Du Rose Sons

by Bowes, K T

  Chapter 14

  “I’m still knackered,” Hana yawned, her face against her husband’s naked chest. She fingered the dusting of hair lightly under her fingers and felt him pull her harder into him. Their eyes locked and he smiled at her, the temporary contentment in his expression backed by fear. “Do I look like I spent all last night crying?” Hana asked, sounding like a vulnerable child and Logan laughed, a deep, comforting sound low in his chest.

  “You asked me that on our wedding day.” He pushed a coil of red hair out of Hana’s eyes. She sighed and snuggled in deeper.

  “I should have guessed it didn’t bode well.” Her body shook against his with the force of his chuckle.

  “I didn’t know what to say then and I sure as hell don’t know what to say now,” he whispered. “Back then, I handed you a handkerchief and told you that you looked fine.”

  “Was it a lie?” The question hung between them.

  Logan shook his head, “No. You always look better than fine to me. You looked amazing at eighteen, pregnant, with your dress too tight and snot and tears running down your face. I held onto that image for twenty-six years and adored you. Anything else is an improvement. It’s aroha, Hana. Love.”

  They lay still for a while, Hana dozing at the soporific sensation of Logan’s long fingers stroking her shoulder. She jumped as he spoke, “Hana, why wouldn’t you let me know what sex the baby was?”

  She inhaled deeply and tried to move, but his arm muscles flexed and he prevented her from balking him. They had come too far for him to allow everything to slip back down the dismal tunnel of relationship doom. Hana shrugged, reluctant to dig up yesterday’s hurts, still not sure what today held for her.

  “Hana, nothing’s changed, babe. I still love you, Phoe and this baby.” Logan’s fingers moved over the sensitive skin of Hana’s stomach and she shivered. The child shifted under his father’s hand. “Whatever Ryan is or isn’t to me, it doesn’t change any of that. I need you to believe me.”

  “Is that his name? Ryan?”

  Logan nodded. “Yeah.”

  Hana pressed her lips together. “You’ve already got a son now. A full-grown heir. I didn’t want my little boy to begin life in competition, like you did.”

  “Geez Hana, you have no idea how left-field this all came from.” Logan sounded confused and desperate. “I don’t know how to handle it or how to be. I drove home that night wondering how the hell I was going to tell you and then you’d made this gorgeous meal and I felt like a complete git!”

  “You behaved like one.”

  Logan stroked under Hana’s right eye with his thumb, pulling her naked body harder into his. “I’ll never stop feeling guilty for that, no matter how long I live. You didn’t deserve it.” He silenced his wife with a smouldering kiss. “I was pretty floored to see my wife riding our daughter down the mountain on my mare though,” he smirked. “I thought there was something wrong with Sacha when I tried to mount up. She turned her backside on me and when I finally managed to get the saddle on her, she bucked me off. I’m surprised you didn’t hear me swearing!”

  “She was an angel for us. I wanted to come and talk to you, to try and understand what had happened, but you took the truck. Then when I saw you, you were...” Hana put her hand over her mouth to stem the painful memory.

  “I’m sorry,” her husband whispered again. “Look, having Ryan around won’t make me love our son any less. He’s a bit sullen but I think he’ll come right. It must be hard being sixteen and dragged half way round the world to meet your father for the first time.” Logan sighed. “I think that’s what got to me most - this sense of blame. I hate that I grew up not knowing who my father was and then this kid ended up with the same fate. It made me feel sick to my stomach. I won’t let him being at the hotel affect us.”

  “He’s not the problem!” Hana interrupted, her tone sharp and unyielding. “Him I can deal with. He’ll be just like any other grasping, desperate teenage boy looking for validation. It’s her I can’t deal with. Logan darling.” Hana mimicked Sylvia’s annoying voice. “There’s no place for me because she’s taken it. It’s not your supposed son that’s ruining our relationship, it’s his mother and what’s more, she’s doing it on purpose.”

  “What’s she been doing?” Logan sounded disbelieving and Hana shook her head and tried to push him away.

  “Just open your eyes, man! Ask Leslie, ask anyone. I feel like the mad wife kept up in the tower while the mistress rules the castle. In fact, she said that exact sentence when she walked up to see me in Leslie’s apartment unannounced. Apparently, we’re getting a divorce and there’s nothing I can do about it. You might both let me see Phoe occasionally - if the mental asylum deems me fit. You wonder why I’ve cracked up, sat at home wondering how you’re going, rekindling your love affair. I’m over it, Logan. I’m not doing this anymore!”

  Logan swore and reached out for his wife, his eyes blending rage with agony in their grey depths. Hana pushed his hands away and escaped the bed, stalking her slender body angrily over to the ensuite and locking herself in. As the hot water ran over her rounded belly like a waterfall, she looked down at it in dismay. She could no longer see her feet. When did that happen? Hana slid her fingers thoughtfully across the brown line which had grown darker over the last week, running from her breastbone past her navel to somewhere she could no longer see. Paris.

  Hana needn’t have bothered locking the bathroom door. A misspent youth ensured very few locks kept Logan Du Rose out. Hana heard the door click behind him and jumped in fright as the shower cubicle opened and water droplets cascaded out onto the tiled floor. Logan’s naked body was cold as it pressed up against hers, but that wasn’t the only reason Hana shivered. He brought his face down so his lips almost touched hers and rested his forehead against her fringe. Through the gushing water he whispered, “I regret many things in my life. But the biggest is not having noticed what was happening under my nose. I’ll sort it, Hana, I promise. Nobody will ever take your place, not in my heart and certainly not in my house. Please trust me and give me a chance to make it right? Please don’t leave me, Hana?”

  Hana moved her head just slightly and the water slapped and pounded in her ears as her wet lips found Logan’s. She slipped her tongue gently between his teeth and flicked at his, nestling there waiting. She heard and felt his sigh escape. A dawning realisation blossomed in Hana’s chest like an opening flower. She’d been doing this all wrong, backing off and giving Sylvia room instead of playing her at her own dirty game. Something about the other woman jarred strangely in her psyche, but Hana knew deep down that the truth would eventually come out. It always does. She settled into the task of satiating her pregnancy hormones and some of her own and let Logan along for the ride, confident that nothing Sylvia had to offer could rival this.

  Chapter 15

  “Twelve hundred bucks!” Logan hauled the Jeep’s sorry ass all the way back up State Highway 1 to the hotel. “Why would Jack let the road tax run that far out? He’s going to bloody pay me back!”

  “At least he had a Warrant of Fitness for it,” Hana sighed, “otherwise you would have paid for that as well.”

  “I needn’t have damn well bothered anyway. I haven’t seen a cop car all the way home!”

  Hana’s smile died on her lips at the sight of the hotel nestled at the bottom of the valley. If it wasn’t for Phoenix, she didn’t care if she never came back here again. It felt ruined somehow. Logan reached across and took Hana’s stiff fingers into his, pulling her hand onto his thigh. She saw in his eyes that he sensed her reluctance to return. “Logan,” her voice sounded plaintive and she resented the weakness she heard escaping from her soul, “why did you put my clothes in the bin?”

  “What?” Logan glanced across at her tracksuit pants. They were still a little damp when she put them on in the motel room and Hana had entertained him as she hopped around complaining.

  “I need you to tell me the truth,” Hana persisted, pu
shing through her husband’s confusion. “My clothes were in the dustbin in our...her room. I went to fetch some stuff and they were in the bin. She said you put them there when you were there with her...well, there with her, if you get my meaning. Apparently it was symbolic - you threw me away too.” Hana chewed her lip with anxiety.

  Logan flung the Jeep round the turning circle in front of the hotel entrance and left it there with its wheels askew, the engine cooling with a series of clicks and the odd worrying hiss. “Do you honestly think I would do that?” The aggression was back in his voice and Hana refused to feel intimidated by the flash fire of Logan’s emotions.

  “It was my jeans and the lovely top you bought me in Italy, the floral one.” Hana’s fingers writhed in her lap. “I just need to know. I can’t do this...” she waved a flailing arm at the huge building to her left which stared down at her, sapping her strength and syringing her resolve out through the soles of her feet.

  Logan tipped the keys onto the driver’s seat and kicked the front tyre as he slammed the door. Hana’s shoulders slumped as she realised the foolishness of her question. Twice she almost asked him at the motel, but was too afraid of wrecking their fragile equilibrium. The door next to her was yanked open, creaking and grinding horribly on its ancient hinge. Logan squatted down in the gap. His fingers sought the ready tears on Hana’s cheeks, his eyes dark and forbidding.

  “I can’t go in there unless I know the truth,” Hana persisted, turning Logan’s answer into a grail that needed to be won before she could proceed. “This is pointless,” she sighed. “It’s all too hard.” It was futile wallpapering over the cracks in their marriage. It would render it as false and empty as her relationship with Vik, which would have detonated spectacularly in her face had he not died before tearing down his family with his own hands. Logan’s fingers pressed along her jawbone, turning her to face him, his hand insistent against her resistance.

  “Look at me, Hana. Besides the fact it was a designer shirt and cost a fortune, why the hell would I do something like that? I’d be more likely to smuggle it away and keep it because it was something of yours, than throw it in the bin. The situation between us has been killing me and I would do anything to keep you here, even threatening that you’d never see Phoe again if you left. That was desperation, not hatred.”

  Hana swallowed, finding her throat dry. “Please just get Phoe and take me home. I don’t want to go inside there. I want to go home.”

  “Soon,” Logan said, standing up and straightening out his jeans. “Come in for a while and then I promise, we’ll go. I just need to make a phone call.”

  With a body that oozed reluctance, Hana climbed from the car, feeling the gravel through the soles of her trainers. Logan’s fingers were warm as he took her hand in his. “Hana, do you trust me?” he asked, his face serious as his grey eyes searched her green ones. Hana shook her head and his face broke into a smile. “Well, at least there’s no change there then.”

  She smirked as he led her up the wide concrete steps into the hotel lobby.

  The receptionist gave a happy wave at Hana from behind her desk in the far corner and she returned the greeting with a smile that went quickly sour, as Sylvia rose from one of the comfy sofas over near the roaring fire. “Loge, darling. I’ve been looking for you,” she simpered, walking over to Hana’s husband and striking a pose intended to be seductive. “Where did you go?”

  Logan held tightly onto his wife’s hand but Sylvia placed her body carefully in front of Hana’s, eclipsing her completely from view and making the mother fear for her unborn child against Sylvia’s sharp elbows. Hana tried to release her grasp on his iron fingers, but Logan would have none of it. Misery and depression washed over her like a rock fall smashing everything in its path, but Logan’s eyes were opened. He saw what was under his nose. “Excuse us,” he used the back of his other hand to move Sylvia out of the way and bring Hana forward between them. Without a backward glance he put a muscular arm protectively around his wife’s shoulders and led her away down the long corridor to the family dining room. The delicate blonde woman tottered behind on her heels, struggling to keep up and mewing Logan’s name all the way to the heavy fire door. She struggled to open it after it closed, pushing against it until she burst into the room, finding Logan sharing some private joke with his wife and kissing her tenderly on the lips, his hand nestled on her rib cage very close to her breast.

  Sylvia’s face betrayed a woman for whom things were no longer going to plan. She blustered a little and tried to move closer to Logan again. “Darling, I would really appreciate some help with something in our room.” She glanced at Hana, who tried not to rise to the bait even though the woman’s mischief rattled her volatile blood pressure through the roof. Hana took quiet, deep breaths and gazed unseeing through the window. Sylvia ran her fingers up Logan’s shirt in a physical show of defiance to Hana, who was paralysed with her husband’s arms around her.

  Just as she could stand the ridiculous tug of war no longer and knew she would have to bow out gracefully, Logan spoke, “I’m booking us a little trip to Auckland in a few days. We can all go.” His steely voice made Hana freeze, her body rigidifying in his arms. The thought of being trapped in a moving vehicle with Sylvia and her offspring was like purgatory.

  “All of us?” Sylvia tossed her blonde hair and looked put out. Hana knew she would spend the evening trying to work out how to get rid of her competitor and Hana shivered as her blood ran cold. Smiling with blue eyes filled with hate, Sylvia left the room, clattering down the corridor loudly in her upset.

  Hana rounded on Logan. “Is this your idea of...”

  His lips pressed firmly to hers, silenced her question. He bit her bottom lip and moved around to her neck before whispering, “I promised I’d take care of it.”

  “You better had!” Hana retorted nastily. “Otherwise I might be tempted to take out a hit on her. Someone once told me it was biblical.”

  Before Logan could answer, a raucous knocking came from the lower portion of the heavy dining room door. He strode over and opened it, finding Phoenix on the other side. She was dressed in a strange, ancient looking pinafore dress and had two odd bobbles in her dark hair, which made her look like an alien. Pleased to see her daddy she launched herself into the air and showered his face with wet kisses. “Dada,” she breathed between each kiss. Leslie wasn’t far behind, huffing and puffing through the doorway and leaning on the jamb for a moment to catch her breath. Her brown eyes took in Hana’s rumpled appearance with concern and her expression was questioning as she looked at the younger woman. Hana smiled, conveying nothing and Leslie looked unsatisfied. But Hana knew she daren’t pry, not with Logan in the room. Whilst he valued her running of the hotel, they clashed horribly on personal issues and he hated her meddling in his affairs. Leslie wouldn’t risk it and so Hana was safe for the moment.

  “My moko’s been doing drawing with her granddaddy,” the old lady announced with pride, dropping an enormous sheaf of papers onto the dining table.

  “Horseys for you,” Phoenix told Logan, tilting her face so she could peer directly into his eyes, grey on grey. “And for Mummy.”

  “Granddaddy Alfie does a good horsey, don’t he, moko?” Leslie commented, urgently trying to catch Hana’s eye with Logan’s temporary distraction. Phoenix nodded enthusiastically at Leslie and listened when her step-grandmother asked her, “Why don’t you take mama up to see him in the flat? He’d love that now, wouldn’t he?”

  Phoenix smiled and wiggled to get down, keen to take her mother up to the highest point in the house to see the old man. He was calm and quiet unlike most of the other people in the hotel. He was rarely too busy to make time for a little girl and they sat in front of the long window facing north and he told her stories about the old days. “Come, mama.” Phoenix held her tiny hand out to Hana, the thumb still wet from sucking. “I got Liza’s on, look.” She patted the elderly pinafore and Hana smiled, understanding. The heirloom dress wo
uld be ancient if it belonged to Logan’s half-sister, probably a hand-me-down from even further back. It looked like it should be in the museum, not being abused by biscuit crumbs and streaks of crayon.

  Phoenix didn’t want to be carried, happy to waddle along holding her mother’s hand. But half way down the corridor she halted abruptly, her hand going to her mouth and her eyes troubled. “Oh. No.”

  Hana stopped and looked down at her daughter, curious.

  “Fuffy, back ner.” Phoenix’s cheeks grew pink and tears sprang into her pretty eyes.

  “Let’s get him then,” Hana said patiently, referring to the fluffy horse Tama had bought the child when she was only a few weeks old. They turned and made the journey back to the kitchen past the ballroom and the smaller guest dining room. Voices could be heard through the dining room door despite its robustness and Hana cringed. Phoenix looked up at her mother and to Hana’s surprise, put her finger up to her lips. Hana wondered where she’d picked up that little gem but didn’t need to ponder on it too long. Leslie missed very little and was obviously passing the skill down to Phoenix.

  Inside the room, Logan and his step-mother argued. It was a common occurrence, and Hana hovered outside nervously. “That conniving bitch is running up one hell of a hotel bill with no intention of paying it. She just keeps telling the staff to speak to you.”

  “Well now you’ve spoken to me,” Logan’s voice sounded low and angry as he narrowly managed to keep his patience.

  “What do I put her expenses down to then?” Leslie became irate and Hana felt a stab of guilt as her mother-in-law poked the scorpion on her behalf.

  “I’ve told you, I’ll deal with it! For God’s sake, leave it woman!”

  “Don’t you blaspheme at me, Logan Du Rose. You’re not too old to go over my knee for a whack!”