She tipped her head from side to side. “That’s a big part of it, but it’s also to do with education as well.”
He said nothing for a moment, concentrating on the road. Most of his friends had been to university or at least done some official training, like Jonah, who was a fireman. But they never made him feel as if he was less of a man for not having studied at that higher level, and he couldn’t help but bristle at Hermione’s insinuation yet again that his lack of education placed him beneath her, and not in a good way.
Chapter Eleven
Hermione glanced across at Danny. He’d gone quiet, and his smile had faded. He thought she looked down at him because he hadn’t been to university. Which of course she didn’t.
Did she?
“I’ve hurt your feelings,” she said, horrified she’d insulted him yet again—this time without meaning to. “I’m sorry. I was just trying to explain how it works over there.”
“It’s okay,” he said, although it clearly wasn’t, as his eyes held a touch of steel. “I suppose you can’t help the way you were brought up.”
She winced. “Even so... I am sorry, Danny. You’ve obviously worked extremely hard to get your business set up—I know how difficult that can be. You don’t deserve to be dismissed just because you don’t have a piece of paper to say you passed some stupid exam.”
“Well, I don’t think so. Not everyone is privileged enough to have the opportunity to go to university.”
As soon as he’d said it, the truth sank in. She’d assumed he hadn’t gone because he was the sort of guy who worked with his hands and wasn’t academically bright enough for higher level study. But of course the reason must have been because of his father, either because he couldn’t leave him, or because he didn’t have the money, or both.
A wave a shame washed over her as she realized it changed her perception of him. Was it natural for a woman to look at a guy differently depending on his level of education, or had it been ingrained in her that a higher education elevated a person’s social status?
He glanced at her, and his expression softened as he must have seen her distress. “Don’t worry, I understand. I know the Brits have the class thing, but I would imagine that in most countries everyone thinks of professional people as a cut above the average. I understand why—those who taken the time to study deserve respect. But you’re not the first to make assumptions about me, and it’s a sore spot for me for many reasons. I’m sorry I’m grouchy.”
“You couldn’t go because you had to look after your father?”
“Yeah. As I moved through my teens, I realized it wasn’t going to work. He had to give up his job when I was twelve. He got some benefits but money was incredibly tight. I know I could have taken out student loans, but when I weighed up the mounting debt and the fact that I didn’t want to leave him, I knew it made more sense to stay close to home and get the best job I could here.”
“What would you have studied?” she asked.
“At school my favorite subject was biology, and I was fascinated by genetics and epigenetics—I’d love to have done something like that.”
“Epigenetics? What’s that?”
“It’s the study of the chemical reactions that activate and deactivate parts of the genome as an organism grows and develops, and the factors that influence them—it’s fascinating stuff.” He glanced across at her again and laughed as he saw her wide eyes. “How much do you want me right now?”
“I didn’t realize.” Her cheeks warmed at the knowledge that he was almost certainly at least twice as intelligent as she was.
“Hermione, it’s okay...”
“No, it’s really not.” Her eyes stung. “I always jump to conclusions and it’s terribly wrong of me. No wonder you were so insulted when we first met. Oh my God, I can’t believe I was so rude.”
“Hey.” He took her hand again. “We can only ever go by our first impressions. That’s what makes them so important. I assumed you were some spoiled little brat who only spent her daddy’s money.”
“You were right.”
“No I wasn’t, and stop putting yourself down. Yes, you’ve had a privileged background, but you’ve attempted to make your own way in the world, and I admire you for that.”
“Thank you.” She sniffed. “You’re being too nice to me. I don’t deserve it.”
“It’s only because I want to get in your panties.”
That made her chuckle. “Knickers,” she corrected.
“Knickers sounds like something out of the nineteenth century. Please don’t tell me you wear bloomers that come down to your ankles.”
“No, Danny. White lacy hipsters. Very little material to them, really, I’m sure they’d disintegrate if someone strong got hold of them.”
He glanced over at her, a hopeless look in his eyes, and they both laughed.
“I’ll be surprised if I don’t faint when I get out of the car,” he grumbled. “All the blood keeps flooding to my groin. Having a permanent hard on can’t be good for my health.”
It took all her willpower not to look down, and she turned her gaze out of the window, heart pounding. Something told her he was enjoying this as much as she was.
It was strange, but she’d never really done this before, whatever it was. Flirting, she supposed. Richard never flirted with her—he was kind and considerate, but in her more private moments she wondered whether there would ever be any spark between them. He was nice enough—tallish, although not as tall as Danny, and he dressed smartly, and he was hardly bad looking, but he just didn’t give her that feeling in the pit of her stomach that she longed for.
The feeling that Danny gave her. The feeling he’d given her from the moment he’d walked up to her across her father’s lawn. The feeling he still gave her every time he looked at her with his baby blue eyes that said As soon as I get the chance, I’m going to strip you naked and run my tongue right down your body.
When she looked at Richard, she thought of dinner parties and functions and estates and horses and whether the meadow needed re-fencing and whether they should agree to letting the local tennis club use their courts.
When she looked at Danny, she thought about sex. She thought about his lips on hers, his hands sliding around her waist, his body hardening and preparing itself for her. She thought about his mouth on her breast, his fingers slipping into her folds, and his erection sliding inside her. She wanted to have him thrust her all the way to a climax, to watch him come, and to know that she’d given him pleasure.
“Stop looking at me like that,” he said without turning his head. “I’ll end up driving into a tree.”
She blushed, loving that he seemed to feel the same way, and that he clearly wanted her. She’d seen the bag he’d put on the back seat, and she knew he must have brought a change of clothes and his toothbrush, just in case. He’d arranged for someone to look after his father. He wanted to spend the night with her. She had a whole night to look forward to, of having Danny in her bed, making love to her until the sun came up.
Ohmygod, ohmygod, ohmygod.
*
Danny drove past Mangonui to Doubtless Bay first with the aim of finding some hotels that might suit her company.
Hermione was touched that he was making the effort to help with her business. On the way to the bay, he asked lots of question about what services she offered, apparently trying to get a better idea of the style of place she was hoping to find in the Northland. After she explained that she wanted quiet boutique places that offered the personal touch rather than larger hotels, he pulled over and called up one of his friends who lived in the area to ask if he could recommend any smaller, more exclusive places.
“Thanks,” Danny said into his mobile, “catch ya later,” and he hung up. He steered the car back onto the state highway and continued north. “Stuart says there’s the perfect place at the southern end of Cable Bay. We’ll start there.”
“Stuart—he’s the one getting married to Elle, isn’
t he?” Hermione had tried to learn his friends’ names, keen to do something to balance out hurting his feelings.
“Yeah. Stuart was married before but his wife died a few years ago. We all thought he’d never meet anyone else, but he’s head over heels for Elle.”
“How do you know all the guys up here?”
“It’s a long story.”
“I’m not going anywhere.” She shrugged. “I want to know.” It was true—she wanted to understand Danny. He intrigued her. She’d thought he was shallow, like a river, but he was turning out to be more like the ocean, with hidden depths she longed to explore.
“You remember Genie?” he asked.
“The ex-soldier?”
“Yeah. Her brothers, Beck and Jonah, moved to Mangonui with their father after their mother died in a car accident. Genie was best friends with Ciara—she was Niall’s sister, so Genie stayed in Paihia and lived with their family.”
“I don’t remember meeting Ciara,” Hermione said, frowning.
“No. She died in the bomb blast in which Genie was wounded.”
Hermione’s jaw dropped. She’d seen Genie’s limp when she’d walked across the bar to the Ladies’, and Billie had told her she’d been wounded in action, but Billie hadn’t mentioned Ciara. “Oh, that’s terrible.”
“It was hard on everyone. But anyway, Beck and Jonah went to high school up in Mangonui with the guys up here—Kole, Joss, Fox, and Stuart, and although they drifted apart like you do after school, when Beck opened the bar they all came down to support him, and they visit quite a lot now.”
“And their partners?”
“Kole married Tasha—she’s Fox’s sister, and Joss is marrying Maisey—she’s Kole’s sister.”
“Okay, now I’m confused.”
Danny laughed. “Yeah, I can see why. The two girls met Elle and Caitlin at uni—I don’t know them quite as well as the others, but they’re nice. They all run Treats together, and there’s one other girl, Skye—she’s also Kole’s sister, she helps out in the shop sometimes.”
Hermione looked out of the window. They were passing over a bridge, and to the other side she could see strange twisted trees growing right out of the water. Mangroves! How odd.
She tried not to feel envious of Danny’s large circle of friends, and failed. She’d attempted to explain to him how she felt as if she didn’t fit in with anyone, but she wasn’t sure he’d understood. How lovely it must be to grow up with people who didn’t care where you were born. Who weren’t constantly judging you. Danny and his friends were so relaxed, and although they’d been interested in her because she was from England and had an intriguing background, they didn’t appear to look at her any differently because of it.
Danny might have jumped to conclusions about her when he first met her, but that was because she’d acted like an ass and been rude to him, so she could hardly blame him for that.
“Nearly there,” he said, reaching out to hold her hand again. “You okay?”
“Fine,” she said, because she didn’t want to go into it all again and ruin the mood of the day. But something was gradually dawning on her.
She was lonely.
The problem wasn’t only not having lots of friends, because she knew she could make more of an effort to be sociable, to go out more, if she tried. It stemmed from something inside her, a sense of not belonging, and that nobody understood her. She had the strange feeling that it didn’t matter if she stood in a room with a thousand people—she would still feel alone.
And that was part of the issue with Richard. She’d known him for a long time, and she knew him probably better than anyone except her parents. But they had no connection—he didn’t touch her on an emotional or spiritual level. Instinctively, she knew they could be married for fifty years, be lovers, have a dozen kids, and he would never really know her.
You’re not in love with him? Danny had asked her. He’s not the man of your dreams? Your Mr. Right? Your Prince Charming? He’d been speaking sarcastically—he’d made it quite clear that he didn’t believe in true love, but the trouble was that she did believe it. Or she wanted to believe the possibility that it existed, anyway. She wanted marriage to mean not duty and sacrifice and responsibility, but love and attraction and passion.
Instinctively, she knew Danny Love offered that. Not forever, of course—he was hardly marriage material, but he’d given her a glimpse of the passion she craved. And it made her immeasurably sad. Because once she’d taken a bite from the apple, how would she ever be able to forget that sweet, sweet taste?
Chapter Twelve
Danny had offered to show Hermione around a few hotels because as much as he wanted to drag her straight back to her house, kiss her senseless, and make love to her, it seemed polite to wait at least a few hours. He’d half-expected the morning to be a bit dull as they traipsed around the various hotels with her making copious notes, but in actual fact it turned out to be the best morning he’d spent in a long time.
He parked up under the shade of a huge pohutukawa tree, and they walked along the crescent moon of the bay. Far from having her nose buried in a notebook, Hermione’s wide eyes took in every detail of the boutique hotels he took her to. Although she asked to speak to the manager in each place for a few minutes, and she came away with brochures and prices for weekend breaks, she spent a lot of time asking Danny’s opinion as they were shown around the rooms and amenities. If he was taking a girl away for a few nights, what would he expect from the place in which they were staying?
After the inevitable jokes about condom machines in the bathroom, he gave it some real thought and surprised himself with his answers. Comfort was more important than glamour, he decided—a pretty room for the girl, a soft bed, a pleasant view, and somewhere not too noisy. A friendly staff was a bonus. Decent room service. And a nice restaurant he could take her to for dinner—with quiet, private tables, a varied menu, a good choice of local wines, and great service.
“Quite the old romantic deep down, aren’t we?” Hermione said with a wink.
“Maybe,” he said, glad he’d put a smile back on her face. In the car, when he’d been talking about his friends, she’d grown quiet for a while. He didn’t know her well enough yet to be sure what had bothered her. Was she homesick? Was she missing Richard and her friends in the UK? Somehow, he suspected that wasn’t it. She’d talked a little about not fitting in, and she hadn’t spoken about her husband-to-be with any depth of feeling.
Danny knew he was lucky to have all the friends he’d made over the years. The guys were good, decent Kiwi men, the girls kind at heart, and although they’d all had ups and downs, things were gradually coming together for most of them as they headed toward their thirties. He couldn’t imagine his life without them.
He doubted that marriage was on the cards for him. After the usual succession of on-off relationships in his late teens and early twenties, he’d finally gone steady with a girl called Lynda for a couple of years. To him, going steady had meant not dating anyone else, which he hadn’t, and he’d loved her, or at least he’d thought he had at the time. He’d taken her out a couple of times a week while his aunt stayed with his father, and he’d slept over at her place occasionally, and for a while Lynda had been content with that.
But eventually she’d started complaining she wasn’t seeing enough of him, and that they weren’t going out enough. And when she’d started making noises about settling down, getting married, getting their own house, and having kids, he’d finally told her what he knew he should probably have told her early in the relationship—that he needed to look after his father, and there was no question of putting him into a home or anything like that.
She hadn’t been a bad person, and she’d understood that he wanted to care for his father, but she’d felt that by refusing to put his dad into a home, he was choosing Ron over her. Danny understood that a young woman wouldn’t want the responsibility of caring for a partner’s sick parent so early on in a relationshi
p, but part of him had felt that if she had truly loved him, she would have accepted that he couldn’t leave his father, and she would have been glad to help Danny look after him.
Then after she’d left, he’d realized he was kidding himself. It was unlikely there would ever be a girl who would love him enough to want to move in with him and his father. He couldn’t blame Lynda for reacting the way she had. He would have done the same if he was in her position.
Except he wouldn’t have. Deep down, he knew he would have been prepared to sacrifice his own desires if their roles had been reversed. It was the right thing to do—the honorable thing, and he couldn’t help himself; he resented Lynda for not loving him enough to stay, the same way as he resented his mother for not coming back, even when—especially when—she’d discovered his father was sick.
But this was the real world where everyone was only out for themselves. The likes of Mother Theresa were anomalies, not the norm. Danny had learned to harden his heart and accept that the selfless true love that bards had once spoken about in medieval poetry was something that didn’t exist—or at least not for him, anyway.
And oddly, Hermione had obviously come to a similar conclusion. She’d realized that by marrying Richard she was going to have to work hard to find happiness, and Danny had to respect her for that.
But that didn’t mean that they couldn’t find some pleasure and passion in the short term. He wanted to see her eyes lights up again the way they had in the car, when she’d obviously been thinking about going to bed with him. Was she still going to invite him to stay when he took her home? He hoped she hadn’t changed her mind. Well, even if she had, he still had time to change it back again!
Their hotel visits complete, and with plenty of brochures and ideas to think about, it was growing close to lunch, so they got in the car and Danny drove them back to Mangonui.
“Oh, it’s lovely,” Hermione said as the car wound along the waterfront and around to the line of shops facing the harbor.
An Ocean Between Us Page 8