Playing For Fun: Stewart Island Book 6

by Alvarez, Tracey

  Ford threw up his palms. “I’m there.”

  Rob swivelled the finger in Holly’s direction. “And you. That thing you’ve got, is it laundry? You seemed to have spilled something on your shirt.” His pointing finger dropped until it reached the level of Holly’s chest. “Doesn’t look like it’ll stain, though.”

  Holly’s stomach plummeted like a rollercoaster hitting the first steepest drop. Evil smiles must be a genetic marker in the Komeke family. Behind her, Ford cleared his throat in an embarrassed rumble.

  Holly’s gaze shot to the workbench at Rob’s side. “Apple juice. I stole a sip of Ford’s drink when I came in and dribbled it down my front—such a klutz.”

  Was it her, or did her voice sound like Minnie Mouse on helium?

  “Ah. There you go.” Rob’s eyes twinkled. “Apple juice won’t stain. So you’ll come for lunch?”

  Ford moved to stand beside her, draping an easy arm across her shoulders.

  “She’ll come.”

  Ignoring the temptation to jab an elbow in his ribs, Holly pasted on the politest smile she could muster. “Thanks, Rob.”

  “No probs. I’ll see you at the house in fifteen.” He strode to the door, turned and winked at them. “Oh, and you may want to pay more attention to those Meningitis warnings going around this winter. Don’t share drinks, don’t share spit, remember?”

  Rob left, and the sound of his chuckles floated back through the open door.

  * * *

  “You still threw me under the damn bus,” Holly grumbled, as fifteen minutes later, she and Ford followed the paved path to the Komeke’s front door.

  “And omigawd”—she pointed both index fingers at the front of her shirt, which now showed no sign of a guilty mouth-sized wet-patch—“how is having lunch with your dad after that…interruption, a good idea?”

  Ford, walking a platonic distance away at her side, shot her a hooded glance. “Dad’s staunch. Don’t worry. A little fish, a little small-talk, same as any other time you’ve had a feed here.”

  “So not the same. Then I didn’t have your spit soaking my shirt.”

  “True.” Ford gave her hand a quick squeeze and opened his parents’ front door. “Count your blessings the old man didn’t check on me ten minutes earlier.”

  “That’s meant to make me feel better?”

  “Makes me feel better.” Ford ignored her I’m not moving from this spot ever stance and pulled her into the hallway after him, positioning his lips close to her ear. “Makes me feel on top of the world, thinking about lapping up your sweet cream as you come in my mouth—” Ford’s gaze flicked to the left, farther along the hallway. “Hey, Mum. Is there pie and cream for dessert?”

  Angled behind him, partly out of sight of Denise in the kitchen doorway, Holly kicked Ford’s ankle. Hard. The rotten bastard only grinned over his shoulder and dragged her forward.

  “Hol’s crashing lunch today, too.”

  “I hope that’s okay,” Holly said.

  And she’d totally be A-okay if Denise didn’t have enough food for one extra.

  “Course it is.” Denise flapped a hand. “Since when is there never enough kai in this house to feed a platoon?”

  Holly smiled politely. Yeah, since when. While she and Shaye had mostly been too young to hang with the older Harlands, Westlakes and Komekes as kids, Denise’s Sunday lunches were legend among Ford’s and Harley’s mates.

  Denise beckoned them over. “Come on through. I hope you’re hungry.”

  Ford laid a hand between her shoulder blades, gave her a gentle push forward.

  “We’ve worked up an appetite fitting Malcolm’s muffler at the shop, haven’t we, Hol?”

  Denise’s mouth pursed thoughtfully as she circumspectly scanned Holly from head to toe. The why are you wearing a skirt if you’re helping my son in the workshop? was as clear on the older woman’s face as if the words had scrolled across her forehead. Fortunately, she didn’t comment, except to say, “Well, good. Ford, set the table, please.” Then she disappeared through the kitchen door.

  “I will hurt you,” Holly said in a low voice as Ford once again gave her a nudge.

  “I know.”

  His smoky tones translated to: And baby I can’t wait.

  Truthfully, neither could she. So how the hell would she get through the next hour?

  Rob, in his typical Rob-ish manner, smoothed things over. Ford always said that his dad should’ve been a salesman or worked as a deejay on a talkback radio station. So whenever Holly blanked out from staring at Ford’s disgustingly smug and gorgeous face across the dining table, Rob steered the conversation in another direction.

  She’d managed to eat most of a plateful of perfectly fried blue cod, baked potato and two different kinds of salad convincingly enough that Denise didn’t notice Holly had zero appetite. Or that Denise’s tortoiseshell cat Crush enthusiastically licked his lips after all the bits of cod she’d dropped beside her chair.

  The phone rang as Denise carried out a dish of steaming apple crumble. Rob, two steps behind his wife, holding a tub of ice cream in one hand and a bowl of hastily whipped cream in the other—Ford was such a spoiled brat—tipped his head at his son.

  “Get that, will ya?”

  Ford rose and snatched the handset from the charger. “Ghostbusters, whaddya want?”

  He winked, gaze warming her from across the room. And even though, okay, lunch had been all manner of awkward, the way he looked at her right now—as if the fragile intimacy between them wasn’t, in fact, fragile but tangible and indestructible—sucked the tension right out of her bones. She sagged into the seat—giggling as Crush leaped onto her lap with a chirpy meow.

  A faint, tinny voice squawked out of the phone’s speaker, and Ford’s gaze iced over, the chill spreading down his face in a fast-moving glacier.

  “It’s Ford.”

  A long pause, more tinny squawks. He turned his back on her and his parents.

  “They’re busy, so talk to me. What do you want now?”

  In all the years she’d known him, Holly had never heard Ford use that tone…that razor-edged, Antarctic-frozen-tundra of a tone. Holly would rather stick her hand in a bucket brimming with tarantulas than hear him use it with her.

  Denise stood at the dining table, gaze locked on Ford’s rigid spine, her oven-mitt-covered hands trembling.

  “Put it down, love, before you drop it.” Rob guided his wife’s hands to rest the dish on the trivet.

  “Ford.” Rob said his son’s name with a mixture of pain and reprimand as he crossed the room with his hand extended. “Give me the phone.”

  Ford passed him the handset without another word, the shrill voice still blasting from the speaker. Somebody on the other end of the line was pissed. Rob left the room, and Ford stalked to the table. He lowered himself onto his chair, placing spread palms on the table with deliberate movements—as if he were fighting the urge to slam them down as fists.

  “That was your mum?” Denise, still frozen at the end of the table, peeled off the oven mitts.

  “Pania. It was Pania, Mum.”

  Denise picked up a dessert bowl and dished out a giant serving. “She’s still your whaea,” she said quietly. “And your dad’s sister. She’s whānau.”

  “She’s not my mother or my family.” Ford’s spread fingers curled into fists. “You and Dad and Harley are my whānau. West and Ben, Del and Shaye, Piper, Kez and Holly…” Ford’s eyes, so dark with boiling emotion they were nearly black, sliced into her. “They’re my family, too. I’ve cut Pania from my heart, out of my whakapapa. She’s dead to me.”

  His words punched into Holly’s gut like a nail gun, shredding her to invisible, bloody ribbons. She’d known, of course, about whāngai—the informal adoption that often took place in Maori families. It was nothing out of the ordinary for a child to be given to a close family member to raise, for all kinds of different reasons—not all of them negative. Children were a gift, not only to their birth
parents but also the wider family, and the indigenous culture very much subscribed to the idea of “it takes a village to raise a child.”

  Holly had also guessed Ford and Harley’s whāngai to Rob and Denise hadn’t been for such amicable reasons. Ford refused to delve into his life pre-Stewart Island. He and Harley were raised as part of the gang of island kids, and their early childhood in Christchurch had long blurred into ancient history in the minds of their mates. But Ford hadn’t forgotten. It wasn’t ancient history to him.

  Holly pressed her mouth together, unshed tears burning her eyes. She blinked rapidly, arms tightening around Crush, who still sat purring blissfully unaware on her lap. The cat hissed and dug his claws into her thighs to let her know that a python-grip on his person was unacceptable and jumped to the floor.

  The sound broke the thick tension choking the table, and Ford slid the steaming bowl over to his placemat.

  “Apple crumble smells great, as usual,” he said and dumped a huge spoonful of whipped cream into his bowl.

  From awkward to excruciating in less than five minutes.

  Holly accepted dessert simply because it’d be easier to eat than explain why her stomach felt like tiny fish bones had caught in it and were trying to stab themselves out. The three of them sat in strained silence, the only sound Ford’s spoon enthusiastically scraping the bowl’s sides.

  Finally, Rob returned and sat at the table, sliding a loaded glance at his wife and a warning one at Ford. Then he launched into a detailed criticism of the last All Blacks game, which failed, in Holly’s opinion, to shrink the size of the elephant planted dead centre of the room.

  “Coffee, Holly?” Denise said, ten excruciating minutes later.

  “No. Thanks,” Holly said. “I’ll give you a hand with the clean up, and then I’d better go.”

  “Oh, no, you’re a guest.” Denise gave her a tight smile and reached for Ford’s bowl, stacking it under her own. “We can’t have you doing the dishes. Are you sure you don’t want a hot drink? Or something cold—?”

  “Holly’s got stuff to do this afternoon,” Rob cut in, scraping up the last spoonful of apple crumble. “Best let the girl get on with it. Ford and I will wash up.”

  Holly stood. All she wanted to do was get home and lock herself under the shower for at least half an hour.

  “Lunch was outstanding. Thank you.” Holly couldn’t bring herself to look at Ford as she slid her chair under the table.

  Denise angled her head toward the dining room’s windows. “Ford, you’re excused from clean-up duties. You walk Holly home, it’s raining out again. Take an umbrella from the hallway, and give her your jacket. She’ll get drenched.”

  Holly opened her mouth to protest—then caught a glimpse of Denise’s expression. She could pull on her big girl panties and deal with Ford since Denise obviously needed to talk to her husband alone.

  Ford pushed back his chair, flicking a come-on-then eye-roll at her, and stood. He bent and kissed Denise’s temple, murmuring something to her in Maori. Whatever he said caused his mum to fiercely grab his hand for a moment then shoo him away with shiny eyes.

  “Go on now, before it really starts coming down.”

  * * *

  After the final uncomfortable goodbye, Holly followed Ford down the hallway. She allowed him to help her into his leather jacket, which covered her hands and hung loose almost to her hips. She couldn’t get her fingers to work right as she attempted to zip it up. Without a word, he brushed her hands aside and zipped it close.

  “Okay?” His eyes were once again Ford’s eyes—warm, kind and laser-focused on her.

  The combination of that, the smell of old leather and the muskier scent of the man, wrapping around her like a cocoon, left her speechless. Seeming to understand, Ford pulled a giant black umbrella from a stand and led them outside into the rain.

  “Using an umbrella doesn’t make you a girl, you know,” she said, after finding her vocal chords hadn’t frozen solid.

  A grunt as Ford side-stepped a puddle forming on the sidewalk outside his parents’ house. “Don’t need one. I’m not sweet enough to melt.”

  As if she was. Hah.

  The patter of rain on nylon, the wet echo of their footsteps, and gulls circling over the wharf were the only sounds sneaking under the shelter of Holly’s umbrella. The silence stretched between them had streaked past strained two minutes ago. Sure as hell wouldn’t be Ford breaking the ice, either. But no matter how many times she rearranged and shuffled the words in her head as if they were one of Ford’s online Scrabble games, she couldn’t form a coherent question.

  From below the umbrella’s brim, she watched his booted feet move in easy rhythm, matching the gentle swing of his hands.

  Balancing the umbrella’s handle on her shoulder, she shoved Ford’s jacket sleeve up to her elbow and grabbed his hand.

  He stopped.

  She stopped.

  Holly tilted the umbrella so she could meet his gaze—difficult, considering the pelting rain and the shadows cast over his face from his hooded sweatshirt. She stepped into him, and he arched away as metal prongs dipped alarmingly near his face.

  “Watch it.” Ford relieved her of the umbrella and held it over them both.

  Then he let go of her hand, changing the angle of his wrist to lace their fingers together, the soft pads of her fingertips rubbing against his guitar callouses making her shiver.

  Big, rough hands. A working man’s hands.

  Hands that plucked magic from his guitar and made a car engine purr like a giant, smug cat. Hands that were never too busy to help a mate out or offer piggy-back rides to the local kids. Hands that had tugged her ponytail and brushed against hers in the popcorn bowl. Now hands that had cupped her breasts and skimmed over her bare thighs.

  Such a simple thing, holding a man’s hand. Deceptively simple, though, because it broke a fundamental rule: friends don’t hold hands. Not unless you were, like, six.

  And standing here holding hands in the rain, tiny droplets of water clinging to Ford’s dark hair…just standing as if the world hadn’t shifted two degrees off its axis…

  “I’m sorry.” Which had to be the dumbest of a range of dumb things to say. “I didn’t know about your relationship with your birth mother.” Again with the dumb. Of course she didn’t know—if Ford had wanted her to know, he hadn’t lacked for opportunities to tell her. And that stung like a wicked case of gravel rash. “You should’ve told me.” Oh-dear-God, she was on a kamikaze roll. Someone shut her up.

  Ford’s eyes had crinkled in the corners as he’d stared down at their linked fingers then traced a warm path up to her face. Now the crinkles had smoothed out, the warmth shuttered behind fortified walls. His generous mouth thinned.

  “Nothing to tell that you haven’t already guessed. Harl and I had a rough start to life, then we moved here and got lucky. End of story. No therapy or you poor, brave, little soldier hugs required.”

  Since hugging him had been exactly what Holly had in mind next, she bristled. “Didn’t sound like an end-of-story deal from your side of the phone conversation.”

  He stuffed a fist into his jeans pocket. Mr. No-Worries-Man-It’s-Cool. “End of story in my head. Pania doesn’t see it that way. She’s at the tail end of her pain-in-the-ass cycle.”

  “Cycle?”

  “Her routine, the way she lives. For a while, it’d play out over three or four years. Crappy minimum-wage job, find herself a man, move in and act the clean girlfriend role for a while. Then she’d slide into drugs and booze again, lose the crappy job, lose the man and then call Dad for some cash to help her get back on her feet. Once Harley and I started to earn a wage, she’d hit us up, too. It’s a rinse and repeat process. Only the last five years, she’s been moving through the steps faster.”

  “How old is she?”

  “Old enough to have her stuff sorted.” Ford grimaced. “She’s forty-five. But the drugs and booze have taken their toll—though, she’s suppose
dly clean at the moment.”

  “So she was only”—math not being her thing, Holly squinched an eye shut and scrabbled to calculate—“sixteen when she had you and Harley?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Wow. Twins at sixteen.” Holly shook her head. “And your father?”

  If she’d thought that Ford’s face reflected a no-go-zone before, the mention of his father made it ten times worse.

  “Some random white guy. He bailed not long after we were born.” Ford slipped his fingers from hers and ducked out from under the umbrella, handing it to her. “Here. This is way too heavy a conversation for a Sunday afternoon.”

  Holly accepted the umbrella. “Rain check, then?”

  “I don’t talk about this stuff—there’s no need for us to talk about this stuff.”

  “Too many feels for you?” Flippant, but hell, his shutdown needled.

  How many times had he listened to her moan about her parents, or her siblings, or whatever her current estrogenic crisis was at that moment?

  Ford swiped a hand down his face, his jaw a harsh line. “I’m not one of your female friends you knew that from the very beginning. We talk about sports and movies and poker and trivia—that’s our thing. Feels and relationship stuff—we don’t go there.”

  “Maybe now we should.”

  Ford’s eyebrows drew into a sharp V. “Why?”

  The man sounded genuinely baffled. Holly fisted a hand on her hip.

  “Because we’ve…you know…and things have changed.” Her cheeks prickled.

  “Only one thing’s changed,” he said. “You’re still going to Invers, aren’t you?”

  Holly nodded stiffly.

  “So we’re just playing around, yeah?”

  “I guess we are.” So why did it hurt so much to admit it?

  Holly snapped the umbrella shut and slapped it against Ford’s chest. “Go back and help your mum; I can take it from here.”

  “Hol…”

  “It’s fine, Ford.”

  She unzipped Ford’s jacket and shrugged it off, cold pellets of rain pinging her bare arms. Damn weather, it’d been sunny when she’d left earlier. And damn man, reminding her that she didn’t dare hope for more than a fast and furious hook up because she was leaving.