Smoke Screen Read online

  "You mean a professional, like a psychiatrist? No. Maybe I should. That's the traditional response, isn't it? Something goes wrong and you hire somebody to fix it for you. If you have enough money you can fix anything. Even nightmares."

  "You dislike having money?"

  "Of course not. Look how happy it's made me." She set her mug down with a thump. Her hand was shaking. "Adam, this isn't me sitting here saying these things. Go away."

  He knew he should. Instead he slid his arm around her, pulling her closer. "I've had nightmares, too." He felt her resistance and refused to honor it. "Come here."

  Paige sensed the blanket slip off her shoulders. She made a grab for it, but it fell between them. Adam ignored it, tugging her to lean against him. "Let me warm you," he insisted gently. "Give in, Paige. Just for a moment."

  Her cheek rested against the rough wool of his jacket. He was little more than a stranger, yet she felt she'd known him all her life. And right now she needed comfort too badly to worry about proprieties. Adam's arms held her tighter, and the fingertips of one hand traveled the length of her back. She felt the rumble of laughter.

  "I've been trying not to imagine what you had on under that blanket. Do you always sleep in a windcheater?" He pulled the sweatshirt away from her skin.

  "'New Zealand, Home of 70,000,000 Nuclear Free Sheep,'" she quoted the logo emblazoned on her chest. "It beats my silk nightgowns all to hell."

  Adam wanted to disagree, but at the moment it didn't seem prudent. He was already fighting his reaction to having her so close. His hand moved to her hair, and the short, silky strands clung to his fingers as he brushed it back from her face.

  "It wasn't just the nightmare was it, kaihana?" he asked softly. "You've been hurt. That's why you came here."

  "It's nothing I can't handle." She rubbed her cheek against his jacket. "What did you call me?"

  "Cousin."

  "You've called me cousin before."

  "Yes."

  "Why?"

  Paige was struggling with too much to struggle with more. And his grandmother had decreed that she not be told the truth. Adam told her what he could. "Jane Abbott was a very distant relation. We claim and value kinship here in a way that you probably don't. 1 can tell you the name of hundreds of people in my family, and Jane was one of them."

  "Then you think of me as a cousin even though the relationship is probably untraceable?"

  His fingers stopped smoothing her hair and lingered for just a moment on her cheek. "I've never had a cousin I've thought of quite this way," he said dryly.

  Somewhere she found the strength and good sense to try to put some distance between them. She lifted her head. "It is early, even though you don't think so, and I know I'm keeping you from your work."

  He didn't let her go. Their faces were only inches apart.

  "Was it a man who hurt you?"

  She countered instead of answering. "Was it Jeremy's mother who hurt you?"

  "Sheila was a woman who damaged everything she touched."

  Paige felt strangely pleased that he had answered. She could do no less. "Granger was a man who healed, but I wasn't the woman who needed his touch."

  "You need someone's." Adam framed her face. "You have for a long time, haven't you?"

  "I don't think I was meant to have what Americans call a 'meaningful relationship.'" She examined her own voice and found no traces of self-pity. She was encouraged and managed a smile. "I think I'm more the type to have a long series of doomed affairs."

  If there hadn't been just the faintest note of wistfulness in her words, he might have laughed. As it was, his hands threaded through her hair. "I think you're afraid."

  "Any sensible person is afraid, Adam. It's a big, bad world out there. Don't they teach you that here?" She tried to pull away, but she didn't try hard.

  Adam knew he should let Paige go. He tried to tell himself that kissing her was a bad idea, but he didn't try hard enough. "Here they teach us to take care of our own."

  She watched him move closer. "Does this qualify as taking care of me?" she asked softly.

  "You decide." His lips took hers gently, blocking all protests. She tasted like sweetened tea and sunrise. She tasted like warm, sweet woman. His unsteady fingers traveled slowly through her hair until he could feel the velvety softness of the back of her neck against his fingertips. Lightly, he caressed the faint hollow before he withdrew his mouth from hers.

  "I don't think you're taking care of either of us." She was shaken by the gentle power of his touch. Lucifer had kissed her like the sweetest angel.

  Adam worked to form an ordinary invitation when he felt anything but ordinary. "Come have breakfast at my house."

  She had expected something very different. A proposition, more kisses, perhaps an angry withdrawal. "Breakfast?"

  He raised an eyebrow. "You call it something else?"

  "Adam, what's happening here?"

  "I'm going to fill your tank with petrol, then I'm going to take you to my house, and Granny's going to serve us breakfast. Jeremy will probably cower, and Granny will probably flutter like an old hen. That's 'what's happening.'" He said the last two words with an excellent imitation of her Louisiana drawl.

  "I'd better not."

  Adam stood and held out a hand. "You don't want to be alone here, Paige. Believe me, I know."

  She had been kissed by more than a few men, but no kiss had affected her this way. She took his hand and let him help her stand. His gaze traveled slowly down to her legs.

  "And you sleep in jeans, too? Expensive jeans?"

  "I sit on the front porch in jeans."

  "Will you ride with me or take your own car?"

  "I'd better change."

  "Don't. Come the way you are."

  "My hair's a mess." She ran her fingers over it.

  Adam knew they had to leave before he kissed her again. "I like it that way. You need an imperfection or two."

  On a whim, she stretched on tiptoe and ruffled his. "You could stand an imperfection or two yourself, cousin."

  "Kaihana. Cousin."

  "Kaihana."

  As he drove, Adam wondered if Paige had any idea how much self-control it had taken not to pull her into his arms and kiss her with the full force of the desire she had ignited. His body ached from restraint.

  And still he hadn't shown enough. He never should have touched her at all. If she had needed comfort, he should have taken her home to Granny. His regrets were overwhelming.

  There would be no excuse good enough to make him touch Paige again. Now he knew the pleasure that touching could bring. Now he knew the frustration.

  Paige sensed that Adam's silence wasn't comfortable or ordinary. If she was still trying to untangle the unexpected intimacy of his kiss, Adam seemed to have untangled and dismissed it. She resorted to small talk. "Is the land we're passing part of your farm?"

  "Yes."

  She turned to stare out the window when a movement in the side mirror caught her eye. "Adam, there's a dog chasing us."

  Adam glanced out his rearview mirror and shook his head in disgust. He braked and got out, waiting for the short-haired, black mutt to catch up. The dog halted several feet away, sank down to his belly and slithered the rest of the distance like a snake.

  "Come meet my latest defeat," Adam told Paige. "This is Cornwall. Cornwall, meet Paige."

  Paige slammed her door to join Adam and the trembling dog. "What on earth is he afraid of?"

  "This." Adam put his foot under the dog's jaw and lifted it gently. His words, spoken in Maori, were less gentle.

  "That's it?"

  "He knows what I'm saying."

  "He's your pet?"

  "Never a pet. He's a sheepdog."

  "I thought he was some kind of mutt, part Doberman maybe."

  "Border collie, black Labrador mix. A Huntaway. New Zealand's greatest labor-saving device. Except this one." He bounced his foot gently so that the dog's head bobbed. "This one is a thr
owaway."

  Adam gave a piercing whistle and pointed, and the dog turned and, shaggy tail between its legs, ran back the way it had come.

  "I hope you never plan to reject me like that." Paige watched the dog until it was nothing more than a blur. "What did he do wrong?"

  "He left his post."

  "Court-martialed." Paige went back around the truck and got in. In a moment they were back on the road.

  Adam checked his mirror again. "Cornwall's from the best stock. His mother's a champion, and his father was my best dog until he died. Apparently both of them had some aberrant genes that produced Cornwall."

  "He seems lovable."

  "He's not supposed to be lovable. He's supposed to be efficient. You haven't seen him down your way, have you?"

  "No. Will he be visiting?"

  "He'd better not."

  In a minute they were at the bottom of the hill leading up to Adam's house, in three, up the hill amid much grinding of gears. Paige laid her hand on Adam's arm as he started to open his door. She liked the way he felt, strong, hard, all wiry, rangy muscle and bone. What she didn't like was the way he tensed at her touch. "Is there anything I should do to make Jeremy more comfortable? I haven't had much experience with kids. I really don't know what to do."

  "There's nothing you can do," he said gruffly.

  Paige withdrew her hand. She wondered where Adam's gentleness had gone. There had been moments on her porch when he had been a different person. On the trip over, he had become the remote New Zealand sheep farmer, and she had become the woman he was forced to rescue once more. She felt disappointment and something more elemental, as if an unspoken promise had been broken. She realized she had been foolish to let down her guard with him. She wouldn't be so foolish again.

  Adam opened the house door for her, and Paige stepped in, confronting a small figure in bright red flannel pajamas. Jeremy sat in the middle of the hallway, spinning a beautiful wooden top. Paige didn't move any closer, afraid she would frighten him. Instead she watched the top, its intricately carved designs whirling in symmetrical patterns. "What a beautiful toy," she told Adam, knowing Jeremy would overhear. "I've never seen one like it."

  "Thank you."

  She turned her gaze to him. "You made it?"

  He shrugged. "He plays with it when he wakes and finds I'm not here. I've been told he can watch it spin for hours."

  Mihi came into the hallway and greeted them. "Adam's carved a top for each child in the family. After we eat, perhaps he'll show you the flutes he makes, too."

  Jeremy seemed to become aware of Paige's presence and fled with his precious toy. But not before she could see how beautifully crafted it was.

  One memorable breakfast later, Paige followed Adam into his office, where he displayed some of his handiwork on the wall over his desk. The flutes were as intricately carved as the top. Of varying sizes with three finger holes, each was covered with designs that heightened the beauty of the dark wood. He took down one of the largest and handed it to her. "This is a koauau."”

  Paige fondled the shining wood, letting her fingers linger in the elaborate spiraling grooves. "Do you play it?"

  Adam held out his hand, and she gave the flute to him. He put it to his mouth, and in a moment his office was filled with music. The sound was primitive, each note sliding into the next with no pattern that Paige could discern. And yet when he was done, she realized the song had the chillingly perfect beauty of a spider web whose pattern can only be recognized when it's completed.

  She tried to shake off the spell of the music, but it had tugged at emotions she couldn't identify. "That was wonderful," she said finally, her voice husky. "Is that a Maori song?"

  "I like to think so. We're an adaptable people. A musical people, too. When the Europeans came, we liked the sounds they made, so we adopted them as our own. There's nothing much left of our old music. That was my idea of what our songs must have sounded like."

  "You keep the old traditions alive, yet you're very much a twentieth-century man."

  Adam didn't want her to understand him. He wanted distance. "Perhaps I believe that some of the old traditions have more value than some of the new." He hung the flute on the wall behind him.

  She heard the dismissal. He thought she was an insensitive little rich girl who believed the world had sprung to life the moment she had been born. Worse, he believed she only saw value in familiar things. "Why are you trying to convince yourself I'm so shallow?" she asked softly. "I'm not."

  "I don't know what you mean."

  Paige tried not to let her hurt show. Since they had gotten in his truck, he had tried to cut himself off from her. She was tired of trying to find out why. "I think I'd like to walk home. The exercise will do me good. I know you walked here from my house once. Is there a shortcut?"

  "Through the thermals."

  She tried to joke. "That might be even shorter than I need. I'd like to live to see New Orleans again."

  Adam was stone-faced. "I'll take you back. I've got to go into town anyway."

  She wished she didn't have to face another ride with him, but she knew she had little choice. It was Adam or scalding geysers. She found Mihi and said goodbye before she followed Adam to the car.

  As unapproachable as he had suddenly become, Paige knew that the trip back to her house was probably her only chance to ask him to guide her through the thermals. Obviously he knew them as well or better than anyone. At the least she had to ask him for the name of someone else if he wasn't interested. Adam was her only resource.

  "I didn't even realize your property bordered the thermals," she began when they were halfway to her house and the silence had extended until it was uncomfortable. "I was fooled by the hills."

  "You have a bit to learn about your thermals yet."

  Mentally she thanked him for the introduction, if not for the snideness of his comment. "I'm hoping you'll agree to teach me some more."

  Paige listened to Adam's silence and thought about how much it said. "I need a guide," she said finally. "I can't make any decisions about selling the thermals to Hamish's corporation without seeing them myself. Maybe you could suggest someone else who could do it."

  "No."

  "Thanks for considering it," she drawled, turning to watch the passing scenery.

  Silently, Adam cursed their situation. "I can't suggest anyone else because there isn't anyone reliable who knows them the way I do."

  "Reliable? Someone's going to strand me beside a boiling mud pool?"

  "I have a cousin, Pat Tomoana, who knows the thermals. But Pat tends to forget about commitments he makes."

  "He sounds better than no one."

  Adam knew he was trapped as surely as if he had been caught in the middle of the thermals after dark. Paige had to be shown the area, and she had to have the right guide. He wouldn't have lifted a finger to help her sell them to Hamish Armstrong, but there wasn't anything he wouldn't do to help her assess them for a different reason.

  "I'll guide you."

  "Thanks, but I think I'll find someone else," she said politely.

  Adam's car made easy work of the gentle slope to Paige's front door. He turned off the engine, then put his hand on her arm to keep her from getting out. "I said I'd take you through, and I will."

  Paige shook off Adam's hand. "You've already done too much. I can't ask for any other favors, and you've already told me how you feel about being paid."

  "You'll be doing me a favor if you let me."

  She turned to him, hand still on the door handle. She was sick of his games. "What am I supposed to think about you, kaihana? One minute I'm persona non grata, the next you're telling me that a favor I need is really a favor you need. Can't you make up your mind?"

  She was flushed, and more than a little angry, even though the polite smile on her lips belied it. Adam knew she had a right to her anger, and an equal right to an explanation. Silently he cursed again. "What do you see when you look at me?"

 
; "I didn't get much sleep last night, so I may not be too good at guessing games."

  "Just tell me what you see."

  "Is this some sort of ink-blot test? Snakes in the squiggles, rocket ships in the smudges?" Paige let her eyes travel from Adam's face down to his feet. "I see a man, Adam. What do you want me to say? That I see a sheep farmer? That I see the father of a little boy and the grandson of a wonderful old woman? That I see a person whose blood combines two ancient and honorable cultures? That I see an exasperating, angry cousin-fifty-times-removed who can't be pleasant for more than a half hour at a time?"

  "Do you see a man who wants you?"

  She was taken aback. "No. No sign of that man anywhere," she said finally.

  "Good." Adam opened his door and came around to help her out.

  Paige regarded him warily.

  Adam leaned against his car. "Let me tell you about Sheila."

  "You don't have to."

  "I think I do."

  She stood in front of him, arms folded, waiting.

  "My brothers married young and happily. They picked flowers for their wives, their wives cooked for them. I thought all marriages were like theirs, and I wanted to marry, too, except I never seemed to fall in love. When I met Sheila, I thought I'd finally found my wife. Only it wasn't that way. Sheila lived with me, but she refused marriage. She claimed she wasn't ready. She needed time. As it turned out, what she needed was a man with no Maori blood."

  Paige frowned. "I thought New Zealand was free of that sort of racism."

  "Racism exists wherever there's more than one race. The government can't legislate what's in a person's heart. When Sheila found she was pregnant, she left me. I did everything I could to trace her, but she just disappeared. Three years later I got a call from the authorities in another city. Sheila had abandoned our child to them, giving them my name. It seems that the older Jeremy grew, the more Maori he looked. Sheila was ashamed of him. When the authorities began to uncover his history, they found a long record of neglect. Apparently, Sheila's favorite way to care for our son was to lock him in her apartment while she went out by herself. Sometimes she remembered to leave him something to eat, sometimes she didn't. The Jeremy you've seen is a healthy little boy compared to the Jeremy I saw that first day."