Hana Du Rose

CHAPTER ONE-5

“You’re being a fool!” Liza spat and Logan widened his eyes in warning.

“I know what I’m doing,” he hissed. Liza pouted and the salvo of inappropriate questions stemmed. The look she gave Logan alerted Hana to some reason beneath her questioning.

“Don’t come crying to me when she’s ruined you!” she spat and moved off towards the buffet table.

Hana opened her mouth to demand an explanation from Logan but Michael stepped forward and engaged her in conversation. From the corner of her eye, Hana watched Logan struggle for control, his body ramrod straight next to hers. “I understand you work at a secondary school.” Affability flowered in Michael Du Rose’s face and Hana relaxed. A natural flirt, he diminished her anxiety and drew her into the conversation. Liza’s barb loosened its grip and Michael’s easy nature smoothed away the discomfort. Only Logan failed to let go, watching his brother through suspicious, narrowed eyes.

“Where do you work?” Hana asked.

Michael’s handsome face broke into a smile. Broader than Logan, they otherwise resembled a matched pair side by side. But where Logan seemed dark and brooding, Michael behaved with open friendliness. “I’ve worked at Auckland’s Emergency Room for the last ten years. I decided to go into medicine when I was twelve.” His eyes flicked towards Logan and back to Hana. “I held someone’s intestines in their split guts with my hands and enjoyed the adrenaline rush.” He threw his head back and laughed but Hana cringed.

“That sounds painful,” she said, siding with the victim. “Did they recover?”

Michael smirked and nodded. “Yeah. Lost a few metres of it but they recovered.”

Hana shivered. “That’s a horrid work story. My worst one is probably a paper cut.”

Michael laughed again and Hana’s smile drooped at the sight of Liza returning.

“Hey sis,” he said to Liza as she pulled a sausage roll apart with her fingers. “How’s life out at Mission Bay?”

“Fine,” she grunted, feeding the crumbled remains through painted lips. Michael winked at Hana, his grey eyes sizing her up. Something about the look made the breath stutter in her chest. She knew in that moment he’d traded a wedding band for a steady procession of conquests. It made her nervous. Plainly used to dealing with drunks and rowdy, injured parties, he placated Liza with a well-timed question about her latest case and turned her attention away from Hana.

Logan inclined his head in a look of gratitude and pulled her away with a firm hand in the small of her back. “Sorry,” he whispered. “I should’ve realised she’d go in for the kill.”

“Why?” Hana’s eyes widened in fear and the answer met her in Logan’s eyes. “Oh. Because of Caroline?”

Logan inhaled as an irritated snort. “Please, let’s not talk about her today.”

Hana nodded in agreement but the Du Rose family dynamic perplexed her. She gleaned from the short but painful conversation with Liza that she and Caroline Marsh were friends. It rattled her. A family connection to Logan hindered her ability to expunge the woman from their lives and gave Caroline a reason to stick around. She wished for Rory’s return like a shopaholic craving shoes. Caroline might remain at the school, but at least she’d leave Hana’s office.

She cast around the room, looking for familiar faces and confused when she didn’t see them. “Where’s Rory and Sheila?” she asked, peering into the strobing gloom.

Logan halted at the edge of the dance floor. “I invited them.” He shrugged. “I called Rory and he said they’d come.”

“That’s weird.” Hana narrowed her brows. “Sheila loves a good party. I hope nothing’s wrong.”

“Hana, Hana, dance with me?” Pete snatched up her arm and whisked her away from Logan. She managed to hand over the wine glass before Pete yanked her back into the throng of dancers. She realised too late he hadn’t offered out of any desire to spend time with her, but because a member of the sports department frolicked behind them with Henrietta. Both looked worse for wear.

After Pete stepped on her feet four times, Hana left him doing his loose-armed impression of John Travolta alone in the middle of the floor. She found space at a circular table and a waitress offered a tray of drinks as soon as she sat down. “Thank you,” Hana said, giving the teenager a smile.

“You’re welcome, Mrs Du Rose,” the girl replied and Hana gaped in surprise. Gwynne watched her from across the table and laughed.

“You’ll need to get used to that.” He patted his new wife’s hand on the tablecloth and she beamed up at him.

“I love being Mrs Jeffs,” she replied with a coy smile.

“I suppose I will.” Hana pushed the glass of wine in a circle using the stem. “I like how it sounds.”

The new Mrs Jeffs grinned. “It suits you.”

They turned their attention to the dance floor as Pete’s antics drove the other dancers away, including Henrietta and the sports teacher. “Whatever happened with that incident?” Gwynne asked, breaking into the silence as Pete moved on to the ‘Chicken Dance.’

“Which incident?” Hana asked and Gwynne’s eyes widened.

“You mean there were more than just the mugging? Oh yeah, I guess there was the broken windscreen too.” He turned to explain to his wife. “A woman and male teenager attacked Hana in the chapel car park after work one night. They tried to snatch her handbag. I was at a cricket meeting and we managed to grab the boy.”

“That’s awful!” Her eyes widened in sympathy. “I didn’t know.”

“Oh,” Hana waved her hand in dismissal. “The police didn’t contact me about that again. It disappeared into the ether, like everything else that happens to me.” She leaned forward. “Did you know my car went missing a few weeks later?”

“No!” Gwynne sat back in his chair, surprise in his eyes. “I assumed you changed it for the big off-roader.”

Hana shook her head. “That’s Logan’s. I borrowed it. I’ve replaced it now with a Honda. The cops don’t know where my other one went. It disappeared from the garage I contracted to mend the bumper.”

“Bumper?” Gwynne’s eyebrows joined in the middle. “What did you do to the bumper?”

Hana swallowed. Her catalogue of incidents seemed ludicrous and unbelievable. The happiness of her marriage lost its glow as she overwrote it with misery. She couldn’t let that happen. “Just a minor ding.” She dismissed it with a casual wave of her hand. “But you guys caught the boy who mugged me, didn’t you?” she asked. “I wonder what happened to him.”

Gwynne snorted and sat back in his chair. “Court. Or at least I’d hope so. Nice kid. Terrible home life. I’m not sure who paid his fees, but they wanted something better for him than becoming a criminal. Mind you, when they come from that kind of background, they often regress into it.”

Hana gaped. “You know him?”

“Didn’t you?” Gwynne rubbed his face in confusion. He shrugged in dismissal. “I assumed you did but perhaps he never ventured into your part of the school. I acted as the Year 9 dean in his first year so I saw him a lot. Stupid kid. Heaps of potential wasted.”

Hana started with such violence, the drink slopped from her glass and onto the table. She watched the liquid pool; concentration etched into her face. Gwynne’s wife mopped at it with a napkin. “This isn’t the right time to discuss it,” she chided him. “Not on Hana’s wedding day.”

“Sorry.” Gwynne winced. “I didn’t think.”

Hana shook her head. “It’s fine. An Old Boy of the school. I never saw that coming.”

Gwynne’s wife made her excuses and headed to the bathroom. He leaned forward to apologise. “Just forget it,” he said. “It sounds like your car became a liability and it’s gone now.”

Hana nodded and let him believe it, wishing she could too.