Hope
So you know how, in the fairy tale, the poor but beautiful girl marries the handsome prince, and they live happily ever after?
Let me tell you how that really goes.
How much can a person really change, even with the best will in the world? How far can a heart really open after it’s been closed for so long? How many steps backward does a person have to take to move forward, and how much trust does it take to be the partner in that dance?
And I’m not just talking about Hemi.
I didn’t ask those questions that night, of course. It was June, the beginning of the New Zealand winter, and I was nine thousand miles and almost a year away from the hot August day in New York City when a controlling, arrogant, absolutely infuriating Maori fashion tycoon and force of nature named Hemi Te Mana first walked into my boss’s photography studio, caught me at a disadvantage, and set out to keep me that way.
By the time Hemi had walked out that day, he’d been well on his way to changing my life for good, and my teenage sister Karen’s along with it. And by the end of that tumultuous year, we’d gone from having nothing to being promised everything, and from having nobody to maybe having…somebody.
And Hemi was some somebody. The truth? By that winter night when my CEO proposed to me as we lay together in his teenaged bedroom in his grandfather’s house in the sleepy New Zealand settlement of Katikati, I’d started to believe that this really could be my life, and that fairy tales really could come true.
You know what they say, though. Be careful what you wish for.
That night, there were no doubts. We slept curled so close together in the undersized bed that I could barely tell where my body ended and his began, and all my dreams were sweet. And in the gray winter morning, when I half-woke to liquid birdsong in the trees outside the window and the feeling of Hemi’s strong hand running down my back and over my hip, it was the most natural thing in the world to sigh, murmur something vague, and turn onto my back so he could touch me better.
I lay, still inside the warmest, most languorous dream, not needing even to wake while Hemi pleased me with his hands, his hard mouth, and every bit of his warrior’s body. Until I was finally being rocked into full wakefulness, the pleasure swirling through my body while my hard, fierce Maori lover murmured words in my ear that I knew the meaning of now.
“Toku aroha,” he whispered. “Taku e aroha nei.”
My love, he was saying. My darling.
I rode that river of shivery, silken pleasure all the way to the sea as Hemi lay over me, filled me in the way that nobody else could possibly match, and let me know where I belonged. I kissed his chest, stroked the breadth of his muscular back, smoothed my hands over the bulge of shoulder and bicep, and could have sworn I felt his heart beating in time with mine. I drifted along with him until his harsh breaths sounded loud in my ears and the whimpers I couldn’t help were escaping with every hard thrust, every slow withdrawal. Until my hands were clutching his biceps and I was saying his name, urging him on, begging him for more, and he took my hands in his, threaded his fingers through mine, dragged my hands up by my head, and held me there.
When he did that, I couldn’t drift any more. Harder and faster, and then, when I was so close, starting to get frustrated, to labor too hard, Hemi was shifting, grabbing both my wrists in one hand and using his other hand to help me out. Giving me all his focus, all his attention, all his effort, until he was taking me with him, pulling me up higher and higher still until the waves took us over, the net pulled us in, and we were both shuddering, crying out. Caught, and tumbling hard.
I was his, but then, I’d been his from the beginning, hard as I’d tried to deny it. More incredibly—he was mine.
An hour later, when his grandfather and my sixteen-year-old sister Karen came through the back door from their night out, Hemi and I were finishing breakfast at the kitchen table and looking out the window past emerald fields all the way to the Pacific Ocean below, and feeling a long, long way from New York City.
We weren’t talking, even though there was so much to settle, so much to discuss. I wanted to hold this quiet moment before our lives picked us up and hurtled us on again, and Hemi seemed content to let me do it. But then, talking—and sharing his thoughts—had never been his favorite things, as I was soon to be forcibly reminded.
“Geez,” my sister said, coming into the kitchen on a swirl of chilly morning air and a burst of teenaged energy and eyeing me in my robe. “You guys are slow. We already had breakfast at the café and everything. Bacon and sausage and eggs. It’s like the whole country’s on the Atkins Diet. Protein delight, and you missed it.”
Hemi eyed her with the lightening around his eyes that was his version of a smile. “Well, Hope and I had a fair bit to discuss last night.”
Karen looked as inquisitive and bright as one of the fluttering little fantails that had dogged our steps on our walk to the coast the day before. “Oh?”
Hemi’s Koro, his grandfather, didn’t ask anything. He just looked at Hemi, his wise old eyes sharp in his lined brown face.
“Yeh,” Hemi said. He was actually smiling for once, not just looking like he might, and now, he took my hand under the table, swallowing it up in that way only he could. “Think you could run to a wedding while we’re here, Koro? Seems I’ve managed to talk this one into it, and I don’t mean to let her get away.”
Karen’s eyes were wide behind her black-rimmed glasses. “Get out,” she breathed.
Koro, like Hemi, didn’t smile much. He wasn’t doing it now, but his broad face somehow showed every bit of his satisfaction. Hemi stood, releasing my hand, and his grandfather pulled him into a fierce embrace. “My son,” he said when he finally stood back, “you make me proud.” Then he turned to me, took me more gently into his arms, kissed my cheek, and said, “Haere mai, Hope. Welcome to our family. Don’t let Hemi get above himself, eh.”
“Never,” Hemi said, but I just laughed and tried not to cry. I knew I was happy, but it was too much. I didn’t trust it, or I couldn’t take it in, or something.
Karen had sat down beside me, and now she was hugging me. “I better get to be a bridesmaid.”
“Plan on that,” Hemi said. “Hope’s going to need somebody standing up with her if she’s really going to take me on.”
“Wait,” I said, finally processing everything he’d said. “We can’t do it now. We’re only here for a couple more weeks.”
“Course we can,” Hemi said. “I asked you, remember? And you said yes. You have your birth certificate. Why d’you think I made you bring it?”
Karen reached out and snitched a chunk of pineapple off my plate. “So you planned this? Awesome. Did you kneel down and everything? And does this mean I get a college fund?”
“Karen,” I said helplessly.
Hemi, of course, was laughing. “Yeh,” he said. “You get a college fund. Long as you earn it, keep working hard.”
“No worries,” Karen said. “I’m very bright.”
She reached for another piece of pineapple, and I slapped her hand and said, “You had breakfast.”
“I’m a growing girl. With a college fund. Who’s going to be a bridesmaid.” She sighed. “Is this an awesome vacation or what?”