tinge of green, were out of kilter with her skin and hair coloring. The long lashes framing them made them look as if a coal miner had set them in her face. He knew she was American, she’d told him so, but there was something exotic, different, to the cast of her features, as if they’d been culled from different parts of the world and put together to make her look like a houri, all temptation and forbidden delights.
But enough speculating. She had it right, they’d never meet again. Unless they were on the same flight. Nah, the gods couldn’t be that kind, or that cruel.
Kel punched the Faa’a airport’s number into the high-tech pad of the cell phone and asked for the information desk. Once the clerk came on line he fixed his problem by asking her to page Mr. Two Feathers McKay, traveling on flight ATN 104.
Simple.
The best plans always were. All he had to do now was wait and see which man in the passenger lounge answered the call.
The announcement filled the terminal for the third time, and still no one had moved. The best laid plans, et cetera…
He began sweating on it.
From the corner of his eye he caught sight of Ngaire, pack in hand, her braid like a pendulum counting the seconds as she headed straight for the nearest hospitality phone. In no time at all, Kel heard her incredulous, “Hello. You wanted me?”
Kel hung up.
Yeah, he’d wanted her, but not anymore. Now he knew what the initial N. stood for. Ngaire.
Ngaire Two Feathers McKay.
He’d aced her features: Maori, Native American and Scottish, an eclectic mix and a damn beautiful one. She reminded him of a pup he’d had as a kid. Bitzer, he’d called it. Cute as all hell. But the moment his back was turned, it would creep up and sink its little, sharp teeth into the back of his heel.
So, Ngaire had rung his bell and he hated her for it. Hated being wrong about her. But she was wrong, too.
She would be seeing him again.
Chapter 2
Ngaire couldn’t believe she was here in the flesh instead of her imagination. As the plane circled before landing she’d had her nose glued to the window, would have been halfway through the thing if she’d been able to open it.
Paradise, her grandfather had called it as he’d told her stories of his time here as a GI during World War Two. From on high it had all looked so beautiful, the sea blue, the lakes silver, the snow-capped peaks like models from some school project. This was where George Two Feathers had met her grandmother, this land of myth and legend. Like the ones he’d read her from books her grandmother had brought to America. They’d been her fairy tales, and the one that leapt to mind was the Maori god Maui, and fishing up the North Island using a whale’s jawbone as a hook. Ngaire did a mental eye roll as she headed for the escalator down to immigration, grinning wide enough to make her jaw ache.
“Kia ora.”
Ngaire handed her passport to the immigration officer, wishing she could return her greeting without making a mishmash of the language. “Hi.”
Her passport was stamped New Zealand and passed back to her with “Enjoy your stay.”
“Thanks, I will.”
Less than fifteen minutes later Ngaire’s case went through the X-ray machine. She caught the operator’s frown as his chair swiveled away from the monitor, pointing something out to the customs officer towering over the end of the conveyer belt.
“Is there a problem?” Pretending she hadn’t a notion what might have caught his attention, she smiled, blanking out the urge to wipe her palms.
“Did you pack this case yourself?” He looked down his long nose at her, grim as an Easter Island statue.
“Yes, before I left Moorea this morning.” She wasn’t fluffy enough to play it sweet; more brown sugar than candy floss, she stuck to being pleasant, just a woman enjoying a holiday in the South Pacific.
“Open it for me, please?”
It was stupid, but her first reaction was relief that she’d packed all her undies in the pocket. Darn stupid, to worry more about watching his hands slide through her silk thongs than what she knew he would find.
Her glance spun around the Customs hall as fast as her fingertips twirled the numbers of the lock. Pleased to find Kel wasn’t there to witness her humiliation, when she’d done dialing in the codes she turned the clasps toward the customs officer, leaving him to open the case.
As he worked, her mind listed every souvenir she’d bought, dismissing them all as trash alongside what she carried.
There could be only one thing he was after.
As her eyes lifted she caught the inquisitive stare of the elegant French woman she’d been seated beside during the flight and felt herself color. She’d envied the other woman’s cool panache on the plane, knowing she’d never achieve its like in a million years. Such things were bred in the bone, and each of her hodgepodge of ancestors was still fighting for top billing, unable to decide if she was Native American, Maori or Scots.
Her ears picked out the rustle of bubble wrap, drawing her gaze to the officer’s hands. He’d gotten down to the layer where she’d packed her black do bok. She didn’t know why she’d brought it except for the security it represented. Heart jumping to her throat, she watched him untie the black belt with its gold insignia proclaiming her status as a hapkido master.
“Stop!” The command left her lips before she could prevent it, earning her a scowl from the guy with his fingers through the loops of her belt and a muffled curse from the guy on the monitor who’d knocked his papers to the floor.
“If you’re carrying illegal goods into the country, too late. You should have worried about it before you entered New Zealand.”
“It’s not that. I don’t mind you searching. I’d just prefer you did it somewhere private.” Her chest heaved as she took a deep breath and held it, waiting for a reply to her request.
Without answering or permitting a crack to soften his stony features, he signaled another officer, one in a supervisory position stationed close to the exit. A quiet word in the other guy’s ear and her case was refastened. “Follow Team Leader Bennett. He’ll take you to a private room. Do you wish to be accompanied by a female officer?”
Visions of a body search made her feel she’d lost everything from the knees down, but she brazened it out. “That won’t be necessary. I can explain everything.”
He didn’t say he’d heard it all before, but she’d bet anything the T-shirt under his uniform had that written across the chest, probably in capital letters. Without another word she followed the guy carrying her chintzy-looking suitcase out of the Customs hall.
The first time she’d seen it, with its stupid good-luck symbol, she’d known its luck had been meant for someone else. That the owners of the Blue Grasshopper hadn’t meant for her to win their contest for the trip to the South Pacific, or the luggage they’d thrown in with the prize.
Kel had wedged himself
