“What would Dad and I do without you?” Ma’s mouth quivered with emotion. “Are you sure—”
“I’m sure,” Tui said. “I’ve got whānau at my beck and call if I need them.”
Which she wouldn’t. Just because she was a woman didn’t mean she couldn’t fix a fence—as a teenager her dad had taught her how.
“And Henry Cameron. He’ll help keep an eye on things if Isaac and Sam aren’t around.”
Henry, one of Isaac’s mates from school rugby days, co-owned a new café in town and also worked part-time catering for Tori’s family’s event venue. Like he had any spare time—but they’d known him for years, and he was as dependable as the day was long.
“Ma! I’ll be fine. Stop worrying.”
“Okay, okay. Let me put Pet into his crib and then we’ll eat.” Her ma disappeared into the house.
Tui fixed a confident smile on her face and strolled over to the empty chair between Uncle Manu and Isaac, who was now changed into a puke-free shirt.
She had this. For once, the flighty baby of the Ngata clan was stepping up and taking charge.
Five days after her parents headed off for some serious downtime, all was quiet on the western front. She’d completed her daily quota of medical/surgical transcribing on her laptop each morning, which left her plenty of time to contemplate the meaning of life in the afternoon. Gumboots on, Tui would walk down to the main house and check everything and everyone was hunky-dory, as her dad would say.
Today the horses were happy, the cattle were enjoying the spring growth—or as far as she could tell since the beasts had free range of five hundred acres and were like spotting horned needles in a haystack—and the dogs would be happy once she’d gone into town to pick up some more dog food.
Technically, Kuri and Hari had enough biscuits for another couple of meals, but restlessness had burrowed into her bones these past few days. She’d take the Ducati out for a spin to help counteract it. Make it manageable, at least.
Tui slipped into her bike leathers, grabbed a couple of bungee cords to attach the bag of biscuits to the pillion seat on the return trip, and tugged on her helmet. Already her heartbeat was flying along the country roads, beating fast and free, ready for the next adventure. The adventure of buying dog biscuits. She snorted and started the bike, loving the growl of the engine vibrating through her.
Time to spread her wings and fly…
By the time she reached Bounty Bay’s main street fifteen minutes later, she’d burned off a small portion of the got to get moving jitters. Noting the time, she decided to grab a couple of take-out coffees and drop in to see Allison on her afternoon break. She found a parking spot, coincidentally right outside Henry’s café, Surf’s Up. Must be her lucky day. The barista working the giant coffee machine smiled at her as she entered and ordered two coffees to go. He was kinda cute, and under other circumstances she might have flirted a little, just to keep her skills from going rusty. But her heart wasn’t in it today.
Her heart hadn’t been in it, truth be told, since Rarotonga.
And…she really had to stop thinking about Kyle, wondering what he was doing this gorgeous spring day.
Allison was waiting for her in a nearby park, her smile when she spotted Tui as sunny as the daffodils waving in the warm breeze. A few parents stood in clusters chatting while their preschool offspring made use of the playground equipment. They found an empty bench seat and sat. Allison peeled open the takeout lid to check Tui had remembered to order her coffee black—which of course she had, because in all the years she’d known Allison, her friend had never taken it any other way. To say Alli had trust issues was an understatement.
“How’s it going, Farmer Joe?” Allison blew on her coffee then snapped the lid back on.
“Sweet as, Drug Dealer Al.”
Allison did a side-to-side over-the-shoulder head whip to check none of the other people strolling through the park had overheard. “Pharmacy technician, thank you very much.”
It was an old joke, but sweet Alli took the bait almost every single time. “Drug dealer sounds more dangerous, you bad girl, you.” She gently shoulder checked her friend and took a long, satisfying sip of her coffee—which was not black, thank you very much.
“Didn’t you once call drug dealers the tapeworms of society?”
“I did. I’m just teasing you, hon.”
Allison rolled her eyes. “I knew that. But my guess is you’re trying to deflect my attention away from whatever has put that expression on your face.”
“I have an expression?”
“You look different somehow. Different from the way you looked when I saw you last in Raro.”
Tui scrunched up her face and took another sip of coffee. “Yeah, well, it’s back to the real world now. Holiday’s over.”
Allison arched away from her, studying Tui’s face the way she imagined an artist would. A police artist, maybe. Tui tried to brush it off with a laugh. “Jeez, will you stop staring at me? I’m not different and there’s no weird expression on my face.”
“Hmmm.” Allison pursed her lips and slitted her eyes. “You look relaxed and skittish both at the same time. And you’ve been mysteriously unavailable for comment since you got back to Bounty Bay.”
“Fine,” she said. “Just don’t go blabbing it to Petra and Tori. They’ll make a big thing out of what is not a big thing.”
“Oh my goodness. You met a man, didn’t you? On Raro? After we’d gone? Are you seeing him still? Where does he live?”
Tui held up a palm before any more questions could be fired. “Yes, yes, yes, no, and I don’t know. We met, we had sex, we went our separate ways.”
Even as the last flippant statement blurted out of her mouth, her stomach clenched tight. Of course it was just sex, the very definition of a one-night stand. Kyle wasn’t her first one-night rodeo star, and he wouldn’t be her last. However, knowing her friend’s history, she should’ve kept her big damn mouth shut.
“Oh.” Allison’s wide smile slipped into a thin-lipped one, the spark of excitement in her blue eyes extinguishing. “I see. So no romantic three dates for you, then?”
“Nope.” Tui dropped her gaze to Allison’s crossed knees and farther to her work-appropriate teal-colored heels that bobbed up and down with the nervous twitch of her foot. “I’m sorry, hon, I didn’t think.”
“No apologies, remember?” Allison smoothed her skirt over her knees. “I’m a big girl and I’m not made of spun glass.”
“Spun sugar, maybe.”
Allison laughed. “Sugar and spice, and all things nice, that’s what little girls are made of. Now tell me about this guy—and don’t spare the details.”
Coffee cups dumped in the trash, Tui walked with Allison back to the pharmacy. She gave her a hug outside, promising to organize a girls’ night for the three of them—since Tori was back in Queenstown—in a few weeks’ time.
She strolled along the sidewalk, window-shopping some, pausing for a chat and catch up with people she hadn’t seen for a while, and thought about dropping in on one of her aunties for a visit, with the ulterior motive of being asked for dinner. She spotted her brother’s newest wood-turning apprentice hurrying out of Surf’s Up a few shops ahead, hands full of takeout bags. Robbie must be on smoko duty for the crew today.
She grinned as he opened one of the bags with his teeth and took a bite out of whatever was inside. Yeah, the kid was definitely part of Tori’s family. She was about to wave out to him when a sign-painted utility truck pulled in to park directly behind her bike.
Griffin’s Mānuka Honey was scrolled in gold across the white sides, along with a gold and black stylized logo showing a bee buzzing around a hive. The truck’s tinted windows prevented her seeing which Griffin brother was driving, a toss-up of asshat one, two, three, or four. Three now, she corrected herself, since she’d heard through the grapevine that Griff had died. Hard to find much sympathy for the crotchety old bastard, but she felt a sliver for his
family. Whānau first, always.
Didn’t mean she would accost which ever asshole brother was driving to offer her condolences, though. She stepped away from the center of the sidewalk and faced a window display of real estate flyers, keeping an eye on her bike in the window’s reflection. With her hot-pink safety helmet bungee-corded to the passenger seat, anyone who knew her knew it was her bike—and she wouldn’t put it past a Griffin to accidentally run it over with the truck.
The driver’s door cranked open and asshole number two—aka Eric Griffin—unfolded his lanky frame onto the road. Great. Other than old Griff himself, Eric was the biggest jerk among them, with a reputation for being thrown out of pubs for brawling. She watched his beady-eyed gaze skim over her bike, his lip curling. He ducked his head, said something into the cab of his truck that she couldn’t hear, then slammed the door.
Double great. There was probably another Griffin left inside.
Tui stepped even closer to the window, hoping the waving Find your new home with us! flag on a stand would provide some cover. With any luck, Eric and his brothers—because they seemed to travel together like a pack of mongrels—would be headed in the opposite direction.
The passenger door opened and from behind the tinted glass emerged another man—taller and broader than Eric, and wearing a blue-checked flannel shirt and a baseball cap. The window display wasn’t the best of reflective surfaces so the man’s features below the cap weren’t clear. Her gaze zipped back to a printed listing for a three-bedroom, split-level home minutes away from the beach, squinting at the glass, curious to see which asshat had chosen to ride alongside Eric.
The man nudged the truck door shut and stepped onto the sidewalk, pulling off the cap and running a hand through his dark hair. Clipped short on the sides, a little longer on top, the man’s espresso-colored hair was left delightfully rumpled, as if he’d just rolled out of bed. She angled her head, taking a quick peek around the flag.
He wasn’t wearing an ugly pair of orange swim shorts or a Hawaiian shirt, but the man waiting on the sidewalk while his brother checked the contents of the truck bed was Kyle.
Rarotongan Kyle.
It felt as if her veins and arteries abruptly pinched shut, her heart expanding, thudding against her breastbone as if seconds from exploding. Blood pounded in her ears, and against her will, she couldn’t pull her gaze away from him. The blue checked flannel sleeves were rolled up tanned and ropy forearms, and faded jeans clung to long legs that ended in a pair of work boots.
Her Kyle.
Eric moved around the truck bed to the sidewalk, tightening cords that held whatever was stored under a tarpaulin. He, too, was long-limbed and tall, his dark hair needing a good trim since it flopped over his face when he crouched to check a tire. He had a different shaped mouth than Kyle—thinner, crueler somehow—a weaker jawline that he’d tried to disguise with facial hair, and eyes a flat brown color. But seeing the two men close together, the similarities between them were there if you looked hard enough, if you knew what you were looking for. And she hadn’t—oh God—she hadn’t at all.
Brothers.
There were four Griffin siblings—everyone knew that—and three of them were regularly seen around town. David, who ran the business side of Griffin’s Mānuka Honey and kept pretty much to himself. Eric, who’d never grown out of the teenage delinquent phase, and the youngest, Matthew, who was Griff’s lackey and a volunteer firefighter at Bounty Bay’s small station. She knew there was one more Griffin sibling, Karl or Kevin, or something starting with K. The eldest son who apparently had the good sense to stay away from the rest of his family and live in Auckland.
She’d never met him, never seen him except years ago from a distance, and she’d been too busy with her own teenage social life to pay any attention to the four brothers who spent most of the year in a posh Auckland boarding school.
“Kyle.”
His name slipped from her lips in a strangled whisper. Her voice was too weak for him to have heard her over the sound of passing cars, the flag flapping, and a group of high school students on their lunch break discussing what sort of junk food they planned to buy.
Yet it was as if she’d summoned the devil.
Kyle watched his brother, cap jammed back on his head, hands casually stuffed in his jeans pockets, the play of a small smile on his face as he’d followed the path of the teens walking toward Tui. His gaze slid to her, frozen like a store mannequin, passed by, then skipped back, hazel eyes flaring wide. For two panicked heartbeats, Tui’s muscles went rigid, pumped full of fight-or-flight hormones.
Maybe he didn’t recognize her. Mirrored sunglasses, hair in a braid so it didn’t fly into her mouth while riding, bulky bike leathers. Nothing like the woman who wore a red bikini, her hair spilling down her back in wild salt-encrusted waves.
Then Kyle’s small smile morphed into one that took up most of the lower half of his handsome face. “Lizzie?”
Nope, nope, nope. Lizzie was still working on her tan on a Rarotongan sun lounger, sipping daiquiris without a care in the world.
Tui, by contrast, lived in the real world where Ngatas wouldn’t give a Griffin the time of day, or the shirt off their backs. Unless that shirt was woven from stinging nettles and barbed wire.
Kyle Griffin.
She stumbled back half a step, ordering her wobbly legs to spin her around in a graceful circle ready to hightail it after the sugar-crazy schoolkids. The heel of her motorcycle boot clipped something solid, and the sandwich board sign near the window display, which she hadn’t paid much attention to, toppled over with a resounding crash. She yelped, head whipping down to check out what damage her clumsiness had caused. When she glanced back up, Kyle was striding toward her.
“Lizzie!” His tone said he knew exactly who she was, sunglasses and leathers aside. “This is a happy coincidence. How are you?”
She managed an automated response of: “Good.”
In reality?
She was shell-shocked. Stunned into muteness. Her brain emptied of logic and was flooded with conflicting emotions.
Happy coincidence, her butt. What kind of sick game was he playing?
Chapter 6
The trip into town with his younger brother suddenly became worthwhile. So worthwhile he’d thank Eric for his insistence that Kyle help out with errands by buying him a steak dinner. Or ten dinners, for that matter. Spotting Lizzie outside the real estate office, staring at him as if he were a genie who’d just appeared from a lamp, made Eric his new favorite brother.
Lizzie was here—in Bounty Bay!
The stress and toll of the past few days as he had tried to make headway with his family fell from his shoulders like an unwanted lead cloak. He hoped his voice didn’t show too much of the excitement pumping through his veins at seeing her again. Not much chance of that. In his head, his voice sounded like a kid who’d discovered the master stash of Christmas presents by accident.
He’d been peripherally aware of someone standing by the shop window dressed in leathers, but it wasn’t until a double take of her face that he knew, without a doubt, that he had found his Rarotongan sea witch again.
He stopped two feet away from her—that was the distance his brain settled on as a polite gap—then the scent of her, a heady mix of leather and perfume, drew him in. He closed the distance in a long stride, heart punching into his throat as he slung his arms around her in a bear hug. He wasn’t generally much of a hugger, but offering a handshake to a woman who’d rocked his world seemed both lame and a little insulting. They’d parted on amicable terms, and besides, he’d need superhuman strength to resist touching her to make sure she was real.
She was real all right. Solid yet yielding, she fit him from toes to her chin pressed to his shoulder, like she was made for him. Her hands skimmed around his waist, brushing the back of his shirt before resting loosely either side of his hips. His fingers only encountered stiff leather and the soft tail of her braid.
He grinned into the wisps of hair escaping to curl around her face. Guaranteed he could guess the owner of the hot-pink helmet atop the sporty-looking motorbike. Lizzie, in and out of skintight leathers draped over a big black beast of a machine, had featured in many of his late-night fantasies.
He pulled back to the blank ovals of her sunglasses and the crease of her mouth that couldn’t really be labeled a smile. Wasn’t she happy to see him? His gut clenched, his fingers mimicking the gesture on her leather-covered arms for a moment before he caught himself and loosened his grip.
Lizzie shoved her sunglasses onto her head. Her eyes, which privately he thought were the color of the darkest concentration of mānuka honey, held no former sweetness nor warmth. They were a blank canvas, but he still fell into them like quicksand.
“It’s so good to see you,” he said. “Are you visiting the area? Taking a road trip?”
Something flickered in her gaze then stilled into an intense stare that reminded him of being under the unforgiving heat of a spotlight in a school Shakespeare production he’d been forced to participate in.
“Something like that.” Small white teeth pinched down on her lower lip then released. “Nothing like the freedom found on an open road.”
“Yeah.” An impatient line of questions crowded his throat, pushing and shoving with their need to make the most of this unexpected opportunity. “Listen, do you want to grab a coffee or something?”
He realized he was still holding her upper arms and made a conscious effort to let her go—and as soon as he did, Lizzie took a step back.
“I’m a little stretched for time.”
A worm of unease burrowed down his backbone, causing an itch he couldn’t reach. “Fifteen minutes,” he said. “Café’s right there.”
Her cheeks sucked in and she fiddled with the zipper of her jacket.
He gentled his voice. “Lizzie.” Damned if he’d beg, but… “Please. It’s just coffee.”
“It’s never just coffee—” Her mouth snapped shut, gaze shuttling sideways to a spot behind his right shoulder a moment before a heavy hand clamped onto it.
Tame Your Heart: A Small Town Romance (Bounty Bay Book 6) Page 6