Aussie Rules Read online

  Ernest stared down at the keys, his usually placid face a mask of pain. “I thought she was the most beautiful, wonderful, compassionate woman on earth. I thought she was amazing. I thought…”

  “You were in love with her,” Mel breathed.

  Ernest fumbled with the keys and said nothing.

  “You were as fooled as we were, weren’t you?”

  “She changed,” he said tightly. “It’s my own shame that I didn’t see that before. Soon as I did…” He met Mel’s gaze helplessly. “I stopped helping her. I was still trying to scare you off, though, but by then it was so that you wouldn’t get hurt.”

  “Where is she now?” Bo asked.

  Ernest shook his head.

  “You don’t know, or you won’t tell?”

  “I’ve been covering for her all these years without knowing it,” Ernest said quietly, looking at Bo. “I’ve been fooled, the same way your father was, the same way the others were. But no more. Here.” He thrust out the key ring, with one key in the forefront. “This is yours. It should have been yours this whole time, and saying sorry doesn’t seem good enough, but I am. It’s been waiting here for you.”

  Bo took the key, eyed the number on it. Number thirteen. “Ironic,” he murmured and turned and left the hangar. He knew the others were following him, with Mel immediately on his heels. He could feel her dismay, her anger, and when she set her hand on his back, her support. Damn if that didn’t mean far too much. They moved along the tarmac to the rental hangars, stopping at the second-to-last one.

  Ernest’s.

  Bo unlocked the side door and came face-to-face with the same stacks and stacks of old boxes he’d seen before. But Ernest reached out and pushed at them, and they fell over. “Empty,” he said.

  “Nice cover.” But Bo didn’t feel amused as they flipped on the lights to find…more boxes. He shoved those out of the way as Ernest had. Like the others, they fell easily aside, revealing—

  “Holy shit,” Bo breathed at the sight of the Beechcraft.

  His father’s first plane.

  Mel gasped at the sight of the antique aircraft. It’d clearly been neglected, but was probably still worth close to three quarters of a million dollars as is.

  “Right under our noses,” Danny said, and let out a low whisper. “Christ, she’s a beauty.”

  Bo didn’t say a word, couldn’t say a word as he walked up to the plane and stroked the steel.

  Mel covered her mouth at the stunned, almost overwhelmed look on Bo’s face as he reverently touched the Beechcraft. She still couldn’t quite believe it. All these years, it’d been right here. How was that even possible…?

  But it made sense. Perfect sense. Sally had been keeping tabs on them. She knew Bo had never shown up.

  God, it was all so amazing, how it’d worked out. Mel thought back to how Bo had been when he’d first arrived: ready to take on all of them to get back his father’s good name, not to mention what had been rightfully his. She knew Bo now, knew him better than she’d ever meant to. Yes, he was cocky and sarcastic and far too good looking for his own good. But he was also fiercely loyal, passionate, and utterly honest, bluntly so at times.

  And he’d never lied to her.

  He never would.

  There was comfort in that, unbelievable comfort. It was a shame that she hadn’t given that comfort back to him. She hated regrets, but now she moved to Bo’s side and stared her biggest one right in the eye. “I didn’t know it was here,” she said softly.

  “He loved this damn thing—” His voice was rough with emotion, his hand still on the plane as if he couldn’t bear to stop touching it.

  “Bo.” She turned him to face her. “I swear it. I didn’t know.”

  His gaze went suspiciously bright when he nodded. “I know.”

  Not thinking, simply reacting, she pulled him into her arms.

  He resisted for a half a second, then with a roughly muttered “fuck,” fisted his hands on her shirt at her spine and held on tight, burying his face in the crook of her neck. “I miss him, Mel. I still miss him.”

  Words failed, so she just nodded and held on tighter.

  After a minute, he lifted his head and looked at her from those gorgeous green eyes that always stopped her heart. “A piece of him is here.” He glanced at the plane. “Which means me coming here was the best thing that could have happened out of all this.”

  “Because you can sell it?” Ernest asked. “And be rich?”

  “Megarich,” Danny added.

  Mel knew what the money would do for Bo. It’d give him the nest egg he needed to get the restoration business off the ground. It’d give him a down payment on land in Australia, where he could run an airport like North Beach if he wanted. It’d give him freedom to go anywhere, do anything. And she found herself holding her breath as he eyed them each in turn, finally his gaze landing on her for the longest beat of her life. She managed to smile at him, through a throat so thick she could scarcely breathe.

  “Whatever you do,” Danny said, pulling out his cell phone, “we need to call the police.”

  Ernest went green. “We do?”

  Bo looked at the older man. “Yeah, we do. The paperwork is in Sally’s name, right?”

  Ernest nodded.

  “I want to get this all straightened out. It’s going to be a mess.”

  “I didn’t really do anything illegal, you know,” Ernest said.

  Mel narrowed her eyes, but before she could open her mouth, Bo said, “It’s not you I’m after.”

  Ernest nodded but still didn’t look happy, knowing he could end up in jail.

  It didn’t take the police long to arrive, and they all had a long chat, spilling everything they knew, from the beginning. By the time that was over and Mel got into her car to drive home, she was exhausted.

  But not sleep exhausted.

  Heart exhausted.

  She parked outside her place and sat there for a long time. She looked down at her passenger seat, at the signed lease lying there. She’d never given it to Bo, but now seemed as good a time as any.

  So she started her car again, heading to the condo Bo rented. It was dark outside. As she got out of the car, she could hear the waves crashing onshore in rhythm, a soothing sound. Still, her chest felt too tight, her heart squeezed into too small of a space as she knocked on Bo’s door.

  He answered wearing a pair of shorts and nothing else. She could tell by his tousled hair and sleepy eyes he’d been lying in bed.

  “Um…hi,” she said. “Is it too late?”

  “Depends. Too late for what?”

  Bo waited for Mel’s answer. His brain was still befuddled from lying on his bed, sleepless, tossing and turning, thinking of the woman now right in front of him, the woman with the biggest heart of any he’d known, with a smile who could melt him at one hundred knots.

  It was if he’d conjured her up from his fantasies, except in his fantasies she didn’t have on a pair of jeans and a tank top, she had nothing on but a sexy smile as she dropped to her knees in front of him and—

  Instead, she slapped the signed lease against his bare chest. She was trying not to look at him, but her gaze kept dropping to his chest in a way that made him extremely grateful to be a man.

  He loved that she lusted after his body. He’d love for it to be more than lust as well, and was banking on talking her into that with some more time.

  “I took your deal,” she said. “I know you’re probably halfway out the door, and I just wanted to say good-bye. Alone. Just you and me.”

  “Mel—”

  “No.” She stepped over the threshold and slid her arms around his neck. “I don’t want to talk. I don’t even want to think. Okay?”

  Not thinking worked for him. He’d done so much thinking his brain hurt; about his father, about the past, about what the fuck to do with himself now that he’d come here with destruction on his mind but instead had ended up actually enjoying himself.

  He