Fractured (Not Quite a Billionaire #2) Read online

  Hope

  “No,” I told Hemi.

  “No? Are you sure you want to say that to me?”

  Hemi, unlike most men, didn’t shout. Instead, his voice tended to get quieter and more controlled—if more Maori—the angrier he got. Which didn’t mean he looked any less powerful. Or call it what it was. Menacing.

  And despite that…

  I’d been scared plenty in my life. You bet I had. But about one thing, he’d been right. I’d never been scared that he’d hurt me.

  So I didn’t run away, not this time, and I didn’t walk out. I was dimly aware of Karen moving behind me, ducking out the back door, but I didn’t acknowledge her. Instead, I took two steps around the table, put my hands on Hemi’s forearms, looked up into his forbidding countenance, and said, “Hemi. I love you so much, and I want this to work between us more than I’ve ever wanted anything in my life except for Karen to be well. I’d do almost anything to make that happen. But I know that—I feel that—” I had to stop and breathe before I went on. I had to trust that I was right, and it was so hard to do. “That we have to be equal partners, and that’s going to be tricky, especially for you, but for me, too. I can’t let you run me over, because then I won’t be happy, and I won’t be able to make you happy.”

  “It’d make me happy right now for you to do what I say,” he muttered, but his face wasn’t quite so hard now. He felt, under my hands, like he wanted to hold me. So I found my courage and went for it.

  “What would make me happy,” I said, “would be for you to put your arms around me and tell me you love me, and that you’re willing to work this out with me.”

  “That’s what I just said.”

  “No. You said you’d do it. There’s a difference. Please, Hemi. Please hold me, because I’m so scared and sad right now.”

  His face twisted, and just like that, his arms had gone around me, and I was home. I wrapped my own arms around his neck, pressed my face into his broad chest, inhaled the clean, warm scent of him, and said, “Thank you.”

  “Aw, sweetheart.” His dark-chocolate voice went straight inside me and settled there. “You frustrate the hell out of me. What am I going to do with you?”

  “Love me, I hope.” The words came out a little tight, because that was how my throat felt. “Talk to me. Work with me.”

  “Right. Tell me how.”

  The relief was trying to make me shake. “I don’t know how. And I know I didn’t listen well enough last night, and that I embarrassed you just now in front of your grandfather, but it’s not going to work if I start out feeling wrong—or with you feeling wrong, either. I think it has to start with you listening to me and me listening to you. It starts with talking over our future, and Karen’s. What do you think?”

  “I think,” he said, his hand smoothing down my back, “that it’s a big ask, but I’ll do my best.”

  I stepped back, got both hands around his head and pulled his face down, and gave him a kiss. “Then I’ll go get dressed and pack a bag, and I think you should bring your laptop, and we’ll go to your hotel and talk it all out and write it down so we both remember.”

  “Thought you didn’t sign agreements.” He was still trying to look severe, but it wasn’t working.

  I smiled at him, and he didn’t smile in return, but the dark eyes looking back at me were so warm, it was as if he had. I told him, “I don’t sign the kind you put in front of me. I definitely sign the kind I work out with you. Because the truth is, I get so distracted when I’m with you, I can forget what you said. That’s what happened last night. And if I’m in a hotel room with you, that could happen again. There’s that one way you do overwhelm me and take me over, and in case I haven’t mentioned it—I love that, and I want it. But it makes me know that I’ll need a record.”

  “Ah.” It was a sigh, and his hand had gone all the way down to my bottom now, was rubbing over it, and squeezing some, too. “I’m going to have an exception clause in there, so you know. Into that not telling you what to do bit.”

  “Mm.” I pulled his sleeve up and nuzzled his heavy, tattooed bicep. “I love that exception. What was that you said? You’re driving, and I’m drawing the line.”

  “That’s how it works,” he agreed.

  “But sex isn’t real life.”

  “Real enough for me.” He gave me a hard slap on the bottom, smiled when I jumped, and said, “Go get dressed, or I’ll be making that exception right now, and wouldn’t that be embarrassing. That’s another reason we need the room. If I’m going to cede this much territory, you’re going to give me privileges in the rest of it. Call it compensatory damages.”

  When I went outside with Hemi fifteen minutes later, the guilt hit me hard. A cold, driving rain had blown in from the sea, soaking me instantly, and we’d left Karen and Hemi’s Koro out here.

  “Oh, no,” I said, pulling my hood up over my head. “Where are they?”

  Hemi had hold of my hand and was pulling me through the rain across the driveway. He shoved a door open, and there Karen and Koro were. In the shed, which was chilly, shadowy, and neat as a pin.

  Koro looked up from where he was crouched, apparently taking a lawnmower apart, by the looks of things. “Get it sorted, did you?” he asked.

  “No,” Hemi said. “But we’re going to.”

  “But we need to let you back in the house now,” I hurried to say. “I’m so sorry. Kicking you out of your own house. I didn’t even hear the rain.”

  “No worries,” Koro said. “Karen doesn’t melt, and neither do I. Anyway, I needed to do this, and she’s helping me.”

  “Well, not exactly,” Karen piped up from beside him. She was sitting on a box with her arms drawn around her thin knees. “You know, Hope, I never realized it, but we’re completely helpless. I don’t know how to fix anything. I don’t even know how to use any tools. I don’t know how to grow plants, or collect eggs from chickens, or catch fish, or anything, and you don’t, either. If our plane went down on a desert island, we’d die. I’m just saying.”

  “Reckon you’d better have Hemi with you, then,” Koro said, a twitch at the corner of his mouth belying his serious expression. “He knows how to do all that.”

  “Or I’d better teach you,” Hemi said. “In case you need to use tools or catch fish. You’re right. Everyone should know all that, though I’m not sure the chickens are strictly necessary. He kai kei aku ringa, eh, Koro.”

  “What does that mean?” Karen asked.

  Hemi said, “There is food at the end of my hands. Meaning that if you’re willing to work, you can feed yourself, and your family as well. Reckon I’d better show you how to do that, in case of that desert island.”

  “Seriously?” Karen said. “What all do you know?”

  He shrugged. “The usual. Basic repairs. Growing veggies. Fishing with a rod and reel. Spear fishing. Can you swim?’

  Karen sighed. “No. Hope can’t, either. See? We’d totally die. We wouldn’t even make it to land.”

  “Maybe we’d be wearing life jackets,” I suggested. Wait. Why were we talking about this?

  Koro eyed the bags in Hemi’s hand as if he’d had the same thought. “Going somewhere?”

  “Yeh,” Hemi said, sobering. “Hope and I have some talking to do, and I can’t keep you in the shed all day. I thought we’d leave Karen with you tonight, and then tomorrow, if Hope’s satisfied, I’ll take the two of them to Auckland for the day.” He looked at Karen. “We won’t be able to teach you to swim just yet. We’ll have to leave that for later. But depending how well I go with the rest of this, we’ll be able to buy you the best dress you’ve ever had.”

  “Cool,” Karen said. “If we get something that isn’t lame, I can wear it to prom in a couple years, if I go.”

  Hemi said, “First, it won’t be lame. You seem to forget that I’ve made a dollar or two dressing women. And second, you won’t be wearing it to prom, because it’ll be two years old and out of style. I’ll be designing someth
ing specially for you.”

  Karen was sitting up straight. “Seriously? You’d do that?”

  “Unfair,” I muttered. “Totally and completely unfair.”

  Hemi glanced down at me with a sardonic look in his eye. “Yeh,” he told Karen. “I would. I can see it now, in fact. Bronze. Silk taffeta, maybe, with a bit of body to it. Clean lines. And if it looks as good as I think? I’ll put it in the line, and you can know that you inspired it. What d’you reckon? Could be that college fund right there.”

  “Digging yourself in deeper,” I told him.

  “Nah.” He had my hand in his and was turning toward the door. “Marshaling my forces.”

  Hemi

  I took Hope out of the garage and hustled across to the car with her, got her inside, then slung our bags into the boot.

  “You know,” I told her when I was turning the key and switching the heat to full, “you might be more effective in these negotiations if you weren’t wearing polka-dot gumboots.”

  She stretched her legs out in front of her and looked with obvious satisfaction at the white dots on their red background. “I think I can be effective. I’ve got a secret weapon. And I love these. They could be my favorite things you’ve bought for me.”

  I sighed in resignation, and she said, “Except my bracelet, of course. Do you want to know why I love that so much?”

  I thought, Not because it cost over two hundred thousand dollars, I’ll bet, but I didn’t say it. I didn’t ask her what her secret weapon was, either, because I already knew. That I couldn’t resist her, and couldn’t deny her anything. “Can’t wait to hear,” I said instead.

  She said, “Because you told me it meant ‘I love you.’ That was the first time you said it.” She wasn’t close enough to suit me, but she had her hand on my thigh all the same as I turned into the road and headed north.

  I cleared my throat. “You say I’m unfair promising Karen a prom dress, and then you come up with that. Not to mention putting your hand on me. But since you bring it up—just see how much your engagement ring is going to mean ‘I love you.’ Wait and see.”

  “I’m not even going to answer that,” she said. “You appeal to all my lower instincts, that’s my problem. You make me want sparkly things, and expensive wine, and orgasms that half kill me. Not to mention the worst one. To be held and babied and taken care of.”

  She didn’t take her hand off my thigh, though, and I didn’t tell her that I wanted to give her all those things, and to keep on doing it. This was meant to be a negotiation, which meant that the winner would be the one who needed it less.

  Yeh, right. I was a dead man.

  It was still raining hard when I pulled into the carpark of the Oceanside Resort in Mt. Maunganui. “Oh,” Hope said, “it’s on the beach. That is gorgeous.”

  I gazed doubtfully at the view before us. “Yeh,” I said. “If it stops raining, we can go for a walk.” Just now, the wind was blowing, the foaming breakers were crashing into the shore, and it wasn’t looking like any kind of lovely walk to me.

  Of course, she said, “I don’t care if it’s raining. I want to walk anyway. But we have to do this first.”

  When we were finally in our suite, though, she didn’t seem to know how to begin. She looked around after taking off her gumboots and anorak at the door and said, “It’s nice.”

  I sat down on a black leather couch that looked out over the view of pounding surf and gray skies, pulled my laptop from its case, and set it on the black lacquered coffee table. If I took control, I might be comfortable again, though I doubted it. I opened my laptop and said, “Come sit by me, and we’ll start this.”

  She hesitated, hovering between my couch and the other one, set at right angles to it. “Maybe I should be over here, to stay…strong, you know. I don’t really know how to do this.”

  “Luckily,” I said, “I do. You said we had things to decide. Start by telling me the ones you’ve thought of, and we’ll write them down and go from there. But you need to sit by me so you can see what we’ve got, and what I write.”

  She took a breath and did it, and I relaxed a fraction.

  “Well?” I asked, once I’d opened a new document.

  “Uh…” She was nibbling at her full lower lip, her soft hair falling in a pale, tumbled cloud from the humidity, her perfume delicate and floral, and maybe having her beside me didn’t give me as much of an advantage as I thought.

  It was that secret weapon. It was a killer.

  I waited, practicing calm and stillness, not betraying my weakness, and she finally said, “Money. That’s pretty much it. It all comes down to money. And Karen. Taking care of her.”

  I wrote it down, and she said, “What do you have?”

  “Sex,” I said. “Appearance.” I added those to the list.

  She stared at me. “Appearance? What, I have to look a certain way, or you’re not going to keep me? I’m not a trophy wife, Hemi. I don’t have the body for it, and I’m all done growing.”

  “We’ll get to it. No arguing before we get there. We’ll go in order. Yours first.”

  “You’re starting out lousy,” she muttered.

  I negotiated for the win, and I got it. It was best to have your opponent off-balance, flustered. But this win was different, and to get it, I had a feeling that I had to approach it differently, too. So I told her, “In a negotiation, you don’t tell the other person what you’re actually going for. You ask for everything, and then you work downward. You let them think they’ve won when they get you to accept what you wanted in the first place. But I’m going to break the rules and tell you exactly what I want. I want to put my ring on your finger, and I want you to want it there. I want to change your name, and then I want to go home with you and move you and Karen into my apartment. I want to come home from work and kiss you hello. I want you in my bed every night. And that’s all.”

  Her eyes were soft. Her brain, unfortunately, appeared to be completely unaffected. “That’s not all,” she said. “That sounds wonderful—even the name change part, which I should at least be deliberating—but you aren’t telling me all of it. You’re saying you are, but you aren’t.”

  She was getting narky, and so was I. What, that hadn’t been good enough for her? “What am I not telling you?”

  “How much control you want over what I do.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “No? Is it all right with you if I go to lunch with another man? How about dinner?”

  “No,” I said immediately.

  “See what I mean? You’re possessive, Hemi. Write ‘other people’ down on that list.”

  I scowled, breaking another rule—not betraying emotion. “I’m not negotiating that.”

  “Fine.” She hopped up. “We can leave.”

  I grabbed her hand and tugged her back down with me. “No threatening to walk out. Ground rules. We’re here until we’re done, and we both say that what matters most is being together.”

  “Even if,” she said, her blue-green eyes deceptively innocent, “we’re not married at the end of this trip? You’re not saying, ‘My way or the highway?’”

  I sighed. “I want to say it. You have no idea how much. But I’m not.”

  “Then I agree to those ground rules.”

  “Right.”

  She said, “So put ‘Other people’ down on the list,” and I did it. I didn’t want to, but I did.

  “Money first, then,” I said. “What about money?”

  “You have a lot more than I do.”

  “Yeh. I noticed.”

  “And you could think that gives you all the power.”

  “No worries,” I muttered. “I already got that.”

  “Good,” she said. “So how does the money thing work?”

  I blanked. “Dunno. How do you want it to work?”

  She stood up, and this time, I didn’t pull her down. There was a reason this had been the first thing out of her mouth.

  She paced to th
e window, stood looking out at the sea, and didn’t answer. Finally, I said, “Money is power. There’s no use denying it. That’s why I’ve worked so hard to get it.”

  “And it’s yours,” she said without turning. “I know that. Obviously.”

  “No,” I found myself saying. “It should be ours. It has to be ours. I don’t want you doing everything I’ve had to do to get it, or working as many hours as I have. I want you with me when I’m home. I want your company, and I want to know you don’t have to be exhausted and worried anymore. I want to know that I’m taking that burden off you, and I want you to know it, too, and to trust it. I want…” Children, I didn’t say, because we didn’t need any more complication today. Time enough for that later. This negotiation hadn’t been my idea, and if that wasn’t playing fair? Too bloody bad. “How about,” I said instead, “if we set up a joint account with our paychecks, took our expenses out of it—which includes Karen’s—and sat down every month to go through it together? And I set aside that college fund for Karen straight away, too, so you don’t have to think about that anymore?”

  She turned from where she’d been staring out at the blowing curtains of rain to stare at me instead. “How could you agree to that? To the checking account, I mean. That’s ridiculously unfair to you.”

  “I have investments.” That was one way of describing it. “This would be low risk for me even if you spent it all, which I know you wouldn’t.”

  I tensed, waiting for her to ask me how much I had, not sure whether I was willing to reveal that, but she didn’t ask. Instead, she said, “I’m not going to ask you about those, because they aren’t my business,” which more or less took my breath away. “Anyway,” she went on, “what you bring to the marriage is yours, right? Isn’t that how it works?”