Persuading Spring: A Sexy New Zealand Romance (The Four Seasons Book 4) (5 page)

“Ah. Yeah. I could nip out and get you some
clothes.”

“Can’t we have room service, Dad?” Mateo
asked.

He hadn’t thought of that. He raised his
eyebrows at her. “Would you prefer that? They have a good menu here.”

Her face lit up a bit, and she nodded.

“Okay.” He retrieved the menu. “How about I
order a few things and we all dip in?”

She nodded again, her eyes light as they
rested on him.

“Don’t forget chicken nuggets,” Mateo
prompted.

“Of course. No meal’s complete without
nuggets.” He rolled his eyes at her. “Any requests?”

“What do you recommend?” she asked Mateo.

The boy studied the menu solemnly. “I like
the meat pizza.”

“Pizza it is, then.”

“No ancheevees though.”

She kept a straight face. “Definitely no
ancheevees.”

Aaron hid a smile, picked up the hotel
phone, and dialed. He could think of worse ways to spend a Saturday afternoon.

They ate pizza—without anchovies—chicken
nuggets, fish bites, fries, and a variety of other food that probably had limited
nutritional value, although Aaron did order up a couple of salads too, giving
Mateo a spoonful of one which, in spite of his complaints, he ate.

Aaron also ordered a bottle of Marlborough
Cabernet Merlot, and Bridget didn’t refuse a glass when he offered it to her.
She sipped it, enjoying the taste of blackcurrant with notes of cloves and
spice. Mal hated red wine. For some reason, that seemed to make it taste even
more delicious. It slid down to her stomach, warming her all the way, and she
welcomed that too, feeling as if she’d been cold for millennia.

For a while, they didn’t talk much, not
about anything personal, anyway. They watched a quiz show, Aaron and Mateo
obviously playing an old game where they gave random answers to each question,
making each other laugh the more outrageous the answers became until in the end
Bridget was smiling too, caught up in their camaraderie.

He had a lovely relationship with the boy—firm
and yet friendly. She could imagine he was great with dogs—they’d be well
trained and well behaved, but they’d adore him, and she understood why.

He was obviously divorced from Mateo’s
mother—or separated, at least. His tone on the phone to her had held a
frustration she knew only too well. Why was he in a hotel? Did he stay here all
the time? She wanted to ask, but she didn’t want to question him in front of his
son.

She studied him while he chatted to Mateo
about the Egyptians after the boy had asked a question about Tutankhamun. He
was kind and gentle, and yet very much a man. He called his son ‘mate’. The
sweatshirt she wore smelled of his aftershave. He was serious and she imagined
he worked hard at his job, but he was ready to laugh too, and his chuckle was
quite infectious. He was polite and courteous, and yet when his gray eyes looked
at her, they held an intensity that gave her a little frisson down her spine. He
liked her, but he wouldn’t dream of saying so under the circumstances.

At the thought of what had happened earlier
that day, Bridget’s spirits sank. For a few moments, she’d put it to the back
of her mind, but she was stupid if she thought she could avoid thinking about
it. At some point, she was going to have to face the cold, hard truth. Mal had
dumped her in the cruelest, most hurtful way imaginable, and she was going to
have to deal with that at some point.

“Are you okay?” Aaron bent his head to
catch her eye.

Her appetite vanishing, she pushed away the
half-eaten food and picked up her wine. “That was lovely, thank you.” She
finished off the glass. “I should go, though.”

“Of course.” He put his plate aside. “If
that’s what you want, I can call you a taxi. Where will you go? Your parents?”
he suggested.

“They’re both dead.”

Mateo looked up, halfway through eating a
chicken nugget, and stared at her.

Aaron’s brow creased. “I’m sorry.”

She shrugged. “I was only ten when my dad
died. Fourteen when my mum followed him. Hitch—my brother—looked after me while
I grew up.”

“What about his place?”

“I could… I have lots of friends, but I
don’t really want to see them right now.” She didn’t want to talk about it, and
she didn’t think she could bear to see the pity on their faces.

“I’d better go home,” she said. “I was
supposed to be moving in with Mal when we got back from our honeymoon so
everything’s packed up, but the rent’s paid for another two weeks.”

“Are you sure you want to be on your own?”
Aaron asked cautiously.

“What do you mean?”

“Will you be okay if your… ex turns up?”

Her ex. Yeah, that was what he was now. For
real. No short term breakup anymore.

She shrugged. “I don’t see why he would.”

“It’s only… Hitch told me that he turned up—I’m
not sure where.”

Her eyes widened and her head spun. “You
spoke to Hitch?”

“Only briefly, after you finished your call.
Just to reassure him you were all right.”

“What… why did Mal turn up?”

“Hitch told me not to tell you.” He ran a
hand through his hair when she glared at him. “He wanted to apologize.”

She inhaled, fury sweeping through her. If
Mateo hadn’t been sitting next to her, she would have sworn violently. “I see.
What happened?”

“Apparently one of Hitch’s mates gave him a
right hook.” Aaron’s lips twitched. The notion pleased him.

She stared at him. Which of her friends
would have done that? Gene, maybe, as he was a trained protection officer,
although she wouldn’t have put it past Rhett either. She felt a warm glow in
her stomach at the thought that they’d stood up for her. She wasn’t alone in
all this. Mal might have taken the hope of marriage and babies away from her,
but he couldn’t take her friends.

Her gaze slid to Mateo. “Do you think he
deserved it?” she asked. The boy nodded. “So do I,” she said.

Aaron gave a short laugh. “I’m glad.”

He was right though—she didn’t want to go
back to the house if there was any chance of Mal turning up there and catching
her alone.

“You don’t have to make your mind up now,”
he said easily, obviously picking up on her hesitation. “Stay a bit longer,
have another glass of wine. Mat’s going to have a shower—”

“No I’m not.”

“—and then
Shrek
is showing on the
movie channel.”

Her lips curved up. “I haven’t seen that
for ages.”

“That’s settled then.” He slapped Mateo on
the leg. “Come on, boyo. Let’s clean you up.”

“Aw, Dad…”

Aaron stood, picked the boy up in a
fireman’s lift, and tickled him as he carried him through to the shower.
Smiling, Bridget took the plates over to the kitchenette, scraped the scraps
into the rubbish, and washed the plates.

Aaron came out after a few minutes and
dried up beside her. Singing emitted from the shower, the theme tune to
Transformers
,
if she wasn’t mistaken. The two of them exchanged a smile.

Bridget finished the last plate and wiped
her hands. “I am sorry for interrupting your day,” she said as she leaned
against the counter. “I’m guessing that your time with your son is precious,
and I’m sure the last thing you needed was to play knight in shining armor to
some hopeless woman on the quay.”

“You’re not hopeless.” He dried the last
plate and hung the tea towel over the rail. “In fact I think you’re coping
well. It’s no small thing to have a relationship end, and the way it’s happened
to you is just… well…” He glanced at the bathroom door to make sure that Mateo
couldn’t hear him. “…fucking awful,” he finished.

Her lips twisted. She scratched at a mark
on the counter. “Do you know the worst thing?”

“What?”

Normally she wouldn’t have said it out
loud, but she felt liberated by the fact that Aaron was a stranger and she’d be
unlikely to see him again.

“I think I’m more upset by the humiliation
of being jilted than I am about actually losing Mal.” A weight lifted as she
said it, even though it was an awful thing to admit.

Aaron didn’t say anything, and eventually
she lifted her gaze to his. His gray eyes studied her, interested, thoughtful.

“Does that make me a terrible person?” she
whispered.

He gave a short laugh. “It sounds as if you
had a lucky escape.”

Lucky… A few hours ago it would have been
the last word she would have used to describe herself. Maybe he was right,
though.

Aaron was still watching her. His gaze
dropped to her lips, and she wondered whether he was thinking what it might be
like to kiss her.

Of course he wasn’t. Her cheeks warmed at
the irreverent thought. He must be desperate to get rid of her. He must be
cursing himself for walking up to her on the quay.

“Dad!” A voice echoed from inside the
bathroom. “I’m done!”

Aaron turned away. “I won’t be long.” He picked
up a pair of pajamas and disappeared into the bathroom. Soon, the sounds of a
boy being dried and dressed filtered through the door.

Bridget walked back to the bed, stared at
the empty glass of wine on the bedside table, and then at the half-full bottle.
Sighing, she poured herself another glass. At the moment, she was living from
one minute to the next. It would soon become clear what she was supposed to do,
she was sure.

Before long, Mateo emerged in his
Transformers
pajamas and, to her surprise, ran toward her and jumped onto the bed, moving up
next to where she sat with her back to the headboard. He flicked on the TV.
“Shrek’s started, Dad! Get the snacks.”

“On my way.” Aaron rustled around in the
bag he’d been carrying when she’d seen him on the quay, produced a few packets,
then retrieved a tub of ice cream from the freezer before coming over to the
bed.

He handed her the tub and a spoon. “Your
share of the chocolate fudge brownie.”

She took the spoon from him and smiled.
“Thank you.”

He went around the other side of the bed
and sat beside Mateo. The two of them opened the packets of popcorn and
chocolate buttons. Clearly, this was a recurring ritual.

Bridget took the lid off the ice cream,
dipped the spoon in, and tasted the ice cream. The rich chocolatey taste filled
her mouth, and she knew then that it would always remind her of this moment,
sitting curled on the bed, with her life in tatters but somehow feeling that
everything was going to be okay, even though she didn’t yet know how.

They watched
Shrek
, not talking much
but laughing at the jokes and singing along to the songs, and that led into
another movie as the light gradually faded and the day came to an end. The rain
had eased off, and outside, the clouds had parted to reveal a tangerine sky.

Bridget looked down to see that Mateo’s
eyes had closed and the boy had dozed off. She reached out and touched Aaron’s
arm, and he looked down and smiled.

Together, the two of them got up gently,
took out the empty bowls, and then Aaron covered Mateo up.

Bridget swallowed the last few drops of
wine in her glass. Aaron came over to where she stood by the window and held up
the bottle.

“Seems a shame to waste it,” he said.

She sighed and gave a little nod, and he
poured most of it into her glass and the rest into his.

“To the future,” he said, holding his glass
up.

The last rays of the sun fell across him,
warming his skin to a caramel color and turning his eyes to silver.

“To the future.” She touched her glass to
his and sipped the rich, red wine. When he gestured to one of the seats at the
table, she took a chair, and he sat opposite her.

“He’s a lovely boy,” she said, nodding
toward Mateo.

“Yeah, he’s all right.” He grinned and
leaned back in the chair, hooking one arm over the back. He had big, strong
hands. She could imagine him handling restless animals, holding them still
until they calmed.

“Mateo’s an unusual name,” she said. “Is
it…?”

“Spanish. Nita’s from Barcelona—her full
name’s Juanita. She came over here on a working holiday. She was picking kiwi
fruit in the orchards in the Bay of Islands, and I bumped into her in Kerikeri.
She was beautiful, exotic—long, dark, wavy hair down to her hips, black eyes,
curvy figure. I fell for her immediately. Within six weeks, I’d proposed. A
month later, we were married.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah. I tend to be impulsive. I shouldn’t
say it was a mistake because she gave me Mat, and I wouldn’t be without him. So
for that I’m glad I met her. But it’s been a rocky road. She missed her home,
for a start. I understood that, but my life, my career, my family, are all
here. We went to Spain once a year, and the journey grew to be something I
dreaded. She’d be ecstatic for the weeks leading up to it—manic, almost, and
when we were there she’d be her old self—energetic, beautiful, lively. Then as
the holiday drew to an end and she was due to go back, she’d get sadder and
sadder, and angry—at me, at everyone. When we came back, she’d sink into a
depression for months. We argued about it all the time until, eventually, there
was nothing left but the bad times.”

“I’m sorry.” He looked sad, she thought,
his shoulders slumping, the lines on his face illustrating his unhappiness.

“It gets worse,” he said. “I moved out of
the family home in Russell, which is where my surgery is, in the Bay of
Islands. Our divorce eventually came through. I knew she didn’t like the
bay—she missed the city—but I was shocked when out of the blue she announced
she was planning to take Mateo back to Spain.”

“Oh no. What did you do?”

“Got the lawyers involved. Mat doesn’t want
to go, and, even though he’s young, the Lawyer for Child says he understands everything
and genuinely wants to stay here. He doesn’t like Spain—Nita tries to get him
to speak Spanish but he refuses. She thinks I’ve poisoned him against it, but I
haven’t. I’m very careful not to say anything negative about either her or
Spain in his hearing.”