Tempting Taine (6 page)

She took a deep breath to steel herself to tell some part of the truth.
 
“Your father was...he was a boy I once knew.”
 
Her voice caught in her throat at the words and she swallowed convulsively to clear it.
 
There, her secret was out.
 
Or at
least a part of it.

Aroha seemed completely unsurprised at this revelation.
 
With studied carelessness, she picked at a loose thread on her purple leggings.
 
“What was his name?”
 
Her casual tone
was underlain
with a note of apprehension that made her voice quiver slightly.

Verity shook her head with anguished slowness.
 
For her daughter’s sake, she
couldn’t
confess that much.
 
Not when Taine had consistently refused to acknowledge his daughter's existence.
 
She would not lay Aroha open to that heartache if she could avoid it.
 
“It wouldn’t do you any good to know.”

Aroha looked up eagerly at her mother.
 
“Do I know him?”
 
The look of hope on her face was almost too much for Verity to bear.

“No.
 
You’ve
never met him.
 
We went our separate ways before you were even born.”

Aroha’s
face fell visibly at the news.
 
“Did you love him a whole lot?” she asked tentatively.

Verity stroked her daughter’s deep brown hair.
 
“Yes, I did,” she said, her voice cracking with pain at the confession.
 
Once upon a
time
she had loved
Aroha’s
father far too much for her own good, and that love had caused her more hurt than she could well bear.
 
“More than I loved anything else in the entire world, except for you.”

“I thought you must have,” Aroha said with deep satisfaction.
 
“That’s why you called me Aroha, isn’t it?
 
Because Aroha is the Maori word for love.
 
I learned that in school today.
 
I knew you must've loved my dad a whole lot or you would've called me something different.”

Verity felt a shiver run through the small of her back.
 
Her daughter was growing up faster than she had realized, and growing up smart, too.
 
Soon there would be no hiding anything from her.
 
Soon she would have to tell her daughter the whole truth.
 
“Yes, that’s why I called you Aroha.
 
Always remember that, kitten.
 
Whatever else happened later between your father and me, you were born out of love and you are the most precious thing in the world to me.”

“What happened to him?”
 
The worried note was back in
Aroha’s
voice.
 
“Why did he go away?
 
Didn’t
he love you back again?
 
Didn’t he want me?”

Verity turned her head away so her daughter could not see her blinking away agonizing tears.
 
She
couldn’t
explain to her beloved daughter, not yet, what had happened.
 
She had no words to tell Aroha of the choices she had made, the choices that had driven
Aroha’s
father away
for ever
.

She sat there on
Aroha’s
bed, holding her daughter in her arms,
remembering back to
the glorious summer her child had been conceived, when she had fallen in love for the first time and her life had changed forever.

She and Taine had been inseparable that summer.
 
Every spare moment they had, they spent it together, just content to be in each other’s company.
 
Before the summer was half done, she was utterly and completely head over heels crazy about him.
 
And
he, she was sure, had felt the same way about her.

Even now, ten years later, she could hardly believe that he, one of the Hunter clan, had looked twice at her, a poor Maori girl from the wrong side of the tracks.
 
She’d
been so happy to be with the man she adored, she’d not cared about anything else.
 
She
hadn’t
even wanted to explore her dream too closely for fear that too close a scrutiny would cause her bubble of happiness to burst.
 
She was content simply to lose herself in the moment, soaking up all the love and joy she was bathing in, without a thought for the future.

They were both saving for college – Verity because her mother could not pay for her to go, and Taine because old Mr. Hunter insisted that his children pay their own way even though he could afford to pay for them all twice over.
 
He thought it built character not to have things handed to them on a plate, Taine explained.
 

Neither of them had had much money to spend on fancy dinners, or even cheap dates
like
pizza and movies, but it hadn’t mattered.
 
They had made their own fun – picnicking by the lake and braving its icy water for a swim, walking along the water’s edge holding hands, and, one fateful night, finally making love together in the open air under the stars.

She shrugged as she thought about it.
 
Young and foolish as she was, she had simply not thought of the possible risks – or of how likely they were.
 
She had closed her eyes to the inevitable consequence of having unprotected sex with Taine.
 
She had thought herself invincible, invulnerable.
 
Teen pregnancy was something that happened to other girls, not to her.

Until, of course, it happened to her.

She gave Aroha another fierce hug as she listened to the rain pelting noisily down on the corrugated iron roof of her comfortable villa.
 
She would not be sorry about what had happened.
 
She could not be sorry.
 
Not when it had brought her Aroha, her precious daughter and the joy of her life.

The rain was still coming down heavily the next morning, now pushed sideways by the biting wind that had sprung up during the night.
 
Verity tucked Aroha into her raincoat and gumboots and walked with her down the road to school.
 
It was mornings
like
this she was extra glad she had chosen a house only three doors away from the local primary school.
 
Less than two minutes in the vicious wind and pelting rain, and then her precious Aroha would be warm and dry again inside her classroom.

At the school
gates
she kissed Aroha goodbye and watched her run off into the wet playground before turning her steps towards the hospital.

She had just reached the corner when a Jeep barrelled past her, sending up a spray of water on to the footpath.
 
She jumped back hastily to avoid getting soaked, biting back the curse that was on the tip of her tongue for the inconsiderate driver.

The Jeep braked to a halt just past her, and reversed up the road again until it was alongside her.
 
The driver rolled down the window and fixed her with a stony stare.
 
“Get in.”

Her stomach gave an uncomfortable lurch at the sound of Taine’s voice.
 
He had been looking for her – he
must
have been looking for her.
 
She could not believe
it was an accident that he was driving down her road at this hour of the morning
.

Her heart was beating so fast she could barely breathe.
 
Had he deliberately waited until Aroha had gone into school before confronting her?
 
Did he hate his daughter that much that he would not even speak to her?

She stood in the rain, just looking at the man who had the power to ruin the life of the person she loved most in the world.
 
Before she let him hurt Aroha with his rejection, she would walk away from everything she had built up for herself: her job, her house, her quiet, comfortable life in Taupo.
 
She would travel to the ends of the earth and built a life for the two of them there, where Aroha would never find out how little her father cared for her.

“Get in,” Taine repeated.
 
“Or I shall have to get out into the rain and bundle you inside myself.
 
Which wouldn’t make my temper any the sweeter,” he added in a warning tone.

Obediently she clambered into the front seat.
 
The only thought in her mind was to get him away from Aroha as quickly as she could.
 
If it meant getting into his car and driving with him a way, she could handle that.

“You don’t have a lick of sense, do you,” Taine said with disgust, as she spread her dripping raincoat over her knees.

“Am I dripping on you?”
 
She moved her raincoat a fraction away from his knees so it did not drip on them.
 
“I guess that’s what comes when you stop your car in the rain and order me to get in.”

“I wasn’t talking about your damn coat.
 
I was talking about your damn foolishness in walking to work in this weather.”

“It’s only a bit of rain,” she said dismissively, not wanting to admit to him that the weather, the rain even heavier now than it had been through the night, had had her slightly worried.
 
She had been more anxious about Aroha than about herself though – not that she would ever tell Taine that.

“The river’s running high with all the rain in the foothills.
 
If the rain
doesn’t
stop, the river will break its banks and flood the streets.
 
It’s not safe for you to be walking on them.”

“You’re
driving
on them,” she pointed out, annoyed at his tone of voice, as if she were a naughty child who should have known better.
 
She suppressed the trickle of unease she felt at the possibility she had underestimated the danger.

“I have a Jeep.
 
It was built to handle conditions like this.”

“And I have my gumboots,” she replied with some asperity, showing him her legs encased in rubber boots to the knee.
 
“They were
build
to handle conditions like this, too.
 
In fact, they probably handle the rain better than your Jeep does.”

His face grew blacker than ever at her words.
 
“That’s not funny.”

Had he always been this angry and bitter, so quick to criticize and to demand?
 
Or
was it just the effect she had on him now?
 
“It wasn’t meant to be.”

Just before they reached the hospital parking lot, Verity finally broke the stony silence that had fallen between them and asked the question that had been haunting her ever since he had pulled up alongside her.
 
“How did you come to be on my street at this time of the
morning.
”
 
She had to know the answer – even if only to confirm her worst suspicions.
 

“I was looking for you.”

“What for?”
 
She hoped it was not about Aroha - the child did not need her world turned upside down by the sudden appearance of her father.
 
She had gotten on just fine over the last nine years without one.
 

He shrugged, but
didn’t
answer.

“Has your father taken a turn for the worse?”
 
Talking about work was much safer territory than thinking about her daughter.

He stared straight ahead, his hands gripping the steering wheel with tense knuckles.
 
“No.”

His reaction was niggling at her.
 
There was something about
this
situation she did not understand and it made her feel uncomfortable.
 
“Why then?”

He let go of the steering wheel with one careful hand and gestured at the water running down the windscreen.
 
“It was raining.”

His words made no sense to her.
 
None at all.
 
“So what if it’s raining.
 
It’s
the middle of winter.
 
What else do you expect it to be doing?”

“You don’t have a car.”

“So?” she challenged him.
 
She had never had a car and did not plan
on getting
one, either.
 
It was her choice and nothing to do with him.