The Billionaire Of Coral Bay

It looked as if Richard would use every moment of that hour to focus on business.

Still, his distraction gave her time to study him. His hair had only needed a few strategic arrangements to get it back to a perfectly barbered shape, whereas hers was a tangled, salt-crusted mess. Side on, she could see behind his expensive sunglasses and knew just how blue those eyes were. The glasses sat comfortably on high cheekbones, which was where the designer stubble also happened to begin. It ran down his defined jaw and met its mirror image at a slightly cleft chin. As nice as all of that was—and it was; just the thought of how that stubble might feel under her fingers was causing a flurry of kettledrums, of all things—clearly its primary role in life was to frame what had to be his best asset. A killer pair of lips. Not too thin, not too full, perfectly symmetrical. Not at their best right now while he was still so tense, but earlier, when they’d broken out that smile...

Ugh...murder.

The car filled with the scent of spun sugar again.

‘Something you need?’

He spoke without turning his eyes off the road ahead or prising the phone from his ear, but the twist of the mouth she’d just been admiring told her he was talking to her.

She’d meant to be subtle, glancing sideways, studying him in her periphery, yet apparently those lips were more magnetic than she realised because she was turned almost fully towards him. She snapped her gaze forward.

‘No. Just...um...’

Just obsessing on your body parts, Mr Grundy...

Just wondering how I could get you to smile again, sir...

‘We’re nearly at the boat launch,’ she fabricated. ‘Just wanted you to know.’

If he believed her, she couldn’t tell. He simply nodded, returned to his call and then took his sweet time finishing it.

Mila forced her mind back on the job.

‘This is the main road in and out of Coral Bay,’ she said as soon as he disconnected his call, turning her four-wheel drive at a cluster of towering solar panels that powered streetlights at the only intersection in the district. ‘It’s base camp for everyone wanting access to the southern part of the World Heritage area.’

To her, Coral Bay was a sweet, green little oasis existing in the middle of almost nowhere. No other town for two hundred kilometres in any direction. Just boundless, rust-coloured outback on one side and a quarter of a planet of ocean on the other.

Next stop, Africa.

Richard’s eyes narrowed as they entered town and he saw all the caravans, RVs, four-by-fours and tour buses parked all along the main street. ‘It’s thriving.’

His interest reminded her of a cartoon she’d seen once where a rumpled-suited businessman’s eyes had spun and rolled and turned into dollar signs. It was as if he was counting the potential.

‘It’s whale shark season. Come back in forty-degree February and it will be a ghost town. Summer is brutal up here.’

If he wanted to build some ritzy development, he might as well know it wasn’t going to be a year-round goldmine.

‘I guess that’s what air-conditioning is for,’ he murmured.

‘Until the power station goes down in a cyclone, then you’re on your own.’

His lips twisted, just slightly. ‘You’re not really selling the virtues of the region, you know.’

No. This wasn’t her job. This was personal. She forced herself back on a professional footing.

‘Did you want to stop in town? For something to eat, maybe? Snorkelling always makes me hungry.’

Plus, Coral Bay had the best bakery in the district, regardless of the fact it also had the only bakery in the district.

‘We’ll have lunch on the Portus,’ he said absently.

The Portus? Not one of the boats that frequented Coral Bay. She knew them all by sight. It hadn’t occurred to her that he might have access to a vessel from outside the region. Especially given he’d only called to make arrangements half an hour ago.

‘Okay—’ she shrugged, resigning herself to a long wait ‘—straight to Bill’s Bay, then.’

They parked up on arrival at the newly appointed mini-marina and wandered down to where three others launched boats for a midday run. Compared to the elaborate ‘tinnies’ of the locals, getting their hulls wet on the ramp, the white Zodiac idling at the end of the single pier immediately caught her attention.

‘There’s Damo.’ Rich raised a hand and the Zodiac’s skipper acknowledged it as they approached. ‘You look disappointed, Mila.’

Her gaze flew to his, not least because it was the first time he’d called her by her name. It eased off his lips like a perfectly cooked salmon folding off a knife.

‘I underestimated how long it was going to take us to get north,’ she said, flustered. ‘It’s okay; I’ll adjust the schedule.’

‘Were you expecting something with a bit more grunt?’

‘No.’ Yes.

‘I really didn’t know what to expect,’ she went on. ‘A boat is a boat, right? As long as it floats.’

He almost smiled then, but it was too twisted to truly earn the name. She cursed the missed moment. A tall man in the white version of her own shorts and shirt stood as they approached the end of the pier. He acknowledged Richard with a courteous nod, then offered her his arm aboard.

‘Miss?’

She declined his proffered hand—not just because she needed little help managing embarkation onto such a modest vessel, but also because she could do without the associated sounds that generally came with a stranger’s skin against hers.

The skipper was too professional to react. Richard, on the other hand, frowned at her dismissal of a man clearly doing him a favour.

Mila sighed. Okay, so he thought her rude. It wouldn’t be the first time someone had assumed the worst. And she wouldn’t be seeing him again after today, so what did it really matter?

The skipper wasted no time firing up the surprisingly throaty Zodiac and reversing them out of the marina and in between the markers that led bigger boats safely through the reef-riddled sanctuary zone towards more open waters. They ambled along at five knots and only opened up a little once they hit the recreation zone, where boating was less regulated. It took just a few minutes to navigate the passage that put them in open water, but the skipper didn’t throttle right up like she expected; instead he kept his speed down as they approached a much larger and infinitely more expensive catamaran idling just beyond the outer reef. The vessel she’d seen earlier, at Nancy’s Point. Slowing as they passed such a massive vessel seemed a back-to-front kind of courtesy, given the giant cat would barely feel their wake if they passed it at full speed. It was only as their little Zodiac swung around to reverse up to the catamaran that she saw the letters emblazoned on the big cat’s side.

Portus.

‘Did you think we were going all the way north in the tender?’ a soft voice came to her over the thrum of the slowly reversing motor.

‘Is this yours?’ she asked, gaping.

‘If she’s not, we’re getting an awfully accommodating reception for a couple of trespassers.’

‘So when you said you were “dropped off” at Nancy’s Point...?’

‘I didn’t mean in a car.’

With those simple words, his capacity to get his mystery development proposal through where others had failed increased by half in Mila’s mind. A man with the keys to a vessel like this in his pocket had to have at least a couple of politicians there too, right?

The tender’s skipper expertly reversed them backwards, right up to the stern of the Portus, where a set of steps came down each of the cat’s two hulls to the waterline. A dive platform at the bottom of each served as a disembarkation point and she could see where the tender would nest in snugly under its mother vessel when it wasn’t in use. Stepping off the back of the tender and onto the Portus was as easy as entering her house. Where the upward steps delivered them—to an outdoor area that would comfortably seat twelve—the vessel was trimmed out with timber and black leather against the boat’s white fibreglass. Not vinyl... Not hardy canvas like most of the boats she’d been on. This was leather—soft and smooth under her fingers as she placed a light hand on the top of one padded seat-back. The sensation was accompanied by a percussion of wind chimes, low and sonorous.