Hero Duty (15 page)

Now there was a guy you’d scrape off your boots.

With those two in her life, it was a wonder Jessica could bring herself to trust any man. That she could, did trust him, said good things about her Pops. A man could make millions, even billions of dollars, and leave a lesser legacy than what her Pops had given Jessica. She had the courage to hope and, although she didn’t believe it, to fight.

Brodie raised his water bottle, saluting the man’s memory and his own granddad’s grumpy, stubborn, loving presence. Both men had made a difference in children’s lives.

It made him think what difference he’d make; what his legacy would be.

He drank some water. Strange what turning thirty, quitting the army, stopping and just thinking did to a guy. You got philosophical.

This morning, the physical challenge of the assault course had worked for Jessica. She’d stopped thinking and just done. There was a freedom in that.

Once, it would have eaten at him that others finished the course ahead of him. But he’d gotten over that in the army. Being a sergeant had been about everyone finishing; a different measure of success.

The real shocker had been the scenario in the warehouse. He hadn’t needed it, hadn’t wanted it. The other blokes’ taunts couldn’t have mattered less. It was a mock-up of the tough world he’d survived. That world no longer fit him. It would never be forgotten, but proving himself in it no longer defined him.

He liked being fit and strong. The martial arts kept him focussed and controlled. He’d continue that, but for the rest…saying no to mercenary work was the right choice. His world was more than that. His world was —

‘It is a stunning view.’ Jessica walked quietly onto the terrace and came to stand at the railing near him. ‘I couldn’t appreciate it before. Too scared. Too twisted up. It’s pretty like a postcard.’

Her face was turned from him, examining the view.

He brought his feet down from the rail. ‘What’s wrong?’ The tautness of her spine told him something was. She’d been tired but relaxed before.

A beat of silence. He waited.

‘I guess I’m saying good-bye,’ she said.

Jessica followed Mae to the sitting room. The small room was warm in shades of pink and cream that picked out the coloured threads in the Persian carpet. Expensive china lined the glass-fronted cabinets on the far wall. Portia didn’t collect china. Her interior designer had bought the lot, flattering Portia that it gave the room an old-money, understated elegance.

The reproduction Queen Anne chairs were hideously uncomfortable.

‘Mrs Trove packed her own bags and left at eleven o’clock this morning,’ Mae said once Jessica had refused a cup of tea, coffee and something stronger.

The offer of something stronger had her braced. Mae wasn’t in the habit of encouraging her to drink.

‘Derek left at nine this morning.’

‘He stayed the night?’ Jessica wasn’t arguing Mae’s news. She was shocked. She’d expected Derek to retreat to his own apartment. Maybe she’d underestimated his emotional pain. Anabel had just broken their engagement. Maybe he hadn’t been able to face a night alone in the apartment they’d shared.

‘Derek spent the night in your father’s study.’

Jessica’s sympathy for her stepbrother died like flowers in a winter frost. ‘All night?’

‘You may see for yourself.’ But Mae didn’t move from her seat at right angles to Jessica’s own. Whatever she had to say, it was more than reporting Derek’s actions.

‘Tell me.’

Mae took a deep breath. ‘Steve and I are leaving. We’ve received an offer of employment and we’ve decided to accept.’ Discreetly, she didn’t share who the offer was from. Her secrecy was part of working for the seriously wealthy.

‘Oh, Mae.’ If the Sydney mansion had a heart it was this woman, with her kindness and competence.

‘Louis and the other staff are also considering new employment. I think they will take their chances.’

Jessica nodded, fighting her own sense of loss. Mae was in all of the few good, life-affirming memories she had of the house.

Mae took Jessica’s hand and squeezed. ‘We shall stay friends.’

‘Yes.’ Jessica sniffed, blinking rapidly. ‘Please.’

‘You were a lost little girl when I met you.’

At fifteen, Jessica had been taller than Mae.

‘And now you are a beautiful woman with a man who values you. You will get through this terrible time and be happy. Yes?’

‘Yes.’ What else could Jessica say? Although each time someone mistook her and Brodie for a real couple, it hurt something in her soul. Regret, perhaps.

‘We’ll stay in touch.’ Mae smiled and stood, clearly relieved to have tackled the difficult conversation.

Jessica stood, too, and hugged her. ‘Love you, Mae.’

‘Honey.’ Mae hugged her back, then ran out of the room, dabbing at her eyes with a white handkerchief.

Jessica stared at the pattern in the Persian rug, then at the china display and finally at the neatly manicured garden outside. She inhaled the stale perfume scent of the air.

Whatever Portia chose for herself, Jessica would never return to this house.

***

‘It’s over.’ Jessica spread her hands wide on the terrace railing as she told Brodie about the latest development.

‘Are you saying you don’t need me anymore?’ he asked quietly.

‘What?’ She spun around.

He sat alert and watchful on a steel and canvas chair. ‘You said you guessed this was good-bye.’

‘To the house.’ She was bewildered at the interpretation he’d put on her words. ‘Mae and her husband, Steve, are leaving. They have another job. All the staff are lining up other work. It’s the end of an era. I hated this house so much as a kid, and now, I’m never coming back. Never.’

‘Ah.’ He leaned his elbows on his knees. ‘Right.’

‘I hated and feared this view for so long.’ She waved her hand at the beautiful harbour behind her. ‘And that was its own kind of tie. I’m free of it. If Portia wants to stay in the house, she can. Otherwise…’ She mimed throwing the house into the sea. ‘Her revelations were a drastic cure for my phobia of open water, but it’s done. It’s habit that makes me brace before I look at it, but the tense, stifled feeling is gone. I can breathe.’

‘That’s good.’

‘Yeah.’ She smiled.

Brodie’s gaze snagged on her mouth, then his eyes flicked to hers. ‘Happiness suits you.’

Her smile dimmed, turned wistful. ‘It’s not so much happiness as a brief moment of freedom. There’s still so much to sort out. The meeting with Joe on Monday, thinking about Vera’s briefing, deciding what to do with everything. I can’t run Numbat. It’s too much.’

He caught her hand and pulled her onto his lap.

The move shocked her. She didn’t cuddle and she hadn’t thought Brodie did, yet she fitted perfectly.

‘Enjoy the moment,’ he said. ‘You can be Chicken Little tomorrow.’

‘The sky isn’t falling.’

‘Nope,’ he agreed. ‘So this is time out.’

‘We had that this morning.’

He bumped heads gently with her. ‘Time out doesn’t have to include mud.’

She laughed and snuggled close.

The view was sensational. After ten years visiting the house, it was as if she saw it for the first time. Yachts tacked across the bay.

She thought of her home in Canberra. It was nice and looked out over a park, but there wasn’t this sense of space. She recalled the vast freedom of Augusta in south-west Australia, where Pops had had his holiday home. Brodie’s hometown of Jardin Bay had that same coastal sense of freedom.

It could be hers. She could live anywhere. The small amount of tutoring work she had in Canberra wasn’t enough to tie her there, and nor were her friends — and that was on her. She’d closed down, not trusting people enough to share herself with them. Only Brodie had cut through. Instantly.

‘I don’t want to live in Sydney,’ she said.

No answer.

She laced her fingers through Brodie’s as they rested at her waist. ‘Do you know what I like about you?’

‘My sexy body?’

‘No!’ Her head jerked up. She met his eyes.

He was laughing silently. ‘A man can hope.’

‘Of course you’re gorgeous.’ She tried to make it jokey, but the way the gold in his hazel eyes darkened, she figured she sounded more breathless than humorous. ‘I like that when I’m thinking out loud, you don’t rush in with solutions. You’re bossy in a way that looks out for me, but doesn’t dominate.’

‘So BDSM doesn’t work for you?’

For an instant, her brain scrambled. Whatever response she’d anticipated from him, it hadn’t been sexual teasing. ‘I’ve never…you wouldn’t…have you ever?’

He laughed, shifted her in his lap and covered her breast with a large hand.

She blinked at the bold move.

‘What do you think?’ he asked.

‘I think you’re too naturally dominant to need to play games.’

He began to slide his hand away from her breast. ‘Good call, babe.’

She caught his hand and held it there. Her breasts felt hyper-sensitive; one squashed against his chest, the other pressing into his palm.

Their gazes clashed.

‘You’ve got to know I’m interested.’ His mouth was a whisper from hers. ‘But I shouldn’t have started this. Not here, not now.’

Portia’s home. Mae could walk in on them, any time. Derek, too.

Derek.

Jessica sighed and slipped off Brodie’s lap. ‘Mae says Derek spent the night in Dad’s study. I should go see what he was up to.’

‘Expect the worst.’

‘Well, you’re a ray of sunshine.’ She walked back inside, conscious of him behind her.

‘One of nature’s little sunbeams,’ he said smugly.

She gave him a disbelieving stare.

He had to reach out and stop her walking into a wall. ‘What? You don’t think I’m a sunbeam?’

‘I think you’ve had too much sun.’

He closed the distance between them and whispered in her ear. ‘Not too much sun. Too much frustration.’ A lingering pat to her bottom and he let a decorous space open up between them again.

Hot and cold. The attraction ran between them. Sometimes he’d deny it, refuse it. Just now, unexpectedly, he was open to it. Pursuing it. She could call his mixed messages teasing, except that she understood. Attraction this strong knocked you off balance, especially when it was mutual.

Hell, she had no idea how to deal with it.

Her dad’s study was on the first floor, looking over the harbour.

Jessica opened the door and wrinkled her nose at the stink of alcohol that drifted out.

‘Vodka,’ Brodie said as he sniffed an empty glass and replaced it on the desk.

Splash marks marred the shining mahogany of the desk. A half-used notebook sat beside the computer, two torn pages crumpled beside it. A pen had rolled to the floor.

The computer was in sleep mode. She woke it, but it only showed the uninformative desktop, not what Derek had been looking at.

Brodie squatted beside her, studying the drawers of the imposing desk. ‘Scratches.’

‘A bit more than that.’ Evidently Derek hadn’t bothered searching for a key. He’d used something to lever open the locked bottom drawer. ‘Why?’

‘He was drunk.’ Brodie shrugged and straightened. ‘Or he thought there was something in there.’

‘He could have asked Portia for the key.’ The wanton destruction unnerved her.

‘Would she have given it to him?’

‘Derek’s her son.’

‘Last night she looked like a woman facing some unpleasant truths. Don’t know she was in the mood to humour Derek’s taste for revenge.’

She stared at him, appalled. ‘Revenge?’

‘A weak man who’s not getting what he counted on, who’s losing what he took for granted, he’s not going to blame himself.’

‘Revenge,’ she whispered, getting it.

‘So what could he have taken?’

She looked around helplessly. ‘I hardly ever came in here. Sometimes Dad brought work home, but mostly he was proud of leaving the office at the office. He boasted about it. I’m betting it meant overtime for Vera, dealing with what he wouldn’t.’

‘What about the computer?’ Brodie prompted. ‘It will show which documents were open most recently.’

‘Right.’ She shifted the mouse and scanned the list of recent documents. ‘They haven’t been opened in days. Derek mustn’t have used the computer.’

‘Those are documents stored on the hard drive. What about ones on Numbat’s system?’

Her stomach muscles clenched. ‘Passwords. You know how people write them down and keep them near the computer.’

‘Not smart.’

‘No, but if no one thought to cancel Dad’s security pass, then it and the passwords could get Derek into the system. As chairman, Dad would have had access to everything.’

‘I doubt that.’

Brodie’s calm tone jerked her out of panicking. She stared at him.

‘It’s a fact of life in hierarchies. People protect their turf. Joe and his vice-presidents wouldn’t have wanted Ian to be able to snoop into everything. Phone Vera, let her know what’s happened. If she worries, then we’ll contact Joe. We don’t even know if Derek did hack the system.’

‘I’ll phone Vera.’ She stopped. ‘It’s the weekend.’

‘Call her.’

It wasn’t just about respecting Vera’s personal life and time off. Jessica flinched from the thought of sharing with anyone what Derek had done. When people behaved badly, you kept it in the family. Except, was Derek family?

‘Vera’s on your side. Trust her with this.’

‘Okay.’ Shelving the emotional analysis for later, she phoned Vera, apologised for interrupting her weekend and explained Derek’s break-in and possible hack of Numbat’s system.

‘Impossible,’ Vera said briskly. ‘Not to sound unfeeling, but I contacted Security to cancel Ian’s access to the building and the computer system the day he died.’

‘Oh.’

‘Derek may have tried to access it, but he wouldn’t have gotten anywhere. Interesting, though, that he tried.’ There was a hint of a question, an invitation to confide.

Jessica glanced at Brodie.

He leaned against the desk, his thigh close to her hand on the mouse. Given how loudly Vera’s voice was coming through the mobile, he heard her implied question and nodded.