His Christmas Present (2 page)

“Cool.” He tipped his head back on the headrest
as a wave of tiredness hit him. Jet lag, no doubt. It couldn’t be the pace of
life in the Northland. Even the staff at the tiny airport had been laid back,
shrugging off the plane’s late arrival with typical Kiwi indifference. And Sean
hardly seemed stressed, driving along happily at fifty in a hundred kph zone.
What was that—about thirty miles an hour? Jeez. And there weren’t even any
speed cameras to worry about.

What would it be like to get up every
morning and know your day involved driving to a field somewhere and hammering
nails into planks of wood until home time? No airports, taxis, extended
lunches, long business meetings in boardrooms, laptops, iPhones, annual reports.
No air conditioning, stewed coffee, dry sandwiches, or the cloying smell of
beeswax from the polished oak tables. No talking, talking, talking all day
until he thought he’d used every word in his vocabulary and would never be able
to utter anything ever again.

Actually, it sounded quite attractive now
he thought about it.

Then he sighed.
You’d soon get bored
,
he scolded himself. He was disillusioned and tired, stressed after the events
of the past few months, maybe a bit burned out, and he needed a break. But he
wasn’t due a mid-life crisis yet.

Sean glanced at him again.

Dion raised an eyebrow, sensing a question
hovering in the wings. “What?”

Sean’s brow furrowed. “Are you really not
going to ask after Megan?”

Dion blinked. He hadn’t asked about any of
Sean’s family yet—there had hardly been time for that sort of conversation. He stared,
surprised at Sean’s glare. And then realisation sank in.

Sean knew
.
Shit
. It had only
been the one night. They’d both agreed to keep it quiet. Why had she told her
brother?

Guilt filtered through him, and he had to
force himself not to squirm in his seat. He and Megan had had a fiery
relationship from the first moment he met her when he was twelve and she was
nine. Irritation and exasperation had eventually matured into a simmering sexual
attraction throughout their teenage years, and even though he’d tried his
hardest to remind himself that she was Sean’s little sister, he hadn’t been
completely shocked—and he suspected she hadn’t either—that when they bumped
into each other the previous Christmas, they’d ended up in bed.

Her passion and apparently genuine desire
for him had both shocked and thrilled him. He liked to think himself fairly
experienced in bed, but he could safely say that night had been the hottest,
most erotic night of his life. They’d practically set the bed alight, and he
suspected that if they’d lived in the same half of the world, it would have
changed their relationship forever, an irreversible chemical reaction, like
baking eggs and flour to make a cake. A hot, sexy, chocolate-covered and
caramel-filled sumptuous delight of a cake, but changed nevertheless.

Still, they
did
live on opposite
sides of the world, and it had only been a fling—they’d both accepted that.

He cleared his throat. “Of course I was
going to ask. I was just…building up to it. How is she?”

“Good.” Sean slowed at a T-junction, but
they hadn’t met a single vehicle on the way, so he didn’t bother stopping and
turned the car onto the main road to the bay. “Her paintings are really taking
off. She sells heaps of local landscapes at the galleries in town, and she’s
getting commissions now.”

“That’s great.”

“Yeah. She’s really good, Dion. People are
starting to take notice, you know? She’s been interviewed on national radio,
and she held art classes in Auckland during the winter.”

“That’s so cool.” He was pleased, but not
surprised. Megan had been painting the first time he saw her. He’d met Sean in
their first year at high school, and Sean had invited him home for tea. She’d
been sitting on the deck, trying to capture their Boxer dog on paper, and she’d
scolded it when it dashed off to greet them.

With a typical twelve-year-old boy’s tact,
he’d laughed at the brown smudges she’d made on the paper, and she’d threatened
to shove her paintbrush where the sun didn’t shine, earning her a telling off
from her mother. The memory still made him smile. Her feistiness seemed even
more prominent because it stood out against the disorder she’d had to fight
against her whole life, like a black cloud hovering in a bright blue sky.

“How’s she coping?” he asked. “With the
agoraphobia, I mean.”

“She’s good,” Sean said.

“I’m glad.” Dion had become aware of the
condition when she was eleven. They’d walked into town with a group of friends.
Crowds from the annual summer fair choked the town. They queued up to buy a
burger, and the unfamiliarity of the situation and the crush of bodies
triggered an attack.

He hadn’t known about her phobia at the
time, and the last thing he expected the spirited, lively girl to have was
panic attacks. Alarm shot through him when she turned white and started
shaking, her eyes widening with fear. But when Sean reacted not by making fun
of her but by announcing he’d take her home, Dion realised the seriousness of
the situation. He walked with them without asking, and they both held her hand
the whole way.

When she got home, she thanked him and
cried, and he hugged her. Her hair had smelled of strawberries, and his lips
had lingered as he kissed the top of her head for a few seconds longer than he
should have.

Was that when his obsession about her had
started? All those years ago?

“It got bad for a while,” Sean added, “around
the time she broke up with Cody. She told you about that in Prague, didn’t
she?”

“Yeah.”

So Sean definitely knew they’d met up the
Christmas before. For the first time in his life Dion thought he might be
blushing. Not banging your best mate’s sister was rule number one. No wonder
Sean had been cool when he got in the car.

“But she’s worked at it,” Sean continued. “She
has counselling, and they’ve taught her breathing techniques, that sort of
thing. She copes.”

“That’s good to know. I’m looking forward
to seeing her again.”

That was the understatement of the year.
Their coming together in Prague had been brief but momentous—like a
once-in-a-thousand-years alignment of two planets. He’d tried not to dwell on her
too much after they parted, but he’d spent more nights than he cared to
remember lying awake thinking about that night before Christmas. He couldn’t
deny to himself that he’d chosen to recuperate in New Zealand with the hope of
seeing her again.

“She’s at the house,” Sean said. “We’re
nearly there.”

Dion’s heart rate sped up at the thought of
seeing her again. For the first time since he left the UK, real pleasure surged
through him that he’d made the decision to go away. All the worries and stress
of the past few months faded. He had two whole weeks here to unwind, to catch
up with his mates and rediscover the friendships he hadn’t realised he’d missed
until he needed them. Two whole weeks to spend with Megan, maybe to explore
that relationship a little more.

Sean signalled at the turnoff for the
marina, drove about ten yards and then turned left into a tiny drive. The road
led steeply upward, and then the car crested the top of the rise.

Dion gasped. The long wooden house below
them lay at the top of a small bay. The hills surrounding the bay were
encrusted with palms, manuka trees and bush. A pair of brightly coloured rosella
parrots flew in front of the car, and when Sean pulled up outside and Dion got
out, he heard the tuis up high in the trees, their distinctive call sounding as
if they were saying
George! George!

“Wow.” He stared at the house. “You built
this?”

“Yep.” Sean practically burst with pride.
“You like?”

“It’s fantastic.” He hadn’t realised the
building business paid so well. “How much land do you have?”

“A couple of hectares. Not much.”

Not much? Dion tried not to exclaim out
loud. He considered himself fairly well off, but he’d only been able to afford
a small apartment in London. Although situated in Islington, one of the newly
transformed parts of the city, it had only a few rooms and no view to speak of.
It didn’t come close to what Sean had.

The front door opened and out came the
dark-haired woman he’d seen with Sean on Facebook. She looked less glamorous
than in her wedding photos, her hair pulled back in a ponytail and her face
free of makeup, but she was a pretty girl, with eyes creased into laughter
lines.

“You must be Gaby,” he said. Used to years
of meeting and greeting through the business, he smiled, walked up and extended
his hand. “I’m Dion.”

“Hey, Dion! I’m so glad you came.” She
ignored his hand and gave him a hug. Taken by surprise—how English had he
become?— he stood there awkwardly for a moment before putting his arms around
her and giving her a quick hug back. “It’s lovely to have you here,” she
continued. “Sean’s been so looking forward to it, and he’s told me so much
about you.”

“All good things I hope,” he said.

“Of course.” She grinned, then flicked Sean
a quick look. “Everything okay?”

“Yep. Lead on.” He gave a mysterious nod.

Was it his imagination, or did they both
look nervous?

She went into the house and Dion followed,
puzzling over their secret communication. But he forgot it instantly as he
found himself in a huge, open plan kitchen and living area with high ceilings
and shiny, kauri wood floors, the far wall completely made of large windows
that looked out over the small bay. “Wow!”

“I know.” Gaby laughed. “It took my breath
away when I first walked in. Sean wouldn’t let me see it until he’d finished it.”

 “It’s fantastic.” He opened his mouth to
ask her to show him around, but the words failed to come as his attention focused
on the person standing on the deck outside, overlooking the bay.

She hadn’t noticed him come in. He could
hear her singing, and it made him smile. She’d always been the same, her brain
like an iPod on shuffle. Now she was singing an old Dylan song,
I’ll be your
baby tonight
. Her husky voice sent a shiver down his spine. He remembered
that voice in his ear whispering erotic things he’d never have dreamed she’d be
brave enough to say to him.

He walked across the floor to the open
sliding doors. As he approached, she turned around, obviously hearing his shoes
on the wood.

Her eyes widened and her jaw dropped in an
almost comical expression of shock and surprise. Obviously, she hadn’t expected
him. Sean hadn’t told her he was coming.

Fuck.
Why?

He stopped walking and stared at her, his
heart hammering. She hadn’t changed much over the past year. Her hair shone the
light chestnut colour it had always been, and she’d pinned it up in an elegant
clip, leaving curly strands to frame her face.

She’d lost a little weight. She wore denim
cut-offs and a pink vest that clung to her breasts, and sparkly flip-flops, or
jandals as the Kiwis called them. She looked pretty and sexy, and an image shot
through his head of her that moment he’d spotted her Prague, stunning in the scarlet
coat, with the saddest look on her face he’d ever seen on anyone.

No, she didn’t look any different.

What
was
different was the baby she
held in her arms.

 Harry squirmed in Megan’s too-tight grip.
She forced herself to loosen her arms and concentrate on her breathing,
recognising the familiar feel of a hand around her throat, the pounding of her
heart that marked the onset of a panic attack. She closed her eyes for a
moment.
Concentrate. In through the nose, out through the mouth.
She would
not
faint, not while she held the baby.

She forced the wave of panic down as if it
were a large dog trying to jump up at her.
You can cope, you’re strong
enough to deal with anything now.
Her inner voice sounded weak and feeble
in her head, but she made herself repeat the words until the panic receded. It seemed
like minutes, but must only have been ten seconds or so.

Slowly, she opened her eyes.

Dion hadn’t moved. He stood three feet in
front of her, looking calm and cool in his chinos and crisp white shirt. Was it
really him, here in New Zealand? Surely he hadn’t come straight from the
airport? He could have arrived off a Milan catwalk, with his Ray-Ban sunglasses
resting on the top of his brushed back dark hair, and his flashy watch.

Jeez, the guy was gorgeous, mouth
wateringly so. She’d dreamed about him so often, but her imagination hadn’t
matched up to the real thing. Thoughts spun in her brain like a child’s
windmill in the wind. Last time she’d seen him, they’d had the hottest sex of
her life. She’d always suspected he’d be great in bed, and he certainly hadn’t
disappointed. She’d fantasised about sleeping with him since the age of
fifteen. It had been a dream come true that moment when he’d seen her as a
woman, not as Sean’s sister. The memory of the desire that had bloomed in his
eyes brought goose bumps out all over her skin.