Hamish said a cool goodbye to Adam and walked Paige to the front desk to call for her car.
She considered letting the hostility at dinner drop, but since she and Hamish were going to be doing some intense business negotiations, she decided to probe a little. She'd found from experience that little things could ruin the most substantial deals.
"I couldn't help noticing that you and Adam don't like each other," she said as they waited for the valet to bring her car around. "I was surprised you knew him, since you aren't from Waimauri."
"You might as well know," Hamish said with a smile that didn't quite reach his eyes, "that he and I have had words about the thermals."
Paige was glad she had played her hunch and opened the subject. "Do you mind telling me why?"
"He came to me when he heard I was asking questions about the area. He has some cockamamy story about them being scared ground or some such rot. What it comes down to, I'm sure, is that he and his people are afraid of progress. They don't know the difference between a first-class resort and a tourist trap, and no matter how hard I tried to explain, he didn't understand."
Paige was intrigued, although she didn't tell Hamish. Adam wasn't a man who would have trouble understanding anything. If he was antagonistic to Hamish's plans, then he had reasons. Some of his more cryptic remarks began to make sense, as did the feud between the two men.
"Well, I hope it didn't spoil your evening," she said, holding out her hand. "I certainly enjoyed the meal and concert, and I appreciate your arranging it."
"I'm glad you could come." He squeezed her hand before he released it. "I'll be in touch soon."
"Not too soon," she warned. "I'm going to need a guided tour of the thermals before I can begin any negotiations. I've got to see them for myself."
"When are you planning to do that?"
"Just as soon as I can find someone who's willing to take me in."
"I'm sure I can find someone for you."
But Paige already had a person in mind. She watched Hamish closely for his reaction. "To be honest, I intend to ask Adam. If he can't find the time, I'll see if he knows someone else."
Hamish nodded but, as she'd expected, his expression mirrored his disapproval. "Then you have my number here at the hotel?"
"I do." She turned at the sound of tires squealing and watched as the attendant parked her rental car in front of the hotel. "I'll call you in a day or two. Thanks again for dinner."
"My pleasure."
She doubted that, but she smiled anyway as she slid under the steering wheel.
Paige was out on the road before she remembered that she had forgotten to ask where the closest service station might be. Her gas gauge was too close to empty for comfort, and although she had seen several stations off the highway between Rotorua and Waimauri, she wasn't sure they would be open. She swung back into the drive in front of the hotel, hoping to find the valet.
Instead she found Adam embracing the lovely young Maori girl who had been one of the evening's entertainers. Paige was back on the road in seconds, determined to locate a station by herself.
* * *
"Come on, Hira. Pat's hardly worth all these tears." Adam's arms tightened around Hira's back, and he pulled her into the shadows. He wondered what he had ever done to deserve being saddled with a weeping woman.
"But I love him!"
Adam tried to remember what it was like to be as young as Hira and as captivated by another person. A million years ago, when he'd believed he loved Jeremy's mother, had his feelings been this intense? "You love someone who makes you cry this way?"
Hira moved away and wiped her eyes. "I wish I didn't!"
"Hira, there's hardly a single man for two hundred kilometers who doesn't worship at your dancing bare feet," Adam said, trying to make her smile. "Go home, make a list of all the times Pat's made you cry, and then forget him."
Hira sniffed, and, sighing, Adam handed her his handkerchief. "Really, Hira, he's best forgotten."
"You can talk!" Hira blew her nose and stuffed the handkerchief in the pocket of the jeans that had replaced her dancing costume. "You keep him on at your farm, you post his bail at the cop shop when he's gone off on a binge, you lie to his mother—"
"I don't lie, sometimes I just forget to tell her things."
"You protect him!"
"He's Granny's mokopuna" he reminded her gently. "My cousin."
"Does Granny know he's a ratbag?"
"Ratbag?" Adam smiled, encouraging her to do the same through her tears. "I'm afraid Granny loves him, too. In fact, Pat's always been surrounded by people who love him. It's one of his problems."
"I'd like to wring his neck."
Adam imagined that if Hira found Pat, her hands would go around his neck in a far different embrace. "When he shows up again, tell him I said he doesn't deserve you." Adam kissed her forehead. "Now go home, and forget about Pat tonight."
Adam watched Hira swivel her narrow hips in a naturally provocative movement as she disappeared around the back of the building where her car was parked. He had long since realized that Pat hadn't been born with good sense, but his cousin's latest rejection of Hira was proof once more.
Hira had fallen in love with Pat the moment she had first seen him. Hira had been fifteen, Pat sixteen, and even then Pat had been relentlessly charming. They had taken one look at each other, and an alliance that was still the talk of the family had been formed.
Through the years, the alliance had changed until it was apparent to Adam that the two young people had been lovers for some time, but Pat still refused to marry Hira, even though he claimed he loved her. One minute he treated her like the most precious of gifts, the next he ignored her or broke his promises to her as he had tonight. Pat was supposed to have come with Adam to see Hira perform. He hadn't shown up, just as he hadn't shown up for his job at Four Hill Farm for the past two days. If history was any indication, he wouldn't show up for the rest of the week, either.
Adam shoved his hands in his pockets and started down the sidewalk toward his car. Pat and Hira would have to work out their own problems. In the meantime there was nothing he could do except deliver his usual lecture when a charmingly repentant Pat showed up next week to reclaim his job. Pat was family, Adam's own bones. Tradition decreed that he help him and help him and help him some more. It was one of those Maori traditions that Hamish Armstrong probably wouldn't understand. And tonight was one of those times when Adam wasn't sure the Hamishes of the world weren't right.
Pulling onto the road, he thought about the other family member he was required to help, the family member who didn't know she was one. Paige had been breathtakingly beautiful tonight. He hadn't seen her in a dress before, but he'd found it hard to concentrate on anything except the way the pale pink fabric had clung to the softly rounded contours of her body. The dress was probably worth more than his prize ram, and the pearls in her earlobes and circling her throat were probably worth more than all his spring lambs. She had looked just like what she was, a stunning, wealthy American who was as out of place in Waimauri as he would be in her New Orleans.
And still he found himself thinking of her at the oddest times. "Makere te weka i te mahanga e hoki ano?" he muttered. Granny wasn't the only one who thought in proverbs. They were simple phrases signifying loftier philosophy, and Adam knew them all. "Would the weka return to the snare it escaped?" he chided himself out loud. Not if the weka had any sense. Of course, if the snare was hidden under pale pink and pearls, how could anything as stupid as a parrot resist?
He was lucky he wasn't a parrot. He had fallen for pale pink and pearls once before, and it had gotten him heartache and a son so terrified that even now Adam found himself speeding to get home in case Jeremy awakened.
Preparing to pass, Adam was almost on top of the car in front of him before he realized it belonged to Paige. For a moment he wondered if he'd summoned her out of his thoughts. Then he realized she was driving so slowly that something had to be
wrong. Honking, he blinked his lights several times and motioned her over to the side of the road.
Paige stepped out of the car when she realized it was Adam who had come to her rescue. It galled her to need his help for yet the third time. She waited for his condemnation.
Adam opened his door and got out. "If I hadn't ridden with you, I'd think you were afraid to drive."
"I'm low on gas. I only saw one station in Rotorua that was still open, and they had just sold out. I think I'll make it if I take it slowly."
Adam knew Paige wouldn't ask for help, just as she hadn't asked him to lead her home through the thermals or to fix the heat in her house. She was proud and arrogant and entirely too calm for a woman alone in a foreign country with an empty petrol tank. And just like every other time he'd helped her, she rose another notch in his estimation. She was pale pink and pearls, but she was also finely tempered steel.
Adam leaned against the car, crossing his arms in front of him. "Didn't your mother ever tell you what happens to women who run out of petrol on dark country roads?"
"The darkest country road my mother ever expected me to be on was St. Charles Avenue," she said dryly. She realized he didn't understand. "One of the main thoroughfares in New Orleans. I was raised to be a debutante, not an executive, and certainly not an executive surrounded by sheep." She waved to the pasture behind her.
"Sheep?" He said the word as if he didn't know it. "Not sheep, Romneys. Some of New Zealand's best. They're producers of meat and wool."
Paige shrugged. "Then I was perfectly safe. I wouldn't have starved or frozen if I'd had to spend the night here."
Adam laughed, and the sound surprised them both. "What does it take to scare you?"
She knew. The answer was the sound of her heart beating double-time, just as it had the moment she had realized it was Adam getting out of the car. The answer was that peculiar thrill of anticipation she had experienced knowing she was going to see him again. "I don't scare easily," she said, knowing it was a lie. "If I'd run out of gas, I would have gone to sleep in the car until someone came along to help."
He gave a mock bow. "I suppose I saved you a step. I'll follow you in. If you stall, we can siphon some petrol out of my tank to get you home."
"I saw the way you were barreling down the road. Aren't you in a hurry to get somewhere? Home to Jeremy?"
"I'll get there quicker if we start now." He pushed himself away from the car. "Next time ask somebody where to find a station."
"I started to. . ." Her voice trailed off.
Adam waited.
Paige decided to continue. It was just as well Adam had a woman in his life anyway. "I went back to the hotel to ask, but I thought I might be interrupting something if I got out of the car."
The corners of his mouth turned up as he realized she had seen him with Hira. "Oh, you would have been, and I would have been grateful. You could have helped me comfort my lovelorn niece."
Paige didn't let her eyes flicker. "I'll remember that next time."
Adam appreciated how well she controlled herself, but he wondered if she realized her creamy skin was tinting a delicate rose. His eyes trailed down to her mouth. She had just moistened her lips, and they were a dewy, darker shade of the same color. He wished there was something about her to criticize.
Back in her car, Paige drove at the agonizingly slow pace she had set earlier, aware, as she did, that she was keeping Adam from Jeremy. Her hands gripped the wheel, but she kept her foot light on the accelerator, determined not to have to ask Adam for more help.
She wondered if he knew anything about the strange mixture of feelings she had experienced when he had said that the lovely young singer was his niece. She had felt both relief and disappointment, and she wasn't sure which had been the stronger.
The lamp she had left on for her return glowed in the window when she finally drove up to her house. Adam pulled up beside her and got out of his car at the same time she got out of hers. He read her gas gauge through the window.
"I'll be over tomorrow morning with petrol," he told her, going back to his own car. "You won't make it into town to get any."
Resigned, she nodded. "You don't want to do it now to save yourself time?"
He slammed his door, then motioned her to his window. Paige strolled over, puzzled. Adam pointed to his own gauge. It stood one hair past empty. "And I knew where an open station was," he said.
She was delighted. "Then you had no excuse."
"Only that I had my mind on something else." His eyes lingered just a second too long on hers before he started the engine and backed down her driveway.
Chapter 5
After an endless night, luminescent layers of gold shot through the New Zealand darkness, testimony that day would come, and soon. Paige sat on the front porch, bundled in a blanket against the cold, and urged the sun to hurry.
She had awakened hours before in the grip of a terrifying nightmare, and now it seemed only the sun could burn away the malaise that remained. Sleep was impossible; she wouldn't take the chance that another dream might occur. Eyes wide open, she stared at the horizon and counted sun rays.
The sound of a vehicle on the road in front of her house broke the early morning stillness. Somewhere nearby the flutelike trills of a magpie answered the grinding of gears as the vehicle, a battered truck, turned into Paige's driveway. She pulled her blanket closer, but she didn't go inside. Nothing could entice her back to the scene of her nightmare.
The truck stopped, the engine died, and the resulting vacuum was filled by the pathetic baaing of four sheep in the back. The truck door slammed, and they baaed louder.
"Were you waiting for me?" Adam asked, hands in his pockets, surprise on his face.
Paige shivered. The question asked too much. "I'm afraid I had Jeremy's problem," she said, too exhausted and too hung over from fear for their usual verbal fencing. "Nightmares."
Adam didn't want to be drawn to Paige. He had come to fill her petrol tank, not probe the terrors of her night. He held himself rigid, fighting his urge to comfort her. "It looks as if you're trying Jeremy's cure, too."
"If you don't sleep, you don't dream."
"If you don't sleep, you don't get any work done." Adam went around to the back of the truck, shoved one of the bleating sheep aside and lifted out a large can.
"And you've never had a nightmare?"
There had been nights after Sheila disappeared, taking his unborn child with her, when Adam hadn't slept at all. Only that memory kept him from snapping back at Paige. He glanced in her direction and saw her eyelids drift closed, as if she were too tired to pretend she was anything she wasn't.
He was beside her before he even realized he was moving in her direction. He lowered himself to the porch step, careful not to touch her. He kept his resignation out of his voice. "Sometimes it helps to tell somebody about it."
Surprised, Paige opened her eyes and turned to him. "Does Jeremy tell you his?"
"He doesn't have to. I know what he dreams."
"I told my mother about this dream once. I never told her again."
"Then you've had it before."
Her head barely moved in affirmation. "Why are you here so early?"
"It's not early."
"Who are your friends?" She nodded toward the truck.
"I'm moving them to the pasture closest to my house. I don't like the look of one of them, and it's the first time the other three have been bred, so I want to keep an eye on them. They may be lambing early."
"Do you know all your sheep so well?"
"These are some I'm cross-breeding. They're an experiment."
She lowered her voice to a whisper. "Do they know?"
His laughter filled some of her emptiness. "I've got tea," he said, standing. "If you'll get cups we can sit here and watch the dawn together."
Touched by his obvious attempt to cheer her, Paige rose and, went into the house, coming back with two pottery mugs. Adam poured steaming tea fro
m a vacuum bottle for both of them, and they sat together once more.
Adam watched Paige tuck the blanket back around herself. "You don't have a robe?"
"They take too much room in a suitcase. Don't tell Granny. She'd probably knit me one if she knew. I don't usually sit outside before the sun comes up, anyway."
He tried not to think about what was under the blanket. "I know you don't use the wood stove, but don't you at least have a jug to heat water in?"
"One of those plug-in kettles? I do. I just didn't want to be inside that long."
Adam leaned back against the top step. "Tell me about the dream."
Cradling her cup in her hands, Paige tried to think of a polite way to refuse. Then she realized she really didn't want to. "Other people's fears don't bore you?"
Adam was beginning to think nothing about Paige could bore him. He was beginning to wish that were different. "Tell me."
She sighed. "It's always the same. I'm in a room full of people, looking up at them like a small child would. Someone touches my hair, someone else smiles at me, and I feel happy. There's music, someone is singing, and I'm trying to sing with her. Then everything is quiet." She stopped to take a sip of the sweetened tea. Then another. The next part was harder to tell. "Then I'm outside, on a green somewhere. A hand reaches for me, and I reach up to hold it, but when I do, the hand begins to shrivel until it's nothing but bones. All the flesh is gone, but still it holds on. Then the hand begins to drag me away. I hear people talking, but no one tries to help. Someone screams and screams, and finally I wake up and realize I'm the one screaming." She paused. "Or trying to scream," she continued finally, "but no sound is really coming out."
And the family had wondered if she remembered them. Adam tried to make himself speak, but the words grew in his throat until they were too immense.
Paige turned. Even to her own ears she sounded upset. "I'd like to understand. I have the dream often enough to wonder what's causing it."
He swallowed the words he couldn't speak and asked a question instead. "Have you ever asked anyone to help you?"
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