by Bowes, K T
Logan got a glass of water and stared at himself in the mirror while he drank it. He didn’t just feel body tired, he felt a bone wearying, miserable soul and spirit kind of ache as well, deep inside his core. He glanced at the shower and wondered if he could be bothered. He felt filthy. Ten minutes later and the water made him feel more human, running over his body and washing away sweat and the day’s dirt from his hair. Pity it couldn’t wash away his problems as effortlessly.
The water ran cold suddenly, shocking him fully awake and he cursed his rotten luck. But the coolness felt good on his forehead and hand, so he stood there letting it run and mingle with the occasional drips of blood from his nose. Stepping over the side of the bath, Logan rummaged naked and dripping in the bathroom cupboard and found some cotton wool and his nasal spray. He shook the bottle and used it, knowing it was futile as the spray mixed with the blood and dripped back down. The blood disorder seemed to be more of a problem of late – or was it just that he had more at stake nowadays?
Logan balled up two pieces of cotton wool and shoved them up his nose. It would bleed for hours and he didn’t want to get it on the towel or bed sheets. Then he dried himself in the cold, early morning chill and slipped into bed, wondering how on earth he could admit to Hana what he’d done.
Du Rose Legacy
Chapter 10
The sound of a buzzing alarm broke into Hana’s sleep, creating a feeling of irritation somewhere deep down in her consciousness. It roused her, forcing her to come up to a surface she didn’t want to visit. She lay very still, squeezing her eyes tight shut and hoping it would stop on its own. She knew Logan was awake as she heard his first words of the day, like an agonised plea for mercy. “Oh God, no!”
His swollen left hand and fingers refused to work in switching off the aggravating noise coming from his bedside table. He grappled with the small clock radio from a position on his back, not wanting to crawl any further out of sleep into the world of agony waiting patiently for him. The buttons were too small and fiddly for his fingers and a jolt of pain shot up his arm each time he moved them. “For goodness sake!”
Finally, Logan did what he should have done in the first place. He picked up the device, barely gripping it and threw it as hard as he could. There was a twang as the plug ripped out of the socket and the sound of shattering plastic as it broke against the long wooden drawer unit. Then he slumped back down on his pillows with a huge sigh.
Hana sat up quickly. She looked first at her husband, then towards the sound of shattering plastic. “Logan!” she said in shock.
“Sorry,” he replied, his voice sleepy and laden with discomfort, “couldn’t press the buttons.”
Hana lay down next to him. “I hated that noise.” She cuddled up, pushing her face against Logan’s upper arm and reaching for his right hand under the covers. “Why am I in my undies?”
“That would be telling,” Logan smiled, his voice drawling with sex appeal. He turned his head to face her, his features screwed up in a look of teasing, one eye closed and the other squinting at her. He had two long, blood-stained bits of cotton wool sticking out of his nostrils. They looked like tusks.
“So I obviously had rampant sex with a walrus. I only wish I remembered.” Hana snuggled in closer and then groaned. “Oh, I do remember last night. It was terrible!” The whole weight of the previous evening hit her like a moving truck and her heart filled with dread. “Oh no!” Hana’s face dropped sadly and her hand went up to cover her mouth in dismay.
Logan looked at her suspiciously. “I’m feeling nervous right now. What exactly did you do last night?” His voice held shades of accusation. “I’m sure I asked your son to stay with you. But when I got home, there was no sign of him. What’s going on, Hana?”
She seemed so small and childlike; misery crossing her face and pooling in her deep green eyes. Logan wanted to reach out and cup her face but with his broken fingers and lack of dexterity would probably poke her in the eye. “Hana?” He saw her struggle first, before pouring out the row with Bodie the night before. She tactfully didn’t tell him the fight began because she thought he might have been on a killing-and-burying-spree, knowing he wouldn’t appreciate her lack of faith in him.
Logan tutted and shook his head. “You might have been too hard on him, babe. You were both tired.” He found Bodie dark and furtive with a tendency towards self-preservation that came across as intensely selfish sometimes. He also saw Bodie’s conflict of interest with being a cop and having his mother pursued by criminals. “He’ll come round,” he encouraged, believing his own optimism.
“No he won’t,” Hana sighed, rubbing her eyes. “He can be vicious.”
Logan narrowed his eyes as Hana told him about her friend Graham, who took her out a few times five years previously. “He was a teacher who came in to cover absent staff during a particularly bad winter season, when everyone came down with the flu like dominoes. He spent hours in the common room, supervising the Year 13’s and began popping in to see me. He took me for coffee and to the cinema and then he just disappeared.”
Logan shifted uncomfortably in the bed, seeing how close he came to finding the love of his life already taken. “You’re making me jealous,” he grumbled with honesty. “I’m not sure I want to hear this. We agreed at the start; we don’t talk about previous partners.”
“Oh, Logan! It wasn’t like that.” Hana stroked the hairs on his dark chest and soothed him with a soft kiss. “Just hear me out, please?”
“Fine!” Logan rolled his grey eyes and drew Hana’s body into his. “Then I get to take possession of you, after.” His eyes sparkled with wickedness.
Hana smirked. “Around that time, I felt I was starting to come back out of my shell. I wasn’t ready for a relationship with anyone right then and Graham was too mild-mannered and indecisive to be anything more than a friend, but he was good company. After an awkward conversation, which took me by complete surprise, Graham stopped accepting calls to work at the school and went elsewhere. Bodie came home for the weekend and apparently warned him off!”
Hana was plunged into an increasingly lonely winter, with little outside contact other than work and church.
“I’m not sorry,” her Māori husband crooned as he kissed her neck. “I’m grateful to him, actually.”
“But he shut down my social life while he was messing around with a married woman!” Hana complained. “That’s a selfish thing to do!”
“I know a married woman I wanna mess around with.” Logan slipped the fingers of his good hand under Hana’s bra strap.
“No!” She batted him away, her face scowling.
“I’m not getting in the middle between my wife and stepson. Wisdom tells me I’ll be the loser.” Logan sighed with satisfaction as he popped the catch and released Hana’s breasts. Bowing his head to kiss the column of Hana’s neck, Logan muttered softly, “And I’m no loser.”
Hana pushed her partially naked body in closer to his, savouring the warmth of him and running her hand over his muscular back. She kissed his chest and and slipped a tentative finger into the waistband of his boxer shorts, feeling the soft skin over his hip. Logan stilled, waiting. When he felt the tug of the material sliding down, he moaned and rolled his wife onto her back. His broken finger joints ground horribly as he attacked her remaining underwear but somewhere in his conscious mind, it was worth it.
Later, groaning, Logan creaked up into a sitting position, doing a mental check of his aches and pains. “I don’t feel that flash today,” he complained. He was getting too old to roll around the floor fighting with grown men in the dark.
Logan wandered down to the kitchen to make tea, not caring he was naked.
“Don’t stand in front of the kitchen window,” Hana called after him and heard his deep laugh.
“Rubbish woman. I’m ātaahua!”
“If it means you’re a big head, I agree.”
“I said I’m beautiful.” Logan clattered around with the kettle and H
ana sighed.
“Yep. Big head.” She sat in bed and sulked for a time, feeling like she deserved sympathy as well as passion. Then she realised time was probably marching on, even though the clock radio lay smashed on the floorboards. Obviously Logan wasn’t coming back again to soothe and pamper her crumpled ego a bit more, so she went for a shower.
The first opportunity to discuss Logan’s adventures the previous evening came in the car on the way to work. “The car’s filthy,” Hana complained, irritated. She was already cross, wearing an old, tatty pair of leggings from the back of a drawer and whose elastic no longer ‘gave’ properly over her bump. They kept rolling down eerily without warning and the crotch dug into her bottom like dental floss. To say she was uncomfortable in the front seat of the car was an understatement. She wriggled and jiggled about like she had fleas.
“Stop woman!” Logan exclaimed, swerving as she exhaled loudly and grappled around behind her with exaggerated annoyance.
“Sorry! If your pants kept going up your bum, you’d be miserable.”
“You crack me up, woman!” Logan laughed, much to her annoyance.
“So, you promise you didn’t murder anyone last night?” Hana grunted as she gripped the rear seam of her leggings and held onto it as Logan steered the car around a roundabout.
“No, I didn’t murder anyone,” Logan smirked.
Hana cringed, deeply regretting her comment to Bodie. She hoped she was never forced to confess to her husband as she eyed him sideways from her awkward position. “Your whole body looks sore,” she said, injecting sympathy into her voice and suppressing the selfish, physical discomfort of her wedgie. A nasty bruise spread across Logan’s forehead above his nose and the fingers of his left hand looked like a horrid case of elephantitis.
“Ironically, it’s my nose that hurts more,” Logan said.
“It looks sore and dry.”
“I spent several hours wiping it on my cotton sleeve, which didn’t help. Silly bugger head butted me and I didn’t see it coming. I’m hoping it isn’t broken inside. Again!”
“Was that after you left the staffroom?” Hana asked, her face a mask of worry. “Did he attack you again?”
“No, babe, no.” Logan reached out his sore hand and rubbed Hana’s thigh. “It was before that. I thought I’d got away with it but the altitude made it bleed as we went through the mountains. For what it’s worth, he was sorry.”
“Where are the men you fought, Logan? Who did you take them to?”
“I’m not going into details.” Logan sounded stubborn as he removed his hand. “I didn’t kill anyone but it’s best you don’t know anything. I promise the pair from last night won’t be coming after us again, but they are alive and breathing.”
Hana opened her mouth to complain and then closed it again. He was right. She didn’t want to know. “Oh, for goodness sake!” she exclaimed suddenly and Logan almost rear ended a logging truck.
“What the hell?” he asked roughly, sighing in exasperation as Hana jiggled around on the seat again with a pained expression on her pretty face.
“I’m sure half the value of these leggings are stuck up my whatsit!” she wailed in frustration.
“Well ask for your money back!” Logan retorted with irritation. “And stop bloody scaring me!”
Logan mused, wincing occasionally as he drove with his painful hand. Huang was dropped near the emergency department of the Waikato Hospital and left to make his way in alone. Logan scraped him off the courtyard after he left the school and felt it was more than he deserved. The other guy, Flick, wasn’t pleased to see him as Logan bundled Huang into the boot. “Just let me ‘off’ him!” he said angrily to Logan.
“Shut up! That’s now how I do things.”
“It’s how he does things!” Flick retorted. “Laval gave him a contract. How do you know he won’t try to finish it now?”
The Chinese man groaned in agony as Logan closed the back door of the Honda. Logan slung himself into the driver’s seat. “That’s how. He can’t move without almost passing out. It’s a five minute drive to drop him off and over an hour to where you’re going. So shut it, unless you want to help each other into the emergency room!”
Hana’s muscular, blonde attacker currently hid out with the stockmen up at the hotel in the mountains. He was offered temporary protection but would not be at liberty to leave until Logan gave his men the word. The head drover and his workers lived in a bunkhouse, a few kilometres into the bush from the hotel. It was a long low building, built of cedar wood and black metal. With no mobile phone reception or Internet, the only landline was an intercom for the main house. It was rough terrain up there, accessible on horseback, four-wheel-drive or motorbike. Flick would not be going far.
By the time Logan drove the Honda onto the narrow track up to the bunkhouse, Flick’s throat had swollen so badly he wouldn’t be speaking or attempting to go anywhere for a few days. Logan used the ‘scenic’ route to avoid disturbing the main house, not an easy feat in the dark, in a pretend four-wheel-drive. He was knackered. Two of his stockmen came out of the shadows to take delivery of the stricken blonde man. “He doesn’t get to go anywhere!” Logan commanded. “And don’t be too nice to him either. He’s harassed and attacked my wife so that doesn’t make him a friend of this family.”
“Right, boss.” Toby pushed the shotgun into Flick’s back and nodded to Logan. “I’ll take care of him.”
Logan smiled at his head stockman. “I know you will, bro. But watch him. This one’s got no morals. When his throat’s better he can work for Jack in the stables, but he doesn’t talk to anyone.”
Flick clutched his throat and prepared to walk the remaining kilometre through heavy scrub and bush, acknowledging the two guns trained on his face. “Mr Du Rose,” he croaked Logan turned. “Thank you for not turning me in. My step mum was a good woman. She didn’t deserve what Laval did to her. I’m in your debt.”
Logan narrowed his grey eyes and stared at Flick for a long, uncomfortable moment. “You’d better be.” He took a step forward. “Because out here the rules are different. Out here you can die and nobody will notice.” He nodded towards his stockmen, burly and strong in the moonlight. “Push them just once and you’ll find out. No warnings, no second chances.”
Flick kept his hand over his throat and nodded. Then he turned and allowed himself to be pushed into the darkness by the butt of the long gun. Logan watched until they were out of sight and then started up the engine. He didn’t fully relax until he got safely back onto State Highway 1 southbound, turning his mind back to Hana and his unborn child with longing and tenderness.
“Feeling better?” Hana asked as Logan pulled into the school car park and turned the engine off with a heavy sigh.
“Not really. I might nip to the clinic later in my free period if this bleeding doesn’t stop. It’s been hours now.” He dabbed at his nose with a tissue, frowning at the additional spots of red on its crumpled surface.
“What can we do about the rest of this mess?” Hana asked, worry creasing her brow. “Laval’s probably got more guys to send after us.” She fidgeted in her seat, a pained expression blossoming on her face which had more to do with her clothing than her precarious safety.
“I honestly don’t know,” Logan answered running his right hand over his face. “If the cops arrest me and lock me up or Laval takes me out, either way, I get to have a lie down and some time to sleep, so at this very moment I’m thinking bring it on.” He felt guilty for the alarm that crossed Hana’s face and reached out to touch a strand of her coiled hair. “I don’t know, Hana. Let’s get through today, huh?”
She nodded and they got out of the car, plodding into work like a couple of octogenarians visiting the local library. The female student teacher eyed their vehicle, parked neatly in its own space once again and gave Logan a dirty look. He was the current reigning champion for face expressions and gave her one back which sent her screeching off to find herself somewhere else mo
re permanent.
“Stop being mean!” Hana chastised him. “It makes you look like a four year old.”
Logan shot her a filthy look and Hana slapped his arm, biting her lip to hide the smile. “You’re not too big for a slap, boy!”
Logan stopped and his face lit up with mischief. “Ok then. Later.” The puffiness under his eyes seemed more pronounced and Hana raised her left hand and stroked his cheek.
“I love you, Logan Du Rose. Please don’t ever leave me?” Pain and fear backlit her eyes as Hana’s question tumbled out.
“I’m going nowhere, babe.” Logan crushed her into his chest in the middle of the courtyard and kissed the top of her head. A group of boys nearby bounced a tennis ball perilously close in a game of handball and Logan shot them a warning look. Responding to his indefatigable authority, they eyed each other and moved away.
In the office, Sheila buzzed like an electric eel, issuing orders for the clean-up and wired from the success of the previous night’s event. “Photos, Hana?” she demanded loudly and Hana groaned at the memory of the camera still sitting on the kitchen table amidst the morning’s hastily abandoned toast crumbs.
“I’m sorry. I forgot to bring it.” Her voice held tiredness but undaunted, Sheila huffed and puffed with annoyance and continued dishing out her orders.
“Hana, go and collect up the extension cables will you? They’re all over the place. I don’t want them to grow legs and walk off...” She bustled around, barking instructions and not actually doing much herself.
Hana slumped into her chair and put her head on her arms, the position seeming horribly familiar of late. “Pete,” she called, her voice muffled from her jumper sleeves. She heard the soft shuffle of his tracksuit as he turned towards her. “Please help me collect stuff up? I feel like I’m going to die.”