Saturday, 11:30 p.m.
“Happy birthday to you,
Happy birthday to you,
Happy birthday, Henry and Dani,
Happy birthday to you.”
Henry was officially ninety and I now knew what it felt like to be fifty.
No different to forty-nine.
“Come on, Henry,” I said egging him on as he grinned at the singers gathered around the table. “I’ve blown my candles out and now it’s your turn.”
“Sure thing,” he said and leaned so far over the table, if Mum hadn’t grabbed one arm and me the other, he’d have ended face down in his cake.
“There’s one candle for every ten years of your life,” explained Mum still holding his arm. “So take a deep breath and let’s see how many candles you can blow out in one puff, love.”
“Sure thing,” he said again and noting his blinking eyes, fixed smile and red face, I wondered how many drinks my new stepdad had consumed during the evening.
“Go Henry! Go Henry!” The residents from Sunny Days started chanting and banging their walking frames on the floor while Gloria Reeding, the manager, shook her head at them and rolled her eyes.
“I’m a gust of wind,” declared Henry, and puffed out his cheeks like a caricature of the wind as he took a deep breath.
“Oh, God…” I heard Mum moan. “You’ve been at the brandy, haven’t you, Henry. You know you have to stick to beer.”
After watching him huff and puff and spit and fart for several minutes, Mum and I decided we’d better blow his candles out for him—before he broke something important in his chest.
“Having a good time?” asked Simon, coming up behind me and wrapping his arms around my waist.
Smiling, I looked over my shoulder at him. “The best. For a while there last night, I didn’t think I’d ever make fifty. Oh yeah, and thanks for coming to my rescue.”
His hold tightened and he kissed the top of my head.
“You know,” I said, looking around at the partygoers. “Everyone who matters to us is here tonight.”
All Mum and Henry’s friends from Sunny Days, my siblings Penny and Robert with their spouses, my niece Suzy with a new prospective husband in tow, the journalists from the Tribute and even Mum’s gay hairdresser—wearing tight black pants and a brightly colored vest—had shown up with his new squeeze.
Yep. Everyone who mattered was at the party. Except Megan. Funnily enough, I knew I’d miss her. As well as being the hands-on assistant for my column, she’d been the bright spark in my life for the last six months. Always ready with a funny story about her time as a hooker—always the centre of attention, dressed in her designer labels.
I guess I’d need to find myself another hands-on assistant.
I glanced across at Simon again. He winked and then cut me a sexy grin. And it suddenly hit me. Perhaps, now I had Simon in my life, I wouldn’t need an assistant. I could practice on my own lover.
“Oh! Uh! Look out!” I squeaked and moved out of Simon’s arms, ready to beat a hasty retreat and hide out in the shed if necessary. “Here comes Penny.”
“At least she looks calmer now,” put in Simon. “Earlier in the night I heard her shouting at your mother. In fact the people in the next street could have heard her. Must be that half-bottle of Merlot I saw her knock off just before the singing started that’s made her mellow.”
“Hey, little sis,” Penny sang and hiccupped loudly. Then she scowled at Mum. “I’m still pissed off with you,” she told Mum. “Why didn’t you invite Joe and me to the registry office?” She swayed, grabbed the table and then continued without waiting for an answer. “Anyway, I’ve been finking…um…thinking. Perhaps it’s better this way. Now you can stop firtying with the other men at the home.”
Mum raised one eyebrow. “You mean flirting?”
Penny nodded her head four or five times and then her eyes seemed to cross. “S’funny. Feel dizzy. Might just shit down for awhile.”
She collapsed into a nearby chair and closed her eyes.
“Hey, Joe!” Simon called out. “You better take your missus home, mate. She’s out like a light.”
Joe strolled across the room, shaking his head. “Do I have to? It’s so bloody peaceful when the warhorse is asleep.”
“Won’t be peaceful if she wakes up and finds she’s still sitting in that chair,” Simon told Joe.
“Bugger. I s’pose so. Hey, Robert,” he yelled. “Come and help me get your sister in the car. She’s had too much to drink.” And then he turned and spoke to me, his voice matter-of-fact, his shoulders in a shrug. “While you’ve been away we’ve had about a hundred readers phone in to complain that your column’s missing from the paper. God knows why—I reckon it’s a load of drivel myself. Anyway, make sure you’re not late for work on Monday morning, Dani.”
My answering grin came from that evil little place inside my conscience that I normally try to control, but tonight I decided to let her rip. “So, my readers missed me, did they Joe? Hmm…before I return to work, how about coming up with that hundred dollar a week raise you promised me over six months ago?”
Joe narrowed his eyes and shot me one of his snake-eyed glares.
I ignored it. “You know, I’ve been thinking, I might need another month off work to recover from the way you’ve hurt me with your accusations.”
“Make it fifty.”
“How about seventy-five?”
“Sixty-five and that’s my last offer.”
“But—”
“Don’t push your luck, Danielle.”
“Okay, okay,” I said capitulating quickly before he changed his mind. “Sixty-five it is. See you on Monday.”
While Joe and Robert collected Penny and helped her out to the car, I decided to cut my birthday cake. It looked delicious with chocolate flakes and whipped cream piled on top. So what if it had like a thousand calories a slice? Today was my birthday. Tomorrow I’d eat apple.
“Now it’s your turn, Henry?” said one of the Sunny Days residents as I slammed the knife into my cake and wished for world peace.
Mum’s besotted friend Tug, dressed in all-over Mafia black, pushed forward until he stood in front of the Birthday Boy. “Hey Henry,” he said bending to unsheathe a carving knife from the side of his boot, “wanna borrow my blade to cut your cake with, man?”
“Now, Tug,” admonished Ms. Reeding, as she calmly removed the knife from his hand. “We had a good long talk yesterday about borrowing knives from the kitchen, didn’t we?”
She passed the implement to Henry.
Henry smiled and blinked, and missed the cake completely at his first attempt. Laughing, Mum leaned over and guided his hand. After stabbing the cake in the middle, Henry kissed Mum and peered around at his friends and newly acquired family. He stood there with his birthday present from Mum, the hot pink skateboard that would never see any action, balanced on top of his walker. He was the hero of the hour and he loved it.
If Henry hadn’t felt the need to use the bathroom last night, Simon and I would have been burnt toast by now.
Thinking of last night’s ordeal, I squeezed Simon’s hand, and as usual his lopsided grin made my legs melt.
“Happy birthday, darlin’,” he whispered into my right ear, the one that wasn’t covered with gauze and sticking plaster. “I’ve saved your best present until later. After the party’s over.”
“Can’t wait,” I answered. “Hope it involves chocolate sauce and whipped cream.”
“I’m sure that can be arranged.”
“Yum…”
Now all I had to do was think of icebergs and snow and cold showers until everyone had finished partying and decided to go home.
Sunday, 1 a.m.
As Simon and I waved the last of the party-goers off at the gate, Simon’s mobile phone rang.
“Please…don’t let that be more trouble,” I groaned as I bent to pick empty bottles from the floor. I was fed up with picturing cold showers and snow and had been looking forward to doing something a lot warmer—with Simon.
“Right. Thanks mate. I owe you one.” Simon closed his phone and slipped it into his pocket and then took the empty bottle out of my hand and stood it upright on the table. “Leave this, darlin’. I’ll help you clean up in the morning.”
“Who was on the phone?”
“My mate, Brian, from the station. You know, the desk sergeant. He thought we’d like to know Megan’s confessed and been charged with three counts of murder and two of attempted murder.”
I sighed and slumped against Simon’s chest. The relief that it really was all over slammed into me, making me bone weary. Immediately, Simon’s arms went round me. Strong and warm and totally there for me.
“Evidently, Megan loved Derek and had the misguided notion that if she eliminated Mary, he’d come crawling back to her,” Simon went on.
I shook my head. “In a twisted way, I can’t help feeling sorry for Megan. Derek promised to leave his wife and go away with her, yet when she put the hard word on him, he laughed in her face. Must have been awful.”
“A lot worse for those she murdered.”
I shivered as an image of Megan coolly shooting Derek in the head flashed through my brain. “What I can’t understand though is why she killed Jack Rivers. Was he threatening to blackmail her?”
“Yep. Her and all the other high-profile names in his filing cabinet. About twenty all up—which explains how he could own a luxury mansion on a journalist’s salary. Hell, Jack being murdered was a crime waiting to happen. If it hadn’t been Megan—it would have been someone else.”
“You know, Jack might have been a creep, but he didn’t deserve to die,” I said, thinking about how gorgeous he looked when I was sucking on his finger at the restaurant. A young Adonis corrupted by greed. “God, he was so young.”
“Aha. Remembering Jack’s great body, are we?”
“Why would I do that when I can feast my eyes on your sexy six-pack?” I quickly countered.
Grinning, he flexed both arms in a fighter’s pose and tightened his stomach muscles. “I don’t suppose you’d be interested in examining my six-pack right now, would you?”
“I’m always interested in anything to do with research.”
“Good.” He took my hand and started towards the passage. “What say we perform that detailed research in the bedroom?”
A little more than twenty-four hours ago I’d come close to dying on a bed. I wasn’t ready to make love on one just yet. I gently withdrew my hand and reached over to undo his belt buckle. “Mind if we just use the bed to sleep in tonight, Simon?”
Completely tuned into my thought waves, Simon stopped and turned towards me. He slowly slid my top over my head. “We could always christen the white fireside rug I gave you for your birthday.”
I laughed as I helped him undo my bra. “I knew you had an ulterior motive when you suggested buying me a rug.”
“Hey, it was you who insisted on thick and shaggy and comfortable. I thought the animal print would have suited the room better. And what about the rug with the—”
“Shut up about the rug and kiss me.”
I sighed as Simon’s lips touched mine, gently at first, and then deepening until I had to cling to him to stay upright. Oh God, I loved this man. Less than a week ago I’d been looking for Mr. Right in all the wrong places. All the time he’d been sitting in the next desk at the Tribute. My best friend. The man I’d known for most of my life.
Okay, I knew convincing Simon to give up his single status would be a long drawn-out battle—but I was looking forward to the challenge.
Endless Wile E. Coyote cartoons…
Stimulating skirmishes…
And lots and lots of great bone-melting sex.