“Promise me,” she’d said again.
I’d sketched the X over my chest with my free hand. “I cross my heart. I’ll take care of her. Always.”
She’d smiled, and I’d seen what it cost her. “And it’s such a good heart, baby. You’re such a good girl.”
I’d laid my cheek against her papery one, and then I had cried, because nothing in the world could have stopped me.
“Say goodbye, baby,” she’d whispered.
“Goodbye, Mom.”
The words had barely been more than a breath, but she’d heard. Her other hand, the one with the tubes taped to it, had come up and stroked my hair, and finally, I’d sobbed. And for the last time, my mother had held me while I cried.
I didn’t tell Hemi all that, though. I didn’t tell him any of that.
“So she died, and you were left with Karen,” he said. “When you were, what?”
“Nineteen. Five years ago. And you know what?” I smiled, tried to lighten it up. “You aren’t even the first guy to take me out with my sister. Because no choice, you know? A movie ticket’s cheaper than a babysitter. But none of them went out with me a second time. You think Karen was snarky today? Believe me, she can be so much worse.”
“Good thing I’ve got a bit of persistence,” Hemi said, with that slight softening around his eyes, his version of a smile, warming his normally stern expression. “Not so easily scared off, am I.”
“Not easily at all, I’d say. Considering that you’re still here.” I looked into those dark, liquid eyes, at the warmth in them, and something seemed to…connect. I could almost hear the ping as it happened.
“So,” he said, “want to come over here and sit with me for a moment?”
I went for one last feeble attempt at self-control. “You going to go for it, now that my little sister’s out of the picture?”
“You never know. I may lunge at you and…what was that? Oh, yeh. Stick my tongue down your throat and grope you. Or I may pour you a bit more wine and see if I can get you to curl up against me. I’d like to know that you were able to let go of everything for a little while today, because you were with me.”
And after that, how could I do anything else?
The Spider Decides
I never wanted to hear people’s stories. What Hope had said was true. Everybody had a sad story. But I’d wanted to hear hers, because she hadn’t wanted to tell me. And still, she’d sketched out only the barest details.
I’d have said that I knew a bit about courage, but she’d taught me something new today. About the quietest kind of courage, the kind that kept you going when you wanted to quit, the kind that made you put one foot in front of the other and keep walking, because stopping wasn’t an option. And because you were carrying somebody else, somebody you loved, and you couldn’t let them fall.
And then she did come to sit on the couch, and that was taking courage as well, because she didn’t sit at the end. She sat next to me.
Don’t be a spider. When I was with a woman, we normally just got down to business. Courting, the kind of foreplay that was more like “warmup?” Pure inefficiency when both people knew what they were there for. But Hope wasn’t sure what she was here for. She was as nervous as she was excited, and if that excited me, too—well, that would be the bonus.
I needed to make her want it as much as she feared it, if I was going to make it good for her when it finally happened. And so much of that would be what was in her head beforehand. What she imagined. What she fantasized about. I was going to be fueling those fantasies, and then I was going to fulfill them.
I pulled the bottle out of its nest of melting ice and refilled her glass and my own, and she let out a soft sigh.
“I shouldn’t,” she murmured, pulling her legs up under her again as I leaned over to set the wine back in the bowl. And when I sat up again, it was the most natural thing in the world to put my arm around her.
She tensed beneath my hand, and then, when the spider didn’t pounce, she gradually began to relax. I picked up my glass, touched it to hers, and said, “Cheers.”
She took a sip, her eyes watchful above the rim. I kept my hand where it was, but brushed my thumb over the smooth skin of her shoulder, absently at first, and then, when she shivered, with a bit more intent, exploring the gentle dips and curves.
Her eyes drifted shut for a moment before opening again. “Mm. That feels good.”
When my thumb traced down the front edge of the sleeveless dress, lingered over that most sensitive of spots at the edge of her small breast, she shifted a little, came a little closer.
“Hemi…”
It wasn’t a warning. It was a sigh, and an invitation. But I didn’t take it. Instead, I sent the back of my other hand on a slow journey down her other arm where it lay against me. The lightest touch, the gentlest caress. When my thumb began to graze the inside of her forearm, I could tell from the way she was breathing that she was feeling the tingle all the way down her body. She was so responsive, all it took was my touch on her shoulder, her inner arm, to light her up.
It was going to be good for me, when it happened. And it was going to be even better for her. I was going to make sure of it, starting right now.
I kept it up, a slow, steady, patient assault, touching nothing but her arms, her shoulders, and before long, her eyes were shutting again, and her head was back against the cushions, all her attention going to what she was feeling.
“Hope,” I said softly. “Open your eyes and look at me.”
The surge of power flooded me as she obeyed, as I watched the lids flutter open. Another deliberate trace along the edge of her dress brought another shudder. And then, at last, she said it.
“Could you…could you kiss me?” As if she couldn’t help it, as if the words had been dragged out of her.
“No,” I said, and felt her jerk back a little in shock. “No,” I said again. “I’m not going to kiss you. Not today. I want you to go to bed tonight and think about me. I want you to imagine me kissing you, to think about how it’s going to feel to have your mouth under mine, to have my tongue inside you. To open your mouth wider so you can take more of me in. And then I want you to keep imagining. I want you to take off this dress tonight and imagine it’s my hand unbuttoning every one of these little buttons.”
I ran a slow hand down the front of her dress, circling each tiny button-flower in its turn. All the way to her waist, and then slowly, deliberately, below it. Almost to the spot, stopping just short while she waited, frozen, holding her breath. And then moving back up again just as slowly, until I wasn’t touching fabric anymore. Until I was touching skin. My fingertips drifting up between the wings of her collarbones, up the front of her slim neck, forcing her to lift her chin, to open her mouth at the age-old threat of fingers on her throat. Until my index finger was tracing the shape of her lips, and she was opening up more for me, just like that. Just the way she was meant to do.
“I want you to imagine being put on my bed,” I told her, my mouth near her ear, one slow finger still tracing the shape of those soft lips. “I want you to think about your dress falling away from your body as I unfasten those buttons. I want you to imagine me looking down at you while I do it, and how you’ll rise to my hand, and then my mouth. Your own mouth opening just like it’s doing now, panting a bit, needing me to kiss you so badly. Needing my mouth on yours so much. My mouth and my hands everywhere, all over every inch of you, while your hands try to reach for me and can’t, and it feels so good to know they can’t. So hard, and so good, knowing you have to wait for me.”
“I…can’t?” Her eyes were enormous, and, yes, her mouth was open a little.
She was burning. Time to make her burn some more.
“Yeh,” I told her. “You’ll be trying, won’t you? You’ll be pulling so hard, but you won’t be able to reach me. Not with your pretty wings spread wide and fastened down tight. Not if all you can do is lie there and wait.”
“Oh.” It w
as a sigh.
I rose to my feet, then turned to her and brushed the back of my hand over the curve of her cheek, felt her lean into it. “Yeh,” I told her. “That’s nice, isn’t it? That’s what I want you to think about tonight. I want you to remember that next week, we’ll be in Paris, and we’ll be spending time together. You can count on that, and that we’ll be alone, and that your dress will be coming off. Eventually. But you won’t be telling me to kiss you, because the butterfly doesn’t tell the spider what to do. The spider decides.”
She didn’t slap me. She sat there, eyes wide, breath coming fast, and looked at me. I smiled just a bit, said, “I’ll check how Karen’s feeling tomorrow,” and left her to think about all of it.
If you couldn’t get there one way, you didn’t give up. You found a new tactic. And, sometimes, the new way would be even better.
Anticipation was doing so much for me, but it was doing even more for Hope. It was burning her alive.
So, yes, Hope had my interest. You could say that. She even had my sympathy. Because she’d never asked for either, which made her unique in my world.
Then I left her, and everybody asked for them. Oh, well.
My phone rang while I was still in the car. Still thinking about Hope, still aching for her, because once again, she’d lingered well past the time she should have been gone.
The phone rang again, and I looked at the screen, then didn’t allow myself to sigh before I picked it up. You did things, or you didn’t do them. Thinking about them beyond that served no purpose at all.
“Yeh, Ana.” I glanced at my watch. After three, which meant it was five in the morning in Brisbane.
“It’s Mum,” she said without preamble. “Rang me crying. Woke me, didn’t she. Well, of course she did. Been up all night, I’d say, and with a skinful in her, saying the landlord’s threatening to evict her. Why didn’t she ring you? Why’s it me every bloody time?”
“Why d’you think?”
“Because she’s afraid you’ll cut her off. But it’s me she rings, and it’s a bloody nuisance, and unfair, too.”
“Then don’t answer.”
“Easy for you to say.” Her voice was rising. “You aren’t here having to cope, are you.”
“Was there something you needed?” Other than the same old thing? “If she has to move, she’ll tell me where to send the rent, no worries.”
“You know what Jomo said when I said I’d ring you to ask your advice?” she asked. “He said, ‘Why? He won’t give a shit. He’ll tell you to get to the point, and you’ll end up raging at me about it, and I don’t need the agro.’ And I said, ‘He’s my bloody brother. He needs to know what’s happening. He’s going to care if his mum’s bloody homeless.”
“And you’ve told me,” I said. “And I’ve told you I’ll deal with it, if it even happens. Was there something else?”
“Well, yes, as a matter of fact, there was,” came the answer. “I was going to tell you that I’m up the duff again, and it couldn’t have come at a worse moment, but I guess you don’t want to hear about that, either.”
“No,” I said. “I probably don’t.”
“You’re a cold bastard, you know that?” Her voice was rising, and I wasn’t going to care. I’d heard it all before. It wasn’t going to get to me again. “I just got my license sorted to go back to hairdressing, but you don’t care about that, either. Geoff and Alan need new school uniforms, and the new baby will need everything, because I chucked it all, but why am I telling you?”
“I can’t imagine,” I said. “I might care more, of course, if you hadn’t been getting that license sorted for the past five years. And if there weren’t such a thing as birth control. And if Jomo’d got off his arse and off the dole anytime these ten years. I’d care if any of you were making an effort. I’ll pay Mum’s rent. I won’t pay yours.”
I’d done it over and over, in the early years. Just until they ‘got back on their feet.’ Which, I’d learned, was never. I still wouldn’t see my nephews in the street, or even my sister and mum, no matter how I felt about them, and Ana knew it. Probably better if she didn’t, but the old obligations still tugged at me despite every logical argument. However much they deserved it, I couldn’t desert my whanau. Unfortunately, my sister knew that, and my mother did, too.
I realized that my phone had been silent for a while now. “Hello?” I said. But Ana had rung off.
I set it aside, because that was what I did. I didn’t think about it. I’d spent bloody years thinking about it, and years were enough. Indulging in emotion over things you couldn’t help was nothing but a waste of time and energy anyway, and I preferred to keep my time and energy focused where they could do me some good. On where I had the control. The moment you let yourself care, you gave the other person the power, and I didn’t give away my power. Not anymore. I knew too well what it felt like, how it weakened you.
Because when my mum had taken Ana with her and left me with my dad...I hadn’t just thought about it. I’d been gutted. I’d even, to my shame, cried. Although not when she’d told me. Then, I’d been numb.
“Because you’re twelve,” she’d said when I’d come home from school to find her packing. “Better off with your dad, aren’t you. And I’ll see you, summers.”
“S-summers?” It was September, and summer had been long months away.
“Christmas,” she’d promised. “You can come to Brisbane. And you’ll be better off with your dad, staying at your school. Hardly notice I’m gone, will you, as little time as you’re home, what with the school and the rugby and all.”
No, I’d wanted to shout. No. I’ll notice you’re gone. Please take me with you. Don’t leave me here with him. But I hadn’t said it. I hadn’t wanted to beg even then. Or maybe I’d known that it wouldn’t have made any difference. I’d have humiliated myself for nothing.
Now, I understood that it hadn’t been about me. It had been about Benji. The new fella. Benji hadn’t minded Ana, but a pretty eight-year-old girl was an entirely different prospect than a hostile, suspicious twelve-year-old boy. And my mum had chosen Benji, because what I’d told Hope was true. Mums left, too. Mums left, and didn’t care what they were leaving you with.
None of which I wanted to think about. So I set it all out of my mind along with Hope, went back home to get something done after wasting most of my day, and, at five, opened the door to Eugene for my workout.
“Little bit better today,” he grunted thirty minutes later as we took a break. “That campaign of yours working out, then?”
“What? Yeh,” I said with surprise. He never asked me about the job. “We’ll kick it off in Paris.”
“Nah, man. I didn’t mean that one. I meant Miss Little Bit.”
It was such a perfect description of Hope, I almost smiled, but I frowned instead. “Not the way you mean. But she may like me a bit better. Took her to the rose garden today and all. Looked after her a little, maybe.”
He shook his head and sighed. “You know, sometime I’d like Debra to be wrong. Just one time. Make life a hell of a lot more comfortable if I could look at her and say, ‘Remember that time you was wrong?’, and she’d have to say, ‘Oh, yeah, that one time.’” He got behind the bag again. “Break’s over. Go.”
“One moment,” I said, and he stood back. “Debra. She still do some kind of…health thing? For work, I mean.”
“Home health care. Some. Got her LVN and all. That’s nursing,” he added at my blank look.
“This girl,” I said. “Hope, her name is.”
“Little, blonde, and Hope? You’re a dead man.”
I waved that away. “I need somebody to stay with her sister while Hope’s in Paris for the show, and I need to arrange it personally, as—”
“As she’s workin’ for you,” he finished, “and you’re keepin’ it on the down low.” You didn’t have to draw Eugene a map.
“Yeh. Anyway. Her sister’s fifteen. She was ill today, and Hope’s worried about h
er, may not want to come along, I’m thinking, unless Karen’s well looked after. And she could be a bit of a handful, I’m thinking. Karen, that is.”
“Sounds like they got that in common,” Eugene said. “Why’s this Hope takin’ care of her sister?”
“No parents. So what d’you reckon? A week, ten days, something in there?”
“I’ll find out. And let’s go.” He moved behind the bag again. “I don’t have time to waste, and this Hope ain’t gonna love no guy with a gut.”
Enchantment
When the doorbell rang the next afternoon and the voice at the other end said, “Floral delivery,” I wasn’t even surprised.
“Somebody’s sending you flowers again?” Karen asked from her spot on the couch. “Let me guess. Your non-elderly suitor. Mr. No-Scrabble.”
“If you’re feeling well enough to be snarky again,” I told her as I twisted the locks on the door, “I’ll choose to take that as a positive and ignore the rest.”
It was my friend from the previous week, I discovered when he rounded the final turn in the staircase carrying, yes, a huge vase of lavender roses—and a white plastic bag. “This isn’t all,” he said, handing both of them over.
“What do you mean?” I was a little distracted by the sight and smell of a dozen perfect, fragrant blooms. I knew exactly what kind they were, too. My favorite ones of all. Nuage.
Hemi had remembered, and my heart turned over despite myself.
Enchantment.
And then I remembered something else. You know what I want. I’m willing to date you for it, if that’s what I have to do. And, apparently, willing to send flowers, too.
Which was the truth? My heart said one thing, and my head—and Hemi’s own lips—said the exact opposite.
“Be right back,” the delivery guy said while I was still trying to figure it out.
He was puffing when he came up the second time. “It had to be the fifth floor,” he complained.
Fierce (Not Quite a Billionaire) Page 11