Heller's Revenge (6 page)

I laughed and blew a raspberry.
“Research on what? Boobs?”

“It would have been a very
educational experience,” piped up Niq with a scholarly pretension
that had me laughing and reaching for his hair again. He ducked,
batting my hand away.

“You’re too young to be educated
about things like that.”

“God, Tilly!” He rolled his eyes
and heaved a dramatic sigh. “I’m not a kid, I’m
fourteen
.”

“Yeah, like I said – you’re too
young.” I turned to Daniel. “And when did you suddenly become
interested in boobs?” Long-term abuse by a number of men as a child
and selling himself to men as a teenager had left Daniel sexually
ambivalent, not really sure if he was gay or not, and not confident
enough to find out one way or the other.

He pulled a face. “Yuck! Never!
That was for Niq’s benefit. I wanted to see if we could spot you in
the crowd. See if you were goofing off or picking your nose or
scratching your butt.”

My heart sank, but I kept my
smile fixed in place. “And did you catch me up to anything
interesting?”

He started laughing. “Oh baby,
we struck gold! Solid gold!”

“Show me.” I reluctantly pushed
my way between Niq and Sid so I could see the computer screen.

They had called up YouTube and
the footage they’d been watching obviously had come from one of the
guest’s phones. Sid courteously started the clip at the beginning
for me and when I saw what it showed, I groaned so loudly and with
such heartfelt dismay, that the five males with me all openly
laughed, even Clive.

“No! I don’t believe this,” I
moaned, even though I was standing there watching it.

The clip was titled ‘
The
City’s Foxiest Fighter?
’ and featured footage of me in the
Chain Gang set, running from the stage over to the door to deal
with Frankie. And because the music from the show was very loud,
there was no way to hear what Frankie and I were saying to each
other. And that, combined with the poor quality of the footage, did
make it seem as if I subdued a crazed man after a violent struggle.
All by myself. And while the mask did an adequate job at hiding my
identity, it did nothing to hide the skimpiness of that damn
lingerie.

I decided to brazen it out.
“That’s not me, you turkeys. Can’t you see that’s one of the
models? And besides, she doesn’t look
anything
like me.
You’re just confused because of the mask.”

“Matilda, my sweet,” Heller
reproved gently, shaking his head at my pathetic attempt at
subterfuge. “I would recognise your lips out of ten million other
women’s, masked or not.” And the sizzling look he shot me made my
stomach flip over. “That is you in the clip.”

Well, there was no point trying
to deny it any further. They weren’t buying what I was trying to
sell. I sank onto a spare chair and drank a huge gulp of my wine,
watching a particularly unflattering view of me struggling with
Frankie fill the screen.

“Oh man! Did they have to zoom
in so closely?” I grumbled.

“Jesus! Look at the size of your
arse in those undies! It’s bloody
huge
!” teased Daniel.

I turned to give him a
well-deserved thumping, but he jumped to his feet, backing away
from me, laughing. I carefully placed my wine on the table and
rose, advancing on him.

“Take that back, Daniel.”

He laughed once more. “Can’t
take back the truth, Tilly.”

I suddenly lunged at him, but he
was nimble on his feet and dodged me. So I chased him around the
rooftop three times, then down four flights of stairs, then back up
the stairs again to the rooftop, both of us puffing and giggling. I
managed to corner him and after a bout of intense tickling, he
unwillingly capitulated.

“Say you’re sorry,” I
insisted.

“I’m sorry you have such a big
arse.”

“
Daniel!
”

“Okay, okay. I’m sorry. Really.
I mean it. Honestly,” he lied.

“No, that’s not enough,” I
ruled. “You have to do it publicly.”

He groaned. “Don’t make me do
that.”

“I’ll tell you what to say.”

I pushed him into the middle of
the rooftop and whispered in his ear. He rolled his eyes, but
reluctantly complied.

“Hear ye! Hear ye!” he shouted,
garnering the immediate attention of Heller, Niq and the twins.
Giggling, I whispered in his ear again.

“I am guilty of the heinous sin
of slandering the . . .” He sighed.

“Say it,” I warned.

“I am guilty of the heinous sin
of slandering the peachy perfection of Tilly Chalmers’ butt.”

I whispered again.

“In fact, her butt was quite
spectacular in that lingerie and completely –” He shot me a look.
“I’m not saying that.”

“Say it.”

Another extravagant sigh. “Her
butt was completely bootylicious. Thank you for listening.”

I applauded, laughing and hugged
him tightly, messing up his hair for good measure.

He pushed me away, complaining.
“God, you’re such a pain, Tilly.”

I laughed again and went to
retrieve my wine, shutting down the laptop, insisting that nobody
ever look at that clip again and that we all just forget about
it.

Niq was playing pool against
Clive and I ambled over to watch. I put him off his shot by
ruffling his hair again, such a terrible habit of mine. He
protested loudly, claiming clear interference when Clive wouldn’t
let him replay the shot. Clive shook his head unemotionally, arms
folded across his massive chest. There was no budging him. He was a
hard man in every way. He and his twin, Sid, were the spitting
image of the Kray brothers, channelling the whole 1950s London
gangster-look, right down to the black quiffs and spiffy suits. Niq
glared at me for making him lose the shot and I smiled at him
sheepishly, fleeing to the hot tub.

I rolled up my cargo pants and
sat on the edge of the hot tub, dangling my feet in the warm water,
sipping wine and exchanging pleasantries with Sid, who was sitting
in the tub. He was the friendlier and chattier of the twins by far.
Heller surprised me by sliding his arms around me and kissing me on
the top of my head. Unsure of what I’d done to deserve that little
treat, I twisted around to look up at him, quizzical. He leaned
down to kiss me again, lightly on my lips this time.

“Definitely the city’s foxiest
fighter,” he whispered in my ear, and I somehow managed to swallow
the big lump that suddenly clogged my throat.

He pulled away from me, but with
his sharp blue eyes fixed on mine, he stripped off his t-shirt and
jeans, revealing a pair of body-hugging boxers that I was fairly
sure were actually his underwear, not swimwear. I goggled.
Oh
my, those boxers!
At my behest he now reluctantly wore clothes
in the hot tub despite his preference for nudity, but I have to say
in any case, those boxers were tight enough to leave little to the
imagination. Not that I needed my imagination, having seen Heller
in
all
his impressive glory before, and believe me, it
wasn’t a sight a woman would ever forget. As he stepped into the
tub, I was further mesmerised by the rippling muscles on his
smooth, tanned chest and back, and knew that it wasn’t going to be
Will that I dreamt about tonight.

Sid, who was Heller’s
surveillance manager, entertained us both with a story about a
surveillance job he’d had that morning involving a husband and
wife. Each suspected the other of infidelity, and each had
simultaneously hired competing surveillance firms to spy on the
other. The commotion when the
Heller’s
team and the one from
Select Security, Heller’s bitter rival, turned up at the same time
to claim the same covert watching spot had alerted the husband and
wife to each other’s activities and resulted in an all-out brawl
between all parties.

“So what did our team do?” I
asked, laughing as I swooshed my legs in the lovely water.

“Cut their losses and legged it.
Turns out neither were cheating on the other anyway. Luckily we
received our fee in advance.”

“Kind of turns you off marriage,
doesn’t it?” I observed, screwing up my nose – not that there was
much prospect of me getting married in the near future anyway. I
sipped some more wine. The combination of alcohol and all the sex
I’d had that evening made me agreeably relaxed and the warm water
felt nice on my legs. I decided that it would be lovely to be in
the hot tub but was too lazy to go and get changed, so I just
dropped down in the water next to Heller, still wearing my uniform.
He looked at me with amused despair and I smiled at him
contentedly.

“What’s the matter? It’ll dry
out,” I said, my tone nonchalant.

“Hope you didn’t have anything
in your pockets.”

“Oh shit! My phone!” I scrabbled
through each of the cargo pants’ many pockets to pull out my
mobile, soaked to the core and no longer operational. “Oops,” I
blushed.

Heller shook his head at me
again and Daniel came over to retrieve the drowned phone from me,
laughing.

“Maybe it will be okay when it
dries out?” I suggested optimistically. Heller rolled his eyes and
slipped his arm around me, hauling me in close and kissing the top
of my head once more.

“You are an idiot,” he said
affectionately. I threw my legs over his lap, slithered my arms
around his waist and leaned against his chest. To be honest, it was
probably my favourite place in the world to be, and I loved placing
my ear against his chest and listening to his steady heartbeat.

“But I’m a loveable idiot, at
least,” I smiled, looking up at him.

“A sweet, loveable idiot,” he
agreed. “Lucky for you that you are. It’s the only thing that keeps
you employed here sometimes.”

I was happy about him buying me
another phone, but wasn’t too happy about him calling me sweet. He
rarely meets sweet people in his line of work, so he can’t really
make a fair comparison. And I’m not too keen to be classified as
sweet in the first place. It’s kind of boring. I’d much rather be
smoking hot. Yeah, okay, I know that’s unrealistic – I’m very tall
(180 centimetres) with long dark brown wavy hair, big light brown
eyes, clear pale skin, a trim figure and a great rack, but that’s
about it. Not even close to smoking hot territory. Angelina Jolie
and Megan Fox had no competition from me.

He sighed patiently. “I’m going
to have to buy you another phone now. You’re turning out to be an
expensive pet for me to keep.”

“Don’t be so mean,” I protested
and settled down against him. With the warmth of the water and his
gentle stroking of my hair, I fell completely asleep, only waking
minutes (hours?) later when he stirred to get out. I sat up
blinking and yawning.

“Time for bed,” he ordered.
Everyone else trooped off obediently, used to following his orders
after living with him for years. As I stood up, a waterfall
cascaded from my uniform and I tried valiantly to wring out some
water. Wet cargo pants are damn heavy, and I dragged one leg after
the other out of the tub. It was no good, I was going to have to
take the wet clothes off or create a flood on my way downstairs to
my flat on the fourth floor. Heller handed me a towel and stood and
watched impassively as I struggled out of my dripping clothes. The
cargo pants were clinging to my legs and I was having great
difficulty removing them.

“You don’t have to watch,” I
snapped crossly.

“But I’m enjoying it,” he
smiled. It wasn’t the first time he’d seen me in my panties, so I
wasn’t too concerned. Although when I thought about it, they were
soaking wet and I could only hope they hadn’t turned
transparent.

“At least come and help me.”

I had become tangled up in the
wet pants, and was hopping around on one foot, desperately trying
to pull my other leg out of the clinging pants. He grasped my arm
gently, propelled me to the step of the hot tub and pushed me down.
He found the waistband of the pants and dragged them off forcefully
in one go. He then took the towel off my shoulder, stood me up and
proceeded to dry me off vigorously.

“Ow!” I protested. “Don’t be so
rough.”

“I don’t get that complaint from
women very often.”

“That’s not what I’ve
heard.”

He stopped drying and we looked
at each other for an uncomfortable moment, remembering what had
happened some months ago. He’d briefly been a suspect in a homicide
investigation after some very rough sex with the victim hours
before she was murdered. I usually took great care to avoid the
subject because I didn’t want to remind him about the threat he had
made about my oldest brother Brian, one of the investigating
detectives. Brian and his partner had deliberately kept
interrogating Heller for hours about the sordid details of his sex
with the victim even though they knew he was innocent.

Heller wasn’t a
forgive-and-forget type of man and he really knew how to hold a
grudge. I worried for Brian’s safety, having witnessed Heller
delivering a violent beating to a creep who’d attacked me, and
heard rumours that he might even have killed a man. But I figured
that if a cop can’t look out for himself, then who in the world
could? And I
had
tried to warn Brian, God knows. He had
dismissed my concerns with contempt, scorning my suggestion that he
apologise to Heller. I’d had to leave it at that and let it go,
seeing that nothing I said would make a difference. But I still
worried.

Heller wrapped the towel around
me and used it to pull me up tight against him, slipping his hands
down my back and running them over my butt.

“Daniel’s very wrong,” he said
softly, with the ghost of a smile. “These are two perfect handfuls.
No man could ask for better.”

I pushed him away, laughing, and
finished drying myself. I bundled myself up in the towel and yawned
hugely. “Do you want to know what happened today?”