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THIRTY-THREE
When Monday morning dawned and Alethia's ankle still hurt too much to walk on, she called in sick to work and spent the week with Stan instead. The demon who was determined to protect her even from herself, it seemed, for no matter how dark his eyes grew, or how much his jeans bulged, he rarely touched her, except to carry her around the apartment, insisting that anything else would be unseemly or not appropriate or some other word that belonged in a Regency novel and not in the mouth of a hot, shirtless man whose voice kept her in a perpetual state of arousal.
It didn't help that he liked reading aloud to her, and would do so at the slightest excuse. And Alethia couldn't refuse. It was as if the sexiest audiobook narrator who'd ever lived had moved into her house, and she'd happily listen to him read the phone book until he was hoarse. Only she wanted to hear him read sex scenes, the really dirty kind. Actually, what she really wanted was for him to read and record them, so she could listen to them again when she was alone and...
Only she was never alone, except in the bathroom, for Stan was never out of arm's reach. Half a dozen times, she'd considered telling him to leave her alone, but it would be like kicking a puppy. A particularly creative puppy who'd tried to cook dinner in the microwave for her in a metal pot. She'd been lucky the lightning show hadn't shut off the power or set off the smoke alarm.
Well, at least she knew his cooking skills were about as bad as hers.
The more time she spent with him, the more she wanted to be with him, too. If she'd met Stan on that dating app, and he'd asked her to meet up, she wouldn't have hesitated. And the first time she'd heard his voice, she'd...well, she definitely wouldn't have run away.
She'd have wanted him to order everyone out of the restaurant, so he could bend her over the table and have his wicked way with her. Over and over and over again...
She'd settle for the kitchen table here, but Stan's attention was on the TV, while she was trying, unsuccessfully, to find any other references to Carline Bell nee Steel. Burial records, property records, passenger lists, legal proceedings, official records...she swore she had the entire State Records Office collection of documents scanned into the work database from colonisation to federation, but the only additional thing she'd managed to find was a newspaper announcement about her marriage to Sean Bell.
Which was rather odd, she had to admit. She and Sean had lived exemplary lives, if the records were to be believed – never getting into trouble with the law, or having any legal entanglements with anyone else. Even the bushfire that had claimed their home of Bell Cottage hadn't swept through until two decades after her death.
They'd never bought any more property than the original land grant they'd received surrounding Bell House and Bell Cottage, though their descendants had sold off a large chunk of the farmlands to developers over the years, the last of which was in Alethia's own lifetime, for a luxury seaside retirement village. The village was only in its final stages now, a sprawling, sand-coloured two-storey structure that mushroomed out of the bushland between Bell House and the sea, clearly visible from the western veranda of Bell House. The land had been sold on the condition that no development would exceed two storeys, so as not to disrupt the visual amenity of Bell House. The developer had evidently missed that condition in the contracts he'd signed, and he'd spent years trying to fight it, first with the local government and then with the state planning commission, to no avail. There would be no high-rise developments between Bell House and the sea.
Bell House and the surrounding lands were owned and managed by the Bell Family Trust, and administered by the same D'Angelo law firm that had set up the Trust in the 19th century. All after Carline's time, bringing Alethia back to one big, fat, dead end.
She blew out a breath. She wasn't sure which was more frustrating – her search for the woman who'd killed Stan, or his strange sense of honour that kept his pants firmly fastened.
"Is something the matter? Did you find something in your research about Carline?"
Alethia looked up to find Stan's eyes fixed on her, instead of on the paused TV screen behind him. He was watching Grease, one of Mum's favourites. If he liked that, maybe she should suggest Moulin Rouge next. Sure, she'd probably have to answer a fair few questions about it, but it'd be worth it for the moment he realised he was watching a movie about a brothel...
"What's wrong?"
She blinked. She'd better get her head out of the bordello and back into the present. But she couldn't seem to drag her gaze away from the TV screen without a twinge of envy. "You know what I miss most about being stuck in this apartment? Well, aside from sunlight, which I wouldn't be seeing much of this week even without the roller shutters, because it's raining all week, but..." Alethia coughed. Hell, her mind was wandering way too much lately. "I miss dancing. My cousins and I used to order pizza for dinner, pile into the one car, drink a six pack of beer between us on the way, and just spend the night dancing at a night club. Now, I don't even know when night clubs will be allowed to open again, or if it'll be safe to go there if they do."
"It's been a long time since I've gone dancing, too," Stan said, looking wistful.
"Then let's do it. As soon as I can find somewhere that's open, where dancing is allowed, let's go. Just you and me. Like a date," Alethia said.
"A date?" He looked confused for a moment.
Alethia took a deep breath, ready to explain.
"Oh, that's where a courting couple appear in public together, without a chaperone. For coffee or a meal or a movie, like this." Stan waved at the TV screen. "We could..."
The intercom interrupted to tell them that the grocery delivery had arrived, and Stan was soon too busy buzzing the deliveryperson up and doing his best not to threaten the man, or accuse him of anything, before helping Alethia put everything away.
By the time she was done explaining what the readymade stir-fry, pasta and curry and rice packs actually were, and that she liked these "strange foreign foods" very much, it was time for dinner, and he almost exploded when she showed him the sushi she planned to eat, and that she would not allow him to protect her from eating seaweed and raw fish. Not that the smoked salmon was truly raw, but...
When dinner was done, she was too tired to explain anything else, so she asked Stan to take her to bed and read to her. Which he was only too happy to do, so she was soon too distracted by him delivering the hero's lines in That Voice as he got more and more intimate with the heroine, that she forgot all about dancing or dates or even Moulin Rouge.
