Page 52 of Seduction Under the Southern Stars

“I said I’d buy you lunch,” I tell her. “You don’t want to go to a restaurant?”

“I’m a cheap date,” she says. “Not that this is a date… oh you know what I mean.”

Chuckling, I follow her in. I’m not sure why she doesn’t want a proper meal. Does she think it sounds too much like a date? Or does she feel uncomfortable eating in restaurants? Either way, I don’t care as long as she’s happy, so we go into the café, order a toasted panini and a latte each, and I also buy a chocolate brownie for her, which arrives warm and with whipped cream.

“Are you trying to fatten me up?” she complains, but it doesn’t stop her having a big forkful and closing her eyes as she savors the soft chocolate cake.

I watch her eat, thinking how lovely she is. She told me she can’t imagine trusting a man enough to be intimate with him, but despite not having seen me for ten years, she’s already hugged me several times. And I could be wrong, but as we left the lab, I’m pretty sure she was hoping I’d kiss her.

I wanted to. It would have been so easy to lower my head and press my lips to hers. To tilt my head and deepen the kiss. To let my hands slide to her butt and lift her so she could feel my growing erection. To ask her back to my hotel room.

What would she have said if I’d done that?

I think she might have said yes.

She closes her lips around the fork as she takes a bite of the brownie, and I stifle a groan. I haven’t had sex for a long time—maybe six months or more—and although DIY takes the ache away for a while, it’s not as satisfying as sharing yourself with someone.

If she was any other single girl and I thought she might be giving me signals, I’d start flirting, testing the waters to see if I was on the right track. Dating can be precarious at times, and after a few curt rejections I’ve learned to be cautious in my advances, and only suggest taking it further when the signs are blindingly obvious. But I’ve gotten pretty good at it, and I’m sure she’d say yes.

But she’s not any other girl. She’s like a sister to me.

Except, she’s not, and never has been. Maybe for the first year or two at Greenfield I tried to think of her like that. But the more time I spent with her, the more I enjoyed her company on a deeper level.

Did I have sexual feelings toward her? On my part, if I’m honest with myself, the answer to that is yes. I was very conscious of her age though and would never—despite Atticus’s assumptions—have suggested anything sexual. And I was a virgin and fairly clueless. But I was eighteen, the age when a guy can get an erection purely by sitting on a bumpy bus, and I can remember admiring her new curves and thinking how silky her hair might feel in my fingers. On her part, maybe not, as she was so young. And yet fourteen isn’t ten. Your body is full of hormones, awakening, preparing itself for adulthood. Lots of teens fool around and make out, exploring their budding desires, even if they don’t go the whole way. So who knows what thoughts she had about me in bed at night?

I think of how she blushed when I walked into the conservation room today. She’d been thinking about me, and I’d stake my apartment on the fact that in her fantasy we weren’t playing Scrabble.

But I can’t act on it. When it comes down to it, she might well discover that a one-night stand isn’t what she’s looking for. She thinks she trusts me, but how comfortable can she really be with me, a guy she hasn’t seen for ten years, even if we were close back then? She needs to find a man who’ll be patient enough to date her for a while, and who, when he eventually takes her to bed, is slow, and kind, and gentle.

I glower a little at the thought of the guy who’s lucky enough to be the one to touch her. In another universe, I stayed in New Zealand, and eventually when she came of age we started dating, and who knows where it might have led? But I took another fork in the road, one which led me away from her, and now it’s too late. She’s out of bounds, and I’m out of luck.

“So what do you have planned for the next few days?” she asks.

I push my lewd thoughts away. “Nothing, to be honest. I was going to wing it.”

“True Linc style.”

“Damn straight. Originally I thought I might go up to Hobbiton, or do a bit of a driving tour. But I might wait and see what happens with the DNA test. If it’s positive…”

“You’ll be heading down to Queenstown?”

I shrug. “If he wants to see me.”

“Oh I’m sure he will. How often do you find out you have a son you didn’t know about? If he didn’t want to know, he’d have been much more dismissive on the phone. He could easily have said there’s no way he could be the father and hung up. I think the fact that he even requested the DNA test is a really positive sign.”

“I hope so. I’m afraid to get my hopes up though.”

“That’s understandable.”

I blow out a breath. “It’s good that he was able to fast track it, but Monday still seems to be a long way off.”

“Would you…” she hesitates, then squares her shoulders as if she’s summoning up courage. “Would you like to do something tomorrow? To help you pass the time? No worries at all if not.”

“I’d love to,” I reply, pleased she wants to spend time with me. “What do you have in mind?”

“I don’t know. We could go to Weta Workshop and see all The Lord of the Rings stuff. Or go up in the cable car and visit Space Place—the planetarium. Or I’ve got my car if you want to take a drive somewhere. We could go to Stonehenge Aotearoa.”

“Yes, yes, and yes,” I say. “Sounds amazing.”

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