else to be.
Vessels came and went daily on the edge of the Marine Park off Coral Bay—mostly research boats, often charters and occasionally private yachts there to enjoy the World Heritage reefs. This one had ‘private’ written all over it. If she had the kind of money that bought luxury catamarans she’d probably spend it visiting places of wonder too.
Mila peeled her wetsuit down to its waist and let her eyes flutter shut as the coastal air against her sweat-damp skin tinkled like tiny, bouncing ball bearings. Most days, she liked to snorkel in just a bikini to revel in the symphony of water against her bare flesh. Some days, though, she just needed to get things done and a wetsuit was as good as noise-cancelling headphones to someone with synaesthesia—or ‘superpower’ as her brothers had always referred to her cross-sensed condition—because she couldn’t hear the physical sensation of swimming over the reef when it was muted by thick neoprene. Not that her condition was conveniently limited to just the single jumbled sensation; no, that would be too pedestrian for Mila Nakano. She felt colours. She tasted emotion. And she attributed random personality traits to things. It might make no sense to anyone else but it made total sense to her.
Of course it did; she’d been born that way.
But today she could do without the distraction. Her tour-for-one was due any minute and she still needed to cross the rest of the bay and clamber up to Nancy’s Point to meet him, because she’d drifted further than she meant while snorkelling the reef. A tour-for-one was the perfect number. One made it possible for her to do her job without ending up with a thumping headache—complete with harmonic foghorns. With larger groups, she couldn’t control how shouty their body spray was, what mood the colours they wore would leave her in, or how exhausting they were just to be around. They would have a fantastic time out on the reef, but the cost to her was sometimes too great. It could take her three days to rebalance after a big group.
But one... That was doable.
Her one was a Mr Richard Grundy. Up from Perth, the solitary, sprawling metropolis on Australia’s west coast, tucked away in the bottom corner of the state, two days’ drive—or a two-hour jet flight—from here. From anything, some visitors thought because they couldn’t see what was right in front of them. The vast expanses of outback scrub you had to pass through to get here.
The nothing that was always full of something.
Grundy was a businessman, probably, since ones tended to arrive in suits with grand plans for the reef and what they could make it into. Anything from clusters of glamping facilities to elite floating casinos. Luxury theme parks. They never got off the ground, of course; between the public protests, the strict land use conditions and the flat-out no that the local leaseholder gave on development access through their property, her tour-for-one usually ended up being a tour-of-one. She never saw them, their business suit or their fancy development ideas again.
Which was fine; she was happy to play her part in keeping everything around here exactly as it was.
Mila shed the rest of her wetsuit unselfconsciously, stretched to the heavens for a moment as the ball bearings tinkled around her bikini-clad skin and slipped into the khaki shorts and shirt that identified her as official staff of the World Heritage Area. The backpack sitting on the sand bulged first with the folded wetsuit and then with bundled snorkelling gear, and she pulled her dripping hair back into a ponytail. She dropped the backpack into her work-supplied four-wheel drive then jogged past it and up towards the point overlooking the long, brilliant bay.
She didn’t rush. Ones were almost always late; they underestimated the time it took to drive up from the city or down from the nearest airport, or they let some smartphone app decide how long it would take them when a bit of software could have no idea how much further a kilometre was in Western Australia’s north. Besides, she’d parked on the only road into the meeting point and so her one would have had to drive past her to get to Nancy’s Point. So far, hers was the only vehicle as far as the eye could see.
If you didn’t count the bobbing catamaran beyond the reef.
Strong legs pushed her up over the lip of the massive limestone spur named after Nancy Dawson—the matriarch of the family that had grazed livestock on these lands for generations. Coral Bay’s first family.
‘Long way to come for a strip-show,’ a deep voice rumbled as she straightened.
Mila stumbled to a halt, her stomach sinking on a defensive whiff of old shoe that was more back-of-her-throat taste than nose-scrunching smell. The man standing there was younger than his name suggested and he wasn’t in a suit, like most ones, but he wore cargo pants and a faded red T-shirt as if they were one. Something about the way he moved towards her... He still screamed ‘corporate’ even without a tie.
Richard Grundy.
She spun around, hunting for the vehicle that she’d inexplicably missed. Nothing. It only confounded her more. The muted red of his T-shirt was pumping off all kinds of favourite drunk uncle kind of associations, but she fought the instinctive softening that brought. Nothing about his sarcastic greeting deserved congeniality. Besides, this man was anything but uncle-esque. His dark blond hair was windblown but well-cut and his eyes, as he slid his impenetrable sunglasses up onto his head to reveal them, were a rich blue. Rather like the lagoon behind him, in fact.
That got him a reluctant bonus point.
‘You were early,’ she puffed.
‘I was on time,’ he said again, apparently amused at her discomfort. ‘And I was dropped off. Just in time for the show.’
She retracted that bonus point. This was her bay, not his. If she wanted to swim in it before her shift started, what business was it of his?
‘I could have greeted you in my wetsuit,’ she muttered, ‘but I figured my uniform would be more appropriate.’
‘You’re the guide, I assume?’ he said, approaching with an out-thrust hand.
‘I’m a guide,’ she said, still bristling, then extended hers on a deep breath. Taking someone’s hand was never straightforward; she never knew quite what she’d get out of it. ‘Mila Nakano. Parks Department.’
‘Richard Grundy,’ he replied, marching straight into her grasp with no further greeting. Or interest. ‘What’s the plan for today?’
The muscles around her belly button twittered at his warm grip on her water-cool fingers and her ears filled with the gentle brush of a harp. That was new; she usually got anything from a solo trumpet to a whole brass section when she touched people, especially strangers.
A harp thrum was incongruously pleasant.
‘Today?’ she parroted, her synapses temporarily disconnected.
‘Our tour.’ His lagoon-coloured eyes narrowed in on hers. ‘Are you my guide?’
She quickly recovered. ‘Yes, I am. But no one gave me any information on the purpose of your visit—’ except to impress upon her his VIP status ‘—so we’ll be playing it a bit by ear today. It would help me to know what you’re here for,’ she went on. ‘Or what things interest you.’
‘It all interests me,’ he said, glancing away. ‘I’d like to get a better appreciation for the...ecological value of the area.’
Uh-huh. Didn’t they all...? Then they went back to the city to work on ways to exploit it.
‘Is
