“Better to deal with the devil you know.” Nat grimaced. “And it’s a savvy idea.”
“Whoa,” Allison said, making a time-out gesture. “Can one of you please explain what the hell you’re talking about?”
Tui picked up her second slice of toast and tipped her head at Vee. “You know the history as well as I do. Give them the rundown.” She nibbled on a corner, then added, “And just the facts. Lay off the spawn-of-Satan references.”
“Fine.” Vee rolled her eyes, stretching out her legs and crossing her ankles—settling in for story time. “Fact one. Al Griffin is the patriarch of the Griffin family and he owns a ton of land around here, yeah?”
Allison and Petra nodded.
“Not so much fact as opinion,” Vee continued, “but Griff could be a nasty piece of work if he didn’t get his own way. Fact two. Griff wanted to buy a chunk of Ngata land for years, but Tui’s parents refused to sell. Year after year he got more aggressive trying to acquire it, and to say bad blood developed between the Griffins and Ngatas is an understatement. That bad blood may’ve turned destructive when, seventeen years ago, someone started a fire on the Ngatas’ private beach in the middle of the night.”
“I remember that,” Petra said. “It was over the summer holidays. Our family had come up here to go camping that year, and I still remember being woken up in our tent by the sirens, then smelling the smoke and huddling with other campers outside, watching the flames devouring all that beautiful bush in the distance. We cut our holiday short that year and went home.” She frowned, propping herself up on her elbows and half turning toward Vee. “Didn’t someone die in the fire?”
“Yeah,” Vee said. “Griff’s daughter-in-law’s brother—that’d be Kyle’s uncle. He was guarding a suspected marijuana plot hidden deep in the bush on Griffin land. Investigators speculated he’d been sleeping and the fire surrounded him before he could escape. Griff denied any knowledge of the illegal plants being grown on his property and accused Tui’s dad of deliberately starting the fire.”
“He bloody well didn’t,” Tui said. “And neither did anyone else in my family, especially my brothers.”
Vee squeezed her hand. “Nobody who knows your family believed Isaac and Sam had anything to do with it.” She addressed Petra and Allison. “Kyle’s younger brother Eric attended the same high school as us, and he made Sam’s life hell spreading rumors that he’d started the fire.”
“That’s horrible,” Allison said. “He was only a teenager.”
Tui dropped the uneaten crust of toast back onto her plate and wrapped her arms around her middle. “As you can imagine, civility between the two families disintegrated even further. Accusations flew on both sides, but whoever started the fire was never caught.”
“So it could’ve been Al Griffin, his son, or daughter-in-law, or one of his grandsons?” Allison asked cautiously.
“Yep,” Vee said. “Except not his son. He died six months before the fire.”
Tui’s chest gave a sympathetic squeeze for Kyle and his brothers losing their father to such a dreadful disease. “The Griffin brothers were home for the summer holidays, but we were all kids.”
Vee slanted her a wary side-eye. “Um, Kyle wasn’t. He was nineteen. And the others were teenagers like us. Any one of them could’ve been responsible.”
“Or none of them,” Tui said. “It could’ve been freedom campers whose campfire got out of control by accident. They got scared and ran.”
Now that she’d met Kyle, the scenario Tui’s ma had come up with to keep everyone calm had a lot more appeal. She so badly wanted to believe he and his family had nothing to do with such a vicious, thoughtless act.
And look at her, cupping a protective hand over her belly—as if that could prevent the collection of cells growing inside her from carrying Griffin genes.
“Of course,” Vee said soothingly. “But there you go, ladies. That’s the drama in a nutshell.”
“Got it,” Petra said. “It’s a clear case of boy meets girl but boy’s family hates girl’s family, and now the girl’s knocked up, uh-oh.”
“Pretty much.” Tui pressed her palms to her eyes, which still felt hot and swollen from last night’s crying jag. “And I’ve got to make a decision. God.” She dragged her palms down her face. “What am I going to do?”
Pet chose that moment to let out an Isaac-sized belch and then he started to fuss.
“Sorry!” Nat said. “If I’d known, I wouldn’t have brought him.”
“Don’t be silly. Let me hold him.” Tui held her arms out for the baby. Regardless of her decision, she loved her little nephew.
Nat lowered Pet into her arms and he gave her a windy smile.
“Hey there, sweet cheeks. How did your big ugly dad manage to co-create such a beautiful creature?” The beautiful boy in question burped again.
“He had a lot of help,” said Nat.
“And loads of practice, no doubt,” Vee added with a grin. “But no one loves that little boy more than his daddy.”
Tui dipped her head to Pet’s soft tufts of dark hair, inhaling his delightful freshly changed baby smell.
She imagined what either of her brothers would’ve suffered if Nat and Vee had taken the decision of fatherhood out of their hands. Her heart began to pound faster and faster. She at least owed Kyle the chance to have a voice.
She sat up straight and looked around at her friends. “Before I make a final decision on what I’m going to do,” she said, “I have to tell Kyle I’m pregnant.”
Chapter 12
Kyle glanced at the text from Tui. Just in case it’d changed since the twenty times he’d examined it during the past twenty-four hours.
Tui: Come for dinner tomorrow night at my place? This is definitely not a booty call! It’s Tui again, BTW.
Like he hadn’t immediately added her to his contacts list when she’d messaged him two days earlier to say her doctor friend had given her the all clear. He’d made himself wait a full five minutes before replying, grinning like an idiot the whole time.
Kyle: It’s a date. I knew it was you, BTW. The booty call exclamation mark was a dead giveaway.
Tui: It’s not a date either. See you at 8:00 p.m.
Inexplicably nervous, as this was the first time Tui had officially asked him into her space, Kyle had nearly had a nervous breakdown at Bounty Bay’s grocery store. The town’s only florist was shut, as was the liquor store, which left the grocery store the only option for flowers and wine. Armed with a dubious-looking bunch of daffodils and a bottle of Wāina Valley chardonnay, he was twenty minutes early when he parked by the Ngatas’ cottage.
Even with his windows shut he could hear music blasting from inside the cottage. He got out with flowers and wine in hand, cocking his head at the soaring vocals streaming out of the open front door. Grinning at her choice of world class opera singer and fellow New Zealander Dame Kiri Te Kanawa belting out a track from Les Miserables, Kyle followed his ears—and his nose. Something cooking inside smelled amazing and his mouth watered.
He knocked on the door but couldn’t prevent his gaze from landing on Tui in the open-plan kitchen. She wore black sports leggings and a loose tank top, the shoulder strap of which had slid partway down her bare arm, revealing the thinner straps of a hot-pink bra. With her back to him in a wide stance that emphasized each luscious ass cheek encased in black Lycra, she threw out her arms in a dramatic pose, her long dark hair spilling down her back. He chuckled, wondering if she was singing along with the dame.
The song ended on a flourish, with Tui performing a sweeping bow. Before the next track on her playlist started, he knocked on the door again.
She jerked out of the bow and spun around, palm on heart. “You’re early.”
“Sorry.” Though he wasn’t. He liked adding to what scarce knowledge he had about this woman, and he really liked being surprised by that information. “Didn’t mean to disturb your performance.”
The opening notes from M
oulin Rouge’s “Lady Marmalade” blasted out of the speakers. Tui gave him a glance that completely contradicted her this is not a booty call text and strutted, shimmied, and shook her ass over to the dining table where she hit a button on her phone.
“Hey!” he said after the music died. “Don’t mind me. Carry on.”
She crinkled her nose at him and laughed. “I don’t think so. I didn’t invite you to dinner and a show.”
He definitely wished she had, making a mental note to download the song himself in the hopes he could tempt her to Moulin Rouge in the privacy of his bedroom. He strolled inside, producing the bouquet and wine which he’d been holding behind his back.
Instead of the gooey reaction and welcoming kiss he’d secretly hoped for, Tui eyed the flowers and wine with a slitted glare. “I told you this wasn’t a date.”
“You did. But my mother taught me it was rude for a guest to arrive empty handed.”
“Manners, even? You’re not completely barbaric, then.”
Tui took the offered daffodils and while she dug around in a kitchen cabinet for something to put them in, he offered to pour her a glass of wine.
She stopped mid-rummage, keeping her face hidden in the depths of the cabinet. “Not for me. I’m extending my Dry July.”
“To the middle of October?”
“Yeah. Too many empty calories in alcohol,” she said, rising from where she crouched with an ugly green vase in her hand. “Wineglasses are in the pantry. Help yourself.”
From the shape of her—the jaw-droppingly sexy shape of her—counting calories should be the last thing on her mind. But he shrugged it off and poured himself a glass. After a few bolstering sips, he set down his drink and ventured into her territory.
“What’s for dinner?” he asked, coming up behind her at the stove. “Leafy greens and tofu?”
Careful not to startle her, he angled to one side to watch her stirring a saucepan of something creamy that smelled like garlic and cheese.
“Don’t knock tofu,” she said.
He risked an elbow to the gut by setting his hands on the curve of her hips. Her body tensed beneath his fingertips for a couple of beats then relaxed.
“That’s not tofu.” Dipping his head, he brushed his lips along her bared shoulder, stopping to kiss the spot where a delicate vein beat wildly in her throat.
She sucked in an uneven breath, stirring fast enough that a few droplets of pale yellow sauce splattered out of the pan. “No. It’s creamy garlic parmesan sauce to go with the two slabs of beef marinating in my fridge.”
“Ah. Red meat. The foolproof way to win a man’s heart.”
He spoke against her smooth skin and was rewarded by her delicate shiver—and another hitching breath. His grip tightened on her hips. He shuddered in a breath of his own, his nose filled with the crisp scent of apples on her skin, of tropical fruits in her still-damp hair, of something indefinably enticing that was pure woman.
If Tui’s fresh-from-the-shower scent could be bottled, he’d name it Sweet Temptation. Not original, maybe, but it took every ounce of willpower he could muster not to gently sink his teeth into her, then spin her around to kiss her senseless.
“Did your wife cook for you every night?”
He blinked, straightened, and tried to gauge the reason for the unexpected topic change by her body language. Getting no clue from her dipped chin and studious application of wooden spoon moving in clockwise circles, he answered. Warily. “Not every night. We took turns.”
She nodded. Had he passed Previous Relationship Question One?
“And what did she do?”
“Lydia is an event coordinator.”
She squeezed away from him and crossed to the fridge. “How long were you married?”
“Six years. But two and a half of those were while we were officially separated. She asked for a divorce when she wanted to remarry.”
Tui pulled out a shallow dish, and as advertised, two fat steaks were marinating under what looked like crushed garlic and soy sauce. Crossing back to where a line of pots and pans hung on hooks above the stove, she kept her gaze well away from his. She chose a skillet, lit a ring under it, and swirled virgin olive oil around the pan.
“Any kids?”
He’d anticipated her follow-up question, given the direction of their conversation, but it still somehow shocked him like a slap across the face. “No,” he said levelly. “No kids.”
Tui placed both steaks on the skillet. The sizzle and spitting and heavenly scent of them should’ve distracted him, but although his stomach gave a grumble of anticipation, he wasn’t distracted.
“Asking about previous relationships is date territory. And you were quite clear that this wasn’t a date.”
She shrugged, stirring the wooden spoon through the sauce again. “It was just a polite getting to know you question.”
“You want to get to know me? Other than in the carnal sense?”
“You’re here, aren’t you?” She dipped the tip of a finger into the sauce and tasted it. “Needs more salt.”
He passed her the grinder and she used it liberally.
“You don’t have to stick to the polite questions,” he said once she’d stirred the sauce and retested it. “The good, the bad, the ugly—ask away.”
Tui set down the spoon and faced him, leaning her hip against the counter and meeting his gaze with a level stare of her own. “I’ve never been married so I’m not going to suddenly slip into a pair of judgy pants about you and your ex. I am curious, though.”
“About what went wrong?”
“Yeah.”
“Lots of little things that eventually became big things.” And the big things had worn them both down to the point that when tragedy struck, they crumbled. “We worked too hard and too much. We stopped spending as much quality time together. We didn’t communicate well and that led to arguments. I wanted a family, she didn’t, and then she fell pregnant.”
The sympathetic curve of Tui’s mouth and the softening of empathy in her gaze suddenly froze. Beautiful as she was, Tui Ngata was hopeless at masking her emotions. He could almost spot the thought process going on behind her dark brown eyes as she twisted his ‘no kids’ comment around and around trying to make sense of it.
“She didn’t want the baby?” she asked softly.
“Not at first.” He’d come home from work one evening to find Lydia sobbing on the bathroom floor, knees hugged to her chest in front of a semicircle of home pregnancy test sticks.
All of them reading positive.
“But you did.” Tui didn’t phrase it as a question.
“Yeah, I did. Part of me hoped having a kid would fix things between us.” He huffed out a bitter laugh through his nose.
“They got worse before they got better, but somehow we continued to struggle along, and Lydia changed her mind. Suddenly it was everything baby, all of the time, and I got caught up in it, too. By the time Lyds was sixteen weeks along, we’d outfitted the spare room as a nursery, and every friend and relative in the country knew that the Griffins were expecting. She—we—lost the baby at nineteen weeks. The sonographer couldn’t detect a heartbeat. It was a boy.”
He closed his eyes against the memory, dragging a palm down his face and over his mouth. His eyes flickered open when Tui’s arms slid around his waist. She didn’t say a word, just pressed herself into him, holding him tight—so tight. As if she were attempting to squeeze the remembered pain right out of him, to absorb it into herself.
“We”—he moistened suddenly dry lips—“we couldn’t come back from that. We tried—grief counseling, couples’ therapy.” He rested his head against Tui’s. “She checked out of our marriage. I guess we both did, to be fair. I threw myself into work, she threw herself into another relationship. We separated three months after she miscarried.”
She tucked her face into the crook of his shoulder and hugged him tighter. “I’m so sorry, Kyle. I didn’t mean to dredge this all up for you.�
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“It’s over and done with now.”
Pulling back to meet his gaze, Tui slid a hand up his chest to cup his jaw, fingertips feathering over his cheeks. Petting him, soothing him with her gentle touch. “Grief is never over and done with. I see the shadow of it left behind in your eyes.”
She placed her other palm on his shoulder and rose on tiptoe, brushing her lips against his. The sweetest of kisses, tender and delivered, he suspected, from a need to comfort. But his body took the comfort and, with greed, transformed it into a need of its own. A need for her.
Their noses bumped together as he dipped his head to find her mouth. A whisper of a sigh shuddered out of her as his lips grazed her jaw, her nails digging crescents into the flesh of his shoulder. Lips colliding, clinging for a moment, all heat and need and want—then parting, testing the two of them to see if resistance was possible.
It wasn’t.
He claimed her mouth, sinking into a kiss that went from tentative and exploratory to hot as hell and all-consuming in record time. Tui matched him breath for breath, gasp for gasp, groan to groan, tongue to sensual tongue. He deepened the kiss; she followed with gusto. He paused to tug on her lush lower lip; she threaded her fingers into his hair and yanked his mouth back to hers.
Stupid with wanting her, Kyle whisked her off her feet to trap her between his body and the countertop, melding soft to hard in all the right places. And inappropriate or not, he was desperately hard.
He cupped the side of her breast through her thin cotton tank, stroking her warm curves, running the back of his knuckles down to her waist to gather the loose fabric in his hand. She pushed her hips into him, giving him room to work her top up but nearly causing his erection to make a play for freedom in his shorts. Damn, but he was hot for her. Smoking hot.
Something other than the scent of apples and summer fruits bypassed his nostrils and pierced through the lust fog cloaking his brain. Smoke? Tui stiffened in his arms, and their heads turned in unison to the curl of smoke just starting to rise from the skillet.
Tame Your Heart: A Small Town Romance (Bounty Bay Book 6) Page 15
