Sweet as Honey (The Seven Sisters) - By Caitlyn Robertson Page 0,6

back.

So far, it wasn’t working. Dex admired his persistence though.

Chase clapped Koru on the shoulder and wished him happy birthday, nodded at Reuben, who nodded back just as dismissively, then crossed the café and leaned on the counter. Daisy came over to the till and put her hands on her hips. Slim, beautiful and sharp as a bee sting, with bright blonde hair rolled into an elegant chignon, Daisy could make men wither at twenty paces by fixing them with her cool green eyes. Dex could see why other men found her attractive, but she wasn’t his type at all.

“What do you want?” she asked impatiently.

“Hello, beautiful,” Chase said in a low voice so Reuben couldn’t hear. “What’s the best kiss you have on the menu?”

She gave him a look that would have shrivelled a lesser man, like sprinkling salt would shrivel a slug. Chase, used to her disdain, just blew her a kiss. Dex laughed and took his seat.

“I’ll only be five minutes,” Honey said.

“No worries.” He sat back in the chair and sipped the cooling latte, watching her as she moved about behind the counter, tidying away.

Shorter than Daisy, maybe five seven or eight, with hair the colour of her name tumbling down her back in waves, Honey Summers had a beautiful spirit that radiated from her and filled him with a light he’d never experienced until the day he walked into the café. He’d been captivated from the moment she gave him the extra chocolate fish, entranced by the flush in her cheeks, her delightful English accent, the frequent smile in her eyes and the way she appeared completely naïve and innocent—qualities he’d never thought to find in a grown woman. She seemed to cleanse away all the bad things he’d done in the past, all the destructive emotions and feelings that had infected him like a disease. When she looked at him with love and joy in her eyes, he felt reborn, and he never wanted to let that sensation go.

The more he’d got to know her, the more he’d discovered the darker, haunted side to her personality. As Chase settled beside him with his mocha, Dex watched the sun stream through the window causing a pillar to cast a shadow across the counter, thinking how it mirrored the way her sunny character was offset by the depression that plagued her every now and again, usually when she thought about her previous boyfriend.

Dex would happily admit that he wanted to kill Ian McFarlane. Or Ian Mc-Fucking-Idiot as he liked to call him. How a man could take a spirit as bright and fresh as Honey’s and corrode it like seawater does copper, he had no idea. In spite of her insistence to the contrary, he knew Honey thought herself weak for letting Ian treat her badly for so long. He didn’t blame her—he’d seen enough of that type of man in his job to know it was entirely possible for one person to hold another in thrall, to possess them and control them so completely that their own personality almost dissolved.

Part of him felt resentful that her family hadn’t intervened earlier. He supposed they’d all been too caught up in their own lives to notice how bad it had got. Koru had told him that Campbell Summers had been too worried about Marama’s cancer diagnosis to realise his daughter was suffering. Certainly their reaction when they found out how unhappy she was—immediately organising the move back to Marama’s home country—convinced Dex that they felt guilty for not paying more attention to her. And he knew Koru felt the same.

Following the consumption of a good portion of a bottle of whiskey celebrating the All Blacks’ success on the rugby field against Australia shortly after they met, the ‘seventh sister’ had confided that he blamed himself for not rescuing her earlier. Koru admitted that when he’d found out what had been going on, he’d tracked Ian down in a dark alley one night and beaten the crap out of him, kicking the bastard so hard in the crown jewels he’d probably never father a child. Koru had looked wary at what his new police officer friend was going to say to that revelation.

Dex didn’t usually condone violence, but he’d shaken Koru’s hand and said vehemently, “Fucking great result,” and that was that. They never mentioned it again.

When he and Honey first dated, it had taken her two weeks before she told Dex the story about what had happened