Hero Duty (20 page)

The old man was deaf, his voice loud. Brodie caught the gist of the conversation. The man had flown bombers in the Second World War. He’d been a hero. Still was, even if he was frail now. A steward had helped him onto the plane and steadied him down the aisle. The old pilot had accepted the assistance, thanked him loudly and now chatted happily with the young pilot called to meet him.

Seventy years ago he’d been young, strong and independent. Now he needed help. So he buried his pride and accepted it. That was a quiet kind of courage.

The kind Jessica had.

Brodie jerked, banged his knee, and swore. ‘Sorry.’

The middle-aged lady beside him gave him an evil look. He could only imagine the feelings of the person in front of him, whose seat he’d bumped.

He folded his arms and brooded on his situation. He should have stayed in Jardin Bay. The restless feelings he’d been having — that small-town life and a car restoration business wouldn’t be enough — were simply a natural stage in adapting to life outside the army. Hell, his brother, Zane, was looking forward to finishing with the surfing world-champion lifestyle and settling back in Jardin Bay. If he could do it, Brodie could.

But Zane wouldn’t be giving up his old life completely. He’d open a surfing school, stay connected.

More importantly, Zane would have his fiancée, Molly, with him.

So maybe Brodie wouldn’t open a car restoration business. He hadn’t decided definitely on it. He could retrain as a paramedic. Not a doctor.

Jessica had believed he could be a doctor. She’d believed he could do anything.

‘Fuck.’

If his next-seat neighbour glared, Brodie didn’t notice. He was mid-epiphany.

Jessica believed he could do anything. She’d trusted him enough to make love with him. With bastards like her dad and stepbrother in her life, it was a miracle she could trust at all.

She hadn’t been trying to buy him with her money. Offering him the challenge of setting up and running her charity had been her ultimate gift of trust.

Her family had used and abused her to control the money. She had surmounted that betrayal to risk her heart again. She’d trusted him.

He unbuckled his seatbelt and half stood before realising he couldn’t get the plane to turn around. It was carrying him relentlessly away from Jessica. He subsided, tipping his head back to stare at the ceiling of the cabin.

He was a moron. Worse. He’d gotten so tangled up in his own pride, the bitterness that he could offer her nothing, that he’d attacked her. Savaged her. She’d made her offer while he was coming down from the high of their night together to the depths of the mess he’d made of his life. He didn’t even have a job. She was a doctor with billions of dollars.

And none of that had mattered to Jessica. Like the stewardess and pilot who saw the truth in the elderly ex-bomber pilot and respected him for it, she had looked deeper than Brodie’s current rudderless state and trusted him.

He’d betrayed her trust.

It cut deep.

Through the chaos of Sonia’s sexual harassment case he’d held onto his honour and remained a man he could respect. For how he’d treated Jessica, he wanted to punch his own head in.

When he landed in Perth, he’d catch a plane back to Sydney. He had to talk to Jessica. He had to apologise to her and he had to ask her, beg her, to be braver than anyone he’d ever met and take a risk on him again. Physical risks were one thing. You could learn to rejoice in them, to get addicted to the adrenaline high. Emotional risks went deeper.

He’d have to tear open his own heart and give Jessica whatever she needed. Anything, as long as she listened to him. As long as she let him in.

***

The hotel room bed was vast. Jessica lay in the middle. Three more people could lay either side of her. She was alone, cold, curled tight. Midnight had come and gone. She’d left a bedside light on for comfort. She’d turned off her phone after Derek’s call.

He hated her.

Derek would parade her through the media as a nymphomaniac, a rich girl Lolita, a screw up. Her professional life would be ruined. She couldn’t stand in front of a lecture hall knowing that a fair proportion of the students would be wondering what she’d be like in bed. And her colleagues wouldn’t ever forget. There would be no career advancement.

Would her friends believe her or Derek?

She’d feel dirty for the rest of her life, and yet, it was all lies. She’d already showered twice.

There was no way out.

The hotel phone beside the bed rang. ‘Dr Trove, my apologies. I hope I didn’t wake you.’

‘No.’

The voice had the professional, detached politeness of a hotel concierge. Besides, no one else had the number.

‘There is a gentleman at the desk.’

Derek
. She straightened sharply, wrapping her free arm around herself. ‘I — ’

‘A Mr Carlton.’

‘Brodie.’

‘Yes, Dr Trove, that was the name he gave. Brodie Carlton.’

Did she want to see him? She couldn’t withstand anything more and this was what expensive hotels bought you: someone to keep people away. ‘Send him up. Thank you.’

‘Thank you, Dr Trove.’

She pushed the bed covers back and rummaged for clothes. She would not meet Brodie in her silk shortie pyjamas.

She managed jeans and a sweater, but her hair a mess when the doorbell rang.

‘Courage,’ she whispered, and opened the door.

Jessica stood in the doorway, hanging onto the handle of the door, searching Brodie’s face.

He looked tired. His shoulders were as straight as ever and his eyes steady, but there were lines at their corners and deeper lines bracketed his mouth.

She stepped back.

‘Thanks for letting me in.’ He dropped his duffel bag inside the door. ‘I was a bigger jerk than your stepbrother.’

She choked on the sob that forced itself up her throat.

‘Jessica.’ He tried to draw her in against the warmth and strength of him.

She wrenched free.

‘I’m sorry.’ He followed her into the sitting room.

The curtains were open, framing the city lights. She looked out at the impersonal view. It was safer than looking at Brodie. ‘How did you find me?’

‘I had a mate track your credit card.’

‘Follow the money,’ she said low. ‘You can always find Jessica Trove by the stink of money.’

‘You’re more than your money. A lot more. So much more that I was scared I couldn’t measure up.’

Shocked, she turned to him.

He waited metres away, giving her space. Giving her the right to choose. ‘You’re the bravest person I’ve met. People betray you, then you risk trusting again. You have all the temptations of limitless wealth, yet you’ve created an honest life where you work for everything you have.’ He talked over her protest. ‘You earned your PhD. You offered me your trust, Jessica, and I got mixed up in my head. I knew I didn’t measure up, couldn’t offer you anything as valuable as you, and I put that on you. I failed you.’

‘Please, Brodie. Don’t.’

His face went hard, determined. ‘I want your trust, Jessica. I want you. If you give me a second chance I won’t screw up again. Not like this. Never again.’

He was killing her. He had his warrior face on. He would fight, fight and die for her. But behind the implacable determination was emotion, fierce and true.

Back eleven years, before her Mum and Pops died, she remembered that light in the eyes. It was love. And she knew it found an echo in her own breaking heart.

Love counted no cost. It gave till its last breath for the one who was loved.

Derek was about to drag her into the mud. He’d destroy her. But she could save Brodie.

‘I think you should go,’ she whispered.

‘Let me stay.’

She shuddered.

He took a quick step forward. Given the chance, he’d wrap her in his care. He was a protector. ‘If not as your lover, than as the bodyguard you wanted. Your meeting with Joe is in the morning.’

‘You can’t go,’ she said high and panicked.

His eyes narrowed.

‘You have to leave. Leave now. I should sleep. The meeting…’ She came away from the window, skirting him, aiming for the door.

He looped an arm around her waist and pulled her against him. ‘I was wrong. This is about more than what I did to you.’

She shook her head, burrowing into his shoulder.

‘Love.’ His breath against her ear. ‘Trust me, whatever this is, I’ll sort it.’

‘N-not this.’

His arms squeezed.

Idiot. She’d admitted that there was something. She sought for damage control. ‘Please, respect my right to deal with it alone.’

‘Alone’ was the wrong word choice.

‘I can’t,’ he said. ‘You’re not alone anymore.’

The tears that she’d held in all day burst out. Her body shook with the force of them. She shook Brodie who gathered her closer and closer, finally sitting in an armchair and wrapping her up, holding her together.

As her tears subsided to sniffles, he shifted her so he could stand and grab the tissue box from the far side table. She blew her nose to the sounds of water filling the kettle. He made two cups of tea while she disposed of the tissues, but kept the box near.

Then he returned them to the security of the armchair, with her sitting on his lap.

She hadn’t a hope in hell of keeping the secret of Derek’s threat.

His body went rigid around her as she described Derek’s theft of corporate secrets and his blackmail attempt.

‘Brodie, promise me you won’t do anything that Derek can use against you.’ She fisted a handful of his T-shirt and tried to shake the promise out of him. ‘Nothing criminal. You can’t punch him.’

‘How about exterminating him? He’s vermin.’

‘He is and he wants to hurt me.’ She’d failed to keep the secret from Brodie, but she had a last, desperate hope. ‘He’d use you as a weapon against me if he learned how much I l like you. Please, go back to Jardin Bay and when this is all over — ’

‘No.’

‘It’s the sensible thing to do. It would make things easier for me.’

‘Bullshit.’

‘Brodie.’

‘I am staying with you. We’re going to fight.’

‘Derek fights dirty.’

‘And I’m trained to fight till the other guy’s death.’

She caught her breath. He touched his forehead to hers and drew back to look into her eyes. ‘I won’t do anything stupid, love. But Derek’s got to learn that no one hurts you. Never again.’

‘You can’t promise that.’

‘I can.’ He eased off his intensity, maybe noticing that she was freaked. ‘Am I forgiven for being a jerk?’

‘Um.’ She looked at herself curled in his lap. ‘Yes.’

‘Good.’ He kissed her, slow, deep and full of promise.

She melted.

‘I want to make love to you,’ he said between kisses.

‘Yes.’

He stopped in the doorway to the bedroom.

It was a strange sensation, to be kissing someone whose lips froze. Jessica opened her eyes.

He’d gotten her T-shirt off on the short journey from the armchair and his hands cupped her breast and her hip. But his gaze was on the bed. ‘It’s huge. I think I have performance anxiety.’

She laughed, bumping her head against his shoulder.

‘Like that, darling.’ He swept her hair away from her throat and traced the fall of it down the line of her spine. ‘I like hearing you laugh.’

Then he proceeded to show her that he was very far from experiencing performance anxiety. He coaxed her onto the giant bed and worshipped her body. Last night they’d shared a joyous adventure, learning one another. Tonight, after the day from hell, each touch meant so much more. They had nearly lost this.

Brodie rolled her on top of him.

‘No.’

His hands on her hips stilled.

‘I want your weight,’ she said. She craved it. The security. ‘All your power. I want — ’

He flipped them and entered her in one relentless thrust, pulling back to do it again and again. He used his strength, as he hadn’t before, driving them both up the bed to the stack of cushions.

She used herself up, matching his passion. She flung everything into the storm. There was no place to hide and she didn’t want to. She had to reach that place with him. Nothing else mattered. Nothing else existed.

He roared his satisfaction as her climax triggered his, so close, so very close, that it blurred into shared triumph and they rode the pleasure.

***

Brodie pulled his jeans on as he watched Jessica sleeping in the monster bed. Light from the sitting room gave enough illumination for him to appreciate the full curves of her breasts, the flat stomach and flaring hips. Her endless legs sprawled in unconscious invitation. Just so had he left her and he wanted to crawl back in, fit himself to her, and sleep.

Life as a soldier had taught him to sleep when he could. He’d napped on the plane. Now, he needed to protect Jessica.

He closed the bedroom door so as not to wake her, found his phone in the sitting room and called Alex, the friend who’d tracked her credit card. Alex was a private investigator. A good one. And ex-army.

‘I know it’s late,’ Brodie said when Alex answered. ‘I need a rush job. I need Portia Trove found before daylight.’ He gave what details he had. ‘And then I want everything, and I mean everything, back to his childhood, that you can dig up on Derek Amberly. Money will have buried it deep, but there’s got to be something there. A bastard doesn’t become one overnight. He works up to it.’

‘I’ll call you.’ Alex hung up.

Brodie went back to bed.

The call came at 4:55am. His mobile phone vibrated beneath the pillow. He untangled himself from Jessica with swift caution and padded naked out into the sitting room. ‘Yeah?’

‘Derek Amberly has a juvenile record. Dates from before his mum married into the big time. I found her, too. I’m emailing you what I’ve got and I’ll keep digging.’

‘It’s urgent, Alex.’

‘I got that. Check your email.’ Disconnect.

‘Brodie?’ Jessica stood wearing his T-shirt just inside the sitting room. The shirt hit her upper thighs. She looked good in his shirt — except for the worry in her face.