As Deep as the Ocean Read online

  As Deep as the Ocean

  Blue Penguin Bay Book One

  by Serenity Woods

  Copyright 2017 Serenity Woods

  All Rights Reserved

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is coincidental.

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  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter One

  THEY WERE LATE.

  It didn’t help Mac’s mood. At two o’clock, he’d been prepared. He’d practiced his speech a hundred times, asked and answered dozens of questions in his head, and promised himself that if he was honest and open, everything would be okay.

  By four o’clock, when the car finally appeared at the end of the long drive, his stomach was a bag of bees, and he’d convinced himself they were going to throw him out on his ear.

  He stood by the fence surrounding the complex of buildings at the head of the vineyard, and jammed his hands into the pockets of his jeans as he waited for the car to arrive. His German Shepherd dog, Scully, sat beside him. She’d been subdued all day, presumably picking up on his mood.

  He glanced to his right. The vineyard sloped down toward Blue Penguin Bay—a small crescent of golden sand inaccessible by land, and visited only by the occasional boat and the birds that gave the bay its name. The Pacific Ocean beyond sparkled in the afternoon sunshine. Boats headed out from the town of Russell farther up the coast, some ferrying foot passengers over to Paihia, others taking tourists to the Hole in the Rock or to watch the dolphins that would be playing in the deep water.

  It was an idyllic scene, but it felt all wrong. There should have been a storm, with thunder rolling around the hills, and the sky gray with rain. Something should have been happening to mark the end of his world, but even though his emotions raged inside him, the sun continued to shine, warming the grapes in the vineyard and turning the terracotta roofs of the stone buildings behind him to a deep, earthy red.

  The car—a taxi, he could see now—wound along the drive and pulled up in front of him. Scully stood, and he put a hand on her collar. Not everyone liked dogs, and some people found Scully’s size intimidating. They didn’t know that if you unzipped her fur coat, there was a teddy bear inside.

  He saw movement in the car, watched the person sitting in the front passenger seat pay the driver, and then three doors of the taxi opened.

  He’d been in contact via email with a guy called Fred, but three women got out of the car. Damn it, he’d assumed these were the Cartwrights, but presumably they were late visitors to the Cellar Door. He’d have to turn them away—he didn’t want visitors here when the Cartwrights arrived.

  To his surprise, though, two of the women began retrieving a set of cases from the car, while the third crossed the gravel toward him. Were they all sisters? Two of them bore the same color hair, blonde that shone with a reddish sheen like copper in the sunlight—strawberry blonde, wasn’t it called?

  The third woman stopped before him, and they appraised each other silently for a moment. She ran her gaze down him, as if sizing him up, so he took the opportunity to do the same. Above average height, five-nine, maybe, or even five-ten considering she wore Converses. Slim without being slender, curves in the right places, long legs. Her hair—darker than her sisters and a pretty chestnut color—was twisted up with a clip, untidily, with little care, lots of long strands blowing around her temples and neck. She wore dark-blue jeans and a stone-colored tee. No jewelry he could see, no earrings or necklace, no rings on her fingers. His gaze returned to her face, and he looked into a pair of shrewd hazel eyes. Fine lines touched the outside—no blushing eighteen-year-old here—he’d put her at late twenties, maybe a year or two younger than he was.

  “Mac?” She raised her eyebrows.

  He gave a short nod.

  “Sorry to be so informal,” she continued, “but you didn’t put your full name on any of your emails.” Her tone was vaguely accusatory. “I’m Winifred Cartwright.” She held out a hand. She had an English accent, not quite Cockney, but definitely south-eastern.

  Winifred. “Fred?” he queried.

  “Yes.”

  He grasped her hand and shook it, his head spinning. The guy he’d been dealing with was a girl? He’d made all kinds of assumptions from those emails—had pictured Fred Cartwright as an acerbic Englishman, a fast-talking accountant or lawyer who’d confuse him with jargon and smart words. He felt a brief flash of indignation that she’d been purposely obtuse, then remembered that she was right—he hadn’t included his full name in their correspondence either. It hadn’t occurred to him.

  “I’m sorry about the informality,” he said, “but we tend to be that way in New Zealand. I’m Eamon MacDonald.”

  “As in e-i-e-i-o?” She didn’t smile.

  “Er, yes. But everyone calls me Mac.”

  “Even your mother?”

  “Yep.” Her words were at odds with her tone, which was faintly hostile.

  She held his gaze. Her eyes searched him like a flashlight, poking into all his dark corners, illuminating every single inch of his soul in a way he’d not felt for... years, maybe. Inside him, something stirred and stretched, like a hibernating bear sensing the arrival of spring.

  The taxi pulled away, and the other two girls picked up the cases and came over.

  “This is Ginger.” Fred indicated the younger girl, whose hair hung in waves around her shoulders. Not ginger as such—maybe a touch more strawberry than the other two. A pretty girl, with finer features than Fred, although with the same bright hazel eyes.

  “Fred and Ginger?” he observed.

  “Our mother liked old musicals,” Fred told him. She gestured at him and said to her sister, “This is Mac.”

  “Hi.” Ginger gave him a flicker of a polite smile and shook his hand.

  “And this is Sandi,” Fred finished as the third girl approached.

  He greeted her, thinking this was possibly the middle sister. She wore her hair loose, and she had a pleasant face and kind eyes.

  Her smile was fleeting, though, and the bees returned to his stomach at their hostile resentment. He had a tough time ahead of him. Diplomacy wasn’t his forte, and he spent his life out in the fields for a reason, alone except for the birds and the green vines and Scully at his heels. He didn’t know how to put people at ease, how to smooth things over.

  He lifted his chin. All he could do was be honest and forthright. That, at least, he could manage.

  “This is Scully,” he told them, gesturing at the dog at his side.

  “An X-Files fan?” Fred held out a hand for her to sniff.

  “Yeah.” He was impressed she’d made the link. Scully, who was normally indifferent toward strangers, nuzzled Fred’s hand and granted it with a lick, then snuffled at the others. That made him feel
a bit better. Maybe things wouldn’t be so bad. If Scully hadn’t liked them, he’d have known he was in for trouble.

  “Sorry we’re late,” Fred said. “The plane was delayed, and then, when we arrived at Paihia, we had to stop and take in the scenery.”

  “The photos don’t do it justice,” Ginger said. “Everyone says the Bay of Islands is one of the places to visit before you die, but I had no idea it would be like this.”

  They all looked across the fields toward the ocean. Mac could only imagine how it must look to someone who’d grown up near London. He’d been to the great city once, many years ago, when he’d done his big Kiwi overseas adventure. He’d hated it, as he’d hated all the cities he’d passed through, overwhelmed by the weight of its history, feeling hemmed in amongst all the high-rise buildings, the concrete, the filthy air. He’d felt like holding his breath until he set foot in New Zealand again.

  “It is like paradise,” he agreed, “and Blue Penguin Bay is the best part, although I guess I’m biased. I grew up around here.”

  “That’s Russell, isn’t it?” Sandi nodded at the town just north of the bay, a ferry-ride across from Paihia on the mainland.

  “Yeah. It was the first capital of New Zealand back when the whalers and missionaries came in the early nineteenth century.”

  “The hell-hole of the Pacific,” Ginger said. “We read about that.”

  Fred’s steady gaze returned to him. “We were expecting less picturesque scenery and more prostitutes and bar fights.”

  His lips curved up. She still wasn’t smiling, but he was beginning to think her sense of humor was Sahara-dry. “Only on the weekends,” he said.

  She treated him to a smile then, and, for a brief moment, everything went out of his mind except the two entrancing dimples that appeared in her cheeks and the light in her eyes that made his heart give an extra-hard thump.

  Then she looked away, and his returning smile faded. She’d come to take the one place in the world he loved more than anything, the estate he’d thought was rightfully his until a few months ago. He’d expected to see out his days here, amongst the vines, watching the sun lift out of the ocean and fade into the hills until the day he died. But now he’d have to seek some other place to stand. It physically hurt to think of leaving. He couldn’t imagine ever finding somewhere else that would make him feel the way this place did.

  Well, you don’t always get what you want, he scolded himself. No point in crying about it.

  “Welcome to Blue Penguin Bay estate,” he said to the girls, his voice gruff. “Why don’t I take you to your rooms so you can drop off your luggage, and then I’ll show you around.”

  Chapter Two

  FRED PICKED UP HER case and exchanged a glance with her two sisters as Mac strode off toward the gate in the fence, Scully trotting beside him. Ginger raised her eyebrows, and Sandi pursed her lips. Presumably, they were thinking the same as she was. They’d known Mac was the son of the previous manager of the estate. His emails had been terse and to the point, as if he’d typed them with gritted teeth, fingers hitting each key with more force than was necessary. She’d pictured him in his late forties, gruff and grumpy, his face contorted with the bitterness and anger that the tone of his email implied.

  And yet, when it came to it, he could have kept the news to himself and nobody would ever have known. But he hadn’t. It must have cost him dearly to tell them what he’d discovered, but he had, and here he was, inviting them onto the land he must have been so certain was his, and not a lawyer in sight, nobody standing in his corner, fighting for him.

  She hadn’t expected him to be so young, early thirties at most. He was weather-beaten, in the way that men who spent their lives outdoors were, his face and arms a deep brown, the skin well-creased at the corners of his eyes. But oh, what eyes. They were the brightest blue she’d ever seen in a man, the color of the Pacific behind him, as if he was Neptune made real, or who was the Maori equivalent she’d read about? Tangaroa, the sea god, in person.

  Just because he was good looking, it didn’t mean she shouldn’t keep up her guard, she reminded herself, extending the handle of her case and following him up the path. There were a hundred reasons he might have decided to tell the truth, and not all of them involved him having a heart of gold. Undoubtedly, something had forced his hand.

  Mac led them through a gate in a tall fence, and she found herself in a large courtyard, flagstones forming a path through overgrown beds of plants, the palms and bushes in desperate need of some TLC. The buildings were beautiful, though, long, low, and whitewashed, with terracotta roofs, like those on the Greek islands, Ithaca or Skiathos.

  She’d read online that the bay had a Mediterranean feel, and when they’d asked the taxi driver to take them first through Kerikeri before heading for Paihia on the coast, she’d understood what the articles had meant. There seemed to be more sky here, and although it must rain frequently—how else could it be so green?—there were apparently five hundred more sunshine hours a year here than in the south-east of England, where she came from. Cafés spilled tables and chairs onto the pavements, something she only associated with warmer climes, and palm trees lined the streets. Even though it was March and the start of autumn in the southern hemisphere—which was weird considering it was nearly Easter and daffodils were out in the U.K.—many people they’d passed in the towns had worn shorts, and hardly anyone wore jackets.

  Mac headed toward a sign bearing the word Reception.

  “I thought you might like to stay in the Bed & Breakfast for now,” he said. “The rooms are all clean and have fresh linen. I’m still getting the main house up to scratch, but of course it’s up to you.”

  “That’s fine,” Fred replied. He had a Kiwi accent, unsurprisingly. She vaguely remembered her father speaking the same way. The difference was mainly in some of the vowel sounds. His ‘e’s sounded more like ‘i’s. Earlier, he’d said ‘yis’ instead of ‘yes’, and ‘fresh’ became ‘frish’, while ‘getting’ became ‘gitting’.

  She wondered where he lived—was he residing at the house? She knew his father had lived there after her own dad had died.

  Thinking of her father gave her a knot in her stomach. Harry Cartwright would have walked these flagstones, seen the very things her own eyes were seeing. It was the closest she’d been to him for over twenty years. She swallowed hard to contain her emotion. This wasn’t the time or place for tears, not yet.

  An arrow directed visitors to the right, where another large sign declared Blue Penguin Bay Bed & Breakfast, pointing to a long, low group of buildings. The whitewashed walls had been painted with attractive curling black and green fern shapes. The terracotta roofs made it look as if the buildings glowed in the afternoon sunshine.

  “Oh,” Sandi said quietly, and Fred exchanged a glance with Ginger, and smiled. When they’d first agreed to travel to New Zealand and see the estate, they’d decided each to focus on a different part. They would make their decisions individually, and, after a few days, they’d sit down and discuss whether to sell or to stay.

  Sandi was to size up the B&B. With a degree in hospitality, and several years’ experience working alongside the manager of a medium-sized hotel, she was ready to try something different and take up the challenge on her own. The Blue Penguin B&B had received unimpressive ratings over the past few years. Their lawyer back in England had told them that when James MacDonald had died and Mac had taken over, he’d closed the B&B until the girls decided what they were going to do with it. Sandi’s task was to assess the facilities and see whether there was any hope of making it into a worthy business.

  Ginger would be checking out the restaurant attached to the Cellar Door. This was doing slightly better than the B&B, and Mac had kept it open, but Fred had read the menus that he’d sent on her request, and she knew her sister’s innovative flair would bring some life back to the uninspiring dishes currently offered.

  It was Fred’s job to investigate the vineyard itself.
Six months ago, the only thing she’d known about wine was that she preferred red to white and two glasses were better than one. She’d done a lot of reading since then, though, and she was hoping that, with time, she’d be able to gauge whether it made sense to keep the vineyard or sell.

  Mac unlocked the B&B with a key, and led them in past an empty reception and down a corridor. Fred could see four doors, two to the left, one to the right, and one at the end. Mac stopped by the first, pushed it open, and gestured for Ginger, who was in front, to precede him. She went in, followed by Scully, and Fred and Sandi peered around the door to look inside.

  Fred saw a north-facing room filled with light, and a large bed with white covers. Apart from a few items of well-worn furniture, there was little else of interest in the room, no color, nothing pretty. She glanced at Sandi, seeing her sister’s sharp eyes passing over the decor. No doubt Sandi was painting walls and hanging pictures in her head, giving the place some character.

  “Amber aired the rooms and made up the beds with fresh linen,” Mac said, moving on. “She’s a local girl—the only one I kept on when I let the rest of the staff go. She’s sweet—she’d be worth rehiring, although it’s up to you, of course.” He pushed open the door opposite and stood back to let Sandi in, then continued down to the next bedroom, opened the door, and gestured for Fred to enter.

  He didn’t move back, leaving little space between himself and the doorway. She had to brush against him as she squeezed by. He smelled of the open air, of freshly cut grass and sunshine, along with the faint smell of lemons—his aftershave, or real lemons? The taxi had passed them on its way into the vineyard so she knew they grew there, the first time she’d ever seen them on trees and not just in boxes in the supermarket.

  She could feel his bright blue eyes on her as she passed him, and she didn’t miss the answering tingle between her shoulder blades as her arm touched his chest. She ignored it, though, and instead threw her bag on the bed and walked over to the sliding glass doors looking out onto an overgrown garden. Paving slabs marked a path toward a swimming pool, which had been covered over, and was littered with dry leaves.