Just Once More (13 page)

There had been headlights behind him for a while now. He eased off the gas again, fighting for that self-control.

He’d let the fella pass, he decided. Five more minutes, and they’d be at the beach. If they even made it out of the car. But he didn’t think he was the best choice for leading the way there.

The car didn’t pass, though. Instead, it turned on its own lights. The flashing blue ones.

“Aw, sh—”, Nate breathed. Why tonight?

Ally looked around. “Maybe he’s going somewhere,” she said hopefully. “An ambulance.”

A blip from the siren put paid to that idea. Nate sighed and pulled onto the shoulder, stopped the car, and sat.

He looked across at Ally. “Don’t even say it.”

“What?” she asked innocently, then spoiled the effect by giggling. “You mean you might actually get a ticket?
You?
I didn’t think that was allowed. I thought you were disciplined.”

“I used to be.” He pushed the button for the window as the officer approached.

He man bent down to peer into the window. “Evening,” Nate said.

“Evening,” he got in return. “May I see your documents, please?”

Nate handed them over, and the man pulled out a flashlight, scrutinized them.

Nate waited. “Quit smiling,” he hissed at Ally.

“Sorry,” she said, made a poor attempt at schooling her expression, and failed.

“Nate Torrance,” the officer said.

Nate sighed. “Yeh. That’s me.”

“Not doing so well, are you?” the man asked. “How many have you had tonight?”

“Two beers,” Nate said. He knew that everyone said “two beers.” It was just that in his case, it happened to be the truth.

“I’ll have to ask you step out of the car,” the man said.

Nate sighed again, got out, went back to the police car and endured the breathalyzer test. His first one ever, and bloody hell, but it was embarrassing.

“Huh.” The officer read the results. “Barely a reading. It really was two beers, eh.”

“Yeh,” Nate said. “It was. I don’t drive drunk.”

“Wouldn’t have thought so. But the way you were driving…Want to explain that?”

Nate scratched the back of his neck. The neck that Ally had had her soft fingers on just minutes before.

“I got…engaged last week,” he said reluctantly.

“Ah,” the man said. “That the young lady?”

“Well, yeh.” Nate glared. “Of course it is.”

“Sorry,” the man said hastily. “You never know.”

“And she’s…” Nate stopped. How was he meant to explain this?

“Yeh,” the man said. “She is.” He saw Nate glaring and coughed. “I mean, pretty girl. Congratulations.”

“Look,” Nate said. “I know I wasn’t driving too well. Let’s just say I’m going to get where we’re going in about five minutes, and I won’t be slowing down any more along the way. I’ve got someplace I need to be.”

The man was frankly grinning now. “Ah. Been married nearly fifteen years myself. Early days, eh.”

“Yeh,” Nate said with a sheepish grin. “And just back from the Tour. It’s all a bit…exciting.”

The officer nodded, walked him back to the car. Nate got in without a word to Ally, shoved the documents into the glove box, and waited.

“Are you going to give him a ticket?” Ally asked.

“Nah,” the man said. “Not tonight. Call it a warning.”

“Really.” She actually looked disappointed, Nate thought with outrage. “Because you’re right,” she said hopefully. “He wasn’t driving very well.”

The officer looked at Nate, and he read sympathetic amusement in the other man’s eyes. “Could be he had a little provocation,” he said. “You take care he does better, miss.”

She sighed. “How come you guys never say that to me?”

The professional mask had slipped entirely, and he was laughing. “I’ll say congrats and send you on your way,” he told Nate. “Get her there safely, mate, and don’t take too long about it. And best of luck.”

“Well, I call that disappointing,” she pronounced when he’d pulled onto the road again, was driving his usual cautious kilometer or two below the limit.

“Do not push me,” he warned her. “Most embarrassing moment of my life.”

“Really?” she asked with pleasure. “The very most? Man, you really have lived way too safely.”

He laughed. He couldn’t help it. “You’re going to be the death of me. Or the making of me, I can’t tell which.”

She smiled happily back. “I’ll do my best—my very best—to be both. How soon until we go swimming?”

“Two minutes.” He could see the sign for Maketu in the distance. “Two minutes, and then I take you for your swim, and you find out what happens to naughty girls who get naked on the beach.”

She could have been more tactful, Kate thought a bit guiltily as she and Koti said their goodbyes and climbed into the back seat of Reka and Hemi’s car for the short drive home. But she’d
meant
to be tactful.

She sighed. No way around it, tact wasn’t her strong suit. She’d just have to apologize to Koti when they were alone.

And all right, apologizing wasn’t her strong suit either. But she’d do it anyway. Because, yeah. Tact.

“Good time,” Hemi said from the driver’s seat. “Good to have all the boys together again, and good to see Nate settling in so well too. Good to show everybody that the guard’s well and truly changed, and that everybody’s all right with that.”

“Harder for us than for you, I sometimes think,” Reka said. “Hannah’s right. It’s better for us to have our own lives, our own focus. Important to remember that we’re about more than what you do and who you are. And, yeh, about Nate. Settling in, I thought, and settling down as well.”

“No hope for it,” Hemi agreed, then laughed at her snort. “Nah. He’s a happier man all around. That’s easy to see.”

He turned into the quiet street dominated by the massive Moreton Bay fig that took up a lot-sized space at the corner, then was taking the turn into the semicircular driveway, pulling up in front of the sprawling modern home he shared with Reka and their four children, with her mum cozily ensconced in her own granny flat.

“D’you mind popping in and checking on Maia for us?” Koti asked as they all got out of the car.

“Why?” Reka asked. “You not coming in?”

“Thought I’d take Kate for a drive,” Koti said.

There was something in his voice that told Kate her apology was definitely going to be required, and that she’d been wrong. She was going to enjoy it.

“Oh, yeah?” she asked. “Going to show me the stars?”

“Something like that.”

“We won’t wait up, eh,” Reka said.

“Probably best,” he agreed cordially. “See you in the morning.”

“Hmm.” Hemi used his key on the front door as Koti’s flash car swung through the drive and out onto the street. He stood aside and held the door for Reka. “I think Kate’s about to get reacquainted with Koti’s um.”

“Got your mind right in that gutter, boy,” Reka said. “Maybe he really does want to look at the stars.”

“Yeh, right.” He shut the door behind them and grabbed her from behind. He felt her start of surprise as he pulled her back against him, then the softening in her body when he bent to nuzzle the side of her neck, because she loved that, and he loved doing it to her. “Got something disparaging you’d like to say about my um?” he murmured in her ear. “Because I’d truly love to have an excuse to put you right tonight.”

He heard the
thud
as she dropped her purse to the tiled floor of the entryway, the hitch in her breath as his mouth continued to move over her skin, as his hand came around to find a full breast. This just never got old.

“Why don’t we just…pretend I did something wrong?” she got out. “Then you can show me what a warrior you are. Because I miss those Northern Tours.”

“What?” His hand stopped moving, and he lifted his head. “You miss me being gone for five weeks?”

“Not that,” she said, snuggling up to him a little more. “Touch me again. Don’t stop. Please.”

“Not until you explain that,” he said sternly. He wanted to. Oh, yeh. He wanted to. But she wanted to have some fun too? He’d oblige.

“All right, then,” she sighed. “If I have to. I miss you coming home. Having all that pent-up ferocity for me. I miss you showing me everything you wanted, everything you’d thought of. Sending the kids to Mum’s and keeping me in bed for days. I ended up pregnant half the time. And I loved it.”

“Mmm.” His hand was there again now, and she was leaning back against him, purring her contentment. “Right, then. I can’t take myself off for five weeks. But I’ve got
some things I’ve thought of, no worries. So let’s go. Upstairs. I hope you’re ready to learn, because I’m ready to take you to school.”

“All right,” Kate said when they’d turned at the fig tree, were on the main road again. “You didn’t have to go to this extreme. I was planning to apologize anyway.”

She looked across at him, saw the flash of a smile, and relaxed a little. He hadn’t said anything since they’d got in the car, and for a minute there, she’d wondered.

“Oh, for the apology I’ve got in mind,” he told her, his voice silky smooth, “we needed the car.”

“All right, now I’m completely at a loss. Why? So you can yell?”

“Nah. So you can.”

That
shut her up. And instantly flipped the switch, had blood rushing everywhere it needed to be.

He drove for ten minutes or so, the silence becoming more fraught with every kilometer.

“Where are we going?” she finally asked.

“The Mount.”

“All…right. Why?”

“You ask a lot of questions, don’t you? Never mind. You’ll find out.”

She couldn’t handle the silence. She knew he was playing, but there was an edge, too, she could tell. She wasn’t sure if it made her nervous or excited. All right, she was sure. It made her both.

“Everybody knows I was just being funny,” she told him. “And anyway, what about that reputation of yours? You got that the old-fashioned way. You earned it. So if anybody thinks anything at all about you, it’s because of you, not me. And all right, I didn’t say it quite right, but that’s because it didn’t come out quite the way I meant it. It sounded much better in my head.”

He was winding up the streets of the extinct volcano that gave Mt. Maunganui its name, then pulling to a stop off the road near the summit. With, indeed, a view out to the dark sea below, the lights of the town and Papamoa beyond glittering to the southeast,
Tauranga to the southwest, and the distant dots that were the smaller settlements to the northwest. The entire hilltop reserve deserted now, past ten on a Sunday night.