Chapter Eleven
“What do you think?” Finn asked as he came to the end of the story, but Zoe could see his lips twitching with the effort not to smile.
“Oh, you know what I think!” she accused. Kupe Kahale’s life story had everything she’d told Finn she wanted to write about in those once-upon-a-time days. Drama, adventure, history, romance. An impoverished hero in love with the only child of a wealthy Chinese merchant couple who thought he couldn’t keep their daughter in the style to which she was accustomed. An elopement, family reconciliation, a rags-to-riches story as Kupe went on to amass his own fortune. “Will he talk to me?”
“Sure.” Finn poured coffee into two cups. “But since you’re not interested in going to Kupe’s restaurant on Saturday night it’ll have to be over the phone.”
“How do you know I’m not going?” she asked as he passed one of the cups to her, and then answered her own question because duh! “Aiata told you.”
He raised his coffee cup as though toasting her perspicacity. “You’re not going because you don’t do junkets, you think dinner shows are touristy and you prefer to write about more authentic dining options—markets, street food, out-of-the-way places where only the locals go.”
She gave a half laugh, a little impressed, a lot disconcerted. “Wow, she’s thorough.”
“I know you live in Sydney, that your parents still live in Hawke’s Cove, that you’ve traveled to every continent, that your favorite flavor is raspberry, that you go to the gym every morning at seven o’clock, that your hair clip collection is out of control—”
“Stop, stop!” she begged, with another half laugh. “Are you sure Aiata doesn’t work for MI6?”
“Aiata told me about your junket-aversion and that you weren’t going to Mama Papa’e.” He paused there, kept his eyes on her in a way that was somehow assessing, then squared his shoulders as though it was time to face the music. “The rest was down to Google.”
Her jaw dropped. “You googled me?”
“I did.”
Zoe didn’t know why that should shock her so much...and yet it did.
“I found your blog, read your posts,” he went on. “Read a broader selection of your articles than Aiata provided in her briefing pack. So...” He looked away from her, toward the rainforest, letting silence linger so that she was squaring her shoulders, bracing for impact, before he brought his eyes back to her. “You know I live in Sydney.”
Automatically, her hands went to her thighs—up, down, up. “Yes.”
“What else do you know about me?”
Her hands stopped as her mind blanked. What did she know about him? “Motorbike accident,” she ventured.
“I told you that an hour ago. What else?”
Nothing came to mind.
Her parents had never mentioned him. Nor had her friends. No, that wasn’t strictly true. There was that one time Lily told her about the death of his mother and that Finn had moved to Australia, but that had been on her birthday call, nine months after the accident. It had been the first all-in girl-call since Zoe had left England; she’d been too dazed and confused during that soul-destroying find-a-miracle tour to pretend everything was fine so she’d withdrawn from contact with everyone she knew, even Victoria, Malie and Lily. And when Lily had started talking about Finn on that call she’d rushed past the topic because the disorientated, half-buried impressions of that night with Finn caused her too much anguish. Which meant the only conversation she’d had with anyone about Finn Doherty in the past ten years had been the one with Malie two months ago in Hawaii, and she was hardly going to repeat that.
“I know you own two resorts?” Was that the right thing to say? Oh. Maybe not, because he stood abruptly, his face shuttering.
“Which reminds me,” he said, all business now, no hesitation. “During the QA on the boat today you didn’t ask about the accessibility features of Poerava.”
“I didn’t have to,” she said, feeling like she’d just been whirled around and repositioned exactly where he wanted her: at an emotional if not a physical distance.
“You’re writing for Wanderlust Wheels and you don’t have to ask about wheelchair access?”
“Aiata provided me with a comprehensive accessibility fact sheet but it’s more important that I live the access. I’m in a wheelchair-accessible room, today I was on a wheelchair-accessible boat. During the week I’m going to use those wheelchair-friendly ramps that take me across the sand to the beach lounger that’s been set aside specifically for me as a wheelchair user. I’ll dine at Tāma’a, have a drink at Manuia, take a book to the quiet room and read. I’ll definitely describe the differences between my overwater bungalow and the equivalent garden suite. But all those things are a sidebar to the main story, which will focus on the destination.”
Silence.
Zoe didn’t know how to proceed, how to recapture that hopeful feeling of nascent camaraderie of only a few minutes ago. All she could think to say was: “How about I ask you some questions about those differences? My bungalow...yours?”
He sat again, picked up the notepad she’d left on the table, looked at it as though he could x-ray through the cover. And then he raised his eyes. “How about you live that, too, Zoe? Take a tour at your own pace, go through the place. I have some emails to deal with so no rush.”
She couldn’t quite believe he was going to let her roam around his private space when he’d so emphatically closed himself off from her. “You mean now, alone?”
“Now, alone,” he said, and held out her notepad. “Or, sure, ask questions instead if that’s too...what...personal, for you? I can get Aiata to give you a garden bungalow inspection tomorrow or any other day you choose.”
Personal. Hadn’t it always been personal? The truth was she was desperate to know what his room looked like, what it smelled like, what it would reveal about him. She looked at the notepad, at his strong fingers. What if she took that notepad and let her fingers brush his?
She reached for the notepad before she could stop herself, but he pulled back just before their fingers could connect. Even so, one of those now-familiar shivers ran through her and she didn’t have to look down to know how her body was reacting.
“I’ll do the tour now,” she said, and fled.
Finn waited for Zoe to go inside before releasing a long, slow breath.
Enough.
It was done.
Or as done as it was ever going to be. She’d be gone soon and he’d get on that flight in the morning and start working on forgetting her all over again.
Definitely time to read the email from Gina about the UK properties.
He pulled out his phone, opened the email, started reading, and knew immediately that he was wasting his time. He couldn’t take anything in with Zoe roaming through his bungalow.
He closed his eyes, concentrating on the air around him. Letting the warmth suffuse him, the air caress him, the sounds calm him. The garden bungalows were so called because of the vine-covered trellises that delineated each one’s specific territory but they could as easily have been named for the rainforest that was so densely packed beyond those trellises it always seemed on the verge of encroaching into the humans’ space. It made him think of nature barely kept at bay so it always surprised him how quiet it was, although his attuned ear could make out an infinitesimal rustle of foliage, an almost imperceptible whisper of breeze. He felt his aloneness more keenly here, but it had always been a peaceful aloneness. Strange, now, to not feel at peace...and yet to still feel alone.
He had no idea how long he stayed like that, drinking in the loneliness, until he smelled a hint of lemon, heard Zoe coming out.
He tried not to tense his muscles as he opened his eyes but his body went right ahead and locked itself up anyway as she reached the table. He pantomime-glared at his phone and tapped out some gobbledygook with a harsh finger so she’d think he was dealing with something important. Only then did he look up, turning his phone facedown on the table.
“Questions?” he asked, wanting them over and done with so she could leave.
“Yes,” she said, frowning. “How did you get it all so right?”
“I didn’t, Jed did. Jed Grierson. He’s an architect.”
“He’s good. People without a disability can’t always imagine all the things that make people like me...well, anxious. It’s virtually impossible to foresee all the obstacles we have to navigate on a daily basis. What you’ve achieved here is—”
“Jed’s a genius,” he said, cutting her off because something akin to admiration had crossed her face and the idea of her admiring him was intensely irritating. “He’s also a quadriplegic.”
“So you...you hire him specifically for the accessibility stuff?”
“No, I hire him for all our stuff. I like his style.”
She stared at him, apparently thunderstruck. “This bungalow...” she started, but seemed to be having trouble finding the words she was looking for. “I mean... Are all the garden bungalows designed for people with disabilities?”
“There’s one overwater bungalow and there’s this one, that’s it.”
“So...are all the other bungalows booked out? I presume no one else needed this room. People without a disability are usually only given these rooms if there’s no other room available.”
“All the overwater bungalows are booked but two other garden bungalows are free.”
“Then you being in this one...is it a test, the way you tested out the lift on Pearl Finder?”
“No,” he said.
“Then I guess...” She licked her lips, then shook her head. “I guess I don’t know why you’re...”
He imagined telling her that he knew the effect he was having on her, knew what the shivers meant, knew why her nipples were hardening whenever he was close. Imagined telling her he wanted to take her to bed and show her exactly what he’d been doing for those two excruciating years, what she’d been missing while she’d tortured him by practicing those anemic boyfriend-girlfriend touches with Brad Ellersley—the hand-holding, the how-does-this-work laying of her head on his shoulder, the awkwardly inexperienced kisses and stupidly childlike arm bumps.
Imagined...but he knew he wasn’t going to say any of that, which would smack of all guns blazing, and he had learned thatlesson. So, “My guess is you do know,” was as far as he allowed himself to go.
He heard the uptick in her breathing. Saw the longing flit across her face. Awareness. Desire. She could be his. Say it, say you want me, say you want to know what it’s like with me, say it and I’m yours, touch me and I’m yours, make the move.
He leaned across the table, edging his hands to within touching distance. “But if you really, truly, honestly have no idea?”
He saw the swallow she took as she looked at his hands, he could almost feel the tremble in her. “It was for me,” she said. “You’re in this room because of me.”
And there was that tremulous smile, the one she’d given him across the salt shakers, and dammit, the memory hurt, turning him back into good old Crab Shack Finn, so full of yearning and restraint he was an aching blob of misery. God, he couldn’t do this. Not to her, not to himself. A one-night stand wasn’t going to bridge all the years between then and now and he damn well knew it.
“It’s no big deal,” he said, and pulled back his hands.
“Isn’t it?” she asked softly.
God, he hated that softness, he didn’t want softness. “Is it?”
“I think...yes, actually. That you’d go to that trouble to make sure I was comfortable tonight.”
Comfortable. That hadn’t exactly been top of mind for him. “Yeah, well don’t tell anyone, you’ll ruin my reputation.”
She laughed, a little breathlessly. “As if you ever cared what anyone thought of you.”
“Proving that you didn’t know me as well as you thought you did. Or any other teenage boy for that matter. We all care, Zoe.”
“Teenage girls too,” she said, her smile slipping. “But you always knew that. You knew me. Better than anyone.”
“I thought I did, once upon a time,” he said. “Like a fairy tale. It was a bit like a fairy tale, wasn’t it, that summer?”
“Yes,” she said, and the forlorn wistfulness in her voice had him reaching for a memory that would make her laugh again, edge them back from the intensity that was saturating the air, the dark chasm she’d opened between them that couldn’t be bridged in one night no matter what he wanted, and imbue this last fragile interaction with the light they’d once shared, not the darkness that had ended it.
“Talking about fairy tales, remember the time you decided you needed to write a reverse take on ‘Rapunzel,’ with the princess breaking herself out of the tower?”
She laughed, as he’d wanted her to, but he knew she’d forced it out. Smoothing the road, as usual. “She traveled the world searching for her prince, only to discover that just after her escape he’d ridden to her rescue—too late!—and ended up locked in that old tower of hers,” she said.
“And she had to go on a quest to find the key to release him because his hair wasn’t long enough for her to use it to climb up.”
“And we kept taking turns to add to the story.”
“There were dragons—”
“And witches—”
“And goblins—”
“And a time travel machine, with Rapunzel zipping between the past, present and future, looking for her prince through space and time.”
“No, she was zipping between the present and the future, but she couldn’t get back to the past where the idiot prince was imprisoned,” he said, and wanted to laugh but he didn’t have that skill of hers, to smooth the path, and it jammed in his chest.
Here they were reminiscing about one part of their past, the safe part—that one naive summer—so tangible he felt as though they could reach back and touch it and yet he—could—not—laugh! All he could think was that it was no wonder she’d always looked so confused, so hurt, when she’d come up to him in the village after that summer. And seriously, after those two years of his calculated, feigned indifference to her, how could he possibly have thought it was a good idea to explode into her hospital room, not asking her what she wanted but telling her what she needed? Riding to the rescue too late, just like Rapunzel’s prince.
They’d need a time machine to fix that. To go back and rewrite that part of the story. They could have him not play the sneering villain every time she’d ventured near him, and then he could visit her in hospital as the friend she’d believed him to be, wanted him to be, tried to make him into, nothing more.
“If you had a time machine, Zoe, would you go back to the past or into the future?” he asked.
She looked down at her legs, considering that, and he thought he knew the answer.
But no, he didn’t, because she shook her head and said: “I’d break the machine, and stay in the present, and dream about the future.”
“I’d go back,” he said, too fierce.
Up came her eyes. “But...but your life. I mean, then, and...and now. Your life!”
He understood what she was trying to say—and also trying not to say. His life used to be pulling beers at the local pub on his side of the bar for people like her to drink on the other side, going hungry, wearing charity shop clothes, loitering with intent on the streets of Hawke’s Cove with the villagers giving him the widest possible berth. Now he was the half owner of an array of boutique luxury resorts; he lived in a penthouse apartment; he led a glamorous international life; he could eat at the best restaurants; he sat on the “right” side of the bar; he had enough money not to flinch at the cost of a new shirt; he’d finally got that motorbike; he’d even found love, although it had been a bit like the motorbike—fun while it lasted but ultimately a mistake. He’d lived all right, hard and fast.
And yet...he wasn’t happy.
The hunger was still inside him, a yearning for that elusive more. He didn’t know what the more was, but he knew where: buried in his past. He just hadn’t found the key to the map that would take him to where “X” marked the spot, and Zoe had told him tonight she couldn’t help him with that.
“My life is good, I know that, but it...” He shrugged, restless, impatient, frustrated. “It doesn’t feel like my life.”
“I don’t understand.”
“That’s because you were always certain of what you wanted. Your dreams were all about travel and adventure. Even when you were stuck in Hawke’s Cove you knew what you wanted. Knew you wanted to see everything and do everything and write everything. And I...well, when I finally left the Cove I still didn’t know what my d—”
He broke off, hearing footsteps on the path to the bungalow, then a loud laugh.
“I think the cavalry’s arrived,” he said.
“The cavalry?”
“That’s Joe’s booming laugh and my guess is Cristina is with him.”
He didn’t mean anything by that, but Zoe looked upset out of all proportion. “I didn’t arrange this, Finn.”
“You don’t have to explain yourself, Zoe.”
“But I didn’t, I didn’t ask her to come.”
“OK.”
“I mean it. I would have stayed. If you...you wanted me to. Did you want me to? I mean...do you? Want me to stay? I mean for a while. Or...”
Doorbell.
Dammit! Damn! It!
Ah well. It was probably for the best. Somewhere during tonight’s reminiscing he’d lost the bitterness that would have made a one-night stand a victory. He was fairly certain the only thing a one-night stand would achieve was him having to spend another ten years getting over Zoe and he was done with that. “It’s OK, really,” he said. “It’s for the best. The story’s told, dinner’s over...and you’re looking forward not back.”
And as he went to answer the door, he breathed a sigh that was almost relief. But not quite.