by Diana Fraser
“Nothing’s unfixable, not if it’s essentially sound.” He caught her eye and then moved forward. “Just think, Susie.” He paced around the room, looking up at the ornate ceiling, now covered in grime. “For access, you have the flat land above, perfect for a helicopter pad, and you’re only half an hour boat ride away from any of Auckland’s marinas.”
“But that’s not good access, surely?”
“It is for people with money who want privacy. I know people who’d rent this whole place out for their family for months at a time. And between times, it could be run as an exclusive lodge. It would have a professional kitchen and be a showcase for Whisper Creek wines.
“And you reckon it would be worth it? It wouldn’t ruin this place?”
“Not if it’s done right. Which it would be. You’ll see when we go to Onihau next week. Guy, runs something similar at his winery. You’d be able to develop the winery in line with your vision and invest in its operations.
She frowned up at him. “It’ll require huge investment to get the place up to scratch. Where’s the money going to come from?”
“Mackenzie Investments has been developing property for years. I’ve got the team. I’m assuming Pete would be interested in a joint venture, or selling it?”
She shrugged. “Probably, so long as he didn’t have to be involved. His heart’s in the Mackenzie country, even though he’s kept hold of most of the original estate.”
“Good. No problems then.”
“For you, maybe not. But it would change the whole feel of the place.”
“Susie, your and Tom’s future would be secure. You’d both have the freedom to do as you like.”
She was speechless at the sudden vision of a future where anything was possible. But, the door slammed closed on her vision. James still owned everything. He still had the power.
“It’ll be fine,” James continued, oblivious to the turmoil that was raging in her head. “I’ll show you the kind of lodge I’m envisaging when we go to Onihau.”
She nibbled her lip. “Just for one night, that’s all I’ve agreed to. I need to be back for Tom. He’s finishing school early next week.”
“No you haven’t, Susie,” Tom piped up. “I’m staying in Auckland for the rest of the week so I can go to Matt’s birthday party, remember. Aunty said it would be okay.”
“That’s settled then.” James thrust his hands in his pockets and Susie could see his mind slipping into business mode as he looked around the place. “Next week in the Wairarapa we’ll discuss the lodge and new equipment with Guy.” He turned to Tom. “Does your mum have some posh clothes?”
“Yes.” Tom grinned. “But she never wears them.”
“Dust them off, Susie, you’re wearing them next week. Lucia and Guy like to do things properly.”
She tried to smile for Tom’s sake. But still the seed of doubt nagged at her. Why was he doing this? Would this venture make her free, as he claimed, or tie her further to him? She and Tom followed James outside to where he stood looking up at the battered facade of the once grand old house.
“What a perfect place. I hope, one day, I’ll find a home like this.”
“You must have a string of beautiful properties, all over the world probably.”
“Properties, yes. A home, no.”
She frowned. “You’ll find a home one day, I’m sure you will.”
His face held no trace of smile now. “Are you? I’m not.”
“See!” Tom exclaimed proudly. “We don’t need a tent.” He tentatively rattled the collection of driftwood that he’d hammered into the sand behind where they’d be sleeping and James suitably admired it.
“The flag’s especially good,” James said, flicking the tattered white cloth marked with a skull and crossbones with his thumb and finger in lieu of any breeze. “Should ward off any pirates.”
Tom looked at him with a pitying expression. “James, there are no pirates any more.”
James laughed. “There are on foreign seas—Indonesia, Africa.”
“But we’re not near foreign seas, are we?”
Still laughing at his reduced status as an object of pity to a ten-year-old boy, James reached for a bottle of wine. “Where’s your mother?”
Susie had made sure she was never alone with James. She obviously didn’t want the conversation he wanted. But he would have it.
“She’s just coming round the rocks.” James followed where Tom was pointing. Susie was wearing a long sarong-type wrap skirt and a flowing shirt, both a soft orange. Slowly James stood up, transfixed as Tom darted over to her and took the basket of pine cones she’d been gathering from a neighboring bay.
Tom ran over and tipped them onto the pile of dry leaves and twigs they’d placed for the fire. James handed Susie a glass of wine and she came and sat a little distance from James, leaving a space between them for Tom.
“It’s a beautiful evening.” James looked up at the sky, sipping his wine. “The stars are already beginning to appear.”
“Do you know anything about the stars, James?” asked Tom as he flopped down beside James and pulled some blankets over him.
“No, sadly. I remember my brother, Callum, trying to teach me which stars were which, but I never paid much attention.”
“You’ve got a brother? I wish I had a brother.”
“Oh, you’re better off without them. I have two—one in the South Island and one in Wellington. They argue with you when they’re bored, they thump you when they’re happy and they try to humiliate you as frequently as possible. It’s one of their favorite pastimes.”
“They sound mean. Don’t they love you?”
James’s heart melted a little at the boy’s seriousness. Apart from the obvious need for a good education, he could see why Susie had decided he needed to mix more with other kids on the mainland. “Of course we love each other. We’re just used to expressing it in different ways. Like, if you want to tell your mum you love her, I guess you go and say it, or hug her, do you?”
Tom nodded. “Yep. She likes that, don’t you Mum?”
“Sure do.” Susie’s smile to her son brought a lump to James’s throat. “Bread and cheese anyone?” She passed a slice topped with melting Camembert to James.
“Thank you. And, Tom, I’m sure she does.” He glanced over at her. “Well, when we were your age, if Callum approved of something I’d done, he’d punch me in the arm, get my head in a head lock and slap me playfully on top of my head and say ‘do it better next time.’” James shrugged. “That’s love in our family.”
“Wow!” Tom’s eyes were large with surprise.
“Both my brothers are married now. Hopefully their wives have taught them that headlocks are not a good way to express love.”
“I heard they’d got married.” Susie, propped up on the multitude of cushions that James had insisted on bringing, pulled Tom closer into her embrace as she nibbled on the cheese and drank the wine. The soft warm breeze ruffled her hair and the flickering firelight gave her face a look at once familiar and exotic. “I can kind of imagine Callum married, because he got married young, didn’t he? And his wife died. But Dallas? I was surprised. He always seemed like a confirmed bachelor.”
“Not now. He’s very happily married with two children. And Callum’s wife, Gemma, had their first child six months ago.”
Susie looked at him thoughtfully. “So you’re on your own now—the only one unmarried, the only one without a family.”
“Thank you, Susie, for pointing out how quite alone I am.”
“Is that why you’re here?”
Tom sat up and looked at them both in turn, his eyes suddenly bright with curiosity, obviously aware of some undercurrent of conversation. “Because James wants a family?” He turned to James. “Is it?”
James glanced uneasily at Tom. “You both think I’m lonely? No, I have a lot of friends, a whole other life in the US and big plans for the future. I’m just here to check on your mum. Your mum and I we
re friends years ago. I wanted to see how she was getting on. That’s all. Make sure she was okay.”
“Sure she’s okay.” Reassured, Tom dropped back down to the ground. Susie covered him in blankets. “She’s got me to look after her.”
James nodded. “So I can see. So…” He desperately needed to change the subject. “Coming back to these stars. What have we got?” He took a sip of his wine and drew closer to Tom and Susie. With Tom half-hidden by the blankets on the ground, James’s face was close to Susie’s.
Susie lifted up her arm and pointed to a cluster of stars already dipping towards the western horizon. He watched the pale underside of her arm and itched to stroke it. “That’s Scorpius. Maori say it’s the fish hook that the god Maui used to catch the Great Fish of Maui.”
“The Great Fish of Maui is the North Island,” Tom informed James.
“Is it indeed? That is some big fish,” he added, distracted as he watched Susie shift her hand until her arm was nearly stretched across his body. “And do you know what that is?”
Tom yawned and James was too busy gently blowing out a breath against her skin, watching her skin goose bump under the influence of his breath, to answer.
“It’s the Sea Goat. Capricornus.” She looked at them both. “Am I the only one who knows about stars round here?”
“I’m sure Tom does, but he’s too sleepy. Besides we don’t need to, with you here. You always were smart.”
She withdrew her arm, suddenly self-conscious and pulled a blanket loosely over herself. “Not so smart.”
He shifted onto his side, propped up by his hand. “Yes, smart.”
“Not so smart now, though, am I? Trapped on a beach with you.”
“And me, Mum!” Tom said sleepily before burying himself even further. His body stretched, pushing at them both, as he gave a great yawn. “I’m tired.”
“Then snuggle down and I’ll tell you about the stars.”
Slowly the light faded until the only light was coming from the stars and their reflection on the sea. Susie recounted the stories about each of the constellations that were gradually becoming visible. James sat back, one arm hooked under his head, and listened to her stories, allowing her voice to wrap its way around him, to find its way into his heart.
Tom wriggled one last wriggle as his breathing deepened and he fell asleep.
James reached over and took hold of Susie’s hand that was about to point out another star. “He’s asleep.” She lowered their joint hands until they rested gently on Tom. “Your hands are cold.” He drew her hand to his mouth and blew on her fingers, rubbing them. “You should get under the covers. Keep warm.”
Slowly she withdrew her hand from his, her eyes dropping to his mouth. He licked his lips as his thoughts refused to shift from her own lips. “Um.” She shivered. “Guess you’re right, Mac.” There was something in her lowered tone, in the use of her nickname for him, that got to him. It was like a vibration that made its way deep inside of him, triggering a response he hoped she wasn’t aware of. She pulled the covers up until only her head was visible, and her eyes, which still held his gaze. “It’s lucky…” She trailed off before clearing her throat. “…that you brought the extra thermal blankets. The night’s colder than I thought it would be.”
He felt an overpowering need to touch her, to feel the reality of her. Casually, he shifted his hand so he could touch her hair that spilled over the cushion, feeling its silkiness between his fingers. She didn’t move, didn’t show she was aware of what he was doing. “It came with the rest of the stuff. Warm enough?”
She nodded, the slight movement betrayed by the gleam of the stars on her hair. “You?”
“Put it this way. You and Tom have all the extra blankets and I’m manly enough to cope with the cold, despite what you think.”
She grinned and it warmed his heart. “Too manly to go searching for the sleeping bag or admit you might be cold, that’s for sure.”
“Absolutely. But I’m sufficiently in touch with my sensitive side to agree to share the blankets should the offer be made.”
“It’ll be made… When I’ve tired of watching you sit, uncomfortable and cold on the beach, I might let you share the blankets.”
“So good of you. I promise to behave.”
“How reassuring,” she said archly. “And how unnecessary. In case it’s escaped your notice, my son is lying between us both.”
“Your son… Believe me, it hadn’t escaped my notice. I’m fully aware of that fact. But, you know, I’d have behaved anyway.”
“Right!” she scoffed. “Mac, your reputation precedes you.”
“Susie, my reputation is exaggerated.”
“Yeah, right. Liz was telling me the other month about how you disappeared with Dallas’s nanny at Callum’s wedding.”
“Oh yes, I remember her. Nice girl. I spent a very chaste night listening to her life story.”
“Yeah, right!”
“You don’t believe me.” He shrugged. “I don’t blame you, but it happens to be true. It’s hard to get rid of a reputation which one’s worked so hard at acquiring. But if there’s one thing about me that hasn’t changed, it’s that I never lie.”
She didn’t respond immediately. “No.” Her voice had changed suddenly—it was so soft it seemed to float to him on the soft warm breeze. “No, you don’t. Perhaps you have changed if you no longer need to seduce every woman you see.”
James swirled the wine around his glass, trying to lessen the pain of her accusation by focusing his attention on how the firelight flickered, lightening the ruby red to flashes of orange. “Yeah. It was what I did for a long time. Like some people drink too much, some people become obsessed with sport, well, seduction was my sport.” He turned ruefully to Susie. “A sport I was good at. But a sport that’s lost its allure.”
“You’ve definitely changed.”
He turned away again and focused on the lazy roll of the waves on the shore. All he could see was the intermittent flare of white surf as it broke on the sand. Silence settled around them like a heavy blanket. The occasional call of a nocturnal bird and whisper of the wind in the flax were all that pierced it. Suddenly he felt the tentative touch of her hand on his. He didn’t dare move because he didn’t want her warmth to leave him.
“Or, rather, you’ve changed back to what you were like before. You’re the boy I once knew, the boy I had some happy times with.”
He licked his lips that were suddenly dry. She hadn’t forgotten about their time together, nor how happy they’d been. A happiness he’d taken for granted, a happiness he’d trashed, a happiness he had no right to now. “It’s a wonder you can remember him. It was a long time ago.” She withdrew her hand and he felt the chill of the air where her hand had been. He rubbed it, needing that warmth still.
“Not so long, really. Not if you’ve got a good memory.” She looked up and caught his gaze in the darkening light. “Not if you don’t want to forget.”
An exquisite tension, pure and strong, gripped his heart. “And you don’t?”
She looked away and smiled, a sad smile. “Some of it, maybe. But not all. Not the firelight, the jokes, the cold nights and hot days, the laughter…” She cleared her throat. “They’re the times I like to remember.”
“But not later?”
“No. Not later.” Her words were cool and clipped and hurt all the more because of it.
The grip that had taken hold of his heart twisted a little. He looked up, above her, at the dark movement of the leaves against the dark sky and cleared his throat. It was time to do what Tom had told him to do, what his conscience told him to do. “I’m sorry, Suse.”
He didn’t think she’d heard him at first because she didn’t move. But then she reached out for his hand that he hadn’t realized was tightly curled into a fist, and caressed it. “I know you are.”
He frowned, examining her hand in his. “And how do you know this?”
“Because I know you, I k
now what you’re like.”
His smile faded. “You know what I’m like,” he repeated, his gaze fixed on the stars that seemed to throb and pulse lighter with each passing second. “Then tell me, because I don’t even know what I’m like any more.”
“Oh, James.” The unexpected note of tenderness in her voice nearly undid him, as did the use of his given name. Apart from when Tom or Pete were present, it was the first time since they’d met up again that she’d used it, instead of Mac. It seemed to denote a shift towards intimacy. “You were always kind. Always. I remember watching you with your brothers. Callum and Dallas would always be needling each other, competing, fighting. But you, you’d be looking around and you’d see me, watching you from the bushes. You defended me to your parents, talked them round, stuck up for me. Always.”
He swallowed and licked his lips. “You were like a little puppy, all arms and legs and fierce eyes. You didn’t care what anyone thought. Someone had to do the talking for you.” He watched the shadows the darting flames of the fire cast on her face. “You were a funny wee thing. Haven’t changed much either.”
She threw a hunk of bread at him. “I may have been small but I wasn’t funny. Anyway, we’re talking about you, not me.”
He picked up the bread and took a bite. “We’ve moved on to you.” He had no choice but to move on to her if he was going to rid himself of the unwanted straitjacket of emotions that imprisoned him, which made him vulnerable. “Small and funny. What else? A great cook. I remember the cook-ups you’d do on the campfire.”
“So I can cook—not that you’re ever going to taste my cooking again until you display a little more of this legendary charm I keep hearing about.”
“And you light up any room you’re in.”
She dropped her hands to her lap and fidgeted with her nails. “Now that is a total exaggeration and I was just beginning to believe you.”
He frowned. The light atmosphere had suddenly disappeared into the dark night. “I’m not exaggerating. Why would you think I am?”
“Because I’m plain and ordinary and definitely don’t light up rooms.”