“Not over till the whistle,” Talia managed to tell Faith, then caught her breath with a hiss, because the ball was on the ground, and the referee was blowing his whistle, his arm in the air, pointing towards the All Blacks.
“Now it’s a tie,” Faith said.
“Nah,” Talia said. “Now it’s a penalty. One of the Poms came in from the side.”
Whatever that meant, but what it meant, apparently, was the All Black kicker lining up and putting the ball on the tee from what looked like the center of the field. A kick. It didn’t matter how many points it was worth. One would be enough.
He stood back from the ball, braced himself, and Faith could see his chest heaving from the exertion of the previous eighty minutes. An excruciating pause while the crowd, and the group in Will’s lounge, seemed to be holding its collective breath, and he took three steps forward, gave the ball a mighty boot…
And missed, barely. Wide to the right by what looked like inches. A groan from the crowd, the referee was blowing his whistle, and this time, it really was over.
“What happens now?” Faith dared to ask into the silence as the players on the field gathered themselves, began to form a line, to shake hands and slap the backs of the opposition, nobody on either side looking happy. A tie didn’t seem so bad, except that it did. “There are three games, right?”
Will’s grandmother was the one who answered. “Yeh. The All Blacks won the first one, and with a draw—we win next week, and we win the series.”
And if we lose, she didn’t have to say, we don’t.
“Would a tie for the series be really…really bad?” Faith asked tentatively.
“Yeh,” Emere said. “It would.”
“Losing’s part of sport,” Will said. “Except for the All Blacks. There, it’s not acceptable.”
“Isn’t that too much pressure?” she asked.
“Sometimes,” he said. “Or it’s exactly what it takes to earn that record, and to hold onto it, too. Depends how you look at it.”
“And after that,” she asked, “after this…this series, you go back to play the other games? The…regular games?”
“Yeh.” He stood up and began to gather paper containers from the coffee table as if he needed to do something. “Got the rest of the Blues season.”
“And then more of the All Blacks?”
“That’s the idea, eh. If I’m selected. The Rugby Championship. Aussie, South Africa, Argentina. Depending how I go next week, of course,” he said with a shadow of his usual grin.
“Depending how well you kick? If you make those long ones?”
“It’s heaps more than that,” his mother said. “It’s how he manages the match, his decision-making on the pitch. The first-five drives the game.”
“Lucky he’s up to the challenge, then,” his grandmother said briskly. “You’ll be all right on the night,” she told Will. “You would’ve been tonight, if the selectors had had any sense at all, and next week? No worries. When the pressure’s on, that’s when you show what you’re made of. Come the hour, come the man.”
“Thanks.” He bent to kiss her cheek. “I’ll be in there getting stuck in, count on that.”
She nodded, and Will smiled again and headed into the kitchen with the containers. Faith stood to gather plates herself, and realized, however much of a front he put on, that he wasn’t always as confident as he appeared. That sometimes, he was pretending.
***
“Here’s that first time you wanted,” she told him a half-hour later as she pulled her tunic over her head, then wriggled out of her leggings. “Our first time getting ready for bed together without any moves, when you can roll over and kiss me goodnight without a single pillow in the way.”
She’d wanted to make him smile, and she’d succeeded. “No moves?” he asked. “Those the rules? Hope I get to take off your necklace, at least, because I loved doing that.”
She turned her back on him, even though she didn’t really want to, because he was standing there in only his boxer briefs, in all the glory of lustrous brown skin, hard muscle, and swirling tattoo. But sacrifices sometimes had to be made, so she pulled her hair away with one hand and looked back over her shoulder at him. “Well, since all I want to do right now is make you happy…” She sighed. “I guess you’d better come over here and do it.”
He was there before she had finished speaking, and there was nothing for her to do but lean back into him and enjoy it. His hands were at the back of her neck, unfastening the clasp, and he was handing it to her. She clutched it in one fist, then started at the brush of his lips over her nape. It wasn’t long before she was pressed back against him again, though, because he was so solid, so strong behind her, and every bit of him felt so good.
“Wanted to do this so badly the other night.” It was a murmur, his voice husky in her ear as he pulled her back into him with one big hand on her belly. He used the other hand to turn her head so he could kiss her mouth, and just being held by him like that, controlled by him only that much, was sending tendrils of excitement curling into every secret spot.
“That necklace…” He sighed, his breath a warm caress against her skin. “That’s so sexy, and so are you. I know you’re trying to make me feel better, give me a consolation prize, and so you know…it’s working.”
“My necklace is sexy?” she managed to ask. “Uh…how?”
He stroked a thumb over her cheek, down her jaw, and she shivered. “Sweetheart. You’ve never noticed that it’s a pussy?”
She actually jumped. “What?”
His voice was so deep and dark, his hands so sure. “That a bad word in the States? Not a bad word to me. One of my very favorite words, in fact, when I’m thinking about a girl. When I’m thinking about you.”
The heat was flaming in her cheeks, and the thrum at her core had long since started up again. She wouldn’t have thought he could possibly want anything else tonight, or that she would have, either, not after all the time they’d spent today, all the things they’d done. But the arousal was sending its tingling message to her breasts, so deliciously heavy and aching for him, up along inner thighs that were more than ready to part for him, to every last bit of her that needed him to cover it, to fill it, to let her know that he was there, and she was his.
He put a hand over hers, took the pendant from her, and ran a big thumb over the little pearl nestled into the mother-of-pearl folds, over the delicate, ruffled edging of silver.
“Baby,” he sighed, “whoever made this had exactly one thought in mind. It works, too, because whenever I look at it, I have that same exact thought.”
She closed her eyes, embarrassment warring with arousal. “I can’t believe it. I’ve worn this so much. Don’t tell me every guy who’s seen it around my neck has imagined—”
“Maybe not,” he said, although she could tell he didn’t mean it. “Maybe it’s just because I can’t help but go there anyway, when I look at you.” He set the pendant onto the bedside table, and then his hands were on her again. Stroking over her breasts now, feather-light touches around the lacy edges of her satin bra, and then one hand was sliding slowly inside to tease and torment, and just like that, she was squirming. “But maybe better just to show it to me, eh,” he whispered in her ear. “Just like the real thing. Just like all of this. Just like these pretty undies. I love that necklace, and I love these.”
“You’ve mentioned that,” she managed. “Or maybe you’ve just mentioned how much you like to take them off.”
“Then lie down, baby.” His lips were brushing her ear, and her knees had begun to tremble. “I know you want to make me feel better, and I know exactly how you can do it. You can let me take them off, and you can let me kiss you all over, until I find that little pearl.” His other hand had drifted down her belly, a whisper of sensation, and was tracing the wide edging of cream lace that sat low on her hips. She held her breath as slow fingers found their stealthy way inside, stroked over sleek folds that parted for him,
exactly the way her legs were parting now.
“Ah,” he sighed. “Oh, yeh. That’s it. That’s mine.” And she would have said exactly the same thing. If she could have talked.
***
He lay beside her afterwards, one big arm wrapped around her, and toyed absently with a lock of her hair.
“I was wondering,” he said, “if you’d like to come to the match on Saturday, and bring Talia with you. I can get a couple tickets, I’m pretty sure. Pity I didn’t think about it sooner, or I’d have everybody down for it. Maybe even Mals, because I’m thinking I ought to see to Mals a bit more.”
“Mmm,” she agreed, so sleepy and satisfied she could barely speak. “A male influence might be good.”
“Yeh. That’s what I had in mind, too. Taken me a while to figure that out, I know, but I think so.”
She turned on her side and ran a light hand over his chest, then snuggled into him more closely. “You’re figuring it out now. I’d say you’re doing a really good job.”
He bent his head and kissed her on the top of hers. “You may be a wee bit prejudiced, but thanks. Anyway, it’d be good for Talia, I’m thinking, to know I want her there, and it’d give you a chance to see one more bit of En Zed while you’re here. We could do better on that than we have. Quite nice, Dunedin, and you girls could fly down on Saturday morning, stay the night, fly on back to Auckland from here on the Sunday, when I’ll be back as well. Dunedin’s in the South Island, you know, or maybe you don’t.”
“I know.”
“Let me guess. You did the research.”
“Well, I was traveling.” She smiled against his skin, and knew that he was smiling too, in the dark. “And of course I want to come. To see you play in person? Of course I do. And I’d love to go with Talia. Not that she’ll be much help explaining the game to me, because I have a feeling that she’s mostly just going to be watching you, with her heart in her throat for you the whole time.”
“Hope that’s true. And I was thinking something else, too. That it might be better for you to stay in Rotorua this week, for Talia and all. I know we said you’d go back to Auckland with me, stay in my house, but maybe you wouldn’t mind being here instead. You could work here just as well, couldn’t you?”
Why didn’t he want her in his house? Because he wanted her to stay with his family? Or because…because he didn’t want her to get any ideas?
The thought was a shower of cold water dousing every warm feeling, a sickening jolt straight to her stomach. Of course he didn’t want her to get any ideas. He hadn’t said a single thing different, and he must be wondering what she was thinking right now. He must have known that she’d be making more of this than it was, because she wouldn’t be able to help it.
It wasn’t as if he hadn’t warned her.
I don’t stick. He’d said it the second day he’d known her, and he’d never said anything else. In fact, what had he said just now? It’d give you a chance to see one more bit of En Zed while you’re here. He hadn’t said before you leave, but he hadn’t had to, because they both knew it.
“Sure,” she managed to say. “If you think it’s better. Sure, I’ll stay here.”
“Good.” He sighed, turned his head, and gave her a soft kiss. “Night, baby. See you tomorrow.”
He was out within a couple minutes, the regular rise and fall of the chest under her hand told her that. But she wasn’t. She lay in the dark, eyes open, and faced facts.
See you tomorrow. Sunday. Sunday was all they had, because he’d be leaving on Monday to join the All Blacks in Dunedin, and he wouldn’t be back in Auckland for nearly a week. Not until the following Sunday, and on Monday, she’d be gone, across the Pacific and back to work. And he’d be back to training again, back into the long season that ran all the way through to December, with only one short October break.
A long-distance relationship like that would be unlikely to work with anybody, and it would be even more unlikely for the two of them, because Will wasn’t anybody. He was a star, and he was a player. He’d told her that, too. He wasn’t going to make some kind of ridiculous commitment to her, not after knowing her for such a short time, after a few days of sex that had been spectacular to her, but probably no more than what he was used to.
This had been their deal all along, and there was no other way for it to play out. He was looking at it realistically, that was all, and she’d allowed herself to forget.
Two weeks had seemed perfect when he’d first proposed it. Two weeks had seemed amazing. The longest vacation she’d ever had, because she was somebody with three jobs and bills to pay. So long, and not nearly long enough. Two weeks had become two days. Two days, and goodbye.
She’d been wondering again this morning, for the hundredth time since she’d arrived in the country, if she should tell him about her story. Four episodes of it, the fifth and sixth coming soon, uploaded to all those electronic stores. So visible, too, because they were selling so well. Every one of those episodes with his picture on the cover, looking dark and dangerous. Looking like Will.
No, looking like Hemi. Hemi, who didn’t have anything to do with Will other than his body, the body of a man she had barely known at the time she’d started writing. But Will might not understand that, and if he didn’t, if he were upset, all she would do was spoil the little time they still had. If she didn’t tell him, he’d never know, and he’d never have to worry about it. That was what a pen name was for.
She shouldn’t have come here at all, she could see that now, and she definitely shouldn’t have slept with him, but she had. The only thing to do was to embrace it, to take the darkness as well as the light, the pain along with the pleasure. To enjoy being with him, even as she felt herself falling in love with him. Not just with his beautiful body, and not even because of the way he made love to her, the way he made her feel beautiful, and desired, and so very needed.
She would spend these final days with him, and she would love him. And then she would go home and remember him, and be glad, even in the midst of the pain, that she had had the chance to know the man he was. The friend who’d put her palm fronds into her truck for her, had cared during every single shoot that Gretchen had been comfortable, had played miniature golf with a four-year-old. The sweet, demanding, breathtakingly unselfish lover. The generous, protective brother. The son, and the grandson. The good man. The family man.
Tribunal
“Hang on a moment,” Hugh Latimer told Will as the private dining room in the Dunedin hotel started emptying after breakfast on Tuesday morning. “We need a chat.”
Will had stood up to leave as well, but he sat down again. It wasn’t like he hadn’t been expecting this. Just as it hadn’t been a complete surprise when he’d arrived the day before to find that he had been assigned to room with Hugh.
He would have expected to share a room with one of the younger boys and do the mentoring bit, the way he’d done with his Aussie squad and had continued with the Blues. Instead, he was in with the punishing flanker, his Blues skipper, a hard man amongst hard men. He was being sent a message and no mistake.
But that was the price you paid. The All Blacks’ bus was driven from the back, by the group of senior players who not only set the tone for a team that meant more to them than almost anything else in the world, but enforced its rigorous code of conduct as well. The worst thing, when you’d crossed the line, wasn’t facing the coaches. It was facing your teammates.
The most galling part was that Will was looking to be part of that senior leadership group himself. He wanted to be, he needed to be sitting on the other side of this tribunal. This was what happened when you took this kind of misstep, though, so he sat and waited while he and Hugh were joined by Koti James, his handsome face wearing an unusually serious expression. They weren’t going to be doing any lighthearted arm-wrestling today, it was clear. Nic Wilkinson, the fullback, was here now as well, along with Kevin McNicholl, the wing, and Liam Mahaka, the ferocious hooker. And, of cour
se, Nate Torrance, the captain, from whom intensity was nothing but normal.
The six of them didn’t range themselves on the opposite side of the table from him, or anything like that. They didn’t have to.
Nate spoke first, of course. “Can’t say we’re not disappointed,” the skipper told Will. “You wear this jersey, you’re expected to fill it up, on the field and off it. You don’t want to do that, you’re not fit to be in black. That’s how it is, and I’d have thought you knew it. It wasn’t like you didn’t have a choice. It’s just that you made the wrong one.”
His pale-blue gaze held Will’s, his face hard as stone, and Will remembered with a curling edge of shame that Toro and his partner Ally had faced something very much like this themselves. Photos online that she hadn’t modeled for, a massive invasion of her privacy that had created a national scandal and sent her fleeing the country. It had all been raked up again after Will’s own indiscretion, and that would have cut the skipper to the quick.
Not that Toro would have cared for his own sake, because there was nobody tougher-minded, nobody better able to disregard distractions and turn his focus to more important things. But he would have minded for Ally. Will knew, now, that seeing her hurt would have been worse than being hurt himself. And every man here would have minded for him, because that was how it worked.
“I let the team down.” Will looked his skipper in the eye and let him know he meant it. “I let you down, and I know it. I knew it was a risk, and I took it anyway. I didn’t think about the team, and I was wrong. Can’t say more than that.”
“Yeh. You can,” Liam Mahaka said from beside Toro. “You can tell us why.”
Mako’s face, with its broken nose and cauliflower ears, all the scars earned in a lifetime of battling in the dark places, had a kind of formidable gravity in repose, like the fearsome sculpture of an ancestor, carved from the hardest wood. Just that much strength, and just that much mana. The liquid brown eyes were stern today, the incongruously sweet smile conspicuously absent. This wasn’t the thoughtful, articulate ambassador for New Zealand rugby. This was the other Mako, the leader of the haka, calling Will to account exactly as if he’d been standing in front of the elders in the marae. Calling him to judgment, and to justice.
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