by JD Nixon
“Okay, good. I want you to settle down,” I ordered Angry Elvis. He slumped against Ben’s chest and let himself be led out the door. I followed them out to the foyer.
“Don’t even think of coming back. Take your loss like a man,” Ben recommended as we watched him slouching away.
“Yeah, harden up, princess! And if you come back, we’ll kick you in the goolies!” yelled out Ancient Elvis from where he’d trailed after us, keen not to miss any of the action. In fact, he seemed to be enjoying the altercation more than he’d enjoyed the potentially incapacitating swivelling of his hips on stage.
“What the hell is it with you and goolies?” Ben asked him, shaking his head in disbelief, both of us really wishing he hadn’t butted in at that particular moment.
And as though struck by the elderly man’s taunt, Angry Elvis suddenly spun around and ran back towards us to re-enter the room, obviously wanting another go at Tubby Elvis. I ran interference between the door and him, but he forcefully shoved me out of the way, fuelled by his consuming belief in the injustice served up to him. I fell hard for the second time that day. Surely that went beyond the call of duty, I thought unhappily as I landed on my back with jarring painfulness. Again.
I rolled onto my stomach quickly and grabbed Angry Elvis by one of his ankles as he jumped over me. He was in full flight, so by holding his ankle I halted his momentum quite abruptly and he fell to the ground as well, twisting around and kicking out at me aggressively when he landed.
Angry Elvis was still very angry, but guess what? So was I. In fact, I might even have been angrier than him. I’d arranged a far too rare visit to my boyfriend, Will, tonight and I didn’t want to be late or turn up with a face full of bruises. I wanted this whole situation sorted out now.
I sprung up to sit on his legs, stopping him from kicking. To compensate, he began striking out at me with his fists. I slid up his body, straddling his pelvis until I could restrain his arms. It was a curiously intimate position being astride him, holding down his arms, looking into his face. I’d been there many times with Will, but with much less clothing involved. He struggled to buck me off, but I pinned his arms down with as much force as I could muster, and he wasn’t a big man.
“Do you want me to kick him in the goolies for you?” offered Ancient Elvis, fluttering around us with alarming eagerness.
“No, she bloody well doesn’t! Will you just go away?” Ben suggested tersely, his testiness with the feisty senior growing every second.
“Calm down now or we’ll be forced to call the police,” I said to Angry Elvis slowly and patiently, keeping my eyes locked on his. “You don’t want to be doing the jailhouse rock, do you?” Damn! Ben didn’t hear that one so it probably didn’t count.
Angry Elvis shook his head and stilled.
“Good. This is what’s going to happen. I’ll get off you and my colleague will help you to your feet. Then we’ll escort you to the entrance of the convention centre where you will leave peacefully and you won’t return. Do you understand?” He nodded. “Otherwise,” and I indicated over my shoulder to where Ben was standing by on alert, all six-foot-three of menacing muscles, “he will be the one sitting on you next time while we wait for the police to arrive.”
I climbed off him and Ben took custody of him, assisting him to his feet. The man was dishevelled, his quiff in disarray, his leather outfit scuffed. He dusted himself down, ran a comb through his hair, and with his chin lifted high, allowed himself to be escorted to the doors of the convention centre where we watched him stalk away down the stairs.
“Do you reckon he’s gone for good?” I asked.
“Yeah, I think you scared him off when you mentioned the cops.” Ben looked at me, raising his eyebrows, a smile playing on his lips. “That was an interesting hold position you had on him,” he teased. “Was it good for you? Do you need a cigarette now? I think a few of the other Elvises were about to become rowdy on purpose just so you would sit on them as well.”
“Sure they were,” I laughed, rolling my eyes.
As we sauntered back to the room to supervise the last of the contestants out of the convention centre, Ancient Elvis suddenly kicked over a chair, causing a racket.
“What the hell?” demanded Ben.
Seeing that he’d captured our attention, the elderly man kicked over another one, then another.
“What on earth are you doing?” I asked, bemused and concerned about his hips.
“Look what I did. I’m a real badass. You better stop me before I hurt someone.” He kicked over another, puffing with the effort. Ben and I stared at each other, not sure what was going on.
“I think you should stop doing that, sir,” said Ben politely. “The only person you’re going to hurt is yourself.”
Ancient Elvis carefully lowered himself to the carpet and laid his limbs out straight. He looked over to me. “Well, what are you waiting for? You better come to subdue me. You saw what a total badass I am. Come and sit on me. Just like what you did with that angry guy. But be careful of my hips – they’re not as flexible as they used to be.”
“Oh, brother,” I sighed, rubbing the back of my neck, not sure what to do. Ben unsuccessfully smothered a laugh.
“Hurry up,” Ancient Elvis insisted. “I might just start kicking over more chairs otherwise. I’m bad, I tell you. I’m a real motherfluffing badass, I am.”
“Go on, Tilly,” smirked Ben, nudging me. “You better manage that motherfluffer over there. That’s what you were hired to do. God only knows what he might do next. He might even kick someone in the goolies.”
Shooting Ben a dirty look and muttering under my breath, I gently dropped to my knees next to Ancient Elvis. His eyes were bright with mischief.
“Look, if I do this, will you promise to go straight home afterwards? You need to rest your hips. You might even need to see a doctor.”
“Okay,” he agreed mildly.
I threw one leg over the wrinkly supine body on the ground, careful to keep myself a few inches above him at all times. I wasn’t going to be responsible for injuring a senior citizen.
“There you go. You’re now duly subdued. Off home with you.”
“Do it properly!” he wheezed indignantly. “You’re insulting me.”
Rolling my eyes, I gently pinned his hands to the ground with a couple of fingers, and said in an embarrassed voice, “If you don’t calm down immediately, I’m calling the police.”
“Say it meaner. Like you did with that other guy.”
“God!” I raised my voice and tried to inject some anger into it. “If you don’t calm down immediately, I’m calling the police.”
“Never! Anarchy forever!” He struggled beneath me, even though I wasn’t restraining him at all.
“Hey!” I said, alarmed. “Calm down. You’ll hurt yourself. Remember your hips.”
“Is this absolutely necessary?” demanded the head organiser in a heated voice liberally laced with undisguised disgust. He’d come out to the foyer in time to witness our display. “He’s harmless, surely. Get off him! Jesus! Do we now live in a police state?”
“Don’t spray me! I promise I’ll behave,” whimpered Ancient Elvis, a tremulous waver in his voice that I’d never heard up until now. “And please don’t let him kick me in the goolies like he threatened.” He shot a scared look in Ben’s direction.
“I’m not going to kick you in the goolies!” protested Ben, turning to the organiser in supplication. “He’s the one who wants to do that all the time, not me! I don’t do that to old people.”
“Oh, so now I’m old! Is there no end to the insults?” wailed Ancient Elvis. “That’s discrimination!”
“No, no, no, sir,” soothed the organiser, panicking. “There’s no discrimination here. Not in my competition. Here, let me help you up.” His eyes on me were lava-hot with anger. “If this young lady will allow . . .?”
I sprang to my feet. “Of course. Let me help as well.”
“No!” shrank back our wrinkled
little trouble-maker. “Not her! You saw her crushing me with her gigantic weight.”
“Hey!” I complained.
“My hips,” he moaned, hands rubbing up and down them.
“He’s trembling!” spat out the organiser. “You people are savages!”
“No –” started Ben.
“We’re not –” I tried.
“I’ll be asking for a new security team tomorrow, be assured of that!” he promised over his shoulder as he led Ancient Elvis away, asking, “Is there anything we can do to make this up for you?”
“Well,” Ancient Elvis said weakly. “You could find me a small spot in the final. Just as a sop to my incredibly hurt, and possibly litigious, feelings.”
“Of course, of course. You’d be more than welcome. Yours was a most . . . er . . . entertaining performance. How about first billing?”
“That would be nice.”
“Let me call you a taxi. We’ll pay, of course.”
As he was led away by the concerned organiser, Ancient Elvis looked back over his shoulder and winked at the pair of us.
Ben groaned and I palm-faced myself.
“We’ve been played,” rued Ben.
“Oh yeah,” I agreed. “Like a string section.”
We looked at each other and laughed regretfully.
“But now we have one hell of a problem,” he said.
“What’s that?”
“What’s Heller going to say?”
Chapter 2
We didn’t have to wait long to find out. As we drove off in a black Toyota 4WD, one of the Heller’s fleet cars, my phone rang.
“Matilda.” Heller always called me by my full first name even though he knew I disliked it.
“Heller, it’s not what it seems.”
“It never is with you.”
“We didn’t hurt him. He made fools of us so he could get his own way. Honestly! We’re the patsies, not him. We’d never hurt an old man.”
Silence for a while, then a heavy sigh. “It has that unmistakable ring of Matilda-truthiness about it. But still, I’ve been asked to replace you both on the job and that doesn’t reflect well on any of us.”
I groaned in disappointment. “But I was having fun.”
“I don’t pay you to have fun.”
“Yeah, well, sometimes it just happens spontaneously.”
“So you enjoyed it?”
“I laughed my arse off!” I giggled into the phone.
“Oh, how unfortunate for you. Was there any other trouble?”
“A minor scuffle. I was flattened by a tubby Elvis and knocked over by an angry Elvis. Nothing we couldn’t handle. Although I have to say that my back’s a bit sore now.”
“I’m not even going to ask,” he said, sighing again. “Would you like me to give you a massage when you get home?” And he laughed in that low, growly sexy way of his that always made my stomach feel funny.
“Very tempting, Heller,” I said honestly, “but I’m going to Will’s place tonight.” I’d sweet-talked Ben into dropping me there directly.
“I’ll pick you up at the normal time.”
“Okay. See you then.”
“Have fun, my sweet.”
“I plan to, believe me. Bye.” And I hung up.
Ben turned to me. “The Boss checks in with you after every job?”
“Yep. I have to let him know what I’m up to every second of the day.” And I was only half-joking.
His sideways glance was curious. “I’m surprised to hear that you have a boyfriend. I always thought you and Heller were . . . you know. That’s the word around the office anyway.”
My voice was cool in response. “Everybody thinks that, but it’s not true and never has been.”
He persisted. “But don’t you spend the night at his place a lot? That’s what the other guys say.”
I refused to discuss the matter with him any further, cursing the gossip that continually buzzed in the security section about my love life. Those big, burly men were worse than any woman when it came to tattling about each other and me. I didn’t want to explain my complicated relationship with Heller, a relationship that wasn’t quite platonic, but not yet consummated.
The fact was that I couldn’t explain it to Ben – I couldn’t even explain it to myself. And it was true that I frequently spent the night with Heller, sleeping in his bed, occasionally fooling around with him even though I had a boyfriend. But I guess some relationships only make sense to the people in them. Heller and I cared about each other and simply liked to be together.
But I could tell that Ben wasn’t convinced with my denial. Those rumours were pretty pervasive around the office. I shrugged to myself with resignation and dismissed the topic from my mind. After all, there was nothing I could really do about it.
We pulled up out the front of Will’s place.
“It was fun working with you, Tilly,” Ben said, idling the 4WD. “I hope we work together again soon.”
“Me too, Ben. Thanks for the lift.”
“Viva Las Vegas, hey?” he grinned and drove off, tooting the horn jauntily as he did, and scoring the last point in our Elvis game as a bonus.
Will met me at the door, his wild, curly brown hair particularly unruly, but his soft brown eyes welcoming. It wasn’t long before we were naked in his bed, sharing a very pleasurable experience. Afterwards, we laid back, bodies entwined and chatted a little.
“I suppose you’re running off at midnight as usual,” he sulked, running his fingers through my long wavy, dark brown hair.
I suppressed an impatient sigh. It was a longstanding complaint of his that we didn’t spend enough time together. While I appreciated his viewpoint and had promised to find more time, it just wasn’t possible for me to spend every second of my spare time with him. I had other people who were very important to me that I needed to spend time with as well, and the more time I spent with him only robbed me of time with them. It was a difficult balancing act, and I wasn’t sure I was doing it all that well. But instead of arguing with him, knowing I could never win that battle, I distracted him with my body again.
He stopped complaining – for a while at least.
When time came for me to leave, to my surprise it wasn’t Heller who picked me up as he normally did, but Sid. He was a massive, intimidating man who managed Heller’s surveillance section, while his identical twin, Clive, managed Heller’s security section. I lived with all three men at Heller’s warehouse-like office/accommodation building that I’d dubbed the Warehouse for obvious reasons. Living there with us as well were Heller’s office manager, sensitive, scarred Daniel; Niq, the small, androgynous teenage Goth-boy; and the never-seen Victor, Heller’s valet. Heller had a sumptuous flat on the fifth floor (as did Victor, allegedly), Daniel and I each had a flat on the fourth floor and Sid and Clive shared a flat on the third floor, neighbouring the family gym. Niq ostensibly lived with Heller, but in fact slept wherever he felt like it, mostly at Daniel’s or the twins’, sometimes at Heller’s, but rarely at my place. My flat is the smallest of them all, a snug self-contained one-bedroom place, full of light and brightness. I loved it and could not now imagine living anywhere else.
“Hey, Sid!” I exclaimed with pleasure, not having caught up with him for a while.
“Hey, Tilly. So that’s the boyfriend, huh?” he asked with vaguely menacing curiosity, slowly eyeballing Will as he stood on his veranda, sadly waving goodbye.
Will wasn’t particularly popular with the guys I work with, mostly because it ruined everyone’s cosy perception of me as Heller’s woman. I did question my sanity on occasion for not wanting to be Heller’s woman, him being over two metres of sexy Scandinavian manliness, all muscle, stunningly beautiful model looks, attractive accent, piercing blue eyes and spiky blond hair.
Sid’s bulk filled the driver’s seat. He was powerfully built, he and Clive owning craggy, unforgiving faces, heavy eyebrows, and black slick-backed hair. When I’d buckled up, he sped off be
fore I even had a chance to wave back to Will. I sighed to myself knowing that he’d be in a snit about that when I next spoke to him.
We drove in companionable silence for a few minutes.
“Sid?”
“Hmm?”
“How did you and Clive come to live with Heller?”
I’d always wanted to know and now seemed as good a time as any to ask. Daniel and Niq had already told me their touching stories about being rescued from heartbreakingly terrible lives by Heller. I’d often wondered if the twins had a similar story.
Sid laughed. He was by far the more congenial of the pair, Clive much more taciturn and not one of my biggest admirers.
“Believe it or not, we were sent to teach him a lesson.”
My mouth flew open in surprise. “Get out of here!”
“True story,” he affirmed, smiling as he shot me a quick sideways glance. “You’ll never believe who sent us either.”
“Who?” I had no idea.
“Chris Kirnin.”
“Oh.” I was silent for a moment, digesting that interesting little nugget. Chris Kirnin was not a man I’d ever be including on my Christmas card list. In fact, the last time I’d seen him, I’d deservedly backhanded him across his ugly face. He’d changed my life forever, and not for the better. “I suppose that makes sense. But obviously their feud has been going on for a lot longer than I ever suspected.”
“Sure has. Kirnin wasn’t running Select Security then though. He owned a small debt collection agency. Clive and I worked for him as his enforcers.”
“Heller owed money?” That seemed very unlikely to me. Heller wasn’t the type of man to let himself be under anyone’s control or in anyone’s debt.
“Nah, of course not. Not Heller.” He swerved slightly to avoid a pothole. “Kirnin also did ‘favours’ for some of his more dodgy clients. And one of them had a grudge against Heller.”
“Do you know why?”
Sid laughed again. “It seemed that Heller not only slept with guy’s wife and two daughters, but also with his mistress, his sister and his step-mother.” He flashed his surprisingly small teeth in amusement. “And possibly his grandmother too.”