Talk about bursting your bubble. Not that I had thought he’d been flirting. Of course not. He was kind, that was all. I addressed the first part of Karen’s statement instead. “How isn’t he serious, exactly? If you’d ever seen him in action, you’d know he’s dead serious. He chucked Max out of the room after I had Isobel, strong as you like, and before that, when it was a ... well, an emergency, medically, and with the kids, too, he knew exactly what to do, and he did it. He has no problem giving orders, either. Maybe he’s not ... not arrogant about how strong he is, or about being a ... in a power position, like some people, or maybe people just don’t know him well enough. Just because he’s good-looking, that doesn’t mean he’s not serious. Just because he’s charming, that doesn’t mean he’s not powerful.”
Somehow, I was getting a little heated. I had to stop to catch my breath, in fact.
“Whoa,” Karen said. “All righty, then. Maybe I’m wrong. And by ‘other people,’ you probably mean Hemi, who’s basically cornered the market on ‘serious’ and ‘power position.’ Also ‘arrogant.’ But—huh. Am I assuming too much? Maybe. After all, look at Jax. I swear that your dad still thinks he’s not serious, just because he’s so good-looking and used to be a player, and that’s Jax. Who defuses bombs, which is pretty much the definition of ‘serious.’ So you think everybody’s stuck in some sort of thought-pattern, because of the ‘good-looking player’ parts—which are true, by the way—and not giving Matiu enough credit? Huh. I’m bad at noticing those things. I’ll have to ask Hope, the queen of empathy. I’m not even the jack of empathy.” She handed the baby back to me with obvious regret—Jax wasn’t going to have to wait too long, I had a feeling—stood up, and said, “Right. I’m going to finish making that breakfast.”
“I can’t wait.” I was, in fact, suddenly absolutely starving, despite the toast. “Too much work for you, though.”
“Nah. Food is my happy place. And you look so much better than your mother said to Jax,” she went on in the sort of impulsive sharing-burst that was pure Karen. “In fact, you know what I think?”
“No,” I said, laughing and wondering exactly how horrible I had looked. “What do you think?” Isobel was still awake, so I set her in the baby carrier that Karen had also “liberated” from Hope and Hemi’s beach house, and started sorting through my bag for something to wear. Shirt A or Shirt B, that was the question. I hadn’t exactly flown up with a wardrobe. Too many bags to carry already. Also, I was a bit tired of both those shirts after three babies. Ready to wear some real clothes again. Maybe even ready to look ... nice.
“I think you should take some extra time right now,” Karen said, as if she’d read my mind, “since Matiu does have the kids, and get beautiful. How long has it been since you did that?”
I had to laugh. “Not your most tactful comment ever.”
“Oh,” she said. “Whoops. Oh, well. My honesty is my charm. Anyway, we should go for haircuts while you’re here, too, get wild and crazy, try something new. I know a good place in Mount Maunganui. I might even be able to talk them into squeezing us in, because they love Jax. It’s the hero thing. I miss my sister so much, but you’re my sister too, right? I think we should celebrate that. And—oh, wait. This is awesome.” She headed out of the room fast, came back a minute later, and tossed a dress onto the bed.
I picked it up and looked at it with some doubt. “I don’t think ...” I began.
“Oh, come on,” Karen said. “You can totally get away with it. It’s an awesome dress, and it doesn’t even have spaghetti straps, so ... nursing bra underneath, right? Except that nobody will know. You’ll just look bodacious. Plus, it’s a sundress, and it’s sunny here, because North Island. Yay. Jax bought it for me about the first day the calendar said ‘spring.’ He saw it in a shop window in Christchurch, went in there in his fatigues, looking all badass and all, described my size and coloring to the clerk, and bought it for me. In, of course, the most extra color they had. Plus new sandals. It was so sweet. I wore all of it out to dinner with him that night, and I felt so sexy and pretty, though that could have also been because I didn’t wear a bra with it. Ten out of ten would buy again, because that dress works, I’m just saying. I think you should go for it. If I had red hair, I’d be so out there.” She laughed. “Well, I’m out there anyway. But I’d be more out there. So go on. Wear it. Do it.”
Matiu
I didn’t have much chance to worry about the kids and the sea. That’s because I was too busy being in the sea with the kids.
I’d planned to play with them on the sand, well out of the water. But first, there’d been Olivia.
“No togs,” she’d said when Karen had helped me find them, and a tube of sunscreen, in the kids’ room, a space that was furnished, just now, with two sleeping bags and nothing else.
“Livvy,” Hamish said, “you have to wear togs. We’re going on the beach, and that’s the rules. Besides, you’ll get your clothes wet.”
“No,” she said, sticking her chin out in a way I’d come to recognize. “I’m going to be a elbowtoss and be naked. I’m going to be naked all the—” She took a breath and waved her arm dramatically. “All the, all the time until I grow into a bird.”
Karen was laughing, of course. I said, “Nah, that’s all right, then. You can be naked. We’ll just have to put more sunscreen on you.”
“No sunskeen,” she said. “I’m all naked.”
“No sunscreen,” I said firmly, “no beach. Sunscreen and a hat and ...” I pulled out the four pieces of yellow plastic with relief, “floaties.”
That was why, now, I was splashing through the shallow water, skirting a couple of family parties, romantic couples old and young, and a jogger, a few meters below the edge of the grass that was the bottom of Jax and Karen’s garden, flapping my wings behind a shrieking child dressed only in a hat and inflatable yellow floaties on her arms, who was running as fast as her chubby little legs would carry her, then picking her up and “flying” her while she did her best to make albatross noises. Hamish, meanwhile, had made friends with an enthusiastic Golden Retriever with a tolerant owner, and was tossing a Frisbee into the water for it with more enthusiasm than accuracy, then dancing and doing a bit of shrieking of his own every time the dog bounded out of the sea with it, shaking water happily all over Hamish, panting, smiling, and urging him with his eyes and the occasional joyful bark to throw it again.
It wasn’t easy to keep my eye on both kids, but I was doing a pretty fair job of it. Even when they decided they wanted to swim, it wasn’t too bad. The sea in this protected little cove was flat, the water clear and azure-blue, and the bottom gently sloping. Hamish was a fair swimmer, and Olivia, of course, thought she was.
When Karen showed up, wading out into the water to call, “Breakfast in ten minutes,” the kids weren’t ready to go. But when Karen said, “Special breakfast,” they came, right enough. Karen told me, “Hose them down in the outdoor shower, will you?” So I did, gave myself a rinse as well, pulled on my T-shirt and gave up on the state of my fairly damp shorts, and herded them through the back door and into their bedroom, where Olivia started up with the naked-bird idea again.
Hamish said, “You can’t eat breakfast if you’re naked, Livvy,” which proved that Hamish was a practical boy.
“Yes, I can,” she said.
“No,” I said, picking up my cue. I might not have kids, but I also hadn’t been born yesterday. “Albatrosses can only eat ...” I blanked for a moment. “Squid. Raw squid with long, rubbery tentacles. And suckers. Also raw fish. Raw, bloody fish.”
Olivia, fortunately, looked horrified. I’d half-expected her to be thrilled.
“Raw means not cooked,” Hamish put in helpfully. “With the heads and guts and eyeballs. And blood.”
Olivia started to cry. “I don’t want to eat eyeballs,” she sobbed. “I don’t want to eat skids.”
“You can eat nice eggs instead,” Hamish said. “If you get your clothes on, like me.”
I didn’t engage in further discussion, just got a pair of undies out of a bag and helped her on with them as if there’d be no question, hoping that was the right choice. Possibly it was, because she said, “I want the yellow shirt,” and that was that. There was a bit of nose-wiping, but I wasn’t a stranger to bodily fluids, as noted previously. I was all good.
And then we finally made it into the kitchen, I saw Poppy, and I wasn’t.
21
Pretty to Boys
Matiu
Poppy was setting the table. She turned when I came in with the kids and said, “Oh, good. You got clothes on her. Brilliant. She always wants to be something, though a bird is a new one.” She was talking a little fast, and her color was heightened. Her hair was more tamed than I’d seen it, though, the waves falling halfway down her back, looking like every bit of bright metal in the world. Copper and gold and bronze, all together.
And then there was that dress.
Hamish said, scrambling up into his chair as Olivia did her best to do the same and I gave her a boost, “She never wanted to be naked before, though. Usually she wants to be a monkey.”
“Because monkeys are nice, and they have long tails and they can swing from their tails,” Olivia said, stabbing at her egg and laughing gleefully when the yolk ran out. Olivia marched to the beat of her own drum, it was clear. Just like her mum.
“I can understand that,” Karen said, as Poppy reached to cut her daughter’s breakfast into pieces for her, and I said, “Let me.” Poppy should be allowed to have one meal, at least, that she could eat with two hands.
Karen went on, “Monkeys always seem to be having fun, chasing each other around and being silly, plus having a tail would be awesome.” She glanced at me. Saucily, but then, that was Karen’s normal expression. “A bit sexy, too, I’ve always thought, wouldn’t you say, Matiu? That could be a story, Poppy. If you wrote that kind of story, that is. Illustrated. Wow.”
“What’s ‘sexy’?” Hamish wanted to know.
“Pretty to boys,” Karen said.
“Karen,” Poppy said, laughing. She was eating her breakfast, and she was enjoying it. I was enjoying watching her do it, and she knew I was watching, that was clear.
“But don’t say a girl’s sexy,” Karen went on to tell Hamish. “It’s not a thing for kids to say.”
“Which makes me wonder,” I said, torn between laughing myself and frowning her down in the way she absolutely deserved, “why you taught him the word. How does Jax cope with you?”
A woman with a tail. It actually was sexy. I could imagine it, too. Easily. What did that say about me?
That I wasn’t getting laid, that was what. Or that my imagination had been working extra-hard lately because the woman I wanted was unattainable, and for once, I wasn’t shrugging and moving on.
“Jax,” Karen said sweetly, “is very, very tough.” She opened her eyes wide and left me to ponder that while she told Hamish, “It’s how grown-up girls are pretty to grown-up boys. Like your mum looks pretty to Matiu today, because she does look very pretty in her dress, doesn’t she?”
Hamish eyed her doubtfully. “I guess.”
“You do,” I told Poppy recklessly. Blame the conversation. Blame the dress. “Beautiful, I think is the word. And, no, it doesn’t matter what the picture looked like last time I saw it. I’m looking at the picture now.”
She turned a little pinker, and Karen said, “Oh ... kay. Revising my opinion here.”
Poppy said, in a hurry, “It’s a bit short. The dress.”
It was a bit short. It was a bit absolutely everything. Somewhere between yellow and orange, the sunniest color you could imagine, one that took a redhead and shot her straight into the stratosphere. The skirt was ruffled and, yes, short, which was a very flirty look indeed. I was discovering that Poppy had some very pretty legs, and the kind of smooth-skinned shoulders that you wanted to brush your thumbs over as you held her there, because it would make her shiver. I could tell that because the dress was held up by ruffled straps, and that was all. Then there was the part over her breasts, which was made of the same sort of stretchy fabric as the straps. And I mean—only the part over her breasts, because they were outlined by that stretchy material, with the simple little dress falling away below them in the most casual possible way.
And then there was the back, which I’d seen during a few heart-stopping moments when she’d been setting the table. It buttoned up all the way up from just above her bum, and the whole thing was about as sassy-sexy as a dress could possibly be.
“It’s Karen’s,” Poppy told me.
“It looks good on me, too,” Karen saw fit to tell me. “Good thing the bodice stretches, though, huh?”
“Uh ... right,” I said, in another powerful display of suave poise.
“Don’t tell him that,” Poppy said. She was laughing, clearly enjoying looking so pretty, and the little gap between her teeth showed. There was just enough space there to touch it with your tongue. You’d know who you were kissing, and that was the kind of mouth you could kiss for hours. She’d kiss like a firecracker going off. It would be a challenge to keep it slow and easy.
Poppy went on, “You know it looks even better on Karen, because of her short hair, so you can see the whole back.”
“Is the back nice?” Hamish asked obediently.
Poppy stood up, turned around, lifted the hair from the back of her neck with one hand, and turned her head to look at us. Showing off that low back, the buttons, and some lacing above them, like a sort of corset, or like they’d designed the whole thing to make a man think about how you’d unfasten all of that, and what it would look like when you shoved those little straps slowly off her shoulders. When that scrap of yellow was falling to the floor, around her bare feet. And then there was that teasing glint in her flower-pounamu eyes, that laughing pink mouth.
“What do you think?” she asked. Saucily.
Hamish said, “I guess.” Doubtfully.
I said, “Absolutely.” Firmly.
“Poppy and I are getting our hair cut today, as it happens,” Karen said. Demurely. “Last-minute plan, shoehorned in. Possibly sampling a few other beauty services, too. Assuming somebody can babysit.”
“I can help you with that,” I said.
“I’m not a baby,” Olivia said, which a person could have predicted. “And you can’t sit on a baby, or you would squash them, and Mummy says, ‘No squashing.’” Which made me suspect that Olivia had tried to sit on the baby at some point. Maybe I didn’t want to babysit.
“You don’t want to babysit,” Poppy said.
I said, “Course I do. Why not? You should have your girl time. I’ll take them to Koro’s, and we’ll do it together.”
“We who?” Poppy said. “Your grandfather’s over ninety.”
“Whoever’s there,” I said. “It’s Labour weekend. Bound to be some of the whanau there, as well as Nikau and Vanessa, with a kid of their own and all his toys. And Koro may be ninety-six, but all the mokopuna love him best. Could be because he always has lollies in his pockets, of course.”
“I like lollies,” Olivia said. “I want to go to the house with lollies and eat all the lollies.”
“You’ve been there before,” Karen said. “Remember when you and your mum came to surprise Uncle Jax for his birthday, the day you found the dog? Koro has the dog now.”
Hamish had been watching all this time. I suspected Hamish spent a fair amount of time watching, and wondered, suddenly, when he had fun, when he didn’t have to worry and could just be a kid. Now, he said, “I remember the dog! We had to leave the dog there, because Daddy is allergic. Can we go see the dog, Mummy?”
Poppy lifted her hands and let them fall. “Yes,” she said. “If Matiu is really willing to babysit, I guess I’ll drop you off. I’ll pump some milk for Isobel.” She lifted her chin as she said it, determined not to be embarrassed. “That is, if you can be at your grandfather’s by eleven, Matiu, and if you
’re sure. It’ll take a couple hours, though, there and back again.”
“Oh, more,” Karen said. “Definitely more.”
“I can be there,” I said.
Poppy
A few hours later, I jumped out of the car for the second time that day at the little tree-shaded house sitting between the green mountain above and the paddocks and the sea below, and found a bit of a party happening. Matiu was sitting under an avocado tree with his grandfather, and a bundle that was either Isobel or a very large burrito lay on a blanket at their feet. Next to a sleeping ... duck. All righty, then, as Karen would say. Hamish was throwing a ball inexpertly for a fluffy little dog I recognized, who was scampering after it exactly as inexpertly. I didn’t see Olivia at first, which made me rush a bit. Olivia could get into trouble in the time it would take another kid to think about it.
The old man said, as I approached, “Now, why are you in such a hurry, I wonder?” He laughed, showing some missing teeth. “Looking for little Olivia, I’m thinking. No worries. I’m watching. She’s showing Ari how to make fairy houses, as Matiu’s just finished mowing the grass for me.” Indeed, the air smelled of sweet hay, sunshine, and flowers, heady as white wine on a summer day, and, yes, there they were. Beside a slightly crooked white picket fence at the edge of the drive, amidst the riot of pink hollyhocks and purple and white delphinium, bundling up mounds of grass and forming them into circles, moving hollyhock blossoms around inside. Ladies in pink dresses, those would be. Olivia, dressed in a yellow shirt and shorts, since she was going through a yellow phase, and a curly-haired toddler who was the old man’s great-great-grandson. I could hear Olivia’s piping little voice, although that wasn’t news, as I could usually hear Olivia talking. Since she never shut up.
“Wait,” I said. “How did you mow the grass, Matiu, with the baby right here? You can’t have a baby anywhere near a mower when it’s switched on, or the other kids, either. It’s not safe.” Please, I thought, don’t have done it while she was lying on that blanket. Please, no. And all the other kids right there, too. I wasn’t a helicopter mum, whatever Max said, but the images of stones being spat out with lethal force from the mower’s whirling blades was too vivid in my mind, and I was crouching over the baby, listening for her breathing and unable to hear it over the buzz of honeybees and the excited barking of the dog, then seeing her mouth purse in sleep and nearly staggering from the relief.
Stone Cold Kiwi (New Zealand Ever After Book 2) Page 16
