Smoke Screen

by Emilie Richards

  They parted at last, each breathing hard, each totally vulnerable. "I don't care how many men there have been in your life," Adam said, drawing a line from her forehead to her chin. "But when you're mine, you'll stay mine and no one else's."

  She knew she was already his, but she wasn't quite ready to forgive him, or tell him so. "Perhaps that day won't come."

  "Perhaps." His finger touched her lips, caressing them lightly. "Or perhaps it will come very soon."

  * * *

  In the end it was Cornwall who lamb-sat. Adam assured Paige that Rambo wouldn't starve if they were gone several hours. He waited patiently while she fussed over him, feeding him until he was a wooly sphere with drowsy eyes and a limp, red bow. Then he said a few choice words as Cornwall trotted merrily into the kitchen through the open door and plopped down beside the lamb for a nap.

  "He is a sheepdog," Paige said, trying not to smile.

  And Rambo, whose world was made of larger, stranger creatures than the dog, contentedly settled next to Cornwall, baaed and fell asleep.

  Once out of the rolling green hills surrounding Paige's house, they hiked along a different route to the thermals. The path was shorter and steeper, leaving Paige gasping for breath by the time they paused beside a steaming stream that meandered over jagged rocks covered with mineral deposits and rainbow-hued algae.

  "We're about halfway." Adam removed the backpack he carried, and stretched. Paige watched the fabric of his shirt strain against his chest. They had hardly spoken as they'd walked, and Adam had made no move to touch her. He'd acted as if nothing had ever happened between them.

  She perched on the edge of a boulder near the stream, trying to figure out which Paige she was supposed to be now. The practical businesswoman Paige, who treated Adam as her tour guide? The aloof Paige, who kept her distance from everyone? Or the real Paige, who was much too vulnerable to a certain Maori man? She juggled sulphur-encrusted pebbles from hand to hand. "You've never told me how you know where to look. Are you searching systematically, or do you have clues?"

  Adam settled beside her, draping his long, lean frame against another rock. "Only a description in the legend."

  "Will you tell me?"

  "Exactly?" He didn't wait for her answer; instead he began a fluid recitation in Maori.

  "And now, the translation, please," she asked patiently when he'd finished. "I didn't quite catch it all."

  He laughed, his eyes lazy and heavy-lidded. He had told her everything he felt for her and exactly what he wanted to do about it. If she did speak Maori, her cheeks would be the color of her shoes.

  "The legend says that Hori-i-rangi resides where Te Po, night, and Te Rangi, day, meet. It's a place of opposites, earth and sky, fire and water, tapu and noa."

  "Tapu and noa?"

  "Loosely defined, tapu means sacred, or under religious restriction. Noa means free from that restriction, or ordinary. Things, places, people, actions that are tapu must be avoided or handled carefully according to rules. If the rules aren't obeyed, sickness or even death can occur."

  "Taboo's a common enough word in English," she said, tossing a pebble to him. "The two words must come from the same source. Is there more description, or is that the end?"

  "Hori-i-rangi rules over the place where Aotearoa's water has its source. As it issues from the earth, she, being female, changes it from tapu to noa, so that it's fit for human use."

  "A spring, then? The mouth of a stream?"

  "It would seem so." Adam shut his eyes, as if he were gathering his strength for the next part of the hike. "Once, when I was a boy, I counted the springs that I knew, everything from the spongy dampness of low-lying ground to the source of the geyser I tried to show you last time we were here. I counted forty-three possibilities. Forty-three possibilities and I still haven't found the mauri."

  "Perhaps there are forty-four." Paige swung her legs around so that she could see him better.

  "And perhaps the last tohunga was a man with a sense of humor. Perhaps there's nothing here except the ghosts of a different time."

  She dropped her pebbles and laid her hand on his shoulder in comfort. "Maybe a man and a woman have to find it together. If it's a place of opposites..."

  Without opening his eyes, he let his hands creep around her waist. "When I was a boy, I would never have accepted that. Now..."

  "Were you such a chauvinist then?"

  "I had no use for girls." He opened his eyes, and they crinkled in amusement. "Except for one. A cousin I met only briefly when I was still a young boy."

  "And did you call her kaihana with that gleam in your eye?"

  "I might have, although I was only nine and she was five."

  "A real cousin? Not the shirttail variety like me?"

  "We're all family."

  "Funny, somehow you don't feel like family."

  "No?" he asked with a slight smile, drawing her nearer.

  "Anything but."

  He held her only inches from him, his gaze sweeping her face. "She had the darkest eyes. They danced with joy at everything she saw. Her hair was black and straight. She wore it in pigtails, and when she moved, they bounced behind her. She hadn't been to a family gathering before, and she wouldn't talk to anyone but me. She slipped her little hand in mine, and I lost my heart. The other boys teased me, and I didn't even care."

  She smiled, seeing the young Adam protecting the little girl. "She must have been so grateful to have you there to help her. Is she still your friend?"

  "Sometimes I think so. Sometimes I don't."

  Paige was disappointed. "I would have thought that kind of bond would last forever."

  "Who knows? The world has a way of interfering, doesn't it?" He reached up and slipped his hands into her hair, pulling her mouth to his.

  She sighed softly, giving herself up to his touch and his kiss. Both of them knew where these kisses would lead. It was a matter of time, of letting the sweetness between them grow until it was as strong as the passion they had both felt right from the beginning. Like the others they had shared, this kiss wasn't a preliminary; it was an anticipation. A promise. And when it had ended, she knew which Paige she had to be with him.

  The one he could hurt.

  She wondered if Adam saw any of the parallels between their own story and Hinemoa and Tutanekai's. They, too, were separated by the circumstances of their births, with continents and life-styles between them instead of tapu and a mile of icy lake water. She wondered whether, if she found the strength to come to Adam across those barriers, he would find the strength to accept her.

  Adam saw the questions in her eyes. "What are you thinking?"

  "Of Hinemoa and Tutanekai."

  The day he had told her the story, he had seen the similarities. In her own way Paige was of royal birth, set aside by her father to marry well and help build the Duvall empire. The question now was whether, after one failed marriage, she would see that she, too, must follow her heart. And the question for him was whether he could accept her and trust her if she did.

  "Have you noticed that nothing is ever simple between us?" Paige stroked Adam's cheek with the backs of her fingers. "You tell me a story, and I wish I could be as courageous as Hinemoa. You wonder whether, if I were, you would reach out, cover me with your feathered cloak and take me to your bed to become your wife."

  He moved his cheek against her touch until her fingers rested on his lips. "Nothing is simple, because we aren't simple people," he murmured against them. "The days when things could have been simple were stolen away."

  "What do you mean?"

  Adam felt a familiar sting of frustration. The limitations of what he could say weighed heavily on him. "If we had come together when we were younger," he said finally, "when neither of us had been hurt, perhaps things would have been different."

  She tried to imagine such a thing. "Like your cousin, perhaps," she said. "We would have met as children, climbed trees together, chased sheep."

  "Gone to
family gatherings."

  "I would have liked that."

  "Perhaps we should make up for what you missed then."

  "I've grown beyond the tree-climbing stage."

  "I was talking about the pleasure of belonging."

  Her fingers stilled, and she searched his eyes. "I have no family here. I can't belong to something I don't have."

  "Our hapu is having a hui, a family gathering to celebrate Hira's twenty-first birthday. It begins on Friday. Will you come with me?"

  "But Hira hasn't invited me."

  "A hui is open to everyone. This will be rather small, probably. Perhaps as small as three hundred people."

  "My debut was smaller than that."

  "Then you'll come?" Adam didn't let his concern show. There was always the possibility that someone attending might blurt out the truth to Paige. But the hui was part of her heritage, part of the life she had been kept from. Granny insisted it was Paige's right to be there. Adam only hoped that if the hui triggered memories she had buried deep inside her in the form of a nightmare, she wouldn't be alienated forever.

  Paige wondered how it would be to accompany Adam to a gathering of his family. In every way she would be a stranger. "I won't know what to do," she warned him. "And I won't understand a word of it if it's in Maori."

  "I'll translate when it's necessary. Will you come?"

  Paige didn't know what she was agreeing to exactly, but somehow she knew Adam was inviting her to share a part of his life that had been kept from her so far. She stretched up to kiss him, lingering for a long, sweet moment. "I'll be there."

  The rest of the hike wasn't as difficult as the beginning. Adam helped Paige over the hardest parts, then seemed to forget to drop her hand when they were once more on a grassy plain. The morning sun plated the landscape with twenty-four carats, and they slowed their pace, the day too special to rush through.

  As they walked, they talked. Adam told Paige about his childhood, and she was surprised to learn that in Pakeha terms, Mihi wasn't his grandmother at all, but a great-aunt who had no children of her own and had taken him to live with her as her grandson when his parents had moved to a sheep station in the high country of the South Island. He had brothers and sisters scattered around the Rotorua area and some who lived near his parents. Although the family lived in different places, they were never far apart.

  "Then you had two sets of parents," Paige said, trying to understand.

  "Granny and her husband were my matua whangai. They chose me to be their grandchild, and as I grew up, I owed them my first allegiance, although I could be with my parents whenever I chose. It's not uncommon among us. Maoris take whangai for many reasons. In my case I was chosen because my uncle wanted to instruct me. He believed I had the ngakau Maori, the Maori heart, and he wanted me to learn the traditional knowledge and skills. He's the one who taught me to carve, and he's the one who passed down the story of the mauri. At home I was one of many children, but with Granny and Uncle, I was alone. And now Four Hill Farm is mine because of that relationship."

  He told her other things, stories of childhood escapades, loving descriptions of family members, vignettes about Jeremy's first days with him. He told her about his program for developing a new breed of sheep and what he hoped to accomplish. By the time they reached a cliff running beside the same steaming stream where they had rested before, Paige was beginning to form a clearer picture of the complex man who was Adam Tomoana.

  He was a man of such fierce loyalties that to be loved by him was to know he would always be there. He was a man who would toil unceasingly, asking little in return, and what he received would invariably surprise him. His farm was one of the most successful in the Waimauri area, but he took no time for pride, although he was the proudest man she had ever known.

  He was a man who would tolerate much from the people he loved, as long as he received the same loyalty he gave. And any woman who let him love her would need to understand that.

  When they finally reached their destination, Paige was almost sorry.

  "This is the area where I've concentrated my search." Adam gestured in a wide arc.

  She tried to remember the legend. "Day and night, earth and sky, fire and water, tapu and noa."

  "You listened well."

  Paige was turning in a slow circle. "The cliff shades the stream, and from the algae growing on the surface of the rocks there, I would bet that it never sees the sun. Perpetual night, even during the day."

  Adam watched her, surprised that she had become involved so quickly. "Earth and sky?"

  Paige frowned. "The cliff seems to reach to the sky, connecting it with the earth. Do you suppose that's what he meant?"

  He shrugged. "If we find the mauri we'll know."

  "Fire and water. The steaming spring? Seems logical."

  "Tapu and noa," he finished for her.

  "I don't understand the concepts well enough to guess. What do you think?"

  "I don't understand how they apply here. Unless the legend is referring to Horo-i-rangi's influence on the water."

  Paige walked beside the stream. "Do you know where this begins?"

  "You won't like the answer."

  He was right, and she liked even less what it compelled her to do. "Not straight up the cliff," she protested after Adam had explained that the stream began as a boiling spring gushing from a mysterious hole in a cave off a wide ledge hidden from their sight. "There has to be another way."

  "Believe me, there's not."

  "There's no path to the top?"

  "There is." He teased a piece of her hair that had escaped the neat confines of an onyx comb. "We go back the way we came, cross the stream on stepping stones, then swing on a rope over a smoking chasm and pick our way carefully over the slippery terrace that culminates at the bottom of this cliff about five hundred meters that way." He pointed. "And finally we pull ourselves up hand over hand, using roots and crevices in the rocks, until we get to the path." He paused. "A path that crumbles under your feet as you walk on it," he added, as if he'd just remembered that detail. "That would take us to the top of the cliff, but then we'd have to find a way down to the ledge anyway."

  "Suddenly this looks easy."

  "You don't have to climb it, kaihana. You can wait here."

  "You've been up before?"

  He settled his arm along her shoulders. "Dozens of times. It's perfectly safe."

  "And you've never found anything?"

  "Nothing. But there is a labyrinth of boulders in the cave. Two of us could keep track of our path better than one."

  "Tell me more about this cave."

  She listened as he described it. The cave was wide and deep, extending back from the cliff face farther than Adam had ever attempted to go. It was hidden from view, its mouth obscured by a wind-tortured tree that leaned out over the ledge like a man perpetually contemplating suicide.

  "I haven't explored it thoroughly enough," Adam finished. "I've never been convinced that Horo-i-rangi would be hidden so far into the cave. But it's possible I've been wrong."

  "Are there bats in the cave?" Paige asked the question as if it didn't matter.

  "Did you know bats were the only mammals in New Zealand when the Maoris came to settle the islands?"

  "I don't find that encouraging."

  "Neither did my Maori ancestors. They imported dogs and rats and learned to go without pork and chicken."

  "If you're trying to make me forget that I'm about to climb a sheer rock face for the pleasure of having bats roost in my hair, it's not going to work."

  "Then you're coming?"

  She turned toward him, and his arm tightened around her. "Do you think I'd let you go alone?"

  "I've been going alone for years."

  "Not today."

  Adam did the gentlemanly thing and let Paige begin the climb first. She told him how much she appreciated it each time she struggled to find a handgrip, each time she fumbled for a foothold. Realistically, however, s
he was glad to have Adam behind her. The cliff wasn't as sheer nor as high as it had seemed from the ground. The path sloped, so if she leaned into it, she could almost crawl rather than climb. With the adrenaline that pumped through her bloodstream giving her both energy and a healthy sense of caution, she fought her way to the ledge. Adam laughed at her complaints, calling encouragement from right below until she had reached a short shelf of rock obviously created by Mother Nature as a resting spot.

  He pulled himself up beside her and wedged his bottom against hers.

  "You're not even breathing hard." Paige fanned herself with her hand.

  "No cliffs in New Orleans?"

  "When I was at school in Geneva, I always managed to be in the infirmary the week they climbed Mont Blanc."

  "We don't have much farther to go. Then you can rest in the cave. With the bats."

  "I should take one home to round out my menagerie."

  Adam pointed out the best path to the ledge, and Paige twisted, clinging to anything she could find until she was standing on the ledge waiting for him. When he was beside her, he took her hand, guiding her carefully, backs to the cliff face, until the ledge widened. "Rest a minute, then follow me," Adam told her. "The ledge widens noticeably on the other side of these rocks." He pointed to a protrusion that hid everything on the other side. "You can't see any of this from where we were on the ground, but the water coming down the cliff from the cave makes an impressive waterfall. Watch the way I maneuver past the rocks, then do the same. I'll be over here to give you a hand."

  "If you've been inside the cave as far as the mouth of the spring and haven't seen any evidence of the carving, wouldn't that mean this was the wrong place?"

  "It's not unknown for a mauri to be placed a distance away from whatever it represented. The Whanganui people placed a stone mauri of an eel-weir at a waterfall instead of at the weir itself to frustrate magic spells meant to deprive the mauri of its power. The spells couldn't be heard above the rushing water."

  Anthropology lessons in midair. Paige tried not to look down, waving Adam on. "A practical people."

  He seemed in no hurry. He was perfectly at home on the ledge, his balance as superior as a cat's. "So the mauri could be deeper inside the cave," he finished.