Gracie cocked her head. “Guessing that, unlike your big sister, you weren’t on board with home education?”
“No. Yeah—” He yanked open the dishwasher drawer then stacked the plate inside. “It wasn’t all bad, and it wasn’t all good either. Ali, Daniel, and I had a pretty idyllic childhood on the whole. We traveled around the country, met lots of interesting people, got to experience a lot of different things. We had freedom that many kids don’t get to experience in today’s hectic world.”
He dropped in his knife and fork, slid the door shut, and twisted the dial to set the machine going. Facing her, he mimicked her hip-against-the-counter stance. A smile ghosted his lips, and for the first time since he’d arrived home, the lines around his eyes softened. “Every afternoon, once our lessons were done, Ali, Daniel, and I were off on our bikes, exploring our surroundings, or going on some crazy mission that Ali had cooked up on the spur of the moment. We had no TV entertainment then, just board games, books, and each other.”
“What did your friends think of that?” she asked.
“Friends were pretty easy-come easy-go because we moved around a lot. But our parents returned to the same fruit-picking jobs every summer, and we got to know the kids of other house bus families who worked there year after year. We were just average, normal kids to them.” He shrugged his wide shoulders. “But not to the kids in some of the other towns we stayed in. There, we were hippies or gypsies.”
And Gracie would bet the amount of her student debt that Owen was once called worse than a hippy or a gypsy. “Was Bounty Bay one of those towns?”
His chin dipped in acknowledgement. “Dad got a job at the local camping grounds during the off-season when I was thirteen. That’s when I met the Ngata brothers. I finally convinced Mum and Dad to let me attend the local high school, and Sam and Isaac had my back when some of the kids decided I was an easy target.”
“Ali didn’t go to school with you?”
Owen shook his head. “No. She was seventeen by then. Her part-time job in a Whangarei café had become full time. Ali was always fiercely independent and determined to do her own thing, so Mum and Dad let her. All she ever wanted, she told me on her wedding day, was to live life on her own terms, find a good man like Shaun, and one day become a mum. Some people would say that’s not an admirable ambition for a modern woman.”
“Some people would be idiots,” she said. “Your sister sounds as if she got everything she wanted with three amazing kids.”
“She did.” He folded his arms. “And she wanted those three kids to have a childhood similar to what she had—though more settled in suburban Auckland with her building contractor husband, instead of bouncing around the country in a house bus. And now Ali’s eldest daughter is asking me to go against her mum’s last wishes.”
Before Gracie could overthink things, she’d stepped forward and laid a hand on his forearm.
“Morgan is a young woman who knows her mind. What do you think her mum would say now, given the circumstances?”
Warm skin tensed under her palm, but Owen didn’t pull away, just continued to stare down at her.
“I think,” he said slowly, “that Ali loved and believed in her kids enough to know when to hold them close, and when it was time to let them leap from the nest and try to fly. I think she’d agree that Morgan is a girl who goes after what’s important to her…relentlessly.”
“A little like her uncle in that respect.”
“You think I go after what I want?”
Something in his tone, a roughness to the normal, deep timbre of his voice, fired a warning shot of pure lust through her system and scored a bull’s-eye. Her danger detector went berserk, but Gracie ignored it, trapped in Owen’s smoldering hazel gaze.
“Do you?” Her voice contained all kinds of do you want to kiss me? breathless-ness, but she couldn’t seem to extract her thundering pulse from her throat.
“Yeah. Even when all logic tells me I shouldn’t.”
Were they still talking about life goals, ambitions, and education? Owen’s gaze dipped down to her mouth and lingered there.
“Doctor O-for-Outrageous-Rule-Breaker.” Total brain-edit fail.
“I’ll own it.” A smile curved his mouth.
A real smile. A not-tired smile. A wicked, dangerous smile that sent another flaming lust arrow straight into her, this time igniting the very marrow in her bones.
Then his gaze sharpened, the intention in his eyes as clear as if he’d shown her a “pucker up” sign. She was unable to make any sort of rational decision—rational being step away from the good-looking guy with kisses on his mind—and he cupped her jaw.
Her eyelids fluttered shut with anticipation. His lips brushed hers—a whisper, really. Soft skin meeting soft skin. A ragged inhale and her mouth tingled in desperate anticipation as his mouth left hers. Please.
Had she spoken or merely begged with her mind?
She was lost. Lost and way out of her depth. His lips touched hers in another pass, and this time clung in a kiss that evaporated every last drop of rationality from her mind.
She might’ve been lost for hours in that kiss but for the sudden vibration jiggling her butt. The dishwasher—which she was now somehow backed up against—changing cycles. She broke the kiss, doused in a returning reality.
“Think we broke more than one rule here,” he said.
“I never much liked rules.”
Gracie, still hyperaware that every inch of him was pressed snug to her, could’ve used a rule book. Like, what was the rule about after-kiss etiquette with your boss? Promise to write out an incident report and have it on his desk first thing in the morning?
“I didn’t either as a kid. Now they help me know where I stand.”
Owen solved the problem of after-kiss etiquette by taking a giant step backward. He shoved his hands into his pockets, which only served to emphasize the tented front of his pants.
Heat exploded into Gracie’s face. Sure, a part of her had been aware of his arousal while he’d kissed her senseless, but she’d had the distraction of his fingers caressing her face then sliding into her hair. She’d lost herself in the warm, roiling, floating-on-a-cloud sensation as his mouth moved on hers. But to see his interest so obvious, to mentally take a time-out and analyze why she’d kissed the type of man she normally avoided…
Gracie’s gaze darted away from Owen to the back door. He was like a black hole, a Death Star, and she had to get away from his gravitational pull.
“Where do I stand with you, Gracie?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “Can I get back to you on that?”
His head dipped, the smile curling his mouth every bit as intoxicating to her as an addict’s next fix.
“Yeah,” he said. “You do that.”
They stared at each other a moment longer, the only sounds in the room the hiss of water sluicing through the dishwasher.
“Good night, Gracie,” he said.
And she fled.
Gracie closed the back door behind her and crossed to the guest room. From somewhere behind the garage, a native owl called out its distinctive “morepork…morepork” cry.
More. She slid open the guestroom door with a grunt.
Now she knew there was more—a lot more—to Doctor Owen Bennett than met the eye. She truly didn’t know where they stood with each other. The one thing she did know? Owen stood closer to her than she’d allowed any man to get in a long time. And not only in a physical sense. In less than two weeks he’d breached her first line of defense and made her want more from him. More of what made him tick, more of his wicked smiles, more of his kisses.
Dammit. Somehow he’d made her like the man hiding inside the stuffy suit.
***
Two days after Gracie had driven him out of his mind in his kitchen, Owen grabbed a half dozen steak-and-cheese savory pies to go from the Blue Sky Café and headed to Sam’s workshop.
Bribery in the form of buttery, hot pastry.
He’d blown off Sam’s lunch invite for the last couple of weeks, preferring to hunker down at work and snatch a slightly stale sandwich and foul black coffee from the cafeteria. The pies would hopefully mollify his mate’s annoyance at Owen’s unexpected arrival on a Friday afternoon instead of Monday, Sam’s slowest day.
Owen parked behind the barnlike structure of The Kauri Whare’s main retail building and got out of his car. A tourist bus rumbled out of the driveway, likely on its way to Cape Reinga at the northernmost tip of the Far North. The parking was packed with an abundance of motor homes and hire cars, with customers bustling in and out of the wide-open doors, many with recycled paper bags carrying their purchases. Clusters of people hovered at the building’s corner beside the gigantic forty-five-thousand-year-old kauri stump, waiting for a selfie op.
Isaac would be happily rubbing his hands together at the mega-successful business his younger brother had established.
Owen snorted. If Isaac even manufactured a smile lately it was cause for excitement. Let alone his mate actually being happy about something. Owen bypassed the retail building and strolled over to the workshop’s entrance.
As a young teenager, Owen had often come with Sam and Isaac to hang out at the workshop when it had just been a workshop. Back then, there’d been only a medium-sized shed on the barren block of land Sam’s whānau owned. Sam’s dad, Pete Ngata, was a farmer—an old school farmer who still rode a horse and used it to check on his free-range cattle roaming the acres of native bush behind the Ngata property. It was Sam’s Uncle Manu who was passionate about the time-honored tradition of whakairo—or Maori carving. And it was Manu who’d spotted Sam’s talent and taught him everything Manu knew of his craft.
Owen pushed the workshop door open—a workshop that had expanded to over six times the size it had been—and was met with the rise and fall and whining buzz of running machinery. It was off-limits to the public, except for special tours at weekends, during which tourists could watch through a huge glass window—Owen got a free pass into the workshop since Sam’s family considered Owen just another Ngata boy.
Nobody reacted to his entrance until Uncle Manu, who was running his thumb down the edge of a kauri bowl, straightened…and sniffed the air. The old man ripped off his All Black’s beanie and scratched his bristly gray hair. His mocha-colored skin collapsed into masses of wrinkles as he started to laugh. Jamming two fingers into his mouth, he blew out a shrill whistle. The four other wood artists looked up from their jobs, and the roar of machines dimmed as, one after the other, the motors died and the men strolled over.
“Well, well. Look what the cat dragged in.” Uncle Manu reached Owen first and without bothering to ask permission—because he knew he didn’t need to—snatched up an oil-spotted paper bag. “Kia ora, boy. These for us?”
“Bloody better be.” Robbie jogged over. He was one of Sam and Isaac’s many second cousins, who’d started an apprenticeship with them last year after he’d graduated high school. “I’m famished.” He grabbed a bag and buried his nose in it, sucking in a huge breath.
A hand reached between the shoulders of two workers, Ahi and Jonno, and smacked Robbie’s head. “Manners, you cretin.”
Sam grinned at Owen, and Owen passed him a bag.
“Sorry,” said Robbie who’d already wrangled the pie from the bag and had taken a giant bite. “Thanks, bro.”
“No worries.”
Robbie gave him a quick half salute and slipped away from the other men to the open roller doors. Set up outside away from the retail building was a recycled pine picnic table where the men sat during their breaks. Where, according to Uncle Manu, they laughed and gossiped like a bunch of old kaumatua.
After the rest of the men disappeared with their lunch, Sam gave Owen’s face a squinty-eyed examination while casually scratching the tribal tattoo on his shoulder that was a twin to Owen’s.
“Sit with the guys?” Sam asked, an eyebrow lifting over one dark eye. “Or is there something you want to tell me about in the smoko room?”
“Could use a coffee to go with the pie. You know what the swill’s like at the hospital.”
Sam’s piercing glance melted into his normal, good-natured twinkle, and he clapped Owen’s shoulder. “Nah, mate. Wouldn’t drink it. You could use that stuff as paint stripper.”
They left through the same way as Owen had entered and walked across to the main building’s back entrance. Behind the cavernous retail section, where tourists spent hundreds and sometimes thousands on Sam’s and his wood artists work, was Isaac’s domain. Separate from Isaac’s office and the small conference room, where he met with the more influential and wealthy clients who wanted Sam’s work, was a kitchen-cum-break-room for Kauri Whare’s staff.
A few years ago the brothers were at loggerheads over whether to build a separate foul-weather break room for Sam’s wood-turning staff behind the workshop, separating the sometimes scruffy crew from the retail staff and potential big-time customers.
But for all Sam’s geniality, he wouldn’t back down. “I’m not ashamed of my guys and if a bigwig investor is scared off because of a bit of sawdust or the boys’ ink and lack of fucking fashion sense, then screw them. This is who we are. These men are the reason we do what we do. They eat with everyone else.”
For a moment Owen had thought the two men were about to exchange blows, then Isaac had smiled—such a rarity that it defused the tension between the brothers.
“You’re right, Sammy. Screw ’em.”
They stepped into the break room and Owen tossed the box containing the last two pies onto the dining table. A glossy magazine spread open on the tabletop caught his eye as Sam grabbed two mugs from a cabinet. A one-page article with a candidly caught photo of Savannah, arm in arm with Glen, taken somewhere in Bounty Bay, stared back at him. “Broken but not beaten: Savannah Payne will marry her man this March.”
“Paparazzi strikes again. Pack of wankers,” Sam said, glancing over his shoulder.
He stuck a mug under Isaac’s fancy espresso machine and hit a button. The machine hissed and whirred. “I bet Savannah’s unimpressed, but least no one’s leaked where the wedding’s taking place.”
Owen grunted. With everything Isaac had gone through with New Zealand’s small-but-voracious media sharks, it was little wonder both Sam and Isaac hated them.
“Your hot nanny seen that pic of her brother?” Sam asked, a dimple appearing in his cheek as he struggled to keep a straight face.
“Gracie isn’t the type to get her kicks from celebrity gossip in a trashy magazine—and who said she’s hot? You haven’t even met her yet.” Owen knew the answer before his lips had finished forming the word hot. “Was it Isaac?”
Sam lost the battle and broke out into a huge smile, his dark eyes dancing. “Nope. He just said he’d met Glen’s sister at the hospital last week. Mate, you’re the one who told me she’s smokin’ by the dreamy look on your dial.”
“I’m not, and I don’t look—”Owen stabbed a finger at Sam, who’d exchanged one mug for the next and now had his back turned. “Even think about calling me McDreamy and I’ll kick your ass.”
Sam snickered and tapped the button to start the second coffee. He carried the mug over to the table and set it beside Owen’s hand, which was fisted on the tabletop.
“Never happen, white boy.” He swung a chair around and straddled it, folding his forearms on the back and leaning forward. “So what’s going on between you and the hot nanny, eh?”
A memory of their kiss ping-ponged around Owen’s head. Gracie’s soft lips parting under his, the sweet hint of spiced apples in her mouth from the herbal tea she’d been drinking. The way she’d molded herself to him for a few moments, the feel of her breasts pressed into his chest, and the quiet, protesting gasp she’d inadvertently made as they pulled apart. She wasn’t the only one who’d protested ending that kiss.
A sharp punch on Owen’s biceps startled him out of his daydream.
> “Ow—hey!” he said.
Sam watched him with a classic Ngata stare. While his older brother had a Medusa gaze that could transform the average person to stone, backed up by the man’s don’t fuck with me ’tude, the easier-going Sam still had enough forthrightness inherited from his ma to make Owen squirm. Ariana Ngata, matriarch of her family and “Ma” to everyone including Owen, never let her kids get away with anything. From homework, to farm maintenance and chores, to reaming out whichever kid—hers or fostered, she didn’t care—left the gate open so that Shirl the nanny goat got into the vegetable garden, Ma spotted guilt and excuses like a sniffer dog.
“O,” said Sam. “You’re doing it again.”
“Doing what?”
Sam wriggled his fingers at Owen’s face. “That sappy, lovesick puppy look again. You look like Tui when we caught her carving Jordan’s initials inside the barn.”
“She was only twelve. You’re not still reminding your little sister about that, are you?”
“Hell, yeah.” Sam’s nose crinkled. “Like I’m ever gonna let my baby sister get her heart broken by a jerk like Jordan again.”
“In Jordan’s defense, he was only twelve, too, and all he did was tell Tui he wasn’t ready for a girlfriend.”
“Doesn’t matter.” Sam held up a finger. “And don’t change the subject. What’s going on between you and Glen’s sister?”
“Gracie,” Owen said. “Her name’s Gracie.”
That little zipping tingle that threaded through his veins at the mention of her name? Yeah. Meant that he couldn’t lie to Sam and say with any honesty that nothing was going on.
Sam cocked his head. “So you slept with her, huh?”
Owen had taken a sip of coffee and promptly spat it back into the mug. “No! Of course not. I only just kissed her yester…” His voice trailed off at the smirk on Sam’s face. “Shit. I see what you did there. I’m really off my game if I got sucked in by the oldest bait and switch in the book.”
Teach Your Heart: A New Zealand Opposites Attract Romance (Far North Series Book 3) Page 11