Sweet Talk Boxed Set (Ten NEW Contemporary Romances by Bestselling Authors to Benefit Diabetes Research plus BONUS Novel)

by Novak, Brenda

  “You know what?” she said when she’d managed the nerve-wracking ordeal that was parallel-parking on the wrong side. She blew a tendril of hair out of her face, then kept exhaling, because she had so much tension stored up in her body by now, she was like an overfilled balloon.

  “What? And keep breathing,” he advised. “You did it. First time’s always the worst. That’s what I tell all the girls.”

  That surprised her so much, she laughed, and he was laughing, too. “What?” he asked again.

  “You’re nice,” she said. “You are a nice man.”

  “Hmm,” he said. “That sounds suspiciously like ‘I value our friendship.’ But come on. Rattle your dags, because I’ve got a date with the gym this afternoon, and unless I’m guessing wrong, Kuia’s going to be dragging you off to yoga again. Need to get you fortified.”

  “Nope.” She hopped out of the car. “She’s not, because I’m one step ahead of her. Never underestimate the power of desperation.”

  Close Personal Friends

  At three o’clock that afternoon, sure enough, Faith was on a bicycle following Talia’s blue-cardiganed back. She was breathing cool outdoor air, too, however tinged with sulphur it was, instead of the Sweat Vapors of the Damned.

  They rode through city streets, skirted the bowling green and the rose garden beside the flamboyant half-timbered expanse of the Rotorua Museum, then turned onto a paved path. The smell was stronger here, steam rising in plumes on either side. When they reached the lake, Talia hopped off her blue bicycle and began pushing it by the handlebars, and Faith followed suit. She followed the girl down a path edged with the ever-present ferns, the expanse of Lake Rotorua on one side, the green hills and the clouds overhead reflected in the water. Black swans floated, majestic and serene, in the shadow of weeping willows that draped their branches over the water’s edge, while mallard ducks paddled nearby.

  “So pretty,” Faith said, feeling all the inadequacy of the word.

  Talia didn’t answer that, because, Faith supposed, this was nothing but her back yard. “There they are,” she said instead, and Faith had to hurry to keep up as the girl rushed the last few yards, left the path, and dumped her bicycle on a rocky shore where a group of five or six young people were gathered, some sitting on a log, a couple standing.

  A young man in a hoodie and jeans turned his head at their approach. The only one of the group not in school uniform, he looked a little older, too, with a faint mustache and beard decorating his lean face. He was Maori, Faith thought, at least partly so. Not as tall or as well-built as Will, but with the thin build in skinny jeans that would appeal to a teenage girl.

  “You’re late today,” he told Talia.

  “Sorry,” she said, sounding a little flustered. “I had to go home first and get my…Will’s partner. This is Faith, everybody. And this is Chaz,” she said, indicating the young man. She went around the group, naming the rest of them, and Faith did her best to smile and look young and fun, like somebody who wanted to kick back and share the moment.

  Chaz pulled a pack of cigarettes from his pocket, shook one out and offered it to Talia. “I can’t,” she said, with another quick glance at Faith. “Will’s here.”

  “Wouldn’t want to get big brother’s knickers in a twist,” Chaz said. “So, Faith. Escaping the house? Talia’s mum giving you a bit of a bad time, with Will in the naughty chair and all?”

  The rest of the group laughed a little nervously, and Faith smiled coolly. “Oh, I don’t know,” she said. “I think mothers tend to be protective of their sons. Your mother’s probably exactly the same.”

  “Yeh, Chazzer,” a boy named Tom said. “Think I hear your mum calling you right now. Better run home.”

  “My mum knows better,” Chaz said. “But then, I only like the kind of girls she likes. Nice, pretty Maori girls.”

  “Too bad for Will,” Faith agreed. “But then, you know what love is. It can strike when you least expect it, even in Las Vegas of all places. So do all of you go to school with Talia?”

  “For our sins,” a girl sitting on the log beside Tom said. Sophia, Faith thought. “All but Chaz. Least until we can leave, though Talia will stay all the way through Year Thirteen, because that’s her family’s thing. Stay there all alone, though.”

  “Speak for yourself,” Tom said. “I’m going to Uni, myself.”

  “Yeh? With your marks?” Sophia jeered.

  “I’m doing better,” he said. “Got big plans, haven’t I.”

  “Yeh. You and your big plans,” she said, and he gave her a shove, and she shoved back, and they laughed, and Faith smiled. This was more like it.

  Talia sank onto another log, looking a little more relaxed, and Faith sat with her.

  “Are you really from Vegas?” Sophia asked, a bit shyly.

  “I really am.”

  “What’s it like? Glamorous and all?”

  Faith laughed. “You and Talia saw the same movie, I think. No, it’s pretty much like everywhere, except in the desert and with more casinos. And with a lot of traffic,” she added. “In fact, I’d trade places with you. That’s what I was telling Talia.”

  “Are you…” Sophia asked, then stopped herself.

  “Am I what?” There was no better way to get to know a teenager than getting to know her friends, so Faith relaxed her posture, picked up a handful of pebbles from between her feet, and dribbled them through her hand, doing her best to project ease and approachability.

  “Are you…trading places, then?” Sophia asked. “Because Will—he’s fit, eh. I know he’s your brother and all,” she said hastily to Talia. “But he’s bloody fit, and he’s an All Black, and if he looked at me?” She sighed. “I’d look back, and that’s the truth.”

  “Too old for you,” Tom said, frowning a little. Faith couldn’t blame him.

  “Well, I know that,” Sophia said. “I’m just saying, if he did. I’m just asking Faith.”

  “Who knows?” Faith said cheerfully. “I’m visiting, that’s all, and enjoying it. Will took me on that treetop walk this morning. I loved that.”

  “Tourist stuff,” Chaz said.

  “Probably,” Faith said. “And I loved it anyway, but I guess that’s because I am a tourist.”

  “What are you on about with ‘tourist stuff?’” another boy, Andy, asked Chaz. “Make a pretty good living on that tourist stuff, don’t you. Wish my whanau had a show. I’d be in like a flash.”

  “You?” Chaz scoffed. “Think the French chicks want to look at your fat arse?”

  “Better than looking at your skinny chest,” Andy shot back.

  “That’s what you think,” Chaz said, then glanced at Talia and cut himself off, which Faith didn’t miss either.

  “So you do something for tourists, too?” Faith asked him.

  “His whanau—his family,” Talia explained. “They have one of the Maori cultural shows, do some songs, the greetings, the haka, explain a bit of the history. Like that. It’s pretty awesome. A good job, if you can get it. But you have to have skills.”

  “What kind of skills?” Faith asked.

  “Fighting,” Chaz said. “Got to be good at fighting.”

  “Well, I’m shit at fighting,” Tom said cheerfully, and Faith laughed. “Means it’s Uni for me, eh, or I’m doing construction on the Gold Coast like my brothers.”

  “That’s what I decided, too,” Faith said. “Because I’m shit at fighting myself, and I hate doing construction.” They grinned at each other, Sophia laughed, too, and Faith felt a little better about Talia’s friends.

  “So did you go to Uni, Faith?” Chaz asked, lighting another cigarette and sitting down beside Talia at last. “Not what Talia’s mum thought, then, eh.”

  “Oh really?” Faith asked, keeping it light with an effort. “What was her guess?”

  “Stripper, wasn’t it?” Chaz asked Talia, his mouth curving beneath the stubble. “Bloody funny, we all thought, old Will going to Vegas and bringing back a strip
per. Pity it isn’t true.”

  “Nope.” Faith saw the dusky color stain Talia’s cheeks a deeper shade of bronze, and answered for her. “Not a stripper, alas. Nothing so exciting. I’m a photographer’s assistant, just like the newspaper said, and I’m a marketing writer, too. My mother was a stripper, though.” She looked around Talia and straight at Chaz. “Feel free to share.”

  He laughed. “No shit? Maybe I will.”

  “Hey. Knock yourself out.” She shouldn’t have said it, any of it, but he was on her last nerve by now, and slapping him wasn’t an option, unfortunately.

  “Don’t share,” Talia said with a quick, wild glance at Faith. “Please. Will doesn’t need—”

  “Your big brother doesn’t need your help,” Chaz said. “Got himself into hot water, didn’t he, and he’ll get himself out of it, too.” He put an arm around Talia and kissed her cheek. “No worries, babe.”

  Talia stood up, adjusted her skirt, and finally looked at Faith. “We should go,” she said. “I’ve got homework.”

  “Got to do the homework.” Chaz stood with her. “See you tomorrow, then?”

  “Yeh.”

  He kissed her again, still on the cheek, but with a glance at Faith that let her know why. “Don’t be late next time.”

  “Nice to meet you all,” Faith said, picking up her bike with Talia. “See you again soon, I hope.” And it was mostly true.

  ***

  “You have some nice friends,” she told Talia once they had gone through town and were in the quieter residential streets again. “Thanks for taking me to meet them.”

  “Yeh?” Talia said cautiously. “You liked them?”

  The direct approach might not be best here, Faith decided. “Chaz is out of school, huh?” she said casually. “How old do you have to be to do that here?”

  “Sixteen. But he’s nineteen, actually. Just had a birthday.” Talia’s casual was almost as good as Faith’s. “I’m sorry he said that, about the…about the stripper thing. I didn’t think that, I mean, I didn’t think you were. I don’t really think my mum did either. She was just angry at the time, you know. Because of Will.” She was embarrassed, obviously, but points to her for actually acknowledging the issue instead of pretending it hadn’t happened. Not easy, at fifteen.

  “Mmm. And now he does some sort of fighting exhibition for work?” Faith could easily imagine how attractive and exciting that would seem.

  “Not fighting. Not like you’re thinking. It’s just a demonstration. He’s wicked good, though,” Talia added proudly, as if she couldn’t help herself. “Dead fast. He’s won competitions and all.”

  They’d made it to the house again, so Faith put her bike away, then followed Talia upstairs.

  “I do have homework,” the girl said. “Or I’d hang out some more. You know, keep you company.”

  Faith smiled at her. “That’s all right. I’ve got work to do, too. But thanks.”

  She went into the bedroom she shared with Will, which was empty. He probably wasn’t back from the gym yet. She turned on her laptop and sat at her desk with her hands poised over the keyboard for a minute. She should work on the Roundup copy, and she should polish her latest episodes and post them, too. But she didn’t do either. Instead, she called her mother.

  They got through the preliminaries, and then her mother was asking, as Faith had known she would, “So. You sleeping with him yet?”

  “You know what?” Faith said. “I’m actually not going to tell you. And before you say anything, I’m just about exactly as surprised to hear that as you are, so don’t even start. But I was so careful last time, and I missed him anyway after he left, so what difference would it make?”

  “Getting a man out of your system by going ahead and sleeping with him? It never works. Take it from me. Unless he’s lousy in bed, and honey, I doubt it.”

  “Maybe there are worse things than having your heart broken, though,” Faith found herself saying.

  “You think so?”

  “Like never having your heart be touched at all. Wouldn’t that be worse? But that isn’t actually what I called you about,” Faith hurried on. “There’s something I do need your advice on.”

  “Shoot,” her mother said, even though Faith could tell that she wanted to talk more about Will. But Faith didn’t want to, because she didn’t know what she felt. Or rather, she was afraid she did, and her mind kept skittering away from it. It was more than a crush now, she was becoming increasingly and uncomfortably sure of it. She was afraid that she was falling in love. And in a little more than a week, she was leaving forever. Will had never pretended anything else. If it had been a bad idea to have a fling with him, how much worse would it be to fall in love, act on it, and have all those feelings crushed? To fly back across the ocean, knowing that she had offered him her heart, and that he didn’t want it?

  No. That wasn’t happening, because it would be more than she could take. Her vulnerable heart seemed to curl up into a tight little ball at the thought, and she had to force herself to breathe.

  She’d be brave, she promised herself. She’d take a risk, would let her heart be touched. Later. When it made sense. With somebody else, when it would have a chance of working out.

  She made herself go on. Maybe she could at least help Will with this while she was here. “It’s Will’s sister,” she told her mother. “She’s fifteen. And I think she’s getting…call it entangled, with a boy who’s nineteen. A boy I don’t like much, and that I don’t think her family knows about. He’s not even in school anymore.”

  “Too big an age difference,” her mother said. “Red flag. How entangled?”

  “I don’t know. But she’s on her phone all the time, texting, and I don’t have a good feeling. So what do I do about it? Do I tell Will? Do I tell his mother—who hates me, by the way, so she’d probably just hate me more if I did that. I could tell his grandmother, though.”

  “His mother hates you? Why?” Faith could hear the outrage in her mother’s voice.

  “Black widow?” she suggested. “Entrapping him?”

  “You? Guess they don’t grow them very wild in New Zealand, if you’re a black widow.”

  “Right. But what do I do? Do I tell her mother?”

  “No. Last thing you want to do. Then she gets even more rebellious, if she shared something with you and you ran away and tattled, got her mother coming down hard on her.”

  “Tell Will, then?”

  “Mmm…still no. Not unless you think it’s desperate. Same deal.”

  “Then what? Lecturing her on why it’s a bad idea wouldn’t work, I’m smart enough to know that. You were so good at being a mom to a teenager, but I’m not her mother, and I’ve got no power to do anything at all.”

  “What did I do when you were going out with that guy in college? That Trey?”

  “I don’t remember. Just that I was going out with him, and I thought he was really cool, and then I didn’t, and I broke up with him. Did you do something?”

  “See? You don’t even remember. I invited him to dinner. Over and over again. Let you see him sitting there, hear how he talked to me, let you get a little embarrassed, while I killed him with kindness. I let you see him through my eyes, is what I did, and that was all it took. He wasn’t a sexy bad boy then, he was just a jerk.”

  “Huh. That’s exactly what I’d say about this guy. I can’t invite him to dinner, though.”

  “Then some other way. See if you can spend time with the two of them. See what you can do. You’re a black widow, after all,” her mother said, sounding happy at the thought. “I’ll bet you can figure it out.”

  Cultural Evening

  “Where’s Faith?” Will asked the next day. He’d come back from the gym at five as usual, and hadn’t seen her since. He’d assumed she was out with his grandmother again, or on a walk, maybe, but now his mum and grandmother were starting their dinner preparations, and there was still no sign of her.

  “Talia took her to
a concert,” his grandmother said. “The Kupe one, I think.”

  “What? Without telling me?”

  “Last-minute thing. They fixed it this afternoon.”

  “Could be she thought she’d taken enough of your time today,” his mum said.

  “That’s why she’s here,” Will said. “To take my time. Happy to spend it with her.”

  It was even true. He’d loved doing the treetop adventure with her yesterday. When she’d shrieked and pulled him in, and he’d felt her tremble at the thought of him falling…that had been worth the price of admission all by itself. Today, he’d taken her to a geothermal area, had watched a geyser erupt and walked over boardwalks across steaming hot pools in vivid shades of turquoise, orange, and green, had stood over bubbling mud pots and seen her laugh in delight at the silly sounds they made. All so familiar to him, but seeing it through her eyes had made it new. Special.

  Now, he wandered around the kitchen, leaned back against the bench, then had to move out of the way so his grandmother could get into the fridge. He thought about having a beer, then abandoned the idea. He was going to be ready for training on Tuesday, that was the one thing he was bloody sure of.

  “Have a good day today, Mum?” he asked instead.

  “Not too bad,” she said without looking up from the board where she was preparing vegies to roast. “Pretty busy day at the i-Site, considering it’s nearly winter.”

  “How did they get there?” he asked.

  “Who?” His mother was still chopping, still not looking up, as his grandmother washed mussels in the sink.

  “Faith and Talia, of course,” he said with impatience. “Did Faith drive?” She wasn’t ready to drive at night yet, at least not without him in the car. If she turned out of the carpark onto the wrong side without thinking, still caught up in the show, and somebody else came around that corner…He was sweating at the thought.