Read Stealing Luca's Heart for Free Online Page B

But the thought passed quickly as she hustled to her desk to find her passport.
    * * * *
    “Please fasten your seat belts as we begin our final descent into Auckland, the City of Sails. The local time is seven fifteen a.m., Sunday, the temperature is a lovely twenty-four degrees Celsius,” the flight attendant pleasantly announced in her New Zealand accent.
    “Excuse me,” Ally said to her seat mates on her left, a nice older couple from Oregon who were visiting New Zealand for the first time. “Do you know what that temperature is in Fahrenheit?”
    She watched as the gentleman thought about that. “I believe it’s seventy-five degrees.”
    “Thank you.”
    She couldn’t believe it had taken her over eighteen hours of travel from Iowa City to get this far. Even though she’d made this trip before, there was still no getting used to the long hours in the air. Losing a day going down and gaining it back on the return flight was always confusing. Plus, there was the time difference to factor in. Her mind knew it was early morning, but her body was confused.
    She had tried to sleep but gave up after the giant plane’s tail waggling proved too distracting. She started to watch a couple of movies, but even they couldn’t distract from the stockpile of questions she had. She continued to pray that her dad was just wounded, but that didn’t stop the worry about the head injury. That could mean anything. Plus he’d been shot . During the two-hour layover in Los Angeles, she was able to reach a nurse on her dad’s floor, who informed her that he was in stable condition. Was that code for medicated? Why wouldn’t they tell her anything else?
    There still was the lingering question about where she was supposed to go once the plane landed. Maybe the flight attendant would come by and tell her what airport gate she needed to go to for the connecting flight to the South Island. At least the New Zealand customs didn’t have long lines like back in the United States. The drug-sniffing beagles also weren’t as threatening as the U.S. German shepherds.
    The moment a person entered New Zealand, there was a completely different vibe. New Zealand was more concerned about items people might bring in that could potentially harm their agricultural industry, like foreign insects, not weapons or drugs.
    The flight attendants were busy cleaning up the cabin, so she decided to wait before bothering someone about a connecting flight. She turned toward the window to take in the view below. Lost in the expanse of the ocean, her thoughts trailed to the first time she visited New Zealand. Could it have really been fifteen years ago? Her dad had taken the whole family with him for his first business trip to New Zealand. They were excited to get their passports and read all the brochures, trying to decide what they wanted to see.
    While visiting the upper reaches of the North Island, they stayed in a colonial lodge overlooking the beautiful Bay of Islands. At the time, it seemed like there were little islands scattered everywhere you looked. Now Ally knew there were 150 islands off the coast. It reminded her of the Caribbean.
    Mom had taken them to see the Waitangi Treaty Grounds, a place where the British and over 500 Maori chiefs had signed a treaty that made New Zealand a British colony. She wished she could remember more of the history. She did remember Tara drawing ink designs on her entire face, like the pictures they had seen in the museum of the Maori warriors. Then Tara told Mom to take a picture while she was in a warrior pose. Mom took the picture and then wouldn’t let Tara wash it off all day “so we all can enjoy our warrior”. Tara didn’t think it was so great after about an hour. In the end, one day as a warrior taught her quite a lesson about drawing on her face.
    Their days were filled with sailing, trekking, and swimming with the wild dolphins that came into the lodge’s cove every morning. Even though she was only