New Zealand Ever After Books

I may have lost my leg. I may have lost my job. I didn't have to lose my courage. You don’t find many too-pretty rich boys in the New Zealand Defence Force. Turns out there’s a reason for that. Fortunately, you can find your true self in the oddest places. Of course, you can lose yourself in those places, too—at least some pieces of you. Since I was back home with a new leg, some facial alterations, and time on my hands, I might as well help out my sister. Showing a potential buyer around some of New Zealand’s quirkier ecotourism sites, having a few adrenaline-fueled adventures? Fine. It wasn’t like I’d never been camping, unlike the walking tornado that was Miss Karen Sinclair. Unfortunately, Karen had never heard of the phrase, “Let me get that,” let alone, “We don’t have time.” She’d definitely never heard, “There’s no more room in the car.” And then there was the sexual frustration.

Falling in love can be bloody inconvenient. Let’s inventory, shall we? State of my professional life: Brilliant, if counted in terms of sales of Hazel the Hippo books, the substantial proceeds from selling my Kiwi Adventures New Zealand glamping business, and any number of glossy magazine articles about my charmed existence. Of course, I couldn’t seem to write or draw anymore, but that would pass. Surely. State of my personal life: Murky. A mysterious siren I was not, in my nursing bra and only-kind-that-fits maternity panties. My three redheaded children? Good thing. Good, exhausting, frustrating, terrifying, wonderful thing. My marriage? Living with a failing marriage is like living with a toothache. It’s not going to get any better, and eventually, it’s going to get heaps worse, but who wants a root canal? Beginning to fall for the much-too-charming, not-quite-available, stone-cold-beautiful Dr. Matiu Te Mana, on the day he delivered the third of those children on the grass outside Dunedin Hospital, a few short minutes before my marriage began its spectacular and very public final implosion? Possibly tricky.

People who say “love is trust” probably didn’t grow up in a cult. My name is Daisy Nabhitha Kittredge. I chose it myself. As an RN in the Emergency department in one of New Zealand’s largest hospitals, there wasn’t much left in me of the sixteen-year-old girl, covered from neck to ankle and not allowed to make eye contact with a boy, who’d run away with five dollars in her pocket and terror in her heart. Or maybe there was too much left of that girl, because I was still slow to trust. Slow to share. And a whole lot slow to get intimate. Which doesn’t put men off much, right? Unless the man’s a tough Samoan ex-rugby player with sweetness and strength to spare. One who keeps fronting up to help even when you tell him you don’t need it. And what’s even harder to resist—one who wants to help your sisters, too. I was going to end up sharing. I wasn’t going to be able to help it. But when my walls came down, would he want the person behind them? Also—who was the person behind them?

I'm an adventurer, not a girl-dad. When you grow up with a single mum and quadruplet baby sisters, you find out two things. You can change two diapers at once, and you don't want to. Anyway, my job was finding gold, and however much I liked New Zealand, it had already been explored. Rescuing a woman dressed in a nightdress at a costume ball? That worked for me. And holding her up against the wall to shield her from the cops was pure enjoyment. Driving with her to a barbecue, a fruit salad in my lap and her twins--her girl twins--in the back seat? Out of my comfort zone. And that was before she started asking me for dating lessons and wondering how to explain that she couldn’t have sex before marriage. I had it under control, though. I was coping. Until those four sisters of mine decided to go looking for their sperm donor.

Breathe, smile, and move on. When you’re writing the next chapter in your rags-to-riches-to-rags story, you need about a million quotes like that. I might have been short on inspiration, but I had determination. That was it, except for a very young cousin and a very old campervan, but I was all about starting over. Nobody knew me in New Zealand other than a series of café and motel managers, and anonymity suited me fine. Manlessness suited me even finer. Until the day when that campervan rolled down a South Island hillside in a tropical cyclone and trapped my cousin Delilah inside, and an extremely rude stranger helped me get her out. Now, I had no campervan and possibly even less inspiration. I still had determination, though. Determination not to let one Roman D’Angelo, no matter how rich or bossy he might be, run my life or mess with my inner peace. I was serene. I was independent. I was in control. I was in so much trouble.