And yet here she was. Here they all were, but that was her own mother’s doing, of course.
“It’s not necessary,” Will had told his grandmother when she’d rung the day before to tell him they were all on their way and would be joining him to meet Faith. Including his sister, who was meant to be in school today.
“Too right it’s necessary. Showing that your family’s supporting you, that we understand? We’ll be there. Pity we can’t get Caro and Hine and the rest over from Aussie for it, but they say they can’t, not with the kids and all.”
That would have been all he needed—his two other sisters, their partners, and their four kids, an entire Troupe of Traveling Taweras turning up to stage Will’s rehabilitation with the New Zealand public. Fortunately, it was only four of them here, but four was more than enough.
It was only for the day, though. They’d all be gone tomorrow. He’d hold that thought.
“Who are we looking for?” his grandmother asked now. Her dark eyes, still eagle-sharp at seventy-five, searched the monitor overhead, scanning the passengers straggling out one at a time pushing luggage carts piled high after the twelve-hour journey from LA.
“Blonde,” Mals said laconically from under his hat, leaning against the barrier and looking like he needed to lie down. “Hot. Bound to be. That her?” he asked as a—yes, a fairly hot blonde came into view on the monitor, all hair and long, slim legs, and totally Will’s type.
“She’s not blonde,” Will said. “She’s not exactly hot, either. She’s attractive,” he added hastily. “Obviously, I think so. But not like that, eh. It’s more of an…emotional connection.”
He sounded like a bloody greeting card, and he was sweating a little now. He’d known this was a horrible idea. They were going to see straight through him, and so was everybody else.
“You’re joking.” Mals looked interested for the first time, although Talia didn’t even look up. “You went for a girl who wasn’t hot? Since when? Bro, you could get anybody. If I could hook up like that—”
“You’d what?” his mother demanded.
“What? Not like Will doesn’t,” Mals said. “Not like everybody doesn’t know it. Course, he didn’t always have a photographer recording it.”
“It wasn’t real,” Will said in exasperation. “It was modeling. Why can’t anybody get that through their head? And whatever I did before, I’m not doing it anymore, because I’ve got somebody special at last, haven’t I.” There he went with the greeting card again.
Then he got distracted, because there was another pretty girl on the monitor. Head down, pushing a cart, her hair swinging around her face, wearing a short skirt and jersey that, even on the fuzzy black-and-white monitor, were showing off a figure that was keeping him looking.
Then she rounded the corner and was there in person, and it was Faith, and Will was standing there, gobsmacked.
She saw the group behind the barrier, and her hand came up in a tentative wave and fell again.
“That’s her?” Mals asked. “That’s not hot? You’re joking. A bit old, maybe, but that girl is a stone fox.”
“Yeh,” Will said absently through a mouth that had gone dry. He was still just standing there, but so was she, her cart not quite out of the egress lane, the other passengers diverting around her.
He’d forgotten how she looked, maybe, but he could swear that she’d never looked quite like this. Her hair fell in wispy strands around her face, then to her shoulders, with a sexy fringe that fell below her eyebrows. That hair was glowing under the fluorescent lights, too, because there was some blonde in it now.
It was makeup, he realized, that made her eyes appear even larger, her mouth even lusher. She didn’t need any makeup, though, for that tiny little mole above her lip, and he remembered with a jolt of recognition how much he’d always longed to kiss that mole. And as for that body—he remembered that, too, although surely it looked even better now.
“What are you waiting for?” his grandmother said. “Go get her.” She thrust the flowers she’d insisted on stopping to buy into his hands and shooed him on. “Go.”
Will stepped forward, because Faith still wasn’t moving. He was conscious of the eyes on him, and not just his family’s. He’d been recognized.
Faith seemed to realize she had stopped and began shoving her cart again, coming to meet him. She reached a hand up and pushed her hair back as if she still wasn’t used to having it around her face. Or as if she didn’t know what to do with her hands.
“Hi,” she said, and she wasn’t smiling, but then, neither was he.
“Hi,” he managed. “You changed your hair.” Well, that was lame. He realized he was still holding the bouquet of lilies and shoved it hastily at her. “Here. Flowers.”
“That’s how you say hello?” his grandmother demanded from behind him. “The poor girl doesn’t even get a kiss?”
Faith’s eyes widened and flew to his. “Sorry,” he said softly. “That’s my family. Got to be convincing.” He put his hands on her shoulders, felt the tension in her, and knew that, however different she looked, she was still the same Faith. Still not taking it lightly.
He’d meant it to be quick, just a peck. But as soon as he felt those soft lips under his own, the current was leaping between them, and her eyes were opening wide, then fluttering closed. Her body softened, swayed into him a little, her hands had come up to his own shoulders, the tissue-paper wrapping for the flowers brushing against his back, and he was holding her more tightly, pulling her into him. His mouth was moving over hers, and he was kissing her harder, because it seemed he had no choice.
He stepped back at last, a little shaken, and she didn’t look any steadier than he felt. “Hi,” he said again. He reached for her cart, because he needed to do something, or he was going to kiss her again. “My family’s here.” The phones were being held up now, the cameras clicking away. Well, that was the point, wasn’t it?
They had reached his family, and Talia was looking up at last from her ever-present phone. “Kuia,” Will said, “This is Faith. Faith…” He stopped, horror-stricken, because he was so rattled, he’d forgotten her surname.
“Faith Goodwin.” She put out a hand to his grandmother. “It’s…Kuia? Or…Mrs.?”
“Miriama Johnson,” she said. “Will’s mum’s mum. ‘Kuia’ means ‘grandmother.’ But you can call me Miriama.”
Faith blinked a little. “Johnson?”
Miriama laughed. “You’re thinking it doesn’t sound too Maori. That’s all right. Emere’s always telling me I’m not Maori enough.”
“Mum,” her daughter protested. “That’s not what I say.”
“And I say,” Miriama went on, “what’s the point of being alive if you never color outside the lines? Where’s the fun in that? But I guess that skips a generation, doesn’t it, because here Will is, doing it his own way as well.”
Will’s mum wasn’t looking too rapt about that line of chat. “And how’s that working out for him?”
“Well,” Miriama said serenely, “that’s why Faith’s here, isn’t it?” Will’s heart stopped for a moment. Could she know? She went on, though. “It hasn’t worked out so badly for him, all in all, seems to me. And nobody’s welcomed you yet, Faith, though Will didn’t do so badly once he got over his stage fright. Haere mai. Welcome to Aotearoa.” She reached out for Faith and gave her a kiss on the cheek.
“New Zealand,” Will murmured. “Aotearoa.”
“Thank you,” Faith said to his grandmother.
“And my mum,” Will said hastily. “Emere Tawera.”
His mother, to his non-surprise, didn’t kiss Faith. She held out a hand, shook Faith’s briefly and released it, and said, without a smile, “Will’s brother and sister. Malachai and Talia.”
And that was it. Photo opportunity taken, family introduced. “Time to go,” Will said. “Breakfast, and a walk round the Domain, I thought. Sound all right?” he belatedly thought to ask Faith. “Did you sleep on the
flight?”
“Uh…sure,” she said. “Whatever the Domain is. And yes, some.”
“Drop me at the Uni,” Mals said. “I’ve got a lecture this afternoon. And I don’t want breakfast.”
Will fixed him with a stare. “You want breakfast. In your state? Breakfast.”
Close Quarters
Five hours later, Faith was drooping with fatigue. Of course, it hadn’t helped that she’d barely slept on the flight over, however comfortable a seat—or bed, rather—Will’s Business Select ticket had bought her. She’d been too nervous. But when he’d seen her, stopped, and stared, she’d felt a little better. The time spent fixing her hair and doing her makeup in the cramped toilet cubicle that morning had definitely been worth it. And when he’d kissed her, she’d really felt better, because, oh, could he kiss. And, oh, had his body felt good against hers, big and hard and strong. His arms wrapping her up, pulling her into him, his mouth moving over hers…
Oh, dear. She was in so much trouble. And that had been before she’d met his family.
They’d brought two cars, so at least Faith hadn’t had to ride with Will’s mother, although there had been a little skirmish about who was going with whom all the same.
“Kuia and I should ride with Faith,” Malachai had piped up when they’d been standing beside Will’s car, which was, no surprise, red and sporty, exactly as Faith would have imagined.
Will had favored his brother with another dark frown. “No,” he’d said flatly. Could he actually have been jealous that Faith would have been sharing the cramped back seat with his brother? That had been a cheering thought. But no, he probably just hadn’t wanted her to notice the alcoholic fumes that were coming off Malachai. Too late. That was hard to miss, if you’d ever worked in a casino.
They’d taken Will’s sister, in the end, who had sat in the back and said nothing, but had been an effective deterrent to conversation all the same. The three of them had ridden into the City in constrained near-silence, Will asking her about her mother and her flight as if they were strangers. He’d pointed out the communities they were passing, the green hills that were actually the remnants of volcanoes, until they had reached the Domain, which turned out to be a big park situated in another volcanic crater. They’d eaten breakfast sitting on the patio of a little café, watching ducks paddling peacefully in a pond straight out of a fairy tale, lined by trees and ferns so lush, she’d half-expected to see magical creatures peeping out from beneath the greenery. Will’s grandmother had been chatty, Will had looked relaxed and hadn’t been, and nobody else had even pretended. And then they had piled into the cars again minus Malachai, who had headed off after breakfast to walk back to the University, and driven across a harbor that was so picturesque it hurt.
Ferryboats passing busily to and fro against a backdrop of a long peninsula, green hills dotted with houses, and behind them, when Faith turned in her seat, the bridge sweeping across the water to the skyline of the central city, with the spire of the Sky Tower taking center stage, as iconic as a postcard. Clouds scudded across a crystal-blue sky, and the sun shone, then was blotted out by a sudden downpour that passed as quickly as it had arrived. Then it was sunny again, and Will had taken a turn, and they were driving down a street lined with palms and majestic leafy trees, with big houses on either side. Some of her fatigue was lifting, because beyond the houses—that was the ocean she was seeing, those flashes of blue. Will pulled into a driveway on the ocean side, then into the garage of a white house that was all modern lines and glass. Which had, it turned out when Will had led her upstairs, only three bedrooms.
“Oh, no,” she said when she was standing next to a king-sized bed that looked out over a wide balcony, past green lawn edged by palms, and straight out to the beach. Her dream location, but not her dream situation. “Absolutely not. Not part of the deal.”
Will heaved her suitcase onto a low dresser and sighed. “Tell me you’re not going to be passing out in three hours max. Believe it or not, I very rarely make moves on unconscious girls. Besides, it’s just for tonight. And there’s no way my family is going to believe that my girlfriend, the woman I’m madly in love with, is making me sleep on the couch the first night.”
As she continued to stare at him, her hands on her hips, he sighed again. “Right,” he said, then moved to the bed, threw the comforter back, and took the pillows out. “Barrier.” He laid three of them lengthwise down the middle of the bed. “You have your side, I have mine, and never the twain shall meet. Even though you’re beautiful.”
Really? She almost said it, but caught herself. Instead, she just looked at him and said, “Good.”
Her mother had been so right. “The better you look over there, the stronger you’ll feel,” she’d promised. “Take it from somebody who worked mostly-naked and faked a smile for almost twenty years. Knowing you look good is about a woman’s best ammunition.”
“I like to think that’s my mind,” Faith had said.
“And your mind’s just wonderful,” her mother had assured her. “But your mind doesn’t always help if a camera’s on you, or when you’re trying to remember that you’ve got the upper hand over a good-looking man.”
Especially a man who had had his picture taken all day long, nodded politely at calls of, “Oi! Will!” from people he clearly didn’t know, stopped to sign autographs for a couple of kids on the way out of the airport, and signed them again over breakfast.
“I mean,” her resident star was saying hastily now, “not that you weren’t beautiful before. Just that you’re more beautiful, or I’m noticing it more, because you’re dressed differently, or maybe it’s your hair, or…” He stopped. “I’m stuffing up,” he said helplessly as Faith started to laugh, and he was the Will she remembered again, not the polite stranger she’d spent the day with.
“Yes,” she said, “you are. But it’s pretty cute. This is boot camp you’re looking at.”
“What? You joined the army? Then…why are you here?” He looked totally confused, and she had to laugh again.
“Of course I didn’t join the army. Boot camp is fitness classes. I decided it was time to change some things in my life, and this was part of it. Six o’clock every morning, for six long weeks. So if I look better? Well, thanks. Boot camp, hair, makeup, and some new clothes, that’s all.” Which she’d had the money to buy because of everything else she’d changed about her life, but he definitely didn’t need to know that. “And the same me underneath,” she added. “A me who thinks it would be a great idea if you explained why your mother hates me before I go downstairs and she tries to kill me with her withering glare again.”
He sat down on the end of the bed, so she sat down, too, the pillow-wall between them, and waited for his answer. “Same reason your mum hates me. You’re chocolate cheesecake. Well,” he amended, “you’re vanilla cheesecake. And, yes, you are. Although I’ll just say, I love cheesecake.” He stopped and cleared his throat. “Off the point,” he muttered. “Yeh. My mum. You’re the brazen hussy who lured her innocent boy into a life of pornography. And the more beautiful you look, the more she’s going to think so, so I’m afraid you’re stuck.”
“Wow. Me?” She actually felt pretty happy about that. “I tempted the player, huh? With my wicked ways?”
He smiled at her, and her heart did a funny little flip.
“You did,” he said, “and you know it.”
Tempting the Player
Faith woke to blackness. She pulled her phone off the bedside table and blinked at it. Four o’clock. She set the phone down, rolled onto her side, and tried to fall asleep again.
It wasn’t working. She could hear Will’s breathing in the quiet, could sense his warmth across their pillow-barrier, and that was way too distracting.
He’d fixed her a sandwich the day before after she’d taken a shower and somehow managed to unpack, and then she’d gone upstairs to take a nap at four o’clock and hadn’t woken again, just as he had predicted. She hadn’t eve
n known when he’d gotten into bed beside her, which was kind of a disappointment. She’d slept with Will Tawera, and she hadn’t even remembered it. And now it was a whole twelve hours later, she was awake, and she couldn’t sleep any longer.
She stole quietly out of bed and felt her way across the room in the dark towards the closet. She’d just reach in there and grab her robe.
Instead, she let out a squeak of surprise and pain as she stubbed her toe, then lost her balance and fell forward, her hands coming out to catch herself against something low and hard.
“Faith?” The voice came from behind her. The light went on, and she shoved off what turned out to be Will’s dresser. She hadn’t even been close to the closet. She turned to find him sitting up in bed, a white T-shirt stretching across his chest, his jaw dark with stubble. His hair wasn’t even mussed. It was cut too short and sharp to be mussed. In fact, he looked absolutely terrific, and she probably looked…
His gaze flew hastily back to her face, and she realized he’d been staring, too. “Nice jammies,” he said.
“I wasn’t planning to be sharing my bed,” she managed, “or I’d have worn a muumuu.” She’d thought the pinstriped pink shirt and shorts with their black piping were cute, and that they’d be lightweight for packing. But the V-necked collar plunged deep into her cleavage, the shorts were short, and they were riding low, she realized with a hasty glance downward, sitting inches below her navel, their black ribbon untied and dangling down her thighs. She grabbed for it and tied it hastily into a bow, and he watched her do it.
“Did I mention,” he said a little huskily, “that you looked good?”
“Go back to sleep. It’s four.”
He lay back against the pillows, crossed his arms behind his head—which was just way too much bicep for her peace of mind—and grinned at her. “I’m used to odd hours. And I need to keep the light on if you’re going to get out of here without bodily injury. But if you’re going to be changing, I’ll close my eyes. How’s that?”
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