ivyanne slightly nervous. Had Lincoln ever confided in his boss about his summer fling? She knew how men liked to brag.
Ivyanne was nursing a beer while she waited nervously for Tristan to arrive. One of the groundskeepers had shoved it into her hands. She hadn’t had any yet, and didn’t plan to. Mermaids cherished their bodies too much to poison it with drink, and as a result, they had no tolerance for it.
But Ivyanne needed to feign drinking. Back when she was younger, and in Lincoln’s company, she’d made her feelings towards alcohol clear. If she wanted to convince Lincoln that she wasn’t her sister, then she needed to act differently then she always had. She’d even borrowed clothes from Pintang that evening, and after laboring over hair and make up for an hour, knew she looked like a shadow of her usual self. She’d straightened her hair and swept it back into a long, sleek ponytail, and was wearing short shorts and a clingy green halter top that emphasized her curves and made her feel downright exposed. It would draw more attention her way, which wasn’t great, but at least Lincoln wouldn’t look at her and see the sweet, chaste reliable girl who’d he’d built his fantasy future around.