Taniwha Creek: Otago Waters

By Stephanie Ruth

 

 

Barista Maddie Stalwart-Jones has known Todd Kaihanga all her life, but no matter where her brain wanders when she's not vigilant, she refuses to consider her brother's best mate as anything other than off limits. It would be all wrong, right? The self-proclaimed pessimist is intent on ignoring the fact her cafe manager is the only guy she can relax and be herself around, and the only person she's comfortable talking about her dead brother with.

 

Intent on escaping Wānaka, where everyone seems to have an opinion on her intimate business and family history, falling for Todd would be highly inconvenient.

Todd's a patient guy, but he's over waiting around for Maddie to notice he could be so much more than a shoulder to lean on. When Maddie's mother finally agrees to accept some much needed help with her run down property, it's a perfect catalyst for Todd to prove to his high school crush that his optimistic streak isn't a curse, it's the perfect yin to her yang. The wedding of the year is about to kick off, and there's only one woman he wants to be dancing with.

 

TANIWHA CREEK, a friends to lovers Valentines Day novella from Stephanie Ruth's Otago Waters series, is set in the beautiful South Island of Aotearoa, New Zealand. Each book stands alone, but reading them in order provides a deeper experience. Intended for readers who enjoy their slow-burn, feel-good romance on the steamy side, with the promise of a happily ever after.

Reader discretion advised, this novella deals with the trauma of a past road accident, and hoarding.

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• Language: English
• Publisher: Tī Kōuka Publishing
• Release date: Jul 22, 2023
• ISBN: 9781738605910

Book preview

1

TE HERENGA - THE OBLIGATION

With a single shot of Windolene on a soft cloth, every smudge of evidence disappeared.

Sticky fingerprints and smeary nose circles from smaller customers, their faces pressed against the cabinet to view the foodie delights up close… Gone.

If only all Maddison Stalwart-Jones’ problems were so easily dispensed with.

Maddie absorbed the quiet spell with reverence. Wanderer’s Café had just entered the coveted after-and-before stage—an interval not to be taken for granted.

After the clockwork morning take-outs, breakfast sit-ins, and preschooler fluffies. After the ravenous muffin-in-a-bag crowd and bleary-eyed caffeine deprived double espressos came this gift from the fairy-godmother of baristas.

The before-lunch-lull.

Indoor tables were being set to rights by the other staff member on shift, and the two lingering outdoor customers had already been served.

Maddie slipped back behind the counter to put away her cleaning paraphernalia, casting an eye over her workspace. She shuffled the EFTPOS machine two centimetres to the left and the basket of hand-painted table-numbers a smidgen to the right, eyeing the result critically before humming in satisfaction.

She’d taken a psychology paper a couple of years ago, Common Mechanisms to Combat Stressors, and ever since then blamed her tendency to micro-manage space on her mother’s distinct lack of ability in that area.

Everything in its place, Todd teased her on his way back from clearing tables, coffee cups stacked up his corded arm like a wonky tower.

The newly appointed manager never used a tray, though the café had multiple. It was maddening.

Todd Kaihanga had been on Maddie’s radar since primary school, and he’d always done things his own way. Two years older, he’d actually been her brother’s best friend from Sailing Club.

Not the fancy type of sailing, the optimist dinghy kind.

That’s how Maddie had got the café job over nineteen other hopeful applicants, some of them flaunting a lot more experience. Todd liked to imply it was on account of her Shirley Temple dimples and customer service skills, but she knew it was also due to his father feeling he owed her something.

Every upright citizen in Wānaka felt they owed Maddie and her mother something.

Because—Mitchell.

Two years after her brother’s accident the tasteless pasta meals and red-eyed sympathy on the front doorstep had long-since petered out, but the ongoing attentiveness of her small-town neighbours was still relentless.

Survivors’ guilt—human nature at its finest. When your own family was intact, tucked up safely in bed at night, guilt came hand in hand with the relief all that shit had happened to someone else.

Maddie wasn’t particularly comfortable with everyone knowing her business, and up until the secondary barista position had come up at Wanderer’s Café had been trying to stay off centre-stage.

She needed this job, though. It more than covered her rent and expenses, and together with her regular childcare gigs was going to be her ticket out of here.

One day she might even own her own little sweet-treat eatery in Dunedin or Christchurch… Somewhere where nobody knew her. Though saving was a slow process, she’d rather stand on her own two feet than hit up her mother for a slice of her dad’s life-insurance pay-out.

There couldn’t be much left of that at any rate.

When Todd came back out to the front servery from the kitchen, Maddie turned to him. Does the P stand for Pessimist?

What? Todd had dark hair from his father’s side, wavy and incredibly thick. Right now it was getting in his eyes and he swiped it sideways, blinking.

The P-class down at the yacht club. P’s the next step up from Optimist, right?

Todd stood with his head to one side, eyeing Maddie as if she were a tricky coffee grinder to be figured out. Then his mouth began to quirk up into a grin.

He was generally considered okay looking, in a guy-next-door kind of sense, but when he smiled it became trickier to see him as merely that. His eyes crinkled up and laughter lines bracketed his generous mouth in a breath-stealing way.

Maddie cleared her suddenly parched throat.

She’d never fished that river, far too close to home, but that didn’t mean she hadn’t considered it.

"You’re legit asking me if there’s an optimist class, and a pessimist class?" Todd mused, standing at the coffee machine with busy hands.

Maddie didn’t think to quiz his actions until he passed her a frothy cappuccino, still smirking.

Heat crept up her cheeks.

Don’t laugh at me. It was a genuine question. She’d inadvertently opened herself to the dumb-blonde stigma again, and hated it.

Not finishing her final year at university had less to do with lack of brain matter and more to do with her big brother dying mid-semester.

Mitchell, who’d been the glue to everything.

Guiltily, Maddie looked behind herself before taking the offered coffee, but no customers had entered in the meantime.

Um, thanks, she muttered.

For your information, Goldilocks, the P stands for primary trainers.

The cappuccino slid down like a dream, eliciting a groan of pure pleasure from deep within Maddie as it warmed and soothed her from the inside-out.

The last molecule of her morning tension lifted, like mist off the lake.

Unfair, she decided aloud. Pessimism deserves a boat, too.

Oh, it’s got a waka already. Todd leaned forward to tap lightly on her right temple. It floats around up here. All day, every day.

True.

Sod off, Maddie grumbled, but had the grace to smile rather than truly bite back at her brother’s best mate. After all, the guy had just made her a coffee-to-die-for without even being asked.

Todd was a master barista, her trainer as it happened, and as usual had fashioned Maddie a perfect heart in creamy white foam. She knew he meant nothing by it. He was the one who’d taught her how to implement the simple design when she’d started working at the café last year.

Wanderer’s staff decorated all cappuccinos with hearts. Lattes got ferns-fronds, and alternate milks were graced with a koru. It was easier for the servers to deliver their orders correctly if everyone stuck to the same rules.

As Maddie opened her mouth to ask more about primary trainers, the trickier of the two boats to navigate, a pīwakawaka flitted in through the open door.

Oh! She grasped Todd’s arm with her free hand and they both froze, watching in wonder as the little fantail dipped and dived, completing a full circuit of the seating area.

It stopped to hover in front of the pair of them, white tail-feathers flashing unintelligible Morse code, before escaping the way it had entered.

Pīwakawaka in the whare—a message from whānau, Todd murmured, sounding ominously like a soothsayer.

Mitchell.

Had to be. Who else would have anything to say after all this time?

I thought it signified death? She glanced up at him, seeking confirmation.

He never took his eyes off the bird—outside now, investigating the shrubbery. Sometimes. Every iwi seems to have a slightly different interpretation.

Maddie let out the breath she’d been holding, but it wasn’t so easy to shake off the faint sense of foreboding.

What kind of message?

Todd looked down at her, eyes dark and questioning. I don’t know. You tell me.

Though the café was warm with late morning sun streaming through the west-facing wall of windows, Maddie shivered.

Mum?

Maddie pounded on the front door, but got no answer. Giving up on that entrance, she braved the waist deep grass to get around to the back—treading gingerly to avoid semi-hidden obstacles.

She barked her shin on the handlebar of an old bike, discarded in what used to be the veggie garden, but arrived otherwise unscathed.

Mum! It’s me. Open up!

Ever since Mitchell’s death, Sian’s tendency to collect had shifted into something a lot more obsessive. She’d given up bothering to hide the evidence behind the house’s peeling weatherboards and her ‘goldmine finds’ were now spilling into the yard, stacked on the porch, and piling up outside the garage.

The place was eerily quiet, and Maddie was about to wade through to the front again when the door opened a crack.

Maddison?

Yes. You okay? Maddie didn’t bother to hide the relief in her voice.

Her mother hadn’t been answering her phone.

Of course! Sian opened the door just wide enough to slip out, but Maddie caught a glimpse of what lay behind her in the laundry. Piles upon piles of clothing atop the tub and washer, and banana-boxes filled with heaven-only-knew stacked almost to the ceiling.

I called you.

My phone is, ah… It’s gone flat.

Not a very convincing lie. Sian had clearly lost her phone again—the second one this year. It would’ve slipped down behind a pile of something, never to be seen again. Maddie sighed, knowing a brand-new phone was probably already winging its way to Sian even as they spoke, purchased and paid for online by the shopaholic standing right in front of her.

Bizarrely, Sian was never too badly turned out. Today she wore jeans and a masculine dark-green shirt, knotted at the waist. Her wildly curly hair had been tamed into two neat braids, and she even appeared to be wearing a lick of mascara.

But she’d lost more weight. When they hugged, Maddie could feel each and every bone in her mother’s spine.

Was the woman even eating?

Self-reproach kicked in. She shouldn’t be turning up empty handed. Next time she’d bring a filled roll from work, or a muffin. Savoury had always been Sian’s favourite.

I got this from the mailbox. Maddie flapped another council court-order in her mother’s direction, which Sian pointedly refused to look at.

Busybodies. Why do they even care?

"They’re not busybodies, Mum. They’re doing their job. You can’t keep living like this. Maddie squinted skyward, the duck-egg blue of the late midsummer afternoon calming her with its pure lack of clutter. And even if they didn’t care… I do," she admitted with a touch less aggression.

The latest council demand was that Sian’s street-view be up to ‘inspection standard’ by February 14th, and that was as much Maddie’s responsibility as her mother’s. She’d moved out years ago to attend university in Dunedin, stepping sideways rather than addressing the burgeoning issue.

Let me help.

I don’t need any help. Sian looked genuinely surprised.

Maddie scoped the backyard and grimaced. It looked like a scene out of a post-apocalyptic movie; Mother Nature reclaiming every man-made structure.

Just the front yard. Just to keep the neighbours happy, she cajoled, wondering how the hell you went about cutting grass-turned-jungle when