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Rachel Hunter is coy about marriage rumours - but a slip of the tongue from her ice-hockey-star boyfriend suggests the former swimwear model may be about to walk down the aisle again.
Sporting a blindingly enormous diamond ring, a tanned-looking Hunter, who split from rocker Rod Stewart in 1999, gracefully evaded questions about rumours she and Jarret Stoll, 26, had become engaged.
When asked if there was anything she wanted to tell the country, Hunter said with a huge grin: "No, not yet."
But Stoll, her boyfriend of the past two years, must have missed his media briefing. When he was asked if the ring meant he'd popped the question, he smiled sheepishly before replying: "Is it out already?"
The response sent the entourage of reporters into a mini-frenzy before the Hunter clan, which included her two children Liam and Renee, were hurried off to their next appointment: feeding calves at a nearby farm.
Her manager, former All Black Andy Haden, could not be contacted to confirm the rumours yesterday.
But Hunter's father, Wayne, who was at Hautapu Primary School to meet Stoll for the first time, told the Herald he thought the Los Angeles Kings centre was a "really nice guy, very down-to-earth".
Hunter, who recently starred in the reality show Celebrity Circus, yesterday turned her hand to reading Joy Cowley's Mrs Wishy Washy's Farm at the school to launch a promotion aimed at reading aloud to children.
The promotion will also see thousands of books donated to primary schools throughout the country.
The 38-year-old, whose favourite childhood book is Beatrix Potter's The Tale of Jeremy Fisher, felt children were possibly missing out on story time as more chose internet surfing or ipods for their entertainment.
"I still think there's great books. I loved C. S. Lewis and those kinds of books ... It's so long ago, now that I think about it.
"I just loved Beatrix Potter and that whole fantasy thing of an unknown world - and I think that's the beauty of books, especially at that age."
She had no immediate plans to move back to New Zealand and will return to Los Angeles later this week with Stoll and her children after spending some time at Huka Lodge.
"Right now I live in the States, and my kids are up there, but eventually I will find something that brings me down here more often."
