Staying on Track. Or Not.

I was late to meet Hemi. It had taken me a while to find the right elevator to go to the roof, and I hadn’t wanted to ask Nathan. I didn’t need to answer any more questions today.

I looked around uncertainly, holding my box of lunch. It was high up here, which wasn’t my favorite thing, but surprisingly lush. Potted trees cast dappled pools of shade over long wooden benches that curved in sinuous shapes, offering a welcome respite from the warmth and humidity that still lingered in September. Other planters held flowers and greenery, and a chest-high balustrade ran around the entire area, to my relief.

A few late lunchers were scattered around, some of them glancing up at my approach. Was it all right for me to be up here? I looked around for Hemi, but couldn’t see him. But I did see one person I recognized.

Hemi’s assistant Josh was heading over from a seat on one of the benches. To tell me Hemi wasn’t coming, probably. Or that I was in trouble again for being late.

Note One: Maintain dignity.

“Hi,” he said. “This way.” 

Oh. Maybe not.

He led me around the high central structure through which I’d entered, and I realized that the garden extended farther than I’d thought. All the way around the roof, in fact. One entire section in a back corner was set up as a sort of grotto, with a fountain bordered by palm trees providing delicate water-music, containers of ferns resting in the trees’ shade, all managing to look surprisingly natural, like a piece of tropical paradise transplanted into midtown Manhattan. Flat rocks provided resting places by the edge of the pool, and it was on one of those that a man was seated.

Hemi. Of course. 

He rose at my approach, and I found, when I turned my head to say goodbye to Josh, that he’d already melted discreetly away.

“Thanks for coming.” Hemi gestured me to a shady spot on the rocks beside him. “Please. Sit.”

“I didn’t know this was here,” I said, more to make conversation than anything else, because the sight of him, as usual, took my breath away. He could rock a white dress shirt and dark slacks like no man I’d ever seen. And his sleeves were rolled up again.

I sat, tucking my dress under me, then took off my jacket and set it on the rocks beside me, trying not to notice the way his gaze lingered on my bare shoulders. “Is it for anybody?” I asked. “I mean, anybody to use? Am I allowed?”

“Yeh. You’re allowed.” He gave me a faint smile that was really just a softening of the eyes. “I’d like to say it’s because you’re with me, but I have to admit that you’re allowed anyway. Although some of my team say it should be strictly an executive perk. What d’you reckon?”

“I reckon they’ve got some perks already, and maybe the rank-and-file need it more. I also reckon that somebody at the top agrees with me.” I glanced at him from beneath my lashes, smiled just a little, and saw the instant response. I felt rather than saw his indrawn breath, the tightening of his muscles, and just like that, my heart had begun to pound even harder.

All he said, though, was, “Not polite to mock my Kiwi ways.” 

“No? How about if I say that I kind of like your Kiwi ways, if one of them’s about treating people the same, even if they don’t have a lot of money or a private office?”

“Then you can mock a bit after all, because that’s pretty much the definition of a Kiwi. You brought your lunch, I see.” He reached for a deli container of his own and pulled out a sandwich. “How’m I going so far? Any better?”

“Very nearly human,” I conceded, and this time, he actually grinned before he took a bite of sandwich, showing off some very, very white teeth. 

But this time, it didn’t make me feel quite so nervous. It was hard to stay anxious with the sound of water purling gently down the rocks, the sight of silver streams cascading over greenery. 

There were even a few carp in the pool, and I nodded at the fish as I opened my box. “I feel a little guilty eating this here. Like a cannibal.”

“They eat their young. Just making them feel at home, aren’t you.”

That made me laugh, and at last, I tasted my salmon. It was as good as I’d imagined, even reheated. I may have had to close my eyes again, too.

“Extra points for me,” I heard Hemi murmur.

I opened my eyes again to find him watching me. “Pardon?”

“Not making any moves, even with you showing off your pretty legs again, not to mention showing me how much you enjoy…new experiences. Yeh, I’d call those major points.”

“Especially now that I’ve let you know about the experiences I haven’t had,” I said, choosing a few green beans and popping them into my mouth.

“Unfair,” he complained.

I smiled, and not just from the taste of the fire-roasted green beans. I wasn’t a butterfly anymore, or a deer, either. I was in the power seat today, and he was letting me know it. 

“What, like you’d forgotten?” I treated myself to another delectable bite of salmon. “Why do men take that as such an irresistible challenge? Why should it matter?”

“You don’t understand why it matters,” he said slowly.

“Let me put it this way. Every reason I can think of is pretty reprehensible.”

“Oh, no doubt. No doubt at all.” His voice was silky-soft. “But then, I may have mentioned that I’m a pretty reprehensible fella. And, yeh. For the record? I love that idea.”

“Whoops,” I muttered. “Butterfly time.” I had to force myself to keep working on my lunch, even though all I wanted was to keep looking at him. At his muscular forearms, and the start of that tattoo. At the thighs that stretched the fabric of his trousers. At the chest and shoulders and face and…never mind. 

“Pardon?” He looked startled.

“I keep doing these dumb animal metaphors,” I tried to explain. “About you.”

“Oh, bugger. I’m a butterfly.” He shook his head and took another bite of sandwich, and, all right, I may have giggled. 

“Of course you aren’t a butterfly.” And, to my horror, I’d reached out and swatted him on the arm as if he’d been Nathan.

“Sorry.” I tried to scoot back, but he put a hand out and caught mine. And then he turned it and…kissed it. 

He kissed my knuckles, and, all right, I melted. I mean, wouldn’t you, if you’d been sitting beside a pool with Hemi Te Mana, looking into his liquid brown eyes and watching him kiss your hand? And then having him turn it over to caress your palm with one big thumb? Because he did that, too, and who would’ve guessed that a palm could be so sensitive? When he put his lips to it, and my fingers may have stroked his bronzed cheek just a bit while he did…Let’s call it a weak moment and leave it at that. 

I was pulling my hand away, scooting back, and he was sighing. 

“Don’t run,” he said. “Please. I’m stopping. But get me back on track here. Tell me why I’m a butterfly. Make me laugh.”

I cleared my throat. “I’m not sure I’m going to make you laugh. I think this might fall into the ‘stupid’ category. For me to say, I mean.”

“Brilliant. I’m not a butterfly after all, eh. Go.”

“Umm...I might be the…butterfly. And you might be a…spider.”

“Ah.” His eyes had kindled, and I could tell that he was holding himself back, and that it was an effort. “Got you in my web, do I? You struggling a bit?” 

I couldn’t speak, because he’d reached a hand out as if he couldn’t help himself any more than I could, and was running the backs of his fingers down my jawline. So slowly, and so gently. And then his thumb was tracing my lips, first the upper, then the lower, and, as they parted, running over the sensitive flesh inside. Moving a bit farther, and, yes, he had his thumb in my mouth up to the first knuckle, and my lips…well, they may have closed over that thumb.

“Yeh,” he said, his voice pure molten chocolate. “Yeh. You’re struggling, but it’s such a delicious struggle, isn’t it? You’re thinking how sweet that sting’s going to feel. You’re scared of it, and you’re waiting for it, and your heart’s beating so hard.”

Oh, boy. Oh, boy. “See,” I managed to say once I’d managed to turn my head, and he’d removed his hand. “Definitely in the ‘stupid’ category.”

“Does it help,” he said, his eyes, every bit of his attention so focused on me, “if I tell you that I thought about you all night? That I spent too much time choosing your flowers, and too much energy hoping you’d take them? That I planned what I’d say here today, and that I haven’t managed to say any of it?”

“It helps,” I said a little shakily. “Maybe it’d help more if you told me some of those things.”

“Right.” He ran a hand over the back of his head, looked down at the sandwich in his other hand as if he’d forgotten it was there, then looked back at me. “Please. Eat your lunch. If you don’t, if I’ve made you miss two meals—well, still got some room for guilt in me after all, haven’t I.”

“Oh?” I took another bite to please him, but it wasn’t easy. “To be fair, I think I started this one.”

“Yeh.” His eyes were so warm, his sudden smile so sweet. “I’d say you did. And some temptations are just too much to bear.”

It was close enough to my own thoughts to have me shifting uncomfortably. “Planned speech,” I reminded him. “Because my lunch hour’s about up, you know?”

“Yeh. Well—I was thinking. You’ve got a sister, eh. Fifteen, you said.”

“Yes.” My sister? Where was this going?

“And you live in Brooklyn. And, yeh,” he said before I could say anything. “I looked it up. I’m not going to lie to you, and I’m not going to manipulate you. Not any more than I can help. Whatever we do—whatever we do—is going to be because you want it, too.”

“And that helps more,” I managed to say. Whatever we do? What did that mean? 

“So,” he continued, determination clear in every line of his hard body, laser-focus back on me. “Brooklyn. Sister. Nervy.” 

“Um…nervy?”

“Skittish,” he clarified. “Put them all together, and I got—daytime. Botanic Gardens. Chaperone. Me taking you and your sister out for a walk in the rose gardens, getting to know you, while I don’t touch your mouth, and you don’t talk to me about being a butterfly tied to my web.”

 “I didn’t say…tied,” I managed to say.

“No? Must’ve imagined it,” he said with a look that told me how clearly he’d done just that. “Saturday. Ten-thirty. I’ll collect you both at your apartment this time. Sound like a plan?”

Toughen up. “You don’t do relationships,” I reminded him. 

“And you don’t do sex.” If only his eyes weren’t so intense. “First time for everything, eh.”

The buzz that had begun the moment I’d seen him again was so strong now that I had to shift, trying to soothe it. I looked at him, and knew he saw it, and knew I didn’t care.

“So…” he prompted. “Is that a yes?”

“Yes,” I told him, even though it wasn’t the word I’d come up here to say.

Who was I kidding? “No” was a word you said on the phone. You showed up in person to say “yes.” And I’d showed up. 

“And by the way,” I said, trying to force myself back into some measure of composure, “the flowers are beautiful. Thank you.”

He didn’t answer, just reached behind him for a bag I hadn’t seen, because he’d set it behind another rock, and handed it to me.

I knew without looking what it was. My shoes. 

“You don’t have to tell me you’re wearing them,” he said. “You don’t have to show me you’re wearing them. But I’d like you to take them back.”