Fractured (Not Quite a Billionaire #2)

by Rosalind James

  He read my movements, my sobbing breaths. He listened, and he responded. He held me tight, used me hard, lifted me high and bit gently at my breasts, then sucked until I moaned. He gave me no choice, but I didn’t want any, not now. I was making too much noise, and then I was making more.

  He gave me exactly what I needed, and when his hand began to rub…I had my face buried in his neck, and I was whimpering. Trembling. Burning. I was shattering, he was swearing, and we were there.

  It seemed like ages before Hemi untied me. I was barely aware of it until he was rubbing his hands over my back, my bottom, down my arms.

  “Bloody hell.” His voice was rough as I curled into him and wrapped my arms around his neck. “What you do to me. I pushed you too hard, and I know it. Tell me you’re all right.”

  I had to laugh against his warm skin, which smelled, as always, faintly of spice, like the very best cinnamon stick ever. “Uh, Hemi. I think you’ve got it backwards. I don’t think that was me.”

  He sighed. “You’re right. It was me. You said you needed me to convince you, and I just…I can’t stand the thought of you with somebody else.”

  “Mm.” I nuzzled his neck some more, loving the way it felt to have him hold me so securely. “That should bother me. I should definitely be ashamed by how much you excited me just now, too, but I’m not. And do you know what I found out?”

  He was stroking over my bottom again now. It wasn’t exactly sore, but it tingled so deliciously, and I wriggled into him, wanting more.

  “What?” he asked.

  I kissed the side of his neck, then moved up to his jaw, rubbing my cheek over the faint roughness that was a half-day’s growth of beard. “That you love me,” I said. “Because you stopped when I asked you to. Because you helped me when I needed you to. Because you always make sure I’m satisfied. And because…” I leaned back, took his face in my hands, smiled at him, and brushed a soft kiss over his mouth. “Because you always take care of me.”

  Within boundaries, I told myself. Physically.

  Yeah, right.

  Hemi

  Did I discuss everything I could have with Hope? Not even close. I hadn’t wanted to have this talk in the first place, though. It was too much emotion and far too much sharing to be anything like comfortable. I didn’t share, and I didn’t emote.

  And after that? The storm that had raged outside the windows had been nothing to the one inside me, the one that had pushed me right up to the boundaries of my self-control. When she’d said her word, when I’d realized I’d gone too far…it hadn’t been good. And then what had I done? I’d pushed her more.

  I’d been feeling too fierce for tenderness. All I wanted to do was hold her tight and close, and she wouldn’t let me. I knew she wanted to be her own person. Fine. But couldn’t she do that from a spot right next to me?

  Apparently not, and however frustrating that was, being without her was worse. Which meant that tonight, I’d better be showing her everything she meant to me in the way I found so hard to say in words. I’d give her the sweet loving I hadn’t been able to manage earlier. She’d love that, too, because she loved me.

  I told myself that, anyway.

  She came out of the bathroom fully dressed again, her pale hair tamed, went to the floor-to-ceiling windows that led onto the balcony, and said, “It’s not as bad outside now.”

  I took a glance of my own and said in resignation, “Reckon that means I’m taking you for a walk on the beach.”

  “I can go by myself,” she said. “You can stay here. I don’t mind.”

  I laughed, wrapped my arms around her from behind, pulled her back into me, kissed the side of her pretty neck, and said, “Nah. I’ll take you for a walk in the rain, and then I’ll take you to lunch. How’s that?”

  She snuggled back against me and said, “I like that plan.”

  Outside, the fresh wind still blew, bringing a fine rain with it, and Hope pulled a soft white hat over her hair and stuffed her hands in her pockets. But when we got onto the beach and she felt the full force of it, she spread her arms wide, laughed into the wind, and ran to the edge of the shore in her polka-dot gumboots. The gulls dove and screamed into the wind, and Hope whirled, twirled, danced into the storm, into the day, overcome by happiness. She was as overwhelmed as I was, maybe, by everything this day had brought, but so much more able to express it.

  I went to join her. I couldn’t have done anything else. I was taking her hand, spinning her around, then pulling her into my arms and dancing along the firm sand at the water’s edge as the waves hissed and roared and broke around our boots. The wind and the water offered up a rhythm impossible to resist, and I danced to their music with Hope, turning her, twirling her, spinning her around. I danced her backwards and forwards along the shore, and finally, I dropped her back into a low dip, her back arching like a bow, everything in her body trusting me not to drop her.

  She came up laughing, her eyes sparkling. “I didn’t know you could do that.”

  “I can sing as well,” I told her. “Maori talents.” Talents I never used anymore, but something about being home, and being with Hope, seemed to bring them out in me. “But right now, I need you to come with me.”

  She didn’t ask why this time. She just did it. I led her over to the spot where the sand turned to grass, into the shelter of a gigantic, gnarled tree whose mighty branches twined and twisted close to the ground.

  “I have something I need to tell you,” I said. I touched one of the huge, swinging beards, the clumps of aerial roots that provided a dense layer of shelter that shielded us from the gusting wind and occasional spatters of rain. “This is a pohutukawa. In this case—a grandfather. An important tree for an important occasion.”

  “Oh?” Hope asked. “What kind of occasion? Or do you mean today? Today did feel important.” She put her hand up to the side of my face in that way she had that got under all my defenses and said, “Thank you for that. Thank you for talking, and for listening, and for compromising.” As if she knew how hard all of those had been for me.

  I had to smile. “Sweetheart. Do you really not realize that there’s part of this I haven’t done yet? Turns out it was just as well, because I guess you weren’t ready. But now…I think you are. Least I hope so.”

  I finally recognized the emotion I was feeling. I was nervous. I didn’t get nervous, but I was anyway. I wanted to give Hope whatever her dream was, but I didn’t know what that looked like. She might wish afterwards that I’d done it differently, in a more romantic setting. I should wait until tonight, when I’d take her to a flash restaurant. Or hire a helicopter, maybe. Make it more special.

  I shook my head, chasing the doubts away. “Harden up,” I muttered, and Hope looked more confused than ever.

  “What?” she said. “Did I…”

  I hauled in a breath, reached into the pocket of my own anorak, and did it. The thing Karen had said. I knelt down and sank a knee straight into the rough, wet grass of my homeland.

  She looked down at me. “But you said…I thought…”

  “I told you I wanted to do it on the beach.” My heart was galloping away with me, my breath coming short, and I hauled myself back under control as best I could. “I got a bit ahead of myself last night, but I’m doing it properly now.” I opened the red leather box with its gold scrolling, Cartier spelled out across the top, and showed her what was inside.

  I took her left hand in mine, noticed in some detached corner of my brain that her hand wasn’t steady, and maybe mine wasn’t, either, and said it. “Hope, I love you. Will you marry me?”

  “It’s…” Her eyes were shining. “It’s too much.”

  “No,” I said. “It’s not enough. But it’s a start.”

  “Hemi,” she said helplessly. “No. It’s so gorgeous.”

  The breath of a laugh left me. “You’re meant to say ‘Yes,’ you know. I’m not getting any younger down here.”

  She laughed, but there were a couple tears
on her cheeks, too. Hope hated to cry, but she was crying anyway. She reached out with both hands and tugged me to my feet. “Yes,” she said. “Yes. I’ll say it again. And I love you, too.”

  If I’d been nervous before? I was floating now. I took the ring carefully from its velvet nest, shoved the box back into my anorak pocket, and picked up her left hand. The surf wasn’t pounding any harder than my heart as I slid the diamond-encrusted platinum band onto her slim finger.

  I had the first part of what I’d told her I wanted. My ring was on her finger, and even the gloom of the day couldn’t dim the three carats of flash from the round stone in the center, or the delicate curlicues of platinum around the setting that said “Hope” in a way my eye, and my heart, had recognized the moment I’d walked into the shop weeks earlier.

  The ring was bright, it was beautiful, and it was absolutely and completely feminine. In other words, it was perfect.

  “It’s yours,” I told her, still holding her hand in mine. “And it always will be.”

  After that, we walked some more, both of us quiet now, our arms around each other, until even Hope had had enough rain. And then we went back up to the apartment, changed into dry clothes, and went to lunch in a cafe.

  You could say it wasn’t glamorous, but it was right all the same.

  “So,” I said when I was tucking into a beef and mushroom pie and a bottle of Waikato Draught and realizing once again how much New Zealand had to teach the world about food, “I’m thinking this means we’re good to get married this week.”

  “Very restrained of you.” Hope smiled at me from over her pumpkin soup. She was all but glowing. She took my breath away. “Why do I imagine that the first way that sentence was formed went something like, “Now that that’s settled, we’re getting married this week”?

  “I’m not telling,” I said, which made her laugh. “But seriously. It’s Sunday. I’m thinking we do it next Saturday, at the marae, I hope, though Koro’s still checking. I’ll get as much of my whanau—my family—here as I can for it. We can leave most of the invites to Koro.”

  “Wait,” she said. “When could you possibly have arranged that?”

  “Well…yesterday, when Koro and I were fixing the fence, if I’m forced to be honest.”

  “Huh.” She looked up at me through her lashes. “A little confident, weren’t you?”

  “I tend to run that way,” I admitted.

  “I noticed.”

  “So,” I said, “whoever you want to invite—ring them, and then tell me. I’ll fix that as well, get them over here.”

  Some of the animation left her face, and she said, “I hate to say this. It’s embarrassing. But I don’t really have anybody to invite.”

  I was startled, I’ll admit. “Nobody?”

  She laughed, though she didn’t look comfortable. “Doesn’t that sound pathetic? But I’ve been taking care of Karen since my senior year of high school. And friends…” She shrugged. “Friends haven’t been so easy to come by, you know? My friends from high school…they went off to college, got new lives, moved on, moved out.”

  “I can see that,” I said, because I had to say something. And besides, she’d been poor. That, I knew for sure. Poor, still a teenager, and with an eleven-year-old sister to raise? I imagined that might have limited her social life more than a bit.

  “Otherwise…” she went on, clearly determined to make a clean breast of it, “I do have neighbors, and lots of acquaintances, I guess you’d say, in the neighborhood, and I got to know some of the models pretty well, working for Vincent. I’ve had Karen’s friends over sometimes, too. But again, I’m a good fifteen years younger than those girls’ mothers. And,” she said, smiling again, trying to lighten it up, “I somehow don’t think you’d appreciate my inviting Nathan. He’d be surprised anyway, I guess. Work friends are work friends. So, no. Nobody to invite. Isn’t that sad? Do you want to change your mind?”

  She said it lightly, but it wasn’t light. It made something happen in my chest, in fact. Hope had been made to love people, and to be loved in return. From now on, that was what she was going to get.

  “No,” I said. “I don’t. And it’s true for me, too, you know. I have acquaintances, allies, people I’m friendly with, but the closest thing I have to a friend, other than my cousins, is probably Eugene. Debra’s husband. My trainer. When you’re trying to get ahead, you don’t share too much, don’t let down your guard.”

  “Except with me.”

  “Except with you. And only when you drag it out of me. So we’ll have your family, because you have Karen. I’ll have my family, because I’ll have Koro, and some other people who may or may not add value to the party. We’ll assume they’ll be on their good behavior. Hope for the best, eh. And we’ll have each other. That’s all we really need. So—Saturday?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Saturday. So do you mean, your parents…”

  We weren’t going there. Not today. I’d shared more than enough already. “Tomorrow, I’ll take you and Karen to Auckland, and we’ll do some shopping, buy you a dress. I’ve got an idea.”

  She sighed, but dropped the subject of my parents, to my relief. “Why does that not surprise me? The groom’s not supposed to see the dress, you know.”

  “Tell me tomorrow. I’ll have a marriage license to collect as well.”

  Which was when the trouble really started.

  Hemi

  The next morning at eight-thirty, when I left to get the license, Hope wanted to go with me.

  “I’ve never applied for a marriage license before,” she said.

  “It won’t be exciting,” I said. “Standing in a queue.”

  She looked sideways at me. “It’s New Zealand. Just how much of a queue are you expecting at the…where?”

  “Katikati Library. You don’t know how many old ladies will be paying their rates or renewing their dog licenses. And I have calls to make. Things I need to get sorted for today. I need some time. I’ll be back in an hour, and we’ll go to Auckland.” I stepped closer and took her in my arms, heedless of Koro and Karen at the kitchen table, our interested audience. “Let me make your day beautiful. Let me make it right.”

  Her eyes softened. “How am I supposed to argue with that?”

  I smiled. “You’re not.” I gave her a little slap on the bum and a quick kiss on her sweet mouth and said, “That’ll be a good start to the marriage, eh.”

  Karen said, “What, telling her not to argue? Talk about totally wrong.”

  I smiled some more. “Nah. It won’t work. Pure wishful thinking.”

  Hope gave me a shove and said, “Go, then. Come back with a license to marry me.”

  Pity that nothing’s ever as easy as it seems.

  As it turned out, there was only one person in front of me. He was in his seventies, though, and arguing about his rubbish collection rates, which made up for about three dog licenses.

  Finally, though, he was leaving, still shaking his head and muttering under his breath, and it was my turn. I explained my errand, set the documents on the counter, and watched as the comfortably upholstered middle-aged Maori lady on the other side picked them up, scrutinized them one by one, began to type into her computer, and then returned to one of them and studied it again. The one I most wanted her to be done with.

  “I don’t think this is in order, love,” she said at last.

  “Of course it is,” I said. “It’s ancient history, more than twelve years old, and it’s in order.”

  She turned it around to show me.

  New Zealand

  Decree of Dissolution

  the heading read, with all the details beneath.

  Completely in order. I ought to know.

  “Here,” she said, pointing to the lower right corner. “Should be an embossed seal there, and it’s missing. Most important bit of the paper.”

  “So somebody forgot to stamp it,” I said, holding onto my temper. “It must happen. It was done all right and tig
ht.”

  “Nobody forgets to stamp it,” she said. “You’re going to have to get a corrected copy before I can issue your license. Sorry, but I can’t. First rule of getting married, love. You can’t already be married to somebody else.”

  I wanted to explode, but I didn’t. I took a deep breath and said, “I’m back in the homeland for a couple weeks. My fiancee’s waiting at my Koro’s house with my ring on her finger, ready for me to take her to Auckland to buy her a dress. This…” I pushed the paper back toward her. “It was done and dusted a dozen years ago. It may not have a seal, but it’s real. I should know. I paid for it. So—please. I’ve got a girl waiting, and I need to marry her in front of my whanau, so she’ll believe.”

  I couldn’t believe I’d said all that, but I may as well have saved my breath, because she was shaking her head, looking genuinely sorry. “I can’t. I wish I could, but I can’t. Here.” She reached for a paper from a rack on the wall and handed it to me. “All you need to do is look it up online. It’ll be recorded. Then you bring the proof in here, and you’ll have your license.”

  “Brilliant,” I said. “Could I ask you to look it up for me now?”

  She glanced behind me, where a bloke was waiting, shifting from foot to foot and glaring at me.

  “Please,” I added. I didn’t beg, and I was doing it anyway.

  She said, “I can’t. You need to look up your own info. It’s all spelled out on the paper there.”

  It didn’t matter whether I got the license today or tomorrow. The waiting period was three days, and I had six. All the same, I pushed it. “There’s nothing you can do? You sure?” A young mother wheeled a pushchair with a grizzling baby in it up behind the bloke, and the bloke sighed.