Found (Not Quite a Billionaire Book 3)

by Rosalind James

  “I know you do.” There was no teasing in his voice now. “And so do I.”

  “One way or another,” I said, “the thing with Anika is going to be over, and we can get married. I want us to be ready for that.” I hesitated, then went on, “I was . . . surprised to see that in the paper this morning. I think Koro was disappointed. You might want to talk to him. Because that was you, wasn’t it, who made it happen?”

  A long beat, then he said, “It was. I told her she didn’t know what she was getting into. I want her to know that if she keeps going, she’ll be the one who hurts. I’m guessing she knows it now.”

  “And you don’t feel bad about that?”

  “I would have once. That’s why she did it. She thinks I’m that bloke she knew. I’m not.”

  “Good,” I said.

  He laughed, and just like that, the grim, ruthless tycoon was gone, the Hemi who was mine alone taking his place. “You showing me your bloodthirsty side?”

  “No,” I said. “I’m showing you the side of me—the all of me—who believes in you.”

  Another pause, and his voice wasn’t quite as smooth as usual when he said, “Then I reckon I’d better do my best to keep impressing you, and maybe it wouldn’t hurt to tell you that you may have had a couple good ideas yourself.”

  He wanted to move on, so I said, “You mean—the show? The changes?”

  “I do. The push to change the copy for those ads—that didn’t go down a treat, and neither did the sourcing of the footwear, but we’re nearly there. I’ll ask Josh to set up a secure portal for the two of us so I can share a few things with you. I’ll have him add a folder for those photos you sent me as well, and any others you take. Save them going through email, eh, so you feel safe sharing anything you like.”

  He said all that like it meant nothing, when it meant everything. My throat was tight when I said, “I’d love that. To have a safe way to send you pictures, sure. But more than that. To see what you’ve done for the show. I’d love it.”

  “Do you know,” he said, “it’s nearly eerie. When I first thought up the Colors of the Earth line, in that restaurant with you in San Francisco, I thought exactly what you said. Tender and tough, hard and soft. I had the vision, but then I lost that bit. How did you come up with that?”

  “I don’t know. It just popped into my mind. Maybe because I love shoes too much.”

  “Wouldn’t have known it from the ones you were wearing at the start.”

  “Call it an unrequited love.”

  He began to talk more about the line, then, and I nearly held my breath to hear it. About his vision, and how the changes he’d set in motion had played out. About tense meetings with fear and doubt crackling in the air, and his own certainty as he’d laid down the law. He finished with, “I wouldn’t normally say any of this to anyone. Bad idea to discuss internal divisions. You end up setting one side against another, stirring the pot without even meaning to. Better to listen to all sides, decide, make it clear, and move on. The team’s only as a secure as its leader.”

  “Mm,” I said. “You can talk it out with me, though, because I don’t work for you. I have no agenda except yours, and you know it. It’s almost like talking to yourself.”

  “Now,” he said, “if I accept that, it means you were right to quit.”

  “Well, I was right to quit,” I said serenely, and he laughed out loud.

  “You’re tired,” he said, “and I need to get going. Remember, though—day after tomorrow, you’ll get that parcel, and you’re not to open it. Tonight was for business. Next time, we’ll focus on seeing how much I can make you miss me. I’d tell you more about that today, but I don’t think I will. You know how much I enjoy making you wait for it.”

  Which was a completely unfair thing to tell a woman lying in bed alone with her heart so softened it was aching and her hormones at full alert, especially when she was already asking herself why in the world she wasn’t with you.

  But then, as Hemi had once told me, he didn’t play fair.

  Hemi

  I rang off, but I kept my laptop open to Hope’s picture. She’d titled it 10-1/2 Weeks.

  She hadn’t been trying to be sexy, and she was so sexy all the same. It was the secret smile on her face, the cant of her hip, the hand stroking over that tiny belly. She’d worn my favorite pink bra and thong for it, the ones that were trimmed with black lace. I’d taken them off her that last night, and I’d bought them for her at a time when I’d thought she was the woman I needed in my bed and nothing more. She’d let me do that, had worn them every time since, just because she loved to please me.

  I got a sudden image of a whole checkerboard of photos, thirty more weeks of them. Of that belly getting bigger and bigger as our baby grew, and the idea that I’d be seeing those photos without seeing her—it was an absolutely physical pain, a dagger straight into my chest.

  There was anger there, too, and I couldn’t pretend there wasn’t. Frustration as well. She’d told me what needed to change, I’d got it, and I was proving it. Why was she still so far away, and not even talking about coming home? She belonged with me, and we both knew it.

  There was Koro, though. That was the complication. He was sounding better, his voice regaining some of its strength, but I couldn’t forget the first sight of him helpless and dazed in hospital, or the gray tinge to his skin when Matiu and I had put him to bed on that final afternoon. Hope was looking after him, and that was better than anyone else doing it, even with the whanau popping by at all hours to do their own looking after. Outside of Koro himself, there was nobody I trusted more than Hope.

  And then there was Karen, all the noise and the mess and the chaos of her. I’d thought longingly from time to time, after Hope and Karen had moved in, about coming home at night and being surrounded by the order and peace I’d always craved instead of dirty dishes and shoes and electronics and teenage hormones. Now, I had what I’d wished for, but somehow, peace had become emptiness, and restfulness had become echoing silence.

  I was delaying getting out of bed right now, in fact, because it would be so quiet out there. Which was something I never did.

  That was enough of that. I sent off a quick email to Josh about setting up that portal for Hope and me, shut the laptop, and threw back the duvet. Five-thirty. Time to get up and start my day.

  The phone buzzed like a wasp, nearly bouncing on the bed, and my heart leaped as I picked it up. Hope again, telling me she’d changed her mind? Or just wanting to tell me one last thing, because ringing off was as hard for her as it was for me? And then I saw the name on the screen.

  “Hemi.” The single word had enough edge to it to slice the toughest skin, the way only my sister Ana could do. Well, her and my mum. “When were you going to tell me about Koro?”

  “I didn’t think about it.” I didn’t stay in bed. I moved into the bathroom and squeezed toothpaste onto the brush. Moving helped when I talked to my sister.

  “You didn’t think about it?” Her voice rose in a predictable pattern.

  “No.” I shoved the toothbrush into my mouth. I was willing to bet she’d be talking for a wee while.

  “I had to hear it from Dad,” she said. “He said he’d seen you at last, and then he said why. Did you think that I would’ve liked to be there? That he’s my Koro as well, and that I miss him, and I’d care?”

  I spat the toothpaste into the sink. The recitation hadn’t taken her as long as I’d expected. “One sec,” I mumbled, then rinsed my mouth. “No. I didn’t think of it. I was busy getting over there myself. Maybe Dad should’ve called you. He knew soon enough. Maybe you should ring Koro when you don’t want something from him. Could keep you in the loop. Anyway, he’s all good. Had a fall, that’s all. A scare for the rest of us, and a bit of downtime for him.”

  “That’s casual,” she said. “Or cold, more like, but that’s no surprise. I’m your sister and his grandchild, and you can’t bring yourself to think about me more than that? And w
hat are you doing? Are you eating while you talk to me?”

  I set the phone on the cold marble slab and pressed the button for the speaker, then lathered my face, took my razor from the drawer, and began to shave. “No. I’m getting up. It’s five-thirty here. You could’ve thought.”

  “Why? You’d be up anyway. Mr. Ambition. Mr. Discipline. Like that’s all there is. Forgetting your whanau, forgetting you’re even Maori, ashamed of where you come from, trying to turn yourself into some rich pakeha bugger who doesn’t think about anything but how he’ll make his next dollar. How can you forget your only sister, your niece and nephews? Not to mention Dad and how you’ve treated him after all the work he’s done this year, all the progress he’s made. He said you acted like he wasn’t even there. You cut him deep. Why do you still have to hurt him? Mum, too. She told me you haven’t called for a month.”

  “Paid her rent, though, haven’t I.”

  Ana started talking again at that, the words coming fast and sharp and hard, and I tipped my jaw up and focused on the tricky bits beneath.

  I had a sudden flash of Hope, then, the memory so strong it was as if she were there. Leaning against the counter in a short white nightdress on a Saturday morning when she’d lingered in the bathroom to watch me shave, or maybe just to spend another quiet minute with me.

  I’d finished up, then splashed water over my face and come up again, and she’d been right there holding a hand towel. Her touch had been so gentle while she’d dried me off, and then she’d pressed her lips to my throat exactly where I was shaving now and murmured, as I’d reached a hand around to pull her hard against me, “That much hot shouldn’t be legal. All I have to do is look at you. You turn me helpless.”

  I felt the sting first, then saw the red line appear and swore aloud.

  “What?” It was Ana’s voice, sharper than ever.

  “Nothing.” She was talking again, so I kept shaving, watched the blood dripping into the sink, and felt a harder stab, of annoyance this time. That I’d let myself get distracted, had allowed myself to be affected by Ana’s words, the memory of Hope, or both.

  You’re such a good man. That had been Hope, not Ana, obviously.

  “Mum’s asking about Koro as well,” Ana said. “You know how much she loves him. You could’ve called us. Bloody selfish.”

  I knew nothing of the sort. Well, I knew I was selfish. That much was true. “Is that why you called, then?” I was stroking up from the other side of my throat now, watching the trail of crimson inch down wet brown skin and pool at my collarbone, the sting of the cut the least of my worries. “Or did you want something?”

  “I want to see him,” she said. “Of course I want to see him. I’ll have to bring the baby, but I’ll leave the boys at home. One ticket, that’s all.”

  “Really. That I’d pay for, eh. Where were you thinking you’d stay?”

  “With Koro, of course. Be some company for him, because I’m guessing you’ve left Tane and June to look after him. Or maybe you’ve paid for some outsider, like that’s enough and you’re finished.”

  “No,” I said. “You won’t stay with him. No room at his place. Hope’s there, and she’ll be there for weeks yet.”

  A pregnant silence followed, and I used it to rinse my face, then went into the toilet cubicle for a square of paper and ripped off a bit to mop up and staunch the flow. I was bleeding like a hemophiliac. I wanted to swear again, but I didn’t. Instead, I breathed slowly out, then in.

  There. That was better.

  “Hope’s there?” Ana asked. “Still? Dad said she was staying for a bit, but all this time, and more? I thought this was meant to be your love match at last.”

  “Are you almost done?” I asked. “Because I’m getting in the shower. There’s no room for you at Koro’s. Hope’s sister is with her as well, helping look after him. And I’m not buying you a ticket anyway. He’s better every day. I paid for all of you to fly over at Christmas, and I know you’ll be asking me to do it again. That’s going to have to be enough.”

  “The money’s nothing to you.”

  Easy to dismiss the value of somebody else’s money when you were asking him for it. This wasn’t the first time I’d noticed that. “Maybe you haven’t heard.” I knew she would’ve. “Anika’s threatening to take half of everything I’ve got. Reckon I’d better start economizing.”

  I heard her start to speak, then stop herself, and I knew why that was. That she’d begun to say that she hoped Anika would do it, and then had realized what it would mean. No more plane tickets and no more rescues, not if the money wasn’t nothing to me anymore.

  “I should’ve known it’d be useless to ask you,” she said instead. “Anyone who’s quite happy to leave his pregnant girlfriend halfway around the world for weeks on end, exactly like he left his wife? Yeh, Dad told me about that, too, and that she was staying behind and you were all good with it. And you wonder why Anika left you. Don’t exactly know women, do you? We like a man to hold on. We like him to care.”

  The man in the mirror was looking grim. Time to get my perspective back. Whose life would I rather have, hers or mine? Mine all the way. What I was hearing was envy, because I did have a good life. It was getting better every day, too. I had the photo to prove it.

  “Careful,” I said. “Next Christmas is coming closer all the time. Think about those tickets.”

  Hope

  What is it about Friday night? Having a date for that one particular night somehow feels so much better than not having one, even if it might turn out to be a dud, and no matter how much you try to tell yourself it’s not important. And if you know it’s going to be good, if he’s told you he’s going to make it special—well, that sweet anticipation can make your body hum all the way through a long, wet Thursday. And by the time Friday rolls around, that hum might just become a buzz, and then a downright throb. It might make your bike ride down the hill to work an entirely pleasurable experience, in fact, with every push of your feet on the pedals stimulating you a little more.

  It might also make every look and every smile from a male customer feel like it’s telling you, Baby, you’re so pretty. You’re so sexy. You might become hyper-aware, even as you’re walking back to the kitchen, maybe twitching your hips a tiny bit more than strictly necessary, that under your jeans and the scoop-necked red tee that spells out Katikati Beach Café, you’re wearing some underwear your lover would have to touch you through, things he’d need to take off you so slowly. It might make you feel like a purely female creature made of sighs and softness, the pheromones wafting off her silken skin and curling their way like smoke right down inside a man, making him watch her, making him crave her.

  Well, it might. I was just guessing here, because it wasn’t something I’d had much experience with in my first twenty-four years of life. The idea was probably fairly delusional, to tell the truth. I was a five-foot-two, ninety-five-pound, 32B woman with a baby bump, and nobody’s idea of a sultry vixen. But that was how I felt—how Hemi made me feel—even from all that distance. Powerful in a purely feminine way, and so tantalizingly seductive that I was turning myself on.

  I didn’t have to ride my bicycle home, either, because Matiu turned up with Karen and his car, put my bike on the roof rack, and promptly killed my buzz by making me practice parallel parking, with Karen offering helpful comments from the backseat like, “Whoa. Way to hit the curb. Maybe don’t yank so hard on the wheel, Hope. It’s not Grand Theft Auto. No extra credit for collisions.”

  Matiu, fortunately, just smiled and said, “Pull out and try again. You’re going well, no worries. All you need is practice.”

  I did practice, and I got better—gradually—and then it was Karen’s turn.

  She took it much too fast, of course. In fact, she ran straight up onto the curb, bumped back down again, tapped the bumper of the car behind her, lurched forward, hit the brakes just before she hit that car, and said, “There you go. I’m in. First time.”

  “
Good on ya,” Matiu said, “other than that the driving examiner’s just dived for cover and given you a failing mark. Points for style, though. Except that you may want to get out and check that we aren’t going to have to leave a note on that poor bugger’s windscreen.”

  “Ha,” she said. “That’s what the bumper’s for. And that was just my first time. You watch. This time, no curb.”

  Matiu said, “I do like a woman with attitude,” and she laughed, then did it again without the bumper-car imitation.

  “See, Hope,” she had to say. “That’s how.”

  “Nah,” Matiu said. “Hope’s just on a different path. If I had to guess which of you will get the better mark on her test, I’m backing Hope all the way.”

  “But if you have to guess who’ll have more fun doing it,” Karen said, “you’re backing me.”

  “She’s easier to teach, though,” Matiu said. “Listens and everything. So rewarding, too. Hearing her suck in her breath like that, watching her get her courage up and finally do it.”

  “Gee, thanks,” Karen said. “I’m making a note that men like helpless women. The Stone Age called, and it wants its attitude back.”

  “Could be,” Matiu said. “Can’t help it, and I wouldn’t be the only one. Call me a keen student of biology, if you like.” And I thought, Whoa, there, buddy. That was a little too flirty. Matiu sometimes had trouble turning it off, I’d noticed.

  He must have picked up on my reaction, because he said, “Take us back to the house now, Karen. Show us how it’s done.”

  Koro was in his usual spot in the recliner when we got home. He switched off the TV and pushed himself up to stand, brushed off Matiu’s helping hand with an irritable swat, and said, “Parcel came for you, Hope, as well as more flowers. How much space does Hemi imagine I have?”