“Gobsmacked,” I suggested. “That could be the word you’re looking for. It doesn’t sound like the best plan when you put it that way, no.”
“I know you’re better in business than that,” she said, “because I think we’d call that idea ‘dumb.’”
“Granted. And that one’s done, since you have a forgiving nature.” This was a negotiation, I reminded myself, and I was a good negotiator. Time to move on.
“Nope,” she said. “Not done. You have to say the ‘w’ word.”
I sighed and gave it up. “I was wrong, then. Happy now? Because I’m not. I’m still married, and I’m not one bit happy about that. You’re disappointed? Well, I’m disappointed as well. You could think of that.”
She was silent, and I said, “What?”
She glanced at me from the corner of her eye and kept walking. We’d come to an expanse of green lawn, a rugby pitch with a stand of trees beyond it, and she turned and headed across, heedless of the damp grass.
“What?” I asked again. “You heard what he said. I wasn’t with Anika long enough to give her the right to anything I’ve earned since.” I ignored the niggle at the back of my neck. I didn’t borrow trouble, and I didn’t worry. Both were a waste of time.
Half your marital property, Walter had said. And I was still married.
No. I hadn’t lived with Anika for three years—quite—and according to Walter, that was the law. We had to go through the formalities, and it would be over, even though it had really been over fifteen years ago.
Hope was beyond the pitch and veering off onto a track made of beaten earth, still muddy after the rain, that led through the trees at the edges of the reserve. I thought about suggesting that walking back to the car might be better than a tramp through the mud in the gathering dark, but I didn’t. If she wanted to walk through mud, I reckoned we were walking through mud.
You see how reasonable I was? How willing to compromise? Pity Hope didn’t.
Finally, she said, “When exactly were you planning on springing the idea of a prenup on me? The day before the wedding, when I was thinking about the vows, and our life together?” When I didn’t answer, she said, “It’s Monday night, Hemi. The wedding was supposed to be Saturday. You were running out of time, weren’t you, if I need an attorney? Or was it that ‘leverage’ thing? And that would have been a good thing to talk about when we had that ‘money’ discussion, don’t you think?”
Her voice was shaking. Anger, sadness, disappointment, I couldn’t tell. Maybe all three. But I had my own share of those, and now, I gave up on fighting it. “Did you hear me agree to that?” I asked. “Did you wonder why I didn’t cut him off? I let you hear him say all of that, and did you ask me about it, or did you jump to conclusions?”
“What? You sounded like you’d already had the conversation. You clearly had had the conversation. When?”
“This morning,” I said reluctantly. “But I didn’t ask him for a prenup.”
We’d come to a junction in the track, and she turned to face me, searching my eyes for the truth. It was even darker here, and I didn’t know what she could see, but Hope always saw too much.
“I don’t…” I said. I wanted to pace, so I held still and centered myself again. “I don’t talk about things until I’m ready to talk about them, and until I have to. I told you, I operate on a need-to-know basis. I didn’t want to talk to Walter about it in the car, so I didn’t. I’ll talk to him about it later.”
“Are you telling me you haven’t thought about asking me for a prenup?”
“Are you saying you don’t believe me?”
Her eyes were still steady on mine. “That’s what this is about, isn’t it? Trust. I want to trust you, and in some ways, I do. I trust in your goodness. I trust in your honesty, even. I trust that whatever you do tell me will be true.”
“Except that you just questioned what I told you.”
She sighed. “Hemi. If you wanted a prenup, you could have told me. I’d have understood why. I do understand why. Like I said—money is power. I get that you’ve built your…your empire, and you’ll keep building it, and it’s yours, not mine. I get that I don’t have a right to it, either to what you’ve already built, or to what you’ll build by yourself in the future. Why wouldn’t I get that?”
“Of course you’ll have a right to it. And this is…” I broke off. “Bloody hell,” I muttered. “I hate this. All this discussing.”
She folded her arms. “Well, tough, because we’re doing it. Why would I have a right to it?”
“Because you’ll be my partner,” I said in exasperation. “Because that’s what marriage is. If I tell you I don’t want you to work as hard as I’ve had to, that I want you to stay with me, to build a life with me, why wouldn’t I have to…to compensate you for that?”
“Ouch.”
I dragged a hand through my hair. “That’s the wrong word? Think of the word you think I should use, and I’ll use that. Do you want a prenup? I told you. You’re marrying me, and you’re not leaving me, and I’m not leaving you. I’m in this, and I’m in it for good. But it sounds like you’re not.”
The voices were raging at me. Danger. Step back. Don’t give up your power. And I didn’t listen.
Her arms had gone around herself under my suit coat. I could barely see her in the darkness, but I could tell she was rocking back and forth. “I’m scared,” she said. “All this…”
“Aw, baby,” I said helplessly, and took her in my arms. “And you say I have trust issues.”
She let out a choked little laugh, and her face was against my chest. I sank down onto a boulder at the edge of the track, pulled her into my lap, and held her there.
“You’re still married,” she said against my shirt.
“Yeh,” I said. “I am. Bugger.”
I could feel her sigh. “I kind of wanted to marry you, you know? Even though I’m apparently still nervous about it.”
“You’re going to marry me.” Of that, I was absolutely sure.
She sighed again, and we sat quietly for a minute. “Well,” she finally said, “we’d better go home and tell your grandfather, I guess.”
“No. We’ll just say we’ve decided to wait. That it was too fast.”
“Hemi.” She sat up, put her hand on my cheek, and looked at me. “No. Karen knows, and keeping that secret from your grandfather—wouldn’t that hurt you, and him, if he found out? And why not tell? If we don’t have secrets, nobody can use them against us.”
“That’s not true,” I said. “It’s always better to hold your cards close, not to show weakness.”
“Maybe in business,” she said. “Not in this. If we’re open, we don’t have to worry about anyone finding out, or about keeping a story straight. And then we do whatever you want.”
“We do, eh. I like the sound of that.”
“I mean,” she hurried on, “once this is settled, we can get married in New York, or we can come back here. Maybe…maybe Christmas or something.”
I’d wanted to fly back to New York already married to her. I hated the idea that I wouldn’t be doing it. I dealt with what was, always, not with what I wished for or hoped for, but I couldn’t seem to make the shift.
“You’re still moving in with me,” I said.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I have to—”
“No,” I said. “You’re doing it. You and Karen.”
“Let’s see what happens,” she said, and then she climbed off my lap. “And we need to go back. Karen.”
“No,” I said. “Not yet.” Let’s see what happens? No.
“Karen—” she said.
I almost said something very rude about Karen. I was frustrated enough to say almost anything. Instead, I said, “She’s reading The Lord of the Rings, and she’s only halfway through Book Two. She’ll keep for five more minutes. If she gets bored, she can buy tires.”
She had her mouth open to say something else, and I didn’t let her. I shoved a
hand through her hair, pulled her into me, and kissed her hard. She was gasping into my mouth, and I was pulling her down by her hair, propping her up with my arm under her shoulders while I got my other hand up under her sweater and claimed her breast.
I kissed her until she was moaning into my mouth, and played with her, running my hand over her, pinching and teasing and stroking, until she was whimpering. She was so sensitive, it was never hard to wind her up if I concentrated. And I was very good at concentrating.
When I felt her melting into me, lying back against my arm, boneless with desire, wanting it so desperately…I sat her up, pulled my hand out from under her sweater, tugged it back into place, and said, “Come on, sweetheart. Let’s go home. Karen.”
“You are…” She was trying for anger, but she was all but panting with need. “Hemi.”
“Mm.” I dropped a gentle kiss onto her swollen lips. “You can tell me tonight. Or maybe not. Because how do you imagine I’ll be able to keep you quiet enough at Koro’s?”
“You’ll…I’ll…”
I waited, but she didn’t come up with anything. I traced the edge of her jaw with the back of my hand and said, “Will my hand over your mouth do, or do you fancy trying something a bit more…adventurous? You see how I’m asking, sweetheart?”
“Hemi. You wouldn’t.”
“Oh,” I said with absolute certainty. “I would. I will. And you’ll love it.”
I couldn’t win in every way with her, it seemed, but I could still win in one. And I was going to take it.
Hope
My fiancé was still married to somebody else. There would be no dress, no wedding, and no honeymoon, and we had to explain that to my sister, and to Hemi’s grandfather, too, over the lamb chops and roast vegetables he’d cooked in the warm, steamy kitchen of the little house on the hill.
“Not divorced after all, eh,” Koro said calmly, spearing another cube of roasted kumara. “That’s a pity.”
“You could say that,” Hemi said, the faint flush on his cheekbones and the rigidity of his posture telling me what his expression didn’t. “And before you say anything—I know it’s my fault. My carelessness.”
“Nah, mate,” Koro said. “It’s life. You had other things to think of, and you didn’t know everything then that you know now.”
“That nobody can be trusted,” Hemi said. “That you always have to doublecheck. And I didn’t.”
“That some people can’t be trusted,” Koro said. “Best forgive yourself, eh. I don’t see you brooding over your mistakes, my son. Don’t start now. And I know,” he added when Hemi didn’t answer, when he got that little bit more still instead, “that it’s worse to admit to them in front of the people you love. It’s worst of all to feel you’ve let Hope down. But that’s where the mana comes from, in accepting what’s happened, in standing up to it instead of hiding from it. If you look at Hope, you’ll see her trying to tell you that you haven’t let her down, and that she’ll wait for you. If she wasn’t willing to do that, she wouldn’t be the woman you know she is.”
“I will,” I said through a throat that had tightened. “I’ll wait.” I took Hemi’s hand under the table and tried to tell him so that way, since he would still barely look at me.
He had no reason to feel ashamed, and he felt it anyway. That was why he hadn’t wanted to admit this to anybody, even his grandfather. But then, I knew how high he set the bar.
I squeezed his hand until he finally, reluctantly, looked at me. I asked, “Isn’t there a Maori proverb about aiming high? Didn’t I read that?’
“Whaia te iti kahurangi ki te tuohu koe me he maunga teitei,” Hemi said. “Aim for the highest cloud so that if you miss it, you will hit a lofty mountain. Have you been studying, sweetheart?” He managed a smile, too.
“I was thinking about it during the drive,” I said. “I was remembering that when I read it, I thought of you.” I tried my best to let him know I meant it, and hoped it was working.
Steadfast. That was what Hemi was, underneath all the reserve and all the darkness. That was what I loved so much about him. Well, then, I was going to have to be steadfast, too. Which meant kicking my insecurities to the curb and believing. Not easy.
“Well, I’m bummed,” Karen said into the silence. “I mean, that’s great and all that everybody loves everybody, but notice who still isn’t a bridesmaid? Me.”
Everybody laughed, and the tension broke. I kept hold of Hemi’s hand, looked into his grandfather’s wise old eyes, and thought, Bride or not, wedding or not, I’m a lucky woman.
And you know what’s terrible? That whole dinner, while I was wrestling with the most important commitment of my life—in the back of my mind, I was hearing, Do you fancy trying something a bit more…adventurous? And knowing—knowing—that Hemi was hearing it, too, no matter how seriously he talked to his grandfather or how sweetly he smiled at Karen and told her she’d still be my maid of honor, because he wasn’t going to have it any other way.
It was the way he’d turned the tables on me, the way he’d grabbed me and kissed me, not to mention the way he’d touched me, back there in the dark. Or maybe the way he’d made me think he was going to do something else, something we shouldn’t have been doing in public, and then hadn’t. He’d just stood up with me in his arms, set my feet back on the muddy ground, and said, “Think about that, then. I’ll give you three hours or so to wait for it, and then…you’ll see.”
Or the way, right now, that he was holding my hand under the table as we sat over the remains of our dinner and a second glass of heady, spicy New Zealand Pinot Noir, and I let the rich taste, surely more blackberry and cherry than grape, swirl down through my body and into my bones. And as I felt Hemi’s thumb stroking over the side of my index finger. Such an innocent caress, and such a dangerous result. I shifted under the table, crossing my legs, and his dark gaze rested on me for a long instant even as he continued his conversation.
“So,” he said. “We’re back to the original plan, then. I’ll take Hope and Karen down to Queenstown for a bit, I’m thinking, for the skiing.”
“Uh…Hemi,” I said. “Needless to say, we don’t know how to ski.”
“Time to learn, then,” he said. “I was thinking about Aussie and the Great Barrier Reef as well, but we’ll save that for when you’ve both learned to swim. You can enjoy yourself from the first with skiing, but I think swimming could require a bit more time.”
“Do we get to learn how to swim, too?” Karen asked happily. “Awesome. I’m liking this new-life thing a whole lot, so you know. And Hope would love seeing the Great Barrier Reef. That’s snorkeling, right? Looking at fish? She loves wild animals.”
Hemi’s thumb took another leisurely journey, and he said, “She does, eh,” then stood up, pulling me with him. “I’ll remember that, and I’ll make some bookings tomorrow. I may not be marrying this girl on Saturday, but I’m going to give her the holiday of her life all the same.” He looked at me. “Why don’t you go have a bath? It’s been a bit of a long day.”
I could feel my color rising as I said, “That would be nice. I am really tired.” I considered yawning, then abandoned the idea. “Well,” I said lamely, “I’ll say goodnight, then.”
Hemi didn’t follow me. He didn’t come in, either, while I undressed in the bedroom and slipped into my robe, another Shades of V extravaganza in thin white silk. And when I came back from my embarrassingly hasty bath with my skin clean, creamy-soft, and scented with the manuka honey body butter Hemi had bought me…he still wasn’t there.
I turned off the overhead light and turned on the bedside one, and then I sat with my back against the headboard, opened a book on my e-reader, tried to read it, and waited.
It was probably only ten minutes or so, but it felt like forever, and I was starting to feel stupid. Was Hemi talking with his grandfather? Had all of that at the dinner table really just been him being sweet and nothing more?
Love is more than sex, I told myself. A
nd men can’t necessarily do it every day, let alone twice a day. He’s thirty-seven. That probably makes a difference, too.
I normally saw Hemi a few times a week, plus, all right, maybe another time in his office. I’d read somewhere that the average couple had sex twice a week, and he was already doing twice that well. He’d made love to me three times in the last two days. What did I want?
He needed to know I loved him for more than this. I shut down my e-reader and set it on the bedside table, then got up and started to take off my robe. I would put on pajamas and climb in bed like a normal person, with no pressure. I’d let him know that I was fine with whatever happened or didn’t.
Even though I wasn’t.
That was why, though, I was half out of my robe when he walked in wearing a pair of loose black cotton pants and nothing else. I may have gotten a little distracted, too. I’d just unfastened my robe, but my hands stilled on the tie, because I was busy.
Have I mentioned yet that Hemi was good-looking? Well—no, that doesn’t even begin to describe it. His bronze skin appeared richer than ever in the dim light of the bedside lamp, and as for the intricate Maori tattoo that stretched from the sinewy, corded muscle of his forearm, up over the bulge of biceps and triceps, over one strong shoulder, and down to cover the broad, flat slab of pectoral—the design, tonight, seemed almost to pulse in its rich blue-black. Maybe it was the setting, or maybe it was the force of his personality, the way he took up every inch of space he inhabited, and most of the oxygen in a room. He was all shifting muscle and controlled power, and the expression on his face…
Good-looking? That wasn’t enough. Dark, dangerous, and right out there on the edge, though? That was more like it.
“Did you have a…nice shower?” I asked weakly. His close-cropped dark hair was still wet; I could see tiny beads of moisture at his razor-cut hairline.
He didn’t answer me. He was staring at my body, revealed by the silken folds of my open robe.
Fractured (Not Quite a Billionaire #2) Page 9
