Found (Not Quite a Billionaire Book 3) (19 page)

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 what 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?”