He dried her feet, then mopped up her face some more and said, “I’m going to carry you out of here, so you don’t get disgusting again.”
She put her arm around his neck and said, “Because you’re Maui.” Then she rested her head against his shoulder and asked, “Do I have to sleep on a nairplane every night?”
“No,” he said. “Just tonight. I have a regular bedroom for you at home. You’ll see.” She closed her eyes, and he smiled, opened the door, and ceded the space to an older, solidly built fella who muttered, “About time.”
“Sorry, mate,” Rhys said.
The man gave him a second look. A sharper one. “Aren’t you Rhys Fletcher?”
“Yeh.”
He had his mouth open to say, “See ya,” but the man beat him to it. “I see you’ve got your hands full,” he said. “Good luck at the Blues. See if you can keep any more of those fellas from heading overseas, will you?”
“Yeh,” Rhys said. “Cheers, mate.” He headed back to Casey’s seat, but when he would have set her down on her bed, she hung on tighter.
“My mommy always reads me a story at night,” she said. “So I don’t have bad dreams.”
“Have you been having bad dreams since your mum’s been gone?” he asked.
Her arms tightened around his neck, and he felt her nod against his chest. “Well,” he said over the lump in his throat, “I reckon we’d better read a story, then.” He reached over and got the dinosaur book from the pocket beside her seat.
When he straightened, Ilona was behind him. He said, “One sec,” then stepped back and into his seat so she could get by.
“All right?” she asked.
“Yeh. Bit of a rough patch, that’s all. We’re just going to read a story.”
“Aw,” she said. “The poor wee thing. Bit scary, on a plane for the first time. She’s got such a look of you, hasn’t she? Buckle up, though, will you? We’re likely to hit a rough patch up ahead.”
She knew he wasn’t married anymore, he was sure. She also probably knew that he and Victoria hadn’t had kids. She was, in fact, putting two and two together, like everybody else would be.
Nothing but what he’d expected. He was all good. He didn’t live his life for the media.
He did buckle them in, although it was a tight fit with Casey in his lap. After that, he switched on his overhead light, got his blanket out of the plastic wrap, draped it over the two of them, reclined his seat, then opened the book at random and began to read.
A Velociraptor runs on her hind legs, her small, nimble forelegs with their razor-sharp middle claws held in front of her bounding body, he murmured, as close to Casey’s ear as he could manage, since you hardly wanted to shout this sort of thing at the whole plane. She is hunting with her pack, and the stakes are higher today, because she has a nest full of young to feed. When the pack finds a herd of grazing Protoceratops, they quickly single one out: an older male, wandering at the back of the herd. One by one, they leap to the attack, forcing the much larger animal to turn in circles, trying to face them head-on with his armored neck frill, leaving his vulnerable body unprotected. He delivers a savage blow with his heavy tail, and a Velociraptor falls, but another leaps into its place, biting into the four-legged herbivore’s belly with its dozens of saw-like teeth.
Huh. A bit bloodthirsty. He stopped, and Casey sighed and murmured, “Read more.”
No accounting for taste, he guessed.
Today, he read on, the pack wins the battle, and our Velociraptor mother gorges on the unlucky Protoceratops, perhaps regurgitating part of her meal later, back at her nest, to feed her young, just as many birds do now. Tomorrow, the outcome may be different. A broken bone from a crashing tail or a dispute with another of its kind, and our Velociraptor’s life in the fiercely competitive world of the late Cretaceous could come to a sudden end.
“Sounds like rugby,” he said.
Casey didn’t answer. She was asleep.
“I’d enjoy family time so much more,” Zora’s brother Hayden complained on the phone on Thursday night, two days after Rhys had cancelled on her, “if it involved more margaritas and dancing and fewer school recitals and jigsaw puzzles. And I’m not even mentioning compulsory P.E. A treetop adventure park? You know what a devoted uncle I am, but allow me to say that I cannot wait until Isaiah’s old enough to think that ‘Sunday’ means ‘brunch’ and not ‘something I’d rather do at the gym, if I have to do it at all.’ Here’s an idea. Maybe the two of you would like to go to a gallery opening instead. Very avant-garde, and I may have a wee thing for the artist. Picture black-rimmed specs and bright blue eyes. Anyway, I thought you were going to see Sexy Rhys’s new place on Sunday. He’s bound to think that swinging from ropes is a brilliant way to spend his day off. Why don’t you invite him instead?”
“He cancelled.”
“Oh.” A pause, and a different, more cautious tone when Hayden asked, “Why?”
“He said he was leaving town for a few days.”
“I thought he was coaching the Blues. Aren’t they playing their opener at Eden Park next week? Which shows you how much I love you, that I know that. I only do know it because I checked. And I only checked because you told me he was living here, in the same boringly leafy suburb as you, oddly enough, and that he’d asked you over to ‘give me advice about my furniture.’ I wondered at the time, ‘Why is she telling me all this?’”
“I told you why. Because Isaiah dented his car, and I wanted to know how obligated I was.”
“Yeh. See, I didn’t quite believe you. Or him. Everybody was lying, in my humble opinion, except possibly Isaiah. No man with that many scars on his forehead invites a woman over because he wants advice on where to put his furniture. He doesn’t care where he puts his furniture, as long as the couch faces the TV and the bed’s big enough.”
“Uncalled-for and stereotypical hetero-normativity.” She thought that was pretty good.
“Except not, because I’d bet money it’s true. So you’re meant to believe that he’s leaving town, even though he’s got just a bit on the line here, being the new coach and all. He’s sorted out where to put his couch and TV and doesn’t need your opinion after all, so never mind?”
“That’s what he said. So, you see—I need something to do on Sunday.”
Hayden sighed. “Right. I will climb trees and buy the hamburgers and be an uncle, just because I love both of you, and somebody has to do it. I’d also love to tell Rhys Fletcher that he’s as dodgy as his brother. I’d say I’d threaten bodily harm next time I see him, or at least hint at it, except that he’d kill me, so I won’t. I’ll tell you instead. Some men get off on jerking your chain. I wouldn’t have said he was one of them. Too straightforward, I’d have said, but I’d have been wrong, because jerking women’s chain seems to be a genetic trait.”
“Dylan wasn’t—” she started.
“Dylan was. You can tell Isaiah whatever you like. Don’t try to tell me.”
She rang off and wished she could believe her brother, that Rhys had been messing with her. The truth was, though, that he’d regretted making the date—the friendly breakfast invitation—as soon as he’d done it.
He’d been able to tell, that was why. He’d thought it over and had realized, Wait. Something was off there.
She’d been fine until he’d accidentally grabbed her, and she hadn’t jumped away. His hands had closed over her in the dark, and she’d been . . .
Face it. She’d wanted, for that frozen moment, for his hand to move on her breast, his other hand to brush her hair away, and his mouth to come down on her neck. In that sensitive spot just below the hairline, where nobody’s lips had touched her in so very long. That place that would make you shiver. She’d all but felt it happening.
It had been absolutely dark in the kitchen. So dark that you could pretend not to know who was behind you, except that the hard man behind her could never be anybody but Rhys, which meant that the anonymous, swept-away body she
was hoping for was . . . herself.
And he’d jumped back like he’d been burned.
Then she’d made it worse by holding his wrist and wiping the spilled Indian food off his arm, laughing up at him like he was hers. Like it was foreplay. She’d shuddered later that night, thinking about it. For two reasons, unfortunately. Only one was embarrassment. The other was a rush of heat that flooded her body and refused to listen to reason.
She’d felt like she had her life together. She did have her life together. Whose life turned out the way they’d planned it? Nobody’s. You rolled with life, or life rolled you.
She was a good mother, she was a good florist, and her business was growing, if slowly. She owned a home, and she made the mortgage payment every month without holding her breath and checking her bank balance, thanks to her decision to downsize. She’d installed her own Pink Batts and learned how to change out her own kitchen faucet, she’d spent last night researching how you retiled a kitchen floor—how hard could it be?—and if she’d thought she could do it without killing herself, she’d have learned to replace her own roof. And if she was tired, after ten long years, of being the only adult in the room—well, everybody was tired of something. You made your choices, at twenty and for all the years since, and you lived with them.
No matter what Hayden thought, nobody had twisted her arm.
Just like nobody was twisting her arm now, except that they were. For all Hayden’s complaining, he and Isaiah had conquered the first three courses in the treetop adventure park and, when she was thinking longingly of a lovely coffee and muffin, had moved on to the fourth one. The toughest one. Isaiah had said, “We can’t leave now, Mum! This is the most fun part!” And Hayden, the rat, had said, “Yeh, Mum. Where’s your sense of adventure?” Now, she was facing the highest, most wobbly swing bridge in the history of swing bridges, staring at a narrow wooden plank, barely wider than her foot, that you were meant to balance on whilst holding onto rope handrails, and reminding herself that she’d be clipped in the whole way, while her treacherous brother and son beat on their knees at the other side and chanted, “Zo-ra! Zo-ra!” At Hayden’s instigation, she was sure. He was getting his revenge for being dragged along, and it was revenge, because she was going to have a heart attack.
“Afternoon,” she heard from behind her.
“Oh,” she said, and turned. “Hi.”
Alistair Corcoran. Client. Plastic surgeon. Single father, as he’d happened to mention. And right now, welcome distraction.
He smiled. “Stuck?”
“Oh, no,” she said. “A tiny attack of nerves, that’s all. And my son and brother on the other side, being disgusted with me.”
He laughed, but not in a bad way, so she smiled back.
“Dad,” a preteen girl, standing behind him on the platform, said with a sigh.
“Go on,” Zora said, waving her past. She made a “Shoo” motion at Hayden and Isaiah, too. She had a perfect excuse for waiting now.
“This is my daughter, Ruby,” Alistair said. “Ruby, this is Zora, who does the flowers for the office.”
Ruby looked at Zora with absolutely zero enthusiasm, said, “Hello,” and asked her father, “Are you coming?”
“In a moment,” he said, and she sighed again, clipped in, and started across the bridge.
“Sorry,” Alistair told Zora. “I think that was a divorced-dad thing. Electra could come into it, possibly. Also, she’s eleven.”
“No worries. You have a son as well, don’t you?”
“I do. Six years old, and disgusted at not being tall enough to be allowed on this one. He’s having an ice cream down below to console himself.”
“Right,” she said. “Well, I guess we’d better go on, then, or we’ll keep everyone waiting.”
She headed across, when Ruby was done. Mind over matter. The plank wobbled horribly, which she was sure meant something like, “Your core strength is sadly lacking.” Hayden was right. Why would you choose recreation that accused you? It was like going shopping with a friend who pointed out your cellulite.
She made it, though. She had to, since Alistair was behind her. Speaking of cellulite.
How could you get naked with a plastic surgeon? You’d always be wondering whether he was thinking, when he touched your thighs, If I offered her a discount, would she let me take care of that? Or would I have to offer it for free? A little liposuction . . .
One extremely long, stomach-dropping swoop on a flying fox, a scramble across a ship’s-net-type thing that was going to make every muscle ache tomorrow, and a final flying fox to the ground, and they were done. She may have staggered, coming off. Hayden may have laughed, too. Alistair didn’t. He said, when he brought up the rear, “Good work, Zora. My florist turns out to be not only beautiful, but brave as well.”
Ruby rolled her eyes, Zora could swear Hayden did, too, and Zora said, “Your florist is glad to be done.”
“Coffee?” Alistair asked. “Lunch? I think we’ve all earned it.”
Zora said, “You have no idea how I’ve been waiting for those words,” and muttered to Hayden, while they walked to the cars, “Stop it. You keep saying I should get out.”
He muttered back, “Not with somebody who wears plaid shorts.”
Lunch, on the patio of a tiny café, was short and decidedly non-date-like, possibly due to Ruby’s laser-like stare, and possibly because William, Alistair’s son, was decidedly drooping. As they were finishing their coffee, though, Alistair said, “I feel lucky I ran into you, Zora, since I haven’t been able to graduate past offering you a coffee in the office until now. I’m thinking dinner would be nice, though. Next Friday?”
“Yes,” Zora said. “Fine.” He had confidence, asking in front of everybody. Confidence was good.
He smiled. “Fortunately, I have your number. I’ll text you, shall I?”
“Please,” she said, and thought, See? You can do this.
In the car, though, Hayden sighed.
“What?” she asked, then checked the rearview mirror. Isaiah was watching a movie on her phone, with headphones in. Good. Hayden could be seriously inappropriate. “Who was saying I needed to get out? Who’s been badgering me to get out?”
“He was wearing a golf shirt,” Hayden complained.
“He has kind eyes,” she countered.
“And a bald spot. Also a daughter who’ll tell all her friends you’re the wicked stepmother and hate you forever.”
“I’m not marrying him. I’m going to dinner with him. I haven’t been to dinner with a man in . . . Memory fails.”
“Tell me what he does for a job. Wait. Rodeo cowboy. Firefighter. Volcanologist. Stunt driver.”
“Are you finished?”
“Nearly. Demolition expert. There, I’m finished.”
“And they say women are too picky. He’s a plastic surgeon. Ha. Got you. He wears a white coat and tailored trousers. He subscribes to my top-end package and pays the bills on time, which is no surprise, since he has an office in Remuera and another on the North Shore, and whenever I deliver his flowers, he invites me into his absolutely gorgeous staff lounge—which has gray leather chairs, like his waiting room, probably made from the foreskin of a whale—offers me a coffee, and chats me up.”
“Bite your tongue,” he said. “Greenpeace is shocked. And yet, with all that, you’ve never said yes.”
She was silent for a moment, and finally asked, “Can’t steady and trustworthy be good, too? A man who you can be absolutely sure is never going to text you a photo of his junk or text, ‘R U Up?’ because he’s bored and thinks you should stop by and fix that?”
“Maybe,” he said, “if he’s hot enough for you.”
They were headed across the Harbour Bridge. To the left, sailboats tacked for the marina and home, and above them, white clouds scudded across a blue sky. It had been a gorgeous day. Another school term had started, summer was coming to an end, and you could think that was sad, if you’d made the most of your sum
mer. Which she hadn’t. Even though she lived in one of the most beautiful places in the world, and she knew it.
At ten o’clock this morning, on her way to collect Hayden, she’d delivered flowers for a wedding. The bride had been older than her, in her mid-thirties at least, far from model-thin, and wearing the kind of strapless white meringue that did nobody any favors. Her groom had had a bald spot of his own, and they’d both shone like somebody had lit them up. The bride had looked at her groom as if she’d never heard of cynicism, and he’d looked at her like he was marrying his best friend, his lover, and the light of his life.
“My taste for exciting, glamorous men hasn’t necessarily steered me right so far,” she said. “Maybe it’s time to try something new.”
“Once isn’t a pattern,” he said. “Once is a mistake.”
She froze, then checked on Isaiah again. Hayden looked back, too. “He isn’t listening,” he said. “And you know—every single time doesn’t have to be True Love. Nobody’s keeping score, and if they were, I’d say you’ve ticked all the boxes. You took care of your husband even when it got gruesome, and God knows he didn’t deserve it. You’re supporting yourself and Isaiah. You cook dinner every night and never run out of milk or bread. You’re my role model for adulting. I’m going to say that, and then you’re going to forget it, please, and not use it against me. But there’s such a thing as having fun, too. Real fun, not forcing yourself to run about at the tops of trees when it scares you, because you think you should. And, yeh, I noticed. You’re not even thirty-one yet, and sometimes, I think you think you’re sixty. So I’m going to ask you. What do you want? Really want? What do you lie awake at night and wish for? Don’t tell me ‘security.’ I don’t believe you. Tell me the dirty thing, the secret thing. Tell me, and then go for it, because whatever it is, you need it, and you deserve it.”
Whoa. She couldn’t say this. Could she?
Just Come Over Page 9
