Fierce (44 page)

She’d left me behind again, but that was nothing new. “What?”

“I realized
I
was the one being the king.
I
was the one letting you burn, the one without any loyalty, without any faith. I’ve always read that swan story and thought, how could he do that? And then
I
did it.
Me.
I heard something from somebody else, somebody who was jealous, and I believed it. I believed in that person instead of believing in the person who’s proven to me, again and again, that he’s real, and he’s trustworthy, and he’s honest, and he’s
good.
I didn’t believe in you, and I was wrong. And I thought,
No.
I’m not going to do that. I’m not going to let that fire get lit. I’m not going to let you burn. I’m going to wait and ask you. But I didn’t want to be in the hotel to do it. I wanted to be here, at home, where I was...where I could be strong.”

“Sweetheart.” My arm had gone around her, because I could no more keep from holding her than I could have let her burn. “You’ll never be the person without faith. Never. And you can be strong anywhere. And much as I’d like to say that I can’t believe you didn’t trust me, I know exactly why you didn’t. I haven’t been a man a woman could count on, and I may have given some women jewelry, too. Martine was right about that. But with you, it was different. This wasn’t goodbye. This was…this was ‘I love you.’”

I’d never said the words before, and now, I couldn’t believe it. They didn’t feel scary. They felt right. They felt necessary.

“Oh.” She was trembling again, but maybe for a different reason this time. “Oh. I’m so…Oh, Hemi. I’m so sorry. I’m sorry I doubted you. I kept telling myself that I knew you, that this wasn’t
you
, but I let the past take hold of me all the same, and I’m so
sorry.
But there was no note, and...”

The tears were pooling in her eyes, running down her cheeks. And she didn’t even try to hide it. The second time she’d let me see her like that, that she’d let me know her, and I was never going to let myself forget what a gift that was. 

“No, sweetheart,” I managed to say. The tenderness was doing its best to overpower me, my chest swelling with it as if my heart had grown. Because it had. Because she’d made it happen. “I’m the one who’s sorry. There wasn’t a note because I wasn’t man enough to say the words, even to somebody else, so they could write it down for you to read. I’m sorry that it’s taken me all this time to say it, and to let you know it, and to be the man you need. But I’m going to do my best to be that man now.”

“You’ve always been the man I need.” She wasn’t trembling anymore. She’d pulled herself together, because that was Hope. So strong and fierce in her love, so gentle in her touch. The tears were still there, but she was smiling through them. Her eyes were steady, her hand was on my face, and everything I needed was in that hand, in those eyes. “And I love you, too. Of course I do. I love you so much.”

“Then…” I pulled the velvet case out of my pocket, the one I’d stopped to collect on the way here, because I’d been determined that I was going to put it around her wrist, even if it was the last thing I did before she said goodbye to me forever. 

I opened the box and pulled out the circlet of sapphires and diamonds, the dingy surroundings and dim winter light of Hope’s bedroom unable to diminish their flash. “Then, please. My Hope. Please let me put this on you. Please tell me that I get to keep you. Please let me love you.”

It was June, and once again, I was exploring a new place. But with such a difference this time. No five-star hotels, no suites, no haute cuisine. This time, Hemi wasn’t trying to impress me, and as a result, he was impressing me so much more. He’d taken me home to New Zealand to meet his grandfather.

I wasn’t the only one who’d needed a passport, either, because we’d brought Karen with us. It hadn’t even been a question. Hemi’d just assumed she’d come, and if I hadn’t loved him already, I’d have loved him for that alone. 

As of yesterday, we were in Katikati, staying in the little house where Hemi had spent his teenage years. A house that stood on a hillside, surrounded by fruit trees and gardens that were barren now in winter but showed all the promise of spring in their tidy, well-maintained borders. Green-clad mountains rose behind us, mountains Hemi had promised to explore with us tomorrow on a “track that you may find a wee bit steep,” which I’d already figured out was Kiwi understatement for “impossible.” Emerald-green fields stretched in front of the house, sloping all the way down to the town below. And beyond that, there was the impossible blue of the sea. A sea that was disturbed today by whitecaps, the ruffled surface reminding me irresistibly of the bracelet Hemi had given me, and letting me know why he’d chosen it. Because it had reminded him of the land he loved most, and because he’d wanted to share that with me. Just like he’d wanted to share this.

We’d been in New Zealand only a few days, but Hemi had already shed not only his suits, but most of his reserve as well. He’d spent much of today in jeans and an old sweater helping his grandfather fix a fence while Karen and I had taken a walk down to the town and along the coast, and I’d loved seeing him so relaxed.

Karen had outpaced me easily on our hike, too, proving that she’d left her recovery well in the past. It made me a little weepy to see her so happy to be well, to be here, to be having an adventure. She’d finished up her school year without too much trouble despite her weeks of absence, because, as she’d told me, “It’s just so much easier to do everything when your head doesn’t hurt all the time, you know?” 

It was as if she’d started her life all over again, and it felt that way for me, too. For all sorts of reasons.

I was still working at Te Mana, but that had taken a lot of thought, and a lot of talk with Hemi, too, during which he’d held onto his patience and tried hard to see things from my point of view. 

He hadn’t fired Martine, but he’d encouraged her to find a job with another company, a compromise I could live with just fine. And he’d encouraged me
not
to. 

“I want you here,” he’d said. “I won’t lie. I don’t want you working until eight every night. I don’t want it for you, I don’t want it for Karen, and I don’t want it for me. I want to be able to have control over that, and no worries, if you’re working here, from now on? I’m going to have it. But I have another selfish reason as well. I want your ideas, and your enthusiasm, too. I want to put you in Marketing, and I want you working on the Shades of V campaign.”

“Oh.” I’d scowled at him as best I could. “No fair dangling that in front of me.”

He’d smiled, pulled me into his lap, and kissed me. And if we were in his office when he did it? Well, maybe I was weak after all. Maybe there was something a teeny bit hot about being summoned to the CEO’s office for “meetings” that ended up with me being kissed senseless, not to mention some very creative use of his office furniture. If there were, I wasn’t telling.

“Um...” I said on this particular occasion, hard as it was to focus with one of Hemi’s hands inside my blouse and the other one making its stealthy way up my thigh. “We were discussing my future.”

“Yeh,” he sighed. “Well, I’m afraid your
immediate
future involves this coffee table, and the only thing you’re going to be saying is ‘please.’ And maybe ‘more,’ if I do it right. No,” he added when I squirmed a little, “
definitely
‘more.’ But what else did you want to talk about, sweetheart?” 

His fingers caught a nipple, and I gasped a little. “Um...” I’d managed. “I’ll tell you tonight.” 

He’d chuckled, and the only things I’d said after that had been “please.” And maybe “more.” And very possibly “yes,” but I couldn’t exactly remember.

We
had
eventually discussed it on a more elevated level, though, and he’d suggested that I try it out on a six-month trial basis. “And if you still don’t feel comfortable,” he’d said, “I’ll help you find something that’ll suit you someplace else. Can’t say fairer than that.”  

“You’re too hard to argue with,” I’d sighed. “If you’re going to be that fair and reasonable.”

“There’s a reason I tend to win, maybe,” he’d said.

“Oh?” I’d cocked my head and looked at him askance. “Is that the reason?”

“Nah. Usually it’s because I’m ruthless, and I want it more. This time, it’s just that I want it so much, I’m even willing to be fair and reasonable to get it.”

But tonight, we were 9,000 miles away from Hemi’s office. At the Katikati RSA, the Returned Services Association, to be exact, which was some sort of combination of American Legion Hall and pub. Because, it turned out, that was the only place to be in Katikati on a Saturday night in June. The All Blacks were playing the French in rugby, and it wasn’t an occasion anybody could miss, least of all Hemi’s whanau—his extended family. And once again, it was night and day from anyplace else Hemi had ever taken me. A big round wooden table, pints of beer and plates of roast vegetables and sausages. Chat and laughter, brown faces and white, table-hopping and the clink of billiard balls from the pool table in the corner. Young people and families, grandparents and babies, and Hemi at home.

“Trust you, cuz,” another huge specimen named Tane was saying now, laughing as easily as everyone here seemed to laugh. “Finally bring a woman home, and she’s the last thing anybody would’ve expected. Too little and sweet for you, I reckon. You telling me you haven’t managed to scare her off yet?”

“Nah.” Hemi put an arm around my shoulders. “Not going to happen. Course, you ugly buggers may do it, but probably not. Hope’s forty-seven kg’s of fierce. Keeps me up to the mark, no worries. And you think I’m joking,” he told his cousin calmly when he laughed. “But you forget. I don’t joke.”

Karen shook her head and sighed. “You are so
clueless
,” she informed Hemi. “You can’t just blurt out Hope’s
weight
like that to everybody. She’s going to
kill
you later. She’s being polite now, because she thinks that’s important.”

“Not you, though,” Hemi said gravely.

“Well, no,” she said. “Because I’m an—”

“Yeh.” He put an arm around her as well. “Because you’re an idiot savant. Or maybe just a brat. Pity I’ve got such a soft spot for you.”

“Hope’s not the only fierce one, either,” Tane’s brother Matiu said with a grin. “Yeh, cuz, reckon you’re well and truly done for.”

“Oh, I dunno,” Hemi said. “Hope says she loves me. Says she’ll keep on doing it, too. I may just be better off this way. You never know.” And then he looked at me, the smile warming his eyes, making my heart turn over in the way it had since the first day I’d met him. 

Hemi’s grandfather nodded with the quiet satisfaction he’d been showing ever since we’d arrived. “You just may. Because of what she’s taught
you
to do, maybe.”

“And that could be right as well,” Hemi said.

I knew I was blushing, and was glad when the game started. Even though I knew absolutely nothing about it, and I wasn’t particularly illuminated during the hour and a half that followed, other than that the All Blacks wore tight black uniforms, and that they were the best, and that that mattered. That it was one of the most brutal sports I’d ever seen, that the All Blacks won, and that that was a very good thing.

As soon as the game was over, Hemi was pushing back his chair. “I’m going to take Hope back to the house. Jet lagged, isn’t she.”

“I don’t know,” Karen piped right up. “Is she?” 

“Yes,” I said, even though I wasn’t, not that badly. But I wanted to go home with Hemi. Of course I did. 

Hemi bent and kissed Karen goodbye. “Don’t drink too much.”

She rolled her eyes. “Rub it in,” she said, and he laughed.  

She’d pouted, earlier, when I hadn’t let her order a beer, “even though I’m totally
legal
here.”

“Right,” Hemi’d said. “Take a sip.” And had thrust his mug of Waikato Draught across to her. 

She’d tried it and grimaced. “Do they have any better kinds?”

We’d all laughed at that. “That
is
the best kind, love,” Tane’s wife June had said. “You stick to Coke, and you’re golden.”