The Billionaire Of Coral Bay

CHAPTER TWO

BELOW THE SLIGHTLY elevated parking clearing at Five Fingers Bay, the limestone reef stretched out like the splayed digits in the beach’s name. They formed a kind of catwalk, pointing out in five directions to the outer reef beyond the lagoon. Mila led her one down to it and stood on what might have been the Fingers’ exposed rocky wrist.

‘I was expecting more Finding Nemo,’ he said, circling to look all around him and sounding as disappointed as the sag of his shoulders, ‘and less Flintstones. Where’s all the sea life?’

‘What you want is just out there, Mr Grundy.’

He followed her finger out beyond the stretch of turquoise lagoon to the place the water darkened off, marking the start of the back reef that kept most predators—and most boats—out, all the way up to those gorges that he wanted to visit.

‘Call me Richard,’ he volunteered. ‘Rich.’

Uh, no. ‘Rich’ was a bit too like friends and—given what he was up here for—even calling them acquaintances was a stretch. Besides, she wasn’t convinced by his sudden attempt at graciousness.

‘Richard...’ Mila allowed, conscious that she represented her department. She rummaged in the rucksack she’d dragged from the back seat of the SUV. ‘I have a spare mask and snorkel for you.’

He stared at them as if they were entirely foreign, but then reached out with a firm hand and took them from her. She took care not to let her fingers brush against his.

It was always awkward, taking your clothes off in front of a stranger; it was particularly uncomfortable in front of a young, handsome stranger, but Mila turned partly away, shrugged out of her work shorts and shirt and stood in her bikini, fiddling with the adjustment straps on her mask while Richard shed his designer T-shirt and cargo pants.

She kept her eyes carefully averted, not out of any prudishness but because she always approached new experiences with a moment’s care. She could never tell how something new was going to impact on her and, while she’d hung out with enough divers and surfers to give her some kind of certainty about what senses a half-naked person would trigger—apples for some random guy peeling off his wetsuit, watermelon for a woman pulling hers on—this was a new half-naked man. And a client.

She watched his benign shadow on the sand until she was sure he’d removed everything he was going to.

Only then did she turn around.

Instantly, she was back at the only carnival she’d ever visited, tucking into her first—and last—candyfloss. The light, sticky cloud dissolving into pure sugar on her tongue. The smell of it, the taste of it. That sweet, sweet rush. She craved it instantly. It was so much more intense—and so much more humiliating—than a plain old apples association. But apparently that was what her synaesthesia had decided to associate with a half-naked Richard Grundy.

The harmless innocence of that scent was totally incompatible with a man she feared was here to exploit the reef. But that was how it went; her associations rarely had any logical connection with their trigger.

Richard had come prepared with navy board shorts beneath his expensive but casual clothes. They were laced low and loose on his hips yet still managed to fit snugly all the way down his muscular thighs.

And they weren’t even wet yet.

Mila filled her lungs slowly and mastered her gaze. He might not be able to read her dazed thoughts but he might well be able to read her face and so she turned back to her rummaging. Had her snorkelling mask always been this fiddly to adjust?

‘I only have one set of fins, sorry,’ she said in a rush. ‘Five Fingers is good for drift snorkelling, though, so you can let the water do the work.’

She set off up the beach a way so that they could let the current carry them back near to their piled up things by the end of the swim. Her slog through sun-soaked sand was accompanied by the high-pitched single note that came with a warmth so everyday that she barely noticed it anymore. When they reached the old reef, she turned seaward and walked into the water without a backward glance—she didn’t need the sugary distraction and she felt certain Richard would follow her in without invitation. They were snorkelling on his dollar, after all.

‘So coral’s not a plant?’ Richard asked once they were waist-deep in the electric-blue water of the lagoon.

She paused and risked another look at him. Prepared this time. ‘It’s an animal. Thousands of tiny animals, actually, living together in the form of elk horns, branches, plates, cabbages—’

He interrupted her shopping list ramble with the understated impatience of someone whose time really was money. Only the cool water prevented her from blushing. Did she always babble this much with clients? Or did it only feel like babbling in Richard Grundy’s presence?

‘So how does a little squishy thing end up becoming rock-hard reef?’ he asked.

Good. Yes. Focusing on the science kept the candyfloss at bay. Although as soon as he’d said ‘rock-hard’ she’d become disturbingly fixated on the remembered angles of his chest and had to severely discipline her unruly gaze not to follow suit.

‘The calcium carbonate in their skeletons. In life, it provides resilience against the sea currents, and in death—’

She braced on her left leg as she slipped her right into her mono-fin. Then she straightened and tucked her left foot in with it and balanced there on the soft white seafloor. The gentle waves rocked her a little in her rooted spot, just like one of the corals she was describing.

‘In death they pile up to form limestone reef,’ he guessed.

‘Millions upon millions of them forming reef first, then limestone that weathers into sand, and finally scrubland grows on top of it. We owe a lot to coral, really.’

Mila took a breath and turned to face him, steadfastly ignoring the smell of carnival. ‘Ready to meet the reef?’

He glanced out towards the reef break and swallowed hard. It was the first time she’d seen him anything other than supremely confident, verging on arrogant.

‘How far out are we going?’

‘Not very. That’s the beauty of Coral Bay; the inside reef is right there, the moment you step offshore. The lagoon is narrow but long. We’ll be travelling parallel to the beach, mostly.’

His body lost some of its rigidity and he took a moment to fit his mask and snorkel before stepping off the sandy ridge after her.

* * *

It took no time to get out where the seafloor dropped away enough that they could glide in the cool water two metres above the reef. The moment Mila submerged, the synaesthetic symphony began. It was a mix of the high notes caused by the water rushing over her bare skin and the vast array of sounds and sensations caused by looking down at the natural metropolis below in all its diversity. Far from the flat, gently sloping, sandy sea bottom that people imagined, coral reef towered in places, dropped away in others, just like any urban centre. There were valleys and ridges and little caves from where brightly coloured fish surveyed their personal square metre of territory. Long orange antenna poked out from under a shelf and acted as the early warning system of a perky, pincers-at-the-ready crayfish. Anemones danced smooth and slow on the current, their base firmly tethered to the reef, stinging anything that came close but giving the little fish happily living inside it a free pass in return for its nibbly housekeeping.

Swimming over the top of it all, peering down through the glassy water, it felt like cruising above an alien metropolis in some kind of silent-running airship—just the sound of her own breathing inside the snorkel, and her myriad synaesthetic associations in her mind’s ear. The occasional colourful little fellow came up to have a closer look at them but mostly the fish just went about their business, adhering to the strict social rules of reef communities, focusing on their eternal search for food, shelter or a mate.

Life was pretty straightforward under the surface.

And it was insanely abundant.

She glanced at Richard, who didn’t seem to know where to look first. His mask darted from left to right, taking in the coral city ahead of them, looking below them at some particular point. He’d tucked his hands into balls by his hips and she wondered if that was to stop him reaching out and touching the strictly forbidden living fossil.

She took a breath and flipped gently in the water, barely flexing her mono-fin to effect the move, swimming backwards ahead of him so that she could see if he was doing okay. His mask came up square onto hers and, even in the electric-blue underworld, his eyes still managed to stand out as they locked on hers.

And he smiled.

The candyfloss returned with a vengeance. It was almost overpowering in the cloistered underwater confines of her mask. Part of her brain knew it wasn’t real but as far as the other part was concerned she was sucking her air directly from some carnival tent. That was the first smile she’d seen from Richard and it was a doozy, even working around a mouthful of snorkel. It transformed his already handsome face into something really breath-stealing and, right now, she needed all the air she could get!

She signalled upwards, flicked her fin and was back above the glassy surface within a couple of heartbeats.

‘I’ve spent so much time on the water and I had no idea there was so much going on below!’ he said the moment his mouth was free of rubbery snorkel. ‘I mean you know but you don’t...know. You know?’

This level of inarticulateness wasn’t uncommon for someone seeing the busy reef for the first time—their minds were almost always blown—but it made her feel just a little bit better about how much of a babbler she’d been with him.

His finless legs had to work much harder than hers to keep him perpendicular to the water and his breath started to grow choppy. ‘It’s so...structured. Almost city-like.’

Mila smiled. It was so much easier to relate to someone over the reef.

‘Coral polyps organise into a stag horn just like a thousand humans organise into a high-rise building. It’s a futuristic city...with hovercraft. Ready for more?’

His answer was to bite back down onto his snorkel’s mouthpiece and tip himself forward, back under the surface.

They drifted on for another half-hour and she let Richard take the lead, going where interest took him. He got more skilled at the suspension of breath needed to deep snorkel, letting him get closer to the detail of the reef, and the two of them were like mini whales every time they surfaced, except they blew water instead of air from their clumsy plastic blowholes.

There was something intimate in the way they managed to expel the water at the same time on surfacing—relaxed, not urgent—then take another breath and go back for more. Over and over again. It was vaguely like...

Kissing.

Mila’s powerful kick pushed her back up to the surface. That was not a thought she was about to entertain. He was a one, for a start, and he was here to exploit the very reef he was currently going crazy over. Though if she did her job then maybe he’d change his mind about that after today.

‘Seen enough?’ she asked when he caught up with her.

His mask couldn’t hide the disappointment behind it. ‘Is it time to go in?’

‘I just want to show you the drop-off, then we’ll head back to the beach.’

Just was probably an understatement, and they’d have to swim out of the shallow waters towards the place the continental shelf took its first plunge, but for Richard to understand the reef and how it connected to the oceanic ecosystem he needed to see it for himself.

Seeing was believing.

Unless you were her, in which case, seeing came with a whole bunch of other sensations that no one else experienced. Or necessarily believed.

She’d lost enough friends in the past to recognise that.

Mila slid the mouthpiece back into her snorkel and tooted out of the top.

‘Let’s go.’

* * *

Richard prided himself on being a man of composure. In the boardroom, in the bedroom, in front of a media pack. In fact, it was something he was known for—courage under fire—and it came from always knowing your strengths, and your opponents’. From always doing your homework. From controlling all the variables before they even had time to vary.

This had to be the least composed he’d been in a long, long time.

Mila had swum alongside him, her vigilant eyes sweeping around them so that he could just enjoy the wonders of the reef, monitoring their position to make sure they didn’t get caught up in the current. He’d felt the change in the water as the outer reef had started to rise up to meet them, almost shore-like. But it wasn’t land; it was the break line one kilometre out from the actual shore where the reef grew most abundant and closest to the surface of anywhere they’d swum yet. So close, the waves from the deeper water on the other side crashed against it relentlessly and things got a little choppier than their earlier efforts. Mila had led him to a channel that allowed them to propel themselves down between the high-rise coral—just like any of the reef’s permanent residents—and get some relief from the surging waves as they’d swum out towards a deeper, darker, more distant kind of blue. The water temperature had dropped and the corals started to change—less of the soft, flowy variety interspersed with dancing life and more of the slow-growing, rock-hard variety. Coral mean streets. The ones that could withstand the water pressure coming at them from the open ocean twenty-four-seven.

Rich lifted his eyes and tried to make something out in the deep blue visible beyond the coral valley he presently lurked in. He couldn’t—just a graduated, ill-defined shift from blue to deep blue to dark blue looking out and down. No scale. No end point. Impossible to get a grip on how far this drop-off actually went.

It even had the word ‘drop’ in it.

His pulse kicked up a notch.

Mila swam on ahead, rising briefly to refill her lungs and sinking again to swim out through the opening of the coral valley straight into all that vast blue...nothing.

And that was where his courage flat ran out.

He’d played hard contact sports, he’d battled patronising boardroom jerks, he’d wrangled packs of media wolves hell-bent on getting a story, and he’d climbed steep rock faces for fun. None of those things were for the weak-willed. But could he bring himself to swim past the break and out into the place the reef—and the entire country—dropped off to open, bottomless ocean?

Nope.

He tried—not least because of Mila, back-swimming so easily out into the unknown, her dark hair floating all around her, mermaid tail waving gently at him like a beckoning finger—but even that was not enough to seduce him out there. The vast blue was so impossible to position himself in, he found himself constantly glancing up to the bright surface where the sunlight was, just to keep himself oriented. Or back at the reef edge to have the certainty of it behind him.

Swimming out over the drop-off was as inconceivable to him as stepping off a mountain. His body simply would not comply.

As if it had some information he didn’t.

And Richard Grundy made it his priority always to have the information he needed.

‘It’s okay,’ Mila sputtered gently, surfacing next to him once they’d moved back to the side of the reef protected from the churn of the crest. ‘The drop-off’s not easy the first time.’

No. What wasn’t easy was coming face to face with a limitation you never knew you had, and doing it in front of a slip of a thing who clearly didn’t suffer the same disability. Who looked as if she’d been born beneath the surface.

‘The current...’ he hedged.

As if that had anything to do with it. He knew Mila wouldn’t have taken him somewhere unsafe. Not that he knew her at all, and yet somehow...he did. She just didn’t seem the type to be intentionally unkind. And her job relied on her getting her customers back to shore in one piece.

‘Let’s head in,’ she said.

There was a thread of charity in her voice that he was not comfortable hearing. He didn’t need anyone else’s help recognising his deficiencies or to be patronised, no matter how well-meant. This would always be the first thing she thought of when she thought of him, no matter what else he achieved.

The guy that couldn’t swim the drop-off.

It only took ten minutes to swim back in when he wasn’t distracted by the teeming life beneath them. Thriving, living coral turned to rocky old reef, reef turned to sand and then his feet were finding the seafloor and pushing him upwards. He’d never felt such a weighty slave to gravity—it was as indisputable as the instinct that had stopped him swimming out into all that blue.

Survival.

Mila struggled a little to get her feet out of her single rubber fin and he stepped closer so she could use him as a brace. She glanced at him sideways for a moment with something that looked a lot like discomfort before politely resting her hand on his forearm and using him for balance while she prised first one and then the other foot free. As she did it she even held her breath.

Really? Had he diminished himself that much? She didn’t even want to touch him?

‘That was the start of the edge of Australia’s continental shelf,’ she said when she was back on two legs. ‘The small drop-off slopes down to the much bigger one five kilometres out—’

Small?

‘And then some of the most immense deep-sea trenches on the planet.’

‘Are you trying to make me feel better?’ he said tightly.

And had failing always been this excruciating?

Her pretty face twisted a little. ‘No. But your body might have been responding instinctively to that unknown danger.’

‘I deal with unknowns every day.’

Dealt with them and redressed them. WestCorp thrived on knowns.

‘Do you, really?’ she asked, tipping her glance towards him, apparently intent on placating him with conversation. ‘When was the last time you did something truly new to you?’

Part of the reason he dominated in business was because nothing fazed him. Like a good game of chess, there was a finite number of plays to address any challenge and once you’d perfected them the only contest was knowing which one to apply. The momentary flare of satisfaction as the challenge tumbled was about all he had, these days. The rest was business as usual.

And outside of business...

Well, how long had it been since there was anything outside of business?

‘I went snorkelling today,’ he said, pulling off his mask.

‘That was your first time? You did well, then.’

She probably meant to be kind, but all her condescension did was remind him why he never did anything before learning everything there was to know about it. Controlling his environment.

Open ocean was not a controlled environment.

‘How about you?’ he deflected as the drag of the water dropped away and they stepped onto toasty warm sand. ‘You don’t get bored of the same view every day? The same reef?’

She turned back out to the turquoise lagoon and the deeper blue sea beyond it—that same blue that he loved from the comfort and safety of his boat.

‘Nope.’ She sighed. ‘I like a lot of familiarity in my environment because of—’ she caught herself, turned back and changed tack ‘—because I’m at my best when it’s just me and the ocean.’

He snorted. ‘What’s the point of being your best when no one’s around to see it?’

He didn’t mean to be dismissive, but he saw her reaction in the flash behind her eyes.

‘I’m around.’ She shrugged, almost embarrassed. ‘I’ll know.’

‘And you reserve the best of yourself for yourself?’ he asked, knowing any hope of a congenial day with her was probably already sunk.

Her curious gaze suggested he was more alien to her than some of the creatures they’d just been studying. ‘Why would I give it to someone else?’

She crossed to their piled-up belongings and began to shove her snorkelling equipment into the canvas bag.

Rich pressed the beach towel she’d supplied to his chest as he watched her go, and disguised the full-body shiver that followed. But he couldn’t blame it on the chilly water alone—there was something else at play here, something more...disquieting.

He patted his face dry with the sun-warmed fabric to buy himself a moment to identify the uncomfortable sensation.

For all his success—for all his professional renown—Rich suddenly had the most unsettling suspicion that he might have missed something fundamental about life.

Why would anyone give the best of themselves to someone else?

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