“What the hell are you doing?” Eric half spun him back a step as he tugged on Kyle’s shoulder.
Kyle shrugged off his brother’s hand, a flash of heat detonating across his cheekbones. Bloody hell. While Eric could be a total tool, he’d never known him to get aggressive around women—especially pretty women who, unless they were accessorized with a walker and dentures, were considered fair game for his outrageous flirting. Go figure, his younger brother could be charming when he wanted to. But right then Kyle was tempted to knock him on his ass.
Only he wouldn’t embarrass Lizzie with such a public spectacle.
“Ignore my brother’s complete lack of manners.” He aimed a warning glance at Eric that, in Kyle’s professional life, would’ve caused any shady contractor to back away. Slowly.
Eric wasn’t even looking at him. His narrowed gaze was locked on Lizzie, his upper lip curled with the same kind of contemptuous disgust Kyle’d seen on his face as a boy when the four of them walking in the bush had stumbled over the bloated and stinking corpse of one of Griff’s cattle.
“It’s fine.” Lizzie’s gaze zipped to his brother and a muscle flickered in her jaw.
“It’s not fine, Lizzie.”
From his brother came a harsh snort. Kyle twisted to face him. “Seriously, what’s gotten into you?”
“Lizzie, huh?” Ignoring Kyle’s question, Eric widened his stance, folded one arm across his chest, and with the other tugged at the wiry beard sprouting from his jaw. Eric’s go-to wanna piece of me stance, usually before he threw the first punch in a bar brawl.
What the hell was going on?
“I’ve got to get going.” Lizzie’s mouth compressed in a thin line, though her spine was ruler straight.
“That’s typical. Fly away…Lizzie,” said Eric.
High spots of color appeared on Lizzie’s cheekbones.
Kyle frowned. “What am I missing here? Do you and Lizzie know each other?”
“Not in the biblical sense.” Eric’s lip curled again. “And her name’s not Lizzie.”
His brother’s accusation ping-ponged around his brain, but no matter which angle he considered it, it just didn’t make sense.
“What are you talking about?” He directed the question at Eric but kept his gaze fixed on Lizzie’s face.
She wouldn’t meet his probing stare. Instead her gaze cut sideways toward her bike.
“Lizzie?”
Her eyes zipped back to his, but she didn’t respond.
“Since somehow you know each other but don’t know each other, why don’t I make the formal introductions?” Eric sneered. “Big brother, this is Tui Ngata, daughter of Pete and Ariana Ngata. Tui—sorry—Lizzie, this is Kyle Alfred Griffin, son of Netta and Keith Griffin, oldest grandson of Al Griffin. Should I continue?”
Eric’s voice seemed to be reaching Kyle’s ears through a long dark tunnel of soundproofing fiber. During his university years, he’d have stress dreams of entering an exam and not understanding any of the questions because they were written in another language. He felt as if he’d suffered a sudden onset of narcolepsy and fallen into a similar stress dream.
Lizzie—his Lizzie—was Tui Ngata? He studied her face, removing his invisible lust-thick glasses first. A strong jaw for a woman, her nose with the slight flare of her Māori heritage, the defined cheekbones, and the full lower lip now stretched taut. Then he pictured Isaac Ngata’s face from the dozens of promotional photos the former All Black had appeared in—not to mention the games he’d watched on TV.
He could see it now. The feminized family resemblance.
His gut went into free fall.
Damn. Tui bloody Ngata.
He realized he’d been staring at her without saying a word for the past thirty seconds, his mouth desert dry. Swallowing hard, he cleared his throat.
“Tui?” The name—her name, apparently—sound foreign on his tongue.
She lifted her chin. “Tui Elizabeth Ngata.”
Eric snorted again.
Kyle’s gaze shot to him, his fists unintentionally curling. “Go pick up your supplies. I’ll meet you back here.”
“But it’s just getting interesting, right, Lizzie?”
His heart racing like he was teetering on a cliff edge, Kyle gritted his teeth. “Go. Now.”
Eric laughed, speared Lizzie/Tui with one last evil eyeball, and strolled away.
Kyle turned back to Lizzie/Tui, but she’d taken advantage of the distraction of Eric leaving and strode toward her bike.
“Hey—” He went after her, catching up in three long steps.
She’d already stepped off the sidewalk, so she had to tilt her head to make eye contact. Since he had her full attention, only one question burned like battery acid on his tongue.
“Did you know who I was in Raro?”
“No.” She unblinkingly held his gaze for two beats then half turned away to unclip her helmet. “Did you?” The question was asked softly but with a bitter edge.
“No.” He watched her jam the helmet on, nimble fingers snapping the strap under her chin. “You used your middle name.”
“Habit.”
Beneath the helmet’s visor her nose crinkled.
“People hear the name Tui Ngata, sister of the infamous All Black Isaac Ngata, and suddenly I’m that much more interesting.”
“People? Or the men you hook up with for a night?” The words were hurled at her before the part of his brain that wasn’t a complete tool could censor them.
Her brown eyes iced to petrified wood as she straddled the bike and started it.
“Screw you, Griffin,” she said, and used her middle finger only to drop the visor over her eyes.
He took a step back, arms locked over his chest, his jaw set tight enough to crack molars. Tui Ngata didn’t spare him another glance as she guided the bike from the curb and rode away.
Kyle, contrary to her first impression, was an asshat. An undercover asshat. At least his younger brother had never tried to hide his asshattedness from her.
The coffee she’d drunk earlier sloshed uneasily in her stomach, the caffeine no longer providing an energy boost but a less pleasant jittery sensation that had her gripping the throttle harder than normal.
She rode back to the farm, barely paying attention to her surroundings. On autopilot she opened the locked metal gate that barred the entry to Ngata land, drove through, and reset the combination lock. Normally her parents didn’t bother locking the gates when they were at home, but since she was alone now that Isaac’s new house was built on a different section of Ngata land, Ariana and Pete insisted she kept the gate locked.
It wasn’t until she coasted to a stop in front of the main house’s garage and heard Kuri and Hari barking up a storm as they raced around the house that she remembered.
She’d forgotten the damn dog food.
Tui climbed off the bike with a muttered curse and removed her helmet. She rolled her shoulders, muscles tight as piano wire under her leather jacket. The two canines bounded around her bike then lined themselves up, tongues lolling out of expectant doggy smiles.
She held up a finger and slid her phone out of an inside pocket, sending a quick text to Isaac requesting him to pick up a bag of dog food and drop it in before he went home. Which would’ve prevented a whole lotta drama if she’d done that in the first place.
She gave the dogs a biscuit each as a snack and ordered them to their beds on the back deck. Evening was hours away still, but Tui figured it was happy hour somewhere in the world. She shaved five minutes off the return trip to the cottage by quick-timing her stride up the hill. It helped burn some of the jitters out of her system. Some. Definitely not the worst of them.
She’d slept with a Griffin. Worse, she’d actually liked him.
Or the men you hook up with for a night? His accusation clanged discordantly in her inner ear.
She slammed into the cottage and poured herself a glass of wine, draining a good quarter without tasting
it. Carrying the glass, she stalked into the bedroom, stripped out of her leathers, and hit the shower.
Lathering up with her favorite shower gel, she closed her eyes against the warm spray. Her skin prickled, as if the water was scalding instead of tepid. One deep inhale after another, she scrubbed the washcloth over her skin. She needed to get clean—to feel clean again.
Thirty minutes later, Tui sat on the steps leading up to the cottage’s front door. Determined not to give the man who shalt not be named any more headspace, she watched the horses in the paddock below crop grass until her parents’ dogs went nuts, their high-pitched someone’s coming barks rolling up the hill.
She stood, cocking her head in the direction of the main road with a frown on her face. There’d been no rumble of Isaac’s truck or Nat’s smaller car. No crunch of tires on gravel, no Isaac hollering at the dogs to “settle down, fellas” out the window. And it was too early for him to have finished work anyway.
She set her wineglass down and picked her way across the yard to a better vantage point. With her flip-flops causing soft crunches on the dehydrated almost-summer grass, Tui slitted her gaze and cupped a hand over her eyes. Kuri and Hari stood baying enthusiastically, their muscular bodies stiffly pointing in the direction of the driveway.
A moment later she spied the reason for the dogs’ excitement. A lone figure striding cool as you please toward the main house.
Given the No Trespassing sign by the gate, it’d have to be one heck of a determined salesperson to risk the owners’ wrath and possibly a ticked-off guard dog or two chewing on their leg. Luckily for this particular trespasser—a man with bigger balls than he had sense—her dad’s dogs were more likely to herd him into a paddock than they were make ground beef of his leg.
Still in the checked shirt, jeans, and work boots he’d worn in town, he continued his easy gait, a Sunday afternoon stroll, toward the dogs. He faced them, hands shoved in jeans pockets, and whistled. A similar sort of whistle she’d heard her father make thousands of times.
The dogs quit barking, and Hari, the female, plopping her rump down on the driveway. If Tui had been closer, she’d bet both dogs wore similar canine looks of confusion.
“Might’ve fooled the dogs,” she muttered. “But you don’t fool me.” At least, not twice.
Now she knew whose blood ran in his veins.
She folded her arms, watching him, a part of her curious as to what his game plan was entering enemy territory.
So to speak.
He spoke to the dogs, but the breeze was heading in the wrong direction for her to hear what he said. Kuri and Hari, however, loped back around the side of the house, tails wagging.
Traitors!
But then they weren’t to know what sort of snake had walked into their midst.
Kyle approached her parents’ house and knocked on the front door. Heart rate kicking up a notch, she considered hiding in her closet and requesting a couple of boys in blue to deal with the trespasser.
Hiding was not her style.
Telling herself she’d just calmly go down there and tell him to get the hell off Ngata land, Tui headed inside for her car keys.
Kyle waited for her at the fork in the driveway that separated the entrance to the main house and the cottage. Likely he’d heard her ute start up and was planning to ask whoever was causing a cloud of road dust heading his way where she was. Considering Tui could’ve been her father or one of her brothers, the eldest Griffin really did have Superman-sized balls.
As she eased down on the brake—tempting as it was to mow him down—she caught his gaze on the thick native bush covering the hills. Bush that was still in regrowth since the massive wildfire swept through it seventeen years ago.
Māori were the guardians of the whenua—land—and the wanton destruction of it had caused irreparable damage to the Ngata family’s collective soul. The fire was believed to have been Griff’s way of dealing with her father’s refusal to sell a block of his land. An unforgivable act, with unforeseen fatal consequences.
Tui parked and climbed out of her vehicle. She came around the bumper and propped her hips against the hood, folding her arms and crossing her ankles. Casual like. Temper held in check with iced iron control.
“You’re trespassing, and I suggest you leave before one of my brothers turns up.”
Kyle hadn’t turned his face away from the hill, though she didn’t doubt he was aware of her presence well before her flip-flops had hit the ground. She’d certainly felt him. From the crackle of electricity that breached the air between them, from the sheer menace of his presence on Ngata land. It was as if the earth beneath her feet shuddered in silent revolt that a Griffin dared to walk on it.
With one last thousand-yard stare at the trees, Kyle crossed the short distance to stand in front of her. It took an inordinate amount of willpower for her not to flinch at his steady gaze. “I didn’t have any other way of contacting you.”
“What makes you think I’d want you to? Now that you know who I am, and I know who you are, contact is probably not a wise idea.”
He sent her a pained glance. “I was caught off guard. And I wanted to apologize for being a dick, in person. What I said was way out of line. I’m sorry.”
A Griffin apologizing for his behavior? First time for everything.
But if she could somehow scrub his surname out of her head, she’d believe him. Believe Rarotongan Kyle anyway. But Rarotongan Kyle didn’t really exist. And neither did Lizzie, who’d liked him much more than she wanted to admit.
“Apology accepted. Now leave.” She pushed herself away from the hood, ready to return to her car.
“Tui—wait.” Kyle stepped forward.
She froze, fine hairs rising to attention on her nape, little shards of road gravel digging through the soft rubber of her flip-flops. All her parents’ misgivings and warnings over the years clamored for attention in her brain.
Never trust a Griffin. Don’t you go near those boys, they’re all trouble. Any Griffin will stab you in the back as soon as look at you.
And here she was, with only kauri, tōtara, rimu, and pine trees as backup. With her phone charging on the kitchen counter, with her brothers working, and her sister-in-law too far away to hear as she screamed for help.
Not that Tui Ngata would scream, or run, or plead. Not with a Griffin.
“I think we should talk about this,” Kyle said.
The reasonableness of his tone seemed to indicate he hadn’t noticed her silent freak-out. Her moment of insanity, because deep in her gut was a tiny kernel of truth. As big as Kyle was, he wasn’t a threat to her. Physically.
“Like reasonable adults, I assume?” She returned to her former position leaning against the hood.
“Yeah.”
What would a reasonable adult say in the situation? “I’m sorry to hear about your grandfather.”
“Are you?”
“You’re meant to say thank you. It’s the polite response.”
“I don’t always say or do what I’m meant to say or do. And how about for the duration of this conversation we skip the niceties and be straight up with each other?”
Tui arched an eyebrow. “Implying that we weren’t in Raro?”
“I was,” he said. And before she could jump in and flay him with her indignation, he added, “And so were you, middle name not withstanding. I believe we were both honest, acting purely on the attraction between us.”
The last thing Tui wanted to dwell on was the attraction between them then and the dark pull of the attraction she still felt for him now.
“Agreed.” Her voice came out a little breathier than she’d have liked, but she inhaled deeply and continued. “And if we’re being honest, I have to ask, why bother coming here? And don’t say to apologize, because who bothers to apologize to someone they’re never going to see again?”
“What makes you think we won’t see each other again? Bounty Bay is a small town.”
“We’ve m
anaged to avoid seeing each other for most of our lives, otherwise Rarotonga never would’ve happened.”
He cut her a sharp grin. “Likely you would have let me drown in the lagoon.”
She snorted. “Drowning would’ve been the least of your worries.”
“Your honesty is refreshing.”
“Thank you. See? Polite. That’s how it’s done.”
He chuckled, and in an instant she was drawn back to tropical heat and the touch of his salty lips on hers. She blinked up at him, folded arms hugged even tighter across her chest.
“I guess you’ll go back to wherever it is you live now. Since your grandfather’s gone.” She paused, finding within herself a kernel of empathy at the loss of a grandparent. “I really am sorry for your loss.”
“Thank you, Tui.”
She let the sincerity in his deep voice wash over her, allowed a moment of connection to bridge the chasm spanning their lives. “Were you close?”
A muscle flickered in his cheek. “No. Not for a long time. Griff and I never quite saw eye to eye.” He shook his head. “But I’m not going back to Auckland for a while. I’ve some things to sort out with my family, and right now, whether they know it or not, they need me.”
He was staying? And how long was a while? Her stomach got all fluttery at the thought, even though his being a temporary neighbor needn’t mean their paths would cross again. “Well, good luck with that.”
There really didn’t seem to be anything else to say. If she was prone to drama like her friend Petra, she could view the situation as a modern-day Capulet versus Montague playing out in New Zealand’s Far North—though they probably had more in common with West Side Story than Shakespeare. But she’d had enough drama in her life not to voluntarily blow it up with any kind of star-crossed-lovers crap.
Could you even call a one-night-stand participant a lover? Nope. It had been proven to her in the past few hours that she’d been incredibly naïve thinking she’d known Kyle at all. He was a stranger.
She would have walked away then, but Kyle came closer until he stood right in front of her. “I can’t seem to get you out of my head.”
Tame Your Heart: A Small Town Romance (Bounty Bay Book 6) Page 7
