Chapter 13
Roosters didn’t only crow at dawn. They crowed all the damned night. Libby shifted the blinds in her room, trying to locate the culprit, but all she could see in the darkness were overgrown shrubs and coconut trees, stark against the pale moonlit sky.
At some point in the night, a storm had rolled in, but now the wind and rain had died down, and only the thunder remained, rumbling away in the distance.
Where was Dan?
She hadn’t heard him return. Was he out on a wet, mosquito-infested beach? Good luck to him if he preferred that to sleeping under the same roof as her.
Miserable, short-tempered jerk.
How dare he judge her like that? How dare he upset her child? The way they lived, Karim was used to having her by his side 24/7. Mom guilt punched her in the gut again. That served her right for leaving her baby. For trusting someone else—even for a minute—to watch over him.
And how dare Dan accuse her of leading him on? She’d only fallen on his lap by accident and then had gotten distracted by that look in his eyes. A look she’d clearly mistaken.
Hurt stabbed her.
There was only one reason why Dan would kiss her. He wanted to soothe his ego after his stupid ex had cheated on him. As if she were foolish enough to make out with a man on the rebound—especially while her son played on the floor next to them. What a joke.
She’d forgotten how damaged Dan was. How traumatized and vulnerable.
How moody and volatile. His outburst last night was a warning to not get close.
That ugly guy on the flight from Auckland hadn’t gone anywhere, and regardless of what she’d assumed these past few days, she didn’t know Daniel Jones at all.
They weren’t friends. They were just two strangers, jumbled randomly together by fate and bad luck.
And she’d almost kissed him? In front of Karim?
Had she lost her freaking mind?
As the rooster crowed again, Libby returned to bed. At least Karim was sleeping through the noise. Beautiful boy. Warmth flooded through her as she took comfort in her son’s unconditional love and soft baby smell.
The notebook…her press pass.
Your kind…
Yes, she’d been ruthless in getting stories in the past, but she was different now.
She was no longer programmed to sell her soul like that.
Was she? No, if she still was, she’d have emailed Juliana about Xav Hunter and Isabella immediately.
She’d have milked more details out of Dan while he’d been sick.
She’d have taken photographs of him lying in a mess on the bathroom floor, and she’d have pumped more information from his sweet mom.
That’s the kind of journalist Dan had in mind. The kind who’d offer an underpaid hospital worker a wad of cash they couldn’t refuse in order to violate an injured man’s privacy.
But her?
She’d wiped that injured man’s face throughout the night, made sure he didn’t choke on his own puke, and then washed his goddamn clothes.
She’d even left him breakfast!
Asshole.
Anger propelled her out of bed. It wasn’t even five a.m. The sky was still dark, but she was wide awake now and more than ready to lose herself in the actual journalism work she had to do.
She had an hour—if she was lucky—before Karim woke.
So, she fired up her laptop, grabbed her notepad—still creased up from where that idiot had gripped it in his fist—and began to type.
Quickly, she lost herself in her work. An hour later, she’d dumped down all her ideas and angles for her Parent and Child article.
Later, she’d refine it, find her hook, re-draft, and proofread it.
At the end of the week, she’d send it to her editor in New Zealand and hope that she’d want another installment.
Karim stirred. The sky was paler now, and that damn cockerel working overtime told Libby the sun was rising. She shut her laptop, quickly got dressed, and made coffee. Her first sip had barely made its way down her throat when Karim, fully awake now, called her.
“I’m coming, honey!” She made her way back to him, passing the room that would’ve been Dan’s.
Maybe he’s camping out at the airport, waiting for the next flight back to Rarotonga?
But the next flight wasn’t for another two days.
And would he really want to head back there anyway if there was a risk of journalists snooping around, not to mention playing third wheel between Carina and Malek?
It was more likely that he was sulking somewhere. Probably a dark, damp cave where he could wallow in the peace and tranquility of his own misery.
Good luck with that, Cranky.
Libby made breakfast for Karim and got ready for a day of exploring while he ate.
From rock pooling to finding interviewees for her videos, her list of places to visit and things to do would keep her and Karim busy for several days.
She packed her phone, her selfie stick, and her makeup.
Then, once she’d checked that her bag was stocked with snacks, water, a towel, and spare clothes, she held on to Karim’s hand and stepped out onto the deserted road.
“Which way, sweet cheeks? Left or right?”
It was all the same to her. Karim tugged his hand free. Instinct and habit had her reaching for him again, but really, no one was passing by, and anyone traveling down this long, wide road would be able to see them. Karim hadn’t gone far anyway. He’d found a shallow puddle.
“Splash!”
“Yeah.” She smiled at him as he played. But twenty minutes later, she’d had enough of the damn puddle. “Let’s walk, honey.”
They made it a full thirty feet, to where a bunch of logs had been piled on the side of the road. Karim scrambled up onto it. She held on to his T-shirt until he was safely at the top, a whole impressive three feet high.
“Look how tall you are!” Despite her restlessness, she couldn’t help but giggle at his grin. So easily pleased. “You want to walk to the end? Hold Mommy’s hand in case you fall.”
For the next half hour, Libby walked back and forth along the logs, trying to ignore how much she missed adult company. Daydreams of going on little adventures around the island with Karim and Dan had filled her silly, lonesome head too much.
Never mind.
Life was safer and more reliable when it was just her and Karim against the rest of the world.
“Come on, baby. Let’s go.”
She checked her map of the island and coaxed Karim to walk to the nearest beach with promises of more splashing.
It was still early, but surely at least one of Atiu’s 300 inhabitants would be milling around doing something, somewhere, hopefully wanting to be interviewed about life on the island.
And right now, that’s all she wanted. Some life.
Some distraction. Something that would take her mind off Daniel Jones and the hatred in his eyes, directed solely at her.
Dan closed the shutters. Through the cracks, he’d seen Libby and Karim play on the logs, and the volume of his angry words from last night ramped up full blast in his head.
God, he hated that he’d scared Karim and made him cry. Hated that Libby’s voice had shaken when she’d been comforting her son.
Disgusted with himself, he moved away from the window.
Well, at least now she had even more material on him.
He’d threatened her with lawyers, but she would’ve seen through his bullshit by now.
Lawyers couldn’t stop her from publishing anything that she’d witnessed this past week.
What would her articles say, anyway? That he was cranky, that he’d told her to shut up?
That he’d been sick? That his mum had a boyfriend fifteen years younger?
Those weren’t lies.
They were facts.
And Libby hadn’t climbed over any fences or pressed her face up against any windows to get to them.
Dan dropped down onto the narrow single bed he’d slept in and scrubbed his face, wishing he could scrub out the memory of last night just as easily. Well, not all of last night. Dinner with Libby had been nice, and so had sitting on the sofa. Libby on his lap…
He sighed away another wave of hurt and disappointment.
She’d only been after him for a story!
After grabbing his bag last night, common sense had struck fifty meters down the road, snapping him out of his angry trance.
Shit. He hadn’t known where to go or who to turn to.
He was alone in the middle of the South Pacific, a tiny dot of a man on a tiny dot of an island bloody miles from bloody anywhere.
The road had been eerily quiet, but the light shining from the house next door, where the kids lived, had beckoned him. Like a hopeless moth drawn to a flame, he’d knocked on the door. A woman had greeted him, Christopher Mac at her side.
“Have you come for advice?” the cocky kid had asked.
“Yes. Where can I find a place to stay?”
Christopher Mac had grinned. “Have you left your wife?”
“We’re not married.”
“Neither’s half the island,” the woman—Christopher Mac’s mother—had said with a chuckle.
“You can sleep in my room.” Christopher Mac grabbed his arm.
“No, really, I just want to—”
“I share it with my brother, but he won’t mind sleeping on the floor.”
So that’s how Britain’s National Hero had spent the night, listening to the snores of two little boys and the crows of a cockerel who didn’t know the difference between night and day.
The noise of children playing in the next room snapped him back to what he’d been about to do before he’d heard Libby’s voice outside.
He’d been looking for a fresh T-shirt so he could dress, thank his hosts, and find somewhere else to stay.
But his belongings were scattered all over the floor around his empty bag.
Just as well that he’d slept in his clothes last night, because now half of them seemed to be missing.
The concept of private property is different from that of the western world.
Yeah, right.
His other pair of shorts was on Christopher Mac’s bed. His socks, not that he needed any here anyway, were on the floor next to another pile of his clothes. The same clothes Karim had puked on.
Why the hell had Libby washed them?
Why had she stayed when he’d been sick?
And why couldn’t she have been a bitch instead of so perky and helpful and so…bloody nice?
But she’d made notes on him, planning a big fat story, as if his life were public property. A ransacked bag on a stranger’s bedroom floor.
“Dan, breakfast!” Christopher Mac poked his grinning face through the crack in the door. “I’ll walk with you to Atiu Cabins afterwards.”
“Thank you.” Dan pushed up a smile and stuffed his belongings—the ones he could find—back into his bag. He slipped on his flip-flops and followed Christopher Mac to the kitchen.
Last night, he’d sat at the table talking to the whole family, answering their questions about England and why he hadn’t wanted to stay with Libby.
“We’ve argued,” he’d said, then had ironically ended up doing exactly what Libby would’ve done and fired a thousand questions at them about life on the island so they couldn’t ask him any more about himself.
“Good morning,” he said now as he walked into the kitchen.
Christopher Mac’s mother was frying eggs. She waved her wooden spatula toward the window that overlooked the road. “Your wife and son were outside just now.”
“They’re not my wife and son,” Dan said for what must’ve been the hundredth time. Though the scoffs working around the table told him they all knew it and were winding him up. “She’s just a friend.”
“Not so much of a friend now if you’re here.”
“I told you we argued.”
“You make up, then.”
“No.”
“Stubborn man.”
“Yeah, well, that’s my lookout.” Feeling twelve years old again, Dan cleared his throat and thanked everyone for letting him stay last night and for breakfast. He didn’t offer to pay them—that felt like it would offend their generosity—so instead he offered to buy the kids ice cream by the harbor later and also asked Christopher Mac’s mum if she needed any groceries.
She gave him the names of a few items, and after breakfast, Christopher Mac, his siblings, and his cousins—who appeared out of nowhere—showed him the way to Atiu Cabins, where Dan planned to stay for the rest of his time on the island.
As they walked to the Cabins, the children chatted happily around him and somehow multiplied in numbers.
He was the Pied Piper, only with sweat dripping around his face and a sense of foreboding doom that these kids were leading him into nowhere rather than the other way around.
Eventually, they turned toward what looked like the center of the village, and Dan recognized the Christian Church he and Libby had visited yesterday.
“It’s this way,” Christopher Mac said and headed down a road on their left.
But Dan stopped to stare at the white building.
Libby was there. At the entrance to the church.
Her lips were bright red, and even from this far back, he could see the flash of silver on her eyelashes.
Why was she made up like that again? And she was holding a selfie stick, recording herself and the old Māori man standing next to her.
The priest? She was interviewing the priest?
Why?
When she looked his way, she lowered her selfie stick and stared at him for a moment before turning her back.
He’d told her to keep away from him, but really, he needed to keep away from her.
Losing his temper like that last night hadn’t been great at all, but he didn’t feel like apologizing.
He’d grown wise to her sharp intelligence and shrewd perceptiveness, hidden beneath her dangerously warm, sunny smiles.
Dan turned away and followed the kids down the empty, winding road until they reached the sign for the Cabins.
“Hey, kids, mind if we do ice cream tomorrow?” Dan asked. “My legs are done today, but here’s some money for your mum’s shopping.” He pulled out his wallet from his back pocket, handed them twenty dollars, and they took off at speed back up the road with shouts of See you later, alligator!
Their young limbs moved with ease, jumping, skipping, running. Dan’s muscles tightened, and his heart squeezed.
“Hello there!”
A tall, white, and very British man was walking toward him. He had thin gray hair and wore an olive-green linen shirt and trousers that made him look like an old colonel from Imperial days.
“I’m Henry Harrison. Pleased to meet you.” He stuck out his right hand and gave Dan’s a firm shake.
“I’m Dan. Good to meet you, too.”
“I hear you’re looking for a room because you’ve fallen out with your wife,” Henry said.
“She’s not my wife.” Dan let out a weary sigh and rubbed his temple. “We met five days ago. We have the same surname, but that’s the only thing we have in common.”
“Okay, young chap,” Henry said, slapping a hand on his shoulder. “Women are an acquired taste, I find. Much like brandy.”
“I don’t drink brandy.”
“Well, there you go, then. It’s the single life for you.”