by Bowes, K T
Logan snorted and caught her flailing arms. “Yeah, I think you probably do,” he replied and kissed her merlot flavoured lips. “But you’re also a bit worse for wear and need to get into bed.”
“Ok.” Hana flopped on top of the covers obediently. Logan stroked Hana’s hair and kissed her lightly on the lips. “Bathroom light’s on,” his whispered and went towards the door. With a last glance back he said, “Night, babe,” his voice husky. Hana giggled at the thought that a handsome younger man had called her babe.
She fully intended to use the bathroom before going to bed. Unfortunately, Hana ended up sleeping for a long while on top of the sheets before snuggling down into the cold bed in the early hours. She woke up next morning with a pounding headache to find the bathroom light still on as Logan had left it.
Chapter 30
It was nine in the morning before Hana surfaced properly from sleep. She had difficulty at first remembering where she was. The double bed was immensely comfortable and she slept well. Usually an early riser, Hana felt embarrassed for staying in bed at someone else’s house and hurried into the shower, dressing quickly in jeans and a sweater. Once she opened her door and peeked out, she regretted not having paid attention the night before when Logan walked her to her room.
A long corridor stretched out to the left and right on either side of her. It was flanked by doors on her side. The distance to either end was immense and Hana felt lost. She hovered in the doorway, wondering whether to attempt to navigate her way downstairs and try to find the kitchen, or pull out her phone and text Logan. What can I say, Hana wondered? Hi Logan, a bit lost in your parents’ enormous upstairs, please send search party?
Deciding it would be ridiculous, Hana took her bearings, noting the number eleven on her door. She decided to go right, not because it looked more promising but because she liked the vase of pink flowers she could see at the very end of the corridor, perched on an antique French looking table. It stood in front of a long window with leaded glass. Hana heard the door click behind her, realising with horror it wouldn’t open again. Thankfully she was fully dressed and decent, otherwise her embarrassment would have been complete.
Her feet were bare apart from socks, but the floors were clad in a luxurious beige carpet, so Hana went right and began to search for other life forms in the huge mansion. Hana passed door after door, counting up to number twenty in her expedition, realising after a few glasses of wine she had failed to notice she was staying in a hotel. The corridor ended in an elegant sweeping staircase which turned beneath her and led down. The banister rail was a pale, stripped wood and the spindles beautifully turned. The walls were decorated in expensive looking wallpaper, delicate, vertically striped patterns of different shades of grey and silver against a white background. Hana ventured down the stairs, hoping against hope that she recognised some landmark at the bottom.
On the ground floor Hana found the lobby they sat in the previous evening. The grate was unlit and the outside doors stood wide open, the cool air kept at bay by inner glass doors. A reception desk in the corner was unmanned. Hana followed a quarry-tiled surface which led into another corridor, running parallel to the one upstairs. More rooms led off this one, but the heavy doors were propped open allowing sunshine to flood each space with light. Hana moved slowly along, peeking into the rooms as she passed. There was a stylish room with sofas and a coffee table. Magazines laid neatly in a fan shape on the polished wooden surface. An expensive TV was mounted in the corner opposite a set of glass doors which took up a whole wall. The view from the rooms on the right looked the same as the one from Hana’s bedroom, but those on the left looked out onto a sweeping driveway curling up into the mountains. Hana moved cautiously, embarrassed lest someone should appear and think she was snooping. She passed a dining room with multiple round tables neatly set for a meal and a few more rooms with closed doors and numbers on them. About half way down the entire length, Hana found another open door to her right and gasped in surprise and delight at the room beyond it. A huge ballroom opened out before her with magnificent parquet flooring and windows which occupied both the long sides of the room. Through the windows on the right, Hana saw a beautiful courtyard, surrounded by imposing walls and windows. It was grassed with paving stones around the outside, a beautiful fountain gracing its geometric centre.
Hana ventured carefully into the room, transfixed by its old fashioned charm; twinkling chandeliers and a stage in the far distance. Hana closed her eyes and visualised ladies in ball gowns swirling around the floor, whisked off their feet by gentlemen in coat tails with top hats and...
“Oh crap!”
Hana’s thoughts were disturbed suddenly as a clatter sounded from behind a wooden door in the back corner. Logan’s father shot out from what appeared to be a cupboard, nursing his hand and swearing loudly. Hana froze guiltily on the spot and the man, startled by her presence stopped swearing abruptly and put his good hand over his mouth. “Don’t tell the wife?” he asked, hopping nervously from foot to foot.
“Tell her what?” Hana replied honestly. Did he not want her to tell Miriam he swore, or that he was in the cupboard?
Unfortunately, Logan’s dad didn’t explain. He offered Hana his arm like the courtly gentlemen she imagined on the ballroom floor and led her into the corridor. Because it had been closed, Hana ignored what turned out to be the kitchen door, almost in front of the dining room she passed. It was a heavy fire door disguised as a stately wood panelled affair and she walked right past it, failing to hear the clatter of plates and the gentle hum of Miriam and Logan chatting. Hana felt embarrassed she hadn’t remembered the older man’s name and made sure she listened carefully in case Miriam said it. She didn’t have to wait long. Miriam took one look at the abnormal way her husband held his hand and blasted him. “Alfred, what have you been doing?”
He stared down at the fingers which had started to ooze blood up his wrist, as though surprised they belonged to him. “Oh,” he said with feigned innocence. Hana stayed quiet, but looked at Logan for help.
“Sit down here, babe,” he said, his grey eyes smiling and happy. Hana sat next to him at the enormous bleached pine table and Logan reached for a mug from the group in the centre and poured her a cup of tea. “Here you go,” he said, brushing her fingers lightly in the handover.
Miriam reached into a cupboard under the sink and produced a first aid kit, setting about her husband’s cut with a number of products. “Bloody men bleeding in this house!” she complained softly. Logan jerked his head in her direction and looked at her with an unreadable expression. But Alfred sat patiently at the kitchen table while she fussed, telling him once to, “Stop bein’ a baby!”
Hana was surprised after she dressed the cut, as Miriam seized Alfred’s head in both hands and kissed him tenderly on the forehead. “Stupid old man,” she whispered to her husband.
Hana looked away but Logan seemed unperturbed, eating toast and reading the local paper which was open on the table. Hana drank her tea looking around the room at the stainless steel appliances, feeling intrusive. Without looking up, Logan used his free hand to cover hers as it lay on the bleached wood, his fingers smoothing and massaging her fretful fingers.
Hana drank her tea in silence, soaking up the atmosphere of ease and contentment that swirled around Logan, gradually disarming her and making her feel mellow and calm instead of anxious. The kitchen faced onto the front of the property with enormous sash windows offering an undisturbed view of the mountains. The kitchen was a huge industrial affair, immaculately clean and ready to feed a multitude.
Hana bit into a piece of toast Logan buttered for her, when tension marched back into her soul and took up residence. It came in the shape of a question. “You’re ok to trek a few kilometres aren’t you?”
Hana looked at Logan as though he spoke in some Martian tongue. She repeated a few of the words he said, in case they meant something else to people living north of Hamilton. “Trek? Kilometres?”
Knowing how perceptive Logan was, made it even more apparent he deliberately ignored her discomfort when he got to his feet and took her hand. “Come outside and I’ll see if the gelding I picked suits you.”
Alfred patted Hana gently on the shoulder with his good hand, the other swathed in plasters and clamped around an extraordinarily large mug of tea. Then he unnerved Hana further by wagging his finger at his son and lifting his eyebrows. Hana felt the onslaught of impending doom and wondered if she could fake illness for the day.
Logan took her along the corridor past the ballroom, further than she had already explored and into a small room to the right. It had a tiled floor and smelled of worn leather and horse, unsurprising as the walls were covered with shelves full of riding boots, wax coats and hats. A worktable at the side housed a dirty cloth, an open tub of saddle soap and a strap of some kind underneath a metal punch. There was only one long vertical window in the room, but the door opened out onto the back of the property. As Logan led Hana to the doorway, she looked down at her socks and drew to an abrupt halt. Logan felt the sudden tug on his hand and looked questioningly back at her and then down at her feet. “Sorry, no boots,” Hana said, trying to sound sorry about it but not really.
Logan was undeterred from his mission and rucked around on a shelf along the left hand wall. He produced a pair of jodhpur boots, relatively clean in black leather and offered them to her. Hana bent down, praying fervently they wouldn’t fit. Unfortunately for her they were slightly big, but not enough to be a show-stopper. “Cool,” Logan exclaimed with enthusiasm as Hana’s feet slid into them. “They’re my sister’s.”
“Won’t she mind?” Hana asked, casting around for a rescuer.
“Yeah, but she won’t know.” His eyes sparkled with mischief.
“Can I ring her and make sure?” Hana asked and Logan grinned at her.
“No. But full marks for trying.”
Logan wore a pair of dark brown cowboy boots. As an afterthought, he clamped a weather beaten Jackaroo hat on his head which made him look alarmingly like a Māori Crocodile Dundee. Defeated, Hana followed him out of the door into the courtyard. “It’s quite a few years since I rode,” she ventured feebly, feeling like this was some terrible test of acceptance she was about to spectacularly fail. “Will you still go out with me if I fall off?” she hissed under her breath.
The property was surrounded by the colour green. Green hills soared high all around it with lush green grass, green trees and the green bush-line in the background. Not the same shade of green either, but a montage of hues and variations conspired to produce a picture book scene. Hana dawdled, looking around her with fear prickling in her stomach. Logan strode off ahead towards a group of buildings grouped around three sides of a stable yard. Hana followed him reluctantly, her footsteps growing smaller and smaller the nearer she got to the loose boxes.
Rounding the final corner, she heard the stamp of hooves and the snorting of equine nostrils. Hana paused, impressed at the orderliness of it all. Her last ride was at the age of eighteen after having not ridden for a few years. She hadn’t realised she was pregnant at the time. On a whim she visited the stables she used to work at during the school holidays and ended up on an afternoon ride around the flat Lincolnshire countryside with her old instructor.
Logan disappeared from view but Hana heard him banging around in a room to the right. He appeared through a door with ‘Tack Room’ written on the door, bearing a saddle over his robust left arm, a bridle dangling underneath. Hana galvanised herself and followed him to a half door where a grey and black spotted Appaloosa peered over the top at her. Logan clicked at the horse to move back as he dumped the saddle over the ridge of the door and laid the bridle on top of it. The huge horse moved back a few steps, huffing and puffing at the saddle as though making sure it was the right one. Hana walked towards the horse slowly, breathing in its musky scent.
Anyone who worked around horses knew the unpleasant smells came from what the horse discarded, not from the horse itself. Hana could already smell that sweetly perfumed aroma of horse skin and it brought back happy and comforting memories of her life before she made a mess of it.
Logan roughly groomed the horse, running the plastic currycomb over its body and dislodging mud and clumps of hair. The horse flicked its ears back and forth with the rhythm of the brush but edged closer to inspect Hana. She looked at the proud head and the ears pointed inquisitively forward and leaned in towards the whiskery grey nose. The head lifted elegantly and reached out to sniff at her face, scenting her with tiny breaths in and out before making up its mind. One long breath and the nose sank onto her shoulder, leaning hard and lazily against her and enjoying the ecstasy of Logan’s vigorous brushing.
Hana reached up, stroking the hairy cheek with long downward movements. “You’re pretty gorgeous,” she crooned, liking the animal’s kind face but hoping she was going to get something nearer to ground level. The horse breathed out in long puffs and Hana felt the damp air on her shoulder and side of her face. She had forgotten how good this was and closed her eyes in a serene smile.
Logan made no comment but Hana felt his eyes on her and heard the brushing momentarily cease. He disturbed her retrieving the tack, his eyes twinkling with amusement. “What’s he called?” Hana asked, feigning nonchalance.
“You know it’s a he then?” replied Logan with a smile that made Hana want to kiss his full lips.
“Yes,” she replied with confidence. “Obviously there are tell-tale signs but you’re standing in the way. He just seems like a bloke, all adoration and puppy-dog eyes.” Hana smirked and watched Logan as he shook his head and laughed at her.
“Like that, is it?” he asked. He pulled up the girth and the horse stretched his long neck round to look indignantly at him. When he had pulled up the straps and tucked them into the cross ties, Logan glanced at Hana again. She leaned on the door and the horse rubbed the front of his broad forehead against her shoulder, satisfying an itch on that hard-to-reach place and covering Hana’s hoodie in grey hair. Logan smirked to himself.
“His name’s Digger.” Logan’s voice sounded casual. Hana wondered why he had such an unusual name, but carried on scratching his poll and rubbing the inside edges of his ears. The horse snuffed and sprayed her again with damp, snorted air.
Hana felt mellow and contented. Logan moved Digger back as he fitted the bridle. The horse took the bit willingly, his ears flicking, clamping and champing down on the metal as he got used to it in his mouth. Hana resurrected the names of the bridle parts from memory in her head: throat lash, cheek piece, brow band, snaffle... “Do you know much about horses?” Logan asked.
“Not really,” Hana lied, determined not to play all her aces too quickly and make him think she was an expert.
Once Digger was fully tacked up, Logan retrieved a hoof pick from his back jeans pocket and made sure the mount’s feet were picked clean. The horse was unshod but his hooves were smooth and neatly rasped. Hana tried very hard to keep her eyes from roving over Logan’s neatly rounded backside as he worked. She saw his back where his tee shirt rode up and fought the embarrassing urge to kiss his tanned skin. His arms were muscular and the veins stood out as he supported the weight of the dinner plate hooves, flicking out muck and loose grit with his pick.
Logan laid the reins over the pommel of the saddle while he came out of the stable, walking next door and peering into the darkness. A head popped immediately over the door in response to Logan’s interest and he stroked the face of a beautiful white horse. “Good girl. You missed me?” He spoke gently to her, looking into the box and finding her already tacked up. “Awesome,” he said happily. “That’ll save some time.”
Logan turned to Hana. “This is Sacha. I’ve had her about four years now. She was bred here in the mountains and I broke her in myself.” Casting about him, he said, “Jack must have tacked her for me.”
From one of the other boxes appeared the grizzled head of an elderly man, much o
lder than anyone else Hana had seen. He was Māori and ancient, his body bent like a tree that had grown in permanent storm conditions. Locating him, Logan lifted his hand in greeting and, waiting for him to get eye contact with him, silently mouthed, “Thanks,” and put his thumbs up.
The old man didn’t speak but smiled a toothless, merry grin, waving his hand once before bobbing down again inside the stable. Hana heard the clatter of buckets and the hiss of feed being poured. She turned back to Digger’s stable in time to see him pawing at the ground impatiently, using his front hoof to scrape down the stable door. “Ok, now I get it,” Hana said and stroked his forelock to distract him from the boredom habit. Digger stopped and snuffed at her hand in case there was food to be had and disappointed, returned to his activity.
The old man appeared from the stable opposite, barring the door by using his foot to swing the catch across and bolting it at the top in the same fluid movement. He came over to where Hana stood and deftly opened the door into Digger’s stall. He unlooped the reins and lifted them over the horse’s ears, having to stand on tiptoes to reach. He pushed the door hard, almost catching Hana with its edge as she jumped quickly out of the way and the horse followed him, hooves scraping and clattering against the concrete surface. Emerging into the daylight from the darkness of the stall, the horse was even bigger than Hana realised. He towered above the old man and way above Hana’s head, jogging terrifyingly on the spot in his eagerness to be off. Hana gulped.
Logan emerged from the other stall towing his horse behind him, leading her towards a dilapidated kauri table at the back of the stable yard. “Mount up on the table,” he called over his shoulders. “It’s easier.”