ACT II: Scene 7
Just You Wait, ’Enry Higgins [Monique-Noelle]
SAN NOUVEAU ISLAND, CALIFORNIA CHANNEL ISLANDS, A ROCKY PLACE
Wherein the real fun and games begin, and the stakes rise.
The next morning we left before dawn. I had to be at the helipad to collect Sylvie Bainbridge from her handlers by eight a.m., per Mo-No’s edict. We took the speed boat docked at a private marina just north of L.A. and shot out over the cold morning waves for the hour-long trip to the only privately owned Channel Island in the chain which included Santa Catalina, San Miguel, and others. Most of them were state parks now, preserved from development, or else like Catalina, overrun by tourists.
However, San Nouveau had been purchased from a foundering land preservation trust group by a corporation about forty years ago, and since then had very quietly become a haven for the outrageously wealthy.
And by outrageously wealthy, I meant they all each owned their own private islands elsewhere in the Pacific and the Caribbean in addition to their multi-million dollar mansions on this spot of rock jutting up from the water.
Basically, San Nouveau was where they met up with their peers. It was the country club of the super-rich.
I explained some of this to Henry as the front end of the speed boat dipped and slapped the waves. We cut toward the west. I didn’t tell him everything, per my non-disclosure contract. Lots of details about San Nouveau were hushed by legally binding signatures on thick stacks of paper.
For that reason, not many Californians knew about San Nouveau—which had been Santa Margarita before its purchase—let alone other Americans at large. The founders had kept its existence under tight wraps—“To keep out the riffraff,” it actually said on actual printed pamphlets.
The place self-isolated. There wasn’t even any internet service for the service class like me. They wanted a shroud of secrecy, and they got it. I could send and receive texts to the mainland—most of the time—but forget kicking back on a day off and streaming Netflix. The owner class had a dedicated satellite for such things, but their workers had to keep things on the DL. We all knew that going in, and while it wasn’t ideal, the pay made up for it.
“Why’s it called San Nouveau?” Henry shouted this to me over the spiking drone of the speed boat engine. “New Saint? Saint New? It doesn’t make sense.”
“Tongue in cheek reference to the people who would be most likely to live there. The nouveaux riches.” Ha-ha, those corporate founders; they had a sense of humor about themselves—laughing all the way to their Swiss bank accounts.
The rocky outcroppings of land themselves were far enough apart that they couldn’t be seen from island to island, except maybe with a good pair of binoculars, so as we headed out to the open ocean, Henry got noticeably nervous.
“You sure he knows where he’s going?” He aimed a thumb at the speed boat driver as a pod of dolphins crested in front of us to the north. “He’s not just going to plop us in the Pacific and leave? This wasn’t your plot for my demise all along, was it, now Elizer?”
“Look.” I pointed to the dolphins. “They’re the welcome wagon.” I took a page from Henry’s Change the Subject book, in hopes of assuaging his nerves. He didn’t seem bone-deep anxious or anything, but I didn’t want his paranoia spiking like it had seemed to when we were in the bus station and he’d been so hungry.
“Want a granola bar?” I handed him one out of my bag.
After more than an hour of straight pedal to the metal on the speed boat’s accelerator, the island came into view. It wasn’t lush, like Gilligan’s Island or any of the giant-fern-covered spots in the Gulf of Mexico or the South Seas. It was basically a rocky jutting of granite, like a piece of the California desert got chunked off and landed in the ocean a hundred miles off shore. Rocks, dry grass, a little soil with some scrubby native plants.
No question, it didn’t qualify as a tropical island, but it worked exactly right for what the residents wanted: off the grid and opulent, a way to live a posh lifestyle exclusively with people of the same financial class, most importantly with no encroachment from any other financial class. The only reason I could be admitted as nanny was due to my education at a graduate level—and one doozy of a non-disclosure agreement.
Did I mention taking Henry with me to San Nouveau was a risk? And fabricating his social class, his education level, and his occupation was also a risk? Not to mention the throat-clutching legalese.
Yeah, I was pretty much an idiot.
This is for Sylvie, my mantra said again, perhaps less convincingly in the light of day as we approached the place. If it hadn’t been so windy today as we sped toward the dock, my hands would have been sweating.
“Not much in the way of so-called island expectations, is there?” Henry helped me ashore, and we tipped the speedboat driver for helping us get all of Henry’s wardrobe trunks into the waiting cab. “Not even so much as a palm tree. Brother! Even the mainland has a palm tree.”
“I do think you can still get one of those drinks with the little paper umbrellas in it, if you ask.”
“To Miss Monique-Noelle’s today, ma’am?” The taxi driver knew me by sight. He’d been hired for the job because he had a photographic memory and a degree in statistics from a top California university. I guess I don’t need to say that San Nouveau paid well, to be able to draw away a statistician in the age of internet—and from the state that housed Silicon Valley.
Even the taxi drivers and the nannies like me cleaned up on payday.
He dropped us off, and we all three offloaded the trunks at the Bainbridge mansion. Its white concrete panels stretched in modern starkness toward the achingly blue sky. Coy, defoliated azalea bushes flanked the front drive, dwarfed by a line of impressive Italian cypress trees pointing heavenward.
“I’ll take those trunks into my cottage for now.” I fiddled with the security code at the door to the back yard. “We’ll find you a place to stay later.”
It was almost eight, and time to be getting to the helipad. I wouldn’t want Sylvie to have to wait.
“You all right with helicopters, Henry? Or do you want to stay here at the house?”
“I’m fine with helicopters. Why do you ask?”
Huh. Okay. “Just wondering.” I didn’t want to bring up any painful memories or trigger some kind of flashback. Ever since that first day when he’d been basically the male version of a hot mess, he’d seemed so much calmer. The crazy-hungry or hungry-crazy version of Henry Lyon had been all but erased ever since the makeover yesterday afternoon. Once fed and bathed, he’d been all charm, all style, all—I don’t know—mental coherence.
The problem was, this Henry Lyon was dangerous. My determination not to get all wrapped up in his gorgeousness needed reinforcement, because this morning in jeans and a t-shirt that stretched across his chest just right, he could be lethal to my vow.
“Come on. We’ll go get my sweet little charge. You’ll like her.” I’d told him about Sylvie last night on our ride back to Pickering Place in the Rolls Royce, how darling she was, how dear to me.
Instead of using the taxi again, we got into a Bainbridge estate car, one of the several the servant class was allowed to drive, this one with plenty of room for Sylvie’s car seat as well as her other traveling gear. No Bainbridge traveled light.
At first I’d dithered about whether or not to take Henry with me. Introducing someone new to Sylvie might be a breach of Mo-No’s confidence, but then again, so would leaving a stranger in her mansion.
Frankly, she’d prefer I protected the mansion.
“What do you think of San Nouveau?” We whipped around a curve, a few scrubby chaparral brushes lining the sides of the road, the broad sky arching above us. “I’ve only been here six months, but it grows on me.”
“Other than the ocean’s proximity, it reminds me a little of the high country back home, what with all the dry and the rocky ground and the vastness of everything. I like it.” He aimed his eyes at me. “A lot.”
I fizzed a little inside.
High country. Right. He thought he was from the Australian mountains. My mind fluttered back to scenes from that movie he’d described last night at the party, and it was easy to picture Henry astride a thundering horse, plummeting down a hill, one arm in the air, another on the pommel of the saddle, all the muscles in his torso taut with the effort of keeping him atop the steed.
Easy to picture, hard to un-picture. I fanned myself.
“You want me to stop and put the top down on the convertible?” I could use more of a breeze here, in my feverish state.
“You’d look gorgeous with the wind in your hair, Elizer, just like this morning on the speed boat.” He reached over and put a hand atop where mine rested on the gear shift. “Has anyone mentioned how amazing you are yet today?”
No, they hadn’t, but if he was offering…
I had to make the turn now onto the winding road toward the helipad.
“Is that your phone?” he asked. “Or is that the villain’s song from that movie where the woman makes the coats out of Dalmatian fur?”
“That’s Mo-No.” I hadn’t heard it, but I now yanked out my phone to answer. Every time I heard her voice, my blood pressure spiked. And it was getting worse.
“Eliza. I had to wait until the third ring. You know I don’t like to wait.”
“I’m just nearing the helipad to pick up Sylvie. What can I do for you?”
“Stop.”
“Stop what?” I reflexively pulled to the side of the road. A truck passed, piled with goods brought up from the private dockyards. Pre-cooked meals, freshly laundered linens, gourmet pet food—I could read labels on the boxes loaded for distribution to the rich and anonymous citizenry here.
“You won’t be picking up Sylvie.”
My heart clutched. “Please say nothing has happened to her.” Oh, dear. No, that couldn’t be it.
“Not at all.” Mo-No sounded exasperated.
Wait, the woman wasn’t firing me, was she? A flame erupted in my veins, one of fear. Monique-Noelle hadn’t telepathically perceived that I had brought Henry onto San Nouveau without her permission, had she? Maybe the taxi driver ratted me out.
Every nerve ending in my body was snapping.
“Then what’s going on? Is Sylvie with you?”
“Heavens no. I’m saying that Sylvie is not going to be at the helipad this morning. Something about her father wanting time to bond with her at some dirty amusement park on the mainland.”
“She loves Disneyland.”
“Is that what they’re calling it these days?”
At this, I honestly did roll my eyes. I happened to have it on good authority that Monique-Noelle grew up in Van Nuys, California, a short drive from the Magic Kingdom, pure suburbia. My money was on Mo-No owning a season pass to Disneyland as a kid, and that she went year-round to eat churros and Dole Whip.
“I’ll turn around, then. Would you like me to do something else this morning?”
“No! Stop.”
Again with the stop commands.
“You’ll still go to the helipad. Chachi is arriving instead of Sylvie. I had her flown out to be bathed and clipped, and until San Nouveau’s Pet Authority gets smart and finds a better groomer, I’ll continue to fly her out to see Xanthe in San Marcos every week.”
Mo-No went on a bit about Chachi, and by the time the helicopter appeared on the horizon, I had my full instructions. I’d have to book it to be there when the dog got unloaded.
I hung up, more exhausted than I’d been after a full, tense night of schmoozing at the movie premiere.
“Don’t get me wrong,” I said as we pulled up at the helipad a few seconds later. “I like dogs. In fact, I like Chachi as far as ornamentals go.” For some reason I felt like I needed to explain my exasperation to Henry. Sometimes people distrusted someone who didn’t like animals. “However, I grew up on a ranch. There, dogs had work to do, just like every other animal. A white fur ball like Chachi would have become some wild animal’s lunch out at the Circle G Ranch.”
“Did you have a dog, Elizer?”
“Three.”
“What did you call them?” This was a sweet question, one that transported me home, a place I hadn’t been in a while.
“Pudge, Kodiak, and Haggis.”
“As in the Scottish food?”
“The very. My dad thinks he’s funny. What about you? Dogs in your life growing up?” Maybe Henry could use a service dog now, just to ground him in reality. I’d seen that work a few times recently. If the two weeks ended, maybe I’d look into lining up a pet for him, in addition to the phone.
“Quite a few over the years. Barker, Cal, Windy. The biggest one was Cujo.”
“Cujo? As in the killer dog?”
“I don’t know. Calling him that was something my parents always had as an inside joke.” The car was in park and Henry got out. He came around and opened my door for me, deep sigh of contentment. “Is there a killer dog named Cujo?”
“A bloodthirsty one.” I shuddered. Suddenly I realized this topic might work to keep Henry’s mind off the helicopters. I had no idea what seeing them might trigger in him, but he didn’t seem bothered at all, thank goodness, and he’d said earlier he had no problem with them.
For now, I’d go with that.
By the time we walked across the grassy plain to the asphalt landing pad, the little white Maltese with the dark eyes and silken fur had already been unloaded and put back in her crate. As always, Chachi had been allowed, during the flight— unbelievably—to sit in her own seat belt and look out the window. She yapped furiously at me, baring her teeth from within the bars of her box.
Chachi only liked me when I had pepperoni sticks as a bribe.
The chopper pilot accepted his payment and his generous tip, and then I picked up Chachi to put her in the shade beside the car while Henry helped by bringing her luggage. There were three suitcases, which we loaded into the trunk. They barely fit.
I eyed Henry carefully to see whether he’d react badly to the helicopter when he saw its blades fire back up again. Helicopters could actually be intimidating. Their nickname was chopper, after all, reminiscent of a weapon.
However, Henry kept his calm, like the cool winter day we were having. In fact, rather than getting antsy or starting to have a wild, paranoid look in his eye as the wind from the takeoff whipped our hair into our faces, he seemed happy to be along for the trip, despite Chachi’s surliness.
“Is there a view nearby?” he asked after the pilot took off and we could hear ourselves think again. “I think I can hear waves crashing onto something. I’d like to take a look.”
The helipad was located on a flat stretch of a rocky outcropping near cliffs that overlooked the eastern side of the island. Waves crashed audibly below, sure enough.
“I know we missed the sunrise over the horizon already, but I’d like to go check things out. Breakers against the rocks always get me right here.” He pointed to his chest.
“Go for it.” I’d go with him, but leaving Mo-No’s special little doggie to wait alone for even a few minutes in the shade beside the car would be a no-no. Besides, my phone had been buzzing with text after text from Polly, and I hadn’t answered them.
“Mo-No wouldn’t want me to leave Chachi unattended, and I don’t know what she’d do at the edge of a cliff.” She could bolt, and I’d not only be fired, I’d be prosecuted. “Meet me back here when you’re through?”
Henry eyed me a second, a look of disappointment crossing his face. He wanted me along? It got me right there. I touched my chest.
“Back in a jiff.”
A jiff. That was cute. He looked good in those dark jeans and t-shirt this morning, jogging off toward where the cliffs dropped. As he ran, his irresistible cowboy walk morphed into a runner’s gait, so the danger lessened and I let my eyes follow him. Dang, he was one hot crazy Australian cowboy with a bloodthirsty dog. Satisfaction and yearning mixed in me.
Hey, the truth was, I’d never taken even so much as an hour-long break in my frantic efforts to obey Mo-No in order to simply enjoy watching waves break against the cliffs. They’d been breaking there all six months of my stay on San Nouveau, and I’d never once paused to appreciate them.
Wouldn’t they be nicest to experience at Henry’s side?
So nice. Delightfully nice.
Chachi could wait.
A few seconds later, I jogged up beside him.
“Hey, hold up a second.” I hurdled a boulder and in a minute was running along beside him. “I’ve never seen the breakers here. You convinced me.”
He slowed to a walking pace.
“Aw, they’ll be priceless.” The way he said ‘priceless’ sent the word straight to my soul. Dang it. Just when I’d thought I was safe.
Oh, how I lied to myself.
We neared the cliff, approaching its edge at a more cautious pace. The wind gave a rogue gust, lifting my hair, and pressing against my back, making me unsteady. A sudden fear of heights gripped me, clenching my heart and shooting cold water through all my veins.
“Oh!” It was all I could do to stay standing, as the sky and the cliffs and the pounding surf spun in a terrifying blur around me.
My breathing jerked into high gear, and I had to lurch backward or else I’d be pitching forward over the edge and plunging headlong to my death on the rocks below.
“Elizer!” When I stumbled backward, I’d bumped into Henry, and he gripped me in his arms. “It’s okay. It’s going to be okay.”
My heart hammered so hard it was probably audible, and sweat lined my upper lip and neck and forehead. Fear of heights had never attacked me like this in all my days, and I seriously couldn’t control the speed of my breathing. I just couldn’t get the air deep enough into my lungs. I was drowning in dry air.
“Elizer.” He pulled me tight against his chest. “It’s all right. We’re backing away. Breathe. Breathe.”
Step by step, he led me backward, out of sight of the dizzying drop, and then in a slow circle he turned me away from the breakers below. My mind still raced, its eye unable to erase the image of the dark water being dashed to white, foamy bits against jagged stones.
They had to be called breakers for a reason. All that power, slamming, foaming, churning—breaking. They would break me on the rocks, break every bone in my spine, every rib, crush my legs, my tarsals and metatarsals.…
“Metatarsals are very unlikely to break under those circumstances.” He was petting my hair, holding me close, talking softly.
“Did I say that aloud?”
“Do you often talk to yourself?” His hand rested on my shoulder and he turned me toward him and then spun so my back was to the waves again, protecting me, shielding me, keeping me safe from the terror.
My breathing came back under some measure of control. I blinked a few times to reset the images in my mind’s eye. Soon, what I saw was Henry’s face instead, his look of concern, earnest and solid.
“Maybe I do talk out loud all the time and just hadn’t noticed.” I hadn’t realized I’d been doing it a second ago, but it was the only way he would have heard the word metatarsals, unless he was a mind-reader. “Maybe we should get back to pick up Chachi.”
“As long as you’re sure you’re all right.” The look on his face said he wasn’t convinced I ought to move yet. “Has that happened before?”
I shook my head, gulping down the remaining vestiges of anxiety. I looked straight into his eyes, and the gray depths sucked me in, much more engulfing than any ocean at the base of the cliffs. I sank into them, every fiber of my body relaxing as I swam in his gaze.
“It’s going to be all right,” he soothed, his face closer to mine, his breath mint and spices, his eyes still holding me captive. “I’ve got you.”
Yes. Yes, he did have me. In that moment, he had me completely spellbound, dying to know how the roughness of his lips would feel against mine. My pulse upticked again, but not from panic; this time it was from pure desire.
“Thanks.” I breathed it. That single word, thanks, felt inadequate to express my gratitude, but I couldn’t think of any other appropriate response for now. Honestly, I couldn’t think of anything except Henry, Henry, Henry. Kiss me. Kissss me.
“Your eyes are just legend. They’ve taken me in, hundred percent.” He reached up and brushed a piece of hair behind my ear. A shiver ran through me at his touch. “Elizer, I’m…”
“Uh-huh?”
The left side of his mouth lifted in a flirt of a grin, and he came toward me, as if he might kiss me and answer my silent beckoning. Anticipation flitted all through my chest and stomach. But when he neared me, he pulled back.
“Oh, uh. Sorry. I didn’t mean to take advantage of you.”
He meant when I was shaken from the panic attack. It wouldn’t be anything like taking advantage, I wanted to say, but instead I let his arms unpeel from around me, exhaling, and we headed back to the helipad, my heart and blood pressure returning to normal as we put distance between us and the churning surf.
My phone rang Mo-No’s ringtone. I grabbed it.
“You’re not there. Chachi has arrived, and you are not waiting with arms open. The pilot already told me. All these months, you’ve never let me down, but if this is a pattern—where you endanger Chachi for your own ends—then I’m going to have no choice but to put you on a three-strike system, and this is your first strike, because—”
“I’m standing here looking at Chachi as we speak. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
The helicopter pilot must have ratted me out for not being there when he crated Chachi, or something. I couldn’t blame him. Mo-No could manipulate any situation into her own skewed view, regardless of how the pilot had reported.
“Chachi is the most precious thing in my life. You know I’d be there to pick her up myself if I had any other choice but to have my lips plumped on a Friday morning. I thought I could count on you.”
Lips plumped. I thought she’d gone on her hunting trip. Please say her plans hadn’t changed. I’d really started looking forward to spending the whole day with Henry, just looking around the island, getting him situated somewhere, maybe following through on a little of that zapping chemistry we’d just experienced together.
Would it be unethical of me to kiss the man I’d hired to woo my boss?
Probably. But with his scent still wafting through my olfactories, I honestly couldn’t care about that. He smelled far too good for ethics to go confusing me with facts.
We walked up to the car and I could hear the dog still yapping. I was still a little shaky, so it was hard to hold the phone, let alone listen to Mo-No’s bone-rattling shrieks.
“You can still count on me, Monique-Noelle. Here. I’ll put it on video chat. You can see I’m with Chachi right now.”
I connected them visually, and Mo-No made baby talk cooing sounds, and Chachi, suddenly silent and engrossed in licking her toenails, ignored her.
“Don’t worry, Monique-Noelle. They say dogs aren’t good with video screens. Their minds can’t process them. Chachi wasn’t rejecting you.”
“Please. We know that Chachi is smarter than most human children.” She scoffed. “Look at Sylvie. She can’t even say her alphabet yet, and yet we have Chachi here who can count to ten with her paw.” She went on a bit more, arguing the case for Chachi’s superior intelligence. I glanced over and saw Henry staring in full-on disbelief.
“I’ll be home at eleven this morning. Have Chachi ready for me.”
My heart sank. Sure enough, her hunting excursion had been canceled. Not that I was sorry she’d opted for whatever reason not to seek out a candidate for adultery today, but yeah. It cut short my one-on-one time with Henry.
“Eleven o’clock. Chachi will be ready.” Which meant take Chachi for a walk, re-groom her, and repaint her nails, even though the dog had just taken a helicopter ride to receive the most extensive and expensive grooming that money could buy.
We loaded Chachi into the car and I took a drink from my water bottle, which seemed to put the final nail in the coffin of my little episode. I felt healed from that panic attack at last.
Henry had saved me.
“You want me to drive?” Henry asked.
“Actually, that would be nice,” I said initially, but then woke up to reality. Did this guy I picked up at the bus station even have a driver’s license? If Mo-No found out I’d let a vagrant drive one of the Bainbridge fleet, she’d roast me on a spit. “But that’s okay. Thanks to you and your help getting myself back together, I’ve got it.”
We pulled out onto one of San Nouveau’s many winding, rock-lined roads, taking a different route than we’d come, so that Henry could see a little more of San Nouveau. It was a good day for it, cloudless, the salt air tangy and fresh.
Chachi started a bark-fest.
“Don’t mind Chachi. She’s a barker. It’s not personal.”
“The person you’re working for doesn’t seem to have her priorities right.” Henry turned around and eyed Chachi. “Don’t get me wrong. Like you say, dogs are great. I thought I couldn’t live without Cujo once. However, doesn’t the woman also have a daughter?”
“You were listening.”
“Your phone is turned up loud, and this is a small car.”
“Can you see why my boss needs a wakeup call?”
“After the first phone call, I knew things were bad for your little girl.” Henry scrubbed his cheek with the back of his knuckles. “But now I’m beginning to realize that was just the tip of the iceberg.”
“I’d never ask you to help me if it weren’t for Sylvie’s sake.”
“I mean, if you were just trying to pull the wool over the eyes of some random rich snobs, you would have been reenacting the celebration scene from My Fair Lady after last night’s movie premiere.”
“Celebration scene?”
“The one that goes on and on with the two men singing, ‘We did it! We did it!’ and leaving the guttersnipe out, like she’d done nothing herself.”
“How do you know Polly and I didn’t do that after you went to bed?” After the event last night, I’d fallen into bed, and Polly hadn’t been home yet from seeing Geordie off to war, and we’d left before dawn this morning. Yeah, there was no victory dance in the end zone. Maybe there should have been, considering our effort had been an unmitigated success. But it wasn’t the success we were aiming for yet, as Henry was busy pointing out.
“Because you didn’t.”
I sighed. “Yes, I want to put Mo-No in her place, but I’m also driving her car, sleeping at her guest cottage, entrusted with her child—and let’s not forget the dog. For Mo-No, that means everything.
“I just want her to get knocked down a little. Not a lot, just enough to where she’s able to see more of what’s important in this world. Because, as you can tell, she is pretty blind.”
“At first I thought you were in it for some kind of game, trick, or otherwise. Revenge of the Nannies, or some such. And I like a game, myself, so I was in so long as it harmed no one. Then when you said you wanted to stop her from cheating on her husband, I could see some merit in that. I’m all about fidelity in marriage. But now that I’ve heard that woman’s voice more than once, I get the sense all your motives are in the right place. She needs a massive wakeup call. This may or may not work. But I’m game for helping you with everything that’s in me because you’re not in it to harm someone, you’re in it to protect someone.”
His words soaked into me, making my fingertips tingle on the steering wheel. I glanced over at his earnest face, and I recalled how his arms had felt around me a few minutes ago. So comforting. So strong. He’d smelled nice too, even without the cologne from the chauffeur’s shopping trip. Something earthy and real and masculine.
“Thanks. I would never want to hurt anyone.”
“I get that. Which is why I have an idea.”
“An idea.”
“Well, it might be an idea.”
“Or it might not.” My skepticism crept up. A guy who thought coyotes were salivating over him in the night might have a violent idea. “Am I the one who gets to decide whether this notion merits idea status? What exactly do you have in mind?”
He craned his neck around to look at Chachi for a moment, and then he lowered his voice.
“A dog-napping.”