Doubtfully, Shahna relinquished the child into Kier’s waiting arms. “I don’t know…”
“He’ll be fine. And if he’s not I’ll call you,” Kier promised.
He wouldn’t need to. She’d hear if Samuel were upset. “Your washing,” she said. “I was going to hang it on the line outside.”
“I’ll do it.”
Shahna hovered uncertainly, but Samuel was absorbed in a renewed inspection of Kier’s face, his scrutiny just as fascinated and far less covert than her own earlier, and Kier seemed to be returning the compliment.
Samuel grunted, then pointed an imperious finger to the toy basket, now tidied and placed on top of the settle.
“You want to play?” Kier asked. “Okay.”
Neither of them was taking the slightest notice of Shahna, so with faint trepidation she left them to it.
It was difficult to concentrate as she gently shaped lengths of delicate silver wire, to be set with pieces of polished amber-gold kauri gum.
Gradually she became absorbed in the work, clearing her mind of everything else. Hearing Kier’s voice, she looked out of the open doorway and saw him dump a basket of washing on the ground, where Samuel sat under the single wire that had been strung between the trees and the house and was held up by an old-fashioned manuka-branch clothes prop. Kier had found the container of plastic clothes-pegs that had a hook for hanging it on the line, but when Samuel stretched out a hand he placed it in front of the baby.
“Mistake,” Shahna murmured, and couldn’t help smiling as Samuel promptly upended the pegs all over the ground.
Kier laughed, and laughed again when Samuel laboriously picked one up and offered it to him. She heard him say, “Thanks, pal,” as he took the peg and fished a towel out of the basket of washing.
Shahna watched as he inexpertly hung up the towel and picked out another, before she turned back to what she was doing, smothering a nagging sadness that had settled around her heart and that mingled, confusingly, with an undeniable pleasure at just having him in sight.
Accustomed to keeping an ear cocked for the sound of Samuel waking from a nap in the room just a few yards from the studio, she heard him when he began to fuss, and was getting up from her workbench when Kier appeared in the doorway, holding the baby.
“I think he needs changing,” he told her, and thankfully handed the wriggling, indignant little bundle over to her.
As she took Samuel from him, Kier looked beyond her and said, “Mind if I look around?”
“Go ahead,” she invited after an infinitesimal hesitation, and bore her son off to the house.
Kier walked around the small room, where the long-nosed pliers Shahna had been using lay on a sturdy workbench under the single window. Tools hung on the walls, and a high padlocked cupboard occupied one corner.
A collection of photographs almost covered a large corkboard. Landscapes, pictures of rippling water and of wave patterns on sand, mixed with close-ups of ferns and moss, leaves and flowers. And display shots of necklaces, pendants, brooches and bangles, echoing the nature photos so closely he could clearly see where the inspiration for the jewelry came from.
He recognized the necklace that had caught his eye at the airport, rippled titanium and uneven pieces of green and white beach glass etched with abstract designs, distinctive in its unique, almost rugged beauty.
When he’d seen Shahna’s label it felt as if fate had struck him a blow in the heart. For months he’d been trying to convince himself he didn’t give a damn, that except for the worrying dreams and the residual baffled anger that occasionally attacked him, he was over her.
Until her name on a cardboard tag, catching his eye, squeezing a tight fist about his heart, had proved to him that he wasn’t.
Chapter 4
He’d wanted to ditch his meetings and find Shahna. Instead he’d persuaded himself to be coolheaded, concluded his business in Auckland as speedily as possible and then hunted her down.
He picked up a glass jar full of small seashells—some white patterned with brown, others purple or brilliant orange.
There were more jars holding weathered bits of glass, lumps of golden kauri gum, colored stones, even fragments of old china. A magpie collection.
Kier smiled, remembering her fascination with junk shops and markets where she’d buy bits and pieces he could see no use for.
She’d turned old, ugly and broken costume jewelry into quirky earrings and bracelets, or decor accents, like the drift of colored glass cabuchons spilling from a conch shell on her bathroom windowsill, catching the sun in the mornings.
Once she’d fallen in love with a faded fringed silk shawl and hidden the tears in the delicate fabric by draping it in folds on the wall over her bed.
He wondered if she still had it, if it hung over her bed now.
Hearing her voice, he looked through the open window, directly into another a few yards off, glimpsing a corner of a child’s cot. Shahna bent over it, and although Kier couldn’t see Samuel, he heard the little boy chuckle as Shahna laughed.
Her head lifted and her eyes met Kier’s. Feeling almost voyeuristic, he raised a hand to her. She lowered her eyes and turned away.
Minutes later she was back in the studio, Samuel in her arms. “Thanks for looking after him,” she said, “but it’s getting close to his tea time now. There’s no need for you to stay any longer.”
“It must be difficult,” Kier said, “working around a baby.”
“I do a lot while he’s asleep. And as long as I’m not using acid or soldering, he can play here quite happily while I’m busy.”
Kier looked about. “You’ve turned a hobby into an art.”
“I took a six-month course with a good tutor,” she said. “And I’ve had help from local artists here. They’ve been wonderfully supportive.”
“Wouldn’t it be easier to find markets in the city?”
“I made some contacts in Auckland before I left. Enough to start me off.”
He indicated the corkboard. “Those are your work?”
“Yes. I photograph everything before it’s sold. There’s an album in the drawer, there.”
He opened the drawer of a battered chest that supported one end of the solid workbench, and took out a tooled leather volume. “This?”
She nodded.
“I’ll leave you to it while I fix something for Samuel to eat.”
“He can stay with me while you do that if you like.”
She gave him a strange look, and shook her head. “We’ve imposed on you enough.”
He felt as though she’d slapped him. As she went back to the house he had a strong urge to follow her and force some kind of confrontation. Instead he bent his attention to the pictures in front of him.
Shahna almost wished she hadn’t invited Kier to look at the album, although she was proud of her work and wanted him to know it. Seeing him prowling ’round her studio, his keen gaze taking in everything before he looked back at her, had unsettled her.
When he rejoined them she was placing a peeled banana half in Samuel’s outstretched hand and removing the empty bowl in front of him.
“I’m impressed,” Kier said, making her feel ridiculously pleased and proud. She already knew she was good—people with much more knowledge than he had said so. Yet Kier’s praise gave her greater pleasure than anyone’s.