Just For You (Escape to New Zealand) Read online

  Text copyright 2014

  Rosalind James

  All Rights Reserved

  Cover design by Robin Ludwig Design Inc., http://www.gobookcoverdesign.com/

  ISBN 13: 978-0-9909124-7-7

  The Blues and the All Blacks are actual rugby teams. However, this is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Author’s Note

  Table of Contents

  New Zealand Map

  Blast From the Past

  Mistakes Happen

  The Thrill of the Chase

  A Bit of Holiday Fun

  Family Matters

  Winning Effort

  Promises Kept

  Sex, Sport, and Rock & Roll

  Repercussions

  Maori Rising

  The Flounder Returns

  Fizzing

  Aftermath

  E Ipo

  Epilogue

  A Mini Kiwi Glossary

  Just This Once (Escape to New Zealand, Book One): Prologue

  THE ESCAPE TO NEW ZEALAND SERIES

  Reka and Hemi’s story: Just for You (Novella)

  Hannah and Drew's story: Just This Once

  Kate and Koti's story: Just Good Friends

  Jenna and Finn's story: Just for Now

  Books 1-3 Value Price Boxed Set: Just This Once, Just Good Friends, Just For Now

  Emma and Nic's story: Just for Fun

  Ally and Nate's/Kristen and Liam's stories: Just My Luck

  Josie and Hugh's story: Just Not Mine

  Hannah and Drew's story again/Reunion: Just Once More

  Faith and Will's story: Just In Time (In Brenda Novak's SWEET TALK boxed set;

  May 1, 2015 - available for preorder now!)

  Chloe and Kevin's story: Just Say Yes (Spring/Summer 2015)

  THE KINCAIDS SERIES

  Mira and Gabe's story: Welcome to Paradise

  Desiree and Alec's story: Nothing Personal

  Alyssa and Joe's story: Asking for Trouble

  THE PARADISE, IDAHO SERIES (MONTLAKE ROMANCE)

  Zoe and Cal's story: Carry Me Home (June 2015)

  Book Two: Take Me On (December 2015)

  Book Three: Turn Me Loose (2016)

  Note: A New Zealand glossary appears at the end of this book.

  No shirt, no shoes, no…problems?

  Hemi Ranapia isn’t looking for love. Fun, yes. Love, not so much. But a summer fishing holiday to laid-back Russell could turn out to be more adventure than this good-time boy ever bargained for.

  Reka Harata hasn’t forgotten the disastrously hot rugby star she met a year ago, no matter how much she wishes she could. Too bad Hemi keeps refusing to be left in her past.

  Sometimes, especially in New Zealand’s Maori Northland, it really does take a village. And sometimes it just takes a little faith.

  From the Author: This 36,000-word (120-page) novella begins about six years before the events of JUST THIS ONCE. It was designed to be read as a stand-alone book and an intro to the series—but if you’ve read the others and are curious, here’s a handy-dandy little guide to familiar characters you’ll wave “hi” to in this story:

  Drew Callahan (Blues): 24, like Hemi; just made captain of the Blues.

  Finn Douglas (Blues): 27.

  Nate Torrance (Hurricanes): 21.

  Liam (Mako) Mahaka (Hurricanes): 20.

  Kevin McNicholl (Blues): 19.

  (And yes, they do start playing that young! It’s a young man’s sport.)

  The baby was crying, but that wasn’t why he was watching.

  Hemi Ranapia leant against the rail on the upper deck of the car ferry that had left Opua a few minutes earlier and would be in Okiato in a few more. He wasn’t looking at the placid waters of the Bay of Islands with his mates, though, or paying attention to their desultory conversation about the fishing trip they had planned for the next day. He was watching the girl.

  Because he’d met her before. He’d done more than meet her, and he remembered it pretty well. That part would have been a good memory. That part was a good memory. The part that was worrying him was the baby.

  She hadn’t noticed him yet. She was walking on the opposite side of the ferry’s top deck, holding the crying baby, talking or singing to it, he couldn’t tell. She was moving in his direction, every step a swaying bounce to calm the fussing infant, and one part of him wanted to go below, but the other part kept him rooted, waiting for her to recognize him.

  He saw the moment she did, the moment her large, liquid brown eyes met his own, the moment her feet stopped moving.

  She bounced the baby a bit more, but absently now. Aaron and Nikau stopped chatting about fishing and looked at her, and, baby or not, Hemi knew why they were looking, because she looked like a flower, something tropical and lush. She was wearing a flouncy pale-green skirt and a pretty orange top that clung to her rich figure, and her hair, pulled back into its Maori knot, was every bit as dark and shining, her skin every bit as velvety brown, her curves every bit as luscious as they’d looked in the red bridesmaid’s dress she’d been wearing the last time he’d seen her. The dress she’d been wearing for a while, anyway.

  “Hemi,” she said, and it wasn’t an invitation.

  He froze, because he couldn’t remember her name. He could remember every single detail of what she’d looked like naked, what she’d looked like under him, but for the life of him, he couldn’t remember her name.

  “You have a baby,” he said, and if there was a stupider opening line, he didn’t know what it would be. Now that she was closer, he could see that it was a Maori baby, but that was about it. Which left the question exactly as open as it had been before.

  Another woman was approaching her, holding a curly-haired boy of about five by one hand and piloting an empty pushchair with the other. She reached for the still-crying baby, and the girl handed him—her? over.

  “Thanks, love,” the other woman said. “Let’s go downstairs and get in the car, Tai,” she told the little boy. “Tamati needs a feed.”

  A boy, then. Hemi watched the little family leave, looked back at the girl again. “Not your baby.”

  “No,” she said, and the relief filled him. At least there was that.

  “Hi.” Aaron jumped straight into the gap. “You know Hemi, do you? This holiday’s getting better all the time. I’m Aaron.”

  She looked at him, hesitated a moment, and Hemi wasn’t sure she was even going to answer.

  “Reka,” she said at last, and he closed his eyes for a second and cursed his faulty memory. Of course. Reka. “Sweet.” She’d been that and then some.

  She wasn’t looking sweet now, though. She cast him a dismissive glance and followed her friend through the doorway that led down the stairs to the car deck beneath, and that was that. The end of their second meeting.

  The pub on the ground floor of the Duke of Marlborough Hotel was hopping. Summer was always a busy time in the tourist town of Russell, despite its isolated location at the tip of a peninsula, barely accessible except by ferry, bang in the middle of the Bay of Islands and a good three and a half hours’ drive north of Auckland.

  If summer was busy, a Saturday night in mid-January was the busiest, and Reka Harata was rushed off her feet. She wiped down a table that a hovering group hurried to occupy, then turned to the next, held down solidly by a group of American tourists.

  “Care for another?” she asked them.

  “Well, let’s see,” a sixtyish man with a belly said. “We’ve
got noplace to go but back to the hotel, and plenty of sports on TV. I think I’m getting the hang of this rugby thing. I could watch this all night. What do you all think?” he asked his companions. “Another beer sound good to everyone?”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” his wife dithered. “Do you think it’s a good idea?”

  Reka waited, patient smile intact, as the three couples made their decisions. She was finally able to collect their dirty glasses and head back to the bar for the refills they’d decided on—the refills she’d known they’d decide on. She didn’t know why Americans always had to pretend they didn’t really want to drink. Kiwis and Aussies had no such qualms.

  Her step faltered a bit at the sight of the two men entering the crowded, noisy room. They found a spot at one side of a big table facing the widescreen TV that was showing the Sevens tournament in Wellington, the sound off because it couldn’t have been heard anyway. Hemi and one of his mates, in her section. Of course he was.

  She went back to the bar, deposited the dirty glasses and collected drinks for another table from Fred, and headed out again. Head high, a little extra sway to her walk. Not needing him to notice her. Not needing any man here. Too good for all of them. The posture was familiar, even if it came harder tonight.

  But the whole time she was serving drinks, taking orders, her mind was back there anyway, no matter how much she tried to stop it.

  She’d noticed him even while she’d been walking down the aisle in the wharenui, wearing the stupid strapless dress of blood-red satin that Victoria had chosen, a dress she was definitely not going to be wearing again, a dress that had “bridesmaid” written all over it. She’d been supposed to be paying attention to her pace, and instead she’d been looking at the man sitting at the end of the row, up there to her right. A man who was looking right back at her. A mate of the groom’s, she knew, because Victoria had told them all he was coming.

  Hemi Ranapia, the starting No. 10 for the Auckland Blues, one of the year’s new caps for the All Blacks, and about the finest specimen of Maori manhood she’d ever seen. His dark, wavy hair cut short and neat, his brown eyes alive with interest as he watched her. A physique to die for, too, his shoulders broad in the black suit, his waistline trim, the size of his arms and thighs making it clear that the suit hadn’t come off any rack, because that had taken some extra material.

  She’d stood in her neat row to one side of the bride throughout the service, had done her best to keep her attention on the event, and had felt his gaze on her as surely as if he’d been touching her. She’d had to will herself not to shiver, and the look he sent her way, unsmiling and intent, when she walked back up the aisle again told her she hadn’t been imagining his interest.

  She’d still had what felt like hours of photo-taking to come. Standing around endlessly, smiling in the sunshine, arranging and rearranging herself according to the photographer’s instructions, being flirted with by one of the groomsmen, with Hemi in and out of her view all the while. His suit coat off now, his tie loosened, white shirt stretching across chest and shoulders. A beer in his hand and a smile on his face, having a chat with the other boys, being approached, at first shyly and then with enthusiasm, by the kids. And by the girls, she saw with a twinge of jealousy that made no sense at all, as one after another of them smiled for him, touched her hair, touched his arm. It looked to her like every unattached woman at the wedding, and more than one of the partnered ones as well, was going out of her way to chat him up. And he wasn’t exactly resisting.

  But he was looking at her all the same. Every now and then, she glanced across and his gaze caught hers, and she saw an expression on his face, an intensity and a heat that were making her burn.

  By the time the photography was done and she was released at last, the wedding party moving into the wharekai so the eating and drinking and dancing could begin, she was well and truly warmed up, and tingling more than a little in every single place she could imagine him touching with those clever hands, the hands she somehow knew would handle a woman as deftly as they handled a rugby ball.

  The band began to play, the bride and groom stepped into their first dance, and she saw him edging his way around an animated group towards her, a glass in each hand. He reached her side, handed her the flute of champagne with the flash of a smile.

  “Think you earned this,” he told her.

  She took it, and he touched his glass to hers.

  “Cheers,” he said with another white smile, the heat in his gaze unmistakable at this range. He tipped his brown throat back and drank, and she mirrored his action, felt golden bubbles popping against her tongue, the cool liquid sliding down her own throat. Drinking together like that somehow felt as intimate as kissing him, and the tongues of flame were licking every secret spot now.

  “Took your time, didn’t you?” she asked him with a cool she wasn’t even close to feeling.

  He laughed. “Didn’t want to seem too eager. Doing my best to be smooth here, but it’s hard going.”

  Another long drink, another long look as Victoria and Mason finished their dance and the band began another number, a fast one, and couples started filling the floor.

  “Think I can get a dance?” he asked.

  “Mmm, I think you could,” she said. “Maybe so.”

  He smiled again, took her glass from her and set it on the table, then led her out onto the floor, his big hand closing around her own, and she looked up at the strong column of his throat, the vee of brown skin at its base where he had opened a button, and wanted to put her mouth there.

  They danced fast, and they danced slow, and he started out holding her with a firm hand at her waist, the other still wrapped around hers. It started out all right, like any other dance with any other man.

  She hadn’t fallen as fast as she could have. She’d made him work for it at least that much, had danced with other fellas, had turned away from him and not looked at him for whole numbers at a time. But all the same, a few more glasses of champagne and more than a few dances later, she was in his arms without a molecule of air separating them, and her hands were sliding over those shoulders, that back, feeling the strength and the heat of him through the thin white cotton, and his hands were on her hips, and the two of them were barely swaying.

  He pulled back a bit, and she looked up at him, and something happened.

  He wasn’t smiling anymore. He was looking at her, just looking. Their eyes met, locked, and the connection was a physical thing, as if a cord were wrapped around them, binding them together. She felt it in her chest, her belly, and everywhere else, too, and the big, crowded room full of music and laughter and people faded away until it was just the two of them, just this one moment, just Hemi looking at her.

  “Get a bit of air,” he said when the song ended, and she walked straight out the door with him. Around the back of the wharekai, her hand still in his, until they rounded the corner and were in the darkest shadows, in a depression where the pipes came out of the wall, and he was pulling her into his arms.

  His lips were warm and firm, and when they touched hers, she felt the contact all the way through her sensitized body. His mouth took hers in a hot, slow, sweet kiss, then traveled across her cheek to her neck, to the perfect spot beneath her ear, and she moaned, because it felt so good. She was liquid inside, and more than inside.

  They kissed like that for long minutes in the warm air of the summer night, a light breeze caressing them, the darkness embracing them, the sky an overturned bowl pricked in ten thousand places to let ten thousand tiny lights shine through. And when one big hand strayed down from her waist to cup her bottom, to stroke over the curve of her, all she felt was pleasure at the touch, all she wanted was to move even closer. So she did, though she didn’t really have to, because he was hauling her up against him with all the strength of that big arm. And when the other hand didn’t even bother with the boning at her bodice, just dove straight inside to close around a breast, his palm moving over a nipple that h
ad been hard and aching for his touch since the first time he’d looked at her in the wharenui, she was so far past protesting, all she could do was turn her head to the side so he could bite her neck some more.

  She felt herself being walked backwards, and she was against the wooden wall. She could feel the vibration, hear the throbbing music coming from inside, matched by the throb at her core. He was pulling up her skirt by the handful, and then his hand was underneath it, his touch like a brand, rubbing over her, burning her, and she wanted more.

  “Wet,” he said on a sigh. “Aw, that’s good. You’re so wet for me.” He kept touching her there, kept kissing her, and she was gasping into his mouth, because his hand had slid beneath the lace band at the leg opening, and he was there. And, oh, did he know how to pet her, how to stroke her in exactly the way she needed.

  And then he settled down to the business of making her come, because he was talking.

  “This is so sweet,” he told her. “So hot. So wet. It’s all for me, isn’t it? You’re going to give it all to me, aren’t you? You’re going to give it all up to me tonight.”

  She couldn’t answer, because she was past it. Her breath was coming in sobbing gasps, and then she was being carried away by great waves of pleasure, riding his hand as he held her up, took her all the way.

  She was leaning against the wall, catching her breath, and his hands were at his belt, then unzipping, and somehow her underwear wasn’t there anymore, and he was lifting her.

  “Wrap your legs around me,” he told her, and she gave another gasp and obeyed, and he slid home. Her back was against the wall, and he was inside her, hard and fast and a little bit rough, and the music played inside and the warmth of the Northland night was no match for the heat that was Hemi filling her, taking her up again with the forbidden excitement of it, and she was trying not to cry out, taken over again by the raw pleasure that was pushing her higher, and higher still.