Heller’s Decision (23 page)

He stirred and opened his eyes, slowly
stretching his muscles, but not budging from the bed. I loved times
like this when he
displayed signs of being human, lazing in bed instead of
bounding out, instantly alert and all cylinders firing. The night’s
events must have taken more of a toll on him than I’d realised
too.

“
Good morning, my sweet,” he said, kissing
me gently.

“
Morning.” I hesitated over telling him,
but it was only a dream, after all. “I had a dream last
night.”

He smiled indulgently. “Not another dream
about Vikings?”

“
No
. This dream was about you and me.”

“Wasn’t the Viking dream about us?”

“Who knows?”

“
Was
this new dream sexy?”

“
No.” He seemed disappointed. “I don’t know
whether to tell you about it or not.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know. It was a very personal dream.
I’m not sure what it means.”

“
Just tell me about it, Matilda. You
weren’t trying to kill me in it, were you?”

I smiled. “Of course not.” I paused, a bit
embarrassed. “We got married in my dream.” His eyebrows shot up.
“In the registry office where Clarrie and Kitty were married. It
was incredibly detailed. My family and friends were all there, and
so were all the men. I wore a lovely, but simple, cream dress. Not
really a wedding dress, but more of an evening dress. I had my hair
done up with some beautiful white flowers entwined in it. Dixie was
my maid-of-honour, and for some reason you had Farrell as your best
man. You wore a dark gray suit with a blue shirt that matched your
eyes.”

“
Did you run away at the last minute?” he
teased.

“No.”

“
Did I?”

“
No! I stayed and you stayed and we got
married in front of everyone. I can still remember how it felt to
be holding your hands and looking into your eyes, making my vows,
and to hear you making yours to me. And signing the papers
afterwards.” I laughed self-deprecatingly. “It feels like a memory,
not a dream. I had to check my finger when I woke up to see if I
wore a ring or not. Isn’t that strange?”

“
I knew you secretly wanted to marry me,”
he smiled, teasing me again. “But fast-forward to the honeymoon.
That’s the part I’m interested in.”

“Stop it! Well, we did have a honeymoon,
actually. We went to an island resort for a few weeks.”

“You said there were no steamy bits.”

“I lied. Of course it was steamy.”

He moved closer to me. “Did I do this on our
honeymoon?” And he did something exceedingly naughty to me.

“
Heller! Stop it.
”

“Or this?” Something equally naughty.

“
Heller,” I gasped in protest, but rather
more weakly this time. I didn’t really want him to stop, it felt so
good. Too occupied to talk for a while, we didn’t return to my
dream until we’d finished. He lay on his side, arm propping up his
head, tracing around my lips with his finger.

“
Obviously, your dream is not a memory. I
think I’d remember marrying you.”

“
Hmm, maybe it’s a premonition?”

“
Of you marrying?” I noticed he didn’t say
‘
us’.

“Who knows?”

“Someone needs to make an honest woman of
you,” he teased.

“
But not you?” A tinge of sadness crept
into my voice.

He rolled out of bed. “As you say, my
sweet, who knows?”

I reclined back on my pillow and looked up
at him. “Heller, are you already married?”

He leaned over the bed to kiss me again.
“That’s one question I’m happy to answer. No, I’m not.”

“Really?”

“Really. Nor have I ever been.”

“Nor do you ever want to be?”

But he’d answered one question and clearly
wasn’t going to answer any more. He yanked the covers off me. “Out
of bed, lazy. Don’t you have a job to go to?”

“
I’m taking a sick day. I deserve it. Trent
can survive without me for one day.”

“You’re not sick.”

“I’m tired and traumatised. That’s good
enough for me.”

“What will you do?”

“I’ll take Dixie to visit Bick. I promised
her.”

“
I’m going to visit the clients to make
sure they’re okay after their ordeal. Why don’t you come with me
and I’ll drive Dixie to the hospital. We can spend the day together
and you know I always feel better when you’re not out there by
yourself.”

“I won’t be by myself. I’d have Dixie with
me.”

“
That hardly fills me with any confidence,”
he said drily. “You’re coming with me.”

I opened my mouth to argue, but he held up
his index finger in warning. And that was all he needed to do to
have me closing my mouth again, my words unsaid.

We
rushed through a shared breakfast and a shared shower. I
rang Trent to advise him of my pretend illness and then Dixie to
fill her in on our plans. Curious, I trotted down to the security
section to check the damage from the previous evening. A couple of
the men looked somewhat worse for wear after their exertions. We
slapped hands and I gave them the good news about Bick. We chatted
about the fire. Nobody mentioned the burnt bodies and I didn’t know
who already knew about it, so kept quiet myself.

“
That wasn’t the worst effort I’ve ever
seen,” Clive conceded to me, his voice its usual gravelly flatness.
“Securing the clients and removing Barnes from the scene. Not
bad.”

And I guess that was about as much praise
as I could ever expect from him
in a lifetime. He unexpectedly slapped me on the back, in
what he probably thought was a friendly, congratulatory manner, but
which sent me stumbling forward. I tripped over one of the men’s
bloody-huge sized boots into a different man. He staggered
backwards, falling across a desk and I toppled on to him in a very
compromising position.

And
naturally, Heller took that moment to walk through the
door. The poor man trapped underneath me scrabbled to push me off,
standing red-faced and nervous, watching Heller with wary eyes – as
did everyone in the room, all holding their breath.

“
I assume there’s an innocent explanation
for that?” he asked mildly, his eyes unmoving from the unfortunate
man. And having been at the pointy end of one of those glacial
stares, I knew what the poor guy was going through.

“I fell on him by accident,” I rushed to
explain, earning myself a grateful glance from the man.

Heller sighed. “Of course you did.” He
nodded his head to Clive. “A word for a moment? And Matilda, you
can go down to my car.”

As I obediently walked to the door,
Farrell hesitantly approached
me, mindful of the curious stares of the other men.

“
You okay?” he asked gruffly in a low
voice, looking away as if he didn’t care one way or
another.

“
Yes, thanks, Hugh,” I said coolly, bending
down unnecessarily to retie the shoelace on my runner. It didn’t
need it. I flashed him a significant look as I stood up which he
reciprocated. Heller wouldn’t have been the only one worried about
me the previous night, unsure where I was or what was happening to
me.

“
Boss nearly hit the roof when we located
your vehicle and you weren’t there. And then we noticed the bullet
hole. That made him really angry. It must have come
close.”

“
Yeah, it did. I tried to drive off, and
the guy showed us he wasn’t messing around.”

“Nasty bunch of fuckers.”

“
You’re not wrong, Hugh. Are the clients
okay?”

“
Hope so, Chalmers. They were a mess last
night. I had to stay with them for a while.”

“
Heller and I are going to see them today.
To make sure they’re all right.”

He nodded and turned away as Heller left
Clive’s office, shooting us both a sharp glance. He took the time
to say a few words to each of the men involved in the action last
night, leaving behind a trail of beaming men, always proud of any
personal thanks from their hardarse boss.

“Ready, Matilda?”

“
Sure.”

We picked up Dixie, who waited on the
footpath outside her dump of an apartment block. She bounced into
the back seat and I wasn’t sure if it was the thought of seeing
Bick or Heller again that made her so excited.

“
Hello, Heller,” she trilled in a voice so
unnaturally sweet I instantly piled on another two kilograms.
“Thank you
so
much for
driving me to the hospital.”

Oh brother!
I turned around to roll my eyes at her.
She gave me the finger, which was much more like the Dixie I
knew.

“
Hello, Dixie,” Heller replied, looking in
the rear view mirror at her.

“How’s work, Dix?” I asked.

She groaned, dropping her new saccharine
personality in a blink. It must have been killing her to maintain
for even that short period. “Fucking awful. The only gig I’ve had
for two weeks was as a jury member in an episode of
Objection
Overruled
.” A locally
made weekly show, it was ostensibly about a busy courtroom, but in
reality was merely an excuse for showing as much sex and nudity as
the station could get away with at that time slot. Who’d have
thought judges were so randy?

“Did you get to speak?”

“
Yes,” she said glumly. “That’s what I got
to say – ‘yes’. One fucking word. Big deal. And I had to say it
with the rest of the jury.
And
they hardly gave me any screen time. I think you did the
right thing to find another job, Tils.” She thought for a moment.
“I don’t suppose you have any jobs going right now, do you,
Heller?”

“
Dixie, the thought of my business having
both Matilda and you as employees frightens me intensely,” he
said.

“
Aw. Oh well. I guess acting has its bright
side too. I did get to shag the guy who played the head juror at
the back of the set one night after filming. He was pretty
cute.”

“You won’t be shagging anyone else now you’re
with Bick.”

She took entirely far too long to answer
that for my liking and then was a little vague. “I wouldn’t say
I’m
with
him. He’s
fun, but we’ve only been out a couple of times. It’s not like we’re
married or anything.”

My heart sank. I had a horrible
feeling
a nice guy was
going to have his heart trampled on by my promiscuous best friend.
Maybe I should say something to him? But then that wouldn’t be
loyal to Dixie who I’d known since school. Oh God, why did I ever
introduce them? They’ll probably revoke my public service award for
doing so.

At the hospital, Heller went to sort out
some paperwork for Bick’s private hospital room, which his business
was paying for, while Dixie and I visited Bick. He was sitting up
in bed, a bit pale and less ebullient than normal, a dressing
covering a wound over his right eye.

His face lit up when he saw us. “Tilly!
Dixie! What a lovely surprise.” I went over, kissed him gently on
his forehead and hugged him. I was so happy to see he would
recover.

“
I thought you were dead, Bick. You were
lying on the floor, totally motionless, face down, arms and legs
thrown out. I thought you’d been shot. It was awful.”

“Farrell told me you dragged me out of that
building by yourself in the middle of the fighting. You saved my
life.”

“
Don’t be silly. One of the men would have
gone back for you. And maybe those PRON men might not have been
able to abduct you all with me there as well.”

He shook his head firmly. “Nah, wouldn’t
have made any difference. They had guns and were organised. We
didn’t stand a chance. They knocked me out cold in the carpark.
That made it easier to take the clients. And they did it right out
in the open, just like when they snatched you. Audacious as
anything. Actually, I’m glad you weren’t there. It meant at least
someone worrying about us straight away. Did you find my wallet? I
managed to drop it in the struggle, hoping you’d find it and
realise something was wrong.”

“
I did find it. It was good thinking,
because I knew something was immediately wrong.”

Dixie
butted in then, having impatiently waited her turn. “Don’t
let the door hit you on the way out, Tilly,” she said
bluntly.

That stung a little.
“Okay,” I huffed. “I can take a hint. See
you both later.”

And as I closed the door, I heard Bick saying
to Dixie, “I can’t believe you came to visit me,” sounding as happy
as I’d ever heard him.

Heller
, not one for observing social niceties at the best of
times, didn’t care if they wanted privacy. He strode straight into
Bick’s room after finishing the paperwork, interrupting the
tongue-locked couple, not caring for their discomfiture (not that
Dixie could ever be embarrassed by anything). He visited with Bick
for five minutes, before abruptly indicating that we had to leave –
a man without time to waste in life.

“
They were getting along well,” commented
Heller with a smile as he drove.