Heartbreak Hero

by Frances Housden

  His drink halted midway to the table. “I don’t know about the other two, but you didn’t lose this round. Better to say third time’s the charm.”

  Charm? Dare she give any credence to that stupid good-luck sign on her case working? She felt like a dweeb carting it around, but it had been a condition of her trip. As if anyone in the South Seas would be interested in the whereabouts of the Blue Grasshopper? So they’d taken a ratty old building and done it up into a variety of bars, restaurants and nightclubs. That was only a smattering of the attractions in Chinatown.

  When she didn’t answer, he said, “Jeez, I hope you don’t think I was minimizing your ability to look after yourself.”

  His dark eyes glinted above high slashed cheekbones as he pushed a curl of thick dark hair from his forehead. Sheesh, he was disarming. Something about this man called to her, no matter that there wasn’t a hope in hell of this meeting leading to anything more.

  “It’s just that I’m not very big, right?” she murmured, her voice as low as she’d learned to set her expectations.

  They perked up at his “From where I’m sitting you look just about perfect. A real live doll.”

  His top lip lifted in a half smile. The guy was hitting on her, she could tell. Pity the line wasn’t new, but it did make her smile. Men had to have a secret phone number that dished those lines out, so many a dollar.

  The trouble with hope, it kept floating to the surface. “I have taken self-defense lessons for women.”

  Taken them, taught them, what was the difference?

  “What kind? Judo or karate?”

  “Neither. Hapkido…” She took a slug of orange juice, anything to stop from talking. If she didn’t fill her mouth, her life story would come spilling out. Keep telling yourself that those muscles are more poster boy than superhero.

  “That deserves kudos. Women should know how to defend themselves.” He stretched across to take her hand. “We didn’t exchange names. Mine’s Kel.”

  Good grief, she was going to have to touch him. She put down her glass, wiped a palm that had gone sweaty on her pants, until she could no longer leave his hand floating in midair without looking as dweebish as her luggage.

  No good pretending her hesitation had anything to do with knowing the average amount of germs on the human hand. It was the thought of ending up as a wet puddle melting all over his shoes.

  Too late, she laid her hand in his. Held it a moment too long as the shock sent the blood rushing from her extremities to vital organs like her heart, which was pounding fit to burst. “Ngaire, I’m called Ngaire,” she repeated like an idiot with a few brain cells short of a mind.

  “Now, I guess that’s spelled N-y-r-e-e?”

  “No, N-g-a-i-r-e.”

  “That’s Maori, isn’t it? I thought you were an American.”

  He leaned closer, interested, maybe too interested. And, with the response he’d wrung out of her gone-haywire body, dangerous. Before she knew it she’d be spilling her guts about the package she had to deliver. Too dangerous.

  She shrugged, dropping her gaze to hide the lie. “I guess my mother read it in a book.” A book with her grandmother’s name in the flyleaf.

  She decided to turn the tables, ask questions and let him do the talking while she got ready to leave. “Are you a native of New Zealand?”

  “Yes, but it’s been a long time since I was home.” Kel put the bottle back to his lips and took a long swallow.

  The movement in his throat, the earthy slide of his Adam’s apple while he downed the rest of his beer in one, hypnotized her. Keep away from there, girl, she scolded herself. This isn’t a pleasure trip you’re on. It’s more important than sex. A life depended on it.

  Her own.

  Leaving her unfinished juice on the table, she stood. “I need to freshen up. You have a nice visit back home. Bye, now.”

  He stood. “Maybe I’ll see you around.”

  “I doubt it. We’re just two planes who had a near miss, never to waggle wings again.”

  “Take care, now.” He held out his hand. It hurt to ignore it, but the cost of touching him was way too high.

  “Don’t worry, I will.” She’d take care not to run into him again before her plane left. Ngaire glanced around, her eyes seeking the nearest rest room and safety. It was one thing to shake a man off physically, emotionally it was a whole other ball game. She didn’t need anyone taking her mind off her goal. That track led to trouble.

  Kel’s time was running out. A pleasure though it had been talking to Ngaire as he gave the other passengers the once-over, his target needed identifying before he got onboard that plane. Not that her back view wasn’t as easy on the eye as the front as she strode away with her small navy day pack swaying above her hips.

  Ngaire’s unwitting remark about near misses reduced his sex life to a metaphor. Brief encounters were his specialty, a quick fumble beneath the covers, a halfhearted satiating of the soul, then back to work. That’s how he liked it, with nothing to come between him and his career—no wife, no family, not even a relationship. Not anymore.

  Yeah, he had no regrets about watching her walk away. Not that she would be alone for long. Something about her set men’s mouths drooling. Even the guy on the phone broke off his conversation, holding the receiver at chest level as he watched her go by.

  “Thank you, Ngaire,” Kel muttered as an idea struck him that put a wide cat-that-got-the-pigeon grin on his face. She’d given him the perfect solution simply by walking out on him.

  He didn’t feel so bad now about the distraction. One look at her braid swinging behind her chair, like a come-hither signal, and he’d been lost, driven to speak to her.

  Having rescued her sunglasses from the gutter seemed the perfect excuse, but the second he got within sniffing distance of her honeyed scent, all had been forgotten.

  It was her eyes, he thought, as he opened his cell phone. Those blue irises, with their unusual tinge of green, were out of kilter with her skin and hair coloring. The long lashes framing them made them look as if a coal miner had set them in her face. He knew she was American, she’d told him so, but there was something exotic, different, to the cast of her features, as if they’d been culled from different parts of the world and put together to make her look like a houri, all temptation and forbidden delights.

  But enough speculating. She had it right, they’d never meet again. Unless they were on the same flight. Nah, the gods couldn’t be that kind, or that cruel.

  Kel punched the Faa’a airport’s number into the high-tech pad of the cell phone and asked for the information desk. Once the clerk came on line he fixed his problem by asking her to page Mr. Two Feathers McKay, traveling on flight ATN 104.

  Simple.

  The best plans always were. All he had to do now was wait and see which man in the passenger lounge answered the call.

  The announcement filled the terminal for the third time, and still no one had moved. The best laid plans, et cetera…

  He began sweating on it.

  From the corner of his eye he caught sight of Ngaire, pack in hand, her braid like a pendulum counting the seconds as she headed straight for the nearest hospitality phone. In no time at all, Kel heard her incredulous, “Hello. You wanted me?”

  Kel hung up.

  Yeah, he’d wanted her, but not anymore. Now he knew what the initial N. stood for. Ngaire.

  Ngaire Two Feathers McKay.

  He’d aced her features: Maori, Native American and Scottish, an eclectic mix and a damn beautiful one. She reminded him of a pup he’d had as a kid. Bitzer, he’d called it. Cute as all hell. But the moment his back was turned, it would creep up and sink its little, sharp teeth into the back of his heel.

  So, Ngaire had rung his bell and he hated her for it. Hated being wrong about her. But she was wrong, too.

  She would be seeing him again.

  Chapter 2

  N gaire couldn’t believe she was here in the flesh instead of her imag
ination. As the plane circled before landing she’d had her nose glued to the window, would have been halfway through the thing if she’d been able to open it.

  Paradise, her grandfather had called it as he’d told her stories of his time here as a GI during World War Two. From on high it had all looked so beautiful, the sea blue, the lakes silver, the snow-capped peaks like models from some school project. This was where George Two Feathers had met her grandmother, this land of myth and legend. Like the ones he’d read her from books her grandmother had brought to America. They’d been her fairy tales, and the one that leapt to mind was the Maori god Maui, and fishing up the North Island using a whale’s jawbone as a hook. Ngaire did a mental eye roll as she headed for the escalator down to immigration, grinning wide enough to make her jaw ache.

  “Kia ora.”

  Ngaire handed her passport to the immigration officer, wishing she could return her greeting without making a mishmash of the language. “Hi.”

  Her passport was stamped New Zealand and passed back to her with “Enjoy your stay.”

  “Thanks, I will.”

  Less than fifteen minutes later Ngaire’s case went through the X-ray machine. She caught the operator’s frown as his chair swiveled away from the monitor, pointing something out to the customs officer towering over the end of the conveyer belt.

  “Is there a problem?” Pretending she hadn’t a notion what might have caught his attention, she smiled, blanking out the urge to wipe her palms.

  “Did you pack this case yourself?” He looked down his long nose at her, grim as an Easter Island statue.

  “Yes, before I left Moorea this morning.” She wasn’t fluffy enough to play it sweet; more brown sugar than candy floss, she stuck to being pleasant, just a woman enjoying a holiday in the South Pacific.

  “Open it for me, please?”

  It was stupid, but her first reaction was relief that she’d packed all her undies in the pocket. Darn stupid, to worry more about watching his hands slide through her silk thongs than what she knew he would find.

  Her glance spun around the Customs hall as fast as her fingertips twirled the numbers of the lock. Pleased to find Kel wasn’t there to witness her humiliation, when she’d done dialing in the codes she turned the clasps toward the customs officer, leaving him to open the case.

  As he worked, her mind listed every souvenir she’d bought, dismissing them all as trash alongside what she carried.

  There could be only one thing he was after.

  As her eyes lifted she caught the inquisitive stare of the elegant French woman she’d been seated beside during the flight and felt herself color. She’d envied the other woman’s cool panache on the plane, knowing she’d never achieve its like in a million years. Such things were bred in the bone, and each of her hodgepodge of ancestors was still fighting for top billing, unable to decide if she was Native American, Maori or Scots.

  Her ears picked out the rustle of bubble wrap, drawing her gaze to the officer’s hands. He’d gotten down to the layer where she’d packed her black do bok. She didn’t know why she’d brought it except for the security it represented. Heart jumping to her throat, she watched him untie the black belt with its gold insignia proclaiming her status as a hapkido master.

  “Stop!” The command left her lips before she could prevent it, earning her a scowl from the guy with his fingers through the loops of her belt and a muffled curse from the guy on the monitor who’d knocked his papers to the floor.

  “If you’re carrying illegal goods into the country, too late. You should have worried about it before you entered New Zealand.”

  “It’s not that. I don’t mind you searching. I’d just prefer you did it somewhere private.” Her chest heaved as she took a deep breath and held it, waiting for a reply to her request.

  Without answering or permitting a crack to soften his stony features, he signaled another officer, one in a supervisory position stationed close to the exit. A quiet word in the other guy’s ear and her case was refastened. “Follow Team Leader Bennett. He’ll take you to a private room. Do you wish to be accompanied by a female officer?”

  Visions of a body search made her feel she’d lost everything from the knees down, but she brazened it out. “That won’t be necessary. I can explain everything.”

  He didn’t say he’d heard it all before, but she’d bet anything the T-shirt under his uniform had that written across the chest, probably in capital letters. Without another word she followed the guy carrying her chintzy-looking suitcase out of the Customs hall.

  The first time she’d seen it, with its stupid good-luck symbol, she’d known its luck had been meant for someone else. That the owners of the Blue Grasshopper hadn’t meant for her to win their contest for the trip to the South Pacific, or the luggage they’d thrown in with the prize.

  Kel had wedged himself in a corner with a good view of the customs area while he spoke on his cell phone. “Where to now?”

  The answer made him straighten, banging his elbow against the wall. “The Hilton? Are you sure? She doesn’t look the type.”

  It wasn’t that he minded going upmarket, but it didn’t make sense. Most couriers he’d taken out were more concerned with blending into the woodwork. The heat invading his bloodstream confirmed the only place Ngaire would blend was an X-rated movie. His mind distracted by lust, he almost missed the rest of his instructions. “Tell me you’re joking?”

  But his contact wasn’t.

  They’d booked him on a guided tour of New Zealand. Seven days with his every move up for inspection by a busload of tourists. What was the cartel up to, transporting their courier that way?

  There could be only one solution, kiss-and-tell was to be dropped off at some tourist destination. And if he didn’t stick like glue to Ngaire Two Feathers McKay, she’d be making the drop down some dark cave with glowworms as the only witnesses.

  His gut tightened. He’d known that woman for trouble the first time he saw her, and he’d been right. How the hell was he to stay up close and personal and still keep his hands off her?

  From the moment Team Leader Bennett flung open the door on the wrong side of the glass screens shielding the arrivals area, all Ngaire’s bodily apertures began displaying withdrawal symptoms. Hardly surprising since the first person she saw was a female officer who looked as if she enjoyed her work. One hint of snapping latex and Ngaire would be outta there.

  Heck, she could handle all of them, no problem, including the big guy sitting behind the desk. But she had a feeling some countries got a mite upset with visitors who threw their officials against the walls, even walls that were as bare and gray as a prison cell.

  “This lady’d prefer her things searched in private,” said Bennett. From his expression as he thumped her case onto the desk, he thought she was acting just too precious for words.

  It sat there unopened while the handsome, copper-skinned officer with Manu Pomare on his name tag flipped through her passport. A quick read, since this was her first time out of the States. Hope sparked at the sight of his Maori name; surely he would understand that her reasons for leaving her precious cargo off her declaration form weren’t simply to avoid paying duty.

  Finished, Pomare looked up and asked her, “What brings you Down Under, Ms. McKay?”

  “I won a quiz show sponsored by a local nightspot. I’m a trivia nut and…” Ngaire could see her excuse didn’t cut any ice with the guy in charge, and her explanation stumbled on her lips. “First prize was a trip to the South Pacific, Australia and Singapore.”

  A quick glance showed the prize impressed no one. Pomare flicked a finger and thumb at her suitcase. The sound of his fingernail hitting the lock filled the lumbering silence left by her boast. “And what are you carrying that needs to be hidden from the general public?”

  “Open the case and I’ll show you.”

  It took only a couple of seconds to remove her black do bok, the bubble wrap with its brown sticky tape would take slightly longe
r. She loosened one corner and pulled off a strip. Five more to go. Hesitation stilled her hands as her heartbeat gave a hiccup. Had the warm pulsing sensation she’d experienced when wrapping the parcel been more than just her imagination?

  And had the startled yelp from the guy in Tahiti as he dropped her case come from pain rather than fear?

  “Here,” Pomare said, offering her a letter opener.

  “No, thanks. I can’t use anything that might damage it.”

  The final layer under the bubble wrap was a white silk scarf more than fifty years old, yet more than two hundred years younger than the treasure hiding in its folds. This very scarf had been wrapped lovingly by her grandmother before she set out on her sea journey to the States. A silken cocoon to protect the only physical piece of her heritage she’d taken with her.

  Ngaire pulled the scarf aside, the backs of her shaking knuckles skimming fifteen inches of paddle-shaped jade, careful of its cutting edge. She’d always known her inheritance was special. Magic. She’d been a child when her grandfather had spoken of the way the jade had darkened in the days before and after the deaths of her father and grandmother, and how the mottled spots had turned red as if flushed with blood.

  She’d seen the phenomenon herself, seen the changes in the mere before her mother died. But, no warnings for her mother to please be careful had made any difference or stopped a car from ramming into her mother’s in the fog.

  Less than four months ago George Two Feathers, master carpenter and carver, had been hard at work building display stands for an exhibition of Pacific Rim artifacts and weapons in the Halberg Museum.

  In a casual conversation with one of the curators, George had mentioned the greenstone mere the family owned. The mere’s bloody history and the belief that an ancestral spirit lived inside it had intrigued the curator and her grandfather had been persuaded to loan it as part of the display.

  It had been a curiosity when the mere had looked suffused with blood where everyone could see, and it earned a couple of inches in the local newspaper. The day George Two Feathers fell off scaffolding and broke his neck, the mere became front-page news.