“Yeah, well, this morning sickness is disgusting.” The words were out of Tui’s mouth before her brain registered footsteps behind her.
Nat’s wide-eyed, oh shit gaze slammed into hers. Too late. What Kyle’s mother lacked in manners, she made up for in selective hearing and volume.
“Morning sickness?” she all but shrieked at Tui. “You’re pregnant?”
Tui’s gaze skipped away from Netta’s scrunched-up, red-blotched face to where Isaac stood beside Kyle in front of a shelf of packaged honey containers. Perhaps they’d been having a pleasant conversation about the MGO factor of that batch of honey, but at the shrillness of Netta’s voice, they’d spun around and started toward the building’s rear.
Isaac’s forward momentum came to an abrupt halt, and he stood in the middle of the shop floor, staring at Tui with a bewildered frown on his face.
Kyle reacted to his mother’s words first, his mouth thinning into a narrow slash. “Mum.”
Netta ignored him for a beat longer, continuing to glare at Tui.
Then she rounded on him. “You’ve gone and knocked her up, you bloody fool. What are you going to do about it?”
There was only one other time Tui could remember a silence so sudden slicing through a room. When she’d heard the news of Isaac’s near-fatal accident while on an All Blacks’ tour in London.
For that shocked three beats, the weight of her big brother’s stare made her want to run and hide—the same reaction she’d had as a child when she thought she’d disappointed him. Never afraid of his size and strength, even as a kid, the only thing she’d feared from Isaac was letting him down. He was four years her senior, and his world had been black and white, right and wrong, good and bad, for as long as she could remember.
His shocked eyes said being pregnant with Kyle’s baby wasn’t a good thing.
She didn’t hear anything but silence and the dull thud of her rising blood pressure for another beat more, then everyone started talking at once. Netta yelling at her son, David and Eric and Matt talking loudly among themselves, awkward glance-swapping silence from Glen, Jonno, and Henry, and Kyle—Kyle who kept his gaze locked on her face but didn’t say a word even as Isaac recovered his composure and stalked over to them.
“Is this true?”
The softness of her brother’s voice in comparison to the shouting going on around her made her heart drop like an anchor into her stomach. She pressed her lips together for a moment, then nodded.
“How long have you two been together?”
The quiet, reasonable tone of his voice sandpapered over her nerves and took her back to the time he’d discovered she’d shoplifted a pair of flip-flops when she was eleven. She didn’t dare glance at Kyle while she weighed her answer.
“We met in Rarotonga.”
Isaac’s eyebrow twitched up and he glanced at her waist. He always was good at math. “Uh-huh.”
There was a world of we’ll be discussing this more in private later in his eyes, and he directed the scarier version of that stare toward Kyle.
She had to give Kyle credit for not bailing out the nearest exit—not many men on or off the rugby field could hold their ground in a face-off with Isaac Ngata. Isaac took his sport very seriously, but the value of his family to him was way higher. His jawline set hard enough to break concrete, her normally chill big brother bristled with aggression, all of it directed at Kyle.
Netta, who’d finally seemed to run out of negative adjectives, stopped talking long enough to check over her shoulder and see Isaac looming there. Her eyes bugged, then her spine went rigid. “Don’t you go blaming my son for this mess. Takes two to tango.”
“Not blaming anyone, Mrs. Griffin,” he replied.
Even as pissed as she’d seen him in a long time, Isaac kept it locked down under a calm exterior. She guessed if she had to have a bombshell like this dropped on her brothers, Isaac was the better choice for not losing his temper and beating the living hell out of the man who’d knocked her up.
“But like your mother,” Isaac said, “I want to know what you’re planning to do about it.”
Kyle moved in front of his mother, gently easing her behind him. He went toe to toe with Isaac, his iron-hard profile directing a steady gaze on Isaac’s face. “That’s between Tui and I, and nobody else’s business.”
“You’ve only known her a few weeks, but she’s my blood, mate. That makes it my business.”
Threat simmered beneath the surface of Isaac’s words, and once again, Tui was grateful Sam, with his shorter fuse, wasn’t there. Because then she’d be forced to kick two Ngata male asses for treating her like a helpless female.
But Sam wasn’t the only one with a short fuse. Liquid lava spilled through her veins and surged across her cheekbones. Crazily, tears stung in the corner of her eyes, which made her even madder.
“Hey!” Ten heads, including Isaac’s and Kyle’s, swiveled toward her loud exclamation. “All of you, back the hell off.”
Nausea vanquished, Tui straightened her shoulders and marched the few feet to stand beside her brother. “This is not how I planned everyone to find out,” she began.
“Were you planning on telling us?” Isaac said.
“No. I was going to tell you my growing baby bump was a record-breaking tumor.” She glared at him. “Of course I was going to tell you. When I was ready to tell you.”
“And him?” Isaac jerked his chin at Kyle. “Were you planning to tell us about him and this”—his lip curled—“relationship?”
Tui’s back teeth ground against each other. “When I was already expecting this kind of reaction? No. And there’s no relationship.”
“Yes, there is,” Kyle said.
It earned him an arctic glare from Isaac and a tummy flutter deep inside Tui.
“She says there isn’t.” Isaac crossed beefy arms across his chest, biceps flexing as if the rock-hard muscles were itching to break something in half. Like Kyle.
“She’s still in the denial stage.” Kyle must have had a death wish because, when he slanted her a glance, his eyes shimmered with heat and humor.
Oh, so this was funny?
Their non-relationship hot sex resulting in unplanned pregnancy was amusing to him? She got a grip on Isaac’s forearm and shoved hard, surprising him enough that she managed to unbalance him. He fell back a step and Tui slipped into the space he’d vacated.
“She doesn’t need two boneheaded men telling her what is and what isn’t a relationship.” Or how much it stung seeing Kyle’s family’s reaction to the news. Not that she expected her parents’ reactions to be much better. Suddenly she felt incredibly tired, the kind of tired when even a good night’s sleep wouldn’t refill your energy well.
“I’m going home. Feel free to fight it out after I’m gone.” She spun away from the men and without making eye contact with Kyle’s brothers or the other men, strode out of the honey shop.
Sunshine beat down on her head and she dropped the sunglasses off her forehead onto her nose. Added bonus: no one would see any stray tears that slipped over her lashes. No one would guess what a hot mess she was inside.
“I’m coming with you,” Kyle said directly behind her.
Except Kyle. Somehow he’d seen through the bravado.
“And don’t even think about telling me you’re fine.”
“Fine,” she said, untying Storm’s reins from where she’d been tethered.
She scrambled less gracefully than she’d like into the saddle and dug her heels into Storm’s side. The mare took off like a bottle rocket, perhaps sensing some of Tui’s distress. Ranger soon trotted up beside her, and she fought to keep her lower lip from wobbling.
Kyle wisely kept his mouth shut as she slowed Storm down to an easy walk, riding like a beginner with a length of iron rod inserted in her spine. She rolled her shoulders, letting her gaze sweep over the soothing greens of treetops and ferns that surrounded this part of the Griffins’ land. As they approached the fork in
the road which led to Griff’s house, Kyle finally spoke.
“Come back to my place for a bit before the ride home,” he said over the clopping of horses’ hooves on the road. “Please,” he added in a softer voice. “You look like you could do with a cup of tea.”
“What are we, eighty?” She couldn’t keep the snark out of her voice, even though a cup of tea sounded wonderful.
He laughed, the rough, deep sound settling across her rigid shoulders and unknotting some of the tension there.
“I feel I’ve aged a few decades after that scene.”
“You’re not the only one,” she admitted. “All right. A cup of tea—and that’s all.”
That got her a quirked eyebrow. “You think I’d seduce you into bed and risk being disemboweled by your brother and his mates back there?”
She sent him an arched look. “It’s not Isaac you need worry about. You’re not seducing me anywhere near a bed.”
He said nothing, just clicked his tongue at Ranger and turned onto Griff’s driveway, his wicked smile suggesting he didn’t need her near a bed to seduce her.
And he’d be right.
They settled the horses and Kyle led the way to the front door, where a fluffy orange shape sat on the other side of the glass. Beaker must’ve spied them, as he rose onto his hind legs, his front paws hitting the glass and making it rattle.
“Chunky little guy.” She looked at Kyle. “If I go in there, will he try to gnaw my leg off?”
“He’s protesting his confinement by stress eating.” Kyle slowly opened the door, bracing his foot in the crack and bending down to scoop up the cat before he could escape.
Beaker flattened his ears at Kyle and let out a low growl.
“Not my fault if you’ve got a gut ache from too much kibble.” He held the cat under one arm like a rugby ball, moving farther into the hallway so Tui could enter the house. “Take a seat in the living room and I’ll make your tea.”
The living room was currently undergoing an overhaul. What the cat had started by clawing the wallpaper, Kyle had finished, stripping off the ugly patterned stuff and spackling the walls. He’d also ripped up a section of the worn carpet, laying bare the dull wood planking that, when refinished, would make a beautifully restored wooden floor. Dominating the room sat a huge leather sofa positioned in front of a guy-sized flat-screen TV—which was on and playing some sort of weird documentary featuring birds in a garden setting with no voice-over.
She sank into the sofa—brand new, by the looks of it—and watched sparrows splashing in a birdbath. A few moments later, Beaker, tail aloft, strolled into the living room. He sat directly in front of the screen with rapt attention, his ears twitching overtime as one of the on-screen giant sparrows twittered.
“Milk and sugar?” Kyle called from the kitchen.
Beaker’s ginger head continued to follow the onscreen birds’ every move. She found herself battling with the warm fuzzies that Kyle would set up this kind of entertainment for a cat he apparently didn’t like.
“Just milk, thanks,” she called back.
Two green eyes swiveled toward her at the sound of her voice. Beaker let out a chirping mew and sass-walked over to sniff delicately at her feet. The cat bunted his head against her shin and sprang onto the sofa next to her. He nudged her elbow with his face, his whiskers tickling her skin.
“If I pet you and you bite me, we’ll have trust issues going forward.”
Beaker continued to love up on her arm until she caved and stroked a palm down his spine. His tail shot up and quivered, a blissful feline smile on his face as she lightly scratched the base of his tail. The rumbling purr that erupted from him startled a giggle out of her.
“Like that, huh?”
Oh yeah, he liked it and decided he wanted more. Beaker leaped onto her lap, and butt and tail in the air, faced the TV screen. When she didn’t resume stroking him, he glanced around at her and made another chirping mew, as if querying the lack of attention now that he was in a prime bird-watching position.
“I suppose you want a lap massage now?” she murmured, running her fingers through his soft fur. The purring ratcheted up a notch, so she took that as a yes.
By the time Kyle walked into the room with two mugs of steaming tea, Beaker was sprawled across her legs in slit-eyed, boneless pleasure as she continued to pet him. Kyle passed her a mug and eased down slowly onto the opposite end of the couch.
“Either you’re a cat whisperer,” he said, “or you’ve got some contraband catnip in your pocket.”
“You mean he doesn’t do this with you?”
Kyle chuffed out a laugh and sipped his tea. “Since I bought the TV and couch he’s only deigned to sit on it if I keep well away from him.”
“You bought a cat a leather couch and TV?”
Beaker stretched, rolling onto his back to show them both his fluffy belly and still-intact fluffy bollocks.
“Mate, put it away,” Kyle said. “You’re making me feel a little insecure.” He grinned at her over the rim of his mug, and she found herself smiling inanely back. “That would make me a crazy cat man, so no. They’re for Matt when he eventually moves in.”
“Are you and your youngest brother tight? You seem to be.”
Kyle jerked his shoulder up. “Not as tight as we used to be, but we get each other in a way Eric and Dave don’t. Not all sibling relationships are created equal, right?”
“Right.” She didn’t want to be reminded of sibling relationships with Isaac’s reaction still fresh in her mind.
As if he could read her thoughts, Kyle blew out a long breath. “Your brother just wants to know that I’ll do the right thing by you.”
“We don’t know what that right thing is yet.” Setting down her untouched tea, she leaned her head against the sofa back and squeezed her eyes shut. “God, the look on his face—the looks on your family’s faces.”
She pressed her lips together in case they betrayed her hurt with a telling wobble.
“They were shocked, Isaac was shocked; shock is a normal reaction. They’ll get over the shock once they’ve had time to accept it.”
She hadn’t accepted it, and could you keep calling a baby it in these early stages? Did the lack of pronoun make her sound clinical and callous? Did she still feel callously toward the little cluster of cells growing inside her? Did she feel anything at all?
“Maybe.” She concentrated on the heavy weight of the cat warming her legs instead of the chill slick of ice coating her guts. “But I’m not sure your mother and brothers will ever accept it—him, her, whatever—and as for my family…” Tui swallowed past a dust-dry blockage in her throat. “Well. I have to tell my parents now. It can’t wait any longer.”
“What will you tell them?”
Tui heard the clink of his mug being placed on the floor, then the sofa cushion dipped as he scooted over to sit beside her. She cracked open an eye as he took her hand, lacing his fingers with hers.
“I have no idea,” she said.
Isaac’s disappointment was hard enough. The thought of her dad’s made fresh tears well up in her eyes. Now she knew what women meant about damn pregnancy hormones. A tear tipped over her lashes and tracked wetly down her cheek, its progress halted by the back of Kyle’s knuckles.
“Hey,” he said gently. “I’m coming with you. I’ll have your back.”
Kyle? With her as she confessed to her parents she was pregnant? “That’s not a good idea.”
“Worried your dad will whip out a shotgun?”
“Very funny.” She shut her eyes again with a huff.
He squeezed her fingers, transporting their linked hands to rest on his thigh. His rock-hard thigh, warm through the cotton of his pants, pressing into her palm like a brand.
“Look at me, Tui.”
Oh, but she didn’t want to. It was so much easier to hear birds twittering on the screen and a purring cat than to listen to Kyle’s voice rough with sincerity. If she opened her eyes and let
him speak, he’d crumble yet another brick in her defensive wall. Why, oh why couldn’t he be a complete jerk like she’d expected him to be once she found out he was a Griffin?
“I want to do this with you.”
She opened her lashes a crack and got sucked into the vortex of his hazel gaze. It stripped her emotions raw. He meant it. God knew why he wanted to put himself in her family’s crosshairs—but he meant it. “It won’t be easy.”
“Nothing about you comes easy.” He angled his head, the corner of his mouth tilting up in the corner. “But I’m up for the challenge.”
“It’s your funeral.” She stopped petting the cat and reached for her mug of tea. Beaker, suddenly alert, shot out a restraining paw which landed on her forearm.
Kyle chuckled and half rose from the sofa, easing past her to pick up the mug. He offered it to her, handle first. “If you stop giving him attention before he’s done, this is the result. He must like you, though, since he hasn’t drawn blood.”
“That’s reassuring.” She took the mug, letting the heat seep through her palms.
“He can’t help it. It’s his nature.” Kyle sank gracefully back onto the sofa, bracing an ankle on his opposite knee, sliding his arm along the sofa back.
Delicious prickles coiled a warm necklace around her throat at how close his hand was to her nape. If he traced one of those long fingers over her skin to the pulse throbbing beneath her jaw…
She sipped at the rapidly cooling tea, studying a tiny chip of porcelain missing from the mug’s rim.
You can’t trust a Griffin, any of ’em. They’ll stab you in the back as soon as look at you.
How many times had Tui heard one of her parents say some variation of that?
He can’t help it. It’s his nature.
Could Kyle help his nature? And what kind of man was he really? Had she seen the real him? Or did she only see what she desperately wanted to?
He must like you, though, since he hasn’t drawn blood.
That’s what she was afraid of. Kyle liked her, but he could do more than draw blood if one of them chose to walk away.
Tame Your Heart: A Small Town Romance (Bounty Bay Book 6) Page 19