Were-Devils' Revenge [Were-Devils of Tasmania 2] (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) (3 page)

* * * *

Gabriella didn’t usually go on the evening cruises—one of the junior staff did. But there was something just not right about her new recruits, and she needed to keep an eye on them. Particularly Mitch, who was about as trustworthy as a crocodile. Same damn big eyes and readiness to pounce. The sort of guy she normally had no time for. Yet despite her instincts screaming at her to run, she was drawn to him. Worse still, she was also drawn to his brother, though in a different and less tangible way. What was wrong with her? She hadn’t had a boyfriend or even any interest in one since her fight with Wilson had had half her family wading into her affairs. Now she was interested in two at once.

The evening sail had long been a highlight at Dream-maker. The boat, an ex–America’s Cup contender, could take twenty-five people. They started with champagne, sailed as the sun got low in the sky, and then docked on the other side of the island for oysters and Chablis. There was time for a quick swim before lobster salad and a sail home. A perfect evening.

Gabriella wasn’t much of a sailor. Her cousins were right into it, but in general she liked to be either in the water or on the land. While she loved the feeling of the wind in her hair, making her mass of curls even more unmanageable, rough seas and rocking motions made her queasy. But she knew enough about sailing to recognize immediately that Mitch knew exactly what he was doing. She breathed a little easier. It had occurred to her that they might have lied or at the very least exaggerated their expertise, but she’d rung their referees and they had been nothing less than glowing about their physical prowess.

“But are they safe?” asked Gabriella.

“Well, Mitch likes the girls,” the gym owner had said. “More’s the pity really.”

“Does he harass them?” asked Gabriella pointedly.

The gym guy laughed. “Loves them and leaves them, if you call that harassment. But always leaves them wanting more and with roses and chocolates. I don’t think he ever lies to them.”

Gabriella watched Mitch sailing the boat. There were five single women there in the right age group, the rest older or couples. They gravitated to him like a magnet.

“Can I do that? Please let me,” said the plump girl who looked no older than fifteen, but Gabriella had checked her driver’s license and she was actually twenty.

Mitch grinned at her, for a moment eyes for no one else. The girl all but swooned as he put his arms around her to show her how to manage the ropes. But he also pulled back quickly enough, talking to the others, trying not to show favor.

“Where did you learn to sail?” This one was thirty-five and trying to look ten years younger. Her hand ran down Mitch’s arm, making Gabriella squirm. Mitch was taking it in his stride.

“The Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race.”

That got him a captive audience for the next fifteen minutes. Gabriella went to ensure her older clientele were enjoying themselves.

The boat made good time, a wind picking up as they got out of the sound. Mitch was temporarily off the social scene as he maneuvered the sails. He brought them into dock ahead of schedule.

Gabriella served up the oysters and, to her surprise, found Mitch by her side, uncorking wine and serving with expertise.

“I didn’t see sommelier on the resume,” she said lightly as they went down into the galley.

“There’s a lot more that can’t be put on paper,” said Mitch into her ear.

Shit
. Gabriella felt her knees almost buckle. She had clearly been too long without a man. She turned to the glasses and started rinsing them, careful not to look at Mitch.

“Are you guys planning on sticking around for long?” she asked.

“All depends.”

“Depends on what exactly?”

Mitch put more dirty glasses and plates on the sink. “If we find what we’re looking for.”

Gabriella looked up quickly.
We.
This wasn’t a pick-up line. What did he mean?

Mitch seemed to understand his mistake. “Though I’m a lot easier to please than Mac,” he said with a grin. “Or rather I have my eyes on the hottest woman around, so he’ll have to make do with second best.”

“Just keep your eyes on the job,” said Gabriella, keeping her voice steady.

The kitchen was cramped, and when she turned to look for a dishcloth, Mitch was in the way and showing no inclination to move. She was five foot two in heels, and he towered over her. Right now he was enjoying her cleavage.

“I’m your boss,” she said curtly.

“Great,” said Mitch. “Then this can’t be sexual harassment.”

Gabriella glared at him. He laughed and stepped back, hands in the air. “Okay, it’s good. I’ll wait to be invited.”

“Then you’ll be waiting awhile,” said Gabriella, thinking that inviting him to kiss her sounded a delicious option.

After sorting out dinner, they went up on deck. The evening was cooling, with a gentle breeze taking the edge off the earlier heat. All the guests were on the beach, though the plump girl was eyeing Mitch from a distance.

“Have you always lived here?” asked Mitch easily as he leant over the boat’s side and looked deeper into the forest beyond.

“All my life,” said Gabriella. “My grandparents moved here when my mother was a baby. My father’s family came after the war from Italy.”

“No plans to move?”

“None any time soon,” said Gabriella. “Where are you boys from?”

“South,” said Mitch. He watched the trees rustling and stiffened. There was a good deal of squawking as the fruit bats started to move.

“It’s just the bats,” said Gabriella with a laugh. “We have thousands of them. I’m not sure where they go each night, but I pity anyone with an orchard.”

Mitch seemed to suddenly lose interest. “Looks like they’re heading back,” he said as the plump girl started walking toward the boat. “Shall we get dinner?”

* * * *

Launceston, Tasmania, Australia, 1939

“Angie, can you keep a secret?”

How often had Angel Karlssen heard this? Though the younger sister, she often felt that she was the parent. Larissa was at best irresponsible. At worst, Angel didn’t want to think about. This latest request came when she was already holding more of Larissa’s secrets than she liked, and it worried her. She sensed her normally calm sister was agitated which worried her even more.

“I’m pregnant.”

Oh bugger.
This was much worse than Angel could have dreamt up. At seventeen she was the one who had had a steady boyfriend for a year. Her family wasn’t exactly enamored of him, but they tolerated him. Human was better than what Larissa’s lover was, and no one except Angel knew that Larissa was seeing anyone.

“Does Edmund know?” Angel wasn’t sure how she’d managed to get the words out.

“Not yet.” There was a dreamy quality to Larissa that was almost as worrying as the news she had. How could the same family turn out someone as vague and romantic as Larissa and the practical Charles and Adam? Even Angel, for all of her reading and wondering, had a practical streak that seemed to have completely bypassed Larissa.

“Larissa,” said Angel slowly. “You know this is going to cause big family problems.”

Family problems that were going to make the Montagues and the Capulets look like a small family tiff.

The Karlssens had been amongst the oldest of the white settlers, a hundred years earlier. In Launceston they were almost royalty. They had money, status, and owned the biggest winery and the brewery that kept most of the local men in work. The Karlssens had one of the largest houses on the city’s outskirts, a two-story, elegant verandahed building with an expansive, well-kept garden, complete with maze, lake and boat house, rose-covered gazebo and wisteria over the eaves. Edmund Mortimer on the other hand came from Tarrabah in the northeast forests of the state. A hardworking community, they didn’t take kindly to the interference of outsiders and thought a lot of the city folk were fancying themselves a good deal too much. His family had been there far longer than the Karlssens, but only the Indigenous people with whom they lived side by side with knew just how long.

It had started when the white settlers had first arrived. Angel and Larissa’s great-great-grandfather, Eyolf, had helped build the penal settlement at Port Arthur. It had been his family that had first realized that the Mortimers and the Tarribah group were different. Different in a way that the Karlssens were different to the other white settlers. Eyolf had decided that only one of the groups could survive.

Because they were separated by a hundred miles, the tension simmered and little more. At times the children of Eyolf and Zedakiah, Edmund’s great-great-grandfather, would meet. Social and sport functions, where always the level of competition would escalate until either the meeting would be stopped or the tension would escalate to a fight where blood was drawn and death was in the air. The tension ultimately was over which of the clans was the better.

Before Angel had left school, the fight had still been raging. The Karlssens were the smartest, the Mortimers the strongest. Whatever, thought Angel for the millionth time, had possessed her sister to think she could mate with a Mortimer?

Edmund, in Larissa’s class a year ahead, had been the best-looking guy, and he’d known it. Six foot, broad shoulders, and thick, dark hair with the familial white streak. Compared to their more willowy-built brothers Charles and Adam, he looked all man, yet there had been an appealing lack of confidence about him, probably through frequent chidings from his altogether too-arrogant brothers.

Edgar, one of Edmund’s brothers, had tried to come on to her, and Angel had very swiftly told him where he could go. He was hot, too, but this much trouble Angel didn’t need. Larissa though had swooned. She’d been lost from the first moment Edmund had told her she was the most beautiful girl he had ever seen.

“Charles and Adam will kill him,” said Angel, suddenly feeling panicked. Their father may have been more considered, but she wasn’t sure he still had control of his all too self-confident sons.

“I’m going to marry him.” Larissa sounded more certain, but there was still an air of unreality about her. Neither she nor Edmund were twenty-one, and even if they could get around this, they would need to apply for a marriage license, which took time.

Larissa seemed to read her mind. “You know they expedite marriages for our boys.”

Angel felt her heart sink. She’d forgotten. Or rather wanted to forget. They were all leaving within the next month. To Europe. To fight for England. What could she say? She squashed her qualms and hugged her sister and prayed for her and her unborn child.

Queensland, Present Day

On their first day off, Mac and Mitch organized a light plane to Cairns. They went straight to the docks where there was no shortage of charter boats. The owners of the first one they went to recognized
Lena immediately from the photo in the
Nature’s World
article.

“She and her cousin run an operation called Tropical Tours,” said the man at Cairns’ Tours.
He inclined his head to his left. “But you won’t find them there.”

“Where are they?” Mac was tense and looking around. He didn’t like the feel of this place.

“They’re off on the reef with a group,” was the reply. “Saw them leaving yesterday.”

“How long are they usually out?”

“A week. Be back in six days.”

They were due for a day off then as well, so the Mortimers decided to return then. But not before they asked their charter flight pilot to take them back to Dream-maker via the reef.

“Which part?” asked the pilot. “There’s a lot of reef out there.”

Mac and Mitch had both dived but never on the Great Barrier Reef. They pored over a map, and Mac pointed to two sites that had high dive ratings.

The plane took off and headed northeast. The pilot pointed out the first site. Two dive boats were moored there.

“Go as low as you can,” said Mac, eyes fixed on the boats.

The divers were underwater. Just the tour operators, two on each, were on board, and they waved as the plane circled.

“Well?” asked Mitch.

Mac shook his head.

The pilot gained height and went to the next site. Before they got there Mac saw another boat below.

“That one,” he said.

The pilot didn’t bother asking why. He had probably had stranger requests. They were still well above when Mac sensed it. Though amongst the divers mingling on the deck he could not make anyone out, he knew they were there. As the plane swooped it was the two not waving that drew their attention. A large, broad-shouldered man with short-cropped, white hair pulling the sail and a slim woman whose long, blonde hair was flying in the wind. Their eyes
bored into the Mortimer brothers, and Mac felt himself turn cold. Melody’s Destroyers. A rage bubbled within.

“We’ll get them,” said Mitch, hand gripping his brother’s arm. “In six days.”

* * * *

Mac was running a dive boat to the south of the reef the next day. They were too far south of Cairns for there to be
any risk of running into the Destroyers. Just as well, he decided, when Gabriella turned up with the six divers for the 5:30 a.m. departure.