Found (Not Quite a Billionaire Book 3) (34 page)

I knew my smile was too wide, and that it was completely foolish. “I thought you’d given me some good presents before, but, Hemi . . . this is the best. It’s the
best.”

“Not much I wouldn’t do for you,” he said, and his eyes were so warm, the hand around mine so firm. “Time to prove it. You’ve given me your surprise, and now I’ve given you mine. And I’m going to marry you as soon as we can manage it. I’d call this a good day. I’d call it almost the best, except that what’s coming is going to be even better.”

I smiled again, but this time, it was slow and secret and special. He had no idea what kind of day this was going to be. “Oh,” I told him, “this isn’t the surprise. Finish your lunch. There’s someplace we need to be.”

Hemi

When Hope pulled into the carpark of a medical building, I thought I knew what her surprise was.

“I’m going to your check with you,” I said. “I didn’t realize it was today.”

“I made sure it was.” She looked excited, and a little shy, too. “I thought we might need something positive to even the scales. I thought it might help.”

“It does.” The rain had stopped at last while we’d been at lunch, and even as we crossed the carpark, the sun came out. Hope’s hand was in mine, and we were looking at a mass of billowing clouds that glowed around the edges where the sun was making its presence felt, and at a wide beam of sunlight that shone down out of them, blessing the earth after the storm. As poignant—and as trite—as any religious painting you could hope to see.

I’d never have designed anything that obvious, but it didn’t matter. It worked. “Rain for sorrow and rebirth,” I said. “Sun for joy.”

Hope touched the pendant at her throat. It was the manaia carved from South Island greenstone that I’d given her, the protective spirit of an ancestor looking after her soul. She’d worn it today for strength and connection. I knew that without her telling me.

She didn’t say anything, and I thought she might not trust herself to speak. So I did it for her. “Yeh,” I said. ”That feeling you have—it’s your mum, guarding your spirit through all of this. Maybe guarding our baby, too. That’s her grandchild, eh. That matters.”

She stopped where she was, on the pavement outside the building. Her face worked, and she tried to say something, but all that came out was a choked sound.

I did what I hadn’t done yet today, what I hadn’t done for weeks. I gathered her in my arms, held her tight and close, and said the words. “I love you, and I always will. We’re going to be all good, you’ll see. Everything your mum could have wished for you, that’s what you’re going to have. You and Karen both. Everything I can give you.”

She gasped once before burying her face in my jacket. Her shoulders shook, and I held her, rubbed a hand over her back, and thought,
That’s my promise to you, Rose Sinclair. I’m holding onto your daughters and your grandchild, and I’ll keep holding on forever. I’m keeping them whole. I’m mending the cracks.

“No fair,” Hope said at last, her voice shaky. She stepped back, wiped her fingers under her cheeks, then searched in her purse, pulled out a tissue, and began putting herself to rights. She laughed, unsteady and sweet as a baby’s first steps. “The midwife’s going to think we’ve been having a fight.”

The midwife didn’t seem to think so, as it turned out. When she came into an exam room to find Hope sitting on the table, swinging her feet with obvious nerves, and me in a chair in the corner, all she did was shake hands with me and say, “Always good to see the dad here, especially on this visit. Gillian Wright.”

“Hemi Te Mana,” I said. “Pleasure.”

The assessing look she gave me told me she knew who I was, but she just washed and dried her hands, then turned to Hope and said, “Well, my darling, let’s see how you measure up. You’ve gained over a kilo and a half, I see. Working your way back up to the positive side of the ledger.”

“I’m eating like crazy,” Hope assured her. “I’m going to have to be careful not to overdo it if I keep this up.”

“Mm. Still got a ways to go, I’d say. Keep an eye on the scale and the guidelines, and you’ll be good.” She pulled up Hope’s deep-blue sweater, tugged her leggings a bit lower on her belly, took a tape measure out of her pocket, and did some checking. “Very nice.”

Hope let out a breath. “Good?”

“Looks good to me. But then, that’s what we’re going to find out today, aren’t we?” She took hold of the bell of a stethoscope, ran it over Hope’s belly, and frowned.

Five seconds. Ten. Hope was holding her breath, her eyes widening with fear. I could tell that was what it was, but I wasn’t sure why. The midwife was listening for a heartbeat, obviously. That was what stethoscopes were for. But how would Hope know whether she heard it?

At that moment, I heard it myself, amplified so loudly that it made me jump. Not a heartbeat, not the way I was used to thinking of it. More of a gallop. The heartbeat of something very small.

A hummingbird. Or a baby.

Hope was hauling in breath as if she couldn’t get enough and turning her head to look at me, the smile on her face as wide as the sky.

“Baby,” she said.

I took her hand, said, “Yeh. Baby,” and thought I might float away.

I had time to compose myself as Gillian chatted with Hope. Diet and exercise and sleep and vitamins, and I tried to focus, and to listen. I needed to know this, too.

Finally, Gillian said, “And this is the visit when I tell you not to lie on your back from here on out. You don’t want the weight of your uterus cutting off blood flow to your heart, or to baby. And since dad’s here, I’ll anticipate him and say, yes, that includes during sex. Propped up’s OK, if he’s strong enough to keep
his
weight off your tummy. Flat on your back isn’t.”

“Oh,” Hope said faintly. “Is there anything, um, else about that? Anything we should know?” She was turning pink, and I couldn’t help but be amused. And interested. And, yeh, I was strong enough.

“Not really,” Gillian said cheerfully. “As long as you want to do it and it feels good, feel free.” She glanced at me. “Which means as long as
she
wants to do it, and any way that’s comfortable and feels good to
her,
except on her back. Check in, and experiment. Sitting up’s good, facing each other. Spoon fashion’s another. Or from behind, hands and knees. That’s easy on the woman, and no belly to get in the way. You get the picture. License to be inventive, eh. And, yes, oral sex is all good as well, long as you don’t blow into her vagina. We have to say that, though I’ve never heard of anyone doing it. Why on earth would he?”

Hope had a hand over her eyes by now, and I had to laugh. “I think I’ve got it,” I said. “Cheers. I knew there was a reason I’d come.”

“Oh?” Gillian asked. “Don’t want to see your baby?”

My heart knocked against my chest so hard, you might have seen it jump. “Pardon?”

“Ah.” Gillian looked at Hope again. “Are we surprising dad?”

“Yes.” Hope had lost the embarrassment, but she was breathless again. “That’s the idea.”

“Awesome. Off you go, then.”

We could walk to this one, because it was next door. I was quiet, but Hope was quieter. And by the time she was lying on another table, in a paper gown this time and covered by yet more crackling blue paper, she’d gone absolutely silent and still.

I knew what that meant when I did it. It meant I was feeling too much, so I was gathering all my energy into myself, pulling it inward so I couldn’t betray it. The more I felt, the quieter I got. But Hope didn’t have to protect herself. Not here. Not with me. That was my job.

“What is it?” I asked. I took her hand, and it was beyond cold. It was frozen. “Baby, what?”

“What if . . .” She was forcing the words out through tightened lips, a constricted throat. “What if something’s wrong? Everything’s been so good. What if my life can’t go this way after all? What if it’s too much to . . .” She swallowed. “To expect?”

I had hold of both her hands now, and the helplessness, the tenderness—they were making my chest ache. “No,” I told her. “Nothing’s too much to expect. Nothing’s too much to want. Love, babies, work to do that makes you happy. You’ve given so much to Karen, to your mum. To Koro. You’ve rubbed his ugly old
feet.”
As I’d hoped, that made her smile, even though I knew the tears weren’t far away. “And to me. What you’ve given to me alone—it’s going to take a lifetime to pay that back.”

“But what if . . . I haven’t taken good enough care of it?” It was a whisper. “What if I haven’t eaten enough? What if I’ve hurt it?”

I made my voice, my face as firm as I could manage. That was what she needed, so that was what I was going to do. “You know better than that. You’ve taken the best care you could. You’ve never done anything less, and you never will. It’s not in your nature. It’s not possible. And if something
is
wrong? We’ll deal with it, you and me. We’ll do it together. You think you couldn’t bear it alone? You could, but you won’t have to, and neither will I. We’ll only have to bear half. Less than half, because we’d both take more than half off the other. We can get through anything if we’re doing it together.”

The tears were running down her temples, into her hair. Her eyes were squeezed shut against them, her lips pulled back in her effort to suppress the sobs, her chest heaving. If anything had ever hurt me more to see, I don’t know what it could have been.

That was the moment when the tech walked in. Her scrubs were printed with bright balloons, her hair pulled back in a swinging high ponytail. A greater contrast to the suffering woman on the table beside me you couldn’t have imagined.

“We having a bit of an emotional moment?” she asked cheerfully, plucking a box of tissues off the table and holding them out for Hope, who took them with a choked gasp. “Never mind. Happens all the time. Let’s take a wee look and see what we see, and after that, the waterworks can
really
let loose.”

Endless fiddling followed. The tech typed into the keyboard of a huge machine, then spread some thick, clear stuff from a plastic bottle onto Hope’s firm little belly that made Hope jump and say, “Oh. Cold.”

One minute, the machine’s screen was showing a rectangle of black with white block letters in a corner. The next, the tech was moving a paddle over Hope’s belly, her eyes on the screen, and the black background was covered with specks and swirls of white that were . . . nothing I could sort out, try as I might.