Found (Not Quite a Billionaire Book 3) (38 page)

Hope hadn’t seen this one. I’d meant it to be my surprise. Now, she looked at me at last, her eyes shining, and said, “Oh, Hemi.”

That was all. I couldn’t have heard more anyway. The room was erupting in applause, in cheers and whistles. The model was coming off again, and I needed to go out there. I said, “Thank you,” and then I went out to meet the audience.

Hope

I was still reeling from the effects of the show. I hadn’t been to many of these, only a handful the previous year, glimpsed from the back of the room, but surely—surely—I’d never seen one get that reaction. Or one that wonderful.

It had been Hemi’s designs, of course, but it had been everything else, too, coming together to make a unified whole that was more than the sum of its parts. It had been the music and the models, the boots and the leather jackets.

And that dress. That
dress.
A dress that Hemi hadn’t put on a tall, willowy brunette, but on a petite blonde. Because that was who he’d designed it for.

He was out there now, talking, taking his moment. Looking as commanding as only he could, as strong and confident as any woman could possibly desire. Behind him, a huge screen projected a twice-life-sized image of a group of models of all colors and sizes standing in the endless green of the New Zealand bush, their arms around each other, laughing, looking happy, looking glorious. Looking real.

He finished his short statement, thanking the audience, thanking his staff, talking about a team effort, about everyone behind the scenes, sounding every inch a Kiwi and not at all like an arrogant designer.

Then the music started up again, the bone flute whistling softly, slowly, and the lighting faded away until all was darkness except the spotlight on the tall, imposing figure in sharply tailored black and white.

“I am Maori,” he said as the music faded. “And being Maori isn’t about a tattoo or a strong body or a jade pendant. Being Maori is a way of life, a way of fitting into the world and living with everything in it instead of asking the world to fit around you.”

The audience was silent, wondering where he was going. He told them. “There’s a concept every Maori knows, that every Maori man and woman aspires to. Mana. Mana is honor. It is dignity. Mana is the prestige and respect that comes from the way a man walks the earth, the person a woman is when all the trappings are stripped away. You can’t buy it, you can’t take it, and if you announce that you have it, everyone knows you don’t. Which brings me to somebody I’d like to bring out here. Hope, would you please come join me?”

My first thought was,
I should have dressed much better for this.
My second thought was,
I’m there.
I walked out into the spotlight, not looking at the audience, and went straight to Hemi.

He wasn’t looking at them. He was looking at me. He took my hand and said, “There’s a time to be reserved, and there’s a time to open up and tell the world. This is that time for me. I’d like to introduce you to Hope Sinclair, who has more mana than anybody I’ve ever known. This is a woman who tells the truth no matter what it costs her, because the truth needs to be spoken. Hope sat in my conference room some months ago, knowing nobody wanted to hear from her, knowing she wasn’t supposed to say anything, and said this.”

Behind me, I could see the picture change. The models went away, and a block of text filled the screen with letters six inches high. Hemi waited a moment, then read it aloud.

“What’s the alternative to a token? I’ll tell you. It’s everybody looking exactly the same. It’s everything staying the same. It’s starved teenage girls with their clothes hanging off them like all they are is clothes hangers. It’s women looking at that picture and thinking, how would this dress look on a real person? How would it look on me? And not having a clue, because they can’t tell. If the campaign is focused on the clothes being wearable, then show that. Call it . . . call it ‘For Every Body.’”

“If I’ve done something different today,” Hemi said, his hand so strong around mine, “if I’ll be doing something different from now on, it’s because Hope showed me the way and told me the truth. My future wife, the mother of a daughter I know will have her mother’s strength and heart, because she’ll have her mother to show her how to do it. My shining star, my lodestone, and my inspiration. Hope Sinclair.”

Hope

It was the day after Thanksgiving, and I hadn’t had any turkey. I was in New Zealand, I was nearly six months pregnant, and I was getting married tomorrow.

It wasn’t like any wedding I’d ever imagined for myself, not even the one I’d thought I’d be having six months ago. There was nothing rushed about it this time, and no uncertainty, either. We both knew what we were getting into, and we knew that it was what we wanted.

We’d even had time to invite guests, and they felt as much mine as Hemi’s. Eugene and his wife Debra, Inez and her family, my former coworker Nathan and his girlfriend Gabrielle from New York. It looked like Nathan was settling down. But then, it happened to the best of men.

Some of the group had been taken out fishing by Tane and Matiu today. I couldn’t wait to hear what Nathan had to say about that. Nathan wasn’t exactly an outdoorsman.

Violet, who’d brought Karen’s bridesmaid’s dress down from Auckland but had left mine behind, wasn’t among the group. “Not possible, darling,” she’d said when Hemi had offered the fishing outing. “Not that I want to. Glad to have the excuse, to be honest. I
do
have a bride to fit, though, and it’s not easy. Changes every week, doesn’t she.”

Violet had been given the considerable task of altering Hemi’s design to accommodate my twenty-five-week belly. “Not quite kosher, darling,” she’d told me when I’d asked her to do it. “If the groom isn’t meant to see the dress beforehand, he surely isn’t meant to design it.”

“Hemi and I,” I’d told her serenely, “make our own rules. He hasn’t seen me
in
the dress, and that’s good enough for me.”

“You know,” she’d said, “when I first met you, I thought, ‘Hemi, mate, you can’t be serious.’ And now, I think, ‘Hemi, mate, I only hope you can keep up.’”

So, yes, those were all people I counted as my friends, too. And then there were all the people I could count as my family.

Koro, of course. Tane and June and their kids, and Matiu as well, despite the laughter in his eyes every time he encountered Hemi and me, as if he knew Hemi was watching him every moment, waiting for him to slip up and declare his undying love. All the other cousins and aunties and uncles and babies that made up a Maori whanau. And the few whose arrival would be greeted warily by all. Hemi’s father, who’d continued to stay clean—and who’d be borrowing money throughout the reception. His mother and sister, whom I hadn’t met yet and wasn’t excited to see.

Tane had told Hemi the day before, when we’d all been at their house eating dinner and discussing wedding plans, “And before you say anything—if somebody needs to chuck your mum out or drive her back to her hotel, it’ll be me. You’re not the only man in this whanau who can take charge. Time you learned that.”

“Could even be me,” June had said with her usual cheerful laugh. “Since I’m more likely to be fit to drive than you, Tane, and you know it.”

“Right, then,” he’d said. “We’ll do it together. You’re not to worry, mate, and neither is Hope. We’ll get it sorted. You two focus on each other. That’s what it’s all about.”

Soon enough, Hemi would be headed over to Tane’s, where he’d be sleeping tonight while Karen and I stayed at Koro’s. But right now, on a glorious early-summer afternoon, all fresh breeze, impossibly blue sky, and light striking diamonds off the water, he was taking me for a drive.

“Soothe the wedding nerves, eh,” he’d said, looking decidedly un-Hemi-like in shorts, a T-shirt, and jandals, the ubiquitous flip-flops that were mandatory attire in this most casual of countries.

“Speak for yourself,” I’d answered. “I don’t have wedding nerves. Somebody’s got to make an honest woman of me, and it had better happen soon, because I’m not getting any less pregnant here.”

“Compliant,” he’d said, that hint of a smile in his dark eyes. “That’s what I thought when I first saw you. Obedient. Sweet.”

“Good thing you were wrong,” I’d said—yes, sweetly. “How boring would
that
have been?” And this time, I’d been rewarded with the laugh that I, more easily than anybody else on earth, could coax from him.

Oh—I know you’re wondering. Yes, I had a job, and no, it wasn’t working for Hemi. So what was I doing? I had the job of my dreams, maybe the job of a lot of women’s dreams. I was thinking about, talking about, dreaming about, and writing about—shoes.

Funky shoes. Rocker-girl shoes. Skedixx Footwear, to be exact, the company whose designs Hemi had chosen for his show. When I’d seen the shots, I’d known that was something I had to be part of. And when I’d proposed the idea to Hemi, right there in Paris, in the afterglow of his triumph, he’d said yes.

After that, I’d done the work. I’d made the call to the president, a fast-talking, whip-thin woman with the dirtiest mouth I’d ever heard, a woman who would have intimidated me to the point of silence a year earlier. But when I’d called her, introduced myself, and told her that Hemi was interested in using her company as an exclusive supplier and that I’d like to be the liaison in their joint venture? You could say she’d leaped at the idea.

Maternity leave? Flexible hours? No problem. And I had my dream job. All it had taken was a little confidence and a lot of Te Mana. The difference was—this time, I knew I had something to offer. I wouldn’t be a token, and I wouldn’t be a figurehead. I’d be working, and I’d be contributing. I’d already started, in fact, and I loved it.

And Anika? That’s the other thing you’re wondering about. Anika wasn’t going to prison, at least not now.

Walter had paid her an unexpected visit on the day after the Paris show, together with Hemi’s New Zealand attorney. Let’s just say that Anika had dropped her suit in record time, and that if she ever
did
share those recordings, she’d pay a price she hadn’t seemed one bit eager to experience. The spider had gone back into her hole, and she seemed likely to stay there.

If she didn’t? What I’d told Hemi was true. I didn’t care. Sex scandals were a dime a dozen, and a husband talking dirty to his wife wasn’t going to be front-page news.

“Nice here,” I said now, a little sleepily. We were driving along Seaforth Road in Waihi Beach, just north of Katikati, past a row of houses, some modest, some grand, located to catch the best possible views of one of the endless stretches of spectacular shoreline that were New Zealand’s specialty.

“It is,” Hemi agreed. He turned onto a side street that ended at the beach itself and pulled to a stop. A path led through scrubby grass onto the sand. Public, like every beach in the country.

I could have walked and run on these wide-open spaces forever. Or even, maybe, swum. I’d tried a swim in the ocean with Hemi that morning, and it had been different, a little scary but exhilarating all the same, the water clear enough that I’d seen live sand dollars half-burrowed into the sand beneath me, a flash of blue that had surely been a fish.