Smoke Screen

by Emilie Richards

"Come home with me."

  Paige knew what Adam was asking. He wanted her in his life, just as Tutanekai had wanted Hinemoa. "If I come," she said regretfully, "it can only be for the rest of tonight."

  His hand left her hair, and she could feel his body tense. "Adam," she started.

  He didn't let her explain. "Don't bother." He sat up, bringing her with him until she was sitting alone. Then he stood, moving to the water's edge to search for his clothes.

  "I'm going to bother." Paige felt the loss of his warmth and knew without a doubt just how much of herself she had given him. She stood, too. "If I move in with you, how will it look to my father?"

  He stopped, his body rigid in the moonlight. "Your father?"

  She went to him and circled his waist with her arms. "Yes, my father. No, don't pull away." She tightened her grip and rested her cheek against his back. "He controls this land," she said gently. "And until a decision's been made about it, we can't do anything to put it in jeopardy."

  "Jeopardy?"

  "How will it look to my father if he finds I'm sleeping with you? Will he believe I've been objective, that I've tried to make a careful decision?"

  "And you care what your father thinks?"

  She pushed him away, angry. "I care about this place. It's my heritage, too."

  "From rich Pakeha to loyal Maori in one day. A small miracle."

  She turned so he couldn't see how he had hurt her. "Believe what you want."

  She was bending over the damp heap of clothing when she felt him behind her. As she straightened, his arms came around her. "One of the reasons we didn't tell you who you were was because of this land. We didn't want you to think we were asking for favors based on our blood ties."

  She knew he was asking for forgiveness, but she wasn't quite ready to give it. "You're very quick with your tongue, aren't you?"

  "I felt you slipping away."

  "I'm not Sheila."

  "But you're not mine, either, are you?"

  She sighed, and her anger disappeared. "Give me some time to find out who I am."

  With his hands on her shoulders, he turned her to face him. "Your father probably won't sell the land to us anyway, kaihana. He hates us. Nothing you can do will change that. We're fighting a battle we can't win, and we know it. But you mustn't let it rule your life."

  She shook her head slowly. "I know what you think of my father. What else could you think? But there's good in him, too. And despite everything else, he is my father. In his own way, he loves me. He'll listen when I tell him why the land should belong to the Maori people again."

  "But not if you're living with me?"

  "Could I ever persuade him that I wasn't swayed by personal feelings if he knew that?"

  His fingers caressed her neck. "I want you more than I want this land."

  "And what would you tell our grandchildren?"

  Adam watched Paige draw a quick breath as her own words caught up with her. "I'd like to tell them that their grandmother was worth all of New Zealand to me." His lips curved into a smile. "Perhaps I'll be able to."

  She couldn't bear to see the dreams in his eyes. Turning away, she asked, "Do you still want me to stay the night with you?"

  "I'll take what I can get."

  They skirted the thermals on the way to Adam's house, choosing a longer path that avoided the greater part of the treacherous ground and brought them to the road that bordered his property.

  Once they were undressed and snuggled together under a thick wool blanket, Paige sighed with exhaustion. But she wasn't too exhausted to savor Adam's lovemaking. They moved in counterpoint, one to the other, seeking and finding, giving and taking, until pleasure flowed between them and the only Maori words she knew fell from her lips like a benediction.

  * * *

  She wasn't sure if it was the light or the noise that woke her. A door creaked rhythmically, as if it were being swung slowly back and forth, and even with her eyes still closed, she could tell the room was lighter. Adam was gone. Vaguely she remembered a kiss and a laughing rejection of the sleepy offer of her body. He had said something about humble shepherds who had to tend their sheep and beautiful princesses who needed some rest. She remembered that the bed had felt very empty then.

  Now her eyelids came apart slowly. She felt like a woman who hadn't slept enough. As she stretched, the pleasant aches in her body reminded her how little she cared. She was a woman who had been loved thoroughly and well. Her head turned toward the door as she extended her arms.

  Jeremy stood in the doorway, watching her. Caught in the middle of a stretch and yawn, her jaw clamped shut, unfulfilled, and her arms jerked to her side, pinning the covers above her breasts. "Jeremy," she said, wondering what she was supposed to say next.

  "Do you like eggs?" The little boy cocked his head, and the movement reminded Paige so much of his father that, despite her embarrassment, she couldn't help smiling.

  "Yes." She inched the blanket higher.

  He appeared to be trying to remember his next question. He worried a curly lock of black hair that had settled over his forehead. "Do you like marm'lade?"

  "I do."

  "Do you like little boys?"

  The question was so off-handed that for a moment she thought he was still reciting the breakfast menu. His stance was nonchalant, but his eyes were grave, and so like Adam's that her heart felt as if it were skipping beats. "I like you" she said, patting the bed.

  He seemed to consider whether to join her; then he walked slowly across the room and crawled on beside her. He sat just out of hugging distance. "Do you read?"

  "Quite well," she assured him.

  "Do you sing?"

  "Well enough to get along." She hummed a few bars of the overture to The Mikado to make her point.

  "You're pretty."

  She decided that must be a point in her favor, because Jeremy was nodding. "I think I'm being interviewed for a job here," she said, reaching out to smooth the errant lock of hair.

  "What's a job?"

  "Something you get paid to do."

  "If I pay you, will you be my mum?"

  She felt a wave of sadness wash over her. The question had been so horrifyingly adult. The only thing that was still four years old about Jeremy was his body. "I would be your mommy for free if I could." Her fingers trembled in his hair, and she wanted to cry. "But right now, darling, I think I can just be your friend."

  He seemed to be considering her answer. "Can you still read to me?"

  "Anything you want."

  Nodding, he climbed down off the bed. "I'll go tell Granny about the eggs."

  "And the marmalade," she said, trying to swallow her tears.

  He paused at the door. "I have a book about trains."

  "I like trains."

  He turned and flashed her a big smile before he disappeared down the hall.

  Suddenly everything was different. She could no longer pretend that she was just a woman falling in love, a woman with only herself and her lover to consider. She looked up, one rebellious tear trailing down her cheek, to find Adam in the doorway. "He wants a mother," she said, choking on the words.

  "He wants you."

  She shut her eyes, because Adam's expression reminded her so much of his son's. "Adam, I can't be a mother," she protested. "I don't even think I can be a wife. I've never been anything except a spoiled rich girl, and I don't even think I did that very well."

  He took her in his arms and rocked her back and forth, soothing her tears. "I'll bet you've cried more in the last two days than you have in your whole life," he murmured.

  "I don't even cry very well," she said, sobbing.

  "You're wrong about that." He continued to rock her. "You're tired, kaihana. Don't think about anything now. Don't make any decisions. Just be with us today. We'll take Jeremy and look for the mauri. We'll bring something for morning tea and eat it beside the cliff."

  She jerked away. "Not the cliff. I don't want Jeremy anywhere near the
cliff!"

  Adam grinned. "Spoken like a mother."

  She put her head in her hands and hiccupped softly. "You don't know me at all. I don't have any emotions. I'm not maternal. I'm always in control. This isn't me."

  "I like you best when you're not in control," he said, turning her face to his. His lips followed the path of her tears. When she hiccupped again, he laughed, and, reluctantly, she did, too.

  "I'm going crazy," she apologized when they both had sobered.

  "You're like Kaka geyser in the thermals. It builds up pressure underground, where no one can see it, until it finally blows. No one would ever know there was anything there if it didn't."

  All her vulnerabilities were right on the surface. "Maybe I've been afraid to feel, afraid that if I did, someone might see and drag me away from whatever I loved."

  "And banish you to someplace cold and strange, where no one was allowed to love you." His voice was deadly, and Paige knew that if her father were there, Adam would have shown him his own brand of Maori justice.

  "I was a child, and I learned what a child learns," she said, wiping her eyes. "But now I'm an adult. I have been for years, but I've still been doing what a child does to survive."

  "Because you didn't know."

  "And now I do. I can't blame anything on my father now. Only on myself."

  "Don't be too busy blaming yourself." Her hair felt like living silk twined around his fingers, and her skin felt like part of his own. He pulled her close and wondered if he would ever find the strength to let her go.

  "Everything is changing so fast."

  He wasn't sure if the words were a lament or a hosanna. He only hoped they were a prophecy.

  * * *

  "When the shepherd's away, do the lambs play?" Paige swung Adam's hand in rhythm to her words as they walked through the thermals. Her other hand was firmly clasped in Jeremy's. She had insisted he hold on to someone, and he had agreed, with great forbearance, beginning with his father and graduating to her after they had walked awhile.

  "This shepherd has enough help not to worry. Four Hill Farm's a family endeavor."

  "What do you do besides make sure they have enough grass to eat and shear them?"

  He looked down his nose at her. "We tail them, drench them, doctor them, breed them, cull them." He paused, looking to see how she would take the next item. "Neuter them."

  She appreciated the delicacy of his language. "Remind me to hide Rambo the next time you come around."

  "You've done well with him. Orphaned Iambs don't always make it."

  She bristled. "He's most certainly not an orphan. He's mine."

  "He seems to think so, too."

  "Stop smirking. Just because he tried to follow us..."

  Adam laughed, the picture of Paige pleading with the lamb to behave still fresh in his mind. They hadn't been able to leave the house until Adam had promised to fetch Rambo and let Paige feed him before they began their walk. Now the lamb was asleep in Mihi's immaculate kitchen because Paige had refused to leave him in the barn.

  "Rambo won't be tailed, culled, drenched or neutered," she said firmly. "But you can buy him a new red bow."

  "I'd be laughed off the Wool Board."

  "Your ewes might be impressed." She fluttered her eyelashes. "You might get more lambs."

  Adam squeezed her hand. She had been irrepressible after the scene in his bedroom. This was a Paige he hadn't seen before, and one he suspected the rest of the world hadn't seen, either. After breakfast he had actually heard her giggling with Jeremy over a picture in his book. Just yesterday he would have sworn there wasn't a giggle anywhere inside her. Now he knew better. There was a lifetime of giggles stored away.

  They picked their way carefully through boulders left from an Ice Age landslide. Fumaroles sent their unholy smoke to perfume the air, and Adam carried Jeremy on his back, instructing Paige on where to step as she followed him through the giant prehistoric maze. Just past the boulders, they scaled a small ridge, lifting Jeremy up beside them. Paige watched the two males disappear through a narrow canyon, then followed behind, gasping as she entered the small valley, which was almost completely surrounded by low cliffs.

  "Paradise," she murmured, entranced. The cliff face was striped with colors ranging from a purple as deep as the last moments of twilight to a butterscotch gold. The surface was flecked with tiny crystals that sparkled like the New Zealand stars on a clear spring night. The valley had been landscaped by nature with clusters of ferns and a velvety undergrowth of grass. Tall trees swayed in the morning breeze, and birds, absent in the bleaker parts of the thermals, clustered on branches, exchanging morning gossip.

  "I thought you might like it." Adam held her back as she started toward a sky-blue lake fed by a small stream trickling down from a gap in the cliff face. "It's deceptive. Lovely as a jewel and as hot as molten lava."

  Paige clapped a hand on Jeremy's shoulder, afraid he might start toward the lake.

  Adam covered her hand to pry her fingers loose. "Jeremy's been here before. He knows."

  "Then you've come here to look for the mauri with him?"

  "No. The legend wouldn't refer to this. The valley was a gathering place once, as public as any place in the thermals could be. Women would cook in the lake and use the water to set the mud dyes used in their dancing skirts. There was nothing tapu here. Jeremy and I come because it's so beautiful." He rested his hands on her shoulders and turned her around. "And because of the man."

  At first Paige couldn't see what Adam was referring to. The cliffs he had turned her toward were just like the ones she had been facing. Then, suddenly, she realized that wasn't quite true.

  "It is a man," she marveled. "A stone man."

  The cliffs parted, an almost imperceptible crack where water had worn away the surface as it seeped down the cliffside into the lake. And there, to one side, leaning down to watch the eternal trickle, was the stone profile of a man, with bulging eyes and a stubborn chin, short thick neck, protruding potbelly and surprisingly dainty feet. "He should have a name."

  "No one knows it if he does. My uncle called him the kai-tiaki, or guardian. He said that in his youth, when the women came here, they would call on the kai-tiaki to keep them safe. He was supposed to come alive if an enemy approached and protect them, although I imagine that was only what they told their children."

  "Kai-tiaki," she murmured.

  "Later we'll go up on top of the ridge and look down. It's beautiful," Adam said, taking her arm to lead her to a flat grassy area near the lake where Jeremy was sunning himself.

  "Beautiful and deadly."

  "I realize the other day upset you." Adam sat in the grass and pulled her down beside him. "But if we respect the thermals, they'll respect us. I've never had an accident like that in all the years I've been coming here. And no one else has, either."

  "No one else?" Her suspicions began to grow. "Adam, I thought you were the only person in Waimauri, in the whole world, who knew enough to explore this whole place."

  He smiled seductively. "What made you think that?"

  "Everything you ever said about it."

  "I was very careful not to lie. I just told you I was your only choice. And I was. Everyone else knew I was to be your guide."

  "Everyone else?"

  "Everyone else who could have guided you." He reeled off a list of names until she held up her hands to stop him.

  "Is there anyone in Waimauri who's not on that list?"

  He promptly began another list.

  She stopped him again. "Why did you mislead me?"

  "Because I wanted to be your guide. And I'm the best. I knew you'd be safe with me."

  "But if the thermals are so safe anyway..."

  "Did you think I'd take even the slightest chance with your life, kaihana? Even then, I knew you were mine." He lay down and caught her hands between his, tugging her beside him to rest before they continued their search.

  Jeremy joined them, and the thr
ee of them lay together, contented, holding hands and staring at the kai-tiaki.

  Chapter 15

  There was a top in the pocket of her jacket, a spinning top carved with spirals and respect for old traditions. Paige fingered it thoughtfully, then lifted it out to caress her cheek with its love worn surface. Jeremy had shown her how to spin the top on a flat rock near the place where Adam had searched for the mauri. Adam hadn't found the mauri, but she had learned to spin, watching hypnotically as the spirals intertwined one with the other until there was no beginning and no end, but one eternal circle.

  They had gone back to Adam's house long after the sun was high in the sky. She knew Adam hadn't intended to stay so long. Despite his disclaimer, he was an overworked farmer with a successful farm to run. But none of them had wanted to leave the thermals. None of them had wanted to be parted.

  At Adam's she hadn't been able to face parting, either. Instead she had lingered, helping Mihi and one of Adam's nieces wash windows when Adam went to oversee the transfer of part of his flock. The women had taught her the beginning of a Maori song and praised her for her singing while they cackled at her pronunciation. Later she had leaned out of a second-story window, wiping and watching Adam and his men working the dogs in a far pasture until the glass sparkled like a diamond and the men were out of sight. Before she could shut it, Jeremy had called to her from the yard where he was practicing granny knots by tying the ropes on his swing together. She had waved, then gone down to help him untangle the mess he had made.

  Finally, though, she had gone. Without saying goodbye to Adam, she had shrugged on her jacket, promised Jeremy and Mihi that she would see them soon, and started home.

  Home to find Jeremy's farewell gift in her pocket and Adam's name on her lips. Home to wonder just what the meaning of the word was.

  From the kitchen, Rambo baaed, demanding his fourth meal of the day. Paige knew she should put him in the pen Adam had built for her, and she had tried. But the house had been so quiet that cleaning up after the lamb seemed a small price to pay for company. Even Cornwall's shiny black body draped across her sofa was a welcome sight.

  Most of her life, she hadn't minded being alone. Whenever she had minded, there had been cruises and casinos and friends who were one hundred percent loyal to the Duvall name and money. Now she knew that even in the midst of all that merrymaking, she had still been alone, and lonely.