by Jude Knight
Oliver barked, and Zee was nowhere to be seen, before he surfaced a few feet away, the water around his hips and his hands reaching to restore his underwear to its proper place. “Oops,” he said cheerfully. “The elastic wasn’t as tight as I thought. Just as well it’s dark.”
Nikki dived again, swimming further out and further away, but Zee easily kept pace, even swimming one-handed with the other keeping his sole garment in place. He kept his distance, though; close enough to be seen, but far enough away she didn’t feel crowded or threatened. Rushed. Rushed was a better word than threatened.
On just such a night, in a hotel swimming pool in the Caribbean, she and Tyler had first—no, tell it like it was. They had been on assignment, there to interview witnesses, and Tyler had made a move on her without warning or encouragement. She had been so surprised she had not resisted. Later, she had rationalized that she must have done something that hinted interest, and felt guilty for being a tease, however unconsciously. Or had that been Tyler’s suggestion?
At the time, she had just felt—rushed. He had backed off when she protested, but not before they nearly… No. Let the thought go. Tyler was ancient history, and he and Zee were chalk and cheese.
“Toad.”
She realized she’d said that out loud when Zee asked, “Me? Have I offended you?”
“Not you,” she reassured him. “My former fiancé. He was a toad.”
“Which is, I take it, is why he is a former fiancé,” Zee said. Her dark-adjusted eyes managed to make sense of the grey shape of his body on the almost-black waves. He was floating on his back, looking up at the stars. Nikki stopped paddling in place and lay back. “Hold my hand so we don’t drift apart,” she suggested.
Linked, they floated, letting the sea cradle them.
“Did you love him?” Zee asked, then corrected himself. “You must have. You planned to marry him.”
Nikki thought about it. “You know, I don’t think I did. I loved who he convinced me he was. But he lied. He didn’t have the character or the ethics he pretended. He didn’t like the things he said he liked. He wasn’t the mask he wore.”
“I get that.” From the meditative quality in Zee’s voice, he had a toad or two in his own history. “It’s still a loss, though.”
“True,” she agreed. “And grief for loss is no easier when mixed with anger at betrayal and embarrassment at your own stupidity. But when you get over it, you’re over it.”
They floated in silence.
“What happened?” Zee asked, after a while. “If you don’t mind me asking, that is.”
“Slow disillusionment, I guess. I knew something was wrong for ages before I had my nose rubbed in evidence, he was a liar and a cheat.”
Zee was half sorry he’d raised the question, and half wanted more. Who rubbed her nose in the evidence and why? Was it to do with Global Earth Watch vs O’Neal Hotel Corporation? He couldn’t think how to ask and then she answered so he didn’t need to.
“I got an anonymous packet of papers proving he had conspired with opposing council in a court case we’d just lost. It was meant to be a showcase trial. He’d picked the target, done the research, found the witnesses. All lies. All to make Global look like idiots and to divert us from going after the real culprits, who were paying them both.”
An anonymous packet. His father? And what happened to Pat and Iria? Zee had resolutely avoided looking up anything to do with his family or the corporation, but now he was wildly curious.
Oliver interrupted. They heard him approaching, panting as he went, and then he was trying to clamber aboard Zee’s chest, breaking Zee’s hold on Nikki and sinking him under the waves. He rose again, spluttering, and grabbed the dog by the collar before Nikki suffered the same fate. She was laughing. “He thinks it time we went in,” she said, and took off for the beach, just the white wake of her kick visible as she slid down the far side of a wave.
He followed but stopped in the shallows to release the water that had caught in his whitey-tighties, adding weight that warred with the elastic that barely held them up. There. Plastered to his form, which he could do nothing about, but at least firmly in place.
Oliver stopped where the water was only a few inches deep and shook himself vigorously, then raced up the beach after Nikki. Zee followed more slowly. She’d put her blouse back on and it had turned transparent where it clung to her wet shoulders and bra.
Zee struggled into his jeans, the fabric refusing to slide over his wet legs, but didn’t bother with his t-shirt. Instead, he spread it on a handy log that provided a seat a few feet further along the beach.
“Your moon-watching throne awaits, my lady,” he said, bowing with a flourish.
They sat, side-by-side, almost but not quite touching, Oliver recovering from his excursions at their feet, his nose on his paws and his eyes shut.
The moon rose over the heads, slowly climbing until the full globe sailed free in the sky. Bit by bit, Nikki gravitated towards him. Or perhaps Zee drifted towards her. Certainly, once their shoulders touched, it seemed only natural to put his arm around her shoulder, and she didn’t pull away. Far from it. She shifted slightly so she could lean against him. Her damp shirt against his naked chest should have been cold, but it would take more than that to quench his heat.
“Beautiful,” he said, and he didn’t mean the moon. When she looked up, he bent his mouth to hers. She greeted his inferno with her own, so that what he had intended as a respectful salute became a feverish exchange of promises; a prelude to intimacies his every fibre demanded and his soul craved.
Merciful heavens, I’m in trouble. He wanted to stay on this beach forever, exploring the potential her lips and her tongue offered. He wanted to take her home to his apartment and wash the sand and salt from every inch of her skin with loving hands before spreading her on his bed and exploring her with his mouth before joining his flesh to hers. He wanted to wake up beside her and do it all again, not just tomorrow but every day of his life.
She doesn’t know you’re an O’Neal, his conscience warned him, and the hand he’d slid up under her shirt stilled on her breast. Fighting the insistent demands of his body, he forced the hand around to her back, gentling the kiss and eventually easing back, until they were no longer kissing, but still locked together arm-in-arm, body-to-body, his cheek resting on her head.
“We should go home,” he said, but he didn’t let her go.
Oliver woke at the word, and leapt to his feet, panting eagerly. When neither of his humans moved, he barked—one short sound, and then expectant waiting.
Nikki shifted, and Zee released her, but once they were walking along the beach, she slipped under his arm, and he matched his stride to hers.
Tell her, his mind screamed. Not yet, his heart insisted. Tomorrow. Tell her tomorrow. Or the day after. But definitely this coming week.
6
Nikki was humming as she chose what to wear out to lunch. She’d had a busy week so far. She’d talked on the phone to the New Zealand Council of Legal Information about her overseas qualifications and then hunted through boxes to find the certificates, diplomas, and testimonials they required to make the necessary assessment. She’d contacted her boss at Global Earth Watch to tell him she wasn’t coming back, and asked for a reference to use in her application to practice in New Zealand. There’d be exams to sit and courses to study, but the decision she’d made on Sunday still felt like the right one. She was happy here in Valentine Bay, and the man she was on her way to meet was part of the reason.
She was going up to her house to have lunch with Zee. He needed her to make some decisions, he’d said last night at dinner, and there were a couple of things he had to tell her.
All the heat of their kiss last Sunday was in his eyes. He hadn’t touched her since that night, except with his look, but there was no mistaking his desire.
“You’re inviting Niks to have lunch with you and the gang?” Beks had asked.
“I’ve loaned the
gang to Dave for the day,” Zee said, not taking his gaze off Nikki. So, they would be alone. And he’d gone to some trouble, for Beks had confided that he’d consulted her on a picnic menu, including wine. Yes, and strawberries for dessert.
She dabbed a bit of perfume behind each ear, and some more on the pulse points of her wrist. Then she opened the jar again and put a couple of dabs in between her breasts.
There. Ready for anything.
Almost to the door, she stopped to turn her laptop to sleep mode, first rescanning the email she’d left on the screen these last few days. Her mother and half-sister were going to be in Auckland for a week, and wondered if she would like to fly up to join them.
That helicopter sounded close. Nikki had heard it approaching, but now it seemed to be right overhead. She looked out of her window in time to see it flying low over the roof of the house, but the noise continued. Surely it hadn’t landed here? And if so, why?
Nikki opened the door between her apartment and the main house. She could see the length of the house and out through the kitchen windows to the parking space in front of the garage, and sure enough, there was a large helicopter, a man in a suit descending from it, his clothing and hair blowing in the wind from the blades.
Nikki was drawn by her own curiosity down the hall to the front of the house, where Beks was opening the front door while holding a struggling Will by his wrist. “Want to see the helicopter,”
Will insisted. Presumably Emma had managed to sleep through the racket, which was diminishing now since the helicopter pilot had turned off his machine.
“Can I help you?” Beks asked whoever was at the door, raising her voice to be heard through the last of the noise.
“Mrs Masterton?” An American accent. Nikki couldn’t see the man from her position, but she had a bad feeling about this.
“Yes, I am,” Beks confirmed.
“I’m Michael O’Neal, and I believe you can tell me where to find my son.”
Zee took the drive to the Mastertons in record time. Becky’s call had been brief and horrifying. His father was there. Niks, on the other hand, never wanted to see him again, and Becky tended to agree with her. “But whatever,” she said. “Get your butt down here and deal with your father. I’ll deal with you, after.”
Whatever her opinion of Zee, Becky had made his father comfortable in her living room. On the table in front of him, Zee could see the remains of a cup of coffee and a plate with the crumbs from a slice of Becky’s chocolate cake. And the hotel magnate had a child on either side of him, to whom he was reading Dr Seuss’s One Fish Two Fish.
“Excuse me,” he said politely to the toddlers. “Drew. I’m sorry son. I seem to have upset the ladies.”
“My fault, Dad. I… There never seemed to be a right time… I was going to…” Zee trailed off, looking helplessly at Becky, who narrowed her eyes in a glare.
“I’ll be another minute or two,” Michael O’Neal said, turning back to the book and the children, and Zee shifted uncomfortably while he waited, not wanting to sit on Becky’s furniture when she looked fit to murder him.
“It isn’t what you think,” he murmured.
“It’s what Niks thinks that you should be worrying about,” she retorted. “There,” she said to her children as Dad finished the book. “Come and play in the family room. Mr O’Neal needs to talk to…” she left the sentence dangling with another glare.
“I’ll take my Dad over to my place.” Zee had known his deception would infuriate Nikki, but he hadn’t thought about how Becky and Dave would feel. Had he lost his friends as well as the woman he loved?
“Can I play with Oliver, Zee?” Will begged.
“Not now, Will.” Becky’s voice, edged with her irritation at Zee, propelled the little boy out of the room.
“This way, Dad.” Zee ushered his father across the driveway and up the steps beside the garage. “No car?” he asked.
“I jetted into Wellington then came out here by helicopter. I sent the pilot down to the village when Mrs Masterton called you; figured you could take me down to the motel later.”
“Barkers? They’ll make you more comfortable than you’d be on my sofa. If I even have one after Becky has finished with me.” He opened the door to his flat and stepped aside to let his father in first.
“I’m sorry about upsetting your friends,” Zee’s father repeated. “I should have let you know I was coming. I just… I have the information you need, and I wanted to see you. Will Miss Watson let you explain?”
Zee shook his head. “I don’t know. She doesn’t like the O’Neals much. Blames us all for…”
“For Patrick’s stupidity. Yes. I’m sorry about that, too, son. I should have kept a closer eye on him. He has always been one to cut corners when he wanted something.”
Zee did his best to subdue his anxiety about Niks. “Tell me about the family. Is Bethany well?” She was his father’s fourth wife—not the trophy wife that the mass media expected of a billionaire, but a relaxed and loving woman, comfortably upholstered, who returned her husband’s adoration, had added another daughter to the O’Neal clan and mothered all of her stepchildren, even those close to her own age.
“She sends her love,” the older O’Neal said.
For several minutes, they talked about Bethany and her daughter Rosemary, then Zee’s other brothers and sisters, and their spouses or partners and children. Zee had missed them more than he expected. If nothing else good came from his reaching out to his father, at least they’d broken the ice. He could keep in touch now, though he’d have exchanged his entire family to have Nikki back.
O’Neal didn’t mention Pat or Iria. In the end, Zee asked. “And Pat? Iria?”
“Divorced.” Zee’s father grimaced. “That’s part of the reason I could get your answer so quickly. We already had some of the connections.”
Zee stopped pouring the coffee he’d just made, and frowned. How did his brother’s divorce relate to the ownership of a New Zealand hotel?
But his father was explained. “Iria talked both her husband and the Global Earth Watch man, Russo, into working together. Global already had a target in mind for their class case, but Iria persuaded Russo to go after O’Neals’ instead, and she was the conduit for communications between Russo and Pat.”
“So, who was the original target?” He added milk to his father’s cup, handing it over and collecting his own.
The older O’Neal nodded. “The correct question. A hotel chain owned by Iria’s paymaster. I’m sure you can make an accurate guess.”
“Paradise Holidays.” A statement, not a question. “Iria was taking bribes from Chow?”
“Once we had the target, we went digging for links. Iria said her money was old family money. We never questioned it. But when she arrived in Cyprus not long before you did, the name on her passport said Marija Vladislav.”
Vladislav? Not from Cyprus? “She played me?”
O’Neal shrugged. “She played us all. But once we knew who to look at, we uncovered a trail of shell companies, bit coin operations, and the like that led back to Chow. And those same links, when we followed them in the other direction after your email, led to the known investors in your hotel project.”
That was good news, then, but Zee couldn’t focus on it at the moment. “I’m having trouble fathoming it.” He sank onto the sofa, cradling his cup in both hands. “I brought her back to New York with me. I introduced her to Pat.”
“Pat was pretty upset. Mostly about being played for a fool, I think. Not just the Chow involvement, but her cover story for seeing Russo was that she was having an affair with him, and that turned out to be almost the only point on which she told the truth. Russo was your Miss Watson’s fiancé. Is that right?”
Zee nodded, staring into his coffee. Feeling sorry for Pat was not a familiar emotion, but the poor sod must be bleeding.
Outside, Dave’s truck pulled into the parking bay beyond the garage, and Dave descended, glared up at the lo
ft above the garage and strode in the direction of the house. Becky had clearly been talking to him.
Zee stood. “Dad, my boss is home. Will you come and tell him and his wife about Chow?”
O’Neal picked up his briefcase. “I have the evidence here. The investors have broken New Zealand law. And the developer, this Kenworth, too. You’re a witness to the fact that he knows Chow is his ultimate backer.
Zee knocked on the Masterton back door, uncomfortable with letting himself into the house where he had been welcome for a year. He made the introductions when Dave answered his knock; his friend was wearing his poker face. “My father has the information we need to stop the hotel development,” Zee told him, and Dave stepped to one side and waved them in.
Zee let his father lead the conversation, summarizing the evidential path that led from Chow Enterprises to the New Zealand residents and New Zealand-registered companies that appeared on the investor list for the Kenworth hotel development. He stood at O’Neal’s shoulder, uncomfortable under Becky’s glare and Dave’s more contemplative look.
“So, we have them,” Dave said to O’Neal, when the last piece of paper had been spread out and explained. “We report this to the Overseas Investment Office, and the development is dead in the water.”
“Unless your developer has other sources of funding,” O’Neal agreed.
Dave turned to Zee. “Now we have our other problem,” he said.
O’Neal stood, putting his body between Zee and Dave. “My son has a problem,” he countered. “Partly, I understand, of his own making. But he knows that.” He looked over his shoulder at Zee. “Son, how important is Miss Watson to you?”
Zee met Becky’s eyes while he thought about what to say. The truth, of course, to these three. “She is the woman I want to spend the rest of my life with. Here in Valentine Bay, if that’s what she wants. But anywhere that works for her, if she’ll have me after this. Becky, I was going to tell her about my connection to the O’Neals today, at lunch.”