Baby Ngata.
Tui would’ve filled out the medical forms, indicating her single status. Of course the technician had no idea, nor probably cared, who he was to this baby. But still. It sliced across his heart like salt-encrusted razor blades, because old-fashioned or not, he wanted this baby to have his name.
He just had to convince Tui to give this fledgling family a chance.
Thank goodness there was cake at Vee’s baby shower.
Tui was trapped on a three-seater couch between Natalie—who knew about Tui’s bun in the oven and was tactful enough not to mention it—and Great Aunty Polly—who didn’t, and kept patting Tui’s leg and saying, “Your turn one day. We need to find you a fella first, though, eh, girl?”
To which Tui had continued to smile and nod and offer to get the old lady another cup of tea. It was a small miracle her aunty hadn’t floated right out of her parents’ living room on a tide of Earl Grey.
Her ma bustled around the room being the perfect hostess to her newest daughter-in-law’s guests, while her dad and brothers had barricaded themselves in Pete’s garage, with Isaac periodically sent in to steal refreshments. Tui was tempted to slip into the garage herself, but she wanted to support Vee, who was glowing with all the attention. She knew that her oldest friend hadn’t had that sort of support from her ex’s family when she was pregnant with Ruby.
Ma stopped by the couch with a tray of cake-crumb-covered plates and gave her the arched-eyebrows head-tilt toward the kitchen. “Can you give me a hand, love?”
She sprang out of her seat. “Happy to. Excuse me, Aunty.”
“Bring another slice of cake when you come back, eh?” Aunty Polly smacked her lips together and turned sideways to Nat, who was breastfeeding Pet. “Hungry little kunekune, isn’t he?”
Tui fled toward the kitchen before her aunty started dishing out nursing advice.
“She means well.” Ma followed Tui into the kitchen and sat the tray down by the dishwasher. “And you’ll have to get used to a whole bunch of unsolicited advice soon enough.”
“I am used to it, though the topics are usually when are you going to settle down in one place? Or when are you going to make your mark in the world like your brothers?” Tui yanked open the dishwasher door. “Or my personal favorite, some variation of your eggs will be shriveling up soon so you’d better find a man and start giving your parents mokopuna. Guess that’s not so applicable now.” Her mouth twisted into a grimace as she picked up the first plate to stack.
Her ma made a soft noncommittal sound in the back of her throat and passed her the next plate in line. She and Dad had returned home three days ago, Ma insisting that Tui remain in the cottage for as long as she needed.
They’d spoken quite a few times over the past weeks since Tui dropped the bombshell on them, and she could tell each time her ma was making a huge effort not to bring up her pregnancy. To give her space to sort out in her own head what she wanted to do.
Tui caught herself before her hand could stray to press against her stomach in a pregnant-woman automated action, and she sucked in a ragged breath. “Ma.”
Her gaze zipped sideways toward the kitchen door and the sound of Vee’s laughter on the other side of it, then she looked up at her mother, and to her dismay, felt her eyes fill with tears. “Is it normal to feel, I dunno, weirdly out of body about having a baby? I mean, I know there’s something in there, but I’m not feeling the same gooey enthusiasm for the finished product that Natalie and Vee talk about.”
“Oh, baby.” Ma smiled at her. “Your pregnancy isn’t a carbon copy of any other woman’s, so don’t try to measure your ability to connect with this baby on someone else’s scale.”
“I don’t feel a connection. That’s the problem.”
“Pfffft.” Ma flapped a hand at her. “I spent all nine months carrying Isaac calling him a parasitic growth and threatening to make him pay a birth fee when he was twenty-one for stretch marks, swollen ankles, dental fees, and permanently going up a dress size.”
Tui snorted, causing a tear to spill over her lashes. She swiped it away. “You never told us kids that.”
“Of course not,” Ma said indignantly. “Impressionable young minds need to hear how much their parents wanted them, how adorable they were as babies, how everything they did under the age of five showed signs of childhood genius.” She rolled her eyes. “Nobody likes to admit that most fresh-out-of-the-womb babies are about as appealing as a skinned possum, and that the first few weeks after the birth can be truly terrifying—especially if you’ve had no experience handling newborns.”
Tui’s mouth twisted as she raised a hand. “That’s me. Unless you count holding them on my lap for ten minutes while they blow bubbles in their sleep.”
“That doesn’t count.”
“Thought not. So I’m screwed.”
Ma laughed. “The feelings will come, don’t you worry. Not every mother instantly falls in love with her child, but when we do…” She tilted her head thoughtfully. “There’s good reason mothers are compared to a lioness and her cubs.”
“Mmm.” Tui slotted a couple of glasses into the dishwasher tray. “And a reason why lions and their offspring aren’t used as a great parenting example.”
“Girl, did we not watch The Lion King together twenty thousand times when you were a kid?” Ma teased, then her expression grew serious. “You’re worried about Kyle’s ability to be a good father?”
The topic change, even though she’d been thinking about him whimsically as a handsome daddy lion, caught her off guard. “What? No. He’ll make a wonderful dad.”
She remembered the grief in his eyes over his ex-wife losing their child and ached for him.
“He wants you to keep the baby, doesn’t he?”
They were going there after all—guess she couldn’t avoid the inevitable forever. “He does.” She snatched up a dishcloth and started wiping the countertop. “And he suggested we keep the baby.”
“Did he now?” she asked, with a maternal eyebrow raise that said you might as well tell me everything.
“Yeah. Like roommates sharing a puppy.” Or a bad-tempered ginger cat. Her nose crinkled.
“The man wasn’t looking at you like a roommate last I saw.”
Tui paused in her wiping and mock glared at her ma. “Well, obviously there’s sexual attraction—hence the baby in my belly.”
Her ma gave her a deadpan stare. “Uh-huh.”
There were any number of things her ma could’ve countered her sarcasm with. Probing questions, gentle accusations, motherly advice…instead, she folded her arms, leaned a hip against the counter Tui was scrubbing the hell out of, and buttoned her lips.
The silent treatment, dammit. Worked every time.
She forced her cramped hand muscles to relax and release the dishcloth. “In Raro we just clicked, you know? It felt like when you unexpectedly bump into an old friend with a few hours to spare and you know you’ll be happy doing just about anything because you get to spend time with them.”
“It was easy between the two of you.”
“So easy.” Tui’s mouth twisted. “It kinda scared me even then, after only knowing him for a couple of days. And when I saw him again in Bounty Bay, before I figured out he was a Griffin…” She sighed, but it didn’t relieve the ache inside her.
“You felt it. That same feeling,” her ma supplied.
“Real bad.” So bad that she knew that feeling had morphed into a four-letter noun. And that was scarier than anything she’d felt in Raro, because now it wasn’t just her alone she had to think of.
“Does he feel the same? And before you start denying it, dig a little deeper.”
At her lips turning down, Ma closed the distance between them and wrapped an arm around her waist, watching her with dark eyes that’d somehow always spotted deception.
Had Kyle fallen in love with her as she had with him? The way he looked at her, from affectionately amused to a kid on Christmas morning spotting treasures und
er the tree. The way he listened to her as if everything she said was important enough to take notes. The way that he’d go still inside her, as though the pleasure of making love to her was something to savor.
The quivering inside her chest made her realize her heart badly wanted it to be true. “Maybe. But why does it have to be him, Ma? The last man on earth you and Dad would want for me.”
Ma squeezed Tui to her with a surprisingly strong arm. “What Dad and I want is for you to be happy and loved. Any problems he and I have with the Griffin family are not your problems. He’s already starting to warm to the idea of the horse-trekking tour, so that’s progress, don’t you think?”
Now it was her turn to be skeptical. “Uh-huh.”
“I mean it. We’re throwing down an olive branch. That’s what I brought you in here to talk to you about. Dad and I are going to ask the Griffins here for the Christmas Day hāngī.”
Tui felt her mouth drop open. “You’re what?”
“You heard me,” Ma said tartly, releasing her grip around Tui’s waist. She crossed over to Vee’s half-eaten baby shower cake and chopped off another slice, deftly setting it on a clean plate. “We’ll ask, they can say no, but in about six months’ time we’ll welcome this child into the world as one big whānau. Āe?” She thrust the plate at Tui.
“Āe,” Tui muttered, now imagining a fun family Christmas lunch turning into Armageddon, complete with nuclear missiles and biological warfare. Maybe even zombies. “One big happy whānau.”
Chapter 19
The past two weeks leading up to Christmas were the happiest Kyle could remember having in Bounty Bay. He blamed the nights spent wrapped around Tui for the dopey grin he wore daily as he abused his retinas going through endless haphazard paperwork or toiled alongside his brothers around the honey sheds until Dave kicked him out and told him to toil elsewhere. Even reshuffling work commitments in Auckland couldn’t entirely wipe the smile from his face, though the thought of returning to the city without Tui beside him managed to tamp down his good mood. But only for the few hours it took of dealing with the mundane and then it was all sunshine and roses again as he arrived on her doorstep with her favorite takeout sub for lunch.
Often she wouldn’t hear him pulling up outside with her headphones on as she typed on her laptop so fast her fingers were a blur. Inevitably her furrowed concentration would vanish as she caught a glimpse of him in her doorway, and her startled, explosive cursing would end up in laughter. And kisses. Lots of kisses, and sometimes even afternoon delight, depending on both their schedules.
And that thought was better than anything he could find under the Christmas tree.
“What’re you grinning about?” His mother plopped down into the plastic chair next to his, a loaded dessert plate of pavlova and whipped cream in her hands. “Or is it gas from all that meat we ate for lunch earlier? The pork was bit tough, I thought.”
Kyle’s glance zipped across the Ngatas’ sprawling deck and the small army of guests gathered around a table loaded with desserts, helping themselves. As he scanned the glass bowls of colorful layered trifle and the platters of airy pavlovas sagging under the weight of whipped cream, sliced kiwifruit, and strawberries, he clenched his back teeth together and counted to three. Slowly.
“The pork was fine, Mum. As was the rest of the food the Ngatas so graciously provided.”
She sniffed, breaking off a chunk of crisp white meringue with her spoon. “If you like that sort of heavy meal, I suppose.”
Hadn’t stopped her or his brothers from going back for seconds, and in his brothers’ cases, thirds. Considering what could’ve happened today, her complaining about the food was a small price to pay for the uneasy truce drawn between the Ngata and Griffin families. Dave, Matt, Eric, and his mother had been so painfully polite in the past three hours since they’d arrived at the Ngatas’ for Christmas lunch that it was almost as if they were attending the Queen’s annual garden party.
He spotted Dave in the queue for dessert, chatting politely to one of the Ngatas’ many relatives, and Matt out in the vast backyard setting up a game of cricket with kids of all different ages. Eric, unsurprisingly, was tucked into a corner by himself nursing a beer. And Tui…
His gaze swerved to a picnic table under the shade of a huge portable gazebo where she sat opposite Ruby, her sister-in-law’s little girl. The three-year-old was giggling, going cross-eyed as Tui’s whipped-cream-dipped finger got closer and closer to the tip of her nose. His heart rolled over belly-up at the open affection on Tui’s face as she teased the girl with the cream, then darted her finger back to swipe it down her own nose, making Ruby squeal with laughter.
“I always taught you boys not to play with your food.” His mum quietly harrumphed and stuck the spoon in her mouth.
He kept his gaze locked on Tui and opened his mouth to request she use her inside voice but instead said, “I’m in love with her.”
Which he already knew.
“And I’m going to ask her to marry me.”
Which he hadn’t until right that moment.
A fat glob of whipped cream plopped onto the deck by his feet.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” his mum whispered. “And keep your voice down.”
As if by announcing his intentions, one of the Ngata men would appear with a shotgun and frog-march him and Tui to an altar. He didn’t need frog-marching, and pity help the man who tried to force Tui to do anything she didn’t want to, shotgun or not.
That thought also made him smile.
“And for God’s sake, stop grinning like a lunatic,” his mother continued.
“I’m happy and in love,” he said simply. Maybe it was Aunty Polly’s special Christmas fruit punch talking, but he was. Crazily happy now that he’d finally admitted the truth to himself.
“You’re not happy or in love. You’re thinking with what’s between your legs,” she snapped.
He forced his gaze away from Tui and leveled it at his mum. “I’m thirty-six years old. Think I know the difference between love and lust by now.”
She made a snippy sound of disgust. “Not well enough to make your first marriage work. You supposedly loved Lydia, too, and she wasn’t wild like this one.”
And…getting into the 101 reasons why his marriage crumbled was not something he was going to discuss with his mother. “Can’t you find one thing about Tui that you like?”
His mother glared at him as she wobbled to her feet. “Just to get you off my damn back, I’m gonna go tell her what I like about her.” She stabbed her dessert spoon in his direction. “She makes a good pav.”
Kyle slumped in his chair.
She makes a good pavlova. Nice.
Not that Tui had welcomed his family and made a huge effort to include them since the moment they arrived. Or that she was kind and generous enough to buy gifts for his brothers and an art deco soap dish for his mum’s collection. That wild was a term tossed around because Tui’s bright and fierce spirit made some people uncomfortable.
Her wildness, if that’s what you wanted to call it, didn’t mean she was disregardful of others’ feelings, shirked her responsibilities, or was indifferently cruel and self-absorbed. She was wonderfully, beautifully, exceptionally herself and answerable to no one.
And he loved that about her.
A rough throat clearing dragged his gaze away from the sight of his mother wobbling down the deck stairs toward Tui. His gaze shot up to meet Pete’s flat dark gaze, the older man’s mouth set in a thin line.
“Talk to you in private for a sec?”
The clipped undertones in his voice made his words more an order, not a request.
Kyle stood, firing one last glance over at Tui, who’d spotted his mother and somehow managed to fix a welcoming smile on her face. He sent up a quick request to whoever supposedly looked out for drunks and small children for his mother to behave herself.
“Tui can hold her own, don’t you worry,” Pete said, apparently reading Kyle�
�s mind.
“It’s not Tui I’m worried about.”
Pete made a sound that could’ve been another throat clearing or a rumble of amusement, it was hard to tell. Kyle followed Tui’s father into the house, past the lively card game taking place at the dining table and a cluster of preteens sulking in the living room because their parents had banned them from the PlayStation for an hour, and through a connecting doorway into his garage. Pete flicked on the overhead lights and shut the door behind them.
“You’re not planning to bolt it and asphyxiate me with one of your vehicles, are you?” Kyle was only half joking. There were plenty of other tools that could cause damage to the human skull in the garage. The least of his worries was death by carbon monoxide.
Pete snorted. “Door lock’s busted, unfortunately.”
Not at all ominous.
“What’s this about?” Kyle found a clear spot against the workbench and leaned against it. Had one of his brothers said something or done something dumb or inappropriate, offending one of the Ngatas or their guests? Had he?
Pete strolled over and faced him, arms folded, propping himself against the door of his wife’s little run-around car. “You think a baby on the way is reason enough to get married in this day and age?”
Kyle blinked, thrown off guard by the question, and racked his brains trying to remember where Pete had been when he’d been talking to his mother a short time ago. Distracted, he answered without thinking. “My parents did.”
One of Pete’s eyebrows quirked up. He didn’t need to comment on how happy his parents’ marriage had been, since he could’ve heard some of their screaming fights the next valley over.
“I want to know what you think,” Pete said. “Not your parents.”
Suddenly the garage’s overhead lights felt like interrogation spotlights, the remnant smell of oil in the air a machine with spinning parts and razor-sharp blades aimed at all his soft spots. The roast pork he’d eaten hours earlier now sat like a chunk of concrete in his gut.
“No, I don’t think having a baby is a solid reason to get married if the two people involved don’t…care about each other.” He couldn’t bring himself to say the L-word. That was something for Tui’s ears only. Like hell was the first mention of love going to be to her father. And there was no doubt in his mind that this conversation wasn’t about the philosophy of marriage but putting his intentions toward Tui under the paternal microscope.
Tame Your Heart: A Small Town Romance (Bounty Bay Book 6) Page 25