Older Man by Bright Laurey;

Author:Bright, Laurey;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Open Road Media Romance
Published: 1991-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWELVE

On New Year's Eve the Townsends were having a party. “Some of Huia's relations are coming over,” they told Rennie. “They're going to put down a hangi near the beach. And we're having a barbecue as well. Tell Grant you're all invited. The kids, too."

Toby and Ellen, of course, knew all about it from their young friends, and watched as Huia's relatives dug a pit for the hangi, tipped in some rounded beach stones, and lit a roaring fire to heat them, before the foil-wrapped food was placed on top and the pit covered over with sacking, corrugated iron, and sandy earth.

All through the afternoon the children kept dragging Rennie back to the site to feel the slowly warming earth over the pit, asking her when the pork, chicken, fish and vegetables they had seen go into the umu would be cooked.

Grant had run out of reading matter, he said, politely rejecting his mother's offer of one of her library books. He looked at Rennie and said casually, “You offered me one the other night—have you finished it?"

"Yes. I'll fetch it."

He settled with it on one of the loungers set on a terrace overlooking the sea. When Rennie and the children returned from their fourth check of the hangi, he had read a quarter of the book and seemed engrossed. By the time the party started, he was half way through, and reluctant to leave it.

Somewhat smugly, Rennie said, “Enjoying the book?"

He shrugged. “It's fast paced and action packed. I must admit I have to keep turning the pages. It's okay for whiling away a holiday afternoon."

"I thought that was exactly what you wanted.” Rennie was slightly nettled by the faint praise.

Grant raised his brows. “Did I say different?” he queried. “It's fine. I'm enjoying it. Is that what you want to hear?"

Something like that. She smiled at him innocently. It wouldn't do him any harm to relax now and then with something that wasn't a book of statutes. She didn't think she'd ever seen him reading fiction before. Perhaps he thought it was slothful.

Even Mrs Morrison joined the party, sitting on a chair which Grant carried down from the house for her. Picking at steamed pork, potatoes and cabbage from the hangi, and a small piece of barbecued steak, she smilingly but firmly refused the offer of a bite of Ellen's sausage wrapped in a slice of bread and dripping with tomato sauce. The children sat among their friends, eating with their fingers from paper plates and thoroughly enjoying themselves. Rennie wiped their greasy faces and hands with paper towels and shook her head when Grant suggested she might like to join the teenage contingent who were gathering round the barbecue fire on the sand with a tape player and a guitar.

Grant shrugged and said, “I'm taking my mother up to the house."

When he returned, Ellen had fallen asleep against Rennie, and Toby, although he protested for form's sake when his father suggested it, looked ready for bed, too.

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