Southern Sunset: Book One of 44 South

by Nicola Claire

  Maggie gripped the fucking thing as if it was a ticking time bomb. Which, in a way, it was. Dad rolled out of the way as Matt rushed in and kicked Marinkovich’s body. Making sure he was dead or separating him from any weapons, I’m not sure.

  And then I was up and running, my legs cramping from being so still for so long, and Maggie was shouting at me to hurry, and Zach was issuing commands in my ear, and the timer ran down.

  I reached the bomb when it hit ten seconds. Matt was grabbing the kids and running out the shed door, one under each arm. Justin was struggling to stand with his hands tied behind his back, his fingers gripping Mum’s blouse attempting to make her get up off the dirt packed floor. She was sobbing, he wouldn’t make it.

  “Red wire! Red wire!” Zach shouted in my ear.

  Five seconds.

  “There is no fucking red wire!” I shouted back.

  Three seconds.

  “What colours?”

  Two seconds.

  “There’s no fucking wires at all.”

  “Yank it off, then!”

  One second.

  I reached forward and tugged on the clock face as the timer counted down to zero.

  A ripping sound followed, then a crack of plastic as I held the fucking thing too hard. But no bomb.

  “Jesus,” I said, sucking in air like I was drowning.

  “What happened?” Zach demanded. “Did you get it off?”

  “Yes, I fucking got it off. Otherwise I’d be fucking dead. And you would’ve heard a fucking loud bang all the way over in Afghanistan.”

  “I’m in Tekapo.”

  “You’re what?” I yelled. “You’re in fucking Tekapo? Tekapo Military Camp?”

  “What else is in Tekapo? Stars?”

  “What the fuck are you doing in Tekapo?” I demanded.

  “Luke?” Maggie’s voice cut through my hysteria.

  “What?” I said, spinning around and offering her a glare. Then I saw her shaking hands. “Jesus fucking Christ. Maggie,” I said.

  “Yeah,” she agreed. “Don’t know why, but I can’t seem to stop shaking while I’m holding this thing. Can your brother help?”

  “He’s in fucking Tekapo,” I said, as if that was relevant right now.

  “I gathered that,” Maggie offered with a small smile. “The whole station gathered that,” she added, holding up the deadman’s switch to remind me.

  “Babe,” I said softly.

  “No pet names,” she whispered back.

  I’d call her whatever she wanted for the rest of her goddamned life if she stayed.

  I looked down at Justin, who had just managed to get his hands untied. He was releasing Mum’s hands and helping her up off the dirt. Dad was standing beside Maggie as if he was going to protect her with his life.

  “Go,” I said to all of them. “Get out of here.”

  Justin nodded his head and started to pull Mum from the shed. Dad looked at Maggie and then looked at me and then back at Maggie.

  “Go,” Maggie said. “We don’t know if taking the remote out of range would trigger it.”

  “Fuck,” the old man muttered, his gag already reomoved. Then he turned around and spat on Marinkovich’s body.

  “Is he dead?” I asked.

  “Not dead enough,” Dad muttered.

  My eyes met Maggie’s. I saw the hollowness there. She hadn't fired the gun, but she’d played a part in a man’s death.

  “The sick fucker killed Missy,” I said in a growl full of meaning. “He killed James Whiting. That kid from Pukaki. Tried to kill you. Threatened the lives of my family. Fucked with Red Tussock. He doesn’t deserve your guilt, Maggie.”

  “No,” she said, looking down at Marinkovich’s body. “But he did deserve life in prison getting fucked in the arse every day.”

  Zach whistled. “Can’t wait to meet her,” he said cheerfully. “We gonna do this thing?”

  “Tekapo,” I said flatly. “And you couldn’t even pay a visit?”

  “No reason to until now,” he quipped. “Lock her up and throw away the key, big brother. I’m coming home.”

  “If there’s a home to fucking come back to,” I growled, turning and looking down at the contraption before me.

  “Let’s do this,” Maggie said at my side. I opened my mouth to tell her to at least stand back. Five feet would save her, wouldn’t it? When she added, “I haven’t had this much fun in ages. I think Twizel is growing on me.”

  “You do?” I asked, trying not to smile. “How much?”

  She looked up at me, stole my breath, my heart, my fucking brain, and smirked.

  That sort of behaviour deserved a spanking.

  “So much,” she said, cutting through my imaginings, “that I think I might stay.”

  “You just ‘think’?” I pressed, holding my breath, my heart refusing to beat, the world fucking stilling all around me.

  She smiled.

  It reached her eyes.

  Finally.

  Epilogue

  Maggie

  Two Weeks Later

  The sun drifted lazily toward Mount Glenmary, oranges and reds and purples painting the sky. Monet would have liked Mackenzie Country. I lifted my beer bottle to my lips and took a sip, my eyes stuck fast on the splendour before me.

  God did live here, I decided. Why else would a place in the middle of high country New Zealand call to so many people from so many different walks of life? Twizel was a hotbed, all right. But not only for scandal.

  The door to the homestead opened on well oiled hinges behind me, but I heard the swish of air as Luke stepped out onto the back porch. I didn’t take my eyes off Glenmary. I couldn’t. But when he sat down next to me on the old sofa I’d commandeered and threw a blanket over my knees to keep me warm, I couldn’t prevent my lips from smiling.

  A long, calloused finger landed under my chin and my face was urged toward him.

  “Don’t hide that smile from me, Maggie,” Luke murmured. “I’m extremely possessive of each one.”

  “Because they’re so rare?” I queried.

  “Because they make my heart pound.”

  I shook my head, almost rolling my eyes at him, then his hand wrapped around my throat, thumb stoking over my pulse point.

  “They make your heart pound, too,” Luke said in a low rumble. “Thundering,” he added, his eyes watching the movement of my pulse under my skin.

  Or watching the way his work roughened hands looked against my neck.

  My body responded immediately; it always did. My breaths caught in my chest. My nipples hardened. Moisture pooled between my legs. Slowly, so very slowly, Luke raised his gaze from my neck to my lips, then made his way up my face to my eyes.

  For a long moment the world hung suspended.

  Then he said in that voice that sends chills down my spine, “Maggie.”

  I opened my mouth; his gaze darted downwards. And then my cell phone rang loud and clear on the late afternoon air.

  “Don’t answer it,” Luke growled. But my eyes had already shot down to where the phone was sitting beside me, screen up, a name I had never thought I’d see again flashing across it.

  “It’s Michael,” I said, stunned. Phoning me.

  Luke’s hand slipped away from my throat immediately; I missed it. I suddenly felt too bare. I stared at the phone, my heart really pounding now, and then reached out a shaking hand to lift it up. Luke sat silently beside me; a solid presence; a suspended promise; a weight in the air.

  I licked my lips and swiped the call open, then held the phone to my ear.

  “Hello,” I said. “Michael?”

  There was a long pause and then in a voice so weak and scratchy I had to strain to hear it, my brother said, “What the fuck are you doing down there?”

  “I live down here,” I said indignantly, as if I’d had casual conversations about my life choices with my brother every day for the past six years.

  “Bombs, Maggie?” he said, his voice getting strong
er. “Fucking bombs?”

  “Luke deactivated it,” I pointed out. “With the help of his highly trained army brother.”

  “And that’s not the only thing,” Michael said, “I read in the paper that your police senior sergeant was under investigation. What the hell, Maggie?”

  “He’s been cleared,” I said, sitting forward. “That IPCA prick, Mark Everett, started an unsanctioned investigation. He’d been going more and more rogue over the past few years and it all came to a head down here.”

  “Six years,” Michael stressed. “He’d been going rogue for six years.”

  “Six years,” I said more softly. “Michael…”

  “How did you do it?” he said, cutting me off. “How did you prove he was rogue?”

  I let him deflect from the real issue. “I didn’t really. An old Police College friend of mine up in Christchurch had been keeping tabs on the IPCA for years. She had enough evidence to put the final nail in his coffin. Well, after he fucked up down here.”

  “And the Croatian?” Michael asked. “Ex-military, I heard.”

  I ran my fingers through my fringe and sat back, realising Luke’s arm was lying along the back of the sofa now. His hand came down on my shoulder, thumb stroking over the side of my neck.

  I let out a soft breath of air, staring at the dipping sun as it set over Mount Glenmary. God was definitely here.

  “Yeah,” I said finally. “Nothing to prove he still was connected to them, but he had military grade explosives and clearly advanced espionage skills.”

  Michael whistled. “You did good, sis,” he said after a beat. “Are you OK?”

  I wanted to ask if he was. I wanted to ask if this was the first time he’d talked in six years. Had he simply read about what had happened down here in the newspaper and picked up the phone out of habit and concern, talking before he remembered he didn’t anymore?

  I wanted to ask so many things.

  I realised the answers were irrelevant.

  “I’m OK, Michael,” I said.

  “When are you coming back?”

  Luke stiffened beside me and then as if he realised what he’d done, he purposefully relaxed. His thumb stroked my skin soothingly, but this time I wondered if the motion was to soothe him instead.

  It was the hardest and also easiest thing I’d ever said.

  “I’m staying in Twizel,” I told my brother, clutching the phone as if I could clutch his hand. “I like it here,” I added. “It’s beautiful, Michael. You should see it.” I looked across the back pastures of Red Tussock Station toward the ranges that bordered Drake land. Toward Mount Glenmary. “The sun kisses the mountains,” I said. “As if they’re blessed by God Himself. The air is crisp and the rivers run deep. The snow is like a thousand gems sparkling.”

  “And the people?” Michael asked. “Do they treat you right?”

  I turned and looked at Luke. He held my gaze, my body wanting to jump right into that deep chocolate brown that stared back.

  “They’re a little unusual,” I whispered. Luke arched a brow. “Small town folk, you know?” A twitch to his lips now. “There’s this woman in town who spies on everyone. She has a flying fish camera. A salmon.”

  Michael laughed. “Tell me more.”

  “OK,” I said, still holding Luke’s steadfast gaze. “The local vicar rides a Harley Davidson.”

  “No shit?”

  “The barman at the tavern is a pirate.”

  He was really laughing now. A tear spilled down my cheek. Luke reached up and slowly swiped at it. His eyes never leaving mine.

  “The chemist is French,” I added, my voice sounding a little thick. “The DOC scientist drives a convertible in winter. The doctor’s a good ole boy who drinks and cusses but also doesn’t take shit.”

  “Sounds like Twin Peaks.”

  I smiled. Luke’s eyes swirled with something eager; something hungry; something full of lust and love.

  “They’re good people, Michael,” I said. “Salt of the earth.”

  “Yeah?”

  “There’s one I particularly like.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Luke,” I said, and finally, finally, Luke’s hand returned to my neck.

  “He treat you right, sis? Or do I need to come down there and beat the crap outta him?”

  Luke’s thumb swept over my pulse rhythmically. Slow. Patient. A promise.

  “He’s everything I never knew I needed,” I said.

  Luke’s lips parted. He looked a little stunned. And then he was pressing his hard chest against my softer body, his free hand wrapped up in my pony tail, my head getting tipped back as his lips ran along my jaw and down my neck.

  Hungrily. Desperately.

  Michael sighed down the phone; it was getting harder to concentrate on more than Luke’s hands and lips and teeth and tongue and hot, hot, body.

  “I guess I won’t see you for a while, then,” my brother said.

  “You could… you could visit,” I managed to get out between panted breaths.

  “I could,” my brother agreed. “I might,” he offered. “Maggie?” he said after I didn’t reply.

  “Yeah?”

  “Love you, sis.”

  My breath shuddered.

  “Love you too, Michael.” The line went dead, the cell phone dropped from my hand, and then I was flat on my back and Luke was kissing me.

  If God lived anywhere, it would be here, I realised. In the arms of this man, under his lips, wrapped up in his touch, secure in his love.

  “Maggie,” he said, voice gruff. “Maggie,” he repeated on a groan of desire.

  “I’m here,” I said. “I’m not going anywhere,” I added.

  “Fuck.” And then my shirt was coming off and his shirt got discarded and our hands ran over soft flesh and chased goosebumps. Lips wrapped around a hard nipple, fingers scratched over rippling muscles. Moans drifted free on the Mackenzie Country air.

  The sun slowly slipped behind Mount Glenmary as Luke thrust deep inside me. My back arched. My neck exposed to his teeth. His hand fisted in my hair, holding me tight. Holding me just right. Holding me there.

  “Mine,” he said. “From the moment I saw you, you were mine.” Each rock of his hips confirmed it. Each bite. Each lick. Each soft stroke of his thumb over my pulse point. Each heated gaze that met mine and held it. Never wavering.

  “Say it,” he growled, rolling his hips in a delicious circle. “Say it,” he demanded on a hard and fast thrust.

  “Luke,” I said on a gasp.

  And then he was turning us, his back hitting the sofa, my knees landing either side of his hips, his palms kneading my breasts, fingers and thumbs pinching nipples. Hard

  “Ride me, Maggie,” he growled from beneath me. “Ride me hard and make me come.”

  He did things to me, this man. This man who demanded unapologetically. Who asked things of me I was more than willing to give. He made me let go of everything that was unimportant and made me feel everything that was. He held me tight and also let me fly free of it all.

  I hadn’t realised I needed that. I needed him. I hadn’t realised that coming to a small town in the high country of New Zealand would complete me. Would seal a hole that had been torn open inside my heart.

  Luke’s hand swept up my body, between my bouncing breasts, and wrapped around my neck. I tipped my head down as far as he let me, met his gaze, and fell apart.

  Luke caught me. Like he’d been catching me since I arrived here. Like he’d catch me from now on, I was sure.

  “Maggie,” he groaned as he followed me over the edge. Our bodies shuddering, our breaths mingling, our skin slick against one another.

  He reached down and grabbed the blanket that had fallen off the sofa, draping it over my back, covering us in a warm cocoon, creating our own little slice of Nirvana.

  “Don’t move,” he said, wrapping his arms around me and nuzzling my neck. “Not yet,” he whispered, kissing above my pulse again and
again and again.

  “Never,” I promised and his grip tightened.

  The sun disappeared, the stars came out, an inky black sky with hints of green and purple. The Southern Lights danced as if they too could feel how special the moment was.

  I came looking for an escape when I headed to Twizel. I’d found adventure and mystery and love.

  And I’d found Luke Drake.

  “You’re mine,” I whispered, so quietly I was sure he hadn’t heard me.

  And then he said, “And I’m never letting you go.”

  I smiled. I knew it had touched my eyes.

  Touched my heart. Touched everything.

  Just like Luke Drake.

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