Adam knew how she felt. He didn't understand how she had found the courage to come after him in the dark. He held out his hand to her. "Come on, kaihana."
"No. You're asking too much."
"I don't think so." He stretched his hand a little closer. "I'll keep you safe."
"I'll keep myself safe."
He moved toward her until he was within touching distance. "I need you." His hand rested on her arm. "I need you to come."
He had learned how to manipulate her. She was that vulnerable. Paige lifted her chin, but the movement brought her face in line with his. What she saw there was the greatest manipulation of all. His eyes were pleading with her. "Please?"
She nodded and allowed him to take her hand.
Sunshine lit their path. Today the smoke obscured nothing. It drifted in dancing, twisting patterns. Steam rose from springs, an invitation to stop and breathe its mineral-rich vapors. The bellbird chimed its crystalline call, and wildflowers bloomed in pastel hues against sulphur-encrusted rock sculptures.
Paige moved without hesitation. It wasn't the thermals she feared. She would never fear them again. It was being here with Adam that frightened her. Somehow, here, neither of them could hide.
At Kaka geyser she watched Adam put his ear to the ground. When he stood, she followed him across the steaming rocks and remembered it was here that Hamish had confronted the true power of the land he had wanted to tame.
They came to the rockslide where Pat had almost been buried. "Pat will be going home from the hospital after the weekend," Adam said, speaking for the first time since he had taken her hand at the forest's edge.
"You've spoken to him?"
"Samuel wants him to give the university a try. He'll be moving to Waikato to work for a while until he can complete his papers to get in."
"Does he know you forgive him?"
He squeezed her hand. "Yes."
They edged along the rockslide and began the twists and turns that would lead them into Paradise. Paige found herself pulling back as they neared the narrow canyon that led to the small lake. "Why would you want to come back here?" she asked at the mouth of the canyon. "After everything that happened."
"If you come, I'll show you."
"You almost died here."
"But I didn't."
She let him pull her through the canyon. They stopped at the entrance to the valley. The cliff where Adam had almost fallen to his death gleamed brilliantly in the sunshine, its rainbow-hued walls denying the evil of the past night. Embedded crystals sparkled like daylight stars, and against the cliff, on the narrow strip beside the lake, trees swayed in the afternoon breeze.
"What am I supposed to see?" Paige pulled her hand from Adam's.
"The place where day and night meet, the place of opposites, earth and sky, fire and water, tapu and noa."
"So this is where you were going to look for the mauri yesterday?"
"You knew?" Adam raised one eyebrow, assessing her. "And that's why you came here last night?"
"I guessed, but that's not what brought me here." She refused to say more.
"I don't know why Armstrong brought me here to kill me," Adam said, sensing her reluctance to share her thoughts. "There were other, better places. I suppose this one was the closest. He took me to the top of the cliff. I think he had intended to push me into the lake, but when we reached the top, he had second thoughts. He must have realized that if we fought up there, he might lose. Then he decided to shoot me. He believed I'd fall into the lake, or, at worst, that he could throw me in and there wouldn't be any evidence to worry about."
Paige shuddered. "Why are you telling me this?"
"Because Armstrong chose the wrong place." He took her hand. "Come with me."
She held back. "You believe Horo-i-rangi is here?"
"I've been so wrong. Where else would she be? A place so remote that her power had no meaning? No, she'd be here, where her people came to cook, to make their clothes, to play." He gestured to the lake. "The place where Aotearoa's waters have their source. The spring that feeds this lake begins at the guardian's feet. There's an underground stream that drains this lake and comes up again in the hot pool where we swam. It's easy to see how our ancestors might have believed all the water systems were connected."
She let him lead her to the shore of the lake as he continued. "The cliff is night and day, darkest purple—twilight purple. And golden day."
"Earth and sky?" Paige asked.
"In the sunlight the crystals sparkle like stars. Sky embedded in the earth. At night the moon shines on them, too."
She didn't want to be caught up in the spell of finding the mauri again, but she couldn't help herself. And slowly, despite her fears, she was being drawn to Adam, too.
"I understand fire and water." She looked down at the steaming lake where Adam had almost died. "Tapu and noa!"
"That was the key." Adam drew her along the edge of the lake until they were facing the kai-tiaki, the stone man. "I never understood until the first night we made love. I lay there with you in my arms, and I thought about you having my child." He felt a tremor go through her, but he didn't look at her. "I pictured you pregnant, kaihana, large and round with my baby inside you, and then I knew."
"What did you know?" she asked softly.
"That the kai-tiaki is not a man at all, but a woman large with child. Our people believed that a woman was noa, except at certain times. At childbirth, she was tapu."
"The mauri is hidden in the guardian, then?' She took a step, as if to begin a search.
Adam held her back. "That's what I thought until last night. Then I lay here dying an inch at a time, and as I looked at the kai-tiaki in the moonlight, I understood. The mauri is the kai-tiaki. There never was a second statue. The one in the Auckland Museum is the only one. One of our ancestors saw the kai-tiaki, and understood its significance. She was carved by nature to protect this valley and our people. In every way she was the real Horo-i-rangi, our beloved ancestress who watched over us and guaranteed the safety and fertility of this place."
Paige could see it now. The man's potbelly was a woman's womb, huge with child. There was even the separate outline of pendulous breasts sloping down to rest on her swollen belly. "Horo-i-rangi." She was surprised by tears in her eyes. "She guided me to you last night."
He pulled her closer. "How did you find me?"
"Voices on the wind, moonlight on the path."
"When someone is terrified, their senses are altered."
"Granny said you wouldn't understand."
"I understand more than you think." He turned her slowly until she was facing him. "Last night I understood that I had almost killed our love with my fears. And yet this morning, I was afraid again. I tell you I love you, but at the same time I tell you I don't trust you. I brought you here to tell you I understand that now."
"Here?"
"The place of opposites. Love and fear are opposites. This is where they have to meet." He dropped his arms, but he moved closer until they were almost touching. "I love you. I have since I was nine years old. Will you love me, too? Marry me? Have my children?" He held up his hand before she could answer. "I can wait until you're ready. I can wait until you've found a way to make a life for yourself here."
She started to speak, but he cut her off once more. "I can wait, just not forever."
She felt suddenly light-headed. "May I answer now?"
He nodded gravely, and she saw that he wasn't sure what her answer would be. His fears would die, but not immediately. And she knew the same would be true of hers.
But then, they had a lifetime to learn.
"Yes."
He seemed to consider her answer. "Yes?"
"Easier than you thought, wasn't it?"
His smile started slowly, and his hands rose to grasp her arms. "What about the second part?"
"The waiting part? I think I'll have to decline to wait. You see, I've been waiting since I was a little girl, and I'm no
t a patient woman."
"You'll be my wife?"
She could see she was going to have to spell it out. She cupped his face in her hands. "Your wife, Jeremy's mother, the mother of more children, perhaps. And I'll take care of all your orphaned lambs," she added brushing her lips over his. "Cornwall can help."
"You'll make pets of all my livestock and we'll lose the farm."
"But you'll never lose me."
He pulled her close, and in the place of opposites, love and fear merged into forever.
THE END
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Author's Note
I'm delighted to share the second novel in one of my favorite romance series with you. Smoke Screen is the second of a four book series I titled Tales of the Pacific (because James Mitchener had already nailed Tales of the South Pacific.) The books were first published in paperback, and are now available as ebooks. The series came to life after I traveled to each of the four different settings on a family trip down under—with a nice long weekend in Hawaii--just me, my husband and our four children ages four to fourteen for six months. What an extended holiday that was.
By the time I came home again I was bursting with ideas and research information and ready to do something with both. Somewhere along the way--probably the night I was sleeping in a real opal mine in Coober Pedy, Australia--I decided that an opal looked like rainbow fire. Of course I knew immediately that Rainbow Fire had to be a book title.
But if I had fire, didn't I also need embers, smoke and ashes? Of course I did. And as had happened before and since, I created titles before I created stories. Authors are like that.
From Glowing Embers was the initial book, to be followed by others. Eventually I moved from pure romance into women's fiction, which I write today. Between us, though, it wasn't that much of a move. As you read this novel you'll see the elements I continue to share with my readers. Family secrets. Forgiveness. Coming to terms with our pasts. Falling in love when all the odds say "no chance."
Reading back through Smoke Screen I was immediately involved in the life of Paige Duvall, who believed she might have found the right man to settle down with, only to discover he had never given up on his first love. We've all experienced rejection, so it wasn't hard to put myself in Paige's shoes. And we've all found ourselves in places we never expected to be, with people whom we never expected to become part of our lives.
My own weeks in the Rotorua area where this novel takes place are still some of my favorites. In fact my family loved it so much that after checking out of our campground (yes we camped for three weeks with four small children) the children were so disappointed to leave that we turned around and went back to finish our stay there. It was winter in New Zealand, but those hot springs helped keep us warm.
How could I not use this as a setting?
If you've finished this book and the first, From Glowing Embers, you will also have gotten to know Dillon Ward, wunderkind Jody Whitham and (almost) Jody's mother, Alexis. You may wonder, as I did, what happened to them after the hurricane that changes their lives.
Rainbow Fire, third in the series, moves the story to Coober Pedy, South Australia, where opal miner Dillon meets his match in black belt Kelsey Donovan and struggles to discover who nearly killed her father.
And finally in Out of the Ashes you'll get to know Alexis Whitham, Jody's mother, who escapes to Australia only to fall in love with a man with wounds as deep as her own. Along the way you'll catch up with previous characters and make sure all is still well. I love it when that happens.
I almost forgot the best part. All four of these books have been made into movies in Germany, where they've aired in the prime Sunday night slot on ZDF. I was invited to go to New Zealand to watch another of my novels being filmed—and to eke out a day in Rotorua again while I was there. Later I traveled to Germany to help promote the movie based on Rainbow Fire. Who knew when Julie Ann and Gray of From Glowing Embers first appeared to me and began to tell their story, that they would live on in film and I would have so much fun watching it happen?
Happy Reading!
Emilie
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Interest piqued for the rest of the Tales of the Pacific series? Here's more about the others, and excerpts, too.
FROM GLOWING EMBERS
Once, Julianna was plain Julie Ann, a girl from the wrong side of the tracks who dared to love the son of the town’s most powerful family. Gray loved her, too, and married her to give their unborn child a name, but sometimes love isn’t enough.
Ten years later they meet again. She is successful, beautiful, and certain that a decade ago he betrayed her, but despite their painful past, both are helpless to deny a love that never died.
As secrets are slowly revealed, and new and surprising friendships develop with other refugees from an approaching hurricane, the past and present come together in one tumultuous explosion.
RAINBOW FIRE
In the dusty Australian outback, a priceless treasure lies under ancient silt stone and sand: opals that gleam with rainbow fire and spark greed and betrayal in the hearts of men.
Kelsey Donovan doesn’t care about opal. She arrives in Coober Pedy to look for a different treasure, the joys of family and belonging. But when Kelsey finds Jake Donovan, the father she’s never known, she is almost too late. Jake is in a coma, hovering between life and death after a mysterious cave-in at the Rainbow Fire mine that he owns with a stranger named Dillon Ward.
And who better to benefit from Jake’s death than his partner?
What can Kelsey do for the father whose love she’s always craved except safeguard what belongs to him? She sets out to protect the Rainbow Fire from Dillon himself, and to discover the truth behind her father’s accident.
Sometimes though, the most precious of treasures isn’t found in mines or in rewriting a difficult past, a painful lesson Kelsey learns almost too late.
After all her struggles, could the greatest of treasures be standing right in front of her?
OUT OF THE ASHES
For Alexis Whitham, Kangaroo Island off the coast of South Australia seems like the perfect place to escape with Jody, her daughter, and begin a new life free from the escalating abuse of her ex-husband. In their new hideaway she can write, and Jody, an adaptable gifted child, can find friends and grow up in safety.
For Matthew Haley, the remote destination is a place to hide, as well. A ranger at Flinders Chase park at the farthest reaches of the island, he can live in solitude and avoid confronting the pain of his past.
Then his new American neighbor brings him an injured koala, and Matthew finds that no matter how much he wants to, he can’t escape Alexis or her enchanting nine-year-old daughter.
But while Matthew may find a way to put his past to rest, Alexis’s may yet come back to haunt her.
To learn more about Emilie's many novels, visit her website book pages: http://bit.ly/1ULBTjg
Continue reading for excerpts from:
From Glowing Embers
Rainbow Fire
Out of the Ashes
FROM GLOWING EMBERS
Dear God! The child sitting next to Gray Sheridan was only a little younger than Ellie would have been!
Julianna Mason took a step backward, as if putting additional distance between herself and the little girl sitting by the airplane window would somehow shield her from pain. Nothing could shield her now, however, nothing less than a magical return to the moments before she had stepped into the next cabin
of the DC-10 carrying her to Honolulu and seen Gray Sheridan relaxing beside the brown-haired, brown-eyed pixie.
Brown hair and brown eyes. What color would Ellie’s eyes have been? They had been blue at birth; Julianna knew that much. Blue eyes in an impossibly tiny face. Blue eyes that had seemed to grow dimmer and dimmer with each faltering heartbeat. Blue eyes that might someday have been the deep tarnished silver of her father’s. If Ellie had lived.
Ellie.
How long had it been since she had let herself think about her daughter? The time between memories could be measured in weeks now. Sometimes even a month went by. But then, just as she thought she was learning to forget, she would awaken in the middle of the night to Kauai rain tumbling over the eaves of her house, and for a moment she would believe she was back in Mississippi. And Ellie...
Julianna pulled her eyes from the little girl to the man sitting beside her. From their position in the two seats by the window, and from Gray’s relaxed posture and closed eyes, Julianna guessed that the little girl was his. She wasn’t surprised he had a child, but one this old? How long had he mourned Ellie’s death? Six months? Three?
Julianna was almost close enough to touch him, although she had learned a long time ago that touching Gray wasn’t possible. Not really. There was no way to get to the man under the classically handsome facade, a facade that was aging just as flawlessly as she would have expected. Gray was what, thirty-one now? Thirty-one to her twenty-eight, ages when a woman passes the first flush of youth and a man comes into his power.
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