The Billionaire of Coral Bay Read online

  Whoa...

  A decade ago, he’d abseiled face-first down a cliff for sport—fast. The suck of his unprepared guts had been the same that day as the moment Mila’s thick dark lashes lifted just now to reveal what they hid. Classic Celtic green. Not notable on their own, perhaps, but bloody amazing against the richness of her unblemished brown skin. Her respective grandparents had certainly left her a magnetising genetic legacy.

  He used the last of his air replying. ‘You’re a walking billboard for cultural diversity.’

  She glanced away, her mocha skin darkening, and he could breathe again. But it wasn’t some coy affectation on her part. She looked genuinely distressed—though she was skilled at hiding it.

  Fortunately, he was more skilled at reading people.

  ‘The riches of the land and sea up here have always drawn people from around the world,’ she murmured. ‘I’m the end result.’

  They reached her modest four-wheel drive, emblazoned with government logos, halfway down the beach she’d first emerged from, all golden and glittery.

  ‘Is that why you stay?’ he asked. ‘Because of the riches?’

  She looked genuinely horrified at the thought as she unlocked the vehicle and swung her long sandy legs in. ‘Not in the sense you mean. My work is here. My family is here. My heart is here.’

  And clearly she wore that heart on the sleeve of her Parks Department uniform.

  Rich climbed in after her and gave a little inward sigh. Sailing north on the Portus had been seven kinds of awesome. All the space and quiet and air he needed wrapped up in black leather and oiled deck timber. He’d even unwound a little. But there was something about driving... Four wheels firm on asphalt. Owning the road.

  Literally, in this case.

  At least for the next few months. Longer, if he got his way.

  ‘Is that why you’re here?’ she asked him, though it looked as if she had to summon up a fair bit of courage to do it. ‘Drawn by the riches?’

  If he was going to spend the day with her he wasn’t going to be able to avoid the question for long. Might as well get in front of it.

  ‘I’m here to find out everything I can about the area. I have...business interests up here. I’d like to go in fully informed.’

  Her penetrating gaze left him and turned back to the road, leaving only thinned lips in its wake.

  He’d disappointed her.

  ‘The others wanted to know a bit about the history of Coral Bay.’ She almost sighed. ‘Do you?’

  It was hard not to smile at her not so subtle angling. He was probably supposed to say What others? and she was going to tell him how many people had tried and failed to get developments up in this region. Maybe he was even supposed to be deterred by that.

  Despite Mila’s amateurish subterfuge, he played along. A few friendly overtures wouldn’t go amiss. Even if she didn’t look all that disposed to overtures of any kind—friendly or otherwise. Her job meant she kind of had to.

  He settled into the well-worn fabric. ‘Sure. Take me right back.’

  She couldn’t possibly maintain her coolness once she got stuck into her favourite topic. As long as Mila was talking, he had every excuse to just watch her lips move and her eyes flash with engagement. If nothing else, he could enjoy that.

  She started with the ancient history of the land that they drove through, how this flat coast had been seafloor in the humid time before mammals. Then, a hundred million years later when the oceans were all locked up in a mini ice age and sea levels had retreated lower than they’d ever been, how her mother’s ancestors had walked the shores on the edge of the massive continental drop-off that was now five kilometres out to sea. Many of the fantastical creatures of the Saltwater People’s creation stories might well have been perfectly literal, hauled out of the deep sea trenches even with primitive tools.

  The whole time she talked, Rich watched, entranced. Hiring Mila to be an ambassador for this place was an inspired move on someone’s part. She was passionate and vivid. Totally engaged in what was obviously her favourite topic. She sold it in a way history books couldn’t possibly.

  But the closer she brought him to contemporary times, the more quirks he noticed in her storytelling. At first, he thought it was just the magical language of the tribal stories—evocative, memorable...almost poetic—but then he realised some of the references were too modern to be part of traditional tales.

  ‘Did you just call the inner reef “smug”?’ he interrupted.

  She glanced at him, mid-sentence. Swallowing. ‘Did I?’

  ‘That’s what I heard.’

  Her knuckles whitened on the steering wheel. ‘Are you sure I didn’t say warm? That’s what I meant. Because it’s shallower inside the reef. The sand refracts sunlight and leads to—’ she paused for half a heartbeat ‘—warmer conditions that the coral really thrives in.’

  Her gaze darted around for a moment before she continued and he got the distinct feeling he’d just been lied to.

  Again, though, amateurish.

  This woman could tell one hell of a tale but she would be a sitting duck in one of his boardrooms.

  ‘Ten thousand years from now,’ she was continuing, and he forced himself to attend, ‘those reef areas out there will emerge from the water and form atolls and, eventually, the certainty of earth.’

  He frowned at her augmented storytelling. It didn’t diminish her words particularly but the longer it went on the more overshadowing it became until he stopped listening to what she was saying and found himself only listening to how she said it.

  ‘There are vast gorges at the top of the cape that tourists assume are made purely of cynical rock, but they’re not. They were once reef too, tens of millions of years ago, until they got thrust up above the land by tectonic plate action. The enduring limestone is full of marine fossils.’

  Cynical rock. Certain earth. Enduring limestone. The land seemed alive for Mila Nakano—almost a person, with its own traits—but it didn’t irritate him because it wasn’t an affectation and it didn’t diminish the quality of her information at all. When she called the reef smug he got the sense that she believed it and, because she believed it, it just sounded...possible. If he got to lie about in warm water all day being nibbled free of parasites by a harem of stunning fish he’d be pretty smug too.

  ‘I’d be interested to see those gorges,’ he said, more to spur her on to continue her hyper-descriptive storytelling than anything else. Besides, something like that was just another string in his bow when it came to creating a solid business case for his resort.

  She glanced at him. ‘No time. We would have had to set off much earlier. The four-wheel drive access has been under three metres of curi—’

  She caught herself and he couldn’t help wondering what she’d been about to say.

  ‘Of sea water for weeks. We’d have to go up the eastern side of the cape and come in from the north. It’s a long detour.’

  His disappointment was entirely disproportionate to her refusal—sixty seconds ago he’d had zero interest in fossils or gorges—but he found himself eager to make it happen.

  ‘What if we had a boat?’

  ‘Well, that would be faster, obviously.’ She set her eyes back on the road ahead and then, at this silent expectation, returned them to him. ‘Do you have one?’

  He’d never been prouder to have the Portus lingering offshore. But he wasn’t ready to reveal her just yet. ‘I might be able to get access...’

  Her green gaze narrowed just slightly. ‘Then this afternoon,’ she said. ‘Right now we have other obligations.’

  ‘We do?’

  She hit the indicator even though there were no other road-users for miles around, and turned off the asphalt onto a graded limestone track. Dozens of tyre-tracks marked its dusty white
surface.

  ‘About time you got wet, Mr Grundy.’

  CHAPTER TWO

  BELOW THE SLIGHTLY elevated parking clearing at Five Fingers Bay, the limestone reef stretched out like the splayed digits in the beach’s name. They formed a kind of catwalk, pointing out in five directions to the outer reef beyond the lagoon. Mila led her one down to it and stood on what might have been the Fingers’ exposed rocky wrist.

  ‘I was expecting more Finding Nemo,’ he said, circling to look all around him and sounding as disappointed as the sag of his shoulders, ‘and less Flintstones. Where’s all the sea life?’

  ‘What you want is just out there, Mr Grundy.’

  He followed her finger out beyond the stretch of turquoise lagoon to the place the water darkened off, marking the start of the back reef that kept most predators—and most boats—out, all the way up to those gorges that he wanted to visit.

  ‘Call me Richard,’ he volunteered. ‘Rich.’

  Uh, no. ‘Rich’ was a bit too like friends and—given what he was up here for—even calling them acquaintances was a stretch. Besides, she wasn’t convinced by his sudden attempt at graciousness.

  ‘Richard...’ Mila allowed, conscious that she represented her department. She rummaged in the rucksack she’d dragged from the back seat of the SUV. ‘I have a spare mask and snorkel for you.’

  He stared at them as if they were entirely foreign, but then reached out with a firm hand and took them from her. She took care not to let her fingers brush against his.

  It was always awkward, taking your clothes off in front of a stranger; it was particularly uncomfortable in front of a young, handsome stranger, but Mila turned partly away, shrugged out of her work shorts and shirt and stood in her bikini, fiddling with the adjustment straps on her mask while Richard shed his designer T-shirt and cargo pants.

  She kept her eyes carefully averted, not out of any prudishness but because she always approached new experiences with a moment’s care. She could never tell how something new was going to impact on her and, while she’d hung out with enough divers and surfers to give her some kind of certainty about what senses a half-naked person would trigger—apples for some random guy peeling off his wetsuit, watermelon for a woman pulling hers on—this was a new half-naked man. And a client.

  She watched his benign shadow on the sand until she was sure he’d removed everything he was going to.

  Only then did she turn around.

  Instantly, she was back at the only carnival she’d ever visited, tucking into her first—and last—candyfloss. The light, sticky cloud dissolving into pure sugar on her tongue. The smell of it, the taste of it. That sweet, sweet rush. She craved it instantly. It was so much more intense—and so much more humiliating—than a plain old apples association. But apparently that was what her synaesthesia had decided to associate with a half-naked Richard Grundy.

  The harmless innocence of that scent was totally incompatible with a man she feared was here to exploit the reef. But that was how it went; her associations rarely had any logical connection with their trigger.

  Richard had come prepared with navy board shorts beneath his expensive but casual clothes. They were laced low and loose on his hips yet still managed to fit snugly all the way down his muscular thighs.

  And they weren’t even wet yet.

  Mila filled her lungs slowly and mastered her gaze. He might not be able to read her dazed thoughts but he might well be able to read her face and so she turned back to her rummaging. Had her snorkelling mask always been this fiddly to adjust?

  ‘I only have one set of fins, sorry,’ she said in a rush. ‘Five Fingers is good for drift snorkelling, though, so you can let the water do the work.’

  She set off up the beach a way so that they could let the current carry them back near to their piled up things by the end of the swim. Her slog through sun-soaked sand was accompanied by the high-pitched single note that came with a warmth so everyday that she barely noticed it anymore. When they reached the old reef, she turned seaward and walked into the water without a backward glance—she didn’t need the sugary distraction and she felt certain Richard would follow her in without invitation. They were snorkelling on his dollar, after all.

  ‘So coral’s not a plant?’ Richard asked once they were waist-deep in the electric-blue water of the lagoon.

  She paused and risked another look at him. Prepared this time. ‘It’s an animal. Thousands of tiny animals, actually, living together in the form of elk horns, branches, plates, cabbages—’

  He interrupted her shopping list ramble with the understated impatience of someone whose time really was money. Only the cool water prevented her from blushing. Did she always babble this much with clients? Or did it only feel like babbling in Richard Grundy’s presence?

  ‘So how does a little squishy thing end up becoming rock-hard reef?’ he asked.

  Good. Yes. Focusing on the science kept the candyfloss at bay. Although as soon as he’d said ‘rock-hard’ she’d become disturbingly fixated on the remembered angles of his chest and had to severely discipline her unruly gaze not to follow suit.

  ‘The calcium carbonate in their skeletons. In life, it provides resilience against the sea currents, and in death—’

  She braced on her left leg as she slipped her right into her mono-fin. Then she straightened and tucked her left foot in with it and balanced there on the soft white seafloor. The gentle waves rocked her a little in her rooted spot, just like one of the corals she was describing.

  ‘In death they pile up to form limestone reef,’ he guessed.

  ‘Millions upon millions of them forming reef first, then limestone that weathers into sand, and finally scrubland grows on top of it. We owe a lot to coral, really.’

  Mila took a breath and turned to face him, steadfastly ignoring the smell of carnival. ‘Ready to meet the reef?’

  He glanced out towards the reef break and swallowed hard. It was the first time she’d seen him anything other than supremely confident, verging on arrogant.

  ‘How far out are we going?’

  ‘Not very. That’s the beauty of Coral Bay; the inside reef is right there, the moment you step offshore. The lagoon is narrow but long. We’ll be travelling parallel to the beach, mostly.’

  His body lost some of its rigidity and he took a moment to fit his mask and snorkel before stepping off the sandy ridge after her.

  * * *

  It took no time to get out where the seafloor dropped away enough that they could glide in the cool water two metres above the reef. The moment Mila submerged, the synaesthetic symphony began. It was a mix of the high notes caused by the water rushing over her bare skin and the vast array of sounds and sensations caused by looking down at the natural metropolis below in all its diversity. Far from the flat, gently sloping, sandy sea bottom that people imagined, coral reef towered in places, dropped away in others, just like any urban centre. There were valleys and ridges and little caves from where brightly coloured fish surveyed their personal square metre of territory. Long orange antenna poked out from under a shelf and acted as the early warning system of a perky, pincers-at-the-ready crayfish. Anemones danced smooth and slow on the current, their base firmly tethered to the reef, stinging anything that came close but giving the little fish happily living inside it a free pass in return for its nibbly housekeeping.

  Swimming over the top of it all, peering down through the glassy water, it felt like cruising above an alien metropolis in some kind of silent-running airship—just the sound of her own breathing inside the snorkel, and her myriad synaesthetic associations in her mind’s ear. The occasional colourful little fellow came up to have a closer look at them but mostly the fish just went about their business, adhering to the strict social rules of reef communities, focusing on their eternal search for food, shelter or a mate.
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  Life was pretty straightforward under the surface.

  And it was insanely abundant.

  She glanced at Richard, who didn’t seem to know where to look first. His mask darted from left to right, taking in the coral city ahead of them, looking below them at some particular point. He’d tucked his hands into balls by his hips and she wondered if that was to stop him reaching out and touching the strictly forbidden living fossil.

  She took a breath and flipped gently in the water, barely flexing her mono-fin to effect the move, swimming backwards ahead of him so that she could see if he was doing okay. His mask came up square onto hers and, even in the electric-blue underworld, his eyes still managed to stand out as they locked on hers.

  And he smiled.

  The candyfloss returned with a vengeance. It was almost overpowering in the cloistered underwater confines of her mask. Part of her brain knew it wasn’t real but as far as the other part was concerned she was sucking her air directly from some carnival tent. That was the first smile she’d seen from Richard and it was a doozy, even working around a mouthful of snorkel. It transformed his already handsome face into something really breath-stealing and, right now, she needed all the air she could get!

  She signalled upwards, flicked her fin and was back above the glassy surface within a couple of heartbeats.

  ‘I’ve spent so much time on the water and I had no idea there was so much going on below!’ he said the moment his mouth was free of rubbery snorkel. ‘I mean you know but you don’t...know. You know?’

  This level of inarticulateness wasn’t uncommon for someone seeing the busy reef for the first time—their minds were almost always blown—but it made her feel just a little bit better about how much of a babbler she’d been with him.

  His finless legs had to work much harder than hers to keep him perpendicular to the water and his breath started to grow choppy. ‘It’s so...structured. Almost city-like.’

  Mila smiled. It was so much easier to relate to someone over the reef.

  ‘Coral polyps organise into a stag horn just like a thousand humans organise into a high-rise building. It’s a futuristic city...with hovercraft. Ready for more?’