Kiwi Rules (New Zealand Ever After Book 1)

by Rosalind James

  He said, “That’s awesome. Seriously. Awesome. I’m proud of you.”

  He was, too, I could tell. Not because of what he could get from me, because he didn’t care about that. Not because of how much money I’d make doing it, because he hadn’t even asked. But it was going to be a lot. I’d asked for Hemi’s help this time, and had negotiated an hourly rate that was about twice what I’d thought I could charge.

  Jax went on to say, “I’m not sure why you didn’t tell me, though. These past couple weeks have been . . . hard.”

  Saying that had been hard, too, I could tell. I put my hand on his face and kissed his mouth, loving him so much, it hurt. “I’m sorry. Maybe I didn’t quite believe that you felt this as much as I did. I also didn’t want to tell you until I was sure it would work out, and it’s taken a while. And then I didn’t want to call you. I had to see your face. I had to see what you really thought. Also, I think you should marry me, and ask me to have your babies, because I’ve got good genes—well, other than my dad—and I’ll be a good mom, and you’ll be such a good father. We should do it. We should try. It’ll be an adventure, and we both want to have adventures, right? Maybe not right away, because I’m getting this thing off the ground. But in a year or two, I think we should.”

  “Karen.” He was smiling. “Baby. Give me a chance.”

  I rested my head against his shoulder. “Sorry. It’s a twenty-four-hour trip. I had a lot of time to think.”

  “Right, then,” he said. “My turn.”

  “OK,” I said, “but first—I really have to pee.”

  Jax

  I had so much emotion going on here, I was either going to laugh or cry. In fact, I was already laughing. I was also grabbing my crutches, heading for my desk in the workroom, and opening a drawer. When she came back, I was ready.

  I said, “I have a few things to say, too. First, though, I have to kiss you some more. You can’t really blame me. I’ve been waiting two weeks to do it.”

  When we’d done some more of that, she’d settled down a bit. At any rate, she had her head on my shoulder and her hand in mine when she said, “I know this isn’t the way it normally happens, but I was just so sure. I’ve been so unsure, and now, I’m sure.”

  “Nothing about you is the way it normally happens,” I said, “because what I know for sure is that you are absolutely and totally unique. That’s why I’m grabbing hold of you and hanging on. It’s why I tried to do it the first day I met you, when I asked you to come back home with me after the beach. And you didn’t come, by the way.”

  I knew what she meant. The pieces of me that had been rattling around loose since she’d left had settled into place with a click-click-click, and the jigsaw puzzle was complete. Rocks, sea, sky, everything. What had been a tableful of miscellaneous parts was a picture now, and it was beautiful.

  “I messed up, though,” she said, “that first time. I almost drowned Artie.”

  I had to laugh. “You did, and so did I. I saw all of them, by the way, a week ago. They were on the beach again, and none the worse for wear. I shouted them lunch at the Coffee Club. I reckoned it was the least I could do.”

  “You did?” She brightened even more. You didn’t need a sunny day if you had Karen. “That’s great. Why were you up there?”

  “Ah.” I rolled over and grabbed the bag I’d put on the other side of the bed. “You see—I did some thinking, too. Got an idea, and took a leap.” I pulled the box out of the bag, and for once, she was speechless.

  When I opened it, she put her hands to her mouth, looked at what was inside, and stared at me again.

  “It’s a ruby, baby,” I told her, the tenderness rising in me, swamping me like a wave. “And diamonds.” I’d had the fella make it. Three diamonds on either side, the sideways-V shape of them flanking the one and a half carats of cushion-cut ruby solitaire of pure, deep red, all of it set in rose gold. It wasn’t like anything her sister would have, or anything anybody else would have, either. It was going to be hers alone. I said, “Rubies are for passion, power, courage, and life force. In other words—you. Call it my talisman, maybe. A stone that could bring you back to me.”

  “Were you going to . . . come?”

  “Yeh. I was going to come. I was going to tell you that I didn’t want to do this without you, and if you didn’t want to do it without me, we should find a way. But you came to me instead.”

  “It could be the talisman,” she said. “And—Jax. It’s so beautiful. I don’t even know what to say.”

  I’d done it right, and surely, a heart couldn’t hold all of this. “And by the way?” I said. “It’s a day later here. Happy Valentine’s Day, sweetheart.”

  “Is it . . .” she said. “Is it . . .”

  She needed the words, and I needed to say them. I’d had time to think myself. Hours on a bike, with the Southern Alps at my back and the wind in my face. “I love you, baby,” I said. “I want to marry you. I want to stand at the altar and watch your grandfather walk you down the aisle, and know you’re coming to me. It’s what he said. I can’t think of a day when I won’t want to see your face, and I can’t think of a future that doesn’t have you in it. I want you, and, yeh, I want the babies, too. I told you that before, remember?”

  “No,” she said. “You said you wanted to take out my IUD. If it hadn’t been you, it would’ve been creepy. I’m sorry, but . . . how much money do you have, anyway? This . . . this ring. Jax. Is it . . . wasn’t it too much?”

  I was laughing again, and so was she. “We’ll let somebody else take the IUD out,” I promised. “As long as it happens eventually. And I have about five million dollars at the moment. I told you—I invested. It could be hard work to stay ahead of you, though.”

  I got serious, then, because these were the words that mattered. The ones I needed to say, and, I hoped, the ones she needed to hear. “I love you, and I can’t wait to set the date. Will you marry me?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Yes. I love you, too. I want to marry you so much.”

  She was still crying some, and I didn’t have anything but toilet paper to mop it up. Well, that and the towel from before, which was what I used. After I’d slipped my ruby onto her left hand, her heart hand, where it shone like loyalty and courage. Like our hearts’ blood. Like forever.

  Like a talisman.

  Karen

  On the morning of my wedding, I woke early, then slipped out of bed quietly so as not to wake the girls, pulled on a sports bra and a pair of shorts, closed the bedroom door behind me, and crept down the stairs in the gray light of a winter dawn.

  Hemi was there before me, standing in shorts and a T-shirt, looking out at the beach. “Hey,” I said quietly. “Could you not sleep either?”

  “Not so much. Want to go for a run with me?”

  “Yeah. Please.”

  “Nervous?” he asked.

  “Oh, only about a thousand percent,” I said, and he smiled and opened the doors to the patio.

  We took off barefoot down the beach to where the going was firm, our feet barely sinking into the packed sand at the water’s edge. Down toward the village, where, I was sure, Hemi would buy me a coffee and ask if I wanted a treat, like I was fifteen again. Like I was his little sister.

  He said, when we were running in sync, because he’d adjusted his stride to mine, “He seems like the right choice to me, but if you’re not sure for some reason, you know I’ll get you out of it.”

  “I’m sure,” I said. “I’m so sure. He’s such a good man.”

  “Then what is it?”

  “Oh . . .” I sighed. “You know. I’m so excited, and I think, what if I . . . I don’t know. Throw up. Pee my pants.”

  He laughed out loud. “Nah. Not happening. You’re going to have your whole whanau behind you, remember? Nobody will be there who doesn’t love you. You’re also going to be beautiful, and you’re going to know it.”

  This was true, because I had the most gorgeous dress in the world. Made
of silk satin crepe in a delicate blush like the creamy inside of a conch shell, its low spaghetti-strapped bodice softened by an attached cowl, and the luxurious weight of the skirt draping over my lower body like the dress had been designed specially to flatter a woman who’d always felt too tall and too thin. Which it had been, because Hemi had created it just for me.

  The gray light was morphing into a glow of soft pink. Another wonderful sunrise on the Bay of Plenty, the waves high today from last week’s storm, and nobody on the beach but us and a lone dog-walker, far off in the distance. It was going to be a beautiful day, the air clear as crystal, the temperature rising above sixty, everything in the world smiling on Jax and me.

  I asked Hemi, “Do you ever wonder how your life turned out so good?”

  “All the time,” he said. “But I don’t wonder how yours did.”

  “Because my sister fortunately met you? Don’t rub it in, buddy.”

  He smiled. “Nah. Because you’re more honest than anyone I’ve ever known, you’re a harder worker than anybody I’ve ever hired, and you have a mind that looks for the truth and won’t let you compromise. Because you’ve got loyalty and courage and mana. I couldn’t be prouder of you. So you know.”

  “Oh, thanks,” I said crossly. “Way to make me cry. I don’t even have a Kleenex.”

  He reached in his pocket and handed one over. “Do it now. Before makeup, eh.”

  By the time we finished our run an hour later, I was sweating, but I was calm. Or—not calm, exactly, because I was never going to be calm today, but excited in a good way instead of an I-might-pee-my-pants way. And when we got back to the house, Hope and the kids were up.

  “Hey, sweetie,” Hope said, coming over to hug me as much as her enormous seven-months fourth-pregnancy belly would allow. “Happy wedding day. Jax brought you something.”

  “You’re kidding,” I said. “Shoot. I missed him?”

  “You aren’t supposed to see him,” Aroha informed me. “It’s bad luck.”

  “There’s no such thing as bad luck,” Tama said. “Just bad planning and chance, and the better you plan, the less you leave to chance.”

  “Quote unquote from Dad,” Aroha said.

  “Because Dad’s smart,” Tama said.

  “Because Dad’s right,” Hope said. “That’s the tradition, though. I think it’s just to make it more exciting for both people, and more special. Think about it. That’s the only day in your life you get special names for yourself. You’re the bride and groom, and on that day, you become something bigger than the two of you. You become a family. That’s what Karen and Jax are going to do.”

  “How about when you have kids?” Aroha asked. “That’s making something bigger.”

  “You’re right,” Hope said. “That’s a very good day, too.” She kissed her daughter’s head, and Aroha, for once, forgot that she was nearly a teenager, leaned into her, and hugged.

  “This is all very lovely,” I said, “but I think we’re forgetting the most important thing here. What did Jax bring me? It had better be a donut. Was he upset that I wasn’t here?”

  Maybe he was nervous. I thought about being nervous myself about that, and then thought—nope. If a man was ever in it for the long haul, it was Jax. It was what I’d told him. He was my resting place. My island, and my home.

  I was definitely going to cry again.

  I wondered if I should spare some time to think about Josh, and the bullet I’d dodged there. His future wasn’t looking too sweet at Prairie Plus, from what I heard. I’d been right—food products were all about the food. He’d land on his feet, though, because he was that kind of guy, and I didn’t care. Before, I’d thought winning meant knowing you’d triumphed, that you were in the top spot. Now, I realized that winning meant knowing you didn’t care anymore, because you’d moved on.

  Plus, there was my present from Jax. Hope was holding a white bag with gold writing, and it didn’t look like it had a donut in it. It was the same kind my belly rings had come in. The same kind my engagement ring had come in, and that, I was sure, my wedding ring had come in, too. I hadn’t seen that yet, but I knew it would be special. I suspected more diamonds. Jax might wear T-shirts almost every time he wasn’t wearing fatigues, but he sure did like giving me pretty things.

  Maia was jumping up and down. “What’s your present?” she asked. “You’re not s’posed to get your present yet, because it’s not the wedding yet.”

  “The bridegroom’s gift to the bride is different,” Hemi said. “That’s what he gives her to tell her how glad he is that he gets to marry her.” He glanced at me, a glint of humor in his dark eyes. “So she isn’t nervous. Which means Auntie Karen needs to open it.”

  My heart was beating like a drum, even though there was nothing Jax could give me that I wouldn’t want. There was gold tissue paper in the bag, which was no surprise, and a blue velvet box inside that, also no surprise.

  I pulled out the box, opened it, and found out. A chunky, organic swirl of rose gold with a diamond embedded in the front of it and three more along its roughly beveled edge, as if the whole thing had been mined that way by magic dwarves. The pendant I’d seen all those months ago, that Jax had remembered. The one that would look incredible with my barely pink wedding gown, like it was meant to be.

  “That’s gorgeous,” Hope said. “It looks exactly like you. Oh, I do like Jax so much.”

  There was a slip of white paper under it, and I unfolded it. In Jax’s angular handwriting, it said, Look in the bottom of the box.

  I had to sit down, and I had to breathe a little. Hope asked, “What?”

  I lifted the velvet topper. Underneath was a key, the Yale kind, and another note. A URL, that was all.

  I put my head on the table and said, “Oh, my gosh. I can’t.”

  Hemi could. Of course he could. He had his phone out and was typing the address in. A smile spread over his face, and he handed the phone to Hope.

  “Oh,” she said. “Oh, that’s so sweet.”

  “Is it a puppy?” Maia demanded.

  “No,” Aroha said. “That wouldn’t be a good wedding present. They’re going on a honeymoon. You have to housetrain a puppy.”

  “Maybe it’s a horse,” Tama said.

  Aroha sighed. “It can’t be a horse. Auntie Karen goes all over the place, and Jax is a soldier. You can’t have a horse if you’re a soldier. Where would you keep it?”

  “They have it in the cavalry,” Tama said. “That’s the whole thing the cavalry is.”

  “Not now,” Aroha said. “Nobody fights with horses now.”

  “Quiet,” Hemi said. “Let’s show Auntie Karen her present.”

  Auntie Karen was about to expire from curiosity. Auntie Karen was, in fact, about to run screaming in circles.

  It was a house. A house set on the foreshore at Tanners Point, to be exact, in the calm waters of Shelly Bay, halfway between Katikati and Waihi Beach. A house down the coast from Hope and Hemi and only minutes away from Koro, with two ovens and a view of palm trees and the sea, a lawn that sloped down to a safe swimming beach, and kayaks on the grass. A house with three bedrooms, because one of these days, we were going to take out that IUD, and a home office off its perfect kitchen for a wife who was a consultant. And with a spa tub on the deck for a husband whose leg got sore, because he was a soldier, and he was a hero.

  I was flying upstairs for my own phone, and pressing the button to call him.

  “Hi, baby,” he said. No stress at all in his voice. He sounded like this was the best day of his life.

  My knees were shaking, and I slid down the wall to sit on the floor. “Thank you. For my necklace, and . . . and the house. How can you make my life so beautiful? How?”

  “I thought you’d want to be closer to your whanau,” he said, and I closed my eyes and had to swallow hard. “The apartment’s all good”—the little one we rented in Christchurch, where we lived during the week, heading for Moeraki for the weekends—“but I thou
ght about how I’d assumed I’d stay down south, because it’s home. And I realized that you’d want the same thing. You need to be near your Koro while you can, because you aren’t going to have him forever, and near your sister, too, and all the rest of them. You’re going to want to be home, and when we have kids, you’re going to want that even more. I may ask for a posting in Auckland, I thought. We can keep the house in Moeraki, or we can sell it. Heaps of time to decide, but this felt important. It felt right. You changed your life so we could be together. Time for me to show you what I’ll do for you.”

  I said, when I could talk again, “It makes my present to you kind of stupid, though.”

  He was laughing now. “Can’t wait. What is it?”

  “You’re getting it later. OK. I’m . . . I’m overwhelmed. I can’t even think. I’m hanging up. I have to get ready, and . . . so many things. I’ll see you later. I can’t wait, even though I’m really nervous. Oh—and I love you. So much. I do.”

  He was still laughing when I hung up.

  Jax

  Karen thought I was calm, and she was almost right.

  I was sure. That might not be calm, but it felt good.

  The carpark was filling up when I got there with my best mate. Colin Armsworth was wearing his dress uniform, and I wasn’t. He climbed out of the car with me, looked around at lush grass, stately rimu and rata trees, and the wharenui, the meeting house, with its carved red-stained front barge boards. At all the down-home comfort and stateliness of Makahae Marae, in fact, watched over by the mountains of the Hautere Forest. Koro’s marae, and Hemi’s. And after today, Karen would finally believe, hers.

  Colin said, “Nothing like a Maori wedding.”