Found (Not Quite a Billionaire Book 3)

by Rosalind James

  “Next stop, lingerie,” he said. “Save the best for last, eh.”

  “I have to admit,” I said, “that’s necessary. I don’t have anything left that’s pretty and fits. We’re in crisis mode.”

  One second, I was talking to him. The next, I was talking to the air. I turned around, and he was staring at a store window. I had the only man in existence who window-shopped more than I did.

  It was a high-end boutique, and not a maternity one. “What?” I asked, circling around back to him. “You get inspired again?”

  “Nah.” Just like that, he had my hand and was pulling me into the shop. “Or yeh. One or the other.”

  “What?” I was still saying, but Hemi was already approaching the sales clerk.

  “That dress in the window,” he told her, and within two minutes, I was in a fitting room again, with Hemi zipping up the back of the most non-maternity dress you could imagine.

  A beaded, sleeveless sheath in peacock blue, to be exact, ending in a scalloped hem four inches above my knee and with no room whatsoever for any future growth in the belly area.

  “This would be fine,” I said, “for about two more weeks.” All the same, I couldn’t help running a hand over the iridescent beads that were laid out in a pattern as intricate as lace. “Although I’ll admit that I feel most deliciously mermaid-like.”

  “Mm,” Hemi said. “Right, then.” Just like that, he was unzipping me again, and I couldn’t help a pang of disappointment. My beautiful mermaid tail, disappearing off me just because I happened to be growing an extra person. Well, it was over eight hundred dollars, and it was ridiculous.

  I know you’ve guessed already. He bought it. Yes, he did. I didn’t get a vote. “I don’t have shoes, though,” I objected weakly as he pulled out his credit card yet again and I tried to be bothered by that. “I didn’t bring anything nearly dressy enough to New Zealand, clearly.”

  “I’ll do the shoes.” He didn’t look up from the card slip he was signing in his black, forceful scrawl. “You do the lingerie. Bendon, about six doors down. I’ll meet you there. High heels OK, or will they bother you? Balance and all?”

  Oh, man. High heels. I’d been bicycling to work and wearing jeans for weeks. Now I had a mermaid dress, and I was getting spectacular shoes, too. I just knew it. “Unless you’re making me walk,” I said, “they won’t bother me. If we’re talking about me feeling do-me-right-now-please-sir sexy, and you looking at me and thinking the same thing, they really won’t bother me.”

  His gaze heated up by about ten degrees. “That’s what we’re talking about.”

  “Then,” I said, trying and failing to keep my breath from coming faster, “high heels work.”

  He didn’t smile. He just gave me his best dark smolder and said, “Go buy lingerie, then. Make it good.”

  Hemi

  If I’d been the man I was at twenty-two, I’d have spent half that afternoon thinking about what I was going to be doing to Hope tonight, and the other half wondering how I was going to leave her again tomorrow.

  I wasn’t that man anymore, though, and I didn’t waste time thinking about things that hadn’t happened yet. I moved on, knowing I would be doing whatever it took to get what I wanted. The hardest thing of all was waiting, your future out of your hands. I’d done hard things before, though, and I’d do this.

  For right now, I bought shoes and thought of Hope choosing lingerie to fit her new shape, and about taking her out in that blue dress and taking her home again. I rang the Langham Hotel and made a few special requests. And then I went to find her, paid for her purchases without looking at them after she whispered, “I want to surprise you” and blushed pink, and took her to the hotel.

  She walked into the suite on the tenth floor, took in the vase of red roses and bowl of strawberries on the coffee table, looked out the enormous wall of windows at the park, the city, and the Sky Tower, and said, “Somehow, I’m not even surprised. Very nice, Mr. Te Mana.”

  “We’ll meet Violet at seven-thirty,” I said. “Time off from me until then.”

  “Because you have some work to do. Which is fine,” she went on when I would have said something. What, I wasn’t sure. I did have to work. Work paid for the suite, and the dress, and the shoes. Work paid for everything, and beyond that—I couldn’t be somebody I wasn’t.

  When I didn’t answer, she plucked a strawberry out of the bowl and said, “You spent all day yesterday with us, and most of today with me. I needed some time and attention from you, and you’ve given it to me. I don’t need all your focus all the time. For one thing, it’d be exhausting.”

  “Well,” I said, “there’s that.”

  “So I’m going swimming. They have a pool, did you know? And I have a new suit. You just bought it. I’m telling you as a matter of information.” She went into the bedroom, where the bellman had stashed our luggage and purchases. “In case you wanted to know.”

  “That’s nice,” I said, keeping it bland. “There are some different herbal teas in the kitchen there as well. I had them stock up for you.”

  Did I go down to the pool and swim with her in her new suit, the way she expected me to? I did not. I did have work to do, and besides—not taking the bait would make her wonder. It would keep her on edge, and that wasn’t a bad thing.

  Last night had been for reconnection, for tenderness and love and everything we needed to say to each other. Tonight was for everything else I needed from her, and everything she needed from me. And tonight had started the moment we’d bought that dress.

  She left the room quietly, and she came back in quietly. There was nothing spiky or punishing about her silence, though, no angry sighs or jerky movements. She took a shower, made her tea, went into the bedroom, and shut the door. And if I opened that door quietly a couple hours later and found her lying on her side, fast asleep with her book beside her? If I had to cover her with a blanket, ease the book out from under her hand, and set it on the bedside table—well, I had to do heaps of things.

  She appeared in the doorway to the lounge at six-thirty, blinking, her hair in a wild cloud around her head.

  “I’d ask what happened,” she said, still sounding fuzzy, “but I think I know. Worn out on the luxury of spending your money. How long do I have to get beautiful?”

  “Forty-five minutes.”

  She sighed, tugged at the sash of the hotel dressing gown that was swallowing her up, and said, “Then I hope you don’t need it, because that bathroom is going to be occupied for the next forty-four minutes and thirty seconds. I’ve got a long way to go.”

  “No worries,” I said. “I get beautiful with very little effort. Already almost done.”

  She punched my shoulder as if I’d been her mate Nathan, laughed at me, and flounced off with as much attitude as a petite blonde in an enormous terry dressing gown could manage. And I smiled and went back to work and guessed she’d be worth the wait.

  The woman who walked with me into the Sugar Club an hour later wasn’t wearing a dressing gown. Instead, she was carrying off a deliciously short beaded dress with a demure neckline in front and a keyhole back that showed a devastating amount of silky bare skin, and doing it in style. I had my hand resting lightly on the small of her back, guiding her or putting my stamp on her, whichever way you wanted to look at it, and she was as aware of that hand as if she were already lying underneath me. Her hips were swaying with all the rhythm inspired by four-inch heels with the most wicked ankle straps that ever set a man’s imagination alight, her hair was up in a clip that exposed the nape of her neck and left a few tendrils floating free, and all I could think about was where I wanted to bite her first.

  I couldn’t even be sorry we were meeting Violet for dinner. Some of my best times with Hope had come after torturously long restaurant meals during which I’d watched her pupils dilate and her color rise and had pretended I wasn’t seeing it. There was something to be said for waiting, and tonight? Hope was going to be waiting, and I was goi
ng to be enjoying making her do it.

  Hope

  I walked, slightly in front of Hemi, into an intimate space decorated in sumptuous Art Deco style and full of sumptuously decorated people. We were on the fifty-third floor of the Sky Tower, in a circular room that was nothing but windows from floor to ceiling. Below us, the lights of the city provided a glittering panorama, while the velvety black of the harbor was punctuated by the swooping arcs of the Harbour Bridge. Way above my pay grade, as usual.

  Part of me thought, No way am I sitting by that window with a pane of glass between me and fifty-three stories down, and the other part felt Hemi’s hand on my back, knew why he had to touch me, and put a little work into my walk. Not hard to do when you’re wearing killer heels and a mermaid gown.

  I’d never been the kind of woman men turned to look at. What I’d told Karen was true: that sort of thing was reserved for the tall and striking. But tonight, men were looking. Maybe it was Hemi’s magnetism, because that force radiated darker and more powerful than ever from him tonight. He’d complemented his usual tailored black jacket and trousers with a dark gray shirt and black tie, and let’s just say it worked. He looked like the Lord of the Underworld, and I’d bet that any woman who got the benefit of that smoldering stare tonight would be willing to go right there with him. I knew I was.

  Or it might not be Hemi at all. It could be the way I was filling out this rockin’ dress. A 32-almost-D makes a powerful statement of its own, I was discovering, and tonight, it was making it loud and clear.

  Or maybe, just maybe, it was confidence. That was the thought that had me working it even harder. Maybe it was a woman who’d driven in city traffic today and was going to be doing it again, whose bare arms were firm and toned from swimming, and who could give Hemi Te Mana as good as she got.

  Like when I’d opened the bag from the shoe store in the bathroom an hour earlier, for example, had poked my head out the door again, and said, “OK. No fair.”

  “Pardon?” It was said with all his usual calm, but I could see the smile he was suppressing.

  I held up the low brown boots, all buckles, studs, and Western tooling. I wanted to put them on right now, except that I had some even better shoes here. “Dirty play, buddy, reading my mind.”

  “Mm. Using too many of your forty-five minutes, though. Wouldn’t want to keep me waiting.”

  “Now, see, that’s where you’re wrong.” He got my best wide-open eyes. “I’d love to keep you waiting. And then knock your socks off. In fact, that’s what I plan to do. You wait.”

  In the end, of course, he knocked mine off. When I opened the door at last and swayed my way over to him, putting everything I had into it, he shut his laptop, looked me over from head to toe, sighed, and said, “Oh, yeh. That’s my beautiful girl.” And then he upped the stakes. He reached for something on the chair beside him, said, “You left this behind,” and opened a velvet box to reveal the bracelet he’d bought me nine months earlier.

  A cuff of sapphires and diamonds in endless undulating waves, all the glory of the sea in their sparkle. My ‘I love you’ present, which I hadn’t wanted to bring with me to New Zealand, because it would have hurt too much to see it. And besides, it wasn’t the sort of thing you wore waitressing or digging the garden.

  I was clearly going to be wearing it tonight, because Hemi pulled me to stand between his legs, fastened the bracelet around my wrist, and said, “Still needs something, though.”

  “Oh, yeah, because this isn’t enough.” I tried my best for nonchalance and couldn’t pull it off, so I abandoned the effort and went for sincerity instead. “Thank you for bringing it. And by the way—I love you.”

  That lightening of his eyes, and he was pulling out another box and opening that.

  “Hemi,” I said helplessly as he pulled me down onto his knee.

  “Nice, eh.”

  “Nice” didn’t begin to cover it. Four separate lozenge-shaped diamonds had been placed with their points touching to form the petal that made up each glittering stud of the earrings, while a single large sapphire fell in a teardrop below. They were stunning, they were spectacular, and they were entirely over the top. Exactly like Hemi.

  “They’re flowers,” I said.

  “They are. Just like you.” He fastened them in my earlobes, then stood up, dislodging me, gave me a little swat on the bottom, and said, “Let’s go.”

  He definitely did not play fair.

  But you see why I might have been feeling pretty when I walked over to join Violet, who was already seated at a table and looking me over appraisingly. Perils of hanging around with fashion designers, but this time, I’d been dressed by Hemi Te Mana, and nobody was going to find anything wrong with that.

  Hemi was embracing Violet, kissing her cheek, and the maître d’ was pulling out a chair for me, but I said, “I’d rather not sit by the window, thanks.”

  He didn’t react, just pulled out the chair on the aisle, but Hemi said, “Surely you’d like the view.”

  “No, thank you.” I seated myself and set my tiny black clutch down on the table beside me. “I wouldn’t. Too much glass, and too far down. Hi, Violet. It’s great to see you. In fact, you’re one of my very favorite people right now. Awesome hatchet job.”

  She was smiling. “A bit of a change in this one since the last time I saw her, eh, Hemi.”

  “Sadly,” he said, making me gasp. “She’s got even stroppier, as you see. Talks back, tells me what she will and won’t do, runs off to En Zed without me, takes over my granddad and twists him round her finger. The list goes on.”

  “Mm,” Violet said. “Sounds like wife material to me. When’s the divorce?”

  “Two and a half weeks. Still got her dress?”

  “Too right I have, and Karen’s as well. Looks like I’m going to have to let Hope’s out, though, if you don’t get your skates on and marry her fast. And if that’s just the benefit of too much Kiwi cooking,” she told me, “sorry about that. I never did have any tact. But those aren’t the measurements we took.”

  “Could be you’ll be doing that.” Hemi’s hand was on my shoulder, his thumb stroking over the back of my neck. “Congratulate me, Vi. I’m going to be a father.”

  So all that was very nice, and so was the tiny, perfect steak that my knife went through like butter, and the carrots with a hazelnut crumb, and the velvety-smooth baked aubergine with yoghurt and feta and mango that made me have to close my eyes to appreciate it fully. All the good things, and, boy, was I enjoying them. My potato days were behind me for sure.

  I wasn’t even left out of the conversation, to my surprise. I’d have thought Hemi and Violet would talk shop, but the one time she said, “So. Lots of rumors going round about your Paris show,” Hemi looked at her blandly, said, “Always rumors,” and changed the subject. He really didn’t talk outside the company, then. To anybody but me.

  They talked about their families instead, which was why I was in the midst of describing Koro directing Hemi’s garden labor to a much-amused Violet when a woman walked up to our table, the energy field pulsed, and I stopped cold.

  Hemi got still for a split second, then stood up, his face its hardest, coldest mask. Violet said, “Anika. What a not at all pleasant surprise.”

  Hemi said nothing. He and Anika stood there looking at each other, the connection between them as strong and dark as if they were fighting some internal duel, all the more powerful for being invisible.

  She didn’t look like her pictures. She looked better. Stunning didn’t begin to cover it. She was wearing a red jersey dress, cut low in front and slit nearly to the hip on one side. As high as my heels were, hers were higher. And if somebody had wanted to create a woman that men would turn their heads to look at, surely he’d have created Anika. Long, lustrous dark hair falling to the center of her back, aristocratic bone structure that could slice a man in two, velvet-brown eyes, and a mouth that promised everything. And let’s not talk about her figure, because it’s
too depressing.

  I could see why Hemi had been attracted. More than that—I could see why he’d been bewitched. Because it was more than her looks.

  Confidence. Attitude. Presence. Those were the words. If Hemi sucked the air out of a room, Anika did that and more. The two of them together—that was serious wattage. That was blow-a-fuse power.

  Anika spoke first, in the end. But then, Hemi could outwait anybody.

  “If you’re going to go into half the shops in Newmarket,” she said, “I’m going to hear about it.”

  “You could hear about it,” Hemi said, “without turning up. Can’t imagine why you’d make the journey, or go to all the trouble of discovering where I’d booked, either.”

  Anika didn’t answer that. She looked instead at me. One quick scan up and down, and I was summed up and dismissed. Her eyes flicked back to Hemi’s. “You’re joking.”

  Hemi hadn’t moved. Now, he got even more still, pulling all his power into his body in a way that was truly intimidating to watch.

  “Are you going to ask me to sit down?” Anika asked.

  “No,” Hemi said.

  She smiled, something purely feline. And then she pulled out the chair beside Violet, sank gracefully into it, and said conversationally, “It’s very nearly a crime.”

  Hemi sat again himself, but Anika didn’t look at him. She was still looking at me. “How old are you, darling? Nineteen?”

  I said, “No,” and left it there. I might not be able to manage scary, but I didn’t have to do cowed.

  She glanced at my water glass. “Not old enough to drink, either? Or maybe you think the innocent bit will keep him enraptured.” She leaned forward slightly, compelling me to do the same, a compulsion I resisted even as I felt her hypnotic power trying to draw me in. “It won’t,” she told me, dropping her voice so low, I had to strain to hear it. “He’s trying to tell himself he wants this, that he wants to lose the dark side, that if he could only leave his demons behind, he’d be happy. He can’t, and he won’t. Some demons are too strong to be defeated. You don’t know what you’re getting into.”