Maid for the Rock Star (7 page)

"Good choice," she said, nodding at the visible strip of pink.

He stared at it in horror and adjusted the towel to cover it. He left without another word.

Audra hid her smile and returned to the kitchen to wipe down the counter. She'd have to refill the refrigerator, too, given Jay was out of beer. Probably a good thing. She wasn't sure she could discuss rock star romance with a rock star while she was sober. Or without picturing the hero as him...

THIRTEEN

She needn't have worried. After dinner, she spent an hour talking to her family on an online video call while her wristband was mercifully silent. She even managed to squeeze in a little light reading of her own, after she'd found Annette's stack of books sitting outside her room.

Jay avoided her for three days, though she caught sight of him lying on his private beach, reading, more than once. If she lingered for a moment or two to admire the lines of his sweat-sheened body, spread on a towel for all the world to see, surely no one would blame her. She was human, after all. Looking wasn't licking...and she couldn't deny that it had been a long time since she'd licked any part of a man's anatomy.

Not that Jay was on the staff menu, she reminded herself. She'd be lucky to get anything as tasty as mango chicken again this week, let alone raw rock star. A raw, hot mess of a rock star. Or maybe he'd gotten over his momentary insecurity, managed to contact his sister, and decided that he was the deity of music once more. His ego certainly seemed big enough for it.

On the third night after her book delivery to Villa Maxima, Audra eyed the evening's burned dinner offering. Penny had evidently distracted the sous-chef so much that he'd singed the garlic prawns. It wasn't that she didn't like king prawns; it was just time consuming to peel them out of their shells, and if they were overcooked, they might be inedible. She tentatively touched the tiniest crustacean with the tongs.

Someone bumped her elbow, sending the tongs flying. "Don't do it!" Serge cried.

Audra stared at the grinning personal trainer. "Why? Am I so fat I need to cut down on my protein intake?"

"You're gorgeous just as you are. But if you eat one of those, you might break a tooth. Adam did." Serge jerked his head at the gym manager, whose thunderous expression was partially concealed by the bloodstained wad of paper napkins he held to his mouth.

Overcooked prawns. Ugh. Audra reached for the beef curry instead, ladled a generous dollop onto her plate and carried it to an empty table.

"Do you have plans tonight?" Serge's plastic bowl of fruit salad clacked to the table and he took a seat beside her.

"Hmm." She deliberately delayed by taking a bite of beef. "I plan on staying on the island, relaxing for a couple of hours after dinner, before I drag myself into bed to fall asleep for a few hours until I have to wake up tomorrow and vacuum the sweaty gym carpet."

"Hey, it's not just sweat. That's my gym. There's blood, sweat, tears, toil and determination soaked into that carpet!"

Audra laughed. "Glad I only vacuum it and don't have to shampoo it. I've cleaned some crazy things off hotel room floors, but I wouldn't have the faintest idea how to get determination out of carpet."

"Me neither. Hey, do you remember that hen's party last week?"

How could she forget? The bride-to-be and her friends had cackled their way through their stay, drinking the bar almost dry each happy hour as they demanded every cocktail on the menu and a few they'd probably dreamed up just to confuse the bar staff. Not to mention the steamy reading material they'd left behind. Pressing her lips together, Audra nodded.

"They bought me a carton of beer as a thank you for running their boot camp sessions. Gazza from the bottle shop in town rang to tell me, asking me what I wanted. I could've gotten a carton of VB." Audra wrinkled her nose at the name of her brothers' favourite cheap beer. "See? I figured you wouldn't like that, and if I can't tempt you to into town to try the beers at the brewery, maybe I could bring them to you. So I asked him to send a taster pack and I've got Patel keeping it in the back of one of the Catering fridges."

Audra didn't know what to say. Finally, she answered, "But you earned it. You should enjoy them."

Serge laughed. "I intend to. Look, you said you want to relax for a couple of hours. How about you come relax with me on a beach with some of Broome's best beers and we'll watch the stars until they get too fuzzy to see?"

Audra glanced at her wristband, but the display was still dark. Just because she was on call didn't mean she'd be called, and Serge was certainly good company. "Sure. I'll swipe some beach towels from the laundry to sit on and we'll make a picnic of it."

After dinner, they met outside the staff accommodation. Audra slung a couple of towels around her neck, while Serge carried a cooler box full of ice that rattled against the bottles inside with every step.

They reached the beach, only to discover that the tide was in and there wasn't enough dry sand to lay a towel.

"Is there anyone in Villa Penguin?" Serge asked, staring at the waves trying to lick their feet.

Audra snorted. "That's a weird name for a pearl. You can't be serious. I don't believe there's a Villa Penguin."

"Sure there is. It's the little one with a private jetty. If you haven't found it yet, I guess no one's booked it." Serge led the way along the path to the Pearl Villas.

The houses were all dark as Audra and Serge crossed the compound, the flip-flopping thongs on their feet lit up by the glowing path-side lamps. Jungle abruptly ended and the cobbled path gave way to wooden boardwalk, extending out into the water.

"Villa Penguin's private jetty," Serge said, pointing to the sign that proclaimed just that.

Audra laughed softly and shook her head as she led the way along the boards. The scrape and thump of Serge's footfalls behind her was the only sound above the sibilant splash of waves on the jetty. Spreading the towels out at the very end, she settled on one and stretched her toes out over the edge.

Serge sat down beside her and flipped open the cooler box. "Smokey or Pearlers?"

Audra shrugged and reached for the nearest bottle. It was too dark to see the label. With the aid of Serge's bottle opener, the caps tinkled to the deck and they both drank. She tasted the bitter notes as she swallowed – then almost choked as it burned down her throat, as if she'd drunk whisky and not beer. "What the hell was that?" she gasped, squinting at the bottle. By the dim glow of Serge's phone, they read the label. "Chilli beer? What kind of sadistic bastard makes beer out of chilli?"

Serge switched his beer for hers. "Only in Broome. Have mine. It tasted like some sort of tropical fruit."

Not wanting to be caught out again, Audra checked the label first. "Lychee. Yeah, that's fruit. Fruit beer. Only in Broome, all right." When she felt the alcohol warming her from the inside, she lay back and stared up at the Milky Way, spanning the sky in the sort of glorious display she'd never see in the city at home. "I'll be dreaming of stars tonight."

"Me, too." Serge lay down beside her. "What else do you dream of?"

For a moment, she wondered if he was asking about her night-time dreams. No way in hell was she telling him about her fantasy involving Chris Hemsworth, a packet of Tim Tams and a jar of Nutella. Admittedly, lately Jay had taken his place in her dreams, along with an extra jar of hazelnut spread, but she wasn't going to tell Serge about that, either.

As if he'd sensed her confusion, he added, "You'll think it's silly, but what I dream of most is having a secure job. One where I don't need to worry about the weather or the economy or anything. A job where I can earn enough money to live off, and never have to worry about being laid off as long as I do my job right. And then I spend a day working for a bloke with a toothache and realise I want more. I want a steady income, yeah, but I also want my own gym. In the city, not near my family's farm. One where everyone gets one-on-one time with a personal trainer and a wrist tracker, to help them monitor their goals. And small classes, where the instructor's not just up the front, but making sure people do the moves right and get the most benefit they can out of it. With a meal service to help people who want to lose weight or improve their nutrition, too. A one-stop shop." He laughed softly. "That'll only ever be a dream, though. The amount of money I'd need to start my own gym and always have enough to live off...I'll need to win the lottery, I guess."

"Good luck. There are worse dreams than wanting a stable job." Like dreaming of a rock star you couldn't have. Especially when you had to reject his daily offers to make your other dreams come true. "It's one of those things you take for granted until it's taken away without warning." Audra hesitated, then ploughed on, "I'd like to work at a remote weather station in a place like this one. Seeing things few people get to, taking observations for posterity, but most of all...alone, I guess."

"You don't like people?" Serge sat up in surprise. "I wouldn't have thought that about you."

Audra bit her lip. "It's not that. I do like people. I've lived most of my life in the city, in a household with five kids where you barely get five minutes to yourself. I...you'll laugh at me when you hear this. Annette warned me about the accommodation here, saying it was just like a minesite with single rooms and all, but I almost squealed in delight when I saw it. It's the first time in my life that I haven't had to share a room with someone else. I love my family, but they always seem to need help with something. For as long as I can remember, I've done the laundry for all seven of us, just to make sure I had clean shirts for school and then for work. Cooked most nights that I was home, because Mum just never had the time or the energy by the end of the day. Is it a dream to want to only have to worry about myself?"

"Nah, I know what you mean. When I'm on the farm, Dad always worries about the price of wine and grape yields and who's been bought out by the big wineries. Whether he'll get enough workers for the harvest or the pruning, and whether drought or fire or hail will ruin this year's crop. Whether he's better off selling the whole crop to another winemaker, or going to the trouble of pressing the vintage himself. My brothers all went to uni, did agriculture or viticulture or courses in how to make sheep cheese, and now they're all planning on getting married and having kids, to Mum's delight. I'm the youngest and Dad damn near disowned me when I said I didn't want to go to university. As for getting married...I was more interested in health and fitness, not wine. Family...shit, I love them, but they're not the ones living my life. That's me. I have to make my own choices." Glass clinked. "Want another beer? I think these are both normal ones. No fruit or vegetables this time."

Audra accepted the drink and hugged her knees to her chest as she stared out over the dark ocean. "Thanks. Yes, I love my family. But it feels like I do less work out here, even when I'm still on laundry duty. I have time to myself. Almost makes working here feel like a holiday." She laughed. "Don't tell Annette I said that. When we're fully booked and I've had to clean a record number of rooms in less time than it takes to drive here from town, sometimes I vacuum so many rooms and scrub so many showers that I can still hear the hum of the vacuum cleaner at dinner, or I wake up with my fingers cramping around an imaginary spray bottle in the middle of the night."

"Why don't you have a job at a weather station? I haven't finished my qualification yet, but I thought you said you'd graduated."

Audra sighed. "Yeah, I graduated earlier this year. Most of the meteorology jobs in Australia are through the Commonwealth Bureau of Meteorology. They have one graduate intake a year." It still hurt to think about it.

"Did you miss out last year?"

She thanked her lucky stars that it was too dark for her to see the sympathy on his face. Or for him to see the tears escaping from her eyes at the memory of Leon's mangled car and him lying in hospital in a drug-induced coma, like an ad for why seventeen-year-olds shouldn't own V8s, drive fast and drink alcohol. "Sort of. I didn't get my application finished before the deadline. So they didn't accept it and I had to wait another year."

"When's the deadline?"

"In two weeks. My application's mostly written, but I want it to be the best it can be so that this time next year, I'm cleaning a cup anemometer, not some VIP's carpet. So every day off between now and then, I'll be picking through the words, trying to put them together better, practicing responses to interview questions...the best applicants get the best locations, or that's what I've heard. And I've never been outside Western Australia before."