Fractured (Not Quite a Billionaire #2) (12 page)

My throat was so tight, I could barely speak. “I need to change your name,” I said.

“What?” she asked. “Why…”

“Because the person with the honor,” I said, “the person who’s struggled, and who’s overcome? The person who needs to be named Te Mana? It’s you.”

She gasped once, and then she was in my arms. I couldn’t have said if she’d gone there, or if I’d pulled her in. It didn’t matter anyway. We sat there in the middle of a café in Chancery Lane, surrounded by lawyers, and I held her, tried to rein in my emotions, and failed completely.

Did it occur to me to tell her about the niggle with the license? Possibly. Did I do it? No. It would be sorted by tomorrow, and whatever she said, she
didn’t
need to know. Should we have talked more about children, and my parents, and a few other things? Probably.

Maybe I was struggling toward mana. Maybe. But I wasn’t there.

Ah, well.

Hope

People were staring at us, I realized, in their discreet, polite, I’m-not-actually-staring New Zealand way. Well, we probably made an odd couple, Hemi twice my size and as dark as I was fair, not to mention my jeans and sweater and Hemi’s custom-made black suit. And then there was the fact that we were embracing passionately in a lawyers’ café in the middle of the city. And in the middle of the workday.

“You pop the question, mate?” an older man asked from the closest table. When I looked startled, he said, “Ring,” and pointed to his wedding finger.

“Nah,” Hemi said. “Already did that. But I keep having to convince her again that the right answer is ‘yes.’”

I kept my head on his chest—not that he was letting me go anyway—and started to believe it might work, “need to know” and all. “If you didn’t keep messing up so badly,” I murmured into the warm white cotton of his dress shirt, “you wouldn’t have to do all that convincing.”

“Could be,” he said. “But then, I enjoy convincing you.” He stood up, picked up the bag with some lingerie that I might actually end up wearing after all, put out a hand, and drew me to my feet. “Let’s go collect Karen so we can go home and get this party started.”

He was as quiet on the drive through four o’clock traffic to Penrose as he had been on the drive up, but the silence felt different now: contented and settled, rather than full of spiky edges and treacherous undercurrents. And when we walked into Violet’s studio again, she looked us over with obvious satisfaction and said, “Got it sorted, then, did you?”

“Yeh.” Hemi’s face had settled back into its usual inscrutable lines, but at least it wasn’t hard anymore. “Though I’ve got a bone to pick with you.”

“Nah, mate,” Violet said calmly, “you need to be thanking me. Somebody has to shove a window open now and then. It’s got to get stuffy in that head of yours, the way you keep everything bottled up. And I wouldn’t even want to guess about your heart.”

“No worries,” Hemi said. “Hope doesn’t bother with the windows. She goes straight to breaking down the door.”

“Well, awesome,” Karen said, “because I am wearing this dress on Saturday, even if I have to wear it to the beach.”

“No,” Hemi said. “At the marae.” He told Violet, “You’re invited, by the way.”

“You just want a last-minute stylist,” she said, and he actually laughed. “But I might do, at that. Just because I love a Maori wedding, and to witness the breaking down in process. That sounds like it’d be worth seeing.” She eyed me with interest. “I wouldn’t have thought it. The way you look…”

“People look all kinds of ways,” I said. “Including small people. It doesn’t mean a thing.” All right, that was rude, but when you’re little and blonde, you get that a lot.

She smiled. “Nah, guess not. Mother Teresa was five feet tall, eh.”

“I’m not Mother Teresa,” I said. “Unfortunately. Or I probably wouldn’t have said that just now.”

“Good thing, too,” Hemi had to put in. “As she was a nun. Put me right off my stride, haven’t you, Vi. Cheers for the mental picture.”

She waved a dismissive hand. “By the way, Hemi, I’ve got a shopping list for you. I’ll text it to you, now that I know you’ll be needing it.”

“About that…” he said.

He walked with her across the room while Karen called out, “You’d better not be telling him about her dress. It’s bad luck.” And I thought that surely, that was impossible. It was what Hemi had said. The doors were down, or at least open, and that breeze blowing through them? That was nothing but the fresh air of a brand-new start.

We were driving back through Auckland, then, inching along in rush-hour traffic to get out of the city and back to the coast. Hemi didn’t betray any annoyance at the delay. He was back to his customary stillness, fully under control again. So I had to tease him, naturally. “You know,” I said, “if you’d told me about your first marriage up front like a normal person, we’d practically be home by now, and I’d have tried on my wedding underwear, so you’d only have had to pay for one set, and so
I’d
have known that I’d found something that would make you happy to see me on Saturday night. I might even have bought shoes. I feel compelled to mention that.”

Karen heaved a mighty sigh from behind us. “Never mind me. I’ll just be reading my book here and ignoring the inappropriate conversational topics. Do I really want to move in with the two of you? That’s what I’m asking myself.”

The corner of Hemi’s mouth twitched. “Call it role modeling,” he said to Karen. “Learning how to keep your future husband on his toes, eh. And moving in with me isn’t a choice.”

Karen said, “Oh,
nice,”
and Hemi actually laughed. And yes, that was dictatorial, but it was also telling Karen loud and clear that he wanted her, and how could that be anything but great?

He said, low enough that Karen couldn’t hear, “I’m guessing I’ll be happy enough to see you on Saturday night. And you know I’ll pay for as many sets of lingerie as you want to buy.” Then he punched a button on the steering wheel to turn on the playlist from his phone and added, “This is so you can’t ask me my favorite color or how I felt after my dog died when I was eleven.”

“Did
your dog die when you were eleven?”

“Nah. Didn’t have a dog.”

“And, see?” I said. “You just shared. Hardly hurt at all, I’ll bet.”

He smiled, then fell silent again, the radio played, and as the kilometers of gray highway spooled away behind us as the scene changed from apartments and commercial buildings to green hillsides dotted by sheep, and then to the flat farmlands that lay between Auckland and the Bay of Plenty.

After a while, I closed my eyes and drifted into a half-sleep. Fighting is tiring, and relief is exhausting. Or maybe that depends on how much you need it.

I jerked awake to the sound of a ringing phone, then Hemi’s voice saying, “Te Mana.”

A male voice boomed from the speaker by my ear. “Walter Eagleton here. I’ve got your answer. The reason your divorce certificate wasn’t accepted by the registrar is that you’re still married.”

Hope

There was silence in the car for a second, then the music started up again, and I almost thought I’d dreamed what I’d heard. Then I saw the look on Hemi’s face, and I realized what he’d done. He’d hung up, like that would work, like I’d just…what? Forget it?

His driving was still smooth and controlled, his hands firm on the wheel. Of course they were. I said, “Call him back.”

Karen asked, “What’s going on?”

I ignored her. Hemi still hadn’t moved or said anything, so I said it again. “Call him back. Right now.”

He glanced at me, then back at the road, his face still completely impassive. “No.”

“Then let me out of this car,” I said.

“I’ll ring him later,” he said. “We’ll talk about it when I know more.”

Have you ever heard the saying, “steam came out of her ears”? Well, that was me. “No,” I said. “We’ll talk about it right now. What do you think I was telling you back in the café? Was that just…just noise to you? Call him
back.”

Hemi
still
didn’t answer, and I was trying to think of what else to say, trying to contain myself, and knowing there was no way. He was slowing for a town, and for one crazy second, I actually
did
think of jumping out. I was that mad.

I’d never been all that tough, but it seemed people could change. Or maybe it was just that everybody had a limit, and I’d reached mine.

Hemi was parking, though, still without a word, in a diagonal spot on the street, and I clamped my mouth shut and waited.

Don’t explode,
I told myself
. He doesn’t have to say you’re right. He’s doing what you asked. Hopefully. Or we’re going to have a fight. Wait and see which it is.

I didn’t find out for another minute, because he pulled his wallet out of his back pocket and flipped it open, took out a few bills, and handed them back to Karen. “Go have something to eat,” he told her. “Or go shopping, maybe, until Hope texts you.”

“For what? Tires?” Karen asked as she grabbed her backpack and climbed out. I saw her point. We were parked outside a Firestone store. She poked her head back into the car to announce, “This day has been one big fun time. I’m just saying. Plus, I’m going to get a caffeine addiction, the way you guys keep sending me off to have lattes while you fight.”