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

by Novak, Brenda

  Epilogue

  Two months later

  “What do you think?” Faith burst out as if she couldn’t help herself.

  “Shh,” Will said. “Let me finish.”

  He could feel the tense expectancy vibrating in her where she lay stretched out beside him on the deck of the sailboat. It made him smile a little, and touched him, too, that she cared about his opinion so much.

  She’d refused to publish the final installment of her novel until the fuss had died down over what she called “my dirty stories,” and until she’d known that he was securely back in the New Zealand rugby fold. Today, though, two weeks into the Rugby Championship and with his starting position on the All Blacks secure, she had pushed the button, and Hope and Hemi’s final episode was live.

  There had been a few rocky weeks in there, it was true, but nothing the two of them hadn’t been able to ride out together. And the delay, the publicity, the anticipation hadn’t hurt her sales one bit. Faith had become, in fact, almost the only person he loved who didn’t need his money, and wasn’t that something?

  And yet, despite nearly two months of delay, she hadn’t allowed him to him to read this final episode until she’d published it.

  “I can’t stand to,” she had tried to explain when he’d asked. “If you don’t like it, what do I do?”

  “I’ll like it, though. I know I would. I liked it so far, didn’t I?”

  “You said you did. But if you thought it was cheesy…” She’d hid her face in her hand. “Oh,” she’d groaned. “What if it is cheesy?”

  “Well,” he’d said reasonably, “that could be why you’d want me to read it.”

  “No. Not until it’s up.”

  So he’d waited. Now, he held the tablet up against a backdrop of stars and read.

  ***

  Hope was writing a note to her landlady when the buzzer rang.

  “Would you get that?” she asked Karen, and her sister went to the door without a word. Karen hadn’t forgiven her, it seemed, for their abrupt departure from the hotel, or for the additional move Hope was forcing on her. Hope sighed and ran a hand over her forehead. She guessed it was a good thing that Karen was pushing back. Her sister had been too sick to be anything like a typical teenager for so long. But right now, Karen’s attitude felt like the last straw. It was hard enough to leave Hemi, to leave her job, to try to find someplace to hide from him. It was so hard, she could swear it was going to break her, except that as always, she couldn’t afford to break.

  Karen had pushed the intercom button, had asked, “Hello? Hello?” Now, she shrugged and turned away. “Kids or something.”

  She had barely taken the few steps back to the tiny kitchen table when they heard the pounding at the door. Not knuckles. A fist, and they both jumped and stared at each other.

  “Hope!” It was a bellow. “HOPE!” The blows were crashing against the flimsy door again.

  “No.” Hope breathed the word. “I…I can’t. I can’t.” She stood up hastily, pushed away from the table, and rushed to the bedroom, locking the door behind her.

  Coward, she raged, as she wrapped her arms around herself and huddled on the bed, rocking back and forth. But it was too much. Why had he come? How had he come? He was still in Milan. Except that he wasn’t. He was here.

  She heard Karen’s voice, now, Hemi’s deep answering rumble. He was here. He was in her apartment. And she couldn’t stand it.

  ***

  The door opened just as his fist was coming down on it again, and Hemi spun with the effort to pull the punch, not to hit Karen in her poor abused head.

  Because it was Karen, not Hope. Karen, looking…looking well. And despite the adrenaline, the frustration, the fear and pain, he softened.

  “Hi, sweetheart.” His hand went out to feel the fuzz that had begun to grow back to cover her naked scalp. She looked vulnerable and plucked as a baby robin, and he kissed her cheek gently and asked, “How’re you going?”

  “I’m good. I mean, I’m good. I don’t hurt, and it’s…” She laughed. “It’s amazing, you know?”

  “Yeh,” he said, smiling back at her. “I know. How about letting me in?”

  She stepped back. “Oh! Sorry. What’s going on, though? I don’t get it. Did you break up with Hope? Is that why we had to leave?”

  “No,” he said, and the grimness had come straight back again. “It wasn’t me. I’m here to find out what it was. Where is she?”

  “In the bedroom.”

  He was across to it in three strides, because that was how tiny this grotty apartment was, and the rage rose in him once again that she was still living here. He knocked on this door, too, but he didn’t pound this time, because he didn’t want to scare her. She was hiding from him? Why? That wasn’t like Hope. She had always faced him, no matter how forbidding he might have seemed, no matter how much a lesser woman would have quailed.

  “Hope,” he called out. “Talk to me.”

  “Please.” He heard the wavering voice from the other side. “Please go away. It’s all right. I understand. But please go. I can’t talk to you.”

  What the hell? “You may understand,” he said, the frustration mounting at having to have this conversation through a bloody door, “but I don’t have a clue. Talk to me. You owe me that.”

  “I know.” It was a sob. “I know how much I owe you. I’d pay you back, but I…I don’t think I can. Someday, though, I will. I promise.”

  He’d had enough. He was aware of Karen hovering uncertainly behind him, but he didn’t care. “Open the door,” he tried one more time. “Now.”

  “I’m sorry. I can’t.”

  “Then stand back.”

  He stepped back himself, took two quick paces, raised his foot, and kicked the jamb hard. The flimsy fitting broke under his shoe with a mighty crack, Karen had jumped and shrieked behind him, and he was through. Bursting straight upon Hope, her face pale as chalk and wet with tears, her eyes huge, her arms wrapped around herself.

  “Right.” He put his own hands on his hips to keep from grabbing her. “Tell me what’s happened to make you leave me, and I’ll make it right. Whatever I have to do, I’ll do it. Just tell me.”

  “I…” She was shaking.

  “Baby.” He couldn’t wait another minute. He reached for her and pulled her into his arms. “Please. Trust me to help. I can’t stand this.”

  She had let go, was sobbing as he’d never seen her do, hauling in great lungsful of air, her shoulders heaving, and his hands were smoothing over her back, pulling her down to sit on the bed with him.

  He waited until the sobs had turned to hiccups, then reached for the box of tissues and let her clean herself up. “Now,” he said again. “Please. Tell me what it is.”

  “It was…” She still wasn’t looking at him. “Martine.”

  “Martine?” Of all the things he had expected to hear, that was the last.

  “She came to see me this afternoon. She said…” She breathed in and looked him in the eye at last, her face tear-stained, her eyes swollen and red. “She said that you gave her that necklace, and that when the necklace came, it was the…” Her voice wobbled again. “The end. That that was goodbye. And I realized that you had had me working for your old mistress. I couldn’t believe you’d do that, but when the necklace came after all…” Her eyes were filling, and she took another deep breath and forced the words out. “I knew it was true. I knew that I had been so wrong. And I had to go. Because I couldn’t…I can’t say…goodbye.” Her voice had been dropping as she spoke, and the final word was a whisper.

  “Oh, baby.” Fury and tenderness warred for pride of place, and tenderness won. For now. “No. That’s not what it was. And that’s not what Martine was, either. I gave her that necklace to say thank you after our first Milan show. She worked hard, and she did well, and that’s why she’s there, but after today, she won’t be. Because I never slept with her. Never. She wanted to, I know she did. And I guess she was…bitter ab
out that. And so you know—” The fury was back. “Hard work or no, she’s gone. Today. But, no. Never. I wouldn’t have done that to you. I can’t believe you didn’t trust me, but then…” He stopped himself and laughed a little, although it wasn’t one bit funny. “I know why you didn’t. I haven’t exactly been trustworthy in the past. I haven’t been a man a woman could count on, and I may have given some women jewelry, too. Martine was right about that. But with you…it was different. This wasn’t goodbye. This was…this was ‘I love you.’”

  He had never said the words before, and now, he couldn’t believe it. They didn’t feel scary. They felt right.

  “Oh.” She was shaking again, but maybe for a different reason this time. “Oh. I’m so…Oh, Hemi. I’m so sorry. I didn’t know. I didn’t believe.”

  “No, sweetheart.” The tenderness was doing its best to overpower him, his chest swelling with it as if his heart had grown. Because it had. Because she had made it happen. “I’m the one who’s sorry. Sorry that it’s taken me so long to say it. Sorry that it’s taken me all this time to let you know it, and to be the man you need.”

  “You’ve always been the man I need.” Now, she wasn’t shaking. She’d pulled herself together, because that was Hope. So strong, and so gentle. Her eyes were steady, and her hand was on his face, smoothing over his hair, and everything he needed was in that hand, those eyes. “And I love you, too,” she whispered. “Of course I do.”

  “Then…” He pulled the velvet case out of his pocket, the one he’d stopped by the shop to collect on the way here, because he’d been determined that he was going to put it around her neck, even if it was the last thing he did before she said goodbye to him forever. He opened the box and pulled out the delicate circlet of sapphires and diamonds, not even the humble surroundings able to diminish their flash. “Then, please. My Hope. Please let me put this on you. Please tell me that I get to keep you forever. Please let me love you.”

  ***

  Will set the tablet down, barely knowing what he was doing, put a finger and thumb to his eyes, and sighed.

  “What?” Faith asked, her voice anxious. “What? Bad?”

  “Sweetheart.” He laughed a little. “No. You’ve made me…” He did a bit more repair work. “You’ve made me cry.”

  “Really?”

  “You don’t need to sound so pleased about it,” he said a little crossly. “Bloody hell.” He sniffed. “They’d better not make a film, or I’m going to lose it.”

  She sighed gustily with relief. “Oh, good.”

  “Yeh,” he said. “Just that good. How did you think of all that? All those…feelings?”

  She turned her head to look at him. “How? From loving you, of course. From knowing how I felt about you. How scared I was that you could never feel the same way, and how hard I fought it, because I was so sure there was nothing but pain there for me. From thinking about what would make my own heart swell to hear, and what would make me cry.”

  He swallowed at that. “Well, so you know—If you said those things to me, they’d make my heart swell, too. And you already made me cry.”

  “Mmm.” She snuggled closer, put an arm across his chest, and he got an arm under her so he could hold her. “So it was good, huh?” she asked again, as if she couldn’t help it.

  “Yeh,” he said. “It was bloody good, and I’m so proud of you. My brilliant partner. But maybe what I’m offering this weekend isn’t quite enough. Should I have brought you a necklace instead?”

  She levered herself up to kiss his cheek, then settled down again. “No,” she said tenderly. “That’s fiction. I love what you’re offering. Because mostly, what I want is you.”

  It wasn’t her story, now, that was making him choke up, and he pulled her a little closer and bent to kiss her himself, because unlike Hemi, he didn’t have words for this.

  He had the right place, though. They were anchored off Tiritiri Matangi in the outer reaches of the Hauraki Gulf, the gentle slap of the waves against the hull the only sound breaking the winter silence. A bit chilly, of course, but they were cozy all the same in their sleeping bag, and if she got too cold, all he had to do was take her to the berth in the cabin below. There was nobody else around, not even another boat, on this early-September Sunday. Nobody to keep them company but the handful of visitors bedded down in the bird sanctuary’s bunkhouse, the little blue penguins, and the kiwis, and that was fine by him. That was perfect.

  “I promised you a sky full of stars once,” he said at last. “Took me a while, but I got there in the end. I may not have brought you diamonds, but I brought you these. Or at least I brought you to them.”

  “You did.” Her satisfied sigh came to rest somewhere deep in his soul. “And they’re exactly what I wanted.”

  They lay a minute more in silence, the black night around them broken by a million tiny pinpricks of stars, and best of all, the broad swath of creamy light that was the Milky Way. He heard her intake of breath, and a split-second later, saw the reason for it. A meteor arcing its way across the vastness of space, trailing a cloud of white behind it.

  “What is it to the Maori, do you know?” she asked, sounding dreamy. “A shooting star. Does it mean something?”

  “It’s a Raririki. A little shining one. One of the children of Rangi, the Sky Father, playing across his father’s robe, tripping and falling.”

  “A good thing, or a bad thing?”

  “A bright one like that? Good thing. Good omen.”

  “Good.” She snuggled closer, and he held her just a little bit tighter.

  “What does it mean to you?” he asked.

  “Well, when I was a little girl, I read that it meant you got one wish. But I’ve never seen one before, because I haven’t seen the stars enough. This is my first.”

  “So what’s your one wish?”

  Silence, and then a sigh. “If I tell,” she said, “it doesn’t come true.”

  “Ah. Scared to trust it, are you, even after everything we’ve been through. Scared to think it could last. Or that’s wishful thinking of my own, maybe.”

  “Not—no. Not wishful thinking.” Her voice was so tentative. As if she didn’t dare believe it. As if she hardly dared even wish for it. He knew exactly how she felt, because he felt the same way. But it was time to go ahead and speak the wish aloud. There was a point when you had to put it out there, and it was now.

  He waited a moment, trying to think how to say it, and then decided there was no perfect way. There was only doing his best, and hoping it was enough. So he took a breath and did it.

  “It’s hard, isn’t it, to take that leap,” he said. “To close your eyes and step out into space, and trust that I’ll be there to catch you. Even that you can say it, that you can tell me what you wish for. But you can, you know. I’m standing right here with my hands out to pull you in, and I’m going to stay here. And I’ll be counting on you the same way, because it’s exactly the same leap for me. Nothing to hold onto but you, nobody but you to catch me if I fall. It’s a leap of faith, is what it is, and the only way to take it is together.”

  “Oh. That’s…” She had turned onto her side, not looking at the stars anymore. She was looking at him instead.

  “Solomon rang me the other day to tell me he’s got that spot at last,” he told her. “That he’ll be on the squad for the Outlaws, and not the practice squad. He may be a starter and he may not, but he’ll be digging deep for it. If he doesn’t make it, it won’t be because he didn’t try.”

  “That’s…that’s great news.”

  “And you’re wondering why I told you that at this particular moment. It’s because of this. Because that last day, when I was leaving Las Vegas, he and I were talking about this mad life we’ve got, about how much he’s had to move, all the teams. About all the travel you do when you’re a sportsman. And he said something to me, talking about Lelei. He said, ‘Home is where she is.’ I wondered how that would feel, and I knew I didn’t have a clue. And now
I do. I know that these past couple months, when I’ve been gone, when I’m flying home…I’m coming back to New Zealand, yeh, and that’s home, and that matters. But I’m also coming home to you. I know it’s home, because you’re there.”

  He thought she might be crying a little. He put a hand out and found he was right, wiped the tears from her cheek with a gentle thumb. “Dunno if crying’s a good thing right now, or a bad one,” he said, trying to laugh and failing. “I’ve got my heart in my throat here. Or maybe I should say I’ve got it in your hands. Maybe you could give me a hint.”

  “It’s—it’s a good thing,” she said. “Because this isn’t my home, but it…it is. Because you’re here. Because when you come home, it’s the day I’ve waited for.”

  No woman whose eyes are lighting up because you’re home, and this is the day she’s had circled on her calendar.

  He heard Koro saying it, and he looked out beyond Faith to the stars overhead, and knew that he was up there, and that somehow, he knew. That his wayward grandson had found it at last, and that, most of all, he’d been able to recognize it. Because of everything his Koro had taught him about living his life like it mattered.

  You can stay. You can stick. Your choice. Your life. You can run away from it. Or you can run towards it.

  He was going to run towards it. Starting right now.

  “Your tourist visa’s almost up,” he told her.

  “Uh…I know.”

  “Another thing you’re wondering why I’m saying. I’m saying there’s another kind of visa you could get, so I can keep coming home to you. If this is a life you think you can live, and if you want to live it with me. And it’s a…” He breathed deep, felt all those old shackles falling away, and said it. “It’s a fiancée visa. And if it’s too soon,” he hurried to add when she didn’t answer right away, “we can wait as long as you like for the wedding. We can wait a year, if that’s how long it takes you to be sure. But I can’t let you go home, not without trying to keep you. I’ve got to try. I’ve got to take the leap. I’ve got to hope that you’ll be there to catch me.”