by Jude Knight
She was all business, though. He’d thought of nudging closer, but she’d shown no interest in him as a male; no hint that she’d welcome an advance. Oh, she was friendly, but no more than she’d be to any other near stranger. He’d heard her address random Big Diggers with the same warmth and interest.
She sat next to him completely oblivious the effect she was having, inches from his shoulder, turning his brain to mush with the sweet scent of whatever soap she used—something floral with a hint of spice.
Just as well. If she finds out you used to be an O’Neal—Vice President of Interior Design for the whole O’Neal chain, no less—she’ll hate you. Evisceration will be too good for you, you idiot. You should have told her from the beginning.
She turned her beautiful eyes Zee’s way and he lost himself in them, and then found himself trying to catch up with what she had been saying.
“…and keep the veranda upgrade from the more comprehensive estimate, but leave the nice, but not extravagant finishes, that would bring us in around here, wouldn’t it?”
She tilted her tablet so he could see her calculations, and he bludgeoned his brain into concentrating. Ah yes. Very practical.
“I’ve allowed a twenty-five percent contingency,” he warned. “That’s high, but parts of this house are a century old.”
“Yes, and though Poppa was meticulous, no major work has been done for forty years, and little beyond essential maintenance for at least fifteen. Not even that, recently.” She pointed to the sum at the bottom of her calculations. “That’s my budget, Zee. If anything cuts into the contingency, I want to know about it. If we use up the contingency and need more, we’ll probably need to take things off the list. When can you start?”
“We can file permit applications tomorrow for the bits that need permitting, but there’s stuff we can start on while we wait for approval,” he told her. “We could start demolition next Monday, if you can move out in time. We’ve had a job cancelled, so there’s a crew free. And Dave is letting you cut in ahead of others on our work schedule, which I didn’t tell you and you don’t know.” He grinned. “But he’d rather keep Beks happy than the out-of-towners who’ve been bumped down the list.”
Nikki was frowning. “Move out? Do I have to? I thought maybe I could live in the bits you’re not working in.”
“You could, of course.” And then he would see her every day, because he was going to work on this renovation himself. He forced himself to give her the best advice, instead of what suited himself. “But if we have to work around you, it will take longer, and you’ll have to put up with the noise, the dust, the mess and the inconvenience.”
“Hmm. I’ll think about that. It’s a big renovation, Zee. How long will it take? If I move out?”
He pursed his lips as he did some swift arithmetic in his head. “Three months? If it all goes well and the weather is kind.”
Nikki grinned. “We’re coming up to the end of the summer holidays. Traditionally, we get our hottest weather after the kids go back to school.”
Zee returned the smile, but warned, “Dave reckons this heat could break at any time.”
“True,” Nikki agreed. “We’ve had frost and even snow before at this time of year. No accounting.”
We’ll just have to do as much as we can while we have the good weather,” Zee said. “It is certainly hot enough today.”
“It is. After this, I’m going down to North Beach for a swim.” She had been examining her tablet, but now she looked at him without moving her head, her sidelong glance turning his innards molten. “Do you want to come?”
He had another estimate to do, but he could catch up this evening, after Oliver had his walk. His ‘yes’ was out of his lips before he had finished the thought. “I have some swim trunks in the truck. I’ll get them.”
“Wait down there. I’ll get changed and join you, and we can take the bush path,” Nikki said.
The path began one turn of the road around the hill, plunging steeply towards the bay through typical New Zealand regrowth forest. Bush, the Kiwis called it, though Zee could not have said why. Ferns, both ground ferns and tree ferns, predominated, with the native manuka and kanuka trees interspersed with young rimu and beech that reached high overhead to form a canopy.
The track came out on the road a couple of times, and then continued on the other side, before veering away to the north in a long flight of rough steps carved into the hill and edged with rounds of wood.
Nikki and Zee came out onto a less wooded area, which would have been a meadow except for the baby gorse plants that had Zee hopping and wishing he’d left his work books on instead of changing into thongs. On the far side, a row of pohutukawa trees marked the boundary of the beach, the ground underneath still red with the remains of the flowers that had covered the gnarled twisted trees in glory for a few brief summer weeks.
“I love these trees,” Nikki said, patting the tree they passed as they made their way down to the sand. “I’ve missed them while I’ve been away. You should see them in flower, Zee.”
“Glorious,” he agreed. The thinly spread pohutukawa along South Beach had been lovely enough in the weeks leading to Christmas, but North Beach had been incredible.
“I’ll be here for them next year.” Nikki laughed. “And will undoubtedly be roped into the Big Dig, again.”
They draped their towels over a pohutukawa branch dangling over the beach. “Hard to believe this beach had hundreds of people here a few days ago,” Zee commented. The clean-up had been thorough, wiping all signs of the invasion, and today a mere dozen people enjoyed the long curve of the beach and the gentle waves beyond.
Nikki stripped off her shirt, and Zee stopped half way through removing his, struck by the sight of her in her bikini. Who knew that the severe suits and the loose blouses concealed such perfectly moulded breasts?
She noticed him gawking, but the small smile that played around her lips hinted she wasn’t taking offence. Still, he looked away and took off his own shirt, then risked a glance. He worked in a physically active profession, and a walk with Oliver usually turned into a run, a wrestle, and (at this time of year) a swim. She clearly appreciated the results, and the swim trunks would do nothing to disguise his response to her interest. He shouted, “Last one in is a rotten tomato,” and took off across the beach.
The sun-heated shallows weren’t cool enough to quench Zee’s ardour, so he struck for deeper water as he heard her hit the waves behind him. Two buoys marked a swim lane that boats and sail boards were meant to respect, and he swam from one to the other. On his second lap, she caught up, and after that matched him stroke for stroke for another six laps.
Eight laps done, he paused to tread water, and she stopped beside him, grinning. “When you say ‘swim’, you mean swim,” she commented. Zee raised his brows, wondering what she meant.
“Yes?” he ventured, hoping she would explain.
“It’s frustrating going to the beach with people who don’t want to get their togs wet.”
Ah. The old boyfriend had a bit of a reputation as a Narcissus. “Stripping off as an excuse to show off the body beautiful?” he asked.
“You know the type,” Nikki agreed.
“I had a girlfriend like that.” Iria, who, he’d met as his translator in Cyprus where he was working on a project. After six weeks, he’d taken her home to New York, promising her a job in the O’Neal empire, planning to turn their affair into something more permanent. Within days, she had turned her sights on Pat, his brother. “She married my brother,” he disclosed. Another in a long line of betrayals by Pat. Anything Zee had, Pat wanted—and usually got.
He expected a sympathetic comment, but Nikki surprised him again. “A lucky escape then.”
“You’re right.” She was a self-absorbed, cheating bitch, and she and Pat deserved one another. “I hadn’t thought of it that way.” In fact, if he was right about her being involved with Nikki’s fiancé Russo, he should be feeling sorry for P
at, unfamiliar though that emotion was.
“That’s what I’ve been telling myself about Tyler Russo, my ex. Come on. I have some lemonade in the chiller bag.” Nikki struck out for the shore, and he followed her. They spread their towels on the sand under the pohutukawa tree and sat to let the water evaporate from their skin, each sipping from a plastic goblet of lemonade.
Comfortable with the silence between them, Zee contemplated the beach and the bay beyond, enjoying the view and taking in the sounds. Distant shouts from some people playing beachball, the calling of gulls, the constant susurration of the waves. And beside him, a beautiful woman lying on her back with her eyes closed. She had spent the last six months in a sick room, according to Beks, but she’d found time for exercise. Hot didn’t begin to describe it.
A conversation started up behind the trees, in some distant part of the gorse-strewn meadow. Three voices, coming closer. “...and we’ll have to have these trees down,” one said. “The mess in the drains!”
Nikki sat up. “That’s Pokey Kenworth,” she whispered.
Another person spoke in what Zee thought was Mandarin, and then a third voice, this one female. “Mr Chow wishes to know where the housing for his workers will be built.”
“His workers? Come this way,” Pokey said, “I will show you.”
Chow? Zee knelt, then lifted himself higher so he could see over the bank to the three people walking away. One of them was Pokey. One was a small woman in a pastel suit and heels unsuitable for the terrain. The other? It could be Chow, the Taiwanese hotelier, whose worldwide empire had frequently clashed with the O’Neals, mostly when a local agency went for his cheaper development plans rather than their more up-market and environmentally-sound options.
Indeed, Chow should have been the target of World Global Watch’s landmark court case, and Zee was certain that Russo and Patrick had conspired with Chow to turn the activist group’s attention to the O’Neals instead, and specifically to a project Zee had been responsible for building.
But what was Chow doing here? He was certainly not on the investor list that the Mastertons had acquired from the Overseas Investment Office. Zee should tell Nikki. But that would mean explaining who he was, and he didn’t want to spoil the afternoon.
“What is it,” Nikki asked.
“It might be something...” he temporised. “I’ll have to check it out. I should be getting back now, I guess. I have another estimate to do, and I need to take Oliver for a walk.”
Pokey and his guests were out of sight when they crossed the meadow; somewhere in the bush, which the vandals no doubt also intended to destroy. Cutting down the row of pohutukawa? That certainly wasn’t in the plans that had been submitted to the district council.
They climbed the hill, not talking, saving their breath for the steep path, and parted at the truck.
“Thank you for lunch, and the swim,” Zee said, wishing he’d been brave enough to kiss Nikki while they were on the beach. He’d lost his chance now. As soon as he confessed who he was, she’d cut him.
For now, she was warming him with her smile. “Thank you for your advice on the house. Tell Dave it’s all on. I look forward to starting.”
3
The following evening, Zee told the Mastertons and Nikki that Pokey had a financial backer whose name did not appear on any of the papers filed with the Overseas Investment Office. Interested in exploring the ramifications, they brushed over Zee’s vague explanation for his knowledge: ‘I crossed paths with the man while doing some work as a hotel designer’.
“We’ll have to prove the connection,” Nikki warned. “That conversation we heard would just be our word against Pokey’s.”
Dave promised to talk to the rest of the impromptu committee formed to co-ordinate opposition to the development and Becky remembered a couple of school friends who worked in the Ministry of Everything who might be able to suggest lines of investigation.
“The Ministry of Everything?” Zee asked.
“The government department made up of all the bits and pieces left after they finished the reorganisation a few years ago. Among other things, they’re in charge of immigration and tourism. Ministry of Business, Innovation, and Employment,” Dave explained.
Nikki offered her research skills. “I have the time free, and you guys have excellent broadband. Pictures of them meeting, connections between this Mr Chow and the named investors. If it is out there, I’ll find it.”
“I can help in the evenings,” Zee offered. “I may know some of the names or faces. And Dave, don’t you have a copy of the plans that were filed with the council? Maybe I could go over them and see where an unscrupulous person might cut corners? If he could pull the wool over the eyes of the building inspector?”
Zee Henderson was all business the following evening, and looking far too sexy for Nikki’s own good as he focused on plans and specifications spread across his share of the table. Every now and again, he would ask her opinion about the meaning of legal terms and phrases used in the conditions, and every now and again she would call him to look over her shoulder at his laptop.
After two hours, she pushed the laptop away. “Would you like a drink? I have a local Pinot Gris in the fridge, and you don’t have to drive.”
“Sure,” he agreed. “No luck so far?”
“Not yet, but I have a couple of leads to follow. You?”
“Possibly. I might need to do a trip into Barnsley to check a couple of things at the Council offices. I want to give them a polite shake along on your permits anyway. I thought—there’s a home show at the Events Centre this weekend. Everything from building materials to plumbing supplies and light fittings. Opens at noon on Friday. Do you want to come for the drive, and we’ll have a look around? See if there’s anything that strikes your fancy?”
They went in Zee’s ute—his pickup he called it—leaving after breakfast. Nikki had offered her car, but Zee said he had some stuff to pick up for Dave, and needed the pickup’s bed.
Nikki decided not to call him on being a typical male, hating to be driven. Besides, she enjoyed watching his competent hands on the wheel and not driving meant she could enjoy the scenery—both inside and outside the car.
“We’ve gone as far as we can with the demolition,” Zee explained, as the truck skirted the foreshore. “I’ve got the crew tidying up today, and I’ve a few jobs lined up for next week that don’t need permits, but we’ll run out pretty quick. No problem if the council sticks to their ten-day timeline, but if anything is holding them up, I want to know about it ahead of time. If I let Dave take the team off your house and get involved in another job, who knows when we’ll get them back?”
“I thought you worked for Dave?” Nikki teased, prompting a broad smile and a sideways glance.
“Believe me, Nikki, I’m working for you on this one.” No misinterpreting that, although all week he’d been blowing hot and cold. She’d manufactured several opportunities for them to be alone, and any other man would have made a move by now. Showing an interest had always been enough and she’d done that, surely? Perhaps he was shy. Or she hadn’t been obvious enough.
They had the whole day together today; time enough for things to develop.
The road made its turn from the coast, running beside the estuary before turning to climb into the hills.
“Is this anything like where you grew up?” Nikki asked.
Zee laughed. “Not much! Me and my mom lived with her dad up on a mountain in Wyoming. They call it off the grid these days. To me, it was just the way you lived. Fishing in the lake for lunch. Hunting to put meat on the table. School was lessons with mom or grandpop, not just out of books but in our everyday lives. I learnt design hands-on, making things with grandpop.”
“It sounds idyllic,” Nikki commented.
“I remember it as idyllic. At least until...” He trailed off, his hands on the wheel clenching then releasing.
Should she ask or let it go? Before Nikki could decide, Zee spo
ke again.
“My mother was having dreadful headaches. Grandpop insisted on taking her into town; dug up some money for some tests. Inoperable brain cancer. We moved into Cheyenne while she had chemotherapy, but in the end, she begged to go home. She would have liked you, Nikki. She was a brave strong woman, too.”
The compliment warmed Nikki’s heart, softened by the thought of the orphaned child. “I am so sorry, Zee. How old were you when you lost her?”
“Just turned eleven. That wasn’t the worst. Well, it was. It was the centre of all that happened. But it wasn’t all.” He was silent again, calm competent hands on the wheel, eyes on the road, mind far away in that long-ago childhood.
Nikki waited for Zee to be ready to speak, and after several miles he did. “She was on morphine for the pain—couldn’t be left on her own. It was my turn to be with her while Grandpop did the chores and a bit of fishing. He didn’t come home.”
He worried at his upper lip with his teeth. “I radioed one of the neighbours. Took him half an hour to walk from his place to hours, and another twenty minutes to find Grandpop. He’d had a massive stroke. They airlifted him out, but he died in hospital later that night.”
“Oh, Zee.” Nikki didn’t know what else to say. So young, and so much tragedy.
“That’s when Mom sent for my father. It was that or Child Welfare. With Mom so sick and no other adult in the house, they wanted to take me straight away, but she insisted that my father would come and look after us.”
“That must have been a relief. Your own family. Someone you knew.”
Zee shook his head. “I’d never met him. I had no idea he was still alive. All I’d been told was that he and Mom came from different worlds, and it didn’t work out. Not his fault, Mom said. He was a nice man, and I would like him. I’d enjoy getting to know my brothers and sisters, too. I didn’t even know I had brothers and sisters.”