Just for You
Authors: Rosalind James
Text copyright 2014
Rosalind James
All Rights Reserved
Cover design by Robin Ludwig Design Inc.,
http://www.gobookcoverdesign.com/
ISBN 13: 978-0-9909124-7-7
The Blues and the All Blacks are actual rugby teams. However, this is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Just This Once (Escape to New Zealand, Book One): Prologue
T
HE
E
SCAPE TO
N
EW
Z
EALAND
SERIES
Reka and Hemi’s story:
Just for You
(Novella)
Hannah and Drew's story:
Just This Once
Kate and Koti's story:
Just Good Friends
Jenna and Finn's story:
Just for Now
Books 1-3 Value Price Boxed Set:
Just This Once, Just Good Friends, Just For Now
Emma and Nic's story:
Just for Fun
Ally and Nate's/Kristen and Liam's stories:
Just My Luck
Josie and Hugh's story:
Just Not Mine
Hannah and Drew's story again/Reunion:
Just Once More
Faith and Will's story:
Just In Time
(In Brenda Novak's SWEET TALK boxed set;
May 1, 2015 - available for preorder now!)
Chloe and Kevin's story:
Just Say Yes
(Spring/Summer 2015)
T
HE
K
INCAIDS
S
ERIES
Mira and Gabe's story:
Welcome to Paradise
Desiree and Alec's story:
Nothing Personal
Alyssa and Joe's story:
Asking for Trouble
T
HE
P
ARADISE,
I
DAHO
S
ERIES (
M
ONTLAKE
R
OMANCE)
Zoe and Cal's story:
Carry Me Home
(June 2015)
Book Two:
Take Me On
(December 2015)
Book Three:
Turn Me Loose
(2016)
Note:
A New Zealand glossary appears at the end of this book.
No shirt, no shoes, no…problems?
Hemi Ranapia isn’t looking for love. Fun, yes. Love, not so much. But a summer fishing holiday to laid-back Russell could turn out to be more adventure than this good-time boy ever bargained for
.
Reka Harata hasn’t forgotten the disastrously hot rugby star she met a year ago, no matter how much she wishes she could. Too bad Hemi keeps refusing to be left in her past
.
Sometimes, especially in New Zealand’s Maori Northland, it really does take a village. And sometimes it just takes a little faith
.
From the Author:
This 36,000-word (120-page) novella begins about six years before the events of JUST THIS ONCE. It was designed to be read as a stand-alone book and an intro to the series—but if you’ve read the others and are curious, here’s a handy-dandy little guide to familiar characters you’ll wave “hi” to in this story:
Drew Callahan (Blues): 24, like Hemi; just made captain of the Blues.
Finn Douglas (Blues): 27.
Nate Torrance (Hurricanes): 21.
Liam (Mako) Mahaka (Hurricanes): 20.
Kevin McNicholl (Blues): 19.
(And yes, they do start playing that young! It’s a young man’s sport.)
T
he baby was crying, but that wasn’t why he was watching.
Hemi Ranapia leant against the rail on the upper deck of the car ferry that had left Opua a few minutes earlier and would be in Okiato in a few more. He wasn’t looking at the placid waters of the Bay of Islands with his mates, though, or paying attention to their desultory conversation about the fishing trip they had planned for the next day. He was watching the girl.
Because he’d met her before. He’d done more than meet her, and he remembered it pretty well. That part would have been a good memory. That part
was
a good memory. The part that was worrying him was the baby.
She hadn’t noticed him yet. She was walking on the opposite side of the ferry’s top deck, holding the crying baby, talking or singing to it, he couldn’t tell. She was moving in his direction, every step a swaying bounce to calm the fussing infant, and one part of him wanted to go below, but the other part kept him rooted, waiting for her to recognize him.
He saw the moment she did, the moment her large, liquid brown eyes met his own, the moment her feet stopped moving.
She bounced the baby a bit more, but absently now. Aaron and Nikau stopped chatting about fishing and looked at her, and, baby or not, Hemi knew why they were looking, because she looked like a flower, something tropical and lush. She was wearing a flouncy pale-green skirt and a pretty orange top that clung to her rich figure, and her hair, pulled back into its Maori knot, was every bit as dark and shining, her skin every bit as velvety brown, her curves every bit as luscious as they’d looked in the red bridesmaid’s dress she’d been wearing the last time he’d seen her. The dress she’d been wearing for a while, anyway.
“Hemi,” she said, and it wasn’t an invitation.
He froze, because he couldn’t remember her name. He could remember every single detail of what she’d looked like naked, what she’d looked like under him, but for the life of him, he couldn’t remember her name.
“You have a baby,” he said, and if there was a stupider opening line, he didn’t know what it would be. Now that she was closer, he could see that it was a Maori baby, but that was about it. Which left the question exactly as open as it had been before.