by Bowes, K T
“Go where?” Logan’s voice turned icy cold and his chest became rigid against Hana’s back. She watched the veins and sinews in his forearms flex and tighten as tension ran through his body. She sighed and shook her head at Tama in disbelief as he completed his manoeuvre.
“You tell him, Hana. I’m going to...up to...” Tama thought of a reasonable place to absent himself. “I’m going up to see Phoe and Wiri.” He bolted to the left of the lobby to a small archway marked ‘Private’ and disappeared up the spiral staircase. Hana hoped he fell up the stairs in his hurry.
Without releasing his wife, Logan turned her slowly until she faced him, measuring the look of guilt in her eyes. “I think you and I need to have a little chat, don’t we?” he said, raising one dark eyebrow in humourless expectation. Hana quailed as Logan took her hand firmly in his and led her after Tama’s retreating footsteps. At the top of the stairs he turned left and headed towards Michael’s old room. Holding the door open for Hana, Logan let her go past him and she cringed and tried not to touch his body as she went through the gap. A dull thud overhead told her that Tama was horsing around with her daughter in the upstairs apartment and she ground her teeth in anger at the injustice.
“Right then,” Logan’s fingers seized the lapel of Hana’s jacket and he fixed his gaze on her firmly. “So what has my errant wife been up to now?” he asked sternly. To Hana’s surprise, he fingered the material and then slipped it over her shoulders backwards. Her jaw dropped as he set to work on the buttons of her blouse, growing quickly frustrated with the small fiddly pearls and pushing his hands underneath and starting on her leggings, slipping them down over her hips.
“Are you kidding me? I thought you wanted to talk!” Hana exclaimed and Logan laughed, a gentle snuff that teased the soft skin on her neck.
“We can talk if you want?” His voice sounded husky and Hana shivered at Logan’s lips on her bare shoulder as he shoved the flimsy material out of the way. “But you might be too busy for a while.”
Logan enjoyed a perverse pleasure at making love to his wife on Michael’s bed. “Serves him right!” Logan muttered when Hana complained. “Anyway it’s our bed, our room and our hotel, so...”
Hana pressed her lips to his to prevent the rest of the sentence. “So am I still in trouble?” she asked, sounding cute and helpless. Logan shrugged. Hana looked at him curiously. “I thought you were mad.”
Logan pulled her into his chest and wrapped his arms firmly around her, rubbing his nose and lips through the auburn locks at the side of Hana’s head. “Mmnn,” he sighed happily. “Stop worrying.”
“I just hate it when you’re mad with me,” Hana breathed softly on his chest, ruffling his dark chest hair and Logan squeezed her in tighter to stop her.
“I’m not mad with you. Do you think I don’t know what you’ve been up to?”
Hana pulled away from her husband and pouted. “How do you know?”
Logan snuffed quietly and pulled her back into him. “I know everything. It’s my job to know and I’m not mad. So just lay here for a bit because I have to go back to the stable yard soon.”
Hana snuggled into Logan’s chest and lay her cheek against his downy olive skin. “Yes but...” she couldn’t resist and he dug his fingers into her ribs just underneath her armpits. Hana squeaked in shock and then giggled as Logan tickled her. “Stop, stop!” she squealed as the tickle reaction became excruciating.
A loud hammering on the door made Hana jump and Logan stopped instantly. He quickly placed his index finger over her lips. “What?” he called, sounding stern and inhospitable.
Tama’s voice came through the door, heavily muffled. “I’m taking Wiri home now and Leslie’s giving Phoe her tea. So you can carry on with your old peoples’...activities.”
“Thanks,” Logan called gruffly, physically stopping Hana calling out by putting his palm across her mouth. “I’ve got a meeting with Jack soon. Are you coming back for the girls?”
“Yeah. Oh Logan, Carrie on reception asked if you’d given the message to Hana about her purse. Arama rang from his whare and said she left it there this afternoon.”
“I haven’t yet,” Logan answered with the smirk evident in his voice. “But I will. Hey, when you drop Wiri off, can you stop by and grab it for her?”
Tama’s answer was muffled by the door and the sound of a child bouncing around in the hallway. They moved away to the spiral staircase with Wiri’s voice chattering about something in his high boyish voice. Logan took his hand off Hana’s mouth and she immediately raised her voice in anger. “Why didn’t you just ignore him? I feel embarrassed now, yelling to him outside.”
“You couldn’t go to the door, Han, you’re naked and so am I. And you needed a lift home, didn’t you?”
“But now they’ll know what we were doing and it’s humiliating.”
“No it’s not, I love you.” Logan’s grey eyes narrowed with his Du Rose sex appeal and he smiled at his wife. “I reckon we’ve got another half an hour.”
It wasn’t until Hana sat down in Leslie’s apartment upstairs and watched her daughter spreading Marmite on bread with a child’s plastic spoon that another fact occurred to her. She tutted at her own stupidity and shook her head.
“What’s up?” Leslie asked her, noticing Hana’s irritation.
“Oh nothing,” Hana said crossly. “Just don’t ever let me get desperate enough to rob a bank. I’d be rubbish.”
Leslie stopped in the middle of the kitchen floor with a slice of bread in her brown hand. Phoenix reached out eagerly and moved her fingers in a pincer movement as Leslie ignored her. “For real?”
“No, no...I...no!” For some reason, Leslie’s willingness to imagine a red haired mother of three, standing in a bank in her maternity leggings trying to rob it, caused Hana to snort with laughter. Phoenix and Leslie watched with perfectly straight faces as she first squirmed, giggled and then laughed hysterically at nothing in particular. Hana kept laughing until she realised that a trip to the bathroom was urgent and then she giggled at herself in the mirror for ages. “Oh, for goodness sake,” she chided herself. “I think I’m so damn cunning and then I leave half my belongings at the place I’m not meant to be!”
Chapter 30
“What’s the problem?” Logan put a finger in his ear to dull the sound of Phoenix banging wooden blocks into a shape holder with a plastic hammer. “Well how am I supposed to know? She said she was going so I assumed she’d gone.” A pause made Hana look up from her book. “Then she must be coming back, mustn’t she? Nobody just leaves their stuff. But look, pack it all together and leave it in the housekeeper’s office. I want that room stripped and left empty from now on. If she turns up again, give her stuff back and tell her to get the hell off my property. If she won’t go, call the cops.” Logan’s posture was stiff backed and synonymous with the word ‘frustration.’ He gritted his teeth. “Helena, just deal with it. Pack it all up and take it downstairs. I don’t want her staying any longer, so when she comes back, make that clear. Get the cops and they can get rid of her.” Logan waited for a second, his face filled with irritation and then said curtly, “Then change it!” He pressed the button to cancel the call and ran his hand over his eyes.
“Look Daddy!” Bored of whacking the blocks, Phoenix decided to smack herself on the forehead with the plastic hammer. “Not ‘urting. Ouch!”
“No, babe. Don’t be an egg,” Logan told his daughter, absentmindedly removing the hammer from her small fingers. He picked her up in his strong arms and held her, his bottom lip pushed out in thought.
“What’s up?” Hana asked, her fingers stalled on the pages before her. “Fine!” she rebuked him roughly as Logan began the makings of a half convincing head shake. He corrected himself.
“Sorry. Habit.” He sat down next to her on the cream leather sofa and immediately Phoenix wiggled out of his arms and went to torment some of her other toys. She reached into the giant wooden box in the corner, obscuring the bea
utiful portrait of Benjamin Bunny that Hana had painstakingly painted on the wood and her feet teetered dangerously off the floor. She grunted with effort and then humphed with satisfaction as her hands appeared above her head waving a small red car. “Don’t be like that,” Logan whispered, putting his strong arm around Hana’s shoulders and tugging her into his chest.
“Well, you’re just doing your masking act on me, as per usual. Like I can’t be trusted. I hate it. I’m not stupid. Why can’t you understand that knowing the truth is infinitely less worrying than guessing at it?” Hana pondered the irony of her sentence, knowing that ignorance in certain matters was definitely better.
“Ok,” Logan conceded. “That was Helena. Sylvia’s not been at the hotel since dinner last night and wasn’t answering her phone or door. One of the girls went up to take her laundry back and got Helena to open the room. The bed’s not been slept in and all her stuff’s packed ready to go. But she’s not there.”
“She was packed the other night,” Hana replied from Logan’s armpit. “I saw all her stuff after the brick went through the window.”
“Apparently the cops turned up last night to talk to her about that and she wasn’t around. Carrie left her a message but she’s not shown up for it. Yet all her stuff is still there. What do you think she’s up to?”
Hana snorted and the nasty thought was exposed before she could halt it. “Do you have any rich widowers staying in the hotel? Perhaps she’s bagged herself one of them and spent the night.”
“Then she can’t be far away. But I’ve got Helena clearing the room out so she can get lost.”
“You won’t be able to make her go,” Hana said, resignation tainting her voice. “And what about the DNA test?”
Logan smiled with grim determination. “I will make her go. And we don’t exactly need a DNA anymore, do we? I told Helena to change the keypad so Sylvia won’t know the room access number.”
“But it’s been the same number since your...since Reuben had that room,” Hana said, sitting up and staring aghast at her husband. “You can’t change it.”
“I’m changing it,” Logan said with a fire in his eyes. “We won’t ever sleep there again now, so I’m turning that whole wing into guest rooms. Besides, she’s the least of my problems. Her disappearance is no biggie, not like some others.”
“What? Has someone else disappeared?” Hana asked, her interest piqued.
“Bloody Flick!” Logan’s vehemence became evident with his next sentence. “We’re due to run the stock in to check on calving and try to work this whole damn mess out and he’s nowhere to be seen. All his stuff’s gone from the bunkhouse and nobody’s seen him since the other night. Selfish bugger!”
“Oh.” Hana tried to disguise her unease. “I wonder why he’d do something like that.” She looked hard at her husband. “You’ve been so good to him.”
Logan’s face remained veiled in irritation. “Yeah, it’s really rats to run out on us like that. I liked having him here. He was someone I could trust. Oh well. Just goes to show that you don’t always know people like you think you do.”
“Won’t the cops pick him up straight away?” Hana asked, keeping her question casual.
“Dunno, don’t care,” Logan replied, his mind already on a different track altogether.
Hana shrugged and settled back down. “Fair enough,” she agreed. “Are you going to work?” She pointed at the rumpled white tee shirt adorning his torso and his brown legs stretching out of boxer shorts. Logan shook his head.
“Nope, not today. I’m spending the day with my girls.” He smiled at his wife and snuggled her into him on the sofa.
“What about the problem with the cattle? Don’t you need to sort that out?” Hana’s eyes widened in surprise and Logan laughed.
“What’s done is done. I can’t change anything. We’re gonna have to wait and see which of the heifers births a flamin’ Friesian calf. It’s a nightmare for our breeding programme, reputation, everything.”
“But we only saw one black and white calf last night. The other one was white. So could it be ok?”
Logan snorted. “Who knows babe? Black is a dominant gene so you would think it came out immediately, but I’ve done a bit of research this morning and apparently that might not be the case. It could come out in subsequent generations and then the bloodlines are screwed basically.”
“Oh,” Hana sighed. “I wish I understood it all.”
“It’s fine, we need to get the vets in and do some genetic testing. I have no idea what we’re going to do right now. But I’m sure as hell not gonna waste today worrying about it. We’ll wait until all the dams have calved and then see what we’ve got. It can’t be the whole herd because they’re kept all over the property in different areas, so it’s just a case of working out which of the groups the rogue bull got to. Then we need to understand how!”
Hana looked at her husband with a furrowed brow. “Why are you so calm? You would normally be out there checking fences and raging around looking for a culprit. I don’t understand.”
Logan stretched out gentle scarred fingers and touched her stomach tenderly. His hand brushed the cloth of Hana’s tee shirt gently before lifting it up. He exposed her rounded tummy and distended belly button, his fingers light and sensitive. He shifted his body and dipped his head, placing his lips gently over the dark pigmented line that ran from Hana’s breastbone deep into her trousers and Hana held her breath as she felt her husband’s kiss. Logan sat up and looked into Hana’s green eyes. “Maybe I’ve realised there are more important things,” he whispered and kissed her soft lips.
“Ooh, Daddy!” Phoenix jumped to her feet as Logan’s phone rang and she brought it over to him, tripping over her own feet.
“Thanks, honey,” he replied with a fondness in his eyes which caused his daughter to beam and bite her lower lip. Logan answered the call abruptly. “What?”
A long conversation ensued in which Logan did a great deal of listening, nodding and grunting. “What did Jack say?” he asked and waited again while the tinny voice chimed in his ear. “Ok so keep the herd we drove down from our place the other night, completely separate. Don’t let them mix. See what they birth in the next week or so. It’s possible that it’s all contained within that group. There’s no way anyone could have gotten to the lot. Check the ear tag numbers of the dams and work out where they were being kept. I think I know which ones they are, but it’ll be interesting to see if I’m right.”
Hana studied her husband with concentration in her green eyes as he hung up the call. “You want to go don’t you?”
Logan bit his lip and smiled at her confusion. “No, I don’t want to go. I want to stay here with my wife but she doesn’t appear to want me. Have you got some other dude turning up or what?”
Hana looked affronted. “Why on earth would you ask me that?”
“Joke!” Logan soothed. “Hana, what’s going on with you?”
She sighed. “I just feel really jumpy at the thought that somebody’s been standing out there watching us. I keep closing the curtains and then thinking how unfair that is, shutting out this beautiful view. But I’m scared as well and I’m finding myself awake in the middle of the night far too often.” She shook her head and her red hair tumbled out of its clip. Logan stroked her cheek and snuggled her in tightly to his chest.
“I know. It’s pretty sick. If I ever find out who it is, I’ll kill them myself.”
Hana wrapped her arms around Logan’s waist and breathed in the comforting scent of him. She felt a gentle touch on her leg and looked down to see Phoenix rubbing her eyes. “I go bed now,” she asked with casual politeness. “I tired. Fuffy tired.”
“Want me to take you?” Logan asked and the child nodded. He stood and scooped her up in his strong arms and bent so that Hana could kiss her daughter. Phoenix puckered up her lips and kissed her mother, bowing her head onto Logan’s shoulder as he bore her away to her cot.
“I should probably
get some lunch ready, the day’s disappearing,” Hana declared as Logan came back into the room. He shook his head, gently removed the book from her hands and picked her up bodily.
“It doesn’t matter, babe. It’s a day with me so it’s not a waste and I’m looking after you today. You look tired.”
“But...that’s odd because I feel fine...” Hana trailed off as she caught his meaning and slapped his arm. “You bad boy! I don’t look tired at all. What if Tama comes back?”
“He won’t. He’s doing some stuff at Nev’s place. They’re digging the footings for the new barn behind his house. We’ll keep all the heavy gear in there while we strip the area that’s all scrubby. It’s gonna take a few months to get it in shape for grazing or crops.”
“I thought Lucy was coming to stay,” Hana said as her husband negotiated his burden through the door frame.
“Mmnn, yeah,” Logan replied without committing himself to betraying his nephew’s heartache. “Now stop talking.” He kicked the door closed with his foot without letting go of Hana’s arm and began to peel her clothes off and drop them on the chair. “I love you, Hana Du Rose,” he whispered, kissing her neck as his hands roved under her remaining clothes.
“You’re utterly impossible,” Hana sighed as Logan’s bristles rasped against her soft skin and she heard him give a low snicker. When he placed his hands either side of her face and looked at her, his eyes danced, alight with mischief and lust. She opened her mouth to chastise her husband further but he took full advantage and planted his lips over hers, searching with his soft tongue and pressing his hands into the small of Hana’s back.
Chapter 31
The bath later was hot enough to make Hana’s skin mottled and blotchy. Her head swam horribly as she tried to get out. She stood for a moment wrapped in her towel and debated calling Logan for help. The front door slammed and Tama yelled out. “I’m back. Anyone home?”