Found (Not Quite a Billionaire Book 3) (27 page)

“Pushing,” Karen muttered, and I laughed and said, “Always,” and Hemi shot a look at me that told me that was exactly what I was doing.

As for me? I went into the house, took a much-needed shower, lay down for a nap, and thought, before I fell asleep,
That’s how you do it, girlfriend. And that’s what Hemi gets for sending you to the Te Mana School of Negotiation.

That night, we had a hangi at June and Tane’s: an entire meal slow-roasted for hours under burlap sacking in an earthen pit without which any Maori home apparently would be incomplete. Well, any Maori home except one in Manhattan. I mostly spent my time tucking into succulent lamb and chicken, silken potatoes, kumara, and pumpkin, and thought how grateful I was not to be sick anymore. Meanwhile, Hemi talked to an incredible number of relatives, the “big whanau” that gave “extended family” a whole new meaning, Koro looked happy, Karen flirted with cousins she knew and cousins she didn’t and glanced sideways at Matiu too much, and Matiu didn’t come anywhere remotely close to Hemi or me. Which could have been the “she’s-mine” way Hemi’s hand kept going to the back of my neck, the alpha male testosterone waves that were practically pouring off him, or simply Matiu’s good sense. However it was achieved, family harmony was preserved and Koro was happy, which was what mattered.

The next morning, things took another turn. Hemi looked at me over breakfast and said, “Time to buy you some jeans you can button, I reckon, which means we’re shopping today. In Auckland.”

“Oh?” I took another hopefully-dainty bite of pancakes, caramelized bananas, and maple syrup, as a woman does who’s trying not to turn off her beloved for good by putting her face down onto the plate and shoveling everything in. “I’d say something snippy about your high-handed ways, but as it happens, I’d really like some jeans I can button. Plus, you’re much less restrained than I am, and I admit to some reprehensible pleasure of my own along those lines.”

“Which is a roundabout way of saying,” Hemi told Koro, “that Hope loves it when I buy her pretty things and spend too much money on her, but she reckons she shouldn’t.”

“Concussion’s all better, my son,” Koro said with a twinkle in his eye. “I don’t need you to explain what she said.”

“Ha,” Karen said with satisfaction. “Owned.”

“Are you OK staying here?” I asked Karen. “It’s your last day, so maybe you’d rather come to Auckland with us. We could get Tane or June to bring Koro his dinner.”

“No, we couldn’t,” Hemi said. “We’re going out to dinner as well, and then we’re staying over. It’s you and me today. Or mostly, because I invited Violet to have dinner with us. But I’m not leaving you tomorrow without knowing that I can look after you and that you’ll let me do it.”

“Sounds like a non-negotiable deal,” I said, attempting to find something wrong with his plan and failing completely. Violet? I’d love the chance to say “thanks” to Violet for that newspaper quote, not to mention pumping her about Anika. In the ladies’ room, maybe . . .

“That would be because it is,” Hemi said. “You said I took you for granted once I had you in my . . . apartment, and you were right. I’m not taking you for granted anymore, though. If you want me to set aside time for you, you’d better let me show you that I’m willing to do it, or I’m likely to fall back into old habits. That starts today.”

“Very forceful,” Karen said. “Very manly. Notice how I’m not acting all hurt that you don’t want my company, Hemi. Probably because being with you guys while you’re in makeup mode isn’t exactly my favorite thing. That’d be some fun day for me.”

“Probably,” I said, thinking once again how much my life had changed in a single short year. “Too bad I’ve got a fatal weakness for forceful and manly. And yes,” I told Hemi. “Oddly enough, I find that I’d be willing to go to Auckland and be hopelessly spoiled. Thank you for thinking of it.”

Koro didn’t say anything. He just did his benevolent-ancestor look and ate his pancakes.

I drove all three hours to Auckland, and Hemi let me do it. He didn’t even grab the armrest or press his foot obviously into the floor as if there might be an extra brake pedal there. Instead, he asked, once we were on the highway, “What kind of feedback do you want?”

I shot a lightning-quick glance at him, then resumed my Death Stare on the road. “That wasn’t what I thought I’d hear.”

“Reckon you may not know as much about me as you think you do. No point in my letting you drive if I put you off while you do it. Tell me your expectations, and I’ll tell you if they’re acceptable to me. If they’re not,” he said, anticipating my next question, “we negotiate.”

“All right, then." I slowed for a logging truck ahead of me and thought with a flutter of nerves about overtaking. “I’d like you to tell me if you think I’m doing something wrong, or not doing something I should. Like if I should be going faster, you can say, ‘Speed limit’s a hundred,’ or whatever. Calm, the way you do. If I should be in a different lane, you can say, ‘You can move over now.’ Just don’t yell at me and make me nervous. What do you think?”

“I think I can do that,” he said. And he did. I was sure he’d had to exercise some powerful self-control, but then, Hemi
had
some powerful self-control. All the same, when I pulled into the parking garage in Auckland’s Newmarket district after the most harrowing driving I’d ever done and inched the SUV into a spot that I’d have sworn was too small for it but Hemi said wasn’t, I turned off the car, handed Hemi the keys, put my face against the steering wheel, and had to take a moment.

“All right?” Hemi’s hand was on my back.

I nodded without lifting my head, he said, “Eh, sweetheart,” and I sat up and tried to laugh.

“One more checked off the list,” I said. “And next time will be easier.”

“You were brilliant,” he said. “The motorway, Auckland, and all. Ready for New York, I’d say.”

I laughed for real this time, though it still wasn’t quite steady. “Admit it. You were two seconds away from telling me to pull off and let you drive.”

“Could be. But I stayed two seconds away. And you’ve got courage to burn.”

“OK.” I reached into the back for my purse. “Please take me to buy clothes and keep saying nice things to me. In another hour or two, I might stop shaking. And thank you.”

“For what?”

“For loving me enough to keep your mouth shut.”

After that, it was lunch, during which I calmed down, and then it was shopping. Hemi took me first to EGG Maternity, which he’d clearly checked out already. At least, he seemed to know exactly what would work for me, because he went through the place like a Bloomingdale’s after-Christmas sale shopper on steroids, handing item after item to the bemused clerk, who looked as if she didn’t know what to make of him. Within an hour, I was outfitted as well as I could be, at least for this stage of the affair.

“We’ll do it again at six months,” Hemi informed me, watching, his eyes full of pure satisfaction, as I modeled a filmy blouse printed with camellias—a blouse I wanted to wear right
now,
because it made me feel pretty instead of pudgy, and graceful instead of awkward and off-balance. “This is the in-between stage.”

“Let me guess,” I teased. “Josh has become a pregnancy expert.”

“Nah. I have. Google is my friend.”

I stopped in the act of pulling on a stretchy red tee that promised to show off my growing bump in an entirely satisfactory fashion. “Really? You’ve been looking things up?”

“I have. I may have mentioned that I wanted this baby, and that I wanted you. If I haven’t, let me mention it now.”

“Huh.” It was a thought I could live with.

I wore my favorite outfit out of there—the flowered blouse and skinny jeans, though I craved kicky ankle boots to an unhealthy degree—and felt all the thrill of actually needing maternity clothes and wearing them, and of knowing that Hemi was just about as excited about it as I was.

“Next stop, lingerie,” he said. “Save the best for last, eh.”

“I have to admit,” I said, “that’s necessary. I don’t have anything left that’s pretty and fits. We’re in crisis mode.”

One second, I was talking to him. The next, I was talking to the air. I turned around, and he was staring at a store window. I had the only man in existence who window-shopped more than I did.

It was a high-end boutique, and
not
a maternity one. “What?” I asked, circling around back to him. “You get inspired again?”

“Nah.” Just like that, he had my hand and was pulling me into the shop. “Or yeh. One or the other.”

“What?” I was still saying, but Hemi was already approaching the sales clerk.

“That dress in the window,” he told her, and within two minutes, I was in a fitting room again, with Hemi zipping up the back of the most non-maternity dress you could imagine.

A beaded, sleeveless sheath in peacock blue, to be exact, ending in a scalloped hem four inches above my knee and with no room whatsoever for any future growth in the belly area.

“This would be fine,” I said, “for about two more weeks.” All the same, I couldn’t help running a hand over the iridescent beads that were laid out in a pattern as intricate as lace. “Although I’ll admit that I feel most deliciously mermaid-like.”

“Mm,” Hemi said. “Right, then.” Just like that, he was unzipping me again, and I couldn’t help a pang of disappointment. My beautiful mermaid tail, disappearing off me just because I happened to be growing an extra person. Well, it was over eight hundred dollars, and it was ridiculous.

I know you’ve guessed already. He bought it. Yes, he did. I didn’t get a vote. “I don’t have shoes, though,” I objected weakly as he pulled out his credit card yet again and I tried to be bothered by that. “I didn’t bring anything nearly dressy enough to New Zealand, clearly.”

“I’ll do the shoes.” He didn’t look up from the card slip he was signing in his black, forceful scrawl. “You do the lingerie. Bendon, about six doors down. I’ll meet you there. High heels OK, or will they bother you? Balance and all?”

Oh, man. High
heels.
I’d been bicycling to work and wearing jeans for weeks. Now I had a mermaid dress, and I was getting spectacular shoes, too. I just knew it. “Unless you’re making me walk,” I said, “they won’t bother me. If we’re talking about me feeling do-me-right-now-please-sir sexy, and you looking at me and thinking the same thing, they
really
won’t bother me.”

His gaze heated up by about ten degrees. “That’s what we’re talking about.”

“Then,” I said, trying and failing to keep my breath from coming faster, “high heels work.”

He didn’t smile. He just gave me his best dark smolder and said, “Go buy lingerie, then. Make it good.”