“Yes.”
She kinda wished Harley had paid another hundred grand; at least she could’ve had some consolation she’d been well and truly outbid. “It’s a done deal then.”
He nodded.
Bree switched her gaze from Harley to her bare toes resting on the faded but scrupulously clean linoleum. She traced the pattern of flecks to her shower, remembered how Harley had soon gotten the hang of jiggling the water mixer, remembering how he’d made her lose her mind in there more than once in the last two months.
It wasn’t her shower anymore, nor her linoleum. Not her sink or her towel rail, not even her damn toilet.
“Why did you buy it?”
“For you,” he said. “If we’re still on the Reader’s Digest answers.”
“For me.” She rubbed the knuckle of her index finger along the deep crease that’d formed between her eyebrows. “Not so you wouldn’t have to display your paintings on a roadside.”
“You really think everything that’s happened between us in the last two months was a ruse to snatch some real-estate from under your nose? To screw you and every other artist in Oban out of their gallery? That I’d fill the damn walls with my canvases and turn the gallery into a shrine to my fucking awesomeness?”
“That’s the scenario I’d prefer.”
“Wait—what?”
“Because the only other scenario I can think of for why you’d buy this building before the exhibition is that you didn’t believe I could buy it myself. That you had so little faith in me that you jumped the gun and waved a wad of cash under my mother’s nose.”
“I have more than a little faith in you, Brianna.”
She cocked her head, affected what she hoped was a look of cool calculation, even though inside, flames licked at her composure, threatened to melt her into a puddle of tears. Because there was another scenario, one even less appealing than him not believing in her financial capabilities—which, granted, were completely screwed at the moment.
“Then you bought the gallery as security for me and the baby.”
For a moment, he just stared at her, the truth written in the tightening of his jaw, the flat light in his grey eyes. “Like I said, I bought it for you.”
She dropped her gaze again, focusing on the tiny flecks of color in the grey linoleum. Seriously, what a crappy place to have her heart broken. Bedrooms were where the heartache usually started. One combatant on the right side of the double bed and the other combatant on the left—leaving a wintery desert in between. Or a living room, raised voices barking down the empty hallway and under a teenage girl’s bedroom door. Did you really think I’ve stayed on this godforsaken island for you? The only reason I’m still here is because of my gallery.
“Because the gallery is your home,” Harley said.
Her father’s voice, cracked with pain and fury. That fucking place. It’s taken you away from me, from our daughters. I resent the hell out of it, and I resent you for playing the damsel in distress act and convincing me to buy it.
“And I couldn’t bear seeing you lose it.”
You resent me? Her mother’s voice had climbed steadily up the octave scale. You bought the building as a bribe to keep me in Oban while you dumped me with the kids so you could go gallivanting around the world. I’ve sacrificed too much for this family.
“So yeah, maybe it was for your long-term security. But it was also about knowing you’re happy here. ”
I bought it for your security, Christine. Because I thought it would make you happy. But nothing I say or do makes you happy since the girls and I are all but invisible…
And on and on it went, until seventeen-year-old Bree had cranked up her iPod until her ears throbbed with the bass beat instead of her parent’s fighting.
Bree shook her head, all the yous and yours lodged in her brain, as if nailed there with tiny spikes. There were no us or we or ours to soften each blow. She injected some spine into her words. “I won’t accept this place as a lover’s gift. I am not my mother.”
The corner of his mouth quirked, whether in a smile or a frustrated grimace, she wasn’t sure. “I know. And for the time being, if it makes you feel better, we can work on a rent-to-buy scheme.”
Her mouth dried, and her heart went on a footrace around her rib cage, slamming the breath from her lungs. So. She was right. “Time being? You mean until you leave Stewart Island?”
“Who said anything about leaving?”
“Why would you stay? You need to get back to New York and try to rescue your career from the toilet.” Look at her, being all grown up and self-sacrificing—not that he required her self-sacrifice, as she’d known well before her feelings had gotten in the way that Harley wouldn’t be around for much longer.
“Now you sound like my dealer. And as I told her, I’m not going back to New York. I’m staying here. With you. With our baby.”
He pushed away from the door and came to stand in front of her, prying one of her hands off the counter edge and squeezing it gently. “As I said earlier, I planned to tell you all this tonight. About buying the gallery and staying in Oban. Putting in an offer on a big, old house over the hill in Horseshoe Bay—”
Her eyes bugged out. He’d bought a damn house?
“About being crazy in love with you and wanting to be a hands-on dad.”
Bree blinked at him, owl-slow, totally brain-fuddled. Overloaded. Convinced she was hearing things. She held up a finger. One thing at a time. “You’re in love with me?”
“Since I was twenty. Probably earlier than that, like when you burst into tears the time I broke my arm. And yeah, I know, you didn’t cry.”
“You love me.” It came out in a whisper. She still couldn’t quite believe it.
“With a rips my nuts off and shoves them down my throat at the thought of ever being without you kind of love. Apparently, it’s not my most romantic metaphor, but it’s true all the same. I don’t ever want to be without you.”
He tugged her forward and instinctively her arms slipped around him to cling to his broad back. A warm palm cupped her nape, and his breath fell softly on her forehead. “Just tell me you love me, too, Queenie.”
“I love you, too,” she said.
And she meant it—meant it with everything she had in her. She had a ripping her ovaries out and crushing them at the thought of ever being without him kind of love, too. So why was her heart squeezing up into her throat? Why were her palms sweaty as she clutched fistfuls of Harley’s shirt? Why were her knees joints turning to jelly but-not-in-a-tingly-good-way?
He pulled back far enough to show his wide, delighted smile.
She had to guard herself, because that smile she loved so much threatened to tear away the flimsy defence protecting her heart and throw an arsonist’s match down on it. She didn’t have the luxury of celebrating her stunned joy of omigawd he loves me—because there was one more part of his earlier statement.
“What about being a hands-on dad?”
A shadow passed through his gaze, a flicker of unease. Then the cocky grin widened again. “I’ll learn on the job, like an apprentice. I can do this—we can do this, together.”
Rust-red cotton filled her vision, and she studied his shirt pocket as if she were counting the stitches holding it to the garment. Wanting so badly to believe him, needing so desperately to shove her doubts aside and climb the damn tree, trusting the branches would hold, trusting he’d be there to catch her if she fell.
“No. We can’t. I can’t.”
His body, which had been hard but pliably warm under her hands, stiffened. He didn’t let go though, not yet. But he would. Because she just couldn’t take a risk that big.
“I’m sorry,” she said when he remained silent. “If it were only my heart at stake, I’d take the risk. But it’s not just my heart. It’s Carter’s and this baby inside me. I know you’d never hurt either of them deliberately…”
Harley pulled his arms from around her and took a giant step backwa
rd. Like the proud warrior race he was descended from, he arranged his handsome features, locking them down into the grim resignation of a man preparing for war. “You trust me not to hurt our children physically?”
“Yes. Completely.” And it still sliced her open to think that for years Harley thought otherwise, that he hadn’t trusted himself. Hadn’t seen beneath the scars his mother had left him with and into the beautiful heart capable of loving his own children.
“But you still think I’ll cut and run. Like my biological father did?”
“Not at first.” She wrapped her arms around her middle, trying to hold herself together while everything inside wanted to shrivel into a trembling ball. “You’d stay; you’d sacrifice to do what you thought was right. And years later, you’d wake up and resent the hell out of me and our child. I couldn’t bear it. I couldn’t bear your love turning into obligation and then resentment.”
Second after painful second ticked past, while Harley’s smoky grey gaze locked with hers. Her eyes stung. Don’t cry, don’t cry, she ordered her tear ducts—but they completely overruled her pride and continued to block up her sinuses.
“You’re wrong,” he said. “And Paul is right. I won’t make the same mistakes my parents made—that I made when I left you behind. I’m my own man. A man who loves you, a man who won’t give up because you love me, too.”
He walked to the bathroom door. “I’ve got six months to prove to you I’m in this with you for the long haul. Six months to change your mind.”
Bree angled her chin. “I won’t change my mind.”
Harley continued talking as if she hadn’t spoken. “And I’ve got another eighteen years after that. I figure you’ll cave before then. Even your stubbornness has its limits. I’ll be downstairs schmoozing.”
“You do that,” she said, but she was talking to an empty doorway.
***
Harley preferred to get the worst things done first thing in the morning. From the dreaded math homework, completed in a rush when his alarm went off at six while his brother still snored in their shared room, to when he was older, choosing to do unpleasant tasks such as paying bills and doing his accounts. Early mornings were the best times to get that bad shit out of the way.
He slipped out of West’s house soon after the sun rose, the chirp of birds gathering volume as the day began. Hesitating at one of the flax bushes, he debated with himself for a minute and then broke a long, sword-shaped leaf off the plant. Three minutes later, he’d woven a traditional flax putiputi to take with him to Pania’s resting place.
Remaining cross-legged on West’s driveway as he knotted the last strip of flax to form the flower’s stem, Harley considered the bush again. Should he make another one, maybe leave it on Bree’s doorstep? A tui, getting in for an early feed of nectar, considered him right back. Dude, the bird seemed to say as it cocked its black-feathered head, the white feather tufts on its neck quivering. Way to impress the lady with your crafty prowess. Not.
Yeah. Well. Keeping his distance for the last week to give her some space to reconsider hadn’t worked either. Wanting her, needing her, fuck it—loving her—from a distance was a constant itch between the shoulder blades that he just couldn’t reach. A problem he’d gnaw on over and over later this morning, once he got the keys to his new house from the real estate agent.
For now… Harley stood and strolled down the Westlake’s driveway. An early morning kōrero at his birth mother’s grave.
While he hadn’t had much to talk to her about when she was alive—or her to him, unless it was a phone call requesting money—he had a lot more to say since she’d died of a drug overdose in August. His stomach took a slow spiral down to the soles of his boots as he climbed the narrow road leading into the cemetery. He hadn’t returned here since his vigil the night they’d laid Pania to rest.
Harley crossed the grass to the temporary plaque that marked her grave. Next year, as was tradition, the whānau would have a small unveiling of her headstone. But for now, there was only a simple grave marker etched with her name. He crouched, laying the flax flower in front of the plaque.
“Kia ora, Whaea.” Hello, Mother. It’d taken him a long time to refer to her as anything but Pania. And now that he could think of her as mother, he’d never hear her rich, throaty voice again. She’d been a singer, like Ford, though she’d only launched into song after two or three or four shots of her favorite poison.
“Kia ora, Tama.”
Even though the words were spoken in Ford’s baritone, Harley still started and nearly toppled backward.
“Asshole.” Harley stood and whipped around to glare at his brother, who was dressed in an inside-out tee shirt and rumpled shorts, his hair flattened on one side as if he’d just rolled out of Holly’s bed. Which he probably had, because Harley’s twin was not a morning person.
“Whatever. It’s not as if she’ll give you motherly advice after you blubber to her about how you somehow fucked up things with Bree.”
Harley chose not to engage in a pissing match over who did and didn’t manfully cry over a woman, because, shit, Ford always did have a selective memory.
“If you’re here to lecture, piss off.” Harley gave Ford his back and stared out at the watery horizon.
“Lecture at this ungodly hour?” Ford crossed the grass to stand at Harley’s side. “Sans caffeine? Not bloody likely.”
“Should I bother asking how you knew I was here? Who was it? Ben, walking his dog? Kip out for an early morning run?”
“Twin GPS. Or maybe a Vulcan mind-meld.” Ford parroted what Harley had suggested when he’d rung minutes after Holly had turned down Ford’s first attempt to get her back. Harley had Ben to thank for the heads up that his twin was crushed. Not that his pig-headed brother would admit it back then.
“Doesn’t matter who blew the whistle. You don’t need to be here with a you’re a dick for letting her go spiel.”
“It was West, FYI. He spotted you sitting on his driveway and figured you were either turning on your flower-arranging skills for Bree, or heading up to the cemetery. He called me when he saw you headed in the wrong direction.”
“The wrong direction?”
“The right direction would’ve been taking your little Pinterest project to Bree, getting down on bended knee and grovelling for whatever dumbass stunt you pulled during the exhibition.”
“I didn’t pull a stunt before, during or after the exhibition. I’ve nothing to apologize for.”
“She came downstairs a few minutes after you, looking like a finger tap would’ve smashed her. So trust me, dumbass stunt or not, you did or said something worthy of a shitload of flax flowers.” Ford snorted, as if Harley was just about the thickest man to ever walk the earth. “Man, you’ve got a lot to learn.” He draped a heavy arm across Harley’s shoulders.
“I bought the gallery so Bree wouldn’t lose her home and business. I told her I loved her and wanted to stay around and be a proper dad to our baby—guess that was the dumbass stunt you mentioned.” Harley pinched the bridge of his nose, sucked in a deep breath. “Because she said no to all of it.”
“Damn. You mean the pull your head out of your ass, and tell Bree you love her speech I rehearsed walking up here is wasted? She doesn’t love you back? That’s bullshit.”
“She still thinks I’m a flight risk. That I’ll bail on her like Craig did to Pania.”
“You’re not Craig, and you love Bree. No comparison.” Ford dropped his arm from Harley’s shoulder and slanted him a sharp glance. “Unless there is, and you are a flight risk.”
“Nope. She’s it for me.”
“The One. The nut-ripping-off kind of love. Wondered who you were talking about then. Now I know.”
“It was always her, much as I denied it. But this time, I’m not walking away. I bought the house I told you about, so I’ll need a ride this afternoon to take some of my stuff up—plus the paint I ordered.”
“You got it. Scaffolding?”
“Yeah.”
“On it.”
Ford always had Harley’s back, no questions asked.
“I’m staying. She doesn’t believe me yet, but I am. For my baby, but mostly for Bree. I can’t live without her, so I’ll be patient.”
“Huh. Don’t remember patience being one of your virtues. Don’t remember long-term commitment being one of your virtues, either. In fact, if someone even mentioned the word ‘marriage’ in your earshot, you’d start barking out words like sucker, ball and chain, and fuck no.”
And Ford was always the voice in Harley’s head, prodding, pushing his boundaries to find his weak spots—so Harley could shore up his defences before anyone else used them against him.
Ford continued to give him the look. “You want to spend the rest of your life with Bree? Wedding bells and minivans and terrible twos and tea parties—because you are so having a baby girl who’ll make you play Disney princesses with her. Is that the life you’re talking about?”
“Yeah.” How had Harley hidden it from himself for so long? That he’d started to want that life? Waking up to Bree every morning, their baby reaching up for Dad to lift him or her onto his shoulders. Preschool and teddy bears, nightmares and swimming lessons. Holding Bree as she cried, teasing her over her alphabetically organized pantry, promising in sickness and in health…
“That’s exactly the life I want with her.” Harley stared down at the sparse grass starting to grow over his mother’s grave.
Ford nodded, his gaze following Harley’s. “That’s the life Pania should’ve had, too. But then, maybe we wouldn’t be who we are today if she and Craig hadn’t screwed up so badly. Pity she never knew about Carter and what an amazing kid he is—how your next kid will be just as amazing.”
Funny how Ford seemed to pick up on Harley’s thoughts. Twin ESP to go along with the Twin GPS. With a heavy heart, Harley traced the outline of the gravesite with his gaze. Though you’ll never know your mokupuna, Mother, I promise you they’ll grow up strong and kind and good like the woman you might’ve been had your life turned out differently. They’ll make you proud.
Drawing Me In: A New Zealand Secret Baby Second Chance Romance (Due South Series Book 7) Page 28