Just Once More (Escape to New Zealand Book 7)

by Rosalind James

  Hannah had to laugh a little. “You can tell I’m grouchy, huh? I’m sorry.”

  “Nah,” he said, pulling her to him and giving her a kiss on the forehead. “You’re entitled.”

  “Now you know why you were always gone when the babies were due,” she said, wiping her eyes, because they were leaking again. “Much wiser.”

  “Down!” Grace chose this moment to announce, shoving at the tray of her high chair and wriggling.

  “And that would be another no.” Drew took the wet cloth from his mum and wiped down his daughter’s hands and face before releasing her from her imprisonment. “Happy to be here with you, grouchy or not. Go for a walk with your sister. Have a rest. Have a swim this afternoon. Whatever it takes. Mako and I know what our part in this is, don’t we, mate?”

  “Not answering that,” Liam said, a smile lessening the impact of the broad, much-broken nose, the cauliflower ears. “Except to say, yeh. I’m right here putting up my hand to be a supportive partner. Got my nappy-changing down. Went to the one class I was home for, took notes, did a bit of practicing with Kristen on our own, and I’m all ready to hold her hand and remind her to breathe when the time comes. Can’t wait.”

  “Me too,” Drew said. “Went to almost all of them. Extra bonus points for me, d’you reckon? Felt like a bloody fool doing all those hoo-hah breaths and panting breaths and all of that, especially with every other dad in there wanting to talk rugby, but I did it all the same. Bona fide New Age dad here. You wouldn’t think you’d have to go to class to learn how to breathe, though, would you? Let alone to help somebody else breathe. Definition of an impossible task. I have a dark suspicion that they’re really meant to make us boys feel prepared for something there’s no preparing for.”

  “Hey,” Hannah objected, but she couldn’t help smiling, because he’d jollied her out of it, exactly as he’d meant to do. “It’s harder than you think, in the heat of the moment. Easy for you to say breathing’s easy. You’ve never tried doing it while you’re…passing a watermelon.”

  That earned a shout of laughter from Sam. “That’s about it,” he told Drew. “And you’re on shaky ground here. Back away slowly.”

  “How many times did you practice scrummaging?” Hannah went on. “You’d think you’d have known how to do that too, after about thirty years of it. And you still practiced it, just about every single day.”

  “Got me,” Drew said with a grin. “And if you feel anything, anything at all,” he said, exactly as he’d been saying for the past two weeks, “ring me. I’ll be fifteen minutes away, and I’ll be here in fourteen. Don’t wait until you’re sure. Ring me.”

  “Yes, sir,” she sighed.

  He didn’t bother to answer that. “Come on, then, Mako. If you’re not going to disgrace your country with that scrummaging you’ve probably forgotten how to do already, we’d better go give you your workout.”

  “Hmm. Command performance?” Hannah asked, teasing in her turn now. “You called around, and suddenly seven of you guys are going to the gym? You don’t get to boss them anymore, I thought.”

  Drew actually looked surprised, and this time, she was amused. “I’m not bossing anyone. I suggested it, that’s all. And if you want to talk about bossing—that’s Finn’s department. When you see me creeping home, a shadow of my former self—that’ll be all down to him. He’s going to tell me I’ve got soft without him there urging me on, count on it. But nah. Nothing serious. It’s just for fun.”

  He should have told Finn that, Drew thought a couple hours later, because that force of nature was his usual stern taskmaster, calling out the reps and holding the boys to good account. Drew was blowing a bit, sweating more than that by the time the two of them were in the corner of the gym, selecting dumbbells for some bicep and triceps work.

  “Glad you’re not on the park,” Finn told his erstwhile skipper, casting a critical eye over him as they began to lift the weights that, for anybody else, would have looked impossible, but for the two of them, were just another day out. Or at least would have been a couple years ago, Drew thought grimly, determined not to betray any sign of weakness before his former teammate.

  “Yeh,” he said shortly, his body falling into the perfect form that came with doing this for more than twenty years, because it was your job. Your life.

  “Too many nights over the game film and spreadsheets, eh,” Finn said.

  Drew released a quick breath of laughter. “Yeh. Probably.”

  “Coaching’s a bigger ask than playing, I reckon,” Finn said, and that was true too. “All the stress, and you can’t even get out there on the paddock with the boys and bash some heads to relieve it.” He offered Drew a smile that didn’t mask his message one bit. “More important than ever to keep up the training, eh. All that adrenaline’s got to go somewhere.”

  “Sure you’re the conditioning coach?” Drew asked, keeping up the reps and pretending he hadn’t heard. “Not auditioning for that mental conditioning spot? Earned your psychology diploma yet?”

  Finn laughed, his gruff “huh-huh” that Drew had heard for fifteen years on the practice field, in the gym, sharing a beer, and Drew grinned back at him.

  It was a relief to have the big fella with him again. Not to have to be the strongest. Not to have to be the boss, just for a few minutes. Nobody was tougher than Drew, nobody was a harder man than the skipper, or, now, the coach. Nobody but Finn.

  He missed that. And the way Finn had always been there backing his skipper up, too. Wherever, whenever. At training, or before the match. At halftime in the sheds, talking to the boys. And most of all, in the heat of battle. Knowing that every opponent they faced knew that a cheap shot on Drew—and there had been enough of those—meant nearly two meters of Finn coming at you.

  It wasn’t just that, either. It was the way he never gave less than his utmost. Practicing as hard as he played, a towering example to the younger fellas, an intimidating figure to any unlucky soul who dared to drop his workrate. Not afraid, either, to blister the paint, to say the things that Drew’s taciturn style didn’t allow.

  A born coach, and Drew would have loved to have had him here with him in the Bay, with him and Hemi, except that he’d never pry Finn away from the Blues, not for the step down that was provincial rugby. Finn was headed for a spot with the All Blacks, it was all but written out for him. So not now. Not yet. But someday. Someday.

  “I’m keeping up,” he told his former teammate now.

  “Running enough?” Finn asked, not ready to let it go until he was satisfied.

  “Could do more,” Drew admitted.

  “Then do it.” Finn switched to triceps extensions, and Drew followed along automatically.

  “Hannah doing all right?” Finn asked after a minute.

  “Why?”

  The slightest twitch of a big shoulder. “Jenna wondered. When we saw her yesterday.”

  “Yeh.” Drew finished the set of fifteen, switched the heavy weight to the other hand and started up again. “All right, but nineteen months between these two, and Jack not five yet…” He exhaled a little harder than he strictly had to. “It wouldn’t have been what we planned. Except it doesn’t always go like you plan, eh.”

  Nothing but a nod in answer to that.

  “I’ve been a bit worried,” Drew confessed, as he never had. “She’s tired, that’s hard to miss. And she always gets so skinny. They’re meant to get bigger all over, but she never does. Never gains enough, though she swears she’s good. I always wonder if…” He stopped.

  Finn looked at him. “If she’s not gaining on purpose? Trying to keep her figure, not that it’s possible? Or to get it back quicker afterwards?”

  “Yeh,” Drew said reluctantly. “Except she wouldn’t, not really. Not if it weren’t good for the baby. And she’s not vain, never has been. I don’t think she’d do that. It’s just that she’s all belly. It’s like the baby’s eating her up from inside. And this time…yeh. Especially. Not that she complain
s,” he hastened to say. “Never. You know Hannah. But…” He exhaled. “Goes quiet, or I can tell she’s getting weepy and trying to hide it.”

  Finn switched hands himself. “Tiring time for them,” he said after a minute. “Doesn’t get easier, either. Third baby, and she’s a bit older than Jenna, I think. That matters, just like it does for you and me. Can’t pretend it’s as easy as it was in your twenties. That’s a lot of stress on her body, and she takes pregnancy hard. Jenna gets more…alive with it, after she’s not sick anymore. But every woman’s different.”

  Back to the biceps again, Drew’s muscles fatiguing, but keeping up with Finn, because there was no choice. “Yeh,” he said. “I’ve got my mum here now, and that helps, but there’s nobody to carry that baby for her. She feels bad she can’t do more, can’t do as much as usual, and that makes me…” He exhaled. “Doesn’t she see I don’t expect it? That nobody expects it?”

  “And how’s she doing…in herself?” Finn asked, with more delicacy than he customarily showed. “Scared about how she looks? You think so, don’t you? That she’s not sure about you?”

  Drew’s eyes narrowed, shot to Finn’s, but the other man was concentrating on the weight clasped in his fist, the heavy bicep bulging as he lifted the dumbbell close to the shoulder, but not too close. Perfect form, as always.

  “About me,” Drew said flatly at last. “No. She’s sure about me.”

  “Mate.” Finn was looking at his former skipper with not one lick of deference. “She knows what’s out there for you. She’s not stupid.”

  “And she knows I wouldn’t take it,” Drew snapped. “Because like you said. She’s not stupid.” His normally controlled temper was rising, and he took it out on the movement, just as Finn had told him to. Hannah wasn’t the only one on edge these days.

  “She knows you wouldn’t, yeh,” Finn said. “Because she knows you. But she worries you want to. That you wish you could. Because she’s big, and she’s awkward, and she doesn’t feel pretty anymore, and she’s worried you aren’t interested anymore.”

  “That’s rubbish,” Drew bit off. He didn’t want to have this conversation. Not one bit.

  “Nah. It’s not. You don’t think that. Course you don’t. But she does. They all do. If they’re used to feeling beautiful, they worry they’re not anymore. And if they weren’t used to feeling beautiful in the first place, they worry more. They know we care how they look, no matter what we say.”

  “But I like how she looks,” Drew said with exasperation. “Why wouldn’t I? So she’s pregnant. So’s Jenna. You not like how she looks?”

  “Not about what you and I think,” Finn said. “We love seeing them like that. You and I both know that. But they don’t, not unless we tell them.”

  “She knows,” Drew said again.

  “Does she?”

  Drew shrugged, kept up the rhythm. “What is this,” he growled, “marriage counseling, or a workout?”

  Finn shut up, and Drew switched to triceps again, lifted in silence for a minute.

  “So what…do you do?” he asked reluctantly. Jenna was having Finn’s fourth, after all. He’d know.

  “Make her feel beautiful,” Finn said, clearly having been waiting for Drew to ask. “Let her know you still think she is. Let her know you still…” He stopped. “Yeh. Well. Let her know. Show her.”

  “I show her,” Drew said shortly, leaning over and setting the heavy dumbbell back in the rack.

  “Well, mate,” Finn said, shoving his own weight into its spot, those damning two spaces to the right. “Show her more.”

  “Nervous?” Liam glanced across at Kristen.

  “Oh, no,” she said automatically. “No, of course not. I’m fine.”

  He smiled a bit at that. “OK.”

  She laughed a little, wished it sounded more convincing, and scrubbed her hands over the lap of the blue paisley sundress that stretched over her taut belly. Her nervous habit, and he noticed that too.

  “You’ve met some of them before,” he reminded her. “Not too bad.”

  “But I haven’t talked to them much,” she said. “I only know Nate, really, and he’s not here yet. And Drew, of course.”

  “Ah…yeh,” Liam said. “So I’d say you’re good.”

  “What? The captain thing?” She still felt distracted. “That matters?”

  “Oh, yeh. It matters. And anyway, this’ll be easier. I promise. A beach day, and more of a chance to have a chat, when you’re not busy being the bride and all.”

  “Was I too…self-centered, you mean? At our wedding?”

  He let out a breath. “No. You were the bride. That’s the point, isn’t it.”

  “Sorry.” She smoothed a hand over her stomach again. For comfort, and for the pleasure of touching the place where her little girl lay, the ripple of movement along her skin that was a healthy baby getting more comfortable.

  “She’s dancing,” she told Liam, and he smiled again.

  “You know what?” she added impulsively. “However pretty she is or isn’t, I’m going to love her just the same.”

  “Well, of course you are,” he said with surprise.

  She barely heard him. “Because I’m sitting here thinking that I don’t look good, so nobody will like me. Well of course I don’t look good! I’m more than eight months pregnant! Why should I worry that nobody will want to talk to me because I’m not pretty? That isn’t all I am!”

  She was getting heated, even though she knew he wasn’t the one she had to convince. It was herself.

  “No,” he said calmly, pulling into the Papamoa Beach Reserve carpark, full of activity on this Sunday afternoon. “It isn’t. But you’re wrong, you know. You’re still pretty.”

  “Maybe to you.” She got out of the car, waited until he handed her her beach bag, leaving him to take the rest of it, to stick the beach umbrella under one arm and heft the chilly bin full of snacks. She’d have offered to carry something, but he’d just look at her with that pained resignation again and tell her no, so she didn’t bother.

  “To everybody,” he assured her, making light of his burdens as they moved down the path onto the long, broad expanse of sand. “Pregnant pretty, but pretty all the same. But you’re right. That’s not what matters. That’s not what all these fellas, and their partners, too, are going to care about. That’s not what matters, and thank God for that, or you couldn’t love me. And fortunately, you don’t just have a gorgeous face to offer—and a beautiful body too, pregnant or not. You have a beautiful soul as well.”

  A beautiful soul, she repeated to herself as they approached the group. He thought so, and since he had a beautiful soul himself, maybe he did know. Maybe.

  Hannah and Drew weren’t here yet, were waiting until Gracie woke up from her morning nap, so she couldn’t hide behind her sister. Not that she needed to, because it wasn’t about her anyway. It was about the others. She’d stay quiet, listen, laugh at their jokes. And not being pretty, no matter what Liam said, would be better anyway. With women.

  And then the first person she saw, getting up from her beach towel to greet them, made her dismiss that worry. Because, as pregnant as Kristen was, there was no contest.

  Jocelyn Pae Ata. The bride in the wedding they had all gathered to celebrate, and one of New Zealand television’s biggest stars.

  It was easy to see why. A truly stunning face, with the velvety bronze skin, lush dark hair, and chiseled cheekbones of her Maori heritage. And a body, displayed to spectacular advantage in a red bikini, that told Kristen why Josie had been selected as a model for that sporting magazine’s famous calendar, and that would surely have every single man on the beach falling over himself to get another look.

  Or maybe not. Because that had to be Hugh standing up beside her. The guys never looked as big on TV as they did in person. There was no helpful contrast to normal men when they were out there on the field, that was the problem, so you didn’t get the full impact.

  Kristen had told Liam
once that she liked him because when she was with him, nobody stared at her. Hugh had to have that effect as well, and she’d bet Josie appreciated it as much as Kristen did herself. Big, tough, and nothing but fierce, his neatly trimmed dark beard putting the finishing touch on an appearance that would have had more than the rugby players unfortunate enough to be on the other side of his punishing tackles running the other way.

  Liam set down his burdens, made the introductions, gave Josie a kiss on the cheek, then greeted Hugh with a quick embrace, a clap on the back that told Kristen how glad he was to see him, even though they’d been together on the All Blacks’ European tour until just a few weeks ago.

  “Two days to go, eh. Holding up all right?” Liam asked the two of them. “Getting married at the marae’s an adventure in itself. Least Kristen probably thought so.”

  “Oh, no,” Kristen objected. “An adventure, maybe, but it was wonderful.”

  Exactly the wedding she’d always dreamed of, the one she hadn’t had the first time around. Family. Closeness. Love, the real kind. The right kind. And Liam, with Nate by his side, standing and waiting for her at the front of the big room with its ornate carvings, its intricately woven flax panels.

  Standing in the building that was more important to him than any other, and letting her know that she was just that important too. Watching her walk to him, every line of his broad body and beloved, battered face telling her how much he wanted her to do it, how much he needed to be right here, doing exactly this. Taking her hand in his, and marrying her.

  “For you, I hope it was wonderful,” Liam told her. “But then, my family was nothing but rapt to have you, and no worries that you weren’t good enough for me. More the other way around, wasn’t it. But for this ugly bugger, who knows. It’s bound to be a bit more of a challenge for a Pakeha boy. Has your future father-in-law explained to you yet,” he asked Hugh with a grin, “that if you treat her wrong, you’ll have not just him to answer to, but her entire whanau and the ancestors as well?”