Heller's Girlfriend (42 page)

That was a huge concession from
him. He was a busy, driven man running a business. He didn’t take
holidays or days off. He didn’t really do leisure. So two or three
days out of his schedule just to be with me showed me how much he
valued our relationship.

I squeezed his hand and nodded
assent, suddenly looking forward to it.

He took care of the bill while I
visited the bathroom. When I came out and we left, he was smiling
to himself.

“What’s so funny?” I asked.

“The waiter hoped that my wife
and I both enjoyed our lunch,” he said, slipping his arm around me.
“Did you enjoy it, Mrs Heller?”

“I did, Mr Heller, thank you.
What a generous husband you are.”

“You do know that I’ll be
insisting on my conjugal rights tonight.”

“Stop it! You know very well
that men no longer have conjugal rights. It’s not the nineteenth
century any more.”

“Well, that’s not fair. I didn’t
even get to have any, and now they’ve been taken away from me. It’s
the only reason I married you in the first place.”

I rolled my eyes at him, and we
made our way back home.

At the end of the trial, we
learned that Patricia was found guilty of manslaughter by the jury
and sentenced to prison for ten years. She didn’t receive the full
sentence because the prosecution couldn’t prove intent or
pre-meditation, and the judge also took into account her past
history of domestic abuse. Her quiet, meek demeanour also played
well in her favour. I felt very sorry for her for having to go to
prison for so long, but Corella told me that she’d accepted the
verdict with the same ethereal manner she’d taken in everything
since her husband’s death.

I sincerely hoped that her
mental health would be monitored in prison.

Chapter 31

True to his word, as soon as
Daniel returned home and we knew for sure that he was going to
fully recover, Heller took me away for a few days to relax and
recover. Before we left, I fussed around Daniel, giving the twins
and Niq strict instructions about what he could and couldn’t do and
what to feed him and when he needed to sleep and what exercises he
needed to do. By the end of my lengthy spiel, during which there
was much eye rolling, groaning and complaining, even Daniel was
pushing me towards his door to make me leave, closing it in my
face.

I immediately opened the door
again, and said, “Oh, and one more thing –” Only to be bombarded
with cushions thrown at me and met with a chorus of, “
just go
away!
”

As Heller and I drove up the
coast to where all the beach resorts were located, I was terrified
for an instant that he was going to take me to the place where Will
had proposed to me all those many months ago. I breathed a secret
sigh of relief as he kept driving past that particular resort, and
turned to him with delighted disbelief when he turned into the
premier, opulent, absolute beachfront resort that I had only ever
dreamed of being able to afford to visit.

“Heller, you’re kidding me?
We’re staying here?” I demanded, unable to keep the excitement from
my face and voice.

“We are,” he replied solemnly. I
sat back in the seat, thrilled at the thought of spending three
nights here. I remained silent through the respectful and discreet
valet parking, reception and baggage handling services, drinking in
the extravagantly luxurious foyer with big eyes. I almost laughed
when the staff politely referred to me as Mrs Heller, but I later
found out that Heller had booked us in as Mr and Mrs Heller.

Hmm, I think he was becoming a
little too used to that.

“Come on, Mrs Heller,” he
teased, and ushered me with a hand behind my back to follow the
porter to our room. He tipped generously, and the porter shut the
door with deferential quietness after carefully depositing our
fairly minimal luggage in the suite. After he’d gone, we were left
staring at each other.

“Well, Mrs Heller,” he said.

“Well, Mr Heller.”

“What do you want to do
first?”

“Jump on the bed? That’s what I
always did when I was a kid. Whenever my family and I stayed to a
motel.”

He smiled. “I thought instead
perhaps we could head to the beach. I would love a swim in the
surf.”

“Sure, but can I explore the
suite first? Please?”

“You can do whatever you want
to, my sweet.”

And so I very happily spent the
next fifteen minutes discovering every nook and cranny, every
provision, every luxury, while he watched in amusement. It was a
beautifully appointed suite with direct access to the beach from a
small patio leading from the living area. Everything enchanted me,
until I reached the bedroom. There was only one bedroom, and in
that bedroom there was only one bed. Granted, it was a generously
proportioned bed, but the fact remained that there was only one of
them.

“Where are you sleeping?” I
asked, my eyebrows raised in query.

“Here. With you.”

“Do I have a say in that?”

He pondered for a moment. “Not
really.”

I hadn’t shared a bed with him
since the whole Vanessa/Violet affair. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to
or not. Maybe I might be sleeping on the lounge.

After I’d satisfied my curiosity
about every minute detail of our suite, we changed into our bathers
and grabbed our beach towels, making our way to the patrolled beach
at the front of the resort. Heller took great care to make sure I
was fully covered in sunscreen, but laughingly waved away my
attempt to do the same to him. He proclaimed that he didn’t need it
because he was used to the sun, as if he didn’t come from a
Scandinavian country and I was some underground cave-dwelling
hermit who’d suddenly surfaced on earth for the first time in her
life, instead of living all my years in one of the sunniest places
in the world.

Obviously with my hand still
bandaged, I wasn’t able to do much more than paddle at the edge of
the ocean. But Heller took full advantage of the opportunity and
spent an hour and a half bodysurfing, appearing to enjoy every
second. I had long returned to my towel by then and spent the time
alternatively reading the trashy novel I’d brought with me and
scanning the water for Heller. When I could see he was okay, I went
back to my book.

By the time he’d finished
swimming, I was sitting up people-watching, my book cast aside. He
attracted a lot of attention from the other beach goers as he made
his way up the sand to me. Given he was an extraordinarily
noticeable person when fully clothed, I guess it shouldn’t have
been a surprise that he caused such a stir emerging from the surf,
dripping wet and wearing only a small pair of tight black boxer
swimmers, chest bare. I lay down swiftly on my towel and closed my
eyes, not wanting him to know that I’d been watching him.
Therefore, I was taken completely by surprise when he plonked
himself down on top of my legs and ran his hands through his hair,
flicking very cold seawater onto my nicely sun-heated body.

“Heller!” I screeched in
protest, wiping the water from my face, his wet pants dripping all
over my legs. He smiled down at me mischievously, then quickly
assumed a full push-up position over me, looking down. I was
trapped beneath him.

“Kiss me, Matilda.”

“No. I don’t want to.”

He started doing push-ups over
me, kissing me lightly on the lips every time he came down close to
the ground.

“Kiss me.”

“No.”

He kissed me a few more times,
moving up and down, up and down. “I’m not going to stop until you
kiss me back,” he threatened.

I could only imagine the
attention he garnered from the beach crowd now, but I knew he’d be
oblivious to it all. I tossed up making him continue doing push-ups
until he collapsed in agony, but I suspected that might take hours.
I didn’t want to kiss him, but I caved in and gave him a quick peck
on the lips as he came down again. He rolled over onto his towel
and smiled at me in satisfaction.

“Nobody likes a show-off, you
know,” I censured.

He smiled again, even more
smugly, before lying down on his back to dry himself in the sun,
closing his eyes. And it may have been my imagination, but it
seemed as though an inordinate amount of women came strolling past
our part of the beach, brazenly turning their heads towards us to
snatch a glance at Heller’s recumbent body. Okay, I’ll concede that
it was only natural that he attracted a lot of attention – you
didn’t encounter someone like him in life very often. But
geez!
If you’re going to perv at a man when he was with
another woman, at least be more discreet about it! I couldn’t
imagine how it would feel to be married to him for real and having
to put up with that level of attention from other women. It would
surely drive any woman insane after a while. Or make her start
feeling very insecure.

He finally woke from his brief
slumber and rolled over to face me, not even noticing the other
women around, his arm supporting his head, his fingers gently
touching my arm.

“Your skin is too hot. Let’s go
before you are sunburned,” he said.

While he showered, I perused the
dining options before deciding on the hotel’s famous seafood
restaurant. This part of the country was renowned for its fresh
seafood and I knew that the restaurant would also be an acceptable
diet choice for him.

We shared a lovely dinner, then
sat in one of the hotel bars for a few hours, listening to a
pianist and singer belting out soppy, broken-heart tunes that would
normally have had me reaching for a bucket, but which instead made
me want to reach for my tissues. I guess I wasn’t over feeling
sorry for myself quite yet.

Back at the suite I eyed the
lounge and compared it to the comfort of the top-quality bed,
unsurprisingly deciding on the bed.

We lay on our sides, facing each
other and looking into each other’s eyes in the moonlight that
streamed in from the open door onto the balcony. The continual
sound of the ocean was soothing and relaxing. Heller stroked my
face.

“I wasn’t there when you needed
me. I let you down. So many times. I can’t forgive myself for
that,” he said softly.

I was silent for a while, but
I’d thought about it a lot. “It’s not your job to look after
me.”

“Yes, it is. There’s nothing
more important to me than your welfare. I let myself be distracted
by someone else and I took my eye off you.”

“You can’t spend your life
keeping an eye on me.”

“Why not? It seems like a good
way to spend my life. Much better than what I was doing before I
met you, which was just thinking about myself. I like looking after
you. You’re very important.”

“I’m not important,” I said
quietly, and I believed that.

“Yes, you are. You’re very
important to Daniel and Niq. And you’re very important to me. You
mean so much to me, my sweet. And no matter what I do or who I’m
with, that will never change.”

I was silent for a while. “You
mean a lot to me too, Heller.” And then, suddenly, I wanted to
touch him again.

As if sensing that, he hugged me
and then kissed me, and then kissed me again and again, moving
closer to me, his arm and leg thrown over my body. And we slept
entwined.

When I woke the next morning I
was alone. I dozed on and off for a while until Heller returned,
wearing a t-shirt and running shorts, a patina of sweat on his
face. He’d been for a long run on the beach, and I felt slightly
guilty for my laziness. He flopped on the bed, still breathing
heavily.

“Want to give me a hug?” he
teased, smothering me with his sweaty body.

“
Eww
, get off!” I
screeched, pushing at his body with my good hand. He gave me a
damp, sweaty kiss, and threw himself back on the bed laughing
softly. “You smell bad.”

“It’s a very manly smell. Most
women love it.”

“Most women didn’t just have
their face rubbed in your armpit.”

He took the hint and went to
shower. While he did, I dozed again. And yes, I really was that
lazy when given the choice. He threw himself back on the bed
wearing one of the hotel’s fluffy robes, still damp, but smelling
much better. We chatted for a while and eventually ordered
breakfast, taking a long time to get moving; well, I was taking a
long time anyway.

The day passed peacefully. We
pottered, we shopped, we dined, we returned to the beach again. We
both spent a heavenly hour at the hotel’s spa being pummelled and
pampered, then I cheered Heller on as he played on its nine-hole
golf course, after giving up trying to play with one hand myself.
What we conspicuously didn’t do was talk about anything that had
happened recently or about our relationship. I was ready to talk,
but didn’t want to spoil the nice time we were having. So instead I
dragged him to the hotel’s cinema to watch a new-release movie with
me.

“I can’t believe the day has
gone,” he said in bemusement as evening fell. “We didn’t achieve
anything today.”

I smiled. “We had a good time.
Sometimes life is just about having fun. Not everything has to be
about business and making money.”

“Hmm,” he said, as if not
convinced.

“And we spent lots of time
together.”

“I liked that part,” he smiled,
leaning down to kiss me.

That night, as he held me
tightly in his arms, I had a really vivid dream.

It was the dark ages. A young
woman and man lived in a small hut in a tiny village. They had been
recently married and were very much in love. One day she complained
because he was often away from home fighting, not leaving enough
time for him to lie with her and give her a child. He laughed when
she said that, stating that there was time soon enough.

But there wasn’t.