Nate thought how soft her skin was and wondered how she got her legs so smooth. Did she wax? Shave? Her skin was like silk, her calves slim, a goodly expanse of thigh exposed by her denim mini skirt, and he brushed his hand mischievously over her knee and higher, remembering how the skin grew pale at the top, turning white between her legs. He only half-heard her question. “Huh?” He raised his eyebrows and blinked.
“You were worried when you first got here,” she said. “Is it because you were nervous I’d tell people?”
He studied her, seeing her mismatched eyes hooded, but still clear. She was tipsy, but not drunk. He’d surprised himself with the sweep of relief he’d felt when she hadn’t seemed interested in the brown-haired Aussie. He knew she’d kept her distance from him on purpose that afternoon, keen to show him she wasn’t going to assume anything after their evening together, and to make it clear that she wasn’t going to mention the incident at the hospital. He’d been pleased at that, relieved at not having to explain himself to her, only to spend the whole afternoon with his eyes glued to her, unable to stop thinking of the feel of her lips beneath his, the slide of her skin across his in the hot, humid room.
He stroked her shin, circling her ankle bone and down the top of her foot as she kicked off her sandals. “Maybe.”
“Don’t worry,” she said, studying him. “I won’t.”
He said nothing, not ready yet to discuss it with her. Running his fingers lightly up her leg, he watched her shiver, and couldn’t help but notice that in spite of the warmth of the afternoon, her nipples showed through her T-shirt like buttons. “Are you feeling better?” he asked. “Your folks still getting you down?”
She looked at the wine glass in her hand, turning it around to let the sun catch the white liquid, and for a moment he thought she wasn’t going to answer him. Eventually, though, she said, “My dad’s a gambler.”
He studied her, surprised she’d opened up to him. “Ah.”
“Yeah. Always has been. I’m trying to save up to travel, go to Africa and Asia, maybe work there as a nurse, you know? But every time I get some money saved, he goes and spends it.”
Nate relaxed his gaze, seeing the aura around her head and shoulders swirl briefly with dark, angry red. “Is that what happened when you got the text that night?”
She nodded. “He’d spent the rent. Mum was asking me for a loan.” She snorted and took a large swallow of the wine. “Like they ever pay it back.”
Nate stroked her legs, his hands growing warm at his wish to soothe her. “I’m sorry.”
She shrugged. “One of those things. I feel resentful sometimes because I tried so hard to make it work, to go to university, to get myself a good job, but all I ended up with was a shedload of student loans and a pathetic savings fund that my father thinks he can dip into whenever he feels like it.”
“Does he assume you’ll bail him out?”
She sighed. “No, not really. He always tells Mum not to tell me when he’s lost at the races. But he must know she’s going to. She can’t just magic the rent up out of nowhere. He can’t help it—I know that. It’s an addiction, like being an alcoholic. He’s not doing it on purpose to spite me. But I get frustrated because he doesn’t want to find help for it. He likes the high he gets when he wins. Same as any other addiction, I suppose. You’ve got to want to stop.”
He nodded, taking a mouthful of the Pinot Noir in his glass, enjoying the rich taste of the red. Freya watched him drink, and when he put the glass down, he smiled at her, still finding her mismatched eyes unsettling. “What?”
“Are you going to tell me about it?” she asked gently.
“Tell you what?” But he knew what she was asking. His hand stilled on her legs, and he waited for the usual wave of panic to rise at the thought of someone finding out about him, finding out what he did. But Freya’s gentle gaze warmed him like the sun, and for maybe the first time since he’d unburdened himself to Ash, he felt nothing but pleasure that she was interested in him and wanted to know more.
“I won’t badger you, Nate,” she said. “But if you want to tell me, I’ll listen.”
He looked up at the stage, where the current band played bluegrass music that fitted the heat and the occasion perfectly. He glanced along the table, but nobody was paying them any attention. Grace and Ash were dancing, Mia and Ross were deep in discussion about something and everyone else was too involved with their own conversations to be interested in what he had to say.
He looked back at Freya, who watched him, seemingly happy to wait for him to speak. He should change the subject, keep himself to himself. But the alcohol had relaxed him, lowered his defences—not that he had many against this girl anyway. He sighed. “When I was fourteen, I had an accident. A car crash.” He sipped his wine again. “And I died.”
Chapter Eleven
Freya’s eyes nearly fell out of her head. “You died?” She couldn’t have expected him to come out with anything more shocking. Covering his hand with hers, she waited for him to explain.
“For two minutes, officially. They tried to resuscitate me, but I was badly injured with internal bleeding and broken bones, and they officially pronounced me dead when they got me to the hospital. And then—I woke up.” He sighed. “Nobody knows what happened. But it took me a long time to recover. I had to learn to walk again, for a start. But over the next year or two, I began to realise that when I’d died, something had happened to me.”
Freya laced her fingers with his. He looked down at their hands, resting on her bare legs, and she could see how difficult this was for him to talk about. She didn’t push him, though. She sipped her wine and waited quietly for him to speak.
He flexed his fingers in hers. “It was a gradual realisation. It started with my family—someone would have a headache or bump their elbow or something stupid, and I’d feel my hands grow hot. I’d get an urge to put them on the afflicted place, and afterward the person would say it felt better. I didn’t think anything of it at first—I was only fifteen or so, and in quite a lot of pain myself most of the time. But slowly I began to realise what I could do—and so did my family.”
Freya felt him tense. She stroked the back of his hand with her thumb, willing him to calm. He looked up at her and smiled. “You realise you’re a healer too?”
“Well, I’m a nurse.”
“Yes, but it’s more than just learning how to insert an IV and take blood pressure. I can see it, in your aura.” He stopped talking then and looked embarrassed.
She tipped her head at him. “You can see auras?”
He studied her face for a moment and then obviously decided he’d already opened up to her, so he might as well carry on. “Yeah, it also began after the accident. I started to see colours around people’s heads and shoulders. When you’re trying to comfort, yours goes green, here.” He gestured above her head, and then dropped his hand, clearly embarrassed in case she thought he was crazy.
“That’s sneaky,” she said, smiling. “I didn’t realise you had a secret signal system that told you what I was feeling.”
He gave a short laugh. “Hey, girls have another kind of barometer to tell when a guy’s interested in them.” He pointed at his shorts.
Laughing, she waited for him to speak again, wanting to ask so many questions, but determined not to push him. Sure enough, eventually he started talking again.
“First of all, it was just friends and family. People popping in after school with minor ailments. But people talk, you know? Gradually it was friends of friends, and then they were coming on weekends, and after a while it wasn’t only headaches and grazes.” He slid in his chair, sighing, continuing to stroke her feet, and she wondered if he was aware that his hands were warm. “My first big ‘case’, if you like, was the mother of a mate of mine. She’d broken her leg skiing, quite badly by all accounts, and she was in a lot of pain. We found that the healing helped with pain management, so she used to come around after school and I’d lay my hands on
her for fifteen minutes, and it would be enough to see her through the night without having to take the painkillers that made her sick. What we didn’t find out until she went for a check-up was that the bone had completely mended, weeks before it should have.”
“Wow.” Freya squeezed his hand. “That’s quite a gift.”
“Most people would say so.” His tone implied he felt differently.
“Did you enjoy healing?” she asked tentatively.
The frown had reappeared between his eyebrows. “Yes, I did. I was only sixteen, and it made me feel good to think I could make people better and take away their pain. I was happy to do it, you understand, nobody dragged me kicking and screaming. In fact, I’m ashamed to say I got quite arrogant. I’d had no training. No idea what I was doing, really. I assumed it was me doing the healing. Some sort of twisted gift I’d been given because I’d suffered so much after the crash. I thought of myself like a superhero, with this incredible power that was only getting stronger and stronger.”
“You were a sixteen-year-old boy. Of course you’d feel like that.”
His eyes met hers briefly before returning to their hands. “It took up more and more of my spare time. And my dad decided as I worked so hard, it was only fair that we started to charge people for the gift of being healed.” He couldn’t hide the bitterness in his voice.
Freya realised they were getting to the crux of the matter and her heart rate increased, but she kept calm, continuing to stroke his hand. “And you didn’t agree?”
He shrugged. “At first I was thrilled. I could do this miraculous thing that came to me so easily, and I could earn money from it! What’s not to like? Dad charged a fee for people who came to our house, but gradually it got too big for that. So he started hiring halls and organising shows. My mum worried it would be too much for me, but the power kept flowing, and I loved it. I loved the way people thanked me, and the admiration I got from everyone for what I could do.” His frown deepened. “You’ve got to understand, I was starting to produce miracles. I could take pain away in seconds—that’s always been my biggest thing—but I also had huge success with lots of other diseases and injuries, including with cancer patients, reducing growths, slowing the spread of the disease, and, very occasionally, even curing altogether.”
“Oh my God.” Freya thought of him standing over Josh and thought what an incredible ability he had. So what had happened to make this gifted young man run away from the life he’d loved?
Nate carried on, speaking more quickly now. “The shows were hugely popular, and I began to do tours of the Northland, and then the whole of the North Island. I was out of school more and more, and in the end, I dropped out—what was the point in going when I knew perfectly well what I wanted to do with my life? There are so many sick people out there, Freya. You know—you’re a nurse. So many people in pain. And it’s not always about curing them—I learned that fast. Sometimes it’s just about making their death more comfortable. Sometimes people don’t want to be healed. People have to take responsibility for their health and their healing, and eat properly, exercise, and adopt a positive frame of mind. But, in general, it worked on everyone.”
He rubbed his nose. “I left all the business side of things to Dad. I didn’t have a clue what he organised—I went where he said, healed who he told me to heal. I was only interested in making people better. The years went by, and he organised larger shows and interviews on radio and local TV, and I went along and was open and honest, even though I could see there were many people who were sceptical. I had nothing to hide—I knew I wasn’t lying. I made people better. What’s wrong with that?”
He shifted in his seat, starting to look more agitated. “What I didn’t realise was that the more famous I got, the more he charged. I found out later that many people couldn’t afford to come to me, but I didn’t know that at the time. I was oblivious to it all. I was working twelve-hour days most of the time, you see. Holding appointments all morning, usually having a show in the afternoon, more appointments in the evening. I worked flat out. I still didn’t really have a clue what I was doing. I read the occasional book on it, but I was still arrogant—I thought I was so incredibly powerful, who on earth could teach me anything I didn’t know?”
“It’s understandable,” Freya said, but Nate shook his head.
“It was conceited, but I didn’t have anyone to tell me what an ass I was being. My brother worshipped me, my mother idolised me. My father…well, his eyes went kerching! every time he saw me heal someone. So I kept going. I didn’t understand anything about the flow of energies, about where the power comes from, nothing. And, as time went by, it began to take its toll.”
He shifted in the seat, and Freya slid her legs off him and sat up. He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, hands linked. All around them people were laughing and having a good time, but she felt as if they were in some sort of bubble, separate from the vineyard, in another time and place. “What happened?”
“I began to get sick. It was a gradual thing—for years I seemed to have an inexhaustible supply of energy—I could keep going for days.” He glanced at her and smiled wryly. “In all ways. I didn’t have any shortage of female company and, being young and virile, I made the most of it.”
She thought of how attractive a youthful, energetic Nate must have been, arrogant and confident, charming all the girls. “I can imagine.”
He looked back at his hands. “I’d work all day, party all night. Crash out at two am, get up at six, start all over again. But after my twenty-first birthday, something happened. I started to get tired. I was still healing, but it seemed to be taking more out of me. It was as if I’d begun to give more of myself, you know? Instead of letting whatever had done the healing before take over. I wanted to heal the world. I took on more appointments, pushed myself harder. As a result, I started to get colds and sickness bugs, and the old aches and pains from the accident came back.”
“But you didn’t slow down.”
“No. Sometimes I’d ask my Dad if I could have a day off, but he rarely agreed. ‘Just think of the people who’ll be disappointed,’ he used to say. “‘All those terribly sick people.’ Of course, when he said that I’d be racked with guilt, and I’d have to carry on. I still healed with the same strength as ever, but my health got worse and worse. I was exhausted. I couldn’t concentrate—I got depressed. But still my father pushed me. And eventually…”
Nate’s voice tailed off. Freya listened to the drunken singing going on around them and felt surreal, as if she’d stepped into a science fiction movie. “What happened?”
He flexed his hands. “I’d had enough, but my father wouldn’t let me stop. He told me I had to pull myself together and get on with it. But I couldn’t. There was an…incident. I…” He hesitated and bit his lip. Then he shook his head and changed the subject. “I found out about the people who couldn’t afford me, and I wanted to hold a free clinic once a week, but my father wouldn’t let me. He’s a big man, hugely controlling and manipulative, imposing and intimidating. For the first time though, I stood up to him. He refused to give in, and we had a huge row. So I left. Just up and left one night. And I’ve never gone back.” He sank his hands into his hair, looked at the ground. “I feel terrible for all those people I let down. All my regular clients who needed me. But I couldn’t do it anymore.”
Freya studied him. Her heart ached for him, for the young, innocent lad he’d been, and the damaged man he was now. She reached out a hand and touched his face, and he glanced across at her. She was startled to see tears in his eyes. He hadn’t told her everything, she knew. There had obviously been an event that had sparked the argument with his father, but he couldn’t cope with telling her any more now.
She stood and held out her hand. “Come and dance with me.”
He looked up at her, surprised. “Dance?”
She beckoned at him. “Come on.”
He stared at her, and then he took her hand, rising and letting
her lead him to one side of the stage. She put her arms around his neck, and he slid his hands around her waist. The band played a very old, slow Motown number, and as they moved to the music, Freya slid her fingers into Nate’s hair and willed all the comfort and calm she could summon to flow from her into him.
To one side, she saw Ash and Grace dancing, but Ash was watching them, and as he saw Freya look over, he smiled and nodded. He’d seen them talking, and he knew Nate had opened up to her. She smiled back. Now she knew that Ash must have rescued Nate when he was in Auckland, torn up from whatever incident had been the final straw in the downward spiral of his relationship with his father. Presumably, it was also Ash who was trying to get Nate to start healing again. For Nate’s sake—and for Josh’s—she wanted to thank him.
Nate rested his chin against her temple, the five o’clock shadow rasping her soft skin, and she felt him kiss her hair. She turned her face up to his, letting his lips brush her cheekbones and then her lips, and before long they were kissing, slow and leisurely, bathed in the golden rays of the sun.
They danced like that for a while, kissing gently, and then the song ended and the band struck up something livelier. Freya grabbed two glasses of wine from the table, handed one to Nate and led him away from the people down a small track that ran along the vineyard.
They walked for a while in silence, not touching, enjoying the music in the distance and the fantails fluttering in the tall trees to their right. It had grown more humid, and sweat trickled between her breasts again.
Thinking about what he’d told her, Freya asked, “What does it feel like, when you heal someone?”
He sipped his wine and looked up at the sky, shading his eyes. “Like this. Like standing in the sun, feeling the energy run down my arms and out of my hands. My hands grow hot, here, in the middle.” He turned his hand over and drew a circle on his palm with the hand holding the glass. “When I started working with Ash, he taught me a lot about the flow of energy. I mean, he’s not a healer as such, but he knows a huge amount about that sort of thing. He gave me lots of books to read and introduced me to one or two people he knows who are healers. At first I didn’t want to know, but gradually he’s talked me into it. And I understand a lot more now about how it works. That it’s not from me, the power—that I can’t give my own energy away. I’m just a vessel.”
Making Sense: Sensual Healing, Book 2 Page 10
