I’m here for only one week, which was the most vacation days I was willing to take for this trip, you know, when I had a job. I rarely took days off at all, deciding work was more important than a jaunt to Hawaii or something. Now, with the visitor’s visa in my passport, I’m permitted to stay for up to three months. I won’t, but there’s something so strange about my newfound freedom. It doesn’t feel real yet. I still keep thinking that I have a job and a boyfriend to return to.
I’d never given New Zealand that much thought, other than it’s the place where my sister went to do her doctorate in botany. When she said she was getting married here to Richard, her long-term boyfriend she met in college, I figured I’d finally get a chance to come and see her. It’s been nearly five years since I saw her last, and my parents, who arrived here a week ago, have only been out to see her once.
It does make me wonder if perhaps all this time apart has led my sister to forget about me, because she never answered the text I sent her when I got off the plane and I’ve been standing here in the arrivals area for a good thirty minutes, scanning the crowd for her familiar face.
A feeling of dread sinks inside me and I text her again, wondering where she is. I could text my parents since they are in the country, but I don’t want to bug them.
The shitty thing is, I don’t even know where I’m supposed to go. Usually I’m so on top of things, planning it all to the finest detail, but I really dropped the ball this time. I know I’m not supposed to go to a hotel. Or wait, maybe I am supposed to go to a hotel? Or was it Richard’s cousin’s house? And what was the place called? Something with a P? It feels like every town in New Zealand starts with a P.
With my sister still not texting me back, I open up my emails and try to get some sense of a plan. I must be flipping through them for a long time, trying to get a handle of things, hoping my sister gets back to me before I really start panicking, when I hear a throat clear from behind me.
I whirl around and, hello, standing before me is probably the most ruggedly handsome man I’ve ever seen.
He’s tall, at least six foot two, which makes him look like a giant compared to my 5’1” frame. Factor in broad, rounded shoulders, and a chest like a wall of bricks and strongman arms, plus deeply browned skin, all shown off perfectly by a navy blue T-shirt that says Deep Blue Yacht Charters, and he seems larger than life.
And then there’s his face.
Which, as gorgeous as it is—dark mahogany eyes, furrowed brows, thick black hair and a strong jaw—looks a little ticked off. It takes me a moment to register that his eyes aren’t narrowed seductively, they’re narrowed in annoyance.
“Are you Daisy Lewis?” the man asks me with a thick New Zealand accent. Husky and rough, the kind of voice that would normally make me flush internally (voices and hands are so my thing), but I’m able to ignore it because I have no idea who this guy is, or how he knows me and why he seems mad.
“That’s me,” I tell him cautiously. “And you are?”
“Your ride,” he grumbles.
My brows raise. “My ride? Where’s Lacey?”
He stares at me for a moment, as if he’s expecting more from me, but in my hungover, queasy state I don’t have the energy to think.
“Your sister,” he says carefully, “is busy. I was busy too, but when she called, begging and pleading for me to head back down to Auckland to pick you up, it didn’t feel right saying no to the bride-to-be.”
“I don’t understand.” I balk, shaking my head. “The last email she sent she said she was happy to pick me up.”
“You’re a day early.”
I blink at him for a few moments. That doesn’t make sense. “I don’t…” I press my hands to my temples, trying to think. It’s like trying to push over a concrete wall. “I said I was arriving on the 22nd.”
When I open my eyes, he’s staring at me like I’m a complete idiot. Can’t say I like that look. Makes me want to take back all the nice things I’ve thought about him, even though all those nice things pertained to his body, which unfortunately still looks hot. Especially as he folds his arms across his chest, and mama mia, those are some delicious forearms.
“Have you taken note of the date today?” he asks. “Either on your phone, or the form you filled out at customs? Taken a look at the stamp in your passport?”