Just Come Over

by James, Rosalind

  His green-gold eyes got a little warmer, or maybe a little more hawklike. She wasn’t sure what to call it. She just knew he was focused. “I don’t know about that, other than that I agree, it’s sexy.”

  “Not a very nice story.” She shouldn’t have said the “sexy” bit. It had just slipped out. She leaned back against the long gray-marbled white counter with its two white vessel sinks. “Is this floor heated?”

  “Yes. Not now. Too warm out.” He was leaning himself, one hip against the wall, his arms folded. She wondered if he knew how good that stance made him look, biceps and forearms and chest and tattoo and all, and if that was why he did it, but dismissed the thought. Rhys wasn’t one bit vain. Another difference from Dylan. Rhys’s face, its nose broken one too many times, his jaw too square, his brows too thick and dark and his brow ridges too pronounced, told you that you could judge him by what he did, not how he looked, not that he cared a bit how you judged him at all. He said, “Tell me the story.”

  She wished she hadn’t said anything about it. This wasn’t going to come out well. “Maori usually go to church,” she said instead. “You and Dylan seem to have missed out on that.”

  “Some. Call our upbringing ‘irregular.’ Never mind. Educate me.”

  Was it hot in here? She had a hand at the back of her neck, the other one tracing over smooth benchtop and the edges of those gorgeous sinks. They were like broken pieces of shell, tumbled in the sea until their edges were smooth. The whole house was like that. Nothing but gray and white with a few splashes of charcoal, all of it organic, full of texture, and belonging as much to the sea as to the land.

  “King David,” she said, and quoted, “‘And it came to pass in an eveningtide, that David arose from off his bed, and walked upon the roof of the king's house: and from the roof he saw a woman washing herself; and the woman was very beautiful to look upon.’ That’s the only pretty part of the story, if having him spy on her while she was naked can be called ‘pretty.’ Something about it I always remembered, because it was hotter than anything else in church, probably, like every boy hears the Song of Solomon and thinks, ‘I want that.’” She smiled, or she tried to. “That song ‘Hallelujah’? You must have heard that. That’s what it’s about, David and Bathsheba.”

  “Mm,” Rhys said. “I have. Hell of a sexy song. I thought it was about orgasm.”

  “That too. About love and sex and being overwhelmed beyond reason. And maybe about more than that.” Why were they talking about orgasm? She was so far out on the edge. This was disastrous. She was going to embarrass herself and him in the worst possible way. She couldn’t go on.

  He prompted, “Then what happened? In the story?”

  She was going on. “What d’you think happened? If it hadn’t been bad, there’d have been no story. He was the king. She was the wife of one of his generals, and he knew it. And still, he sent for her, and he slept with her. They don’t tell you whether she wanted it, but I’m guessing she was torn. The heart of a lion, the courage of twenty, and the strength to build himself into a king, all the way from nothing? Anyway—however she felt about it, he did it, and he got her pregnant. After that, he sent her husband off to the front lines to be killed. Once that was done, he married his widow. Not too loyal. Not too virtuous. You couldn’t call it anything, in fact—” She had to stop and take a breath. “But betrayal.”

  “Or,” he said, “you could call it overpowering. Stronger than reason. Stronger than everything you’ve ever been taught is right.”

  She swallowed. It wasn’t easy. “Strong as sin.”

  “That desire you talked about,” he said. “When the spark turns to flame. When it takes you in the fire, and you can’t help but burn.”

  She was burning now. “I—”

  He took a step toward her. Just one. And she was right over the edge. She asked him, “Do you know what I wanted last night?”

  Oh, no. She wasn’t saying this.

  “No,” he said. “I know what I did, though.” He wasn’t touching her, but his chest was rising and falling like he was in the gym. “I know what had me running for two hours this morning to try to shake it loose, and it wasn’t just the game I lost. It was what I want that I can’t have.”

  Her own breath was so shallow, she was nearly panting. “I wanted,” she said, then gathered her courage around her like a cloak of feathers and went on. “I wanted to watch you play, just once, and be allowed to do it all the way, to feel everything I felt, with no shame and no holding back. Almost every time I did watch, you were playing against the Blues.”

  “Playing against Dylan.” His hand came out, exactly as it had on the couch a few nights ago. When she’d thought, No. You’re imagining things. Now, she knew she hadn’t been, when he took a curl between his fingers and rubbed. “Or watching with him, maybe.”

  She couldn’t move. He had her pinned with those eyes. “Loyalty,” she said. It was almost a whisper.

  “Sin,” he said, and the word fell from that sensual mouth like a pebble into a pond, sending its ripples through her body. She knew how Bathsheba had felt, when she’d become aware of the king’s eyes on her. How she’d turned her head and drawn the sponge over the back of her neck, down her arm, warm and languid, and thought, He’s the king. What can I do? The dark thrill when she’d walked to him across a bedchamber, and he’d put his hand out, brushed the white gown from her shoulder, and exposed her. How she’d closed her eyes, and how she’d shuddered.

  His hand moved from her hair. Slowly. His palm cupped her face, turned it up to his, and it was so gentle, it hurt. Her eyes closed, and he said, “Zora. Look at me.”

  Oh, God. There was no escaping this. Her lids fluttered open, and he dropped his head. And when his lips brushed over hers . . . they tingled, and the desire went down her body like a flaming arrow.

  Strong as sin.

  Another kiss, his lips firmer now, and his arm around her back, pulling her in. The faint scent of cedar and sandalwood, the moisture in the air from the shower he’d taken, cleaning up for her. The warmth coming off the skin of a man who’d run for two hours on a forest track, trying to get her out of his blood, and hadn’t been able to do it.

  “Mum?”

  Rhys stepped back. Barely. He didn’t turn around, though. She slipped out from under him, and he stood there, both big palms on the white benchtop, his dark head bent, his breath coming hard. She knew why he hadn’t turned around. Because he couldn’t. That arrow had been as hot going through him as it had been in her.

  They were both there. Isaiah and Casey. Casey was looking at Rhys, or at his reflection. Isaiah was looking at her. They were both looking worried.

  “Hi,” she said. “Good house, eh. I can see why you like it, Casey. But you know what I haven’t seen yet? Where you’re planning to put these rabbits. Take me down and show that to me. After that, I think Uncle Rhys has plans for the day. I guess we’ll all be surprised.”

  She knew she had been.

  Rhys was standing in a front garden in Mount Eden, watching Casey fall in love, and not thinking about Zora.

  That was a lie. He was trying not to think about Zora. How it had felt to finally kiss that sweet, soft mouth, after ten years of imagining it. The intake of breath that he’d felt under his mouth, the triumph of knowing he was making it happen, and the silk of her cheek under his palm. He’d still barely touched her, and he knew exactly how she’d feel under his hands, and most intoxicating of all—how she’d respond to him. That was the beauty of imagining things for ten years, except not. Imagining wasn’t enough anymore.

  He didn’t tell himself the thing about the reporter in Sydney again. He didn’t want a blonde.

  “I love him,” Casey was saying, and he refocused. “He’s so, so aborable. He’s the cutest one ever, except all of them are. They’re like babies, even though they’re grownups. They’re better than dolls.”

  “He” was a rabbit. A Mini Cashmere Lop rabbit, to be exact, less than a kilogram
of fuzzy cuteness, currently being cradled in Casey’s arms as she sat on the grass, and nibbling a baby carrot out of her fingers. He was adorable, right enough, a mound of impossibly plush, cream-colored fur, his head round and his little ears hanging down. No stuffed toy in the world could possibly be as cuddly as this, and Casey was toast.

  Beside Casey, Isaiah was cuddling another rabbit, this one a rich brown, and Zora held a third, a dappled black and white. All of them, though, were exactly as sweetly fuzzy, exactly as round, exactly as droopy-eared, and exactly as tiny.

  “We have another couple of places still to visit,” Rhys reminded Casey. “And then we’ll decide.”

  Three pairs of eyes turned to him. All of them were reproachful. The current owner of the rabbits, an older woman with short white hair cut in a combative style and an air about her like a dealer in Oriental carpets that boded no good at all, said, “That’s fine, then. If you’re finished looking, go on and put them back in the pen, as I have another couple coming who are very keen.”

  Casey didn’t put her rabbit back in the pen. She held him tighter and said, “Marshmallow doesn’t want to go with somebody else. He wants to come home with me. And Cinnamon is sad, because nobody’s holding him.”

  Fine. Rhys picked up the fourth rabbit, who was, well, cinnamon-colored. How much trouble was he in that Casey and Isaiah had already named them? Marshmallow, Cinnamon, Cocoa, and Oreo. Heaps of trouble, that was how much. The tiny animal’s nose twitched, and he snuggled into Rhys’s palm as if he wanted to be there. Rhys gave him a careful stroke, feeling like he was about to squash him and resisting the cuteness with everything he had.

  He was a hard man. Famously a hard man. He did not cuddle bunnies. If anybody asked him to kiss one, he was refusing, no matter how Casey looked at him. “They’re smaller than I had in mind,” he told the woman, whose name was Nora. “Delicate, maybe.”

  She snorted. “And small’s a bad thing? I don’t think so. About the most sought-after pet rabbit in the world just now. Most rabbit breeds don’t want to be held, but these ones love it. Perfect temperament for kids this age, if they can be gentle.”

  “Also,” Rhys continued doggedly, “they’re all male. Not so good. Could be aggressive.” Anything less aggressive than the tiny furball currently eating a stalk of hay out of his hand couldn’t be imagined, but you never knew.

  “Male rabbits are calmer,” Nora said. “More desirable. Less likely to nip. Like I said—if you don’t want them, that’s all well and good. It’s three weeks still until we move. I’ll have no trouble selling them in that time. If I find the right family.” She eyed Rhys in what he could only call a suspicious fashion. “You’re an All Black, I understand. You could be violent.”

  Violent? He could be violent? “I was an All Black, yeh,” he said, although there was no “was” about it. Once an All Black, always an All Black. He’d never forgotten his All Black number, his spot in the long line of proud men that stretched back over a hundred years, and he never would. The digits, and his name, were stitched into every one of the black jerseys tucked into a corner of a closet—a fraction of the seventy-nine he’d earned. He’d kept only the most memorable ones, and had given the rest away to various charities. He didn’t live in the past, and his number wasn’t tattooed on any part of him but his mind. “These days,” he said, “I’m a coach.” He didn’t address the “violent” part. What the hell?

  Nora said, “Coach of the Blues, my husband says.”

  “That’s right.”

  She said, “I liked the fella they had before. He was a neighbor, just in the next street. They should have kept him on.”

  “Aleke Fiso,” Isaiah said. “He went to coach Wales, though. And Uncle Rhys isn’t violent. Violent means hitting people at regular times, not in rugby. He doesn’t hit. I don’t think he hit people in rugby, even. Not with his hand.”

  “You’re right,” Rhys said. “Hitting with your hand is generally frowned upon.”

  “Or Finn Douglas,” Nora said, as if he hadn’t spoken. “I see his wife at the dairy from time to time. She’s lovely. Natural as you please. Why didn’t he get the job?”

  Rhys didn’t answer that one, either. Coach selection was like any other kind of selection. The public wasn’t polled, and there was no point in arguing with the armchair critics who were convinced that they could put together a better squad. There was nothing that would satisfy them anyway. If you won every game, they’d ask why you hadn’t won them more convincingly, or how on earth you imagined you’d win the next one with those rubbish selections.

  “Presumably,” Zora said, with a spark in her eye that didn’t bode well, “because he wasn’t the best choice, and Rhys is.”

  “Didn’t win last night, I hear,” Nora said.

  “You may not want to sell your rabbits to me, then,” Rhys said. “Understandable. Let’s go, Casey. Two more places to visit.”

  “I never said that,” Nora said. “When did I say that?” Which was no surprise at all. In about thirty minutes, once he’d parted with too much money, he’d be “that lovely new coach, over at the Blues. You can tell he adores his little girl. Of course, they only select the solid ones for the All Blacks. You could see it in him.”

  “If these look good to you,” he told Casey, setting Cinnamon down again, “choose the two you want, and let’s go.” There were probably things he should look for, rabbit diseases, ear malformations, whatever. They all looked fine to him, though. They looked like rabbits. Small ones.

  “I can’t only pick two,” she said. “They’ll be lonely. They’re brothers.”

  “They are not brothers,” he said. “They’re four rabbits of varying ages who happen to live in the same hutch.”

  “They’re each other’s family,” she said. “They’d be sad. Can’t I have them all? Please? They’re very small. They’ll hardly take up any room. We could fit more than this.”

  “I said two.” He could feel the control slipping right through his fingers. “I distinctly said two rabbits. We could buy about forty guinea pigs for the price of two of these rabbits, by the way. Guinea pigs are soft.” Why hadn’t he thought of that? Guinea pigs were also fairly interchangeable. If one of them turned up its toes in the night for mysterious reasons, he could substitute another one, with Casey none the wiser.

  “But these are so little,” she said. “They’ll fit. Please. I’ll do everything for them. I’ll give them hay and fill up their pellets and change their water bottle every day, and empty their tray and wash it out again every single week like you showed me, except you might have to help, because it’s very big and heavy. And I’ll give them toys and play with them and make sure they are very, very loved. They can be our family, and I won’t be lonesome when you’re—”

  “Fine,” he said. “Fine. Four rabbits.”

  “Four hundred dollars,” Nora said brightly. “Only because they aren’t babies, you understand. Otherwise, it would be six hundred.”

  “Three hundred,” Rhys said, on principle. He had the feeling even that was too dear. She’d marked him as a sucker the moment she’d seen Casey’s eyes. Also, he’d had no idea in the world that rabbits could cost this much until he’d started looking around and had realized how much Casey would love the lop-eared ones. He should have bought her regular rabbits anyway. Normal, cheap, everyday rabbits. She would’ve been thrilled.

  Too late now.

  Nora shrugged. “I’ll show them to the other couple,” she said. “If there are any left, you can have them for a hundred dollars apiece.”

  Casey let out a strangled cry of protest, and Rhys surrendered. “Fine,” he said. “Four hundred.”

  Nora said, “I’m selling the hutch as well.”

  It was a wooden affair, and none too flash. She probably had it priced at nine hundred dollars. “No, thanks,” he said. “We’ve got one.”

  She said, “There’s an indoor cage, too, dead easy to clean, all plastic and wire, built on two levels. The
deluxe size, that is. Good for if the kids want to have the bunnies in the house overnight. They use their litter box, of course, but you don’t want them running around the house unsupervised, do you?”

  “I don’t want them running around the house at all,” he said. “No, thanks.”

  Casey said, “Can’t we get an indoor house too? Please? They could be outside on the grass during the day, like we said, and I could bring them in when I got home from school so they could sleep in my room with me. If it was at night, and I had a bad dream, I could hear them munching their hay, and it would be very, very nice. Especially if you were gone a long way, to Nostralia.”

  “Australia,” Isaiah corrected her. “I think an indoor cage is a very good idea, Uncle Rhys. Rabbits can chew on things, if you let them out. They can even chew electric cords and electrocute themselves. That would be dangerous. It could start a fire.”

  “If you don’t let them in the house at all,” Rhys said, “your electric cords are completely safe, and so are you. How about that?”

  When he was loading up the back of the BMW with a two-level wire and plastic rabbit cage with four twitching-nosed, hundred-dollar bundles of fur inside, he told Zora, busy putting a bag of hay, another of green rabbit pellets, and a collection of miscellaneous items into the boot beside him, “Don’t say it.”

  “What?” Her own nose was twitching, he’d swear, exactly like the rabbits’, like she was restraining herself with immense difficulty from bursting into laughter. “That you paid full retail price for a used rabbit cage?”

  “Because I don’t have to look for it. Get it all set up today, that’s the idea. I’m leaving Tuesday, in case I didn’t mention it.”

  “Pity you didn’t buy the protective tubing for your electric cords, then,” she said sweetly. “Or the rabbit toys.”

  “I am not paying higher than retail value for some plastic tubing and a half-chewed ball of sea grass. One trip to the hardware store, and we’re done. Besides, I was out of cash.”