Found (Not Quite a Billionaire Book 3) by Rosalind James Page B

walked toward me. Karen jumped straight in and began to swim in a perfectly creditable crawl, but Hope sat on the concrete edge, then slid carefully into the lane next to mine. She was so short that only her upper eighteen inches or so were visible, but those inches were choice.
    “Sweetheart,” I said, “how could I have missed that?”
    It was the same white bikini she’d worn at the Polynesian Spa, but if it had looked good then? It looked even better now. First, despite her slimness, which had almost become frailty now, I’d seen the tiniest, sweetest little swell of belly below her navel, and had been nearly overwhelmed by a sudden, fierce longing to put my hand there. I needed to feel that, to trace every beautiful contour, and then to kiss it, because it was mine. And after that, I needed to show her exactly how much I loved seeing it.
    Tonight, I reminded myself. Because the other place where she’d changed, I absolutely had to keep my hands off just now.
    I’d always loved her sweet little breasts, all her delicate curves. She was tiny, but so perfectly made. But now . . . she wasn’t so tiny anymore.
    “I finally got a figure,” she said, reading my mind with perfect ease. “Too bad I’ll only keep it for a month or so. I should have bought a new suit myself, I guess. I didn’t realize how much I’d be, well, spilling over.”
    It was true. That bikini top wasn’t really big enough to do the job she was asking it to.
    “Are you all good to swim?” I asked. “Need me to come over there and give you a bit of help?”
    She laughed, and it sounded so happy, it twisted at my heart. “I have the oddest feeling about exactly how helpful you’d be. Besides, I learned how, remember? You just watch, boy.”
    “Like I could do anything else,” I said, and she laughed again.
    She wasn’t as far along with the swimming as Karen, but she wasn’t going too badly. And then, because I really couldn’t stand there and perve at my own fiancée all afternoon, I shoved my goggles back on and did another twenty laps or so. And if I looked over occasionally to watch Hope swimming, chatting to Karen, or, best of all, doing some floating, looking exactly the way I was going to be seeing her tonight, on her back and blissful? Well, I could hardly help myself.
    After our swim, Hope signed herself and Karen up for more lessons, and she didn’t even object when I paid for them. And when I stopped at the bank and opened an account for the two of them, all she did was sigh and say, “Hemi . . . how does this help my reestablishment plan, exactly?”
    “You don’t have to use it for anything, ah, frivolous,” I said, and then went on with what I thought was some pretty faultless logic. “But you and Karen will be caring for Koro, won’t you? If you weren’t here, I’d be paying somebody else, or a team of somebodies, more likely, and that wouldn’t come cheap. Plus groceries and whatever else he needs. Besides, who knows what he’s giving my dad. Could help me with that, couldn’t you, so he’s not caught short. And if you had an emergency, you wouldn’t have to worry.”
    Hope took the cards, tucked one into her wallet, and handed the other to Karen. “You keep sneaking in under my defenses. I know why you’re so successful. You are the most single-minded man I’ve ever known.” But she was smiling when she said it.
    We headed back up the hill to Koro’s, then, and Karen said along the way, “Tane and June invited me to have dinner with them tonight, and to sleep over. So I could get to know my cousins better, they said, which was nice of them, even though their kids won’t actually be my cousins at all.”
    I made a mental note to thank Tane next time I saw him. “Course they will,” I said. “You’ll find the definition of ‘cousin’ is pretty fluid to a Maori. You could say we have heaps. Your whanau’s more than your mum and dad. Or, in your case, your sister.”
    “Huh,” she said.