Page 17 of Lawless (Dauntless Island #2)

DOMINIC

I wasn’t sure which was going to kill me first—Natty Harper, or my first meeting of the Dauntless Island Local Council.

Which, to be clear, was just Red Joe sitting unhappily in the back room of the Tourist Information Centre while Mavis Coldwell complained about how one of Robbie Finch’s goats had wandered into the village and eaten the chives from her window box.

“I’ve always said those goats are trouble, haven’t I, Red Joe?” she asked.

Red Joe hummed. “You have, Mavis.”

Everyone else hummed too—there were about a dozen of us crammed into the back room. I don’t know if any of the others had council business, or if listening to Mavis was just what passed for entertainment on the island.

Red Joe was not looking very mayoral. He never was, but this evening he looked even less mayoral than usual.

He smelled a lot less mayoral too. He’d come straight from the Adeline , and he stank of fish, sweat and diesel.

He was still wearing his orange fishing gear.

Even Eddie, who was taking the minutes, had put as much distance between them as was practicable in the small room.

“But the difficulty is, how do you know it was one of Robbie’s goats?” Red Joe asked. “Not that I’m doubting you, but there are other people with goats on the island. And there’s more than a few ferals.”

“Like the one that knocked that tourist down a few years back,” an old man said. “You remember that, Red Joe. Same year as the big storm that knocked over Alice Williams’s shed.”

“That was in the seventies, I think, Tall Tom,” Red Joe said. “So it’s probably not the same goat.”

“Must be one of Robbie Finch’s then,” Mavis said, and gave me a narrow look, as though the loss of her chives was somehow my fault.

Shit . Was she attempting to persecute Robbie Finch and his goats at a council meeting because of me? Had she found out about our milk-on-the-downlow arrangement?

“I’ll have a word with Robbie,” Red Joe said. “Is there any other council business?” He looked hopefully around for someone who wasn’t Mavis.

Amy Nesmith waved her hand, and Baby Joe gurgled on her lap. “It’s not really council business, but I wanted to get the word out.”

“It’s never really council business,” Eddie said brightly. “That’s the charm of these meetings!”

Red Joe exhaled heavily.

“I’m going to get a truck for the fish farm,” Amy said, and it was like she’d said she wanted to feed babies to sharks.

Mavis gasped and jabbed her finger in my direction. “It’s bad enough with his bike, disturbing everyone’s peace at all hours!”

I pasted on a pleasant smile that probably made me look like an idiot.

“Every time we get equipment, Elias has to pick it up from the jetty in his boat and get it halfway around the island,” Amy said.

“It’s impractical. And, when we’re up and running and ready to sell, it’ll be twice as bloody ridiculous if we have to do everything by boat.

The jetty is the only place where it’s deep enough for the bigger boats to dock.

If we end up selling to the mainland, that’ll be our pickup point.

We’re going to need a couple of trucks to get our stock to the boats. ”

“Oh, now it’s a couple of trucks!” Mavis exclaimed, aghast.

“We haven’t had trucks on the island since the Americans in the war,” said Tall Tom. “You remember that, Red Joe.”

I was pretty sure nobody in this room, even Tall Tom, was old enough to remember that.

“Where does it end, Red Joe?” Mavis asked. “You’re as bad as Short Clarry with his mopeds for tourists and his shuttle buses, and look how he ended up!”

“I’m not talking about turning Dauntless into Bali,” Amy said. “I just want a couple of trucks. They’d be on the other side of the island, and only come into the village once or twice a week at the most.”

“There’s no law against it,” Red Joe said.

“There ought to be!” Mavis said, and looked at me. Hard.

Shit .

I cleared my throat. “As long as everyone has the appropriate licences and doesn’t commit any traffic offences, it’s not a police matter.”

“What’s the good of you then, if you can’t even stop trucks from coming onto the island?” Mavis demanded.

“I can only stop illegal things,” I said. “Trucks aren’t against the law.”

Mavis’s expression soured. There was no way I’d ever be able to buy milk now.

Amy shot me a grin. “They’re not against the law, see, Mavis?”

Mavis smouldered in her chair like a volcano, if volcanoes wore bright pink puffer coats.

“Speaking of Bali,” Red Joe said. “Well, not Bali exactly, but tourism in general... I got an email this morning from some American bloke. Apparently Short Clarry was in contact with him for a while. This bloke runs some hotel chain or something, and he might be coming to look at Dauntless.”

A murmur ran through the room, equal parts excited, outraged, and perturbed.

“I’ve had a look at his website,” Red Joe said, “and it’ll probably come to nothing. I don’t think Dauntless is—what did you call it, Eddie?”

“On brand,” Eddie said. “His other resorts are all hot stone massages, yoga, and luxurious relaxation packages. If you try to be one with nature here, a goat attacks you.”

“But most of Dauntless is government owned,” Red Joe said, and gave everyone a moment to mutter and grumble. “So again, if he makes a deal with the government to lease some land or buy it, that’s out of our hands.”

“This is our island!” someone up the back exclaimed.

“First trucks and now hotels and Americans!” Mavis shook her head. “Where does it all end? Nothing good will come of it, Red Joe. You mark my words.”

“I’ll make a note of it in the minutes,” Eddie said helpfully.

“I love Dauntless the way it is too,” Red Joe said with a sigh, “but we’ve done things our way for almost two hundred years now.

When Short Clarry got us in the news on the mainland, people in the government noticed, and questions were asked, and change is coming.

” He nodded at me. “Dominic’s just the first. The Department of Education is sending someone over too, so we might finally get a school again, at least for the younger kids.

And the Health Department might give us our own clinic and a doctor.

We can’t avoid change, not altogether, but it’s not all bad.

The other night Nipper Will might have died if the air ambulance had been delayed.

And that’s not good enough. I know we love our way of life here, but we deserve the same access to services as the mainlanders. ”

There was something commanding in the way he spoke, even though he didn’t even raise his voice, or maybe it was in the way people listened.

Even Mavis, with a stubborn tilt to her chin, was listening, and a few people were nodding along.

Eddie met my gaze, a faint smile on his face, and I remembered what he’d said about the Nesmith name meaning something here.

“Our kids deserve the same opportunities as kids from the mainland, and that’s not up for debate, not even for a second,” Red Joe finished, his gaze on Baby Joe.

He raked a hand through his hair. “And now, if that’s everything, I’m going home to shower.

I smell like I’ve been rolling around in a chum bucket. ”

“You have to say ‘meeting adjourned,’” Eddie said.

The legs of Red Joe’s chair squeaked as he pushed it back and stood. “I’m not saying that.”

“Meeting adjourned!” Eddie said. “See you next month, everyone!”

I hung around after the meeting in case anyone wanted to chat. They didn’t, of course, so I eventually wandered off home. It took all of three minutes to get there. I got a can of tuna out for the cat, and a tin of spaghetti for me, and set them on the counter and checked the time.

It wasn’t even seven. Hell, it wasn’t even dark . I still had a few hours to kill until Natty’s evening show.

Natty Harper—the other thing that was going to kill me.

Holy hell.

I didn’t know exactly how we’d got into the pattern of Natty opening his bedroom window and wanking for me every night, but I wasn’t complaining.

Confused and horny, but not complaining.

We’d only kissed once, in the kitchen the night of his brother’s accident, and I hadn’t seen him since during daylight hours, but for the last week he’d been opening his window at night, shoving his curtains aside, and flicking his lights to signal that he was about to start.

And I was totally on board.

Okay, so I would have preferred that he came over to my place instead, but he hadn’t, and so this was what we were doing, apparently.

And the Natty I watched through his window wasn’t the same Natty as I’d kissed.

This one was a total tease, and we both loved it.

A part of me wanted to reciprocate by putting on a show of my own, but I’d never been the recipient of a recurring private strip show before, and I had no idea what the etiquette was.

Also, I had a feeling that if Nipper Will happened to look out the window, he wouldn’t be a fan.

I’d seen Young Harry Barnes drop him off at the jetty midmorning.

He’d been wearing a thick bandage and his customary glower.

I didn’t envy Natty having to live with him.

I was rattling around in the drawer for my can opener when Frank yowled to be let out. I opened the back door for her.

There was a woman standing in my backyard.

“Hi,” I said, stepping outside with Frank. “I’m Dominic. Can I help you?”