Authors: Kate Silver
After so many years away from his home town of Taupo, so many years without seeing or even hearing of Verity Samuels,
he’d
been surprised at the changes that time had wrought in her, that’s all.
In her severe suit and her long dark hair twisted into a plain bun at the nape of her neck, she looked completely different from the girl he had known ten years before.
Ten years ago, she had worn little other than cut-off denim shorts and T-shirts, her long, curly hair pulled back with a simple rubber band into a ponytail.
He’d
loved to free her hair from its rubber band and run his hands through the dark waves as it fell over her brown, suntanned shoulders and down the smooth olive skin of her back.
Nowadays she looked as if she never wore her hair loose any more.
He tightened his grip on the steering wheel.
It was just as well they had both grown up since then.
He needed her as the woman and therapist she was now, not as the girl she had once been.
That girl he had once thought he knew was nothing more than an illusion – the product of his self-delusion and blindness.
He had projected his own needs and desires onto her, and had imagined
she’d
reflected them back at him - and he had fallen in love with that reflection.
But
all he had seen and loved was a being of his own creation, and not her at all.
The reality of her character, her shallow selfishness, her deception, her utter lack of a heart, had proven a heartbreaking disappointment.
He could only hope that she had rather more substance behind her now.
At any rate, now that he knew the real Verity that lay behind the pretty facade, he was not going to
be easily taken in
by her again.
He could have forgiven her everything but for her lack of emotion.
She simply
hadn’t
cared – not about him, not about his love for her or the promised they made to each other, not about anything.
That, more than anything else, had finally killed his love for her.
He shot a sideways glance at her as he drove along.
She
was huddled
up in his old plaid blanket as if it were her lifeline to survival.
Given the light clothes she was wearing, in
this
weather it probably was.
His old plaid blanket.
It was old and moth-eaten now, but somehow it had survived the last decade relatively unscathed.
He hadn’t kept it on purpose – he’d simply left it behind when he’d moved off first to Sydney and then to New York, as he’d left behind everything else that mattered to him.
Seeing her there, wrapped in his blanket,
brought
back so many bittersweet memories.
That summer, ten years ago, when he had been young and naive and willing to believe the lies she had whispered into his ear, they had taken it everywhere with them.
They’d picnicked on it in the sunshine by the lake, wrapped it around themselves as they sat out in the darkness to look at the stars, and made love on it more times than he wanted to remember.
He wondered if she recognized it.
Seeing the way she burrowed eagerly into its warmth, he decided it was unlikely.
She appreciated it only for its current use rather than for any associations it might have held for her.
After all, the summer they had spent together meant nothing to her, as she had been at pains to tell him at the end of it.
With those heart-rending words, she had not only broken his heart, she
had utterly
destroyed his faith in love and goodness.
Why would she remember the rug they had shared, when
she’d
managed to forget so completely everything else that the two of them had once shared?
Chapter 2
They had long left the outskirts of the town behind them now, and were winding their way past patches of native bush, fields full of grazing sheep, and the large pine tree plantations on which much of the wealth of the region depended.
They drove in silence; the only noises the whistling of the wind through the pine tress, the patter of the occasional light burst of rain on the roof of the car, and the intermittent swish of the windscreen wipers.
Little as she wanted to make polite conversation with Taine just for the sake of it, eventually Verity
couldn’t
bear the oppressive silence any longer.
“How is your father doing?” she asked, as much to break the silence as to get any substantive information.
“Surviving,” was the less than helpful answer.
“I figured that much out by myself,” she retorted, irritated by his unhelpful attitude.
He seemed to have forgotten that she was the one doing him a
favor
, not the other way around.
“I’ve never been called on to give physiotherapy to someone who hasn’t.”
“Funny,” he said sarcastically, looking like he would rather murder her than anything else.
“Be unhelpful, then,” she muttered quietly to herself to relieve some of the tension that was building up inside her.
“And see if that helps your father any.”
He had some nerve looking so
black,
she fumed next to him in the passenger seat.
She
didn’t
want anything to do with him.
He
was the one who had come to seek
her
out.
In the nine
years
since she had last seen him she had gotten her life together.
By dint of pure hard work,
she’d
finished her education and gotten herself a decent job.
She’d
worked hard for it all – harder than he had worked, she’d bet, even though he was a millionaire several times over and she was just scraping by.
What right did he have to come back into her life now, when she had no need of him, now that she no longer wanted him?
She had no desire to
be reminded
of the past they had once shared.
That part of her life was over.
She ignored the niggle of fear in the pit of her belly that told her he had one indisputable right to come back into her life at any time he wanted - and had had that right for the last nine years.
He had not taken up his right.
For that, she could never forgive him.
Never had he shown the least bit of interest in Aroha, in his child.
In
their
daughter.
It was as if her precious girl
didn't
exist for him.
Even now, after an absence of nine years, he
didn't
so much as ask about Aroha or how she was doing.
She bit her tongue to stop herself from scolding him, from screaming out the rage she felt in her heart.
If he
wasn't
going to ask about his daughter, she would die rather than volunteer anything.
She hated his indifference to his own flesh and blood - it was needlessly cruel, and had deprived an innocent Aroha of half her family.
The poor child could not help the accident of her birth.
As far as she was concerned, it was too late for him to make up for the last nine years of utter neglect with some fake show of concern now.
Mind you, she would prefer it if he showed a small amount of interest and concern, fake as it may be.
Some
sign that he knew he was a father would be welcome.
Some
small sign that he
wasn't
a heartless bastard who cared nothing for his own flesh and blood.
His voice broke into her thoughts.
“So, what do you want to know about my father, then?”
She dragged herself out of her growing anger and back to her professional duties.
“How much has he lost physically?
How much do the doctors expect he will recover over time?
Is his mind affected at all, other than the depression
you’ve
already mentioned?
How is he coping?”
Taine’s answers to her questions, tersely spoken as they were, occupied the rest of the journey to the Hunter homestead.
Verity was glad of the pen and paper she carried with her.
Writing notes on her latest patient kept her mind on the
task at hand
and off her worries.
She could not help but grow increasingly tense as they approached the homestead.
She had only ever set foot in it twice before, and each time she had been made to feel intensely unwelcome.
Even though this time she was here in her professional capacity, she
couldn’t
help but feel like an intruder still.
At
last
they turned off the road and onto the private tree-lined avenue that led to the front door.
Nervous as she was about entering the Hunter house once again, she was glad at least that the enforced closeness with Taine was nearly at an end.
They had been breathing the same air for far too long for her peace of mind and all of her nerve endings were screaming with the desire to escape from his presence.
When the car finally rumbled to a halt, she tripped over her own feet in her haste to get out.
She
didn’t
know how he had managed it but he was there before her, catching her arm to steady her so she didn’t fall.
She righted herself at once, pulling away from him and brushing down her skirt with shaking hands, trying to keep her professional cool.
“Thank you,” she said formally, bravely attempting to maintain the shreds of her dignity in the face of her awkwardness.
He had not taken his hand away from her arm, but stood there immobile, just holding her.
The touch of his hand on her arm burned right through to her skin.
She took a shaky breath.
He had not touched her in ten years.
Abruptly, he let her go again, turned away and strode wordlessly towards the house.
Her skin still burning from the heat of his touch, she stood and watched him take a few strides before starting to follow.
Physically, he
hadn’t
changed at all in the last ten years.
His hair was still a warm, deep brown the
color
of a
newly-ploughed
field of rich soil, even though he wore it fashionably short now, instead of in a mess of curls as he once had.
His shoulders were, if anything, broader than before, and his arms more thickly muscled.
That could be due to the heavy jacket he was wearing, she supposed, but
more than likely it was the difference that ten years made
.
Though his hips were as slim as ever, the last ten years had filled out his frame and given it a look of finish and maturity that sat well on him.
He still smelled the same as well – she had noticed that as soon as he had come close enough to touch her.
She’d
always liked the way he smelled – a hint of sandalwood soap, a touch of fresh-cut grass, but most of all of something indefinably male.
Ten years ago,
he’d
been a young man not long out of adolescence, with all the poise and arrogance of youth.
Now he was a man of thirty-one with the poise that came of experience, as well as the arrogance, it was quite clear, of the self-made millionaire.
He made her feel insecure and gauche all over again, just as she had felt when they had first met.
It seemed he had a knack for it…
She was not quite eighteen when she first met Taine Hunter – or at least when he had first acknowledged her existence.
She’d
finished her school exams and was spending the summer working in the vegetable market on the main road out of town, and saving every last penny she could.
Come the end of summer, at the start of the academic year, she was planning to leave home and go off to the capital city, Wellington, to university.
Her mother, she knew, could not afford to help her out with university fees or her living expenses while she was studying, but she was determined to press on regardless.
She was determined that she would be the first of her family to break out of the cycle of poverty that had kept her mother and her grandmother trapped in casual, minimum wage jobs all their lives.