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I open the door of the Aston and slide in. “Hey,” I say to Jamie.
“Have a good time?”
I nod and pull out my phone. “Yeah. For several reasons.” Smiling, I pull up my texts, and start talking to Sidnie again.
Chapter Fifteen
Mack
Christmas Eve
“You want another veggie fritter, Mack?”
I blow out a breath and flop back in my deckchair. “No thanks. I’m absolutely stuffed.”
“You haven’t actually managed to fill him up?” Koro, my grandfather, sounds most amused. “I didn’t think it was possible.”
“You leave him alone,” Kuia, my grandmother, scolds, coming over to kiss the top of my head. “He has a big brain, and it takes a lot of calories to fuel it.”
“Big head,” Jamie says, and grins.
I give a lazy smile, too content to bicker.
It’s around eight p.m. on Christmas Eve, and I’m at Matauri Bay, sitting on the deck with my family, looking out over the Pacific and the Cavalli Islands. The memorial to the Greenpeace flagship, Rainbow Warrior, sunk by the French while on its way to protest against a French nuclear test in 1985, is just to the north on the hill. The sun is setting, and the color of the sky matches the fruit in the bowl on our table—strawberry, mandarin, and blueberry.
Koro grew up just down from here, living in a tiny house with six brothers and sisters and not a penny to his name. He worked his balls off and ended up running his own building firm, and made enough money to give his own kids a comfortable life, but the house he owned with Kuia was still tiny. When I made my first million, I bought this piece of land for them, and Koro built this house, full of light and space, with four large bedrooms to house the many guests who come and go. Tonight, there are about fifteen of us here—my grandparents, their two daughters and their families, Jamie, Emma, and me. Jamie isn’t related by blood to them, but my father adopted him when he brought us to New Zealand, and they’ve always treated him like their grandson.
“Come for a swim,” Anna, my fourteen-year-old cousin, pleads. Her sister, who’s twelve, picks up my hand and tugs it.
“I’ll sink,” I groan. “Give me half an hour for my dinner to go down.”
“It’ll be dark then,” Anna complains.
“Leave him alone.” Their mother, my aunt Aroha, shoos them away. “You’ve been bothering him and Jamie all afternoon.”
“Give me half an hour,” I call after them, “and I’ll give you a game of cards.”
They cheer and run away, down to the sea.
“Sorry,” Aroha apologizes, coming to collect my plate. “They’re so pleased to see you both. They’ve talked about nothing else for days.”
“I’ll clean up,” I tell her, starting to get up, but she pushes me back down.
“Have a rest,” she says. “We all know how hard you work.”
I sink back into my chair, a little embarrassed. “It’s not like I work down a mine,” I mumble.
“Don’t worry about him,” Jamie says. “He just sits there all day playing Solitaire.”
They all chuckle. I give a good-natured smile.
“Anyway,” he continues, giving me an impish look, “did he tell you he has a girlfriend?”
Everyone’s eyes widen. “Oooh,” Aroha and my other aunt, Manaia, say together.
“Mack!” scolds my grandmother. “You never said!”
“Thanks,” I say to my brother. “This is exactly what I need.”
