Kiwi Strong (New Zealand Ever After Book 3) Read online

  Kiwi Strong

  New Zealand Ever After, Book 3

  Rosalind James

  Bellbird Publishing

  Copyright 2020 by Rosalind James

  People who say “love is trust” probably didn’t grow up in a cult.

  My name is Daisy Nabhitha Kittredge. I chose it myself. As an RN in the Emergency department in one of New Zealand’s largest hospitals, there wasn’t much left in me of the sixteen-year-old girl, covered from neck to ankle and not allowed to make eye contact with a boy, who’d run away with five dollars in her pocket and terror in her heart.

  Or maybe there was too much left of that girl, because I was still slow to trust. Slow to share. And a whole lot slow to get intimate. Which doesn’t put men off much, right?

  Unless the man’s a tough Samoan ex-rugby player with sweetness and strength to spare. One who keeps fronting up to help even when you tell him you don’t need it. And what’s even harder to resist—one who wants to help your sisters, too.

  I was going to end up sharing. I wasn’t going to be able to help it. But when my walls came down, would he want the person behind them?

  Also—who was the person behind them?

  Cover design by Robin Ludwig Design Inc., www.gobookcoverdesign.com

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  Author’s Note

  Epigraph

  1. When Life Curves

  2. The Body Goes

  3. The Next Thing

  4. The Whore of Babylon

  5. How to Be a Hero

  6. The First Step

  7. Return of the Hero

  8. Chastity Worthy

  9. Hope and Change

  10. Male Behavior

  11. Team Meeting

  12. The Devil’s Handiwork

  13. Water Over Stones

  14. All the Sexual Politics

  15. T. Rex

  16. That Wanaka Tree

  17. Food of the Gods

  18. Revelation

  19. Sparklers

  20. No Strings

  21. If I Had a Hammer

  22. The Bat Cave

  23. Not the Mole Hole

  24. Never Say Never

  25. Like a Brother

  26. Morning Light

  27. Spy Story

  28. Visitors

  29. No Florence Nightingale

  30. Puzzle Pieces

  31. Into the Sea

  32. Protect and Defend

  33. Rose Gold

  34. Not Quite a She-Devil

  35. Daisy: 0

  36. The Right Thing

  37. Courting

  38. A Rupture of the Fibrous Tissue

  39. Reshuffling the Deck

  40. Expectations

  41. Beat of a Heart

  42. Surprises

  43. Precautions and Plans

  44. Flowers and Wine

  45. Sixteen Again

  46. All the Time in the World

  47. Never Enough

  48. Joy

  49. Full Disclosure

  50. Pick-Up-Able

  51. Standoff

  52. Step by Step

  53. Sucking at Golf

  54. The Calm Zone

  55. The Plan

  56. You and Me

  57. Like a Superhero

  58. Kiwi Strong

  59. Same as It Ever Was

  Explore More

  A Kiwi Glossary

  Links

  Also by Rosalind James

  Acknowledgments

  Author’s Note

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Who we are in the present includes who we were in the past.

  - Fred Rogers

  1

  When Life Curves

  Daisy

  They say that the person you are is all about the person you’ve been. In my case, they’re probably right, because when my life shifted in an instant from “Going to Mount Zion to rescue my sisters” to “I’m in a submerged car,” I didn’t die.

  If I’d still been in the cult, I might have thought it was God’s will and drowned. Or, of course, I might just have panicked whilst trying to escape and then drowned. But then, if I’d still been in the cult, I wouldn’t have been driving a car at all. Also, I was too stubborn to give up that easily. That was why I wasn’t still in the cult.

  Obedient submission is a thing at Mount Zion. For women, that is. It isn’t a thing I have, fortunately.

  There was the man, too. I could have sat back and waited for him to rescue me, I guess. Maybe he would have. You’re better off rescuing yourself, though, in my experience.

  I was just south of Cromwell at the time. After midnight on a late-October Saturday, to be exact, after a full nursing shift in the Emergency Department. You could think it happened because I was tired, but I wasn’t, not really. I was used to hard work. I’d been working hard since I was six years old.

  The fog had started some kilometers back, drifting over the low ground beside the Clutha River like a fluffy throw. Now, it was more like a smothering wool blanket, and I’d slowed to a crawl, my fingers tight on the steering wheel, my headlights showing me the white stripe to my left that was the only thing keeping me on the road.

  Where was a handy truck when you needed one? Somebody whose reassuring red taillights you could follow?

  I’d been keyed up already. Now, I had to remind myself to breathe, to shift myself into the emergency-nurse head space. I wasn’t a frightened teenager anymore. I was a competent, independent woman with my own money and my own job and my own car. I was that worst of all things, in fact—a woman in trousers. The Whore of Babylon.

  Born to be bad. It was a cheering thought. I turned up the music and sang along. A strong woman belting out a song that sounded like empowerment. No, two strong women, because we were both singing. Yay.

  I’d made this drive through central Otago, from coastal Dunedin to the Southern Alps, a dozen times in the past couple of years, and not one time before that, not since I’d left Mount Zion twelve years ago with my twin brother. Sixteen years old, under cover of darkness, with five dollars in the pocket of my ugly brown dress. I’d thought I’d surely come back soon, because I hadn’t believed I could really survive life Outside, where the Devil reigned. I’d also thought I’d never come back.

  Neither thing had turned out to be true, which makes you wonder: how much of life do we spend pre-living things that never happen instead of living what’s in front of us?

  Not a minute more than I could help, that was how much. Not anymore.

  I was thinking that, dimly aware of the headlights coming up behind me but with every other bit of my attention glued to that white line, when my lights picked up a dark shape bursting out of the night and leaping across the road. My entire body jerked, my hands yanked at the steering wheel, and my foot slammed the brake pedal to the floor as whatever it was passed practically under my tires.

  No impact, though. I’d missed it. I started to sigh with relief.

  The sigh caught in my throat.

  When your car’s hit from behind, you don’t always register yourself going forward. You notice yourself going backward afterwards. That was what I felt. My head and back slammed against the seat, and the car spun around to the left.

  He hadn’t hit me straight on. He’d tried to go right, maybe. To go around me, but I’d swerved the same way myself. I knew that, because it was my job and my nature t
o notice things and break them down. That was how you figured out your next step.

  The car spun even as I tried to turn the wheel, and I felt the juddering, spongy movement under my right foot that was the antilock brakes engaging. Time passed, tick by tick, in dreamy nanoseconds as I spun like I was on a carousel, my headlights sweeping across a wall of thick gray. I felt the impact when the car’s wheels left the smooth tarmac and bumped over the grass, though. And I felt the change when the car began to slide backward as if the wheels were greased.

  Wet grass. Downhill. No traction.

  My foot was still on the brake. Over the speakers, the song had reached a climax, and the singer was belting it out, the noise filling my head. And I was sliding. Sliding. Leveling out, and … bouncing. Against something that gave under me.

  It was water.

  I was in the river.

  The headlights cut out, and then the radio did. Silence, but not, because I could hear the water around me. Not like rain. Nothing like rain. The darkness surrounded me, and my feet were so cold.

  They were cold because they were wet, and then my ankles were.

  I was trapped in my car with the doors locked, and I was sinking.

  Gray

  I drove through the fog and thought about nothing but the road ahead. I didn’t need to think about the meeting. I already knew what I would say to the former teammates who were now my chief investors. I already knew how I’d be, too. Direct. Open. Clear-eyed.

  Being a builder isn’t much like rugby, you could think, except that it’s exactly like rugby. You make a plan, and then you go out there, keep your head, and play what’s in front of you, because rugby games, like life, never go according to plan.

  Playing rugby and winning at rugby aren’t the same thing. The difference lies in how well you adapt. When life curves, you swerve. When the tackler comes at you, you sidestep, keep your legs moving, and find a new route. Well, if you’re a midfielder, you do. If you’re a forward, you do your best to run the other fella over instead. That way doesn’t work as well in business. That was why the boys with the low numbers on their jerseys were the silent partners in the background, and I was the nimble midfielder making it happen.

  I knew how to do this. I’d been as good at that deceptively quick, silky sidestep as anybody in the game, and better than most, and I was still good at it. I also knew this road like the back of my hand, fog or no fog, because I was an Otago boy born and bred. I still wasn’t taking anything for granted. I was paying attention, because this visibility was no joke.

  The only problem was the headache.

  It started the way it usually did, with shimmering bands of light at the edge of my vision, and a blind spot like a starburst in my left eye. I had some tablets in the glove box, though, and as soon as I got through the worst of this fog, I’d pull off the road and take one. The pain hadn’t come yet, but it was there, lurking just beyond the black curtain, and so was the vertigo.

  From working too many hours today, that was, even though I knew better. When you’ve had as many concussions as I have, you do tend to know better. Also from too much screen time and not enough to eat. All of that was fixable, though. I’d take a tablet, drive another hour, and go to bed. The meeting wasn’t until ten. I was used to pain, and I had time to get over this. Just another sidestep. Just another swerve.

  That was why, though, when the red brake lights came on in the gloom, I wasn’t as fast as usual. It was the lights that weren’t actually there, the ones shimmering around the edges, that distracted me into not recognizing what I was seeing.

  I did react, though. I was jerking the wheel hard to the right, preparing to swing around the other car, because my brain had already calculated that I couldn’t stop in time.

  The problem was, the other car went the same way. The heavy ute caught it solidly on the right rear bumper even as my foot tried to press the brake pedal straight through the floor, and the car started to spin. I was moving to the verge at the sight, getting out of the way. Punching the button for my flashers, getting ready to help as soon as the other car stopped.

  It didn’t stop, though. It turned a complete circle, turned some more, and slid backward straight off the road, the lights flashing from white to red to bright white again as it spun, making me throw a hand up in front of my eyes.

  It was going too fast. Unstoppable.

  Straight into the river.

  The two round lights winked out, and it disappeared into darkness.

  2

  The Body Goes

  Daisy

  By the time I realized I should have hit the button to open the window on my way down the bank, the time for wishing was over. The water was already past my ankles, and rising fast.

  Breathe. Think. Act.

  I reached behind me, found the headrest release button with my thumb, and pulled the whole thing up and out. My only hope.

  The water was to my knees.

  I couldn’t get out through the windshield. That could be true for the front windows as well, and I didn’t have time to find out. Although once I unfastened my seatbelt, I was hurting my chances in another way.

  No help for it. Rear window.

  The car was small. Fortunately, so was I. I shoved and kicked my way between the front seats into the back as the car rocked under me, knelt on the rear seat, flipped the headrest so I was holding the fabric part with two hands, reared back, and bashed at the rear window.

  Nothing.

  I was kneeling in water now. That was good, though. The car needed to fill more for this to work.

  I could do it. I was going to do it. I forced myself to wait until the water reached my chest, then hauled back and hit the window again, harder this time.

  A crack. I thought. No, definitely a crack, because water was trickling in through it. Good. Brilliant.

  The water was to my throat. Soaking me. Freezing me. Trying to drown me. I hauled back again and sent the thought out. I’m coming to get you, Fruitful and Obedience. Don’t worry. I’m coming. I focused all my energy on this moment, hauled in the deepest breath I had just before the water reached my nose, and slammed the metal rods against the window like it was my last act on earth. Like it was my victory.

  The glass pebbled into a thousand pieces, and I grabbed the edge of the window frame, forcing the cubes of glass to crumble, and fought the force of the water rushing in the rest of the way. Once it had equalized, I shoved myself up and out, turning, tucking, rolling until there was nothing holding me back.

  The cold punched into me like an avalanche, shocking me, numbing me. I didn’t fight it, or the current, either. I was still holding my breath. My lungs were balloons, and balloons rose.

  I rose.

  When my head broke the surface, I gasped, hauled in a breath, coughed, shoved the hair from my face, and looked around.

  Nothing but darkness. Black water. Gray fog.

  The highway was somewhere, though. I needed to find it, because when I got out, I was going to need help to survive. I turned, my limbs made clumsy by cold and shock, and saw it. A barely-there brightness in the gloom, or a lessening of the dark. That would be headlights.

  I swam to the light. No need to fight the current. I swam with it, angling my way toward the shore. I was slow, and I was struggling, but I swam anyway. I’d been slow before, and I’d struggled before, and I finished every time. In first place or in last, what matters is finishing, and I was going to finish this.

  Finishing is all about will, and all about pride. Even if you do it on your hands and knees.

  When you do triathlons, your life is about struggling. When you’re me, period, your life is about struggling.

  The body goes where the mind takes it. My mantra. I said it to myself, and I swam.

  My canvas trainers felt like lead weights, and the cold was a painful thing, like burning in a fire. I put my sisters’ little-girl faces out there beyond the light and forced my arms and legs to move.

  I wasn’t
dying like this. Not tonight.

  Swim.

  Something grabbed me. It had my shirt. Pulling me.

  I was caught. I was caught.

  No panic.

  No panic.

  Gray

  I was out of the ute the instant it came to a stop, grabbing the heavy torch from its mount, laying it on the seat, and yanking at my bootlaces.

  You can’t go in there, my rational brain, my rugby brain, tried to tell me. You don’t even know where they are. You’ll die for nothing.

  I saw them go in, and I’ll find them, my other brain, the one that answered to something higher than rugby, answered. I’ll find them, or I’ll die trying.

  Oh, God. What if there were kids in there?

  I was going in.

  I got the boots off, grabbed the torch, left the door of the ute open for extra light, and ran. Only a few steps to the bank, and I was sweeping the light over the black, rippling water the entire way, looking for bubbles. Looking for anything.