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Chapter One. Two women from different ends of the earth discover passion in paradise—a paradise threatened by secrets and impending disaster.






Two women from different ends of the earth discover passion in paradise—a paradise threatened by secrets and impending disaster.

Mourning the death of her favorite Aunt, Annabel Worth is stunned to find she has inherited two things--an island in the South Pacific and a mystery that can only be solved by traveling there. Disillusioned with life as a securities trader in Boston, she rashly decides to exchange one world for another. New Zealander Cody Stanton has made the same choice. Dumped by her lover, laid off from her job, she rents a beach villa on remote Moon Island, expecting to take comfort in sea, solitude and simplicity. Then she meets Annabel.

Haunted by a secret that threatens to derail her relationship with her mother, Annabel resists their powerful attraction. Cody, too, is burdened with a secret that could destroy the passion growing between them. When Hurricane Mary strikes the island, each woman must make a choice that will change her life forever.

Chapter One

Mid-winter bus stop conversation was cheerless and predictable, half-sentences captured before the wind could steal them away, people’s faces mottled, noses dripping. Like a family of fat gray caterpillars, the commuters inched their way along Lambton Quay platform, clutching the jetsam of their working lives in briefcases and plastic shopping bags and glaring at the derelict spread full-length along one of the few benches available.

The trolleybus was late of course. It would have caused needless shock and distress were it to arrive on time. The passengers huddled in line would have had nothing to talk about except the weather, and it seemed fairly pointless to tell someone engaged in a death struggle with coat and scarf that it was a lousy day.

Wellington, New Zealand, was a vile city in July. Southerly winds roared straight up from the Antarctic, constant earth tremors made the entire population twitchy, and the suicide rate doubled.

Cody Stanton hated it. She hated the endless grayness of it all, the flu that everyone had in one form or another, the traffic accidents and the sirens screaming all day. She hated the litter blowing unnoticed along the street, the deadened faces of pedestrians, the television screens in store windows playing nothing but rugby.

Someone gave her a shove and she realized the line in front of her had vanished. Hurrying along the platform, she ran agitated fingers through her windblown hair and hoisted herself up into the red and white trolleybus idling at their stop.

“Two sections, ” she muttered, for once failing to notice the dyke driver’s muscular thighs or her assessing look. Half the city’s public transport was driven by lesbians, it seemed.

The bus lurched away while she was stumbling along the aisle. Grabbing for a rail, Cody snagged her leather jacket on an old woman’s shopping trundler and trod across the protruding Reeboked feet of a brawny youth. She heard his “Fuck you” without registering it, and headed for the only spare seat in the bus, right at the back next to a large Indian woman. Careful not to destroy the filmy sari spilling from her raincoat, she occupied the child-sized space beside her and stared sightlessly ahead.

People got laid off every day, Cody reasoned. Only she had thought it would never happen to her. She had a nice, safe job in computers and her particular skills were scarce in the technology-shy New Zealand market. It wasn’t going to look too hot on her resumé, she realized. There were people at work who had actually resigned to avoid the stigma; men of course, shit scared of taking a nosedive in the job market. Fortunately she wasn’t too proud to take a bullet and a severance check.

Labor laws being what they were in liberal New Zealand, the payment would be decent. That was something, she thought, feeling for the envelope in her pocket. Its stiffness was reassuring. She hadn’t opened it yet. Packing up her desk had been traumatic enough in the half hour they were given. Clear out your belongings and leave the building. Cody couldn’t believe it. Treated like criminals, somebody said. They weren’t supposed to speak to the other staff or notice the awkward looks.

Cody could remember feeling that same queasy relief herself when the first layoffs were announced several months back. She had watched colleagues depart, some of them with few prospects in their specialties. Many had moved across the Tasman to Australia, one had killed himself. Losing his job was not the main reason, the staff psychologist had insisted. There were personal problems.

The trolleybus jerked and clattered through the rush hour traffic at a crawl, stopping and starting for passengers every few blocks. It would be pitch dark by the time she got home, Cody thought. This was something she wouldn’t miss—the snail’s pace commute morning and night. She grabbed for the seat rail as they lurched drunkenly to the left, navigating their way onto the huge roundabout that spewed traffic into the Mount Victoria tunnels. Almost in the Indian woman’s lap, she struggled to get upright, dragged herself to her feet and elbowed her way through the crush of standing passengers to the exit door.

Her stop was directly on the other side of the bus tunnel. Trolley drivers often missed it altogether. Sandwiched between men in trench coats and students with purple hair, she pulled the stop cord so the driver would have plenty of warning. Today had been bad enough without having to walk an extra quarter mile in the pouring rain.

Naturally the driver accelerated through the tunnel then failed to brake in time to halt safely on the steep downward slope on the other side. Watching her stop recede through the fogged up doors, Cody yelled, “Hey, thanks a lot! ”

The driver must have heard her because she ‘missed’ the next stop as well. Cody finally escaped with the exodus of passengers at the Hataitai shopping center. There the smell of fried chicken assaulted her, and she straggled back up the hill toward her flat, her stomach churning.

Once at her gate, she lingered on some silly pretext. Last night it had been paint flakes on the sidewalk, tonight her shoelaces needed tightening. Fool, she berated herself and trudged along the path to her front door. She pushed it open with a pounding heart, half-expecting to smell food cooking and hear some scratchy old Ferron recording. But the narrow hallway was dark and silent, the air stale with last night’s fish and chips.

For the first time that day, tears crept down her cheeks. Impatiently, she brushed them away. If Margaret had been there, she would have rushed down to the kitchen, burst out with her news, thrust the check at her lover to open, and leaned against her, warm and safe. Instead she wandered into the emptiness of her bedroom, dropped her satchel on the floor, and threw herself down on the bed. She stared up at the ceiling for a while, then dropped her eyes to the discolored patch of wall where Margaret’s Amelia Earhart poster had hung.

She really ought to hang something else there, Cody thought for about the twentieth time in four weeks. Instead she lay motionless and icy cold until darkness swallowed the outline on the wallpaper and made a black hole of the gap where Margaret’s chest of drawers had once squatted, drawers neatly packed, doilies arranged on top.

Aware that her teeth were chattering and her hair was making a damp patch on the pillow, Cody eventually sat up. She should make some dinner, only there was nothing in the house. She hadn’t bothered to shop since Margaret left. Anyway she didn’t have much of an appetite, especially not for greasies again.

With a listless sigh, she flicked on her bedside lamp, pulled the envelope from her pocket and tore it open. A message on heavy embossed letterhead informed her that she had redundancy compensation of $10, 000. A check was stapled to the back. Cody pried it off and studied it, feeling dull-witted. The zeros looked wrong. She counted them, rubbed her eyes and counted them again.

Tracing her finger along the line, she read the amount out loud. “One hundred thousand dollars.” For a moment she panicked, then she counted the zeros a third time just to be sure. “Shit! ” she whispered. “A hundred grand.”

Well, that was just perfect. Those stupid bastards in Admin had messed up and she would have to gird her loins and march straight back in there tomorrow to sort out their mistake. Bureaucracy had triumphed yet again.

With a loud groan, she crawled under the quilt with her clothes on. “This is not my day, ” she muttered.

 

When the sun hit Cody’s face the next morning, she opened her eyes with a start and threw off the bedclothes. Eight-thirty! She was late. Cursing, she hurtled toward the bathroom, then remembered. On the floor beside her bed lay the letter and check that proved yesterday was not just a bad dream. Cody approached the oblong bank draft as if it were radioactive and stared down at it. Even upside down, even in the clear light of day, the neatly typed figures were the same as they were the night before. One hundred thousand dollars.

Of course she would have to give it back. Admin had probably discovered their mistake already and canceled the check. But what if they hadn’t? What if they’d just stamped her file Processed and shoved it back to the records department with this week’s big stack of redundancies?

Cody scooped the check off the floor and brushed away imaginary dust. What if she kept it? What if she spent the lot? That would serve the bastards right, she decided a little wildly. What could they do? Ask her for $90, 000 back please? Put her in jail?

For the first time in a month, Cody laughed.

 

Later that morning, the bank teller was less amused.

“Large deposit, ” he commented, looking Cody over as if she were in a police line-up.

“It’s my severance compensation, ” she said, suitably tragic. “I lost my job.”

His face cleared immediately, and he rearranged his expression into one of pious concern. “Very sorry, ” he murmured with a shake of the head. “Lot of it about.”

Cody did her best to look nonchalant as he keyed in the deposit and rubber-stamped everything. She could almost feel the security cameras zooming in on her, see her face immortalized on TV screens all over New Zealand in Crimewatch: Cody Stanton, female Caucasian aged 28, 5’7”, slim build, black hair, and gray eyes. Wanted for theft. She shivered.

The teller was speaking to her in a confiding tone. “...lot of money. Our manager can advise...don’t hesitate to call…”

“Thank you.” Cody shoveled her deposit book into her bag. “I certainly shall. You’ve been most helpful.” Bestowing her best school-photo smile on him, she escaped.

“A hundred grand, ” she muttered under her breath as she walked away from the bank. Now what?

 

 


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