Just in Time (Escape to New Zealand Book 8)

by James, Rosalind

  “And you didn’t think,” he said, “that the person you should tell was me?”

  “Well, no.” Suddenly, she didn’t feel quite so horrible. Not about this part. “How would I even have done that? You were gone. It’s not like you’d kept in touch. It’s not like we had some kind of relationship. You were just some guy I’d known for a little while, once upon a time. I started the story before I’d said more than twenty words to you, when all I knew about you was that you had muscles and a tattoo. We both did this, and we both made some money at it. And then you called me, out of the blue, and offered to pay me to come over here and pretend to be your girlfriend, and you said that was all it would be. Pretending.”

  “Except it wasn’t, was it?” he asked, taking the wind right back out of her sails again. “Or was it? Was it all just pretending after all?”

  “No! No. Of course it wasn’t. How could you think that? And I should have told you, but then I thought, no, don’t, because it’s only for a few days.” She was pleading now, she could hear it, but she couldn’t help it. “I thought you might feel this way, that you wouldn’t understand, and I didn’t want to wreck it. It was so good, and I didn’t want to ruin the little bit of time we had together, don’t you see?”

  “Except that something can’t really be good if it’s not real. If one person’s still pretending after all.”

  She sat there, the guilt a leaden lump in her stomach, because she didn’t have an answer for that.

  “You should have told me, Faith,” he went on after a minute, sounding so…sad. So final. “You should have given me the choice. I gave you the choice to get involved. You should have given it to me.”

  Her chest was aching, the tears trying to come. Because he was right. And it hurt so much.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, feeling all the inadequacy of the word. She wanted to crawl into a corner and hide. She’d done so much damage. She hadn’t meant to, but that didn’t matter. “I’m sorry if it’s going to hurt your image. If it helps, I’ll…” She fought to keep her voice under control while she cast around for something. Anything. “I’ll…tell people I wasn’t writing about you. I’ll tell them you didn’t know. That will help, won’t it? Maybe?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe. I need to go. I need to get on the bus. When you come, we’ll plan a story, I guess. Figure out how to pretend some more. One last time.”

  “All right.” Her voice was so small, because that was how she felt. Small. “I’m sorry,” she said again.

  “Yeh,” he said. “I’m sorry, too.”

  They Always Leave

  He had gone through the motions of getting on the bus, riding to the airport, going through check-in, just following the back of the fella in front of him. Not that anybody else was too chatty, either. It was always quiet the day after a match.

  He needed to think, but he couldn’t think. Too much anger. Too much disbelief, still. And too much…too much something else that he didn’t want to examine too closely, because it might look like pain.

  When he was in the Koru Lounge waiting for the flight to be called, the men around him thumbing over their phones, reading, or listening to music, he started to think that he should know. If he were going to talk to Ian about it, if he had to decide what to do, he needed to see for himself what was in those books, and exactly how bad it was. Because if she’d written anything too far out there, if she had Hemi hurting Hope…that could be very bad indeed. Ian could call it fiction all he wanted, and still, people would wonder how much of it was true. If she could really have made all that up.

  Anyway, he had a choice. He could sit here packing a sad, or he could do something about it. At least he could read what she’d written. At least he could face the truth.

  So he pulled out his laptop, went online, and bought all five stories, hating that he was giving Faith yet more money, paying her once again for the privilege of ruining his reputation, and began to read.

  At first, he rolled his eyes in disbelief. Of course Hemi was a CEO. The only acceptable profession, apparently. And a multimillionaire. Not a billionaire? Wasn’t Faith selling him a little short?

  A designer, too—that was nothing but ridiculous. At least she could have let the bloke do software, or own a construction firm. Something remotely manly. He didn’t see how this underwear magnate could maintain the physique she was describing, either. Building a body like that took time, and Hemi seemed to spend all of his sitting at the head of conference tables, jetting around the world in his company plane, and scheming to seduce his staff. But at least it wasn’t too horrible. It was just…ridiculous. And it wasn’t him. It so very clearly wasn’t him.

  By the time they got to Paris, though, he was…all right, he was interested. In fact, he’d almost forgotten that Faith had written it, and why he was reading it. And when Hemi pulled out his red ribbon…

  Unfortunately, that was when they got the call to board. He wished he’d thought to download the story onto his phone, but too late now. He waited impatiently as the aircraft climbed, leaving Dunedin behind and heading over the Pacific.

  The announcement came at last, and he was opening his laptop again. And an hour and a half later, he wasn’t rolling his eyes anymore.

  For the first few episodes, the story had been steamy enough that his eyes couldn’t have rolled, because they’d been glued to the screen. This was Faith? They said men never read the instruction manual, but they were wrong, because he was pretty sure he was reading it, and he suddenly knew why everything they’d done in that motel room had worked for her. He was still furious with her, of course he was, but he was turned on as hell, too, and he couldn’t help being impressed.

  After that, though, he may have had to dab at his eyes a time or two. When Hope had been sitting at Karen’s bedside as she regained consciousness, trying to be strong for her sister—well, you could hardly blame him, because he had a few sisters of his own, didn’t he?

  Now, his cup of tea was sitting cold and forgotten on the tray table, and he was still reading.

  I opened the door to find Martine on the other side. “Nice place,” she said. “Lucky you.” She looked as polished as always, in a knit suit today that emphasized her willowy proportions. “Your sister’s doing better, I take it?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Thank you,” I hastened to add.

  Martine didn’t mention anything further, to my relief, while we sat at the round table in the suite’s dining area and went through what looked like far more than a week’s worth of work, but that I was somehow going to have to accomplish anyway.

  “And that’s it,” Martine said crisply, shoving her laptop back into its Kate Spade bag. “Shouldn’t be a problem, not with all your other needs taken care of so…thoroughly.”

  Her gaze traveled around the room, from the huge arrangement of roses and calla lilies on the marble coffee table to the windows overlooking the city, not to mention the two closed doors leading to the bedrooms.

  Her eyes met mine again, and I realized I hadn’t answered. “No,” I hurried to say. “Of course it won’t be a problem.”

  Martine hesitated, tapping an elegant fingernail against the clasp of her bag. “Can I make one more suggestion? A little word in your ear?”

  “Of course.” I managed to get the words out, hoping that my galloping pulse wasn’t obvious. My emotions were so volatile these days, rocketing from the giddiest heights to the darkest depths. My brain and body seemed determined to force me to acknowledge the extent of my terror, now that it was over.

  The lesser but still powerful anxiety about my job, my apartment, Karen’s school, both of our futures still loomed. And always, underlying everything, the overwhelming need for Hemi, undeniable and irresistible as the tides, and just as dangerous.

  There was desire there, of course there was, but that was the easy part. It was remembering his tenderness that was so devastating. The sweet rightness when I’d been in his arms after we’d made love, when his hand had been st
roking down my back to soothe me. The leaping pleasure I’d felt at every text, every phone call. The thrill I’d received every time I’d opened my apartment door, had seen him standing outside, and had known that he was there for me.

  I’d long ago been forced to admit, to myself if nobody else, that I loved him with an intensity, an understanding, and a connection that was all the more powerful for being unspoken. I loved him for his strength, yes, but I loved him more for his weaknesses. For how hard he worked to be the best, and how deeply he feared that he wasn’t enough. And I missed him. I missed him so much.

  Now, Martine smiled at me, and I had the uncomfortable feeling that all those thoughts were there to read in my transparent face.

  “I know it’s so tempting,” she told me, “to think it will last. It’s a beautiful dream, isn’t it? But you know,” she sighed, running two fingers lightly over the diamond pendant at her throat, “that’s all it is. A dream. One brief shining moment. And the thing about dreams? You wake up.”

  I swallowed, but didn’t trust myself to speak.

  It’s not a dream, I wanted to say. It’s real. Because Hemi was real. He might be handsome, he might be rich, he might be powerful, and Heaven knew he was the most desirable man I’d ever met. But he was so much more than that. He was a living, breathing, caring man whose emotions were as deep and strong as they were hidden.

  It wasn’t the myth I loved. It was the man, in all his shining, glorious light and all his dark, disturbing shadows. The man who thought he had to hide both those sides from everybody, but who couldn’t hide them from me, because I saw him, and I knew him, and I loved him.

  “And then you wake up,” Martine continued, and I forced myself to focus. “And you get a lovely present. A nice farewell gift. That’s when you know it’s over, when you get that token that you can keep to remember him by. Or that you can sell, of course, if you need the money more. If you’ve been picked up from the gutter, and you can’t stand to go back there again.”

  I barely heard her, because Martine’s fingers were still at her throat, stroking the huge diamond solitaire on its chain that she wore every day.

  No. Surely not. It couldn’t be true.

  “Well.” Martine stood to go. “You’ll want to get to that work. You don’t want to go back to the gutter, I know you don’t, and for that? Work is the only solution. That’s what’s left after men leave. Because the thing about men?” She put a hand over mine for just a moment, the lightest of caresses. “They always leave.”

  He didn’t hear the announcement the first time, didn’t realize they were landing until the flight attendant stopped by his seat, whisked his teacup into her rubbish bag, put a light hand on his laptop cover and said, “Time to shut it down.”

  He closed the lid hastily before she could see what he’d been reading, stowed his computer away in his backpack even as his fingers itched to open it again, to learn what was going to happen next.

  Faith hadn’t written porn. She hadn’t even written erotica. She’d written a romance. She’d written a story.

  Then his thoughts took another turn, and that was worse, because he was having to entertain an entirely new idea.

  He’s not you, she’d said. He’s my character. And all the same…maybe it was more complicated than that.

  Could she really have made all that up? Or was it possible, somehow, that some of that was…him? And her? He thought it could be. He thought it might be, and the idea was shaking him to the core. After everything that had happened, after everything he’d said to her, everything he’d thought…

  The idea that she knew him. That she saw him, in all his light and all his shadow. And that despite all of that, despite everything she knew…that she loved him all the same.

  Forgiveness

  Faith was still sitting on the bed, still holding the phone in a nerveless hand, when the knock on the door came.

  “Come in,” she called.

  Talia opened it, then made as if to shut it again. “Oh! Sorry.”

  “What?” Faith looked at her in surprise, then down at herself, realized she was still sitting in her bra and capris. “Oh. That’s OK.” She pulled the T-shirt over her head and tugged it into place.

  “Um…” Talia said. “Mum says, can you come to the kitchen. Please,” she added.

  “Sure.” Faith followed the girl downstairs, trying to force her mind back from the black hole it kept trying to fall into. From thinking about Will, and how he’d sounded. About how something that had seemed like the best thing that had ever happened in her life, being able to write a book, and having other people want to read it enough to pay money for it, had become—this. Was costing her—well, not Will, because she’d never had Will, and she never would. But was going to cost him so much, and that was just as bad. Or worse, because that was what it was. It was worse.

  She tried to put on some kind of face for his mother. This would be about the lift to the airport, maybe. Emere had finally thawed a bit, but soon, it would all be worse than ever. Faith entertained the craven hope that Will’s family wouldn’t find out about the books until after she’d left. Facing them would be so hard, if they heard the news while she was still here, if Will called back and told them.

  Emere was standing in the middle of the kitchen, though, her body stiff, her face like iron. And it looked like it was all going to be happening now.

  “I just got a call from a newspaper reporter,” Emere said without preamble as soon as Faith and Talia walked in. “Telling me that you’re writing books about your sex life with my son. Asking me if I have a comment.”

  Talia’s shocked gaze flew to Faith’s face. “No,” she said. “Faith wouldn’t.”

  “No,” Faith said. All of a sudden, she couldn’t feel her legs, was having to reach out to the counter for support, and was stumbling over the words. “I didn’t. That is, I did, but it wasn’t that.”

  Emere crossed her arms. “If you did, you did. I’ve had you in my house. I’ve fed you. And you’ve been doing that. And what I want to know is, did he know? Is this all some…joke, between the two of you? Bringing you here to be with us?”

  Talia was backing away, but her mother put out an arm out for her. “No. You stay. You want to be grown up? Be grown up. Stay and face the truth. There’s nothing to be gained by lying to yourself, or by not seeing what’s in front of you. Exactly what’s in front of you.” Her hard stare let Faith know exactly what that was.

  And then it got worse, because Miriama came into the room.

  “What’s going on?” Will’s grandmother asked. “Something’s not good, eh.”

  “No,” Emere said. “Something’s not good.”

  Faith took a breath. Nothing to do but face this. Nothing left to do but tell the truth. As much of the truth as she could tell without hurting Will more, because she wasn’t doing that. “Emere has found out,” she told Miriama, “that I’ve been writing romance books, and publishing them.”

  Miriama cocked her head to one side. “And? Nothing wrong with romance.”

  “They’re…steamy,” Faith said. “They have sex in them.”

  Will’s grandmother laughed, the sound incongruous in the midst of the tension that held the room in its grip. “And that’s got your knickers in a twist?” she asked her daughter. “Seems to me, when you were Talia’s age, I had all I could do to keep you from taking your knickers off for her dad. Have you forgotten that much? You need a man and no mistake. Nothing wrong with romance, and nothing in the world wrong with sex. And sex in a book? What could possibly be wrong with that?”

  “It’s not just sex in a book,” Emere said. “It’s sex about Will.”

  “No.” Faith found her courage, because this was just wrong. She might as well practice saying it. She was going to be saying it again. “No, it isn’t. It has nothing to do with Will, except that he’s the cover model. The story is about an entirely different person. A fictional character.”

  “Except,” Emere said, an
d there was that damning, inescapable truth, “that Will’s photo is on the cover.”

  “Well,” Miriama admitted, “that is a bit worse, maybe.”

  “A bit worse?” Emere demanded. “A bit worse?”

  “Yes,” Faith said. “His picture is on the cover. Of all five books,” she added. That wasn’t going to take them two minutes to find out. “Because Will posed for those pictures, and they’re available on stock photo sites. The photographer’s sold a lot of them, and I suspect that if you look around, you’ll find that they’re on quite a few other book covers, too. They’re good shots, and Will is a very good-looking man.”

  “But none of those other books,” his mother said, “was written by his girlfriend.”

  “That’s true,” Faith said. “At the time I started writing them, though, we weren’t dating.”

  “Which excuses just about nothing,” Emere said. “You could have taken them off the market. You could have changed their covers, I’m guessing. You could have done heaps of things. But I don’t care about that, because I don’t care about you. What I care about is Will. And what I want to know is, did he know?”

  “No. He didn’t.” Faith looked around at the three women, Emere’s face accusing, Miriama’s thoughtful, and Talia’s miserable. “He does now, because I just spoke to him. He’s not any happier about it than you are. For the record, I didn’t know it would get out. I have a pen name for exactly that purpose, to keep it private. But apparently it has gotten out, and that’s my fault, too. I only told one person, but that was one too many. Except that I should have told one more. I should have told Will.”