Unsuitable (30 page)

She
wondered if it was Reece’s original plan or he’d changed it up. It was too loud
to talk in here, the music pulsing, a raw sex throbbing beat she could feel in
her chest. He kept her caged by his body while they watched the dance floor. It
didn’t matter how rough it got, she’d be protected without him having to do a
thing. Surprisingly, he wasn’t the biggest man in the place, but he was the
calmest by far. He wasn’t drinking and she felt no particular tension in him,
other than sexual. But that was enough to cope with. When he put his hand to
the back of her neck and rubbed his thumb up towards her hairline, she had to
lock her joints or fall. When he used his mouth on the same path she almost
went to her knees.

On
the dance floor he brought her against his body and used his hands on her in a
way more suited to the privacy of her kitchen counter than a public place. There
was no mistake he was marking her out as his territory as his hands went to
places that would’ve gotten them separated or thrown out anywhere else. Here
they fit right in, even when his fingers went under her dress to find the top
of her stockings, to pluck the stay on the belt, to cop a quick feel of her
butt cheek and the three bows strung across her sacrum.

He
held her eyes the whole time. Daring her to stop him. If he’d dragged her dress
off over her head she’d have let him. She was drunk, drugged, mindless over his
touch, over his presence in her life. She encouraged him, giving him free
access, pulling his head down to kiss him with outrageous desperation and only
their height difference stopped her grinding on him.

When
the song changed, the new one bringing a crowd of additional people on to the
floor, Reece quit moving and simply widened his stance to wrap around her so
they could kiss easier, longer, feel each other in the throb of the music and
the shift and flow of the dancers around them. He sweated through his shirt,
her scalp got damp under her hair. All that mattered was the pulse of the music
and the electric tension between them.

He
put his lips to her ear. “I can’t hear anything but your heart in my chest.”

She
was sober enough to be hit hard by his words. Sensible enough to know they
needed to cool off. It was so loud in here she might have missed his words but
she’d understood them in her bones.

She
kissed him, her own heart back-flipping, somersaulting, ping-ponging around in
her chest cavity. She could take this giant man with his giant love and suck
him dry, leave him lost and less than what he might be if he could follow his
dreams of family, but she couldn’t be his family. Not emotionally, not
practically, not physically. She’d played at it, like Mia played hospital, but
she was going to have to grow up.

He
found her a stool at the bar. Mostly by intimidating someone else into moving. He
did it in such a friendly way, the man backed off smiling. It was wicked and Reece
knew it and neither of them cared. He got them water with ice, without the
bartender making a thing of it. His shirt had lost its crisp, plus a button. His
hair was tousled from her hands and he kept his on her, soothing, holding,
possessing.

They
had an hour before they were due home. This was the Cinderella moment before
the real world came rushing back at them, before she had to find a way to
manage her feelings for him, to manage his expectations of her.

She
wasn’t aware of the potential for trouble until Reece moved in between her and
the cluster of people to her right. She saw the punch though, saw rather than
heard the bottle smash on the bar top. Saw Reece move again to take a flying arm,
to disable a man and hold another a bay. He moved so efficiently it was all
over, security stepping in before she was fully aware of what went down. He was
back at her side, a nod across heads to the bouncer before she understood how
close she came to being skittled in the drunken skirmish.

She
clutched his shirt. “Hello hero.”

He
grunted. “Fuckwits,” and accepted a beer the barman put in front of him.

He
had enough time to finish it, they had enough time to get back to the car and
get home before the Cinderella hour was over. She was glad of Reece’s arm to
lean on as they left the bar; she should’ve worn lower heels, but the stilettos
got her closer to being eye to eye, lip to lip with him.

They’d
barely made it to the top of the laneway the bar opened out onto before the
shouting started. Her ears were ringing from the music still, this noise seemed
to come at her from a great distance away. Reece’s words came at her crisp and
sharp as early morning cold.

“Stay
behind me. No matter what happens. Don’t run. When I tell you, call the cops.” There
were six of them. She recognised two from the fight inside the bar before Reece
blocked her view.

“Come
on, Little John. Let’s see what you got in a fair fight.”

The
menace in that voice, it cleared the noise fog in her ears, the hard male laughter
cleared the Cinderella dream from her head. They were being attacked. She
pulled out her phone. She didn’t need to wait to call the police.

“Don’t
do anything stupid, bitch.” The bottle shattered on the ground to her feet, the
liquid wetting her legs. She dropped her phone and Reece turned to her. Crouching
to pick up the handset she saw a man come at Reece and yelled his name, but the
man was on his back before she registered Reece moving again.

“Walk
away,” Reece said. He held both hands out and away from his body. “You don’t
want this.” The man down wasn’t getting up, but he was moaning. “If you bring
it I will make you sorry.”

Another
man shaped up. “Who do you think you are, King Shit?”

“Go
back inside. You don’t want to do this.”

She
straightened fumbling her phone, the screen a spider web, when the second man
came at Reece. He put that man down as well, one punch. Same with the third. He
stood like a boxer, knees bent, loose, cool, ready. His aim was deadly; the
sound of smacked skin and pained grunts, a body falling, made Audrey flinch. She
didn’t want to look away to dial. She stared at Reece and could only see a
different man.

The
last three men came at him together. Reece had time to ditch his suit coat. He didn’t
wait for them to reach him, he walked into it. She looked down, the handset was
dead, the first man was getting up. They could kill Reece. Reece might kill
them. She screamed.

He
fought the men with fists, elbows and feet, he opened cuts on their faces and the
sound was sickening, blood flicked through the air and splattered the closest
wall. He danced out of their way, or absorbed what they threw at him. He didn’t
make a sound, but they did, yelling foul abuse, shouting in pain, calling to
each other. On and on it went and Audrey could do nothing but watch, and hope
Reece would knock these men down and they’d stop getting up.

When
he put the last man down for the last time he pointed to him and said, “Stay the
fuck down, mate.” Then he went amongst the men, a hand to the necks of the two
not moving, not moaning. He seemed satisfied everyone was staying down and no
one was dead. He turned to her. His shirt was ripped open, the knee and pocket
on his trousers torn, both hands were bleeding, his knuckles torn up, but he
smiled.

“It’s
all over. Etta is gonna be mad we’re late. Look at this shirt.”

He
held a hand out and all she could do was stare at it. Her gentle giant had
beaten six guys to a heap of groaning, bleeding, unconscious, and in one case
weeping, in need of an ambulance.

“My
phone is broken.”

She
didn’t understand how he’d had done this. Reece made pancakes and spaghetti. He
folded washing and vacuumed. He taught Mia to swim and played pretend games
with her. He built fairy palaces out of bits of furniture and Christmas lights
and he read storybooks in character voices. She didn’t know who this man was.

“It’s
okay,” he pointed overhead. “That’s a security camera.”

“Oi.”

They
both turned, and Audrey gasped as two more men came into the laneway, then she
saw their black shirts, the bar logo on the chest.

“What
the fuck happened here?”

Reece
stepped forward. “Tried to jump me.”

“You
take them all out?”

Reece
bent down, pulled a wallet out of the pocket of an unconscious guy. It was
stuffed with money.

“Dude,
you took six guys out,” the bouncer’s eyes slid to Audrey then away, “by
yourself?”

His
partner was talking to someone through his ear tech. He asked for an ambulance
and the police.

Reece
took two fifties out of the wallet and tossed it to the bouncer. “Bastards can
pay for my parking and a new shirt.” Then he went for his own wallet put the
bills in and took something out. He stepped over the pile of arms and legs and
held it over his head. He was showing the camera his driver’s license. “Cops
can find me if they want me.”

“Wait.
Who are you, Chuck Norris? What the fuck happened here?”

Reece
put his foot against a body and rolled it over. “This is the guy who broke the
bottle. Don’t think he liked me interfering.”

The
guy’s face was a mass of red bruised skin and blood smears. His nose clearly
broken. He moaned and flailed an arm.

The
other bouncer said, “Is everyone still breathing?” He pointed at Audrey. “Do
you need medical attention? You’re bleeding.”

Did
she? Bleeding? She looked down, there was blood on her leg. “That’s not mine.”

Reece
was there, with a torn piece of shirt. “Yeah, baby, it is from the bottle. It’s
not bad.” He spat on the cotton and wiped at her leg. “It’s only a scratch.” He
called over his shoulder, “We’re fine.” Then he took her hand and stood.

He
led her out of the laneway while the bouncers got the attackers roused. None of
them made any move to get higher than their knees. Two were still unconscious.

She
went with him back to the car. He talked the whole way but she had no idea what
he was saying. She kept seeing the calm and composed way he’d beaten six men
into the ground. She did not understand how that was possible. It wasn’t simply
adrenaline. It wasn’t being a hero, or using his size. He’d only had two beers.
He’d been brutally systematic and methodically deadly, this man who cut
sandwiches into animal shapes for Mia, and once let her draw tattoos all over
his arms that took days to wash off.

He
paid for their parking and they settled in the car.

He
rang Etta. “I’m sorry we’re late. We’re on the way now. Twenty minutes. I said
we were sorry. Yes, I understand the concept of overtime. Etta. Etta. Etta. Shit,
all right. All right.”

He
drove. She stopped seeing blood and hearing men shout. She stopped being
shocked and acted. “What was that?”

He
glanced at her. “Are you okay?”

He’d
probably asked her that a dozen different ways on the walk to the car. “I am
not okay. I want answers. I don’t understand what happened.”

“I’m
a big guy. I can handle myself.”

She
swivelled to face him. “You were a machine. You don’t get that way by being a
nanny or by some miracle when you’re threatened.”

“No,
baby. I leaned to do that. But I don’t do it anymore.”

She
shivered, but she wasn’t cold. “You learned to do it, to beat people up. Explain
what that means.”

“Let’s
get home and get some antiseptic on your leg and we can talk about it with a
cup of tea, okay?”

“I
don’t want a fucking cup of tea.”

He
flinched.

Six
men coming at him with the intention of hurting him hadn’t made him twitch, but
her use of a swear word did.

“Pull
over. Call Etta and tell her we need more time. As long as it takes you to tell
me what you just did. The damn bouncers didn’t believe what they saw. You need
to make me understand how the man I trust my daughter with can beat six men
bloody and unconscious and walk away without a scratch on him.”

He
turned into a side street to find a place to park. Audrey looked at her hand
resting on the door moulding. It was perfectly still, an ordinary arm lying
there, but on the inside she couldn’t stop herself shaking. If her teeth
started chattering it would not be a surprise.

Reece
sat still, his hands resting on his thighs. He wasn’t the least bothered by his
knuckles. She’d thought the scars on them came from his days bricklaying.

“I
haven’t always been like I am now.” He kept his face averted. He didn’t want
this. He wasn’t getting an option. He talked or she got a taxi home.

“There
was a time when I was angry and thought the world owed me because I’d had to
cook for a family instead of hang out at the skate park. I was a selfish little
prick, acting out. I finished school and didn’t know what I wanted to do,
except drink, get high and get laid. Polly and I moved into a dive together. We
didn’t know what we were going to do with our lives. We did labouring jobs to
get the cash for rent and to buy booze and weed, meth, Es. We messed around
with women. Polly’s dad hassled us to get it together. He never quit on us. We
were dickheads, young and dumb as cement. One night two guys jumped me. I was so
high I was flying. I beat them both till I thought I’d killed them.” He took a
breath, slow and uneasy. “I liked it.”