Smoke Screen

by Emilie Richards

  Cornwall didn't wait with her. He barked once, then plunged on ahead, turning into a thicket of tree ferns, where he was immediately lost from view. "Cornwall," she called softly, not wanting to interrupt Adam's song. "Come back here." But Cornwall was gone.

  Now, with nothing but the music to guide her, Paige walked slowly, using her flashlight to scan the ground carefully for hidden traps. Only the smell of sulphur hinted that the earth at her feet would soon change. The thicket hid all but the next tree from view, and she picked her way through it, ready to turn back at the first sign of danger.

  The music stopped, then started again, this time louder and more mournful. As it drew her closer, the sound echoed her mood, rising and falling, weaving past and present together in a melody that transcended time. She forgot her questions, her doubts, her despair. She wanted only to see Adam, to sit at his feet and listen to him play. To touch him.

  The thicket ended suddenly, the tree ferns replaced by an expanse of sword ferns and slumbering wildflowers. Her eyes adjusted slowly, and she stood under the last tree, gazing across the lush vegetation to the edge of the hot pool where Adam sat on a rock. Cornwall waited just in front of her.

  If Adam knew they were there, he gave no sign. He was naked, and, as if he had just come from the water, his body glistened with moisture. As she let her gaze roam over him, he finished one melody and began another, turning so that he was facing her.

  His beauty took her breath away. The moonlight touched his body with platinum, and each fluid line of his torso and limbs was a study in symmetry. He moved as he played, bending and swaying with the music, a perfect marble statue come to life.

  When the song ended, Paige stepped from the shelter of the tree into the moonlight.

  Adam put his flute on the rock beside him and folded his hands around one knee. "You shouldn't have come."

  "Then you shouldn't have enticed me."

  "You could have been hurt."

  "I doubt I would have felt it."

  He nodded gravely, but didn't speak. Paige knew he was waiting.

  "Why didn't you tell me?" she asked, knowing she didn't need to explain her question. ,

  "Do you really want to hear my answers? Or did you come to tell me you're angry?"

  "Both."

  He smiled a little, as though he thought her answer was fair. "But you aren't as angry as you want to be, are you?"

  Paige had felt her anger fade with each step. Now she couldn't renew it. "You hurt me," she said. "You didn't trust me, and now I don't trust you."

  "You trust me." Adam stretched, and he was no longer a statue, but a sleek, dark panther about to begin the hunt. Standing, he held out his hand. "Swim with me."

  She shook her head. "I came for answers, not for a swim."

  "You can have both." Adam saw the path her gaze took and waited until her eyes were focused on his again. "Swim with me, kaihana"

  Paige saw the challenge, just as she'd seen the evidence of his desire. She knew that if she went into the water with him, nothing would ever be the same for her again. "You are not my cousin."

  "We are Maori cousins. I figured out our exact relationship the day I led you from the thermals. The common blood we share is a microscopic drop five generations removed. But we have been united from the first time we saw each other."

  "I only have my dreams to tell me of that meeting."

  "Swim with me and I'll tell you."

  Behind her, she heard the crash of bushes as Cornwall disappeared back into the forest. She and Adam were truly alone.

  "Swim with me," he ordered.

  Paige crossed her arms and, with one graceful motion, pulled her sweater over her head. After, kicking off her boots, she un-snapped her pants with one hand, pushing them down over her hips to tangle at her feet. Then she hesitated.

  "Let me see you, as you've seen me," he said in the same tone.

  Her gaze locked with his, and slowly she reached behind her back to unhook her bra. She slid it over her arms. In the moonlight her breasts were the pure white of a new snowfall. Before she could change her mind, she undressed completely, until she was naked before him.

  Adam's expression was veiled. "You're cold."

  She was. Terribly, terribly cold. She forced herself not to wrap her arms around her breasts in protection.

  He moved forward, offering her his hand again, but she shook her head. Turning, she made her way to the water's edge and began to ease herself in. She knew Adam had followed by the splashing behind her.

  When the steaming water was up to her hips, she sank in, flinching as it covered her all the way to her shoulders. Then, her body concealed from his gaze, she turned to observe him. "You knew I'd come."

  Adam stood several feet away and made no move to come any closer. He knew what would happen if he did. "The music was a gift, not a summons. I didn't know you'd be courageous enough to follow it here."

  "Was it my lack of courage that kept you from telling me the truth about who I am?"

  "How could you not have known?"

  Paige had asked herself that all through the long day. The truth had been so obvious, and yet her Maori ancestry had never occurred to her. "There was no reason for my parents to have kept such a thing secret," she said slowly, feeling her way. "It's not as if it's something to be ashamed of. America is a melting pot. People are proud to be part this or part that."

  "So you weren't looking for the truth?"

  "I thought I knew the truth."

  He nodded gravely. "And now, how do you feel?"

  "Like an explanation is in order."

  "I can only tell you what I know. You'll have to ask your parents for the rest of it."

  "You can be sure I will."

  Adam lowered himself completely into the water, moving closer to her, but not close enough to touch. "Your mother and father met when she was little more than a child. I've been told Ann Abbott was the most beautiful creature anyone in Wai-mauri had ever seen, and, knowing her daughter, I have no reason to doubt it."

  Paige tried not to be affected by his words. "Go on."

  "Your father was in the armed forces."

  "Navy," Paige affirmed.

  "He came to Rotorua on leave and met your mother, who was working as a reception clerk at his hotel. They were married against the wishes of her parents. Your father never forgave the Abbotts for that. He left Ann here, but when his time in the Navy was over, he came back for her. There was quite a fight, and when your father took Ann and left, he vowed he would never let her come back to New Zealand."

  "But she did."

  "You were five." Adam moved closer. "The most beautiful little girl I had ever seen. I was nine, and enchanted immediately. You had long black pigtails, and even though you were shy, your eyes danced. You held yourself back from everyone else, but you put your hand in mine and let me take you anywhere I wanted to go."

  "I was the cousin you were talking about the last time we were here."

  "You were." He stretched out his hand and touched her hair. When she didn't move away, he moved closer. "Your mother was a very unhappy woman, and she came here without your father's consent. She clung to her parents, and they clung to her, frightened she would leave them again. Each time I saw her, she was crying, and I remember how her hands shook."

  "And then my father came." Paige wanted Adam's support. When he withdrew his hand from her hair, she reached for it without realizing what she was doing. She held it tight. "Please tell me."

  "We were at a hui, a tangihanga for our great-uncle."

  Paige knew a tangihanga was a Maori funeral wake. "And I was there, too."

  "Yes, and your mother. I took you out on the marae to see something, I don't remember what it was. I only remember that a man I didn't know came striding toward us, his eyes flashing angrily. You reached out to him, but when he began to drag you away, you started to scream. I ran after you and tried to stop him." He paused, as if trying to decide what to say next. "But I couldn't,"
he added finally.

  Without even realizing what she was doing, she clasped his hand to her cheek. "He pushed you away," she said, tears welling in her eyes. "Oh God, my father knocked you to the ground. I remember now."

  Adam put his arms around her, drawing her close. "You don't remember. You were too young."

  "But I do!" she cried. "He pushed you to the ground, and when I screamed, he dragged me faster. My mother came running out of the meeting house, and some men, too. One of them grabbed my father..."

  Adam left the words she didn't say hanging in the air. Carter Duvall had experienced Maori justice, but it had firmly cemented his hatred of his wife's people and stolen Paige from all of them. "In the end, your mother chose to go back to America with your father. I don't know why. Perhaps she was afraid he would take you away forever if she didn't. Perhaps she didn't want to give up the things he could give her. Perhaps she even loved him. Whatever the reason, not one of you ever set foot on New Zealand soil again until now."

  "And my father hid my ties here so that I wouldn't come."

  "Your father was always ashamed of who your mother was."

  "Adam, did he hurt you?" She framed his face in her hands as if she were looking for visible signs of that day.

  Adam held her tighter. "No. I don't think he meant to push me so hard. And that was twenty-four years ago, Paige." He forced her chin up. "That was then. And this is now."

  "I cried for you," she said, stroking his cheeks. "I cried for you for weeks."

  "You can't remember that."

  "But I do." She traced the faint scar that was all that was left of the accident on the cliff. "I cried for you and for my grandparents, and finally my father sent me to school in Switzerland to forget. Then I had no one at all."

  "And you learned not to need anyone."

  "I learned to pretend I didn't," she said softly.

  "And are you still pretending, kaihana?” Paige looked into Adam's eyes, eyes that were brooding and darkly adult. There was little left of the boy who had tried so hard to protect her. But the man holding her in his arms was someone she knew even better, and someone she loved with more than a child's innocent affection.

  "I need you, Adam. And this time there's no one here to drag me away.''

  Chapter 14

  Adam's hands began a slow glide from Paige's shoulders to her hips while his lips moved over hers. "No one can drag you away," he agreed raggedly, after his mouth had reluctantly left hers. "But memory can't bring us together, either."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Twenty-four years have passed." As if to deny his words, he pulled her closer until not even the steaming water was between them.

  His naked body fully against hers was a homecoming. Instinctively she fitted herself against him. "And you're afraid it's memory that makes me want you?"

  "Be very sure it isn't. Because I'm not that boy anymore."

  "And I'm not that girl, though I'm not who I always thought I was, either."

  Adam's hands stilled as he cradled her hips against his. "Are you happy to be who you are?"

  "Right now I wouldn't want to be anyone else in the world." Paige felt Adam shudder, and the sensation sent waves of heat through her. He was holding himself in tight control, but that control was shattering. She moved against him, her body as hot and liquid as the water. "Right now I wouldn't want you to be anyone else."

  "And later?" His question was muffled against her neck.

  Her head fell forward, and the answer came easily. "Later will be just the same."

  His hands gripped her buttocks, and he dragged her harder against him. There was nothing gentle about his hands; there was nothing ambiguous about his desire. He wanted her, and the only thing that had kept him from taking her was his integrity.

  "And later still?"

  "I can't make any promises," she whispered, her lips against his shoulder, "except that I'll never stop wanting you, Adam. Never."

  He groaned, his control gone. He lifted her, and his kiss was fiercely possessive. His lips demanded a response as they trailed down her neck, stopping at the hollow of her throat, then tracing the delicate line of each collarbone to her shoulders. She draped her arms around his neck, and her knees rested against his hips as she leaned back to give him access to her breasts. There wasn't time, there wasn't patience, for leisurely exploration. He hungered, and she offered herself to him. When his mouth and tongue made a mockery of control, she melted in his arms.

  She had known it would be this way, a circle completed, a wish fulfilled. Adam in her arms. Her hair trailed in the water as she arched spasmodically. Her fingernails dug into his shoulder, and she whimpered, a sound of both pain and pleasure.

  Adam clutched her tightly against him, and she slid down his length, her body slick and hot against his. "Not in the water," he ground out. Without waiting for an answer, he scooped her up and carried her to the bank. Her body was cushioned by lush greenery, and she smelled the crushed fragrance of herbs as he set her on the ground.

  He knelt beside her, his hands everywhere, as if he couldn't find the patience to stop, to gently explore, to give slow pleasure. His fierce need excited her as gentleness never would have. She could feel her body throb with unfocused yearnings, and then his hands began a rhythm as old as time, and her yearnings were no longer unfocused, but clearly centered, like a white-hot flame feeding on resin-rich tinder.

  "No more," she said, trying to turn away from him.

  "Always more," he insisted. He stretched out beside her and turned her face to his. His lips were a demand, his hands a demand, too. She felt the first flicker of fear that she might not be able to satisfy him, that she might not be able to give him everything he was insisting she give. Her hands crept to his shoulders as she tried to hold him back.

  Adam gathered her hands and held them, and the kiss went on. His tongue demanded that she give up all her secrets; his body demanded the same. Paige felt him move against her, felt the heat of his desire, and her fear strengthened.

  She had never given all that he was asking for to any man. A small, untouchable part of herself had been kept sacrosanct. Like the devil she had once imagined him to be, he wanted her soul. She cried out in protest, pulling her mouth from his.

  One hand stroked her body, but not to soothe her fears. "I want all of you," he said. "All."

  She squeezed her eyelids tightly together, afraid of what she saw on his face. No one had ever asked for so much. No one had ever known what she held back. "Adam," she said, and the word was a plea.

  "All," he demanded. He turned her so that her body fit perfectly against his. She could feel the heat of his desire, but she resisted, stiffening. She knew he would only make love to her if the terms were his. Total surrender.

  "All," he said, his mouth bathing each eyelid with kisses. "Because that's what I'll give you. I couldn't give you less."

  She opened her eyes and felt her spirit melting into his, bleeding its essence drop by drop into the open wound that was his need for her. Her fear bled away with it. He released her hands and they floated over his body, anchoring themselves finally against the velvet smoothness of his skin. She explored each ridge of muscle, each flexing sinew, until her fingertips had memorized the man he was.

  Adam buried his face at her throat and molded her body with his hands, creating someone new from the person she had been. When he finally parted her legs, he lay against her, touching but not touching, demanding but not taking.

  "All," he whispered.

  "Adam," she begged, the last remnant of fear in her voice.

  "You're mine," he told her. "I'm asking for what's mine."

  She felt herself slipping toward him, merging somewhere in a place that she hadn't even known existed. Then she felt herself giving, giving pleasure, giving love, giving up control. He made their bodies one at the moment she gave herself completely to him.

  And then, together, they gave each other heaven.

  * * *


  "There are more stars in New Zealand than anywhere else in the world." Paige lay contentedly in Adam's arms, one leg draped lazily over his.

  "You've counted them, then?"

  "Every one."

  "They'll be gone soon."

  "Let's stop them." With a graceful sweep of her arm she dragged out her command. "Stay."

  "Do you think they heard you?"

  Her hand settled back on his chest. "I'm sure of it."

  Adam's laughter rumbled through the steamy glen. "Why aren't you sleeping?"

  "I'm afraid to. I might wake up and find out this wasn't real."

  "It wasn't real."

  "You mean I've stayed awake for nothing?"

  "It was better than real."

  Paige pushed herself to one elbow so that she could see his face. The hand on his chest moved up to stroke his cheek. "It was everything."

  He covered her hand and brought it to his mouth. "Taku aroha ki a koe."

  "What does that mean?"

  "Don't you know?"

  She felt a thrill of pleasure as he kissed her palm and wondered how, after a night of exquisite lovemaking, she could still want him. "Understanding the language doesn't come with the genes."

  "I taught you those words when you were five. I'd forgotten, but Granny reminded me yesterday. Your grandmother cried when you said them to her."

  Paige's eyes softened. "Say it again."

  "Taku aroha ki a koe."

  She repeated. "Taku aroha kia koe."

  "Well done."

  "I love you," she translated, knowing she was right. "I do."

  Adam framed her face in his hands, then brought it to his for a long, passionate kiss. "Come home with me," he said when her cheek was pillowed on his shoulder. "Sleep with me in my bed."

  "There's not much time to sleep."