The Australian

by Lesley Young

  The Australian

  By Lesley Young

  L.A.Y. Books

  Copyright © 2015 Lesley Young, 2015

  Cover design by Jenny Zemanek at Seedlings Design Studio

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the written permission of the copyright owner. The only exception is brief quotations in reviews.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or any other means without the permission of the copyright owner is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  ISBN Mobi 978-0-9909135-2-8

  To Shawna Hook

  Acknowledgements

  I am grateful to everyone who read this book early on and provided much-needed suggestions, especially Shawna Hook, a dear friend and scare-me smart reader, and my ultimate sizzle-factor arbiter, Kim Barton. Also: copy editor Rachel Daven Skinner at Romance Refined, proofer David Warriner at W Translation, and my agent Nalini Akelokar, and Amanda Leuck, at Spencerhill Associates. Charlie Sykes will always be one of my favorite characters. I felt the same protective instinct that reared up in all of you—but I would have hurt her more if I’d kept her from experiencing the world.

  Books by Lesley Young

  The Frenchman (#1 Crime Royalty Romance)

  The Australian (#2 Crime Royalty Romance)

  Sky’s End: (#1 Cassiel Winters Series)

  Table of Contents

  Books by Lesley Young

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  How to reach the author

  Chapter 1

  I glanced at the time on my cell phone and frowned. My temp agency had notified me of this job prospect at the last minute, yet I had managed to arrive within sixty seconds of the appointed time, during Sydney’s rush-hour traffic no less. Meanwhile, I glanced at the closed door several feet from where I sat; the employer was unable to stay on schedule posing a mere series of interview questions. Vexing. The result: I was detained with no useful or productive way to occupy my mind.

  My thoughts returned, pointlessly, to retrace events which had led to my current circumstances and the dilemma I now faced.

  I moved to Australia because of a movie. Most people raise their eyebrows at this. For them, a movie is not a proper reason to decide on a new geographical location to call home. However, that is precisely why I made the decision. I wanted to start my new life the way I meant to go on: full of spontaneity.

  The movie was Muriel’s Wedding. Muriel (Toni Collette’s breakout role) is an unpopular, ABBA-obsessed girl who makes a series of illogical decisions driven by the ardent desire to be loved. I do not relate to the character at all, but my mother did. It was her favorite movie.

  In fact, she watched it a few times every year, and, depending on the narcotic she had indulged in, either slurred her way through the songs or gesticulated wildly through the Waterloo dance routine. She never made it to the end, passing out before Muriel, who, having gained a greater sense of self, comes back to rescue her best friend from their dumpy beachside fictional hometown, Porpoise Spit. I could only appreciate this denouement like someone might appreciate a Vermeer painting—out of time and place.

  The day of my mother’s funeral, sitting in our living room in the CrissCross trailer park in upstate New York, I’d spotted the VHS tape on the crate in front of the TV. Uncertain what else I should be doing, I popped it in and hit play. Miss Moneypenny, my Norwegian Forest Cat, jumped up and nestled in beside me. Freddy, the compound manager and my mother’s occasional sugar daddy, as she called him, lingered in the kitchen.

  Freddy had been a significant resource over the past few years. He often gave us rides to the Niagara Falls Methadone Clinic, occasionally to get groceries, and helped out with money when necessary. When I asked my mother once why he bothered, she said, “He damn well owed her.” As with most things she uttered in the last few years of her life, I did not inquire further.

  Freddy was the one who found my mother’s corpse on the kitchen floor. Overdose was the coroner’s final ruling.

  I sighed through my nose, crossly, and checked the time again. This prospective employer was now running ten minutes late. By the time he interviewed the two women seated across from me, it would be another twenty minutes, at least, before it was my turn. Unacceptable. I thought about leaving, but immediately acknowledged that would be unwise, since my dilemma is my inability to find a job in Sydney. I was officially a beggar, not a chooser—a situation I had not anticipated when I decided to move away from America that day in our trailer.

  Rain pattered the thin roof, and Freddy’s cigarette smoke clogged up the already stuffy air. (I’d asked him twelve times over a six-year period to refrain from smoking inside the trailer.) He just stood there, against the kitchen counter, one hand in his pocket, the other smoking a cigarette, staring at me. People are often confused by me. I do not know how to respond on these occasions, but I always recognize the telltale dead air. He asked about my plans, and, as ABBA’s Dancing Queen played from Muriel’s beachside bedroom into my highway-side living room, I heard myself say, “I am moving to Sydney.”

  “Sydney? In Florida?”

  “Australia,” I whispered. My logic slid into place like a well-oiled machine, because that’s how my brain works, or rather how my mother would explain it to people when I was younger. “Oh, Charlie? She don’t think like the rest of us. She’s so smart she don’t bother with things like emotions. She’s a limited edition, well-oiled machine.”

  The truth is I do have a higher than average IQ when it comes to certain subjects, such as math and languages. However, I struggle with fields that require creativity and interpretative assumption making, like reading emotions and navigating nuances of social interactions. I am on the lowest end of a spectrum of unique development disorders that no one really understands well. “A very mild case of PDD-NOS (Pervasive Developmental Disorder – Not Otherwise Specified),” stated the doctor’s report from second grade, which I found tucked among my mother’s belongings, long forgotten. That explained why I had gotten only Cs in certain classes yet won the math award every year, and, perhaps, why I had had no lasting friends until I met Beatrice (B) Moody in the sixth grade advanced program.

  B never stares at me strangely. And, since inserting herself into my life, she has taken on the role of filling in the gaps of silence for me when she is present.

  Take my current situation: I suspected that if she was seated such that she faced two rivals for a job opportunity, she would have found a way to break the figurative ice. I eyed the two women, and my surrounds, and realized I was pursing my lips. Since body language is a po
werful communication tool, and I was in need of a positive job-hunt development after two weeks of searching in Sydney, I un-sealed them.

  The effort did not help to put me at ease. I prefer at least one day’s notice to prepare for a job interview.

  The Wikipedia article I had managed to read on my phone before I arrived here said that Mr. Jace Knight was a lucrative international hotelier and a jet-setter. Certainly, by the looks of the Sydney Plaza offices (and lobby, which I had passed through in order to reach the employee offices in an adjacent, attached building), Mr. Knight had no problem spending money. The chair I sat in was leather, the walls glossy marble. I felt distinctly out of place, a first for me, which struck me as . . . unsettling—yet again.

  Ever since arriving in Australia, I had found myself in the unpleasant position of being what some might describe as a “doubter.”

  For example, unlike B, who had been headhunted out of college by the government (she is an excellent computer engineer), I had dropped out of college in my first year, unable to work, study, and support both myself and my mother. In the spare time I had between job interviews here, I had found myself questioning whether I had made the right decision to sacrifice college.

  Mother and I had an agreement she would not take drugs without me present. Why she would break her agreement, and use far more than even the most inexperienced addict would use, could only lead me to believe she had done so on purpose. When I had said as much to B on the morning of the funeral, she had said, “Charlie, you know full well how people do things no one’ll ever understand. And for the record, it’s the other way around. She failed you.”

  That was not a satisfactory response.

  Nothing about what had happened was satisfactory.

  And I recall feeling it then, severely, sitting on our sofa in our trailer park, like a nasty sunburn or a head cold.

  I was twenty-four. Older than Muriel in many ways, just not in terms of life experience.

  In that moment, Australia showed itself to me, the way a symbolic logic formula unfolds for me—gracefully, effortlessly.

  If I had enough money to make the move after I sold the trailer and the lot, and I had no further obligations to fulfill here, then I could truly start over.

  More importantly, I could start differently. I could put effort into the things that I knew, thanks to pop culture media resources and B’s constant harping, composed a proper young woman’s life. A job that satisfies and enriches. A home to call my own. A man who takes me on dates, cherishes me, and perhaps wishes to mate with me for life. These were all rites of passage I had never desired or pursued simply because they were not possible when I was burdened with my mother.

  The opportunities presented themselves much the same way I imagine the screenwriter had wanted Muriel to feel them, and in such a way that I felt moved to achieve them. It was not clear to me what the consequence of not achieving these goals would be. Only that, for the first time, my future was mine.

  However, post-move, I had lost all confidence in my original decision. Had B been right: was my logic handicapped at the time by the experience of losing my mother? Or were “spontaneous” decisions by nature poor decisions? For now, it was all too clear how I had failed to take into account other factors that would impact my future beyond a change of location and the local university’s credentials (which I researched should I someday manage to save enough money to attend; as I have told B, repeatedly, I do not agree with acquiring debt). Namely, why was it I could not seem to land a job in Sydney? I had years of administrative experience on my resume.

  I should do more information-gathering.

  “Excuse me,” I addressed the last remaining interviewee. “Did you receive a job description for this position?” The woman, whose skin was dangerously bronzed, and whose features met today’s conventional standards for “beautiful,” shook her head at me.

  She made a derisive quiet noise as she half-smiled and glanced away.

  Undecipherable.

  I understood her peculiar response to mean she did not wish to engage in further conversation, and leaned back in my chair.

  While I had anticipated that moving to Australia would make me feel, on occasion, like a stranger in a strange land, I expected the experiences to dissipate over time. I may have been wrong about that, too.

  I was forced to face the truth: moving to Sydney, which was indeed a vibrant, wonderful place to live, had posed a whole series of unanticipated challenges that were, frankly, testing my coping skills greatly.

  Take Miss Moneypenny: she had had to be quarantined for an additional two weeks after my arrival. (It was a lucky coincidence that she had already had her rabies shot six months before mother died; she required a blood test six months post-shot, and even then there had been a forty-two-day waiting period for the import permit.) While the befuddlement I experienced being without her may strike others as silly, that cat was the only living being I had successfully developed an attachment to, other than my mother and B. Her absence felt perhaps how one might feel finding oneself unzipped in a public venue.

  Then there was the extended-stay facility I had checked into: it was expensive, and finding an affordable apartment with a viable long-term roommate was exceedingly difficult.

  At least I had a positive development yesterday on an apartment interview. A young man named David Stemper, studying medicine, renting a lovely two-bedroom apartment in the heart of Sydney’s business district, was in need of a quiet roommate. Other than the fact that David stared at my breasts several times (which is entirely unacceptable according to social norms but does not ruffle me as I’ve been told it should, perhaps because I am not self-conscious), I was certain we would make suitable roommates. I found myself anticipating a call in the next day or two, and took the opportunity to check my email one more time.

  Nothing.

  Upon an offer, I would, of course, clearly outline the non-fraternizing policy I had decided would be necessary with any roommate of the opposite sex. B, who checked in with me twice a day since I moved (I had come to look forward to the routine of that), had warned me off doing this, suggesting instead I consider a “roommate with benefits” policy. I reminded her, yet again, that I planned my first experience of sexual intercourse to be with a man who met Cosmopolitan magazine’s checklist: “Is He Eligible Stick-It Material?” This was partly because I did not wish to contract an STD, and mostly because the three romance novels I had read (for research purposes) showed me that sex could lead to love and love could lead to a lifetime commitment. I did not want to find myself tied down to a “boy toy” or a “deadbeat.” David did not yet have a full-time job, nor did he own a home.

  I checked the time. The last interviewee had headed into Mr. Knight’s office four minutes ago. I wondered if he was speeding up his process as the interviewee before her had taken only seven minutes. With possibly only three minutes to go before it was my turn, I was brought back to the most pressing challenge of all: landing a clerical and/or personal assistant job that would provide an acceptable livelihood.

  I had signed up with a temp agency the day after I arrived because I deemed breadth of experience the most efficient way to make inroads in the marketplace. However, after six interviews, I had had just one day of work at a law firm that did not mind hiring an American to answer the phone. I found the experience mind-numbingly boring.

  Now, minutes away from my seventh interview, I was forced to admit I was less than positive about this prospect, and with reason beyond the employer’s inefficient questioning skills.

  When I had expressed concern to the temp agency director, Miss Alyssa Reid, about the position being full-time and permanent (I was hoping for casual work so I would have time to decide on fit), she said, “Don’t worry. Mr. Knight goes through assistants like chewing gum.” I asked if that was because he had high standards, hoping perhaps the job had proved challenging. Miss Reid laughed, and said, “Yeah, you could say that.” Upon deeper probing, she
admitted that Mr. Knight’s last personal assistant, Rena Kemp, who worked at the agency, had left suddenly. A quick scan of Miss Kemp’s Twitter feed indicated she had not left on ideal terms.

  The interviewee emerged from Mr. Knight’s office with a flushed face. I wondered if his high standards involved physical attributes. My competitors could have been twins. They were endowed with genes that society deemed ideal for mating—lithe, blond, breasts that defied gravity.

  My physical characteristics were opposite. I was shaped like an hourglass, pale-skinned (I had not thought through my increased skin cancer risk moving here), and a brunette. Men find me attractive, mind you, because they watch me with strange looks on their faces, frequently approach with some inane comment or question, and ask me out on dates. It used to happen back in the Niagara Falls Library where I worked for six years and eighteen days, at the bus stop, in the grocery store, at the mall, and so on.

  “Your go,” she said, breathless, on her way out. Her eyebrows were raised at me in such a way to give me pause: did we have unfinished business or something? Her smile, as she walked by, was not unlike the smile Da Vinci painted on his Mona Lisa, which I have always found awfully self-satisfied.

  That gave me just the motivation I needed. I may not have the right experience for this position, but I did value the proximity of Mr. Knight’s offices to my would-be new apartment.

  I rose up with purpose, tugged down my gray pencil skirt, straightened my white blouse, and strode into Mr. Knight’s office with the intention of knocking his proverbial socks off. One of my mother’s often-quoted sayings might also have applied: “Go hard or go home.” (While most of my mother’s sayings were uttered in some inebriated state, they have merit when suitably applied.)

  Chapter 2

  I was struck by the size of Mr. Knight’s office, though I should not have been (given his net worth of thirty-seven million as reported in Forbes), and appreciated how the large room was surrounded with windows that appeared to look onto a private garden. Even more so, I was taken aback by the physical appearance of Mr. Knight, leaning back in his office desk chair, watching me walk in.