Chapter Eighteen
Nanihi’s office door was ajar, which meant staff were welcome to enter. Finn, as the owner, would be doubly welcome, and yet he paused outside trying to figure out what he could ask her given there was nothing about Poerava he didn’t already know.
He was only there to vacate the lobby so Zoe could leave without talking to him. Talking now would be...not good.
“Finn, is that you out there?” Nanihi called from inside the office. Finn entered, deliberately leaving the door open because...just because. Air, he needed air, because of that.
“Just interested in the forward bookings for June,” he said.
Nanihi started tapping on her keyboard and suggested he come to her side of the desk. He stood there, not listening as she explained the data in the file she’d opened, flicking his gaze between the computer screen and the open doorway.
And there she was. Zoe, with Cristina, crossing the lobby.
Something scarily like a whimper came out of his mouth.
“Finn?” Nanihi’s voice recalled him to sanity.
She said nothing else, but looked through the doorway just in time to see a back view of Zoe as she wheeled herself out of the building. Going...going...gone.
“Right, where were we?” he asked Nanihi, and saw that her eyebrows were up.
“What?” he said, feeling the hideous heat of a blush flushing up from his neck.
“You seem...troubled,” she said calmly. “Are you unhappy with the occupancy rates?”
He scanned the report on the screen. Occupancy rates were nudging ninety percent. Everything was perfect. He started to tell Nanihi so and found she was biting her lip.
Dammit! How many more people were going to slap that trying-not-to smile routine on him? “I’m not troubled,” he said, with as much sangfroid as he could muster. “You’re all doing an amazing job.”
“I’m glad you think so. I was only wondering because...” her lip was definitely wobbling, “there seemed to be no reason for you staying on for the week.”
He had no answer to that. All he could do was breathe. In. Out. In. Out.
Nanihi made a tiny sound and covered her mouth with one hand.
Right, he was going to call Gina, fly out tomorrow. He didn’t think he could take any more people sly-smiling at him and laughing behind their hands. Joe and Orihei and Aiata and Tepatua and Cristina and Matilda and Nanihi and even Gaspard with his “not invasion, relationship” stuff, and—
Gaspard!
Why hadn’t Gaspard stormed after him demanding either satisfaction or a raise? Finn had, after all, with no notice, forced him to give a lesson he hadn’t wanted to give; he’d insisted not only that a table be moved into the kitchen but that it also be piled with assorted utensils so they could have the lesson seated without Zoe guessing the table was newly there specifically to accommodate her wheelchair; he’d encouraged Zoe to giggle her way through the class and hadn’t taken one moment of it seriously himself even though he knew disrespect annoyed Gaspard...and Gaspard had let him get away with it all.
“Gaspard!” he said in accents of loathing.
“He’ll be hard to replace if you fire him,” Nanihi said, oh so deadpan but with an unmistakable twinkle in her eye.
“You know!” Finn accused.
She raised her hands, palm out, placating. “I know nothing except that only for a romantic emergency would Gaspard allow his kitchen to be used in such a fashion. I told him he was imagining things.”
“Then at least someone here isn’t an idiot.”
“I told him he was imagining things,” she went on, implacably serene, “but now I know he wasn’t.”
Breathe in, in, in. Out, dammit! “I ought to sack the lot of you.”
“Kupe Kahale has been doing his best to poach staff from Poerava so please make up your mind fast. By Monday, perhaps?” She was full-throttle smirking now. “That’s when she flies home, isn’t it?”
At which point Finn stormed out of the office, intent on bearding the lion in his den.
The sound of Nanihi’s laughter, which she was making no effort to stifle, floated after him.
He tore into the kitchen only to pull up short at the sight of Gaspard leaning a hip against the counter, arms crossed over his chest as though he’d been expecting Finn to arrive at just that moment.
“So!” Gaspard said. “You return to the scene of the crime.”
“Crime?” Finn said, ready to come over all boss-like.
Gaston shuddered. “Her poisson cru? Exécrable. A crime, committed in my kitchen! Impardonnable!”
Finn grinned, despite himself. “At least you didn’t have to eat it!”
Another shudder from Gaspard.
“Listen, Gaspard, I’m sor—”
“She is delightful, my dear Finn,” Gaspard interrupted. “But it is my duty to warn you that if you go there you will have to do all the cooking yourself. Or perhaps hire someone for the home.”
“What do you mean, go there?”
“You know what I mean.”
“But I’m not. Going there. I’m not.”
“Of course you’re not,” Gaspard said, and he didn’t need to roll his eyes because his voice was one major eye roll in itself.
“I’m not!” Finn insisted.
“Is that not what I just said?”
“No, that’s not what you just said. At least it is but that’s not what’s happening.”
Gaspard looked at him with a weary kind of patience and that annoying, knowing smirk everyone was giving him. “If that’s not what’s happening, why are you in my kitchen arguing with me?”
Unanswerable.
Finn turned without another word and swung out of the kitchen.
It didn’t do his temper any good to hear Gaspard laughing his head off. Worse than Nanihi. It would serve Gaspard right if he made him teach Zoe how to make his fussy passionfruit soufflé.
The thought of which had Finn, unbelievably, grinning like an idiot as he made his way back to his bungalow, because she’d probably make Finn eat it the way she’d made him eat her poisson cru.
But as he let himself into his bungalow the grin faded.
Zoe hadn’t been here since Monday night and yet he could still smell her. Lemon and sunshine and white flowers.
He closed his eyes as the memories crowded. Not old memories, new memories. Now memories. The cocktail party, her voice saying, I’m not lost. Swimming off the platform on Pearl Finder with a purple noodle but not one moment’s hesitation. The jut of her chin, the rise of her eyebrows, the tilt of her head, the waves of her hair glinting in the sunlight. The dreamy delight on her face as she sniffed the vanilla air. Hair clips and sequins and sparkly shoes, the ridiculous pink rash vest that was her sole fashion incongruity. That gaze out at the water yesterday when she’d talked about overcoming her one fear, the way she’d tried to laugh it off. Her tolerant self-possession at dinner last night when Daniel leaned his elbow on the rim of one of her wheels as though her chair was a tabletop, the warning look she’d shot Finn as he half rose from his seat at his own table to intervene because she could look after her damn self, thank you. Choking on laughter in the kitchen, writing in her notepad, We do not want an invasion, we want a relationship and underlining it five times as she waited for her shoulders to stop their giveaway shaking.
Holding out that notepad to him.
That notepad.
He’d intended to suggest that Zoe give Cristina the afternoon off and come back with him to his bungalow. To interview him—she could ask questions about Poerava for her travel feature or he could...dammit, yes he could he could give his pathetic poor-boy-makes-good story. To swim with him in his pool. To watch TV or a movie or the rainforest. To talk about anything, everything, nothing. To have another crack at making poisson cru or bake a cake or crack a coconut in half or just open a packet of peanuts from the minibar. To do whatever she wanted.
But the minute she’d held out her notepad and he’d seen her handwriting up close, the despicable truth of why had burst in his head: why he’d gone barging into her hospital room after staying away from her for two solid years.
The first time he’d seen her handwriting was when she’d shyly offered him her journal to read and told him that no one, not even the girls, got to see it. The entry was about sneaking out to go surfing with Malie and it was so funny and charming it was easy to see her as a novelist-in-waiting, but her penmanship had gobsmacked him. How could someone so delicate, so meticulously put together, have handwriting that looked like a drunk spider had dipped its legs in ink and staggered across the page?
He’d thought of it as her one flaw, that handwriting.
Until he’d discovered her second: the way she ate, shoving food in and dripping sauce down her chin—mainly because she was thinking of something she considered more important, like getting more food into him, or she was too busy talking, or listening, or laughing.
He’d liked those flaws, had thought them quirkily adorable.
But there was a truth darker than liking them for their own sake, and that was that those flaws made her less perfect, and if she was less perfect she was more attainable for someone like him.
Less perfect. More attainable.
Not attainable enough for him to take his courage in two hands and ask her out, but enough for her to be with him in...well, whatever way it was that they were when they were together all that summer.
But then summer was over, and the fact that she’d moved on to her “real” life while the Crab Shack and the gym and the pub remained his full-time-forever reality was rammed home to him when she’d dragged her boyfriend over to meet him. Finn had wondered, cynically, if Brad Ellersley—who’d had the protect Zoe shtick down pat, shooting a keep your distance warning at Finn over Zoe’s head—had been preallocated to her from her birth.
The difference between him and Brad had been so marked Finn had accepted the truth at last: she definitely was not for the likes of him; she never would be. But it had hurt. It had hurt to even see her with the guy. Hurt to see her at all, knowing she was always and forever out of his league.
Call it self-preservation, call it whatever you like, but from that moment Finn had methodically rebuffed her every time she came up to him, whether she was with Brad, or those shiny-pretty girlfriends of hers, or on her own. Even after the accident, when it had half killed him not to see her, he’d stayed away...until the night one of the patrons at the pub had confided that Zoe Tayler’s parents were taking her on a long overseas holiday—how brave of them to take that on!
The moment his shift had ended he’d rushed out of the pub, not stopping to brush his hair or change his shirt. Disheveled and smelling of the beer someone had slopped onto his sleeve, he’d hovered outside Zoe’s room for five minutes, asking himself why she’d want to see him when he hadn’t had the guts to visit her even once in the three months since the accident.
He’d been about to flee the scene...but then he’d overheard the breakup, and Brad Ellersley had come out and leaned against the wall, crying. Finn had hissed in a breath wanting to punch the guy, and that had drawn Brad’s attention. Brad had had the nerve to give him another stay away warning look. Finn had no idea what expression had been on his face, but all it took was one step in Brad’s direction to send Brad running away like he’d come face-to-face with the grim reaper.
And of course Finn had had to go into the room because everyone knew people needed support after a breakup, and multiply that need by a thousand in Zoe’s circumstances. Yes, she had three best friends and a million other friends, any one of whom was better than him, but there was no one else waiting out there, not even her parents, so the job fell to him.
And so he’d entered the room, and she was lying there. Not crying. Just...broken.
Broken.
So broken the perfect guy didn’t want her anymore because she wasn’t perfect anymore.
She was really, truly attainable. At last.
It had all come pouring out then. How he felt, what he wanted, what he could do for her.
He felt again the chagrin, the humiliation as she’d yelled for her parents, begged them to get him out of there. And as they’d hurried in, his hopeless longing for Zoe had turned to something else, something savage and cold, something that was almost hate, and he’d wanted to hurt her as she had hurt him.
You’re lost, Zoe, and you don’t even know it, do you? Poor lost Zoe.
He’d seen the anguish in her eyes when he’d said that and he hadn’t cared.
But she hadn’t been lost.
Seeing her now, in his mind, in that bed, he knew what she’d been was young and scared and so, so badly hurt, her life in tatters, deserted by the guy who was supposed to be hers for life. She hadn’t been lost, and she hadn’t been broken. Not her spirit.
She’d kicked him out, hadn’t she? Good for her, he’d deserved it.
And then, valiant as ever, she’d forged that life she’d always wanted. She’d conquered the world and she was now showing him that if anyone was lost it was him.
So lost he had to pay a florist to put flowers on his mother’s grave twice a year—on her birthday and deathday—because he was too much of a coward to go back and do it himself, to go back to Hawke’s Cove and be himself.
So lost he couldn’t bring himself to open a document and look at a property proposal because of a dot on a map.
It might have taken Zoe ten years but she’d managed to do what he could not; she’d gone back—to the place that had made her a paraplegic. Talk about guts. And he’d had the gall to ask her about time machines?
Zoe was in the right of it there. Why look back when you could move forward?
He closed his eyes, tried to imagine being with her. Being with her. Being with her. But the picture remained elusive. How could it be that she seemed to be within his grasp at last and yet even more impossible to claim?
It made no sense.
And yet it made perfect sense.
Because the problem wasn’t her, it was him.
Talk about fighting your big battles to the death; he felt like he’d been fighting a battle for twelve years, ever since the day Zoe had smiled at him over a table full of salt shakers and he’d known that even though she was too good for a scruffy nobody like him he belonged to her.
But it was way past time to leave the battlefield. To say that goodbye to a fantasy that was never his to own. No, not say but feel it.
He dragged out his phone.
“Buy the place in Scotland,” he said, when Gina answered, as usual, on the first ring. “I’ll fly out tomorrow.”
Alone in her bungalow, the word “lost” kept echoing in Zoe’s head.
Lost. Alone. Adrift. Floating out to sea. No anchor.
She was not ready to write that email. But maybe she was ready to talk?
The girls. They’d enjoy hearing about the cooking class, about Gaspard, about Matilda, about Cristina’s burgeoning romance. And of course they’d be interested in Finn.
Hmm, maybe she could leave Finn out of the conversation. That chorus of Zoe and Finn sitting in a tree, K.I.S.S.I.N.G. the girls used to sing sotto voce whenever they’d come into the Crab Shack was the last thing she needed when she was trying to work him out herself. And Lily... After that last phone call, Lily would smell the most gigantic rat if she mentioned Finn. She’d definitely leave Finn out.
She did a quick calculation of time zones. She’d get Malie. V might still be up. Lily would be awake because dinner service would have ended an hour or so ago and she’d only just be getting home...but she’d already off-loaded on Lily once this trip and Lily had enough on her plate; Zoe wasn’t dragging her to the phone at midnight for anything less than a Lost Hours situation. And however “lost” Zoe felt, this wasn’t Lost Hours business.
No phone call then.
She sighed. In the old days a fit of melancholia would have had her reaching for her journal.
But she didn’t keep a journal anymore.
She hadn’t kept one since the accident.
The last entry had been the day of the summer ball.
And the memory was suddenly there. Like a flash, a shock, a blow she couldn’t ward off.
That night, at the pub.
She grabbed her phone, hands shaking as she called Victoria. Victoria, who’d been drinking soda water, not champagne like the rest of them, because she was driving, so she’d have had the clearest head of any of them.
Oh God, how could she talk to V about this when V was planning her wedding? Happy times, moving forward. No, she had to—
“Zoe? What’s up?”
Too late to hang up. “Ah...just wondering how the wedding plans are progressing.”
Beat, beat, beat. “Fine and a lot finer if you’d send me your measurements.” Pause. “But that’s not why you’re calling.”
“I didn’t realize how late it was. I’ll talk you tomorr—”
“Now. You’ll talk to me now.”
Deep breath. “OK. The truth is I remembered something and I...I need you to tell me if the memory is true or my imagination. That night...the accident... I was wearing a blue silk dress, silver shoes. I think there was a photo. Was there a photo?”
“Yes, there was a photo, there is a photo. And yes, you were wearing a blue dress, ridiculously high-heeled silver shoes, and a circlet of fake aquamarines on your head. You looked...” Victoria’s breath hitched. “You looked like a princess who’d wandered off the page of a fairy tale. I’ve got that photo at my studio. I can scan it, take a photo of it, get a copy of it, send it to you any way you like.”
“No, no I don’t... No, not yet. But I think... I think I can see it in part of a memory. The four of us. You, me, Devil, Lils, our arms around each other. We were laughing. So happy and free and young and...” She stopped there, too emotional to continue.
“Innocent, hopeful,” Victoria said softly. “We thought the world was ours for the taking.”
“I’m not sure that I really did think that, V.”
Pause. And then, “What’s the problem, Zo?”
“Memories. Half memories. The absence of memories. Memories I can’t find but want to reclaim. I called you because I suddenly remembered that night at the pub and you were the only one who hadn’t been drinking so I thought maybe your own memory would be sharper and you could give me some clarity. I remember Finn—” Stop. Breath. “Finn Doherty working behind the bar. He wasn’t going to the ball.”
“No, he wasn’t going to the ball. Not his scene even though he could have had his pick of partners.”
“Definitely not his scene,” Zoe said, and it was suddenly so easy to remember the way he’d looked at them all that night, like they were...well, what they were. Eighteen-year-olds at their first grown-up party. It had made her feel as though that holiday in Ibiza had been for kids toting fake IDs. “I doubt he’d have gone even to his own Leavers Ball.”
“Definitely not, because he dropped out of school the moment he turned sixteen. I remember that one of the teachers tried to talk him into staying but he flat out refused. He...he didn’t have much but he certainly had pride by the bucketful.”
“Yes, he did have pride,” Zoe said, and wondered how Finn must have felt that night, seeing everyone in their new clothes, laughing and drinking and full of excitement about the life ahead, when his life was going nowhere. “Claudia was there, at the pub.”
“Yes, Claudia. But not Henry.” Pause. “Claudia was flirting with Finn, doing it on purpose, thumbing her nose at all of us.”
“Yes, they were flaunting it. Claudia...it was like she wanted to make Henry jealous even though he wasn’t there. The sad thing is that I’d seen her do it before and everyone could see that Henry couldn’t have cared less. As for Finn...” She trailed off as those feelings from that night came back to her. Confusion. Uneasiness. Shame. Finn flirting with Claudia...looking at Zoe while he did it...and Zoe was so jealous, and that was wrong, it was bad, because she had Brad. And yet whenever Finn’s eyes met hers Brad ceased to exist.
“Finn the bad boy, Claudia the bad girl,” Victoria said. “Lily said they were a better match than Claudia and Henry. But Malie said no, Finn was yours.”
“A teensy problem with that. I already had a boyfriend and Finn had...well, he had just about every girl in the village.”
“Don’t get me started on your boyfriend.”
“At least Brad didn’t abandon me.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I mean as a friend. He came to see me in the hospital so many times, not only before we broke up but after, always bringing flowers or chocolates or books.”
“Yeah, I think that’s called a guilty conscience.”
“I don’t think so. He had nothing to feel guilty about, not really. I...didn’t want him, V. I really didn’t. And he stood by me, as a friend. In fact he still texts me on my birthday every year. The last few years he’s attached a ‘happy family’ photo of him with his wife and son. In fact, I’m expecting a text this weekend, probably at nine o’clock on Saturday night because the reminder will pop up on his mobile phone at eight o’clock Sunday morning and he won’t think about international time zones, seeing how he’s Hawke’s Cove to the bone marrow. And it...it won’t hurt. It truly doesn’t hurt, V.”
“And there you have it. Brad being Hawke’s Cove to the bone marrow and you being nothing of the kind. Funny, I would have said Finn Doherty was Hawke’s Cove to the bone marrow as well but he proved us wrong by leaving. Maybe Malie was right. Maybe he had all the girls in the village except the one he really wanted.”
“You know he never came near me after that summer we worked at the Crab Shack.”
“I know you kept dragging us over to him despite that. And the way I remember it his eyes were always on you. Who knows what might have happened if you’d given him the look he was always giving you.”
“Oh, the look!” she dismissed.
“The look, yes!”
“I struggle with the whole concept of ‘the look.’ What exactly is it? How do you know someone’s giving it to you? How do you give it back to that person? How did it work with you and Oliver?”
“I don’t think it’s something you can control. I looked at Oliver and it was... I don’t know, it was just there. The feeling, the knowledge that he was the one for me. Why are you asking, Zo? Is there someone you do...”
“Want?” She tried to laugh, but it sounded forlorn, even to her. “Is there someone I want? Yes, there is,” she admitted, and oh the joy of saying it out loud. “But I don’t know how...how to recognize if he’s returning my look, if he’s even seeing the way I look at him.”
“Is it the American journalist Lily told me about?”
“Daniel? No! It’s someone more...well, more interesting.”
“Interesting... Hmm. Interesting’s good. But it’s not necessarily...”
“Not necessarily what?” Zoe prompted.
“Not necessarily safe. Then again, one thing I’ve learned since meeting Oliver is that playing it safe isn’t an option when it comes to love. You need to jump, no parachute.”
A zip of panic raced all the way up one of Zoe’s arms and all the way down the other. “It’s not love, it’s lust. That’s all. L.U.S.T. Lust.”
“Oh well, if it’s just L.U.S.T.,” Victoria said, “by all means do play it safe.”
“Yes, yes, got that! Birds and bees, no getting carried away and forgetting the basics.”
Victoria’s expression warped from serious to comical grimace. “Aaand now I feel like your mother!”
Zoe rolled her eyes. “Do not go there! Please! She’d be express couriering me a jumbo pack of—”
“Stop! Stop, I’m begging you! I don’t need the image of your mother at the Hawke’s Cove post office in my head.”
“Mrs. Whittaker peering over her shoulder as the jumbo pack was furtively shoved into a Jiffy bag.”
“Asking, ‘So is Zoe seeing someone?’”
“Offering Bubble Wrap.”
“And pontificating as to whether the climate control of air freight was conducive to the transport of such a delicate product!”
They both dissolved into giggles, which petered out slowly.
And then Victoria sighed. “Zoe, you are so lovely. So funny and smart and...and perfect.”
Zoe held up a hand. “Don’t. Don’t say that. Perfect. It’s not a word I...I like, really. I think... I really do think I prefer imperfect.”
“Ah, so can I assume the man you want isn’t perfect? Maybe not up to Selena and Noel Tayler’s standards?”
“No! Yes. No. Oh, I don’t know. Not up to Mum and Dad’s standards but...but...”
“But perfect for you perhaps?”
“I think...yes. I think he always was.”
“Zoe! Who are we talking about?”
“Not who, what! Lust, I’m talking about lust. And now I have to go. I have to email those disapproving parents of mine about a charismatically tyrannical half French, half Polynesian chef called Gaspard.”
“So it’s a chef you’re in lust with? Lily is going to be so happy!”
“She will be when she gets the recipe I’m going to send her,” Zoe said, and then she laughed, blew Victoria a kiss, and disconnected.
For a long moment she sat perfectly still, doing what she’d initially planned to do—casting her mind back over that cooking class, every word, every look. She still didn’t understand why Finn had run away at the end...but she knew that she was through playing it safe.
And she was now ready to write that email to her parents, but she was not going to tell them about Finn.
Finn was going to be her unsafe, lusty, dirty secret. She went to her computer and started typing:
Today, I learned that not everything sounds better in French. Take raw fish e’ia ota—doesn’t that sound wonderful? Or in my case maybe don’t take it, because as it turns out, I’m terrible in the kitchen even when something doesn’t actually have to go into an oven...