Rhys strode up to where James was being held and stared him in the eyes. James, for his part, stared back for a few seconds, before breaking first and looking away.
“Hey, Robb,” Rhys said, still staring at James. “Do you think we could take thispigand turn it into sausages for a Bunnings fundraiser barbecue?”
“No, Rhys,” Robb said with a completely expressionless face, while James looked aghast. “It is against Agency policy to turn agents into sausages for fundraising purposes, no matter how worthy the cause may be. Or how delicious the sausages may taste.”
“That’s a shame,” Rhys muttered, continuing to stare at a squirming James.
This is getting a little too dark!
“Okay, that’s enough,” Maisie declared. “As exciting as this has been, I’d really,reallylike to go home now. Or just anywhere that’s not here.”
“Of course,” Robb said instantly. “The both of you are free to go. Wherever that may be.”
Unable to help herself, Maisie let out a sigh of relief so deep and long that she felt completely deflated by it.
“Come on,” Rhys whispered in her ear, his strong arm coming up to wrap around her shoulder. “Let’s go home.”
Epilogue
“Sorry, mate – you’re going to jail.” Trent smiled wickedly. “Again.”
“For crying out loud,” Rhys muttered, as he moved his boot around the Monopoly board. “Are you sure you haven’t rigged the game somehow? How many times has it been?”
“Seven,” Trent said gleefully. “And no, I haven’t rigged it. You just suck that hard.”
Rhys glowered, and Maisie suppressed a good-natured sigh. She was starting to suspect – well, more than suspect – that Trent had brought the Monopoly board to Rhys’s family home with the deliberate intent of causing… well,mischiefwould be the polite way to phrase it.All-out familial warfarewas another way of putting it.
But it’s the Australian edition!he’d protested, when Rhys’s sister Evie had fixed him with a death glare that Maisie had thought might be capable of causing actual death.It’s only the original version that’s banned in this house! How was I supposed to know you’d object?
Maisie had very quickly come to see why Monopoly – or pretty much anything, really – was banned in Rhys’s familialhome, out here on the cattle station his sister and her mate Penny ran. The competitiveness within his family was off the charts, and when you added in his work teammates, all of whom had been granted some well-earned annual leave by Robb, and who had all apparently decided to descend upon Rhys’s home… well, the feathers were flying.
Not to mention the fact that two baby dragons were currently doing battle over the Monopoly board pieces – the wheelbarrow was a complete write-off, one of its handles lying twisted and forlorn on the floor – while a small, silvery, six-legged reptile happily gnawed on the Chance cards. Trent had informed her with blasé indifference that it was a baby basilisk shifter named Quicksilver, and that itprobablywouldn’t turn her stone with a glance.
She was trying very hard to believe him – and, she had to admit, the basiliskwascute. If she absolutelyhadto get turned to stone, she would be happy if the last thing she saw was a tiny death lizard writhing about on top of a Monopoly board.
Apparently Quicksilver was the adopted child of Trent and his mate Zina – as were the two dragon shifters, Goldie and Dusty. Maisie was sure that there was an interesting story behind all of that, and that someone would make sure she heard all about it at some point.
Meanwhile, Hector’s daughter Ruby, unable to sufficiently scold any of the other baby shifters in her human form, had taken to her alicorn form, prancing up and down and sending the remaining cards flying with the beating of her wings.
Despite all of this, the children were behaving better than the adults, who were all glaring mutinously at one another while trying to pretend that they weren’t attempting to sabotage their opponents.
It was certainly the mostinterestinggame of Monopoly Maisie had ever been involved in. She’d bowed out beforethe game had even begun once she’d realized just how uber-competitive everyone was going to be, and was now happy just simply watching, taking in the happy chaos without thinking too hard about any of it. She was still getting everyone’s names straight, what they shifted into, who was mates with who, who the baby shifters were – she didn’t think getting slaughtered at a board game would help matters.
Sipping her beer, she turned her attention back to the game, where Rhys was… well, notlosing, exactly, but not doing so well as he might have hoped. She suspected that some of it was at least in part due to the fact that he was obviously trying to buy up the Whitsundays square on the board, even when it wasn’t in his best interests.
She wanted to tell him that it was fine – to remind him that they were going on their own trip to the Whitsundays in a couple of days, and that this time they were going to do it right, on a private island with no secret agents or snooty tourists or snake butlers – but one glance at the tense set of his jaw, and she decided that she was keeping her mouth firmly shut. It was romantic, in its own way.
Rhys’s brother Hector took his turn, staring at his Chance card – prized from Quicksilver’s chompy little jaws – for several long seconds.
Rhys leaned over his shoulder, looking at the card and leering triumphantly. “Unpaid parking fines, Hec? That sounds like you.”
“Get fu— fudged,” Hector snapped irritably as he joined Rhys in jail. “Rubes,” he said pleadingly to Ruby, who was prancing about and sending the hotels on Kangaroo Island flying, “could you please get off the board so daddy can serve his wrongful sentence, sweetheart?”
“Meh-eeehh,” Ruby protested, clearly pouting. It was sweet that she was so defensive of him and his bid for freedom fromthe fictional jail. Maisie thought that it would probably be best if the children didn’t spend too much longer in the presence of the adults, though – not so much for their own sake, but because she was pretty sure Rhys and Hector were going to explode if they had to keep their language civil for much longer.
Especially since they were both losing so badly to Evie’s wife, Penny, who was keeping a remarkable air of serenity as she wiped the floor with the lot of them, Evie included. Evie had rage quit the game a few minutes ago, hurling the top hat across the room in disgust, where it had been quickly seized by a triumphant Goldie, who had snatched it out of the air with her adorable little baby dragon claws, and then flown around the room with it on her adorable little baby dragon wings.
Maisie watched contentedly, looking at everyone again to remind herself of who was who. Euan was sitting in the corner, watching a crappy soap opera on the TV with a suspiciously high level of interest, though Maisie did catch him cracking the slightest of smiles at the antics going on across the room.
