Madelynne Ellis - Anything but Ordinary

‘Oh, for fuck’s sake.’ Ric planted a hand on the boy’s head and held him at arm’s length, while he browsed through the illicit images with his thumb and repeatedly hit delete.

Kara curled her hand around his bicep when she noticed the kid’s grandmother appear from around the curve of the bay. The old woman saw them huddled around her still flailing charge and hurried over, chiffon scarf waving in the breeze.

‘What on earth are you doing to my grandson? Get your hands off him.’ She inserted herself between Ric and the boy, whom she sent scuttling towards a line of young relatives who’d just appeared from the same direction she had come.

‘Nan?’ they enquired.

‘I’m fine, dears.’ She flapped them towards the shore. ‘Go…play…’

Gentle with her charges, her gaze turned cold as she turned it upon Ric. ‘Who do you think you are, laying a finger on him? You’ve no right, none at all.’

‘He was taking pictures of things he shouldn’t have been.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous.’ The woman’s sun-browned face scrunched into a web of lines. ‘Is that his camera? How dare you take it off him? Give that back.’ She snatched it out of Ric’s hand. ‘And you’ve been deleting his pictures. Oh, my God.’

‘Would you rather I’d left the topless shots on there?’

‘Well…’

Ric scratched the faint golden stubble around his jaw. ‘Or the ones of them shagging?’ He shot sidewards glances at both Zach and Kara, who had positioned themselves at either side of him. ‘Maybe you’d prefer it if I’d just allowed him to carry on.’

Mouth slack, the woman seemed momentarily lost for words. She blinked at Ric.

‘Preposterous. He would never do such a thing. You meant to steal his camera. It was a birthday present, I’ll have you know.’

Somehow she seemed to have missed the expensive camera hanging from a strap over Ric’s shoulder, and hence had failed to realise how ludicrous her claim was.

‘My phone has a better lens than that thing,’ Ric scoffed. ‘Stealing? You’re off your rocker, lady. Instead of casting aspersions, maybe you ought to go and ask your grandson why he felt it necessary to take pictures of strangers. And maybe you’d like to ask yourself how he was allowed to wander off without you knowing where he was or what he was up to.’

‘I did know where he was. Just ahead of me. And there’s only your word to suggest he was doing anything wrong.’

‘Not only my word.’ Ric tapped his index finger against the viewscreen of the boy’s camera. ‘Don’t think I quite got them all, if you’d care to look.’

The woman’s gaze dropped from his face, travelled along the length of his arm to his finger. ‘How am I supposed to know what button does what?’

Ric helpfully tapped the back button.

A blush fanned across the woman’s cheeks. Yet again her mouth fell open.

‘Well…I…never…That’s…Are you?’

She flicked a hurried glance at Kara, clearly appalled.

‘This is disgusting.’

The remaining few images only consolidated her outrage.

‘What sort of person films this filth on a public beach, or performs it?’

Ignoring Ric a moment she levelled another glance at Kara. ‘I suppose it’s too much to hope that you’re married.’

Kara wiggled her fingers, displaying the absence of any sort of ring.

‘You ought to be ashamed of yourselves, the three of you.’ She shut off the camera and deposited it in her cream-coloured handbag. ‘Nasty, that’s what it is, and clearly what you are.’

‘This isn’t a public beach,’ Zach pointed out, but the woman wasn’t listening. She was staring at the sunlight dappling Ric’s naked torso, and the spray slowly trickling over his abs. One droplet clung to his stomach just above the waistband of his extremely low-slung jeans. Kara had to clench her fists and dig her feet into the sand to stop herself from falling onto her knees and licking him. The old woman would probably faint dead away if she did that. Well, perhaps after she’d given them another lecture on propriety.

It occurred to Kara that her own sense of decorum had skipped out of town some nine months ago, right around the time she’d arrived on Liddell Island, and definitely by the first time Ric had fucked her in the arse in the open air. It’d happened on the cliff top, just above this cove. The memory put a hugely inappropriate smile on her face that she struggled to hide. Thankfully, there’d not been an audience that night.

‘For heaven’s sakes, cover yourself up. There are children about.’

‘They shouldn’t be here.’

Kara cast her gaze along the shore. Several kids ranging in ages from approximately seven to seventeen were now splashing about in the waves.

She didn’t need to see Ric’s expression to know his thoughts. Ire was radiating off him.

‘Really, it’s not appropriate. At least pull your trousers up.’

‘This is private property.’

Kara quickly inserted herself between Ric and the woman, just in case he did anything rash. She’d never known him to deck a total stranger, or strike a woman – discounting occurrences during consensual sex – but everyone had their breaking point and Ric had seemed alarmingly close to his for weeks now.

His mouth formed a nasty scowl.

‘Let’s go, Ric. We don’t need to hang out here,’ she counselled, tactfully failing to mention that it wouldn’t kill him to cover up a little under the circumstances. It wasn’t necessary for him to stroll around half naked, even if the fact he did meant she got to drink her fill of his stellar body.

‘Go where? I shouldn’t fucking need to go elsewhere. And no, I won’t put a fucking shirt on, and neither will he.’

Clearly he’d forgotten that Zach was technically dressed. It was an easy mistake to make, given that their roll in the surf had left him sodden and his cotton T-shirt see-through. Kara could see Zach’s nipples, puckered by the cold, quite clearly, along with the ridiculously pleasing cut of his abs, and those cute lines that formed a V either side of his hips that drew the eye downwards to…

She stopped herself looking, aware that the belligerent old woman was still present. The only reason her own clothing wasn’t as transparent as Zach’s was that she’d worn dark colours.

‘Let’s head up to Kara’s place,’ Zach suggested. Beachcomber Barn was only a little way along the cliff top, and at least there they wouldn’t be interrupted.

‘Why should we?’

Ric had a point. A valid point. This was his island. His property. Liddell Island had been owned by his family for centuries. The woman and her charges were only here because he chose to allow it. If he wished, he could force every one of the island’s visitors to leave immediately without giving any reason at all.

‘Come on, Ric.’ Zach clapped a hand on his shoulder. ‘It’s not worth it. Let the kids play in the sun. I can live without sand in intimate places and sunburn on my arse.’

He was rewarded with dual withering glares: one from the tourist, presumably over his language, and the other from Ric, who clearly considered it a matter of pride to stand his ground.

‘Really, man? It’s so not worth it.’ Zach half turned him and gave him an encouraging little shove in the right direction, which at least got him moving.

Ric grumbled under his breath all the way up to the top of the cliff and the way-marker stone. ‘It’s my fucking cove!’ he yelled back at the holidaymakers, giving them a two-fingered salute.

Kara doubted the folks on the beach heard him. The wind was blowing in the wrong direction and they were all too busy enjoying themselves to worry about a strange man prancing about on a clifftop.