Found (Not Quite a Billionaire Book 3)

by Rosalind James

  Is there any relief in the world more blissful than finally peeing when you’re all the way past desperate? It was very nearly orgasmic. At least, I was shuddering. Then I was washing my hands and face and drying them on an actual towel, and that wasn’t bad, either.

  Finally, I stripped off my dripping jacket and unzipped my boots. I’d have to wipe down the water I’d tracked in before Koro came home, because wearing shoes in a Maori home just wasn’t done, let alone walking through the house in muddy boots. But after that, I’d get rid of my wet clothes, take a shower that used way too much hot water, see if Koro had any herbal tea, plug in my phone so I could text Karen, and then lie down and sleep for a day.

  Koro wouldn’t mind, surely. Have a rest and a think, he’d told me. Come to me, my darling. He wouldn’t mind.

  I picked up my jacket and shoes and left the bathroom, finally flipping on the light in the hallway that I hadn’t bothered with on my mad dash.

  Something made me look to the left, toward Koro’s bedroom. I stood there for a moment as if I’d grown roots, my mind trying to take in what I was seeing. And then I heard, as if from far away, the clunk that was my boots hitting the floor, and I’d covered the five or six steps to the half-open bedroom door.

  And the arm that was barely visible through it. The arm on the floor. That wasn’t moving.

  Hemi

  I’d come home from the airport on Tuesday night just because I hadn’t been able to think of anything else to do. I’d wanted to go after Hope, and I’d known I couldn’t.

  When I got there, Karen came out from the living room so fast she nearly cannoned into me.

  “Did you get her?” she demanded.

  “No.” I took off my shoes and followed her into the living room, and had to blink. Papers and magazines were scattered across the coffee table, Karen’s sandals and a long-sleeved shirt lay strewn on the carpet, the TV was blaring, and it looked like an entire family had eaten a Chinese banquet and then fled the premises.

  “What have you been doing?” I asked her. I picked up a remote, turned off the TV, and pressed the button to slide the hardwood panel over the screen for good measure. “Who’s been here?”

  Her gaze slid away from mine. “Nobody.” And when I kept looking at her, she said, “Well, just Noah, for a little while.”

  “What?” I’d been gone . . . barely two hours. Well, three. It was nearly eleven. “Noah the Buddhist? Unattached Noah? Male Noah?”

  “I was upset. Hope was gone, and you were gone, and I didn’t know what to do! I didn’t know if you were going to go to New Zealand or coming home with Hope or what. And Mandy couldn’t come over, because it was late, and I knew you’d freak out if I took the subway over there, because you’re so overprotective and everything, so Noah came over to hang out.” All that last part came out in a rush, her voice rising as she spoke. “And I thought you were bringing her back. You let her go? Why?”

  “One minute.” The Maori in me had risen, and it had to go somewhere. Seemed it was going here. “There is no boy in this house when nobody’s home, and you’re not to go to any boy’s house alone, either. Period. And clean this up, please. You leave it for Hope. You leave it for me. You leave it for Inez. It’s nobody’s job to tidy up after you, and nobody else is going to do it. You are.”

  Her hands were on her slim hips now. She was wearing only a ribbed yellow tank top and short brown shorts, and I looked at her and knew exactly what Noah had seen.

  I hadn’t met him. I needed to. Pity I hated him already.

  She began to stack plates, her movements rough and abrupt, and said, “OK. Geez. I should have gone with Hope. She at least wants me. At least she doesn’t yell at me. And why can’t I have a friend who’s a guy? Why can’t I be a normal person?”

  When she turned around, I took a better look and said, “That would be why.” Her hair was still only a couple inches long, kept short after her head had been shaved for her surgery, and there was no hiding the considerable love bite on her neck. Which would be why the cushions on the couch were disarranged as well. If I’d had a back door, I’d have guessed that Noah had made his escape out of it while I’d been on the way in.

  Hope would have blushed and put her hand to her neck. Karen squared off to me again, dirty plates and all, and said, “So I’ve got a hickey. So what? People kiss. You are such a hypocrite! Why is it all right for you and not for me?” She was waving the dishes around forcefully enough that a knife and fork slid off and headed toward my bare feet, forcing me to take a jump back to avoid them.

  I kept my voice level with a major effort. “Because I’m not sixteen? Barely?”

  “No. Because you’re male. I’ll bet you’d had sex by the time you were sixteen. Probably when you were twelve. And I’ll bet the girl wasn’t eighteen, either. Or the girls. That was fine, but it’s not fine if I do it? What about the girls you did it with? Why am I better than them? That’s being a hypocrite, and it’s slut shaming. Women are sexual beings, and we should be just as free to express our sexuality as men are.”

  I couldn’t deal with this. The mess. The noise. The . . . the hormones. I was stuck, and I was so frustrated, I wanted to growl. Instead, I took a deep breath, let it out, and said, “Hope will talk to you about it.” A weasel response, and I knew it, so I went back to firmer ground and said, “But no. Absolutely not. Noah is not here when Inez or I aren’t, and you aren’t at Noah’s when nobody else is home, and you’re to tell Inez or me where you’re going when you leave, and who you’re going with, and we’ll be . . . we’ll be checking.”

  How? How were you meant to check? I had no clue. When I’d been sixteen, I’d been living with a dad who’d been heaps more interested in what was in the bottle than what I was doing or who I was doing it with. And, yes, I’d been having sex every chance I got, or anything close to it I could manage. Mostly on the beach—the Kiwi teenager’s second bedroom—or snatched moments in the back of a cinema or a party, or, best case of all, in a car. Never enough time, and always the risk of discovery, the thrill of the forbidden to lend spice to the encounter.

  Why? Because most of those girls had had a dad. A dad who’d probably felt exactly the same way about his little girl and about blokes like me as I was feeling now, because he’d known what they were thinking and what they wanted to do, just like I did. And if Karen were doing the things those girls had done with me in the back seats of cars or behind a dune . . .

  How had Hope coped with all this? I needed to talk to Inez. I needed to talk to Charles, too. How was I meant to approach that conversation?

  I was still trying to sort it out when Karen marched past me, all but flung the dishes into the kitchen, then came back and began to throw things about in a fashion that, if it was “tidying,” wasn’t the kind I knew.

  “You didn’t bring her,” she said, her back to me. “I thought she’d be coming home. I thought she’d be back. And now I’m in purdah.”

  “I reckon she needed to be alone for a while. And you’re not in purdah. You can see all the boys you want. Just not alone.”

  “I thought you were going to try to get her back. I thought that was the whole point.” She was tossing cushions about in a random fashion as if that made it better, and I resisted the urge to step in and fold the rumpled throw tossed across the arm of the couch, to pick up papers and stow remotes. Karen bent down, grabbed the knife and fork she’d dropped onto the rug and said, “She wanted to stay. I know she did. She came to see you, and you weren’t even here. How come you guys keep wrecking it? Why can’t you just love each other? You said you were going to fix it. What did you say? You were supposed to tell her you loved her. That’s what she wanted to hear. You should have told her you’d take her for a walk, or to the art museum or a show or something. All those flirting things you used to do. You know, old-timey dating. She loved that.”

  “Yeh,” I said, abandoning any shreds of pride that remained. Even Karen knew what I’d done wrong. “Got that, didn�
��t I. I’ll be doing it from now on, no worries.” I should tell her that Hope was pregnant. But how could I, if Hope hadn’t? I needed to talk to Hope first. I needed to see Hope.

  My entire life was upside down. My meticulously ordered apartment was chaos. I kept finding myself shutting Karen’s bedroom door when I walked by, because otherwise, the clothes on the floor seemed like they would actually roll out into the hallway and stage a coup. The woman who should be my wife, the mother of my child, was flying away from me at nine hundred kilometers an hour. Meanwhile, the woman who was my wife was trying to take away most of what I owned, I had whole buildings full of nervous employees and some very anxious bankers, and just when I needed a clear head to deal with all of it, I was more rattled than I could remember being for years. For fifteen years, in fact. Since I’d been married to Anika.

  But this time, it wasn’t having the woman that was causing the trouble. It was not having her.

  “I’m going to fix it,” I told Karen. “I’m going to fix everything.”

  “I should have gone,” she said, grabbing her shirt and shoes from the floor and standing up, hugging them to her. “I should go.”

  “No.” I put out a hand and ran it over her neat cap of shining dark hair, then pulled her in and gave her a quick cuddle, as exasperated as I was, because it was what Hope would have done. Hope rose above. “You shouldn’t. You should keep me company, and tidy up after yourself, and learn to cook and drive and swim, and visit your girlfriend, and enjoy your first summer of being healthy. And wait for your sister to come home, so you can show her all of that and impress her.”

  Karen’s brown eyes were shining now, and her voice wobbled a little as she said, “I miss her, you know? I slept with her my whole life, did she tell you that? At first it was so cool to have my own bed, and my own room, and my own bathroom, even, but . . . do you think she’s coming back?’

  “I know she is.” I wasn’t sure if I was convincing Karen or myself. “She won’t leave us for long. She won’t be able to. She loves us, and your sister knows how to love.”

  I had a number of conversations the next morning. First with Inez.

  “I want Karen to tell you where she’s going when she leaves the house,” I told her from my spot at the kitchen counter. “I want Charles to take her, and I’d like you to ring up and . . . check. With the mum, or whoever. She had a boy over here last night, and could be his parents are working and he’s at home alone himself, and I think that’d be bad news. But be subtle,” I thought to add. “Not like you’re checking on her, eh. Just that you’re checking, because Hope isn’t here.”

  She gave a sniff, pulled the milk out of the fridge, and got busy at the cappuccino machine. “You think I’m stupid? I have three daughters. Three. I know how to check on girls. Sixteen is a bad age. They think they know everything, and they know nothing.” She poured heated, milky foam over coffee with the attention of a barista, then slid the cup and saucer onto the counter in front of me and took away the empty cup sitting there. “Decaf.”

  “Decaf isn’t going to do the job,” I said.

  “You are too tense. Decaf is better.”

  For a man who liked to be in control, I had a fair few women giving me their opinions. So I did what any wise man would do. I moved on. “And I should tell you that Hope’s gone to New Zealand for a bit to see my grandfather.”

  I was taking a casual sip of coffee when Inez said, “She’s pregnant, and she’s run away.” Which may have made me choke.

  “She said she just found out,” I said when I could speak again. “She said that last night. How could you possibly know?” And then I regretted it. I didn’t share information. I didn’t betray uncertainty.

  Another sniff. She had a pad and pencil out, was making some sort of list. “What, you think it’s because I’m a witch? Because I have magical powers from the Mayan people? No. I know because she stopped drinking her coffee and thought it tasted strange. Because she would only eat yogurt and toast for breakfast, and if I began cooking meat, she left the kitchen. Because I have three children.”

  “Pity I was the last to know,” I muttered. “Could have told me, couldn’t you.”

  “It was not my business,” she said primly, and this time, I was the one who snorted.

  “Karen doesn’t know,” I said. “Best let Hope share it.”

  “Again,” she said, “I am not stupid. And you need to be at work, and I have many things to do here. Go.”

  “Charles is meant to be giving Karen driving lessons,” I said, getting off the stool and choosing to pretend I hadn’t just been ordered out of my own kitchen. “I’d be happier if he started doing that straight away. Keep her out of trouble, eh. I’ll have a word with him today about that. And see that she cleans up after herself.”

  She was still writing, and she didn’t look up. “Why do you think I allow her room to be that way? A way that hurts my head just to look at? Because it’s no good for her for others to do things for her. She has a strong mind. A strong will. She will push. You need to push back.”

  “No worries. I got that.”

  “And now go,” she ordered.

  I looked at her and said, “Maybe I won’t. Reckon I need to push back.”

  “Not with me. Me, you need. Go.”

  Well, she was right about that.

  My conversation with Charles was considerably shorter. When I got into the car five minutes later, I said, “I want you to drive Karen more. Wherever she wants to go. And teach her to drive. Take her to get the . . . permit, or whatever it is, and then practice with her every day.” I’d have Josh check into it and ring Karen with the details. For the LASIK surgery as well. Get that scheduled, and until then? I’d keep her busy.

  “OK,” Charles said.

  “You won’t be driving Hope for a bit longer,” I said.

  Nothing at all for a long minute, then he asked, “She OK?”

  “Yeh. But she won’t be back for a bit, so when you take Karen . . . the Y’s all good, and so is her friend’s. Mandy’s. Otherwise, check with Inez before you drop her off.”

  His eyes flicked to mine in the rearview mirror. “Guys?”

  “Yeh. Could be.”

  He nodded, and that was that. Problem sorted. Pity nothing else today would be that easy.

  Hemi

  For the rest of the day, I put my head down and worked. I put out fires, I reviewed the revised marketing plans for the Paris show and the launch of the Colors of the Earth line. I focused. I dealt. And I tried not to think about Hope.

  I’d told Josh first thing what to do about Karen—the driver’s license, the eye surgery—and then I’d set Karen aside. It was done, and I didn’t do worry. Except that I did. From three o’clock on, when her plane would have landed, I waited for a message from Koro, or, better yet, one from Hope. And heard nothing.

  She’ll be waiting until she gets to Katikati, I told myself. You’ll hear then.

  Surely I would. Because last night, on the way home from the airport, I’d arranged for flowers to be delivered to Koro’s house. Lavender roses, to be exact. I’d done what I hadn’t managed since she’d moved in with me. I’d told Hope she mattered.

  Had I felt self-conscious typing the message into the box, knowing that some florist in Tauranga would be printing my words onto a card? Had I felt raw, and exposed, and much too clearly revealed? Yeh. I had. But I always did what was necessary, and I had a feeling this was necessary.

  She might need me to let her go. She also needed to know that I still loved her, that I wanted her, and that I wanted our baby, too. And I needed to tell her.

  The rest of it, I’d wait to tell her on the phone. I needed to hear her voice, to hear her response, and I needed her to hear mine when I told her how I felt.

  I’d asked the florist to make the delivery that afternoon and had paid extra to make sure it happened. I wanted those roses on Koro’s table when Hope walked in the door. I wanted my note to be the first thing she s
aw. I knew she’d have to text me when she got them, because I knew my Hope.

  Except she didn’t. Five o’clock came and went, and then six o’clock did. I finally gave in and texted Koro, You and Hope get home all right? and got no reply. Probably still teaching me a lesson, because he had to know I’d be concerned.

  Or half out of my mind.

  Then it was seven-thirty, and I texted Karen and packed up to go home. It was Women’s Wednesday, the sacrosanct evening when Hope and Karen would watch a movie while they ate dinner on the couch, with popcorn for dessert. Another thing I’d stopped sharing in once I’d achieved my objective and they’d moved in with me. This would be Karen’s first Wednesday without her sister, though, and I needed to go home and do that with her. It would make Hope feel better, and it would make Karen feel better, too. It might even make me feel better, come to that.

  Karen was surprised, but she watched with me willingly enough. The idea of the driving lessons had helped clear up her earlier narkiness, I guessed. I even let her pick the film, which was why the credits were rolling on Little Miss Sunshine when my phone rang.

  I had the phone out of my pocket so fast that the second ring had barely started when I’d noticed the New Zealand number and was saying, “Hello?” I was already headed out to the terrace, too. I wanted to be relaxed for this, or at least to sound that way. Because it was my cousin Tane’s number, and there was only one reason he’d be ringing me. He had to be with Hope.

  “Hemi.” It was Hope’s voice, not Tane’s, and the single word sounded tense and stressed. But at least she’d rung me.

  “Sweetheart. How are you? With the cuzzies already, eh. Karen and I were just watching this film and wishing you were here. Would’ve made you laugh.” There, that was good. Letting her know I wouldn’t be berating her, even before we got into it. Letting her relax.