Treat her Right: A New Zealand Sexy Beach Romance (Treats to Tempt You Book 2)

by Serenity Woods

  Joss looked back at his mother. “What about Hayley? What does she think?”

  “Hayley’s fine with it,” Sarah said. “She would love to do more, but she has her hands full, and she’s well aware of the strain you’re under.”

  Joss leaned forward and sank his hands into his hair. Emotion washed over him. “I don’t know, Mum, I don’t know whether I can agree to this.”

  “Joss,” she said, and her voice was firm. “We’re not asking your permission.”

  He glanced back at her. She gave him the kind of look she would have given him if he’d knocked over a vase as an eight-year-old.

  “Okay,” he said. He waited for relief to sweep over him. It would mean a lot less work and worry. He should be thrilled. Instead, though, he just felt tired and dull. He needed to go home and go to bed. But part of him didn’t want to go home to the cold, dark house with the empty bed that would make him think of Maisey, and what he’d done.

  “Are you okay?” Sarah wheeled herself forward and rested a hand on his arm. “What’s the matter, son?”

  “How’s Maisey?” his father asked out of the blue. Sarah’s lips curved.

  Joss sat back in the chair. “Maisey’s bright and beautiful, as always. But we won’t be seeing each other again.” He looked down. I’ve lost her, he thought. What a fucking idiot. She wasn’t just another girl, and she was special. He was lying to himself if he tried to pretend otherwise. Way to screw things up, Joss.

  “It’s never too late to say you’re sorry,” Sarah said.

  Joss smiled at her. “Yeah.” Except, in this case, it probably was. He’d insulted Maisey, and he wouldn’t be surprised if she never wanted to see him again. “Well, I suppose I’d better be off.”

  “Okay, love.”

  “Think about it though, won’t you?” he asked. “Don’t rush into anything.”

  “We already have, dear, but yes, don’t worry.”

  He kissed them both goodbye and left quickly, not trusting himself to say much more.

  He drove home slowly along the winding roads, his wipers sweeping away the light rain that had begun to fall. He should be feeling light of heart. It made perfect sense for his parents to move into the retirement home. But he couldn’t shake off a feeling of failure. They’d felt pressed to move because he seemed stressed. He’d let them down, just like he’d let Maisey down.

  His eyes misted over, and he had to blink repeatedly to clear them. He needed a drink. A couple of glasses of whiskey, and everything would start to go numb.

  But the whiskey made him think of the way he and Maisey had passed the ice cube in their mouths, and how she’d let the amber liquid run down over her breasts. He hungered for her, for the way she seemed to know exactly what he wanted. He missed her.

  He cursed and pulled into his driveway.

  To his surprise, a car sat in darkness in front of his house. He pulled up next to it, his heart pounding, only to realize it wasn’t Maisey’s, but her brother’s.

  Frowning, he got out and walked around as Kole got out too.

  “What are you doing here?” Joss shivered in the light rain. “Is everything all right? Is Maisey okay?”

  Kole shoved his hands in his pockets. “Can we go in?”

  “Yeah, sure.” Joss slid the key in the lock and led the way inside.

  He flicked on the lights, went into the kitchen, and studied the bottle of whiskey in the corner longingly. But Kole wouldn’t drink even one glass when he was driving, and he didn’t want to have one on his own, so he flicked on the kettle instead. His mind spun. What would have prompted Kole to drive all the way out to see him? Had Maisey sent him?

  “Coffee?” he asked, wondering if this time Kole had decided to knock his teeth down his throat.

  But Kole just said, “Yeah, thanks,” and walked across the living room to look out at the rain falling across the bay.

  Joss frowned, went into his bedroom, and quickly changed out of his work clothes and into an All Blacks T-shirt and shorts. He came back out and made the coffee and brought the cups into the living room. After placing Kole’s on the coffee table, he sat on the sofa. “What’s up?”

  Kole picked up his cup and sat in the armchair. He blew on the hot liquid, then took a sip. He didn’t look angry, Joss thought, taking a swallow of his own drink. If anything, he looked slightly…guilty.

  “Tash gave me a talking to,” Kole said.

  “Oh? What about?”

  Kole sighed. “About you and Maisey. Practically ripped me a new one.”

  Joss gave a wry laugh. He could just imagine the tiny fireball blasting through an unsuspecting Kole. “What did she say?”

  Kole ran a hand through his short hair. “She bollocked me for interfering. The thing is, I was so pissed off with you two for getting together behind my back that I gave Maisey a piece of my mind. I told her she was stupid to sleep with you because she was too immature, and you’d soon grow tired of her.”

  Joss stared at him. So before he’d given Maisey his lecture about acting like a child, her brother had told her she was immature? “Shit.”

  “Yeah.” Kole studied his fingernails.

  Joss frowned. “But what do you care? You don’t want us to get together anyway.”

  Kole gave an exasperated sigh. “It’s not that I don’t want you to get together. It was never that. I didn’t want you to break her heart. Come on, mate, neither of us have treated girls great, have we? Even Ana, who was crazy about you—you dumped her when she got too serious. I meant what I said about Maisey. She is innocent about life. She’s never been in love, and I know she likes you. She’ll have tempted you to have sex because she thought she could sleep with you and not fall for you, but she has.”

  Joss blinked. “She’s in love with me?”

  “So Tash says. And I’m not surprised. She’s always had a thing about you, although she’s tried to hide it.” Kole leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “Look. I know you have a lot on your plate. And if you don’t want to see her again, that’s fine, I understand. But I just wanted to say, if you do want to see her…well. It’s okay with me.” He finally looked up and met Joss’s gaze.

  Joss’s lips curved up a little. “You’re giving me permission to sleep with your sister?”

  “To date my sister. I don’t want to know about the sex.” Kole pushed away the rest of his coffee and stood up. “I’d better go.”

  Surprised, Joss followed him to the door. “You can stay if you like,” he said. “Watch some of the game. I’ll even cook you a bacon sandwich.”

  Kole grinned. “Cheers, but no. Tasha’s waiting for me.” He glanced out at the rain. Since Harry’s death, none of the Graham siblings had liked driving in the dark or in bad weather.

  “Sure,” Joss said. “Thanks for coming out though.”

  Kole hesitated. “I’m going to tell you something, and I’d rather you didn’t tell Maisey I’ve told you, but I think you should know.”

  “Okay…”

  “When Harry died, she suffered really badly from depression. She still does.”

  Joss’s eyebrows rose. He’d completely forgotten she was on antidepressants. “Oh.”

  “She fights it, and most of the time she does really well. Harry’s death, well, it affected us all in different ways. Skye ran, I got angry, and Maisey…well, she decided she was going to live every day as if it were her last. But it still gets her sometimes. She calls it her black dog, and she says it’s always waiting in the shadows.”

  Joss thought of the moment he’d awoken in the night to find her watching him, unable to sleep. “I didn’t know.”

  “Nobody does. Only me and Skye, and Mum and Dad of course, and Tasha. Listen, I’ve said my piece, and I’ll leave it up to you what you decide to do. All I want to say is, don’t mess her around. If it’s over, it’s over—just leave it that way, eh? But if you want her, go and tell her. And just…I dunno. Just treat her right, you know?”

  Joss nodded. “Okay.
”

  Kole turned up the collar of his jacket and opened the door. “See you later.”

  “See ya.”

  Kole went out and closed the door behind him.

  Joss locked the door and walked into the kitchen. He stood there for a while, looking across the living room and out at the rain that blurred the view.

  Then he turned, retrieved the bottle of whiskey, picked a glass, and took it into the living room.

  He needed to think.

  Chapter Thirty

  Wednesdays were always a busy day for Joss, and this week proved no exception.

  First, he called in to see Hayley. “Thought you might want me to check up on Sammy,” he said when his sister opened the door, carrying the Maggot.

  “Oh yeah, that would be great.” Hayley stepped back to let him in. For once, the hallway wasn’t full of toys, and when he followed her into the kitchen, he found all three kids sitting at the table eating breakfast, dressed in their school uniforms.

  He stopped and stared. “Ye gods. Hayley, did you know your children have been taken over by aliens?”

  She gave him a wry look, and he grinned and kissed the top of Sammy’s head, then fist-bumped the two boys.

  “We had a long family talk over the weekend,” Hayley said, pouring some milk into a glass and passing it to Sammy, who politely said thank you. “I explained how difficult it is to cope with four children, and I asked them to help me a bit more around the house.”

  “Mummy yelled and told us if we didn’t help, she’d send us to an orphanage,” Ethan revealed. Liam kicked him under the table, and Ethan glared at him.

  “I might have been a bit more colorful than I implied,” Hayley said breezily. “But it was a necessary conversation.”

  Joss chuckled and picked up a toy for the Maggot to hold. “I’m glad the threat worked.”

  “For the moment, anyway.” Hayley smiled at him and held out the baby for him to hold. “How are you?”

  “Oh, I’m all right.” He took the Maggot and put her over his shoulder. “I hear you spoke to Mum and Dad.”

  Hayley shot him a look as she finished putting the kids’ sandwiches into their lunchboxes. “So they’ve spoken to you too?”

  “Yes.”

  “What do you think?” She shoved a piece of fruit and a cereal bar in each box and snapped the lids shut.

  “I don’t know. I felt guilty,” he said honestly.

  “You shouldn’t. You already do enough for both me and them. It makes sense.” She gave the boxes to the kids, and they ran off to put them in their schoolbags.

  Hayley turned back to him. “Guilt’s an easy emotion. I feel guilty all the time—guilty I’m snappy with the kids, that I can’t give them half the things other parents give them. I feel guilty that if I’d been a better wife, Ben might not have left, and the kids would still have their dad living at home.” She stopped and looked at her feet.

  Joss shifted the Maggot so he could lean forward and kiss his sister’s forehead. “You mustn’t think that,” he said softly. “What happened wasn’t your fault.”

  Hayley looked up, eyes glistening. “It always takes two to tango, Joss. I could have been more attentive.”

  “You had four kids including a newborn,” he snapped. “Guys have to be a bit forgiving in that kind of situation.”

  She smiled and reached up to touch his face, rubbing her nose with her other hand. “You can be such a sweetie sometimes.” A mischievous look crossed her face. “How’s Maisey?”

  He sighed and looked at the Maggot, who was examining his tie pin. “Hurt. I’m going to see her today.”

  “Say you’re sorry.”

  “I will.”

  “Even if you haven’t done anything.”

  His lips curved. “Yeah.”

  “And if you have done something, buy her flowers. Every girl likes flowers.”

  Joss removed the end of his tie from the Maggot’s mouth, remembering how Maisey had been so startled when the baby had cried. In spite of her obvious discomfort, she’d looked adorable when he’d first walked into the kitchen and saw her sitting there, the baby in her arms, a tender look on her face. He missed her, so much that an ache grew in the pit of his stomach and wouldn’t go away.

  “Time to go,” he said, and handed the baby back to her mother. “Come on kids.”

  He led them out to the car and made sure they were all buckled in, and let Liam sit in the front with him like a grown-up, which made the boy’s eyes glow with pride.

  He kissed Hayley goodbye, drove the kids to school, and then went to work.

  The surgery was already packed when he arrived, and he spent a busy morning going from patient to patient. Sometimes, he felt frustrated at dealing with such minor matters all the time—a tetanus shot after a farmer had caught his hand on a rusty nail; a child with a sore throat; an elderly woman with bunions that were making it painful to walk. But as he worked through the schedule, he realized he felt content every time he helped someone and they walked out happier, thanking him for his time. Maisey was right—he was making a difference, albeit in a small way. He may not be curing cancer, but he was making people’s lives better, and that was no small thing when ordinary life could be so hard.

  Still, one o’clock couldn’t come quickly enough, and as soon as his last patient left the office, he grabbed his coat and almost beat them out of the door.

  He walked the short distance to town, stopping at the florist, and chose the most beautiful bunch of red and pink roses, all tied up with a large scarlet bow. Then, heart thumping, he walked around the corner to Treats.

  As soon as he entered the shop, though, he realized he’d made a mistake. Caitlin and Elle were serving and Tasha was waiting tables, but there was no sign of Maisey. And judging by the look on Tasha’s face, Maisey’s absence was something to do with him.

  Tasha plonked a tray of cups and plates onto a nearby table and marched over to him. Even though she was only five foot six, she had a way about her—a blaze in her eyes and a firm set to her mouth—that always made him wary, like meeting an angry possum on a dark night.

  “What are you doing here?” she snapped. “You are absolutely the last person I want to see today.” She glanced at the flowers in his hand. Was it his imagination, or did her expression soften? She looked back at him with eyes that could have frozen a candle flame. Yep, it was his imagination.

  “I came to see Maisey,” he said weakly.

  “She’s not here.”

  “I can see that. Is she off today?”

  For the first time, Tasha looked upset rather than angry. “Yes, she’s at home.”

  Joss frowned, concerned. “Is she okay?”

  Tasha met his gaze, real worry in her eyes. “No, Joss,” she said softly. “She’s not okay. You and Kole have done a right job on her between you.”

  His heart raced. “What’s the matter? What’s she done?”

  Tasha folded her arms and looked out of the window at the cars flashing by. Her jaw was knotted as if she’d clenched her teeth. She didn’t want to tell him.

  “I’m going to go and see her,” he told Tasha earnestly. “I was an idiot yesterday. I was angry and said things I shouldn’t have.”

  “You think?”

  “I know, all right? I know. I’m going to apologize. That’s what the flowers are for. And I want to ask whether I can see her again.”

  He waited for Tasha’s face to light up, for her to exclaim, to squeal, to laugh, to look pleased at least. But she didn’t. She picked up the tray of cups and turned briefly to face him. “I think you’re too late,” was all she said. Then she walked off, into the kitchen. She didn’t look back.

  Joss stood there, heart pounding, conscious of Elle and Caitlin casting him pitying looks. He turned and left the shop and walked briskly back to the surgery. He put the flowers in his car, went in and told the receptionists he’d been called to an emergency, then went back to the car and set off for Maisey’s house.<
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  He wasn’t too late. He couldn’t be too late.

  He’d lain there on the sofa the evening before, in the dark and the silence, and thought about Maisey all evening, watching the rain gradually dry up and the stars come out, sparkling like Maisey’s eyes. He’d made himself think about each time he’d been with her, and how she’d made him feel, and then he thought about what would happen if he never felt like that again.

  It hadn’t taken him long to realize he loved her.

  At first, he’d told himself he was being ridiculous. He’d slept with her a few times. He’d hardly had time to develop feelings that intense.

  But of course, it wasn’t a relationship that had only started the night of the party. He’d known Maisey for years, had come to love and respect her over a long time, and what had happened recently had been a culmination of something that had built up slowly. He’d buried his feelings deep inside, refusing to let them see the light of day, like a seed planted deep in the earth, lying dormant through the winter. But Maisey was like the sun, shining hot and bright on that seed, and it had flourished and bloomed into something he hadn’t expected, something so beautiful it had taken him by surprise.

  He approached her house and slid his car beside hers in the drive. What had happened after he’d left the night before? Had she been angry? Thrown things, burned him in effigy? Got drunk, cried, gone out and partied? Had she packed her bags and left? Surely Tasha would have told him if that were the case?

  He turned up the collar of his jacket. It had started raining again, warm March rain, and the air felt close and humid, the ferns and palms in the front garden folding up into koru curls as the droplets pattered down.

  After picking up the roses, he closed the car door and walked down the path. He went to knock on the front door, then paused and walked around the back.

  He’d just rounded the corner when he saw her. She sat curled up in a chair at the end of the deck, under the overhang, out of the rain. Her head rested against the wall, and she sat looking down the garden, watching the rabbits nibbling the grass under the fruit trees.