Fierce (Not Quite a Billionaire)

by Rosalind James

  We’d been in New Zealand only a few days, but Hemi had already shed not only his suits, but most of his reserve as well. He’d spent much of today in jeans and an old sweater helping his grandfather fix a fence while Karen and I had taken a walk down to the town and along the coast, and I’d loved seeing him so relaxed.

  Karen had outpaced me easily on our hike, too, proving that she’d left her recovery well in the past. It made me a little weepy to see her so happy to be well, to be here, to be having an adventure. She’d finished up her school year without too much trouble despite her weeks of absence, because, as she’d told me, “It’s just so much easier to do everything when your head doesn’t hurt all the time, you know?”

  It was as if she’d started her life all over again, and it felt that way for me, too. For all sorts of reasons.

  I was still working at Te Mana, but that had taken a lot of thought, and a lot of talk with Hemi, too, during which he’d held onto his patience and tried hard to see things from my point of view.

  He hadn’t fired Martine, but he’d encouraged her to find a job with another company, a compromise I could live with just fine. And he’d encouraged me not to.

  “I want you here,” he’d said. “I won’t lie. I don’t want you working until eight every night. I don’t want it for you, I don’t want it for Karen, and I don’t want it for me. I want to be able to have control over that, and no worries, if you’re working here, from now on? I’m going to have it. But I have another selfish reason as well. I want your ideas, and your enthusiasm, too. I want to put you in Marketing, and I want you working on the Shades of V campaign.”

  “Oh.” I’d scowled at him as best I could. “No fair dangling that in front of me.”

  He’d smiled, pulled me into his lap, and kissed me. And if we were in his office when he did it? Well, maybe I was weak after all. Maybe there was something a teeny bit hot about being summoned to the CEO’s office for “meetings” that ended up with me being kissed senseless, not to mention some very creative use of his office furniture. If there were, I wasn’t telling.

  “Um...” I said on this particular occasion, hard as it was to focus with one of Hemi’s hands inside my blouse and the other one making its stealthy way up my thigh. “We were discussing my future.”

  “Yeh,” he sighed. “Well, I’m afraid your immediate future involves this coffee table, and the only thing you’re going to be saying is ‘please.’ And maybe ‘more,’ if I do it right. No,” he added when I squirmed a little, “definitely ‘more.’ But what else did you want to talk about, sweetheart?”

  His fingers caught a nipple, and I gasped a little. “Um...” I’d managed. “I’ll tell you tonight.”

  He’d chuckled, and the only things I’d said after that had been “please.” And maybe “more.” And very possibly “yes,” but I couldn’t exactly remember.

  We had eventually discussed it on a more elevated level, though, and he’d suggested that I try it out on a six-month trial basis. “And if you still don’t feel comfortable,” he’d said, “I’ll help you find something that’ll suit you someplace else. Can’t say fairer than that.”

  “You’re too hard to argue with,” I’d sighed. “If you’re going to be that fair and reasonable.”

  “There’s a reason I tend to win, maybe,” he’d said.

  “Oh?” I’d cocked my head and looked at him askance. “Is that the reason?”

  “Nah. Usually it’s because I’m ruthless, and I want it more. This time, it’s just that I want it so much, I’m even willing to be fair and reasonable to get it.”

  But tonight, we were 9,000 miles away from Hemi’s office. At the Katikati RSA, the Returned Services Association, to be exact, which was some sort of combination of American Legion Hall and pub. Because, it turned out, that was the only place to be in Katikati on a Saturday night in June. The All Blacks were playing the French in rugby, and it wasn’t an occasion anybody could miss, least of all Hemi’s whanau—his extended family. And once again, it was night and day from anyplace else Hemi had ever taken me. A big round wooden table, pints of beer and plates of roast vegetables and sausages. Chat and laughter, brown faces and white, table-hopping and the clink of billiard balls from the pool table in the corner. Young people and families, grandparents and babies, and Hemi at home.

  “Trust you, cuz,” another huge specimen named Tane was saying now, laughing as easily as everyone here seemed to laugh. “Finally bring a woman home, and she’s the last thing anybody would’ve expected. Too little and sweet for you, I reckon. You telling me you haven’t managed to scare her off yet?”

  “Nah.” Hemi put an arm around my shoulders. “Not going to happen. Course, you ugly buggers may do it, but probably not. Hope’s forty-seven kg’s of fierce. Keeps me up to the mark, no worries. And you think I’m joking,” he told his cousin calmly when he laughed. “But you forget. I don’t joke.”

  Karen shook her head and sighed. “You are so clueless,” she informed Hemi. “You can’t just blurt out Hope’s weight like that to everybody. She’s going to kill you later. She’s being polite now, because she thinks that’s important.”

  “Not you, though,” Hemi said gravely.

  “Well, no,” she said. “Because I’m an—”

  “Yeh.” He put an arm around her as well. “Because you’re an idiot savant. Or maybe just a brat. Pity I’ve got such a soft spot for you.”

  “Hope’s not the only fierce one, either,” Tane’s brother Matiu said with a grin. “Yeh, cuz, reckon you’re well and truly done for.”

  “Oh, I dunno,” Hemi said. “Hope says she loves me. Says she’ll keep on doing it, too. I may just be better off this way. You never know.” And then he looked at me, the smile warming his eyes, making my heart turn over in the way it had since the first day I’d met him.

  Hemi’s grandfather nodded with the quiet satisfaction he’d been showing ever since we’d arrived. “You just may. Because of what she’s taught you to do, maybe.”

  “And that could be right as well,” Hemi said.

  I knew I was blushing, and was glad when the game started. Even though I knew absolutely nothing about it, and I wasn’t particularly illuminated during the hour and a half that followed, other than that the All Blacks wore tight black uniforms, and that they were the best, and that that mattered. That it was one of the most brutal sports I’d ever seen, that the All Blacks won, and that that was a very good thing.

  As soon as the game was over, Hemi was pushing back his chair. “I’m going to take Hope back to the house. Jet lagged, isn’t she.”

  “I don’t know,” Karen piped right up. “Is she?”

  “Yes,” I said, even though I wasn’t, not that badly. But I wanted to go home with Hemi. Of course I did.

  Hemi bent and kissed Karen goodbye. “Don’t drink too much.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Rub it in,” she said, and he laughed.

  She’d pouted, earlier, when I hadn’t let her order a beer, “even though I’m totally legal here.”

  “Right,” Hemi’d said. “Take a sip.” And had thrust his mug of Waikato Draught across to her.

  She’d tried it and grimaced. “Do they have any better kinds?”

  We’d all laughed at that. “That is the best kind, love,” Tane’s wife June had said. “You stick to Coke, and you’re golden.”

  Hemi straightened, now, and asked his grandfather, “All right?”

  “Yeh, mate,” he said. “Karen and I’ll be home in the morning, after we have our wee adventure.” Which consisted of spending the night in his caravan—his travel trailer—in the RSA’s parking lot as he always did, “so I can stay up late and have a few.”

  I’d asked Karen if she’d be good with that, but she and Hemi’s grandfather had bonded. She made him laugh in the same way she amused Hemi, to my relief, and she’d headed out there to help the two of them with their fencing as soon as we’d gotten home from our hike today, and had seemed to enjoy it. We’d a
lways been pretty short of male companionship, and Karen was making up for lost time.

  Tonight, that left Hemi and me alone, which was another thing that suited me fine. We said our goodbyes and left, and Hemi said, as he held the car door for me, “Would you rather have stayed longer?”

  “No. I want to go home with you. Although,” I mused as we headed up the winding road toward the house, “I’m rethinking that now. Some of those rugby players were really good-looking, and that’s some fierce stuff. I always thought you were sexy, but if you were sexy and a rugby player....hmm, mightn’t that be even better? Maybe I’ll just stay on here, take a little extra vacation, and see what happens. What do you think? Think I’ve got a shot?”

  “I think,” he said, smiling all the way now, “that I’ve created a monster. And that it’s been too long, and that I may need to do a little...reminding tonight of who you belong to.”

  “I think you’re right.” I moved a little closer and put a hand on the thrilling solidity of his thigh. “I like you this way. All manly and Kiwi and Maori. All that veneer worn off. Think you could show me some more of the elemental man tonight?”

  “You know,” he said, the smile still quirking the corner of his mouth, “I think I could. Throw down a challenge like that? You’re asking to get thrown down, aren’t you.”

  “Only if I’m very, very lucky.” I stretched so I could give his neck a gentle bite, then a soft kiss, which had him swearing and slowing a little too much around the next corner, then throwing me a glare that told me what I had to look forward to. “But then,” I said with a sigh, “I pretty much am.”

  For all that, he wasn’t one bit rough, as it turned out. He was just...thorough. He took me into the house, put me on the bed, and took my clothes off slowly, kissing all the way down my body. And when I tried to reach for him, he grabbed my hands, pinned them over my head, and kissed me some more. Until I was sighing. Until I was melting. And then he started moving down my body again.

  After that, he set to work to remind me of exactly how much pleasure he could give me with his slow hands, his talented mouth, and every solid inch of his hard body. To satisfy me over and over again, to move me into one position after another, to wear me out until I was lying, limp and shaking, against his chest, and he was running his hand over my back, letting it drift down over the curves of my backside.

  “Another night,” he promised me as I lay with my eyes closed and hummed a little at the pleasure of his hand stroking over my skin, “I’ll let you know what I do to girls who fancy the All Blacks.” He rubbed a bit more, then slapped me once, hard enough to make me jump.

  I smiled against his chest, then squirmed upward a little and bit him in the spot where the ridge of muscle at his shoulder met his neck. “Promise?” I breathed into his ear.

  He sighed. “Saucy. What am I going to do with you? Think I need you under my iron hand a bit more, eh. And as it happens, I’ve got a plan for that.”

  I sobered a little. “We’ve talked about this.”

  Because we had. Hemi’d wanted to move Karen and me in with him ever since he’d given me my bracelet, and I’d said no. For the same reasons I’d been careful all along. Karen, for all her feisty talk, loved Hemi so much already. I didn’t want to think of what it would do to her if she lived in his apartment, got used to counting on him, and then it ended.

  And if you think I might have had some of those same issues—you’d be right.

  “Mm,” he said, his hand smoothing over my skin again, gentle now. “Not until we’re sure it’s forever, you said. Until you’re sure I’m sure, more like. Would marriage help you be sure enough? If we did it here in En Zed, so we could go home together and start the rest of our life? Because as far as I’m concerned—I want to spend it with you, and I want to start that now. Or do I need to do that carved moko after all to convince you? I’ll do it if I have to, but, sweetheart, you’ve made me hurt so much, it feels as if I already have.”

  I was sitting up. “Wait. What?”

  He pulled me down with him again, wrapped his heavy arms around me, held me close, and took a deep breath while I tried to process what he’d said.

  “Bloody hell,” he said after a moment. “I’m not doing this right. I’m trying to make a joke of it, because I’m scared of what you’ll say. So let me try again. I love you, and I want to marry you. And I meant to ask you properly. I was going to buy the ring and take you to the ocean, to stand in the spot where I used to look across the Pacific, out to where I saw my dreams coming true. Not knowing what the most important part of those dreams would be. Not having a clue, because I didn’t believe in fairy tales then. I didn’t believe in enchantment, I didn’t believe in love, and I didn’t believe in you. And now I do, so I wanted to look out at the sea and hold your hand and tell you all the things I feel. But I didn’t. I don’t do anything without a plan, but I’ve done this. And I wish you’d answer me.”

  “I—” I was having trouble breathing. “Are you...sure? Karen—”

  “Karen too. Karen absolutely. Karen’s had enough worries in her life. She needs to know that she’s going to university, and not to have to worry about how she’s getting there. Not to mention that she’s turning out to be as pretty as her sister, and she needs a brother-in-law to meet those blokes before they take her out. And to stare them down before they even take her out the door.”

  “Well,” I said weakly, “you’re the guy for that.” I couldn’t catch up. I couldn’t even catch my breath.

  “I am. But the question is—am I the guy for you? Because, sweetheart. I’d be so proud to be your husband.”

  I was sitting up again now, because I had to look down into his face. His amazing face, which could look so hard, so inscrutable. And, right now, was nothing but open. Nothing but vulnerable. Nothing but mine.

  “Yes,” I told him. “Yes. You’re the man for me. You’re the only man for me. I love you, too, and I always will. And I’d be...” I was having trouble with my voice now, but I forced myself to go on, because I needed to say it, and he needed to hear it. “Hemi. I’d be so proud to be your wife.”

  I hope you’ve enjoyed this first entry into the new Not Quite a Billionaire series. Want to hear about new releases, sales, and preorders—plus receive a FREE Escape to New Zealand book? Sign up for my mailing list.

  My thanks as always to my awesome critique group: Barbara Buchanan, Carol Chappell, Mary Guidry, Kathy Harward, Bob Pryor, and Jennifer Spenser, for helping me make this book the best it could be.

  Check out sweet, sexy rugby players in the Escape to New Zealand series

  Learn more about New Zealand, listen to Maori songs, watch the All Blacks doing the haka, and more on the Rosalind James website.

  Read on for the first three chapters of the inspiration for this book--

  JUST IN TIME (Escape to New Zealand, Book 8)

  Available now!

  Just in Time—Dream Date

  It all started with Mrs. Johnson’s toilet.

  Faith Goodwin wielded the blue plastic plunger with everything she had. She was late, and every plunge was making her later. The accordion pleats compressed with a whoosh, then released with a sucking sound that…never mind.

  “Three”—whoosh—“hundred”—suck—“dollars,” she chanted in her mind. The amount of rent she paid in exchange for managing the six-unit apartment building. It was a good deal, even though she was wearing rubber boots and rubber gloves, and this wasn’t the first time she’d unclogged Mrs. Johnson’s toilet. Or any toilet.

  “It’s the colitis.” The quavering voice came from a nice, clean, dry spot behind her. “I have to use extra paper. And you know, dear, these toilets could stand to be replaced.”

  Faith closed her eyes and counted to ten. “You need to start flushing more in…in between, Mrs. Johnson. This makes twice this month.”

  “Maybe a plumber…” the old lady suggested.

  “He’d charge me a hundred dollars to do the exact same
thing,” Faith said, doing her level best to detach from her surroundings. “So, please. Flush.”

  She plunged a few more times, then gave the lever a push, crossed her fingers in the yellow gloves, and held her breath. The toilet thought about it for a minute, and then reluctantly decided to resume normal service, the water gurgling its way down the bowl. Yay.

  “All right,” Faith said. “Good. If you’ll hand me the mop and the bleach, I’ll clean up.”

  Yet another job they didn’t tell you about during Career Day. She was late for work already, she was going to be later, and she couldn’t stay in this spot for another moment. So as usual, she took her mind somewhere else.

  She was jogging down the hard-packed sand of the beach in a pink—no, a black bikini, which looked great on her, because…well, because this was a fantasy, and she’d obviously put in some gym time before it started. The gentle crescents of blue lapped up onto the shore, delicate scallops edged with cream, and her feet were getting wet, but that was all right, because she was running barefoot, as she did every morning. Past the group of guys throwing a football, and she could see their heads turning out of the corner of her eye. She pretended to ignore them, but she could tell they were watching.