Page 83 of Catch a Kiwi
“Except that Roman lives heaps closer to Daniel than I do,” Hemi said. “Unfortunately.”
This time, Roman actually cracked a smile. “No worries,” he said. “I’m no soft touch.”
Hemi finally looked at Koro, who’d sat between him and Roman during all this without saying a word, occasionally taking a bite of lamb or kumara, but otherwise just listening. “Good enough for you?” Hemi asked.
“He’s probably been holding his breath,” Delilah said. “Wondering if we were going to have to do a cage match. That would’ve been interesting. Hemi’s older, but he seems meaner.”
“Nah,” Koro said. “Hemi knows what’s right. That’s good enough for me, my son,” he told Hemi.
“Whanau is whanau,” Hemi said.
“Especially if you’re Maori,” Hope said.
“I should tell you,” Roman said. “I’ve never considered myself Maori.”
“How could you,” Koro said, “without an iwi. Without your mountain and your river. Without knowing what you come from.”
“His tribe,” Hope said quietly to me. “His ancestors. His sense of place. His marae—the meeting place. A Maori belongs to the place, and he belongs to the people.”
“I’ve got along without those things so far,” Roman said. “I can respect it, but I won’t be rushing out to get a tattoo.”
“Fair enough,” Hemi said.
“Are you sure?” Delilah asked. “It could be totally awesome, and those tattoos are smokin’ hot. If you actuallywantSummer to fall for you, that is, and not keep running away.”
Hemi smiled and said to Hope, “We may as well have Karen here, eh.”
“Which would be awesome,” Delilah said. “Karen is my kind of people.”
I said, because I thought I needed to, “I don’t care about the tattoo. I don’t care about the packaging. I care about the man underneath, and so far …” I took a deep breath. Could I say this? Yes, because Roman needed to hear it. “So far, the man underneath is pretty special. It’s not what a man says. It’s what he does. I forgot that for a little while,” I told Roman, “because of my prejudices. Against wealthy men. Good-looking men. Confident men.”
“Arrogant men,” Delilah chimed in helpfully.
“No,” I said. “I’ve decided not. An arrogant man can’t be set right. He can’t change his mind, because he’s sure hedoesn’t need to. And that’s not the man Roman is.” Another breath. “Not the kind of good man he is. If you have to get a long-lost brother,” I told Hemi, “I can’t think of a better one.”
“Think I’m getting that,” Hemi answered gravely, but with some humor in his eyes. “And I’m thinking you’re not doing too badly yourself,” he told Roman. “In more ways than one.”
34
WALK ON
Roman
I didn’t know exactly what to say to Summer after that. She blew so hot and cold, it was driving me mad. Did I go with what I was getting from her today, or what she’d said before? I was on the back foot and no mistake.
She kept me confused by moving off as soon as the meal was over and circulating among the guests, introduced first to one group, then another, either letting me know that I didn’t need to worry about her or … or something else. I saw her shining blonde head through gaps in the crowd, and every time I caught a glimpse of her face, she was smiling as if this party met all her dreams for a social occasion. She’d been the one with the composure today, with the ease. So far from the withdrawn, brittle woman who’d dragged herself up and down my hillside with her rake until she was practically dropping where she stood. When had that changed? And why? I needed to know.
Just now, though, I was sitting on the wall with Jax MacGregor, drinking a beer and neither of us saying much, possibly because he was a soldier and I felt like I’d beenwalking through a minefield all day myself, and because I wasn’t Summer. I didn’t have her ease with people, or whatever that was. Compassion, I guessed. Empathy. Maybe I’d always worked so much because it was the one thing I knew how to do. Huh. That was a thought.
Jax had the sort of watchful, calm stillness you saw in military blokes who lived on the sharp end, and he wasn’t quite part of this family either. Or Maori, for that matter, which made it easier. We talked about bomb disposal, about wind power, about Dunedin. “I grew up there,” Jax was saying. “Thought I’d stay closer, but Karen’s whanau is here. Her heart, too. No choice.”
The party was quieter now, most of the teenagers and younger people having gone next door to Matiu’s brother Tane’s house to play basketball and ping-pong, Delilah among them. The babies and littlies were mostly taking naps in the house, the slightly bigger kids playing cricket on the grass by the fruit trees. Music played softly in the background, mingling with the hum of insects, the voices around us, the occasional call of a bird. A warm, sleepy day. Hard to stay wound up on a day like that. I said, “No Army base in Tauranga. And, yeh, I recognized your name.”
Jax said, “Can’t escape it, especially not in shorts. I’m conspicuous. We’re in Auckland during the week, but here most weekends. Got a house on the sea not far from here. Poppy and Matiu and the kids are there with us this weekend. Bursting at the seams, but never mind, I like my sister, and it makes Karen happy. Keeps her laughing, and I like her laughing. She’s a bit like wee Olivia. Always an original thought, and she always expresses it. Lives to the hilt. Force of nature. She does consulting for work, except that it’s more like inventing. Food science. New products.”
“Accomplished,” I said.
“She is that,” Jax said. “Brilliant, too. Out-earns me byheaps.” He grinned, crinkling the surface of the wide blue scars. “Pretty funny, hey. But then, power struggles can be fun. And I can hear you thinking about the MacGregor money. I have some of that, yeh. Some money I earned myself, too, back in the day.”
