Just Once More (Escape to New Zealand Book 7) Read online

  “No,” she said. “No, please. Talk about it. I want to be…part of it. If it’s hard—well, some things are hard. Everybody here probably knows that. That doesn’t mean I have to run away, or that I can’t enjoy myself. That I can’t enjoy being here with all of you.” She tried to mean it. She had been enjoying it, but there was no escaping the pain, either. Still. Always.

  “No worries,” Reka said. “You’re part of it. No escape. Marry this bad boy, and you’re part of us.” Her nod was as firm as her voice, and Josie thought she was surely going to cry now.

  “I know about that, too, wanting to be part of it,” Jenna said. Josie could tell from the look Jenna shot her, the final press of her hand, that she was taking the spotlight off her, and she was grateful.

  “I had the opposite thing, you know,” she told Josie. “I wasn’t sure if…everyone would accept me either, because I was different too. In a different way. I wondered if they’d think that Finn married me just because I was pregnant.” She had a couple spots of color on her cheeks now. “True confessions, except it isn’t, because everyone here knows it, except maybe you. It’s no secret that we didn’t have Lily after ten months. We had her after six. And I wasn’t sure how that would go over. With anyone. I know it was tough at the school dropoff, because I was Finn’s nanny. Guess everyone knows that too. All the mums sure did. When I turned up that first day with the kids, after the holidays, with the ring, and the belly…”

  “And with me,” Finn put in, his face set in the hard lines that showed exactly how he’d earned his fearsome reputation. “And nobody said a bloody thing, did they?” He looked like he wanted to punch somebody right now, and Josie’d have bet that nobody had ever said a thing, not when he was around.

  “Not to you,” Jenna said, echoing Josie’s thoughts. “And not to my face. But I knew what they were saying behind my back. And I was so afraid that all of you would be saying the same thing,” she told the others. “Since I’d only met any of you as Finn’s nanny. That first barbecue, at your house,” she told Drew, “that was rough.”

  “Nah,” he said with the gentle smile that had come as a surprise to Josie. “No worries.”

  Reka snorted. “Oh, yeh. You should have told me this sooner. I could’ve set your mind at rest. Think we knew you were more than the nanny a good long time before that.”

  Jenna looked startled. “You did? But you couldn’t have. We didn’t even…we weren’t even…”

  She was redder than ever, and Finn chuckled, his expression having lost the frost. “You’re reckoning without Reka’s magical powers.”

  “Such a thing as chemistry,” Reka went on, ignoring him. “And we’re not blind. So tell us. What did happen, with the wedding and all? All we knew was, Finn was at Koti’s wedding alone one month, as usual, and the next thing we knew, Hemi tells me he’s turned up at training the next month with a shiny ring on and his mouth shut, again as usual. Or else Hemi just didn’t ask,” she said with a reproving glance at her husband, who was laughing now. “All I got was that Finn was married, and who he’d married, which wasn’t exactly an earthshaking surprise, like I said. But seems Hemi didn’t bother to get any more info than that. I didn’t know about the baby until you turned up at that first game.”

  “Imagine depriving you like that,” Hemi said with a shake of the head. “All that time wasted, when you didn’t know the whole story. What was I thinking? I know you’ll be shocked to learn this, but we don’t actually sit around the gym and open our hearts to each other. I didn’t know because Finn didn’t tell me.”

  “Really?” Jenna looked at Finn, who was smiling now along with the rest of the men. “You didn’t tell them?”

  “Of course I didn’t tell them,” he said in exasperation. “Not their business, was it. It was your story to tell or not, anyway, not mine.”

  “Well, since Finn deprived us then,” Reka urged, “tell us now.”

  Jenna looked around. It felt…bare, to share this with them. But look at what Josie had shared. There were no real secrets here. They all knew she’d been the nanny, and unless their math skills were seriously deficient, they all knew when she’d got pregnant.

  “When we got…engaged, I guess you’d call it,” she said slowly, “we were in Motueka, near Finn’s family. And we didn’t have anything. Any friends around. Anybody but his family. Any plan, any way to do it. I mean…” She looked at Finn for help.

  “Any clothes,” he put in helpfully. “No clothes to get married in. And Jenna didn’t have many clothes left at all, by the time I got through with her. And what d’you mean, ‘I guess you’d call it?’ I did my best. Got down on a knee and all. I did the business.”

  She laughed, even though she was embarrassed, and everybody else lost the slightly shocked expression and laughed along with her. “Except that you were down there already. And it wasn’t…like that,” she explained, flustered, because, well, it had been a bit like that. “With the clothes, I mean. It’s just that it was all a bit of a surprise.”

  Finn snorted. “Yeh. You could put it like that.”

  “I’d call it a surprise and then some,” Finn went on, and Jenna sat back, listened to him tell the story, and remembered.

  His sister Sarah had brought Harry and Sophie back to the little holiday park office that Christmas day, nearly three years ago now, after Finn had made his unconventional proposal, and Jenna, to her own shock, had accepted him. There’d been some tearful hugging and kissing, and Finn had contributed his fair share of the tears, because Finn was like that.

  “So that’s all good,” Sarah had said with satisfaction after everyone’s tears had been dried, everybody was happy again, and the kids were getting busy with their ice blocks. She went to the door and flipped the sign from “Closed” to “Open.” “Finally, and it’s all happened just because I’m so good. So what’s the plan now?”

  Jenna looked helplessly at Finn. “I don’t know. I can’t just leave Sarah. Not at Christmas, with nobody else to help here.”

  “Bugger that,” Finn said roundly. “You’re going to leave her. She’ll manage.”

  Jenna was laughing, and crying a little again too, because she couldn’t help it. She’d been so tired, and so sick, and so sad for so long, and the sudden change was almost too much to take. “I can’t just leave you,” she told Sarah. “Not when you’ve been so kind. Not right before Boxing Day, the moment it gets busy.”

  “Too right you can,” Sarah said. “And you’re going to. Think this is the first time Kieran and I have been left to shift for ourselves? And here it is for a happy reason, not because some flaky backpacker met a fella she fancied and did a runner. I’m sacking you now. Right now. This minute. The kids are going to help me in here for a bit, and Finn’s going to help you pack up your things, and I’m going to ring that girl who was in asking about a job the other day and tell her she’s got one. So go on, get out of here, because you’re sacked, and I need my cabin back today.” She was trying to glare, but it wasn’t coming off too well.

  “And then we can go to the beach,” Harry said happily, his mouth stained red from the ice block he’d just finished. “And Jenna can come! We can show you our swimming! You can do a lesson!”

  There had been no arguing, not with Finn’s considerable authority backed up by his equally determined sister, not with Jenna’s own willful heart overriding every responsible scruple. Ten minutes later, she was in the tiny staff cabin she shared with a German girl, emptying her possessions into her single suitcase. And Finn was eyeing her few items of clothing with disgust.

  “Thought you’d given up wearing things that are too big for you,” he said, holding out a pair of baggy green shorts that earned themselves a withering frown.

  She grabbed for them, tugged when he held on, and had to laugh. “Finn. Give them to me. I won’t have anything to wear. I had to get rid of a lot of things, because nothing fit, and I didn’t have a lot of money to shop. I had to take what I could get.”


  He yanked the shorts out of her grasp and stuffed them firmly into the rubbish. “That’s it. We’re leaving the kids here, flying to Auckland tomorrow, and doing some shopping. I’ve got something I need to buy there anyway, a ring I’ve got to put on somebody, and I’m not having my wife looking like she got dressed out of the rag bin.”

  My wife. She stopped packing, and he saw the expression on her face. His own face softened, and he pulled her into his arms.

  “I like the sound of that,” he told her. “Hope you do too, because we’re getting married inside a week, I promise you that. I’ve learned my lesson. I’m not letting you go again.”

  “Yes,” she said, hiding her face against his shoulder so the words came out muffled. “I like it. I do.”

  “Crying again, eh.” He cuddled her a bit more, stood back a pace, laid one big hand across her belly, felt the swelling there, so distinct now.

  “I want to see you show this off,” he told her gently. “I want to buy you some better clothes so you can do it properly, so you can feel pretty. Because you’ve been hiding it, haven’t you?”

  She wiped her eyes and nodded, unable to say more. She didn’t have to anyway, because he knew, and he knew what it had cost her to do it.

  “Then let’s get this done,” he said, “because I want to take you swimming in those pretty togs of yours, see this little belly we made.”

  She laughed through the tears that still flowed, because the feeling of him touching the place where their baby grew was so precious. Something she’d never, ever thought she’d get to feel.

  “I don’t have that one anymore, though,” she told him. “Your favorite. I’ve bought that other one instead, the one you wanted at the beginning. The navy-blue one with the little skirt.”

  “No.” He looked truly horrified, and she had to laugh again.

  “It was the only one in the shop that fit.” She cupped a breast, more generous than ever now, and if she was teasing him a little, well, she was entitled. “I’m hard to fit. Especially now.”

  He was smiling, and then he wasn’t. Finn had never been slow on the uptake. His reaction time was legendary, and right now, he was reacting to her. Before she could do more than blink, he had her hauled up against him with one big arm, had the other hand behind her head, and was kissing her like he meant it.

  That was fine with her, because she meant it too. Her body was responding to him in the same way it always had. More, because every single one of her hormones seemed to be springing to life and demanding that he touch her body. Right now. Everywhere.

  She’d tried to forget this. She’d tried so hard. And she hadn’t even come close.

  “I want to be romantic,” he groaned against her mouth, “but could we take that as read? Because I need to touch you. I haven’t made love to you since…”

  “October thirtieth,” she said with a gasp as his mouth reached her throat, at the faint scratch of whiskers against her skin, because Finn’s beard grew so fast. At the feel of him, the size of his shoulders, the breadth of his back under her palms. The strength and bulk of him so comforting, and so thrilling at the same time. “But…ah…who’s counting.”

  He was pulling her onto the narrow bottom bunk with him, ducking to fit. “I love you. I do. But I need to be inside you.”

  She couldn’t answer, because she was too busy pulling his shirt up over his head, shoving him down on the bed, running her palms over the light furring of hair on his chest, sinking her teeth into the heavy muscle of his shoulder and hearing his indrawn breath, his start of surprise.

  She bit again, excitement at what she was doing mixing with the thrumming of nerve endings everyplace he was touching her. He was reaching for her too, his hand diving inside the neckline of her dress to cup a breast, stroke her there, needing to hold her as much as she needed to touch him.

  “Hungry?” he asked, his voice coming out a little strangled at the feel of her teeth on his skin. “Or just…ah…taking it out on me?”

  She didn’t answer right away, just rolled so she was on top of him, bit him hard again, then kissed the spot, taking satisfaction in seeing the faint red mark her teeth had left. Up the bulky line of shoulder to the broad column of his throat, and she had to bite him there too.

  He tasted like salt and man. He tasted like Finn, and all she wanted was to explore that big body with her hands and her eager mouth.

  “Both,” she told him. If he needed her, she needed him just as much. “Hungry for you, and taking it out on you too. I’m going to take it all out on you. I’m going to make you sorry.”

  She could feel what her words did to him, and she smiled in satisfaction, did some more biting, could feel from the strain against her how hard he was working to hold himself back, how much he wanted it.

  She had his clothes off before he did hers, did as much touching and kissing as the tiny space allowed before he caught up, and, finally, overtook her, exactly as she’d known he would. Before he’d rolled her again, had wrestled her clothes off with a few choice words, and had reminded her of what she’d been missing.

  The bed was much too small for him, and by the time they’d finished, he’d banged his head on the upper bunk, his elbow against the wall, his foot against the post. And none of it seemed to matter to him one bit.

  They did the best they could, and if he swore from time to time along the way, it was nothing to what came out of his mouth when he was over her, sliding into her, moving in her, going so deep, and still taking care not to be too rough. Taking too much care, until, at last, she wrapped her arms and legs around him and urged him on, because she needed more.

  “Harder,” she gasped. “Finn. Harder. Please. Do it hard.”

  “Don’t want to…hurt you,” he managed, and she could feel the restraint, the tension in the shoulders she was gripping with all her might.

  She ran her hands down the length of his spine, back up again, faster and faster, then slid them down to the powerful buttocks, took one in each hand, and tried to force what she needed from him. “I need it harder,” she told him fiercely. “Do it.”

  He growled. Actually growled. Deep and rough, and she got what she wanted. Everything she wanted. All of him, no holds barred. All the way.

  It was a squeeze, when he had rolled off of her again. Finn in a narrow twin bunk bed didn’t leave much room for her at all. Which meant they had to snuggle.

  He got his breath back, laughed a little.

  “What?” she asked, trailing her hand down his side, touching his big body just because she wanted to. “I’m funny?”

  “Nah. Even though you are. Who knew my sweet, sexy nanny would turn out to be so…demanding? I’m going to make you kiss every one of those marks you made. So you know. Something to think about while we have that swim. Before I take you to bed again tonight and show you exactly how much I’ve been missing you, once I have room to…” He smiled. “Express myself. But nah. I was laughing because I was just thinking—so much better without the condom. Hell of a way to get to feel you like that. And there I was, being so careful all that time, when I could’ve had all that. Just as well, because I’d never have let you out of bed.”

  “It really feels that much better?” Her hand was still stroking his shoulder, exploring everyplace she could touch, because she couldn’t stand not to do it.

  “Oh, yeh,” he assured her. “Feels so good, I’m going to have to have it again just to make sure. As soon as possible. Tonight.”

  He gave her a final lingering kiss, ran his hand over her as dust motes danced in a shaft of sunlight that fell in a bar across her body, a diagonal stripe over her full white breast, her rapidly disappearing waistline. He followed that line of sunshine with his hand, and she shifted a little under the caress of warm sun and warmer hand. Big and hard, just like all of him. All except his deceptively soft heart.

  How she’d missed that hand, that heart. She’d never thought she’d feel his touch again, and her eyes filled with tears once more
at having him back, at knowing she could keep him. That he was here, and this was real.

  “What, the thought of being in my bed that bad?” he teased gently, his hand going up to wipe away the treacherous moisture that spilled down her cheek. “If I’m not doing it right anymore, you don’t have to cry. All you have to do is tell me what you want, and you know I’ll try harder for you.” He smiled down at her, gave her a kiss on the forehead.

  She laughed, though it came out a little shaky. “Yeah. I definitely think you should try harder. Because you didn’t satisfy me nearly enough. Maybe after two or three more times, though, it might get tolerable again. Though you may need to do it a different way next time. You know, keep me from getting bored.”

  His deep chuckle was her answer. “You know I’ll be doing it some different ways. Soon as we’ve got a bed I can move in. But come on.” He gave her a gentle slap on the bum. “Rattle your dags. Sarah’s going to think we’ve eloped right now.”

  “Oh,” Jenna said with a smile of her own, “I think Sarah’s going to have a pretty good idea of why packing took us so long.”

  He laughed again. “You could be right at that. And we don’t even have to hide anymore. Though I’ll admit that sneaking around had its moments. Come on. I’ll help you pack your things.”

  And he did. Well, if “help” meant “throw most of them away,” because that was what he did.

  He was especially caustic about her underwear. “Thought we were done with this industrial-strength stuff,” he complained, holding up a white bra that wasn’t going to be featuring in anybody’s fantasies, a sturdy pair of white cotton briefs. One dangling from each hand, until he tossed them with decision into the rubbish bin that already held most of the rest of her wardrobe.