“Yay!” She giggled, squeezing her little knees tight against his hips.
He strode into the living room, which boasted huge picture windows overlooking Bounty Bay. Designed by a local architect, who’d positioned the house to highlight the unspoiled beach curving into the distance, the three-bedroom property stated this guy’s successful to anyone who visited. Including his parents, a few months before Ali and Shaun’s accident. They’d been impressed with the large, airy rooms, the modern kitchen, and even the bed-and-bath guest room adjoined to his garage where they’d slept.
“You could fit the whole Bennett and Heath clan in this place if we all bunked down on the living room floor,” his dad had joked as they’d stood on the wide deck above a twisting, narrow driveway. “Old Gypsy wouldn’t make it up here, though.”
Nope. Not a chance the gigantic, ugly house bus would fit—a positive factor that had weighed in when he’d decided to purchase the house.
Owen peeled off his niece and lowered her giggling, squirmy body to the couch next to William, who was rereading, of course, one of his Harry Potter books. Once Owen’s couch had been a plush, leather paradise where a guy could relax after a day of broken bodies and administrative nightmares. Now it was covered in popcorn crumbs and a fluffy pink blanket.
Bright yellow blobs burst onto his sixty-inch screen, jarring his eyeballs. He slumped onto the couch, sandwiched between Charlie and a naked, big-breasted doll with wide-spread legs and a come-hither smile. He wordlessly handed it to his niece, trying not to be bloody depressed that the only woman who’d spread her legs for him in the last few months was made of plastic.
***
One night under the same roof as her father, and Gracie had a choice to make. Borrow a car and drive to Bounty Bay right now. Or, option two, smother her father with a pillow and spend a lifetime looking pasty in prison orange. If they even wore orange in New Zealand. Possibly, she’d binged on one too many Netflix shows.
She opted for the car and a rebel yell of freedom. By rebel yell, she meant texting her father after he’d left for an important, mustn’t-be-disturbed meeting.
Heading north to spend time with Glen and Savannah.
Call her a chicken, but she couldn’t cope with another lecture.
The taxi dropped her and her trusty backpack at Savannah’s house in Devonport. Glen and Sav had established a home together in Bounty Bay but often spent a weekend in the 1930s-era villa to catch up with friends and family in Auckland. Sav’s yellow VW Beetle remained garaged there as city transport, while she used a racy four-wheel drive on the rough roads leading to the Bounty Bay property. Last year, Sav and Glen had flown to London so Savannah could introduce him to her father and his new family. Gracie had taken a couple of days off work to meet her big brother’s new fiancée, and somehow, though they couldn’t be more different, they’d clicked. So when Gracie called this morning, Sav squealed, told her where the Beetle’s spare key was hidden, and ordered her to drive her butt north.
Backpack in the trunk, windows open, and a classic hard-rock station thumping on the stereo, Gracie merged with the steady flow of traffic headed north. Since the UK also drove on the left-hand side of the road, she navigated the Beetle through the morning commute just fine. Not that she could afford a car while living overseas. Still, it felt good to have the wind rushing through her hair and the big city disappearing in her rearview mirror.
Following Sav’s directions, Gracie arrived in Bounty Bay in the early afternoon. Unlike her older brother, she hadn’t traveled to this area before. Back when her brother was a university student, he and his mates—including Nate Fraser, who now lived a short distance from Glen and Savannah—had surfed and fished in the bay.
She drove through the small town of Bounty Bay. One department store, one supermarket, lots of little tourist stores and cafés, no traffic lights because there was barely any traffic, and out toward the beach. The road curved through rolling hills of lush green native bush that were a frame to the cloudless blue skies stretched above. Spotting a few people licking ice cream cones outside the corner store opposite the beach, she pulled into a parking spot.
So sue her, she was kinda on vacation. At least for a couple of weeks. And vacation meant sunny days, beaches, and ice cream cones.
She bought a single, hokey pokey ice cream and walked down the side of the corner store to a picnic table positioned under the spreading branches of a pohutukawa tree. Smiling, squinting behind her sunglasses, she sat with the whispery rustle of leaves at her back and the Tasman Sea sparkling in front of her as it stretched toward the horizon. The vanilla ice cream was silky and sweet on her tongue, the hokey pokey chunks irresistible not to crunch—
A soft whimper sounded behind her.
Gracie spun around and caught a flash of bright yellow disappearing behind the pohutukawa’s thick trunk.
“Hey,” she said and stood up.
Birds twittered in the cabbage trees surrounding the old pohutukawa. From the direction of the beach, a dog barked excitedly. Another whimper then a louder shushing.
“Be quiet. She’ll hear us and call the police,” the shusher warned the shushee.
Kids, by the sound of it.
Gracie’s curiosity piqued, and she chose her steps carefully across the hard-packed dirt, avoiding any potential snapping twigs or scuffing of her shoes. She peeked around the trunk.
From the bottom of the tree, two pairs of dark-brown eyes stared up at her. The pair shiny with tears belonged to a little girl of about four or five, wearing a yellow pinafore with torn purple tights and gumboots. The second pair of eyes were filled with pain and set into the face of a nine-or-ten-year-old boy obviously struggling to appear brave. He sat hunched next to his sister—no way could these two be anything but brother and sister—holding his left wrist to his chest. His swollen left wrist.
Gracie stepped around the base of the tree. “Stick ’em up, kids. It’s the cops.”
The little girl’s eyes bugged wide for a moment then slitted, her nose crinkling. “P’lice officers wear a uniform, and they don’t eat ice cream.”
Her brother continued to silently clutch his forearm. Dirt covered the boy’s jeans, and his jaw bunched as his gaze dropped to the ground. Guess he hadn’t bought the cops line either.
“Observant and smart.” Gracie licked her melting ice cream, at the same time casting an eye around the corner store’s yard. Two cars were parked out front along with hers, but no adults appeared to be mounting a search party for these two. “Saw right through my ruse, huh?”
“Kangaroos?” The girl’s eyes brightened, her cherubic mouth pulling wide into a smile that could slay dragons. “Did you hear that, Will? There are kangaroos.”
Having some experience with normal big-brother-little-sister dynamics from her own childhood and her stint as an au pair, Gracie expected the boy’s response to be snarky, impatient, or sullen—or a combination of all three.
“Not kangaroos, Charlie. Ruse—it means the lady is tricking us. She’s not a police officer.” He turned his liquid, cocoa-colored eyes on her, and proven oh-so-wrong, Gracie melted. Just a little.
“Your brother’s right. I’m teasing.” She glanced between them. “You are brother and sister?”
“Yes. He’s William,” Charlie said. “And you have to call him William or Will but never Willie because some people say that instead of penis.”
Gracie nearly inhaled a chunk of hokey pokey. She coughed onto the back of her hand. “Always William or Will, got it. And you are?”
“Charlie not Charlotte,” Charlie said. “And I’m nearly, almost five.”
“William, why aren’t you in school?” Gracie asked. “It doesn’t let out for another hour.”
“We’re homeschooled,” he said.
The complete lack of guile on the boy’s face convinced her he wasn’t, at least, a preteen delinquent bunking for the day and corrupting his baby sister. She didn’t know much about homeschooled kids, other
than the two sisters who used to be in her ballet classes growing up, but according to the name, it was pretty obvious these two should be home, being schooled by their parents.
“And where are your parents?”
The second she’d finished saying the word parents, Gracie knew she’d put her foot in it. William’s face closed down like a store front dropping iron security bars.
“They went to heaven,” Charlie said with a matter-of-fact shrug. “We live with Nana and Gramps in a bus.”
Oh shit. Both parents…dead? Gracie licked again at the ice cream, now dribbling down the cone and over her fingers. The sweetness suddenly sickly on her tongue, she tossed the remains of the ice cream into the bushes surrounding the tree.
“Are Nana and Gramps here?” She hadn’t noticed a house bus parked outside the corner store, guessing that’s what the girl meant by bus.
“They’re in Whangarei,” William said stiffly. “We’re staying here while Nana is sick.”
Ah. So no parents, sick Nana… “So who is taking care of you?”
“Uncle Owen,” Charlie said. “But he’s at work, so Mrs. Collins is, and she’s a big ol’ meanie, so Will and I runned away—”
“Charlie.”
The girl stopped chattering and slanted a glance at her brother.
“We don’t tell Muggles our secrets,” he said.
Muggles, right. Super cute, but the kid wasn’t getting away with running off from his babysitter. “Where’s your uncle’s place? I’ll drive you back there.”
Both kids slammed their lips shut, Charlie making a zipping motion in front of hers.
“You can’t make us tell,” she somehow muttered through her clamped mouth.
A toughie, eh? Gracie held back a smile. Change of tactics. “How did you hurt your arm, William?”
The boy gave the pohutukawa above him a filthy look. “I fell out of the tree. But I’m okay.”
Charlie shook her head, which must’ve loosened her lips. “No, you’re not! You said your arm was really, really sore. Uncle Owen needs to fix it in his hospital.”
Aha! There was a clue. “Does Uncle Owen work at the hospital?” Gracie asked.
She’d driven past the Bounty Bay hospital on the way out of the little township. Nowhere near as big as a city center, it still should have an emergency department. And regardless of Uncle Owen’s job—doctor, nurse, administrator, or even janitor—he’d get William seen quickly.
“Yep.” Charlie beamed up at her. “He’s Doctor O-for-Awesome.”
Gracie snorted. She just bet he was—possibly along with the ego to match. “How about I drive you both to the hospital, and we find your Uncle Owen?”
The alternative really was calling the local cops, but she wouldn’t do that if she didn’t have to. Charlie and William exchanged looks.
“We’re not allowed to get into cars with strangers,” William said. “And I’m the eldest, so I have to look after Charlie. She doesn’t know any better.”
“Fair enough.” Good to hear the boy had some street smarts. Not that it helped her dilemma. “Am I still a stranger if I tell you my name is Gracie Cooper, and my brother Glen lives in Bounty Bay, too?”
William cocked his head. “Does your brother have brown hair and glasses?”
“Yes. Like a grown-up Harry Potter but without the scar,” Gracie said.
“Uncle Owen knows him, I think. Does he write books?”
“He does. Ones you’ll be able to read when you get a bit older. So what do you say, William-or-Will? Will you trust me?” And somehow, in the few minutes she’d known the dynamic duo, it had become important that they would.
William’s gaze scanned Gracie like an airport security X-ray. Supposedly satisfied—maybe that she wasn’t Voldemort in feminine disguise—he struggled to his feet with a grimace.
“All right,” he said. “C’mon, Charlie.”
Without hesitation, Charlie stood and slipped her hand into Gracie’s. “I trust you,” she said. “You have smiley eyes.”
Gracie laughed. Not the start to her mini-vacation that she’d planned, but for the first time in weeks, her heart was light enough for her eyes to smile.
Maybe Glen was right. Maybe Bounty Bay was magical.
Chapter 3
The meeting with four other specialists coordinating a treatment schedule seemed to be going well. Not that Owen was entirely focused as he sat in the small room, clicking his pen over a sheaf of paperwork. He’d gone through his mental list of names of potential babysitters and had come up with a short list of approximately…zero. Then Charlie had woken him at 3:00 a.m. with a nightmare about octopuses, or was that octopi? His thoughts went fuzzy, and he jerked, blinking rapidly—on the way to dozing off.
His phone vibrated on the meeting table with a persistent buzz. Giving an apologetic smile, Owen tapped the screen and read a message from his triage nurse asking him to call the desk immediately.
Saved by the buzzer.
“Excuse me one moment,” he said and stood. “I’ll take this in the hallway, but I might need to shoot down to the floor.”
Dr. Johnson waved him away. “We’re practically done here. Go.”
Owen stepped outside the room and called the emergency department’s extension number. “Hey, Jolene, it’s Owen. What’s up?”
“I have a Charlotte and William Heath who’ve just arrived on the floor. William apparently fell out of a tree, trying to catch the Golden Snitch.” A trace of humor wove through the triage nurse’s voice. “He’s fine, but they’re both asking for Uncle Owen.”
“I’ll be right down.” Owen disconnected and strode along the corridor toward the bank of elevators.
What tree could William have fallen from? He dodged past an orderly pushing an elderly man in a wheelchair and poked the down button. There weren’t any climbable trees around his property.
The elevator dinged, and Owen kept the doors open for the orderly—Dave Wiremu. One of his granddaughters had a trampoline accident resulting in a greenstick fracture in her forearm just after Christmas last year. Small hospital, small number of staff, a microcosm of Bounty Bay itself. Everyone knew everyone.
Dave gave Owen the bro-eyebrow-raise as he wheeled his patient into the elevator. “Howzit going?”
“Better if I hadn’t found out my nephew’s just arrived in the ED.” Owen hit the ground floor button and the doors slid shut. The sour pit in his stomach expanded. Day twelve of uncle duties, and already one of the kids had ended up in his hospital.
“Yeah? Think I saw him before I came up to collect Ned.” Dave patted the old guy on the shoulder. “Saw a young fulla looking sorry for himself a few chairs away from Ned’s missus.” He turned back to Owen and gave an exaggerated wink. “That’s some nanny you’ve got for your kids, Dr. O. Quite the looker.”
Owen blanked for a couple of beats.
Huh. Guess through Dave’s sixty-something, rose-tinted glasses, Mrs. Collins could be considered attractive. In a barracuda-ish way. “She’s a handsome woman, for sure.” He forced a smile. “Single, too, I believe. You should ask her out.”
Ned cackled and slapped a skinny thigh. “Go on now, Dave. Ask her to the pub for a pint.”
The elevator pinged again, and the doors slid open to the bustle of the hospital’s main floor.
“You’re both pōrangi—completely bonkers. The girl’s young enough to be one of my daughters.” With a bemused smile and a shake of his head, Dave rolled Ned out. “Hope your boy’s okay, Dr. O.” He angled the wheelchair to the right, the direction of the ED. “You reckon your missus would’ve finished that jersey she’s knittin’ yet, Ned?”
“Blimey, I hope not, ’cause then I’ll hafta wear it…”
Owen tuned out the rest of the conversation and followed behind them. Logical explanation: mistaken identity. Dave must’ve spotted the wrong kid or assumed a younger woman sitting near William was the boy’s nanny.
He raised a hand to Jolene at the ED desk. She pa
used in her conversation with a hoodie-wearing teen and pointed toward the rows of chairs off to the side.
The waiting room was nearly empty. Two other black-hoodie-wearing teenagers slouched over three of the chairs, Ned’s missus sat knitting the ugliest striped jersey Owen’d ever seen, and a woman with her back to him stood looking out a window to the parking lot, a phone pressed to a mass of dark-toffee-colored hair.
Seated in the far corner was Charlie, her yellow gumboots swinging high off the floor. Next to her sat William, his left arm enveloped in a serviceable sling—fashioned from a red tartan scarf. No sign of Mrs. Collins or Morgan.
Owen strode over to his niece and nephew. William glanced up then tucked his chin tight to his neck. Charlie also looked up, but instead of her usual enthusiastic greeting, she slumped into the chair and looked ready to burst into tears.
Owen crouched in front of the kids, calling on his bedside manner to appear calm and unruffled when really, he wanted answers. “Who wants to tell me what happened?”
Charlie’s lower lip pooched out, and she flashed a conspiratorial look at her brother. William shot her a resigned look right back.
“I fell out of a tree,” he said.
“What tree are we talking about?” Owen asked and laid a hand on his niece’s knee to still the constant foot-kicking.
“We were pretending it was the Whomping Willow,” Charlie said. “Well, Will was. I think it’s the Magic Faraway Tree.”
“I was trying to catch the Golden Snitch, and I slipped,” William said.
Whomping Willows, Golden Snitches, and magic-bloody-trees. He so didn’t have time for this. Owen pinched the bridge of his nose. “Let’s start at the beginning. Where is Mrs. Collins?”
Both kids shut their mouths, Charlie’s making a little popping sound as she crossed her arms over her chest and shook her head.
“There’s a code of silence around Mrs. Collins.” A feminine voice came from behind him.
Owen angled his head and met the gaze of the woman with dark-toffee-colored hair. She’d put away her phone and stood hipshot a few feet from where he crouched. His disadvantage in looking up at her could be considered an advantage if he took into account the view of her long legs, bare to her cut-off jeans, and the silky top that slid appealingly off one shoulder. To go with her beach-themed clothes, the woman had blue eyes the color of exotic coral and a cutely sunburned nose.
Teach Your Heart: A New Zealand Opposites Attract Romance (Far North Series Book 3) Page 3