Fractured (Not Quite a Billionaire #2) (23 page)

Hope

When I woke the next morning in Hemi’s enormous bed, I remembered the opening of the superhero movie we’d watched the night before: a comic-book character waking in an unfamiliar world.

Unfortunately, that was all I
did
remember. Well, I remembered drinking a couple glasses of truly delicious white wine with dinner, and it going straight to my head, and snuggling on the black leather couch with Hemi and Karen. And that was about it.

Now, I was naked, I had a headache, and I had a few questions.

I found a couple Tylenol in the bathroom cabinet Hemi had assigned to me and into which I’d unpacked the toiletries I’d brought from the apartment yesterday, brushed my teeth and washed my face, and started feeling slightly more human. Then I pulled on my robe and went in search of Hemi.

I found Karen first, reading on the couch. I said, “Good morning” to her and didn’t get much in return, because she was engrossed in her book. No surprise there. And after that, I found Hemi in his office. At least, I found his back. He was fully dressed and staring at a bank of monitors with only his fingers moving, every line of his hard body spelling
Concentration.

I hesitated in the doorway, then said, “Good morning.”

He swiveled in his chair and frowned at me, and I wondered if I should have left him alone. Then his face cleared and he said, “Morning. Good sleep?”

“Yes. At least—I must have.” We weren’t on vacation anymore. Was I not supposed to disturb him? I’d never even been in this room.

“How about coming in here and giving me a proper good morning, then?” he asked, which answered that question. When I did come in, though, he didn’t say anything. Instead, he pulled me down into his lap, got a hand behind my head and another one on my waist, and kissed me. The moment his lips settled over mine, the hello-baby kiss turned into something sweet and slow and hot, one of the many things Hemi Te Mana did better than anyone else in the world, and I was melting.

“What a pretty girl I’ve got,” he murmured at last, his lips brushing my cheek while his fingers stroked the back of my neck, sending tingles down my spine. “And what a lucky fella I am, eh.”

“Mm.” I moved in a little closer, just because his hand was so deliciously possessive. “But how did I get to bed? That’s what I’m wondering.”

“I carried you. You were asleep.” His thumb was tracing my cheekbone now, and how far gone was I, that his thumb felt that good?

“But I woke up naked.” I remembered undressing. Vaguely.

“Helped you with that, too. And yes, I enjoyed it.”

“But you didn’t…” I began.

He sat back. “Didn’t what?”

“Well…naked.” I tried to laugh, but I needed to know. That was the thought that had troubled me on waking. The point where “possessive” turned into something worse.

His face had settled into harder lines, and his thumb wasn’t on my cheek anymore. “No,” he said flatly. “I didn’t have sex with you while you were asleep.”

“Sorry. I just…” I started to get up, but he tightened his hold.

“You’re always telling me I need to share,” he said. “Now I’m telling
you.
Share. Why would you ask that?”

“I just…” I tried to shrug. “I don’t know what the rules are for this. I’m feeling disoriented, I guess, wondering if this can really be my life, and feeling so ungrateful for wondering. Like you took the goldfish out of the little bowl with its one goldfish buddy and its piece of plastic seaweed, and you put it into an aquarium with all the big fish and the fancy plants, and I’m swimming around the castle and wondering if I should try going through that window, if that’d be an adventure, or if I’d get stuck. It’s just…it’s odd, waking up here, in your place.” I gave up trying to explain it and sighed. “Gift horse, meet mouth. I know.”

One of his arms held me more tightly to him, and his hand smoothed down my back. As always, it was as if that hand had some kind of sedative in it, the way he had me relaxing into him.

When he spoke, his voice was gentle. “Nah. You won’t get stuck, or if you do, you’ll give a yell, and I’ll come pull you out by your…fin.” When I smiled, he did his own almost-smile and said, “You wouldn’t be a goldfish, either. An angelfish all the way, that’d be you.”

I nearly tipped off his lap at Karen’s voice from behind me. “And…awkward once again. I ask myself—do I check if we’re ever having breakfast? Do I pretend you guys aren’t making out? Do I just eat cereal and forget it? Or what?”

“You ask if we’re having breakfast,” Hemi said as I jumped off his lap, flashing Karen pretty well in the process. Of course, we’d shared a bed since she’d been little, so that wasn’t exactly a newsworthy moment. “And I tell you, yes, we are. Straight away.”

Which was how I ended up eating breakfast on Hemi’s terrace. I didn’t change first, either, because it was July-warm outside already, and I didn’t have anywhere I had to go or anything I had to do before the workweek began, other than unpack and explore my new neighborhood. Inez would be taking care of everything else, Hemi had said.

You could call it different. Or you could call it bizarre, because Hemi had been wrong. I was
definitely
a goldfish.

It was so odd not to have to rush to get my chores done, not to mention having Hemi there to hand me my cup of coffee, made from a machine so complicated I hadn’t mastered half its secrets, and then having him reveal a basket of croissants delivered from a French bakery that morning. He scrambled eggs while I sliced strawberries and tossed them in a bowl with the fresh raspberries and blueberries we’d bought the evening before, and Karen set the table. Not at the sarcophagus this time, because Hemi said, “We’ll use the terrace, eh.”

“Oh,” Karen said, “the
terrace,”
and made a comical face at me.

Hemi’s lips twitched, but all he said was, “I have it. We may as well use it. Every Kiwi would rather sit outside. Surely you’ve learned that by now.”

We went outside, and he was right. There were no birds, and in that way, it wasn’t a bit like New Zealand. And yet, it was. We were in the midst of one of the largest cities on Earth, but up here, trees in tubs offered dappled shade, and a fountain trickled water music onto moss-covered rocks, competing with the echo of traffic far below. Two cushioned chaises sat to one side inviting you to lounge, while a glass-topped dining table near the French doors to the living room was surrounded by six natural wicker chairs softened by overstuffed cushions in a variety of bright hues.

There was something new about the table, too. It had a pergola built over it now. I’d noticed the wood-framed structure yesterday, but I hadn’t realized that the terra cotta pot at each corner held jasmine that had begun to twine up the wooden supports.

“Oh,” I said, touching one of the star-shaped perfumed blossoms as I stood beside the table holding my bowl of berries. “Nice.”

“Not grown up yet,” Hemi said, which was true. The vines reached only my shoulder height, leaving the overhead wooden frame of the arbor bare. “But I thought you’d like it.”

I barely heard him, because I was finally registering something else I hadn’t before. The square planters near the terrace railings, and what they now held.

“You have roses,” I told Hemi. “When did all this happen?”

“While we were gone,” he said. “Go look.”

“The eggs will get cold,” I said. I sat down, but my eyes strayed to the planters all the same. He’d had roses planted. That was…nice. White, lavender, yellow, and red. Purity, enchantment, friendship, and passion. All the best things. “I could have cut my own flowers yesterday and put them in my mother’s vase,” I told Hemi. “Except, um…”

“Hope hates heights,” Karen informed Hemi. “She won’t go to the edge, because she doesn’t want to look over.”

“I don’t want to look
through,”
I said. The walls around the terrace weren’t stone, like you’d expect. They were some kind of Plexiglas. They were
clear.
And we were on the twenty-seventh floor.

“Is that true, sweetheart?” Hemi asked.

“That would make anybody nervous.” I picked up a croissant and dipped the special spoon into the pot of extra-special jam. “But the roses are beautiful. Why did you do that?”

He looked at me, not smiling. “Why do you think?”

“It doesn’t make
me
nervous,” Karen said. She hopped up and went over to the edge of the terrace, stood between two planters of roses, and leaned against the glass, waving her arms behind her, over the edge. “Whee!”

“Stop,” I said. “Please. Stop.” I was half-rising, and Hemi had a hand around mine.

“Never mind,” he said. “Karen, come sit down and eat your breakfast.” She looked startled, and I wondered if I should step in, but I didn’t. I was glad he was getting her away from the edge.

“Let me guess,” Hemi said to me. “You have falling nightmares.”

I scooped berries onto my plate. I’d showed him all my weak places yesterday, and I couldn’t stand to show him more today, yet I’d been doing just that. “Maybe,” I said, as lightly as I could manage. “I try not to remember bad dreams. No point. They’re over.”

Hemi didn’t say anything, just studied my face a moment, then began to eat his own eggs. Karen asked me, “What are you going to do about swim lessons, then? What if they make you dive off the board in order to pass?”

“I guess I’ll deal with that when I come to it.” I didn’t say,
Then I won’t pass
. Not skiing was bad enough. I wasn’t going to add not diving to my list a few days later. I was brave about plenty. Just not about diving and skiing. Or heights.

“Did you mean it about the lessons?” Karen asked Hemi. “Because I looked it up on the Y’s website yesterday, and it’s two hundred dollars apiece, and that’s just to get to Advanced Beginner. Which Hope isn’t going to make it to, not if she’s scared to jump off the side.”

“I’m not scared to jump off the side,” I felt compelled to point out. “I’m scared to fall off the twenty-seventh floor.”

“Ha,” Karen said. Unfortunately, she knew me too well.

“I meant it,” Hemi told Karen. “But you won’t be going to the Y, and Hope doesn’t need to worry about jumping off anything she doesn’t want to. There’s a pool on the roof of this building, and I’ll be hiring an instructor.”

“No way,” Karen said, and not in a “No
way,
you’re kidding, you wouldn’t do that,” kind of way. More in a “No way” kind of way.

Hemi had been spreading jam onto his croissant, but now, his hand stilled. “Pardon?” he asked, his tone silky-smooth.

I knew exactly what that tone meant. I was trying to figure out how to step in when Karen answered. “That’s really nice and all, I guess, but I thought about it, and no way am I changing schools, and no
way
am I not going to the Y. Have you thought about all the social opportunities I’d be missing? All right, I’m not going to meet anybody taking swimming lessons, because I’ll bet everybody else in the class is going to be twelve years old, but what if there’s a really cute guy doing laps in the next lane, and he notices my graceful figure and courage on the high dive and finds himself changing his schedule so he can swim next to me, hoping I can steal away from my teacher and join him to whisper hurried, passionate words of love as we…” She waved her butter knife in the air. “Hang onto the side or something, separated only by a rope and our pasts? My future husband, the love of my life, about to start his pre-med studies at Harvard, and I’ve tragically missed meeting him because rich people don’t take regular swimming lessons.”

“I had no idea you were planning to marry a doctor,” I said. “I thought you were planning to blaze your own trail. Based on that, I’m thinking it’s going to be in fiction. Anyway, if he’s going to Harvard in the fall, your love affair’s going to have, what, six weeks to flower? Probably not long enough for the love of your life to get going.”

“Too old for you, too,” Hemi had to point out. I nudged him with my knee, but he went on and said, “Eighteen? No. Not happening.”

“I’m just giving an example,” Karen said. “A
hypothetical
example. With a guy two years older, which is
not
too old. Why can’t I blaze my own trail
and
have a great love? And how long did you guys know each other before your love affair flowered?”