My Fair Aussie

by Jennifer Griffith

  We talked another few seconds, and then she moaned.

  “Oh, but that leaves you without a ride to Frogs in the Sand.” She dug into her purse and handed me the tickets for the last show on earth I’d want to see, especially with Geordie potentially leaving Polly forever, gone for a soldier on the great ocean deep.

  “It’s okay.” I didn’t want her worrying about this. “You’ve done enough by just getting us all prepped, and then you went the extra mile with these sandwiches. Please. I can call a cab.” This whole Operation Deceive Mo-No Into Being a Better Person plan was racking up the costs, in many ways. “What time does the event start?”

  “No, no. Showing up in a cab is lame. You have to go in style if you’re going to pull this off. I’ll ask Terrence. He can take you in Daddy’s favorite car.”

  “But we already asked Terrence to go to Walmart for shampoo and things. Won’t he be sick of us?”

  “He’s fine. Daddy’s out of town and Terrence hates down time.”

  That’s what rich people assumed about their staff.

  “Just—go get dressed.” She shooed me away, probably so she could cry some more. “Oh, besides. You’ll look so good coming out of the Rolls.”

  “The Rolls!” That’s what she meant by Daddy’s favorite car? Polly’s dad’s vintage Rolls Royce Phantom had a higher price tag than most people’s homes. “We can’t take that. Are you kidding? You’d be in so much trouble if something happened to it.” I about hyperventilated. “Didn’t you even watch that movie Ferris Beuller’s Day Off? Remember Cameron and his dad’s Ferrari?”

  This giant red flag from Hollywoodland didn’t seem to faze her one bit.

  “Oh, but you remember that life went on, even after the Ferrari crashed.” Polly shooed me off again. “Besides. Terrence is driving, not you. It’s his job to drive it. He’s the only one who ever does, so it’s not even the same.”

  It wasn’t the same, true, but it still seemed like this whole thing was snowballing. There could be blowback against Polly’s parents for their involvement in our deceptive scheme now, if something went wrong. That Rolls Royce was easily traceable to the Pickering family. Even in Beverly Hills, there were a highly limited number of them.

  We were roping in more and more innocents all the time.

  My stomach knotted. I’d given half my cedar plank salmon to Henry, but now, worry killed my appetite even for a Polly Sandwich Special.

  This could go so wrong.

  ***

  “How am I even supposed to sit down in this?” I hovered near the edge of a sofa, my blue sequined dress so tight against my waist, hips, and thighs I could barely walk, let alone topple into a sitting position without the dress climbing to indecent heights on my legs. At least it was long enough to hit me mid-thigh when I was standing.

  Okay, fine I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t sure whether I looked good in it. I won’t say I looked like an A-lister, but let’s just say I wouldn’t feel self-conscious among some of the other women at the Hollywood premiere.

  “Maybe if you leeeeean…and then fall.” Polly tapped against my shoulder, to tip me over. “Don’t rip it. Then you’d be more interesting than the film.”

  No doubt about that, rip or no rip.

  “And then everyone who worked on the film will be mad at you.”

  The door to the living room swung open, and in burst a male model, the kind that does ad shoots for designer cologne. I lost my balance and did fall onto the sofa, not caring whether the dress’s seams held or not. He was shirtless, holding one white piece of cloth in each hand, his hair strategically tousled, and his face shaven a gleaming clean.

  “Wh-who are you? What are you doing at Pickering Place?” I had to defend Polly’s home. She was off to see her fiancé ship out, so I knew she hadn’t hired some exotic dancer to come show up here, and I sure as heck hadn’t.

  Then he spoke, and I saw the teeth. And I about died.

  “I don’t know which of these two shirts to wear.” He held up both white shirts. “This or this?”

  Polly’s voice scratched. “What you have on is fine.”

  He cocked his head to the side. “I’m not even dressed.”

  “Exactly,” she said, all breathy. “Uh, I have to go.” She shot me a good luck look.

  In the fastest exit I’d ever seen her make, without so much as a fingers-only wave goodbye, Polly gathered up her purse and her picnic basket for Geordie. But at the door she turned on her heel and scuttled back over to me.

  Leaning in she whispered, “Who’d have guessed! Mo-No is toast.” And then she was gone.

  I still hadn’t recovered from the shock of the teeth, paralysis setting in at my lower limbs. But her words snapped me back to life.

  “Wear the one that doesn’t need cuff links.” I managed.

  “Right. Cuff links are a pain.”

  My head was clearing, and I knew time was short before we needed to get into the car to go. But we had something vital that still had to happen before we exploded this bomb called Henry Lyon on a Hollywood party. It was something we’d discussed in the car, but Henry had snoozed through it, and now the clock was striking eleven fifty-nine.

  “We need to set up your back story. And we need to be extremely careful because one little mistake, and we’re outed as frauds.”

  And a whole lot of people could be in trouble.

  ACT II: Scene 6

  Move Yer Bloomin’ [Frogs]

  BEVERLY HILLS & HOLLYWOOD, CALIFORNIA, COMPLETE WITH RED CARPET

  Wherein our hero makes a bit of a splash.

  “Back story?” He was buttoning his shirt, grabbing his tuxedo’s tie, and tying it in a perfect bow without a look. It wasn’t even one of those clip-each-side numbers like guys got for the prom back where I came from. At some point in the past, he must not have been so down on his luck, considering how automatically he formed the knot with each side an even length. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  I still sprawled on the couch, staring too agog at his amazing transformation to move quite yet. So what if I openly admired the work we’d done? Painters and sculptors had to inspect their progress.

  Ours was coming along fine. Just fine.

  “It’s the information we need to invent about your life so that we have both our stories straight, if we get asked by anyone.” And believe me, we were both going to get asked. People who saw me come in with him were going to sidle up and pester me for details about who the hottest guy on planet Hollywood tonight was.

  The grandfather clock beside the grand piano struck seven. If we were going to make it for the seven-thirty event, we’d better scoot.

  “Miss Eliza?” Terrence poked his head in the door, as if he’d been awaiting the clock’s chime. “Are you and Mr. Lyon ready to go? You both look very nice, I must say.”

  Henry came over and extended a hand to lift me from my spot on the couch. Good thing, too, considering the dress’s tight fabric and sequins likely to pop everywhere, just like the fireworks in my chest popping at the touch of Henry’s hand.

  “Thank you,” I said once balancing on my feet again. I took his elbow, since I didn’t wear heels often in my Nanny to the Snobs life, especially because I dwarfed Mo-No as it was. But even in my heels, I didn’t reach Henry’s height. Something about that made him even more attractive to me in the moment, which thing shouldn’t have been physically possible, considering that he’d already knocked me down with his pheromones when he breezed into the room. “I’m probably going to need help both in and out of the car, as well. This is Polly’s dress and it’s dangerously snug.”

  “Yes, it is.” His eyes roamed over my dress as he helped me into the back seat of the Rolls. “You clean up gorgeous, Eliza.”

  Gorgeous? My neck flushed hot again. He kept making that happen.

  Yeah, he’d have no trouble with the charm requirement of this assignment. I let that worry drop from my extremely long list of misgivings.

  “So. My back
story, eh?” Henry slid onto the back seat, much closer to me than I’d expected. “Let’s start with what you have in mind.”

  At this moment the only thing I had in mind was Henry Lyon and the way his scent filled my entire head.

  He flashed me a flirtatious look, and then when he reached across me for a bottled drink, whatever cologne Terrence had chosen wafted around me. That chauffeur deserved a raise.

  “What’s your fantasy about my past, present and future?”

  Fantasy? I gulped. I wasn’t the kind of girl who let her mind get carried away by fantasies about men, especially not about homeless men who thought they owned the bus station. At least not until this very moment when his wording prompted one. With all haste I gave my mind a sweeping-out, but I soon realized it might take an industrial broom to ouster the fluttering images of dancing with Henry’s strong arms, walking on the beach with him, and taking him to meet Black Jack.

  “Because I was thinking my story could be, pretty obviously, that I’m from Oz.”

  I returned to earth from whatever galaxy I’d been visiting to respond to his idea.

  “Oz?” I blinked a few times. As in The Wizard of…?

  “You know. Oz,” he said. “Of if you’re going to be bogan, call it Straya.”

  “Strayer College? Sure. That’s…we’ll. It’s good. It’s unique. Not something someone would suspect or double-check on because it’s just specific and just generic enough no one would bother.”

  Henry put down his Evian bottle and eyed me, as if I hadn’t understood his meaning.

  “I guess Yanks just say Australia.” He emphasized each syllable: Au-stray-li-ah. I closed my eyes in a touch of shame. Some linguistics expert I was.

  Even if by some miracle or bribe I received my Ph.D. someday, from this moment on I knew I’d never deserve it. I’d have to refuse, hand back any proffered diploma.

  “Right,” I choked out. “Perfect, since you’ve already practiced and perfected the accent. It’s perfect. Perfect.” I was repeating myself, but this was because my eyes had strayed to his teeth again. Perfect, like his teeth when he smiled at me like he was doing now and emptying my head of every other word in the dictionary besides perfect.

  “Actually, you’re interesting, Elizer. What’s your back story?” He cocked his head to the side, possibly laughing at me. At least he held a gut-busting laugh dancing in his eyes, if not impolitely exploding from his lips. Oh, he did have nice lips… Chapped, from the sun… They needed a balm. I could probably offer him a little of the gloss on my own lips, since I forgot to pack any in my handbag.

  “Do you hail from all this Los Angeles mayhem originally?” His question grounded me again.

  “Me? Oh, gracious no.” I shuddered. “Not me.”

  He took another drink of his water bottle. “Knew it.”

  “You knew what?” When he didn’t do more than tap his temple at my inquiry, I was forced to explain. “Good guess. I grew up about as far from Hollywood and Beverly Hills as you can get culturally and still be in the state of California. I’ve had to shoot more actual rattlesnakes with my .22 than all the Hollywood movie rattlesnake shootings combined.”

  “You.” He raised a brow. “You can shoot.”

  “Only when I have to, but don’t sound so incredulous. It’s generally only snakes. But I had to shoot a coyote once. It had a lamb by the neck.”

  “I hate coyotes.” He shuddered, as if hearing a coyote’s yowl at close range in this very moment. “Most people say wolves are worse. Or dingoes. And everyone thinks hyenas are worse. But I’ll take all three of those wild dog situations over coyotes every day.” He finished his water. “When I was in the desert, I could hear them in the distance, you know? But then night fell, dark and purple, and the coyotes circled me, so I didn’t dare sleep with both eyes shut. Wore me thin.”

  Oh, we were back in the desert again. Darn. That little conversational tangent brought me crashing back to earth, reminding me that this was Henry Lyon, a man who hailed helicopters in the sky and owned the bus station.

  I fell crashing back to reality with a thunderous clunk.

  “We aren’t getting anywhere with your back story, man.” I cleared my throat, trying to clear my burning shame as well. “Let’s focus.”

  I almost wished I had brought a pen and paper to take notes so I didn’t forget later. This was too important to mess up. Then again, any kind of paper trail could be dangerous for us. We had to be careful.

  “Options. What are our options? We’ve got construction firm—but in the back country. Professional gold miner.” I had to make sure we stuck with big money potential, but also with basics. Nothing too refined, or if his manners slipped into Bus Station Manners, he’d be suspect. The risks of this scheme slammed me hard yet again. “Wait! I know. Oil!”

  Oil could be so unrefined it needed a refinery as a huge component of its industry in general. It was perfect.

  Except Henry didn’t seem to agree. He cleared his throat.

  “How about…what do you call it?” He looked away and back. “Cattle rancher.” He reached over and took my hand, uncurling each finger of my fist that I hadn’t realized I’d been clenching, and sending me back into the stratosphere, despite how loony I knew him to be. “Let’s have my story be—” he stroked my index finger “—I’m an Australian.” He stroked my thumb. “I run a huge cattle operation in the high country.” He followed along with each of my other fingers while I blinked back all the surging hormones my systems had sent into overdrive. “I’m here in the States exploring top-secret business opportunities.”

  I heard the words. They went into my ear canals, but I didn’t process them at all. His fingertips were now sliding along the back of my hand, and then across my palm and my fingers again, and the only one of my five senses I could compute was touch, it was so engrossing. Showers of tingles filled every cell and molecule of me.

  After a bit of my stunned silence, he said, “How does that sound, Eliza?” He said my name, with the Elizer accent again, and my sense of hearing kicked back in. “Cattle baron?”

  “Right.” I gulped once, and then again. “Cattle baron.” That would explain any lack of polish, as well as the cowboy walk, and the great tan for this time of year. Wasn’t it the dead of summer there right now, while we were leading up to Christmas here in the northern hemisphere?

  Perfect.

  “Perfect,” I breathed.

  “Perfect,” he said, lifting my hand and giving it a kiss, and turning my insides from mere tingling sparklers to the full-on Fourth of July. “A cattle baron might win any girl’s heart. Even a nanny’s.”

  Uh-huh, I thought, blinking.

  He was going to do just fine. We’d roll with it.

  The Rolls rolled to a stop at a curb. A moment later, it pulled forward one car length. And again, another moment later, the car’s smooth ride inching us toward destiny at the end of a red carpet.

  Terrence rolled down the glass window between the front and back seats. “We have arrived, Miss Eliza.”

  Showtime.

  ***

  The first moment of truth loomed. I glanced at Henry. “You nervous?”

  Did he have any idea what effect he was going to have?

  He couldn’t possibly. When we left Pickering Place, he hadn’t even looked in the mirror to see how slayingly sharp he looked in that dark jacket and stark white shirt, like he belonged in a 1950s heist movie with the Rat Pack themselves.

  “It’ll be all right.” He put a hand on his door. “Wait there. I’ll give you a hand out,” he said, and he sprang out of the Rolls and came around to grab my door before Terrence could even fully stop. Henry took my hand in his and lifted me from the car onto wobbling ankles. With that roughened skin on his palms, like the ranch-workers’ hands back home, he placed my arm through his and propelled the both of us onto the stretch of red carpet, where a few camera bulbs still flashed for the couple in front of us I recognized as faded TV stars.


  Well, the callused hands would be another detail that corroborated with his cattle ranch story. They certainly convinced me of several things at once.

  I had to shut off all this hormonal firestorm, though, or I’d be a gelatinous mess and ruin the effect we’d spent all afternoon trying to accomplish.

  Yes, Henry Lyon might be off his nut, but I was trusting him with everything right now, from my wobbly ankles to my dignity in general.

  “Who’s that?”

  Voices floated over the din to the sides of us.

  “I don’t know.”

  “She looks like Isla, but that’s not Sacha.”

  “You know, he looks like a tall, younger Clint.”

  “She looks like Heidi, but that’s not Seal.”

  “He looks like Charlton resurrected.”

  Apparently, it got to be too much for Henry. He tipped an imaginary hat at them.

  “G’day, mates.”

  A general swoon went up, followed by a chorus of sighs. Oh, brother.

  “He’s Australian.”

  “I love Australians.”

  “It’s not Keith, is it? Because that’s not Nicole.”

  It went on and on as we strolled at a dismayingly slow speed down the carpet toward the frogs and their choking sand. Then I heard, over all the chatter, Henry laughing to himself. At least he was having a good time, and even embracing it. I let out a held breath as we stepped off the end of carpet at last and into the theater lobby.

  From there, the entrance to the theater itself gaped before us. I wanted to make a run for it, or claim needing a break in the ladies’, but Henry had me firmly at his elbow, and he led us inside where we looked for our seats.

  “That’s the star, over there.” I pointed to the center section of the old theater with its red velvet seats and curtains hung beside the silver screen. “He also bankrolled the picture.” I’d done some internet research this afternoon. “Mainly, our goal should be to not insult him.”