The Billionaire of Coral Bay

by Nikki Logan

  ‘Uh... Socialise? Sleep in? Watch a movie?’

  ‘This is plenty social for my liking.’ She chuckled, looking between Craig and Rich. ‘And why watch a movie when I can be watching dugongs feeding?’

  ‘So you never relax? You’re always doing something wildlifey?’

  His judgement stung a little. And not only because it was true. ‘Says the man who has an office set up on his boat so he doesn’t miss an email.’

  ‘I run a Fortune 100 company.’ He tsked. ‘You’re just—’

  ‘Dude...!’ Craig choked out a warning before getting really busy flying the plane. All those switches that needed urgent flipping...

  ‘Just?’ Mila bristled, as the cabin filled with the unmissable scent of fried chicken. ‘Is that right?’

  But he was fearless.

  ‘Mila, one of the few advantages to being an employee and not an employer is that you get to just...switch off. Go home and not think about work until Monday.’

  Wow. How out of touch with ordinary people was he?

  ‘My job title may not be comprised of initials, Rich, but what I do is every bit as important and as occupying as what you do. The only difference is that I do it for the good of the reef and not for financial gain.’

  Craig shook his head without looking back at either of them.

  ‘I’m out,’ she thought she heard him mutter in the headset.

  Rich ignored him. ‘Oh, you’re some kind of philanthropist? Is that it?’

  ‘How many voluntary hours did you complete last month?’

  His voice crept up, even though the microphone at his throat meant it didn’t need to. ‘Personally? None; I don’t have the time. But WestCorp has six new staff working for us in entry level roles who were homeless before we got to them and that’s an initiative I started.’

  Mila’s outrage snapped shut.

  ‘Oh.’ She puffed out a breath. ‘Well... That’s not on your website.’

  ‘You think that’s something I should be splashing around? Exposing those people to public scrutiny and comment?’

  No, that would be horrible. But would a corporation generally care about that when there was good press to be had?

  The Cessna’s engines spluttered on.

  ‘So you made good on your threat to check up on me, I see,’ he eventually queried, his voice softening.

  Sour milk mingled in with the bitter embarrassment of Brussels sprouts for a truly distasteful mix. Though she was hardly the only uncomfortable one in the plane. Rich looked wary and Craig looked as if he wanted to leap out without wasting time with a parachute.

  ‘I was just curious about what you did,’ she confessed.

  ‘Find anything interesting?’

  ‘Not really.’ But then she remembered. ‘I’m sorry about your father.’

  The twitch high in his clenched jaw got earwax flowing again and this time it came with a significant, tangible and all too actual squeeze behind her breast. Had she hurt him with her clumsy sympathy?

  But he didn’t bite; he just murmured, ‘Thank you.’

  The silence then was cola-flavoured and she sank into the awkwardness and chewed her lip as she studied the ocean below. Craig swung the plane around and headed back towards Coral Bay.

  ‘Okay, we’re on the clock,’ he said, resettling in his seat, clearly relieved to have something constructive to say. ‘Whale sharks, here we come.’

  * * *

  Rich knew enough about this region to know what it was most famous for—the seasonal influx of gentle giants of the sea. Whale sharks. More whale than shark, the massive fish were filter feeders and, thus, far safer for humans than the other big sharks also out there. Swimming out in the open waters with any of them was a tightly regulated industry and a massive money-spinner.

  But, frankly, anyone doing it for fun had to be nuts.

  The water was more than beautiful enough from up here without needing to be immersed in it and all its mysteries.

  ‘What do you need with whale sharks?’ he asked, keen to undo his offence of earlier with some easier conversation.

  Mila couldn’t know how secretly he yearned to be relieved of the pressure of running things, just for a while. A week. A weekend even. He hadn’t had a weekend off since taking over WestCorp six years before. Even now, here, he was technically on the job. Constantly thinking, constantly assessing. While other people dreamed of fancy cars and penthouse views, his fantasies were a little more...suburban. A sofa, a warm body to curl around and whatever the latest hit series was on TV.

  Downtime.

  Imagine that.

  He couldn’t really name the last time he’d done something just for leisure. Sport was about competitiveness, rock-climbing was about discipline and willpower. If he read a book it was likely to be the autobiography of someone wildly successful. It was almost as if he didn’t want to be alone. Or quiet. Or thoughtful.

  So when he’d commented on Mila’s downtime, he hadn’t meant it as a criticism. Of everything he’d seen in Coral Bay so far, the thing that had made the biggest impression on him was the way Mila spent her days.

  Spectacularly simple. While also being very full.

  She patted her trusty camera.

  ‘Whale sharks can be identified by their patterning rather than by invasive tagging. The science employs the same algorithms NASA uses to chart star systems.’

  A pretty apt analogy. The whale sharks he’d seen in photos were blanketed in constellations of pale spots on a Russian blue skin.

  Mila turned more fully to him and her engagement lit up her face just like one of those distant suns he saw as a star. It almost blinded him with optimism. ‘Generally, the research team uses crowd-sourced images submitted by the tourists that swim with them but I try and contribute when I can.’

  ‘You can photograph them from up here?’

  ‘Oh, we’ll be going lower, mate,’ Craig said, over the rattle of the Cessna’s engine. ‘We’re looking for grey tadpoles at the surface. Shout out if you see any.’

  Tadpoles? From up here? He looked at Mila.

  Her grin was infectious. ‘You’ll see.’

  He liked to do well at things—that came from results-based schooling, an all-honours university career, and a career where he was judged by his successes—so he was super-motivated to replicate his outstanding dugong-spotting performance. But this time Mila was the first to spot a cluster of whale sharks far below.

  ‘On your left, Craig.’

  They banked and the sharks came into view.

  ‘Tadpoles,’ Rich murmured. Sure enough: square-nosed, slow-swimming tadpoles far, far below. ‘How big are they?’

  ‘Maybe forty feet,’ Mila said. ‘A nice little posse of three.’

  ‘That’ll keep the punters happy,’ Craig said and switched channels while he radioed the location of the sharks in to the boats waiting patiently but blindly below.

  ‘We’ll stay with this pod until the boats get here,’ Mila murmured. ‘Circle lower and get our shots while we wait.’

  Craig trod a careful line between getting Mila the proximity she needed and not scaring the whale sharks away into deeper waters. He descended in a lazy circle, keeping a forty-five-degree angle to the animals at all times. While Mila photographed their markings, Rich peered down through the binoculars to give him the same zoomed-in views she was getting. Far below, the three mammoth fish drifted in interlocking arcs, their big blunt heads narrowing down into long, gently waving tail fins. As if the tadpoles were moving in slow motion. There was an enviable kind of ease in their movements, as if they had nowhere better to be right now. No pressing engagements. No board meeting at nine. No media pack at eleven.

  Hard not to envy them their easy life.

  ‘The plankton goe
s down deep during the day so the whale sharks take long rests up here before going down to feed again at dusk,’ Mila said. ‘That’s why they’re so mellow with tourists, because they have a full belly and are half asleep.’

  ‘How many are there on the whole reef?’

  ‘Right now there’s at least two dozen and more arriving every day because they’re gathering for the coral spawn this weekend.’

  ‘They eat the spawn?’

  ‘Everyone eats the spawn. It’s why the entire reef erupts all on the same night—to increase the chances of survival.’ She glanced back at him. ‘What?’

  ‘You’re pretty impressed with nature, aren’t you?’

  ‘I appreciate order,’ she admitted. ‘And nothing is quite as streamlined as evolution. No energy wasted.’

  If his world was as cluttered as hers—with all her extrasensory input—he might have a thing for order too. His days tended to roll out in much the same way day in, day out.

  Same monkeys, different circus.

  ‘If it was just about systems you’d be happy working in a bank. Why out here? Why wildlife?’

  She gave the whale sharks her focus but he knew he had her attention and he could see her thinking hard about her answer—or whether or not to give it to him, maybe. Finally, she slipped the headset off her head, glanced at an otherwise occupied Craig and leaned towards him. He met her in the middle and turned his ear towards her low voice.

  ‘People never got me,’ she said, low. And painfully simple. He got the sense that maybe this wasn’t a discussion she had very often. Or very easily. ‘Growing up. Other kids, their parents. They didn’t hate me but they didn’t accept me either, because I saw or heard or smelled things that they couldn’t. Or they thought I was lying. Or making fun of them. Or defective. One boy called me “Mental Mila” and it kind of...stuck.’

  Huh. He’d never wanted to punch a kid so much in his life.

  ‘I already didn’t fit anywhere culturally, then I discovered I didn’t fit socially.’ She looked down at the reef. ‘Out there every species is as unique and specialised as the one next to it yet it doesn’t make them exclusive. If anything, it makes them inclusive; they learn to work their specialties in together. Nature cooperates; it doesn’t judge.’

  Mankind sure did.

  She slid the headset back on, returned to her final photos and the moment—and Mila’s confidence—passed. He could so imagine her as a pretty, lonely young girl who turned her soft heart towards the non-judgemental wildlife and made them her friends.

  The sorrowful image sucked all the joy out of his day.

  The Cessna kept on circling the three-strong pod of whale sharks, keeping track of them until the boats of tourists began to converge, then Craig left them to their fun and scoured up the coast for a back-up group in case those ones decided to dive deep. As soon as they found more and radioed the alternate location, their job was done and Craig turned for Coral Bay’s airfield, charting a direct line down the landward side of the coast.

  As they crossed back over terra firma, Rich peered through the dusty window of his door at the red earth below. He knew that land more for its features on a map than anything else. The distinctive hexagonal dam that looked like a silver coin from here, but was one of the biggest in the region from the ground. The wagon wheel of stock tracks leading to it. The particular pattern of eroded ridges in Wardoo’s northwest quadrant. The green oasis of the waterhole closer to the homestead. When he was a boy he’d accompanied his father on a charter flight over the top of the whole Station and been arrested by its geometry. For a little while he’d had an eight-year-old’s fantasies of the family life he might have had there, as a kid on the land with a dozen brothers and sisters, parents who sat around a table at night, laughing, after a long day mustering stock...

  ‘That’s the Station I told you about,’ Mila murmured, misreading his expression as interest. ‘Wardoo isn’t just beautiful coastline; its lands are spectacular too. All those fierce arid ripples.’

  Fierce. He forced his mind back onto the present. ‘Is that what you feel when you look at the Station?’

  It went some way to explaining her great faith in Wardoo as a protector of the realm if looking at it gave her such strong associations.

  ‘Isolation,’ she said. ‘There’s an undertone in Wardoo’s red...I get the same association with jarrah. Like the timber deck on your boat. It’s lonely, to me.’

  He stared down at all that red geometry. Fantasy Rich and his enormous fantasy family were pretty much all that had got him through losing his mother and then being cast off in boarding school. But by the time he was old enough to consider visiting by himself, he had no reason and even less time to indulge the old crutch. He’d created a stable, rational world for himself at school and thrown himself into getting the grades he needed to get into a top university. Once at uni he’d been all about killing it in exams so that he could excel in the company he’d been raised to inherit. He’d barely achieved that when his father’s heart had suddenly stopped beating and, since then, he’d been all about taking WestCorp to new and strictly governable heights. There’d been very little time for anything else. And even less inclination.

  Thus, maps and the occasional financial summary were his only reminder that Wardoo even existed.

  Until now.

  ‘Actually, I can see that one.’

  Her eyes flicked up to his and kind of...crashed there. As if she hadn’t expected him to be looking at her. But she didn’t look away.

  ‘Really?’ she breathed.

  There was an expectation in her gaze that stuck in his gut like a blade. As if she was hunting around for someone to understand her. To connect with.

  As if she was ravenous for it.

  ‘For what it’s worth, Mila,’ Rich murmured into the headset, ‘your synaesthesia is the least exceptional thing about you.’

  Up front, Craig’s mouth dropped fully open, but Mila’s face lit up like a firework and her smile grew so wide it almost broke her face.

  ‘That’s so lovely of you to say,’ she breathed. ‘Thank you.’

  No one could accuse him of not knowing people. And people the world over all wanted the same thing. To belong. To fit. The more atypical that people found Mila, the less comfortable she was bound to be with them. And, even though it was a bad idea, he really wanted her to be comfortable with him for the few short hours they would have together. He turned and found her eyes—despite the fact that his voice was feeding directly to her ears courtesy of the headphones—and pumped all the understanding he could into his gaze.

  ‘You’re welcome.’

  The most charged of silences fell and Craig was the only one detached enough to break it.

  ‘Buckle up,’ he told them both. ‘Airstrip’s ahead.’

  * * *

  Mila shifted towards the open door of the Cessna, where Rich had just slid out under its wing. As long as his back was to her she was fine, but the moment he turned to face her she knew she was in trouble. Normally she would have guarded against the inevitable barrage of crossed sensations that being swung down bodily by someone would bring. But, in his case, she had to steel herself against the pleasure—all that hard muscle and breadth against her own little body.

  Tangled sensations had never felt so good.

  Twenty-four hours ago she would have found some excuse to crawl through to the other door and exit far away from Rich, or accepted his hand—maybe—and limit the physical skin-on-skin to just their fingers, but now... She rested her hands lightly on his shoulders and held her breath. He eased her forward, over the edge of the door, and supported her as she slid his full length until her toes touched earth. Even then he didn’t hurry to release her and the hot press of his body sent her into a harpy, sugary overdrive.

  Your synaesthesia is the l
east exceptional thing about you.

  To have it not be the first thing someone thought about when they thought about her... The novelty of that was mind-blowing. And it begged the question—what did he associate first with her? Not something she could ever ask for shame; ridiculous to be curious about and dangerous to want, given what he did for a living.

  But there it was. As uncontrollable and illogical as her superpower. And she’d learned a long time ago to accept the inevitability of those.

  Her nostrils twitched as her feet found purchase on the runway; alongside the usual carnival associations there was something else. Some indefinable...closeness. She felt inexplicably drawn to Richard Grundy. She’d been feeling it all morning.

  It took a moment for her to realise.

  She spun on him, eyes wide. ‘What are you wearing?’

  He didn’t bother disguising his grin. He reached up with one arm and hooked it over the strut holding the Cessna’s wing and fuselage to each other. The casual pose did uncomfortable things to her pulse.

  ‘Do you have any idea how hard it is to find a cologne with oak moss undertones on short notice?’ he said.

  Mila stared even as her chest tightened. ‘You wore it intentionally?’

  ‘Totally. Unashamedly,’ he added, as the gravity of her expression hit him. ‘I wasn’t sure it was working. You seemed unaffected at first.’

  That was because she was fighting the sensation to crawl into his lap in the plane and fall asleep there.

  Oak moss.

  ‘Why would you do that?’ she half whispered, thinking about that murmured discussion without their headsets. The things she’d confessed. The access she’d given him into her usually protected world.

  He shrugged the shoulder that wasn’t stretched up towards the plane’s wing. ‘Because you associate it with security.’

  She fought back the rush of adrenaline and citrus that he’d cared at all how she felt around him and gave her anger free rein. ‘And you thought manipulating the freak would somehow make me feel safe with you?’

  He lowered his arm and straightened, his comfortable expression suddenly growing serious. ‘Whoa, no, Mila. That’s not what—’