Just Say (Hell) No (Escape to New Zealand Book 11)

by Rosalind James

  “Injured all last year,” she pointed out.

  “Playing all this year. Every minute of every match. I’ve given my best every one of those minutes. I’m ready to stand on my performance.”

  She sighed. “It must be nice to be you. So uncompromising.”

  “Not always nice, no. It’s not feeling nice right now. And I’d like to know who’s more uncompromising than you. Who’s going toe to toe in my kitchen with me? Who won’t bloody back down, even though I’m right?”

  “What is it you’re looking for?” she asked. “What is it you want from me?”

  He stared down at her. Dark eyes burning, unshaven face hard. “The truth. Which is that you’re here with me, and with Ella, and you’re staying here. That I’m in love with you, and that maybe you’re in love with me, too. I want the truth.”

  He’d swear she hadn’t heard him, or that she had and she didn’t want to. Neither one was a wonderful option. “Pardon?” she finally asked.

  “If I knew how to say it in sign language, I would. Can’t be a surprise to you, since I don’t do any of this, and you know it. I don’t get possessive. I don’t get… personal.”

  “Excuse me? You get nothing but possessive. And what we did last night? That was pretty bloody personal for me. More personal than I’ve ever got, in case I didn’t mention it. Also, what do you call this particular moment?”

  “Frustrating.” He took the tongs from her and set them on the kitchen bench. “The standard response is, ‘I love you, too.’ Or, ‘I’m very fond of you as well.’”

  “Maybe I’m not feeling all that loving at the moment,” she said. While scowling. Not exactly how he’d expected his first-ever declaration of love to be received.

  “Neither am I. But I still know that I love you. In the abstract right now, maybe. But still.”

  She laughed. Laughed. A hand running through her wild waves of black hair, and wearing a shirt with too much lacing across her breasts. A temptress, and a witch. The woman he couldn’t walk away from. She raised both hands high, dropped them against her snug gray jeans with a slap, and said, “Right, then. I love you, too, you arrogant…" Another breath. “And I still don’t see why you want to have this… this confrontation with Grant until after the selection, but all right. All right. My mum loves to take me out, as if I won’t get a meal otherwise. She’s going to suggest it for Friday, I promise. I’ll tell her I’m bringing my plus-one, and we’ll do the big reveal. If we’re lucky, Grant will be eating with the coaches anyway. It’ll be a non-issue.”

  “No,” he said.

  “What d’you mean, ‘No’? Here’s a clue for you. You won. We’re doing it your way.”

  He was starting to smile. Starting to pull her into his arms, where she belonged. “We’re going to invite them here. We’re going to cook for them. I’m not a plus-one. I’m Marko Sendoa, arrogant bastard, and you’re in love with me and I’m in love with you. We’re going to let them know it. And here’s a tip for you, one you already know, because I’ve seen you do it. When the pressure’s hardest? That’s not when you walk away, and it’s sure as hell not when you run. It’s when you walk straight into it. It’s when you say, ‘Come on, then. Come on and try it. Take your best shot. I’m standing right here.’”

  “Life’s not…” She had her arms around his neck in that way he loved, her whole sweet body pressed up against him, and this fish was going to have to wait. “Not a battle.”

  “Now, you see,” he said, giving her a kiss on that mouth, and then a couple more. “That’s where you’re wrong. Life’s a battle all the way, even if all you’re fighting is yourself. And it’s one you can win. For somebody as strong as you? Too right it is. Every time.”

  They did cook dinner at home on Friday night. No concessions to anything, in the menu or anything else. One thing, Marko knew for sure. He wasn’t losing tomorrow night, not if he could help it, and he certainly wasn’t losing because he hadn’t eaten right.

  His card of the day was all wrong, as far as he was concerned.

  The Tower, his mum had written this morning, with a picture of a… yes, tower. Lightning flashing around it, fire burning in it. Sometimes, you have to burn it all down and start over. It can look like destruction and chaos, but you have to clear the ground before you can plant again. One word, baby. Surrender.

  One word he was never going to say. Not in his vocabulary.

  Grant did come along, which was also fine with him. If you had to do something, it was always better to do it sooner than later. And the minute his former coach walked through the front door, all height and presence and beetling gray eyebrows, it was on.

  Nyree got a cuddle from her mum, and one from Grant as well, so there was that. Miriama Armstrong was exactly the same as every other time Marko had met her. A pretty, nearly tiny woman who gave off femininity in waves, as if she’d known all her life that she was destined for good things, and that men would fall over themselves to give them to her. Attentive to Grant and to whomever she was with, and as charming as Grant was gruff. A buffer zone.

  “Marko,” she said, giving him a kiss on the cheek and a smile as if this evening were her big treat, while he took her coat and hung it on a hook. “I was so surprised to hear that Nyree was working here. What a lovely house you’ve got. You’ve landed on your feet up here, obviously. And you’ve hung one of Nyree’s paintings as well. So kind.”

  “Not really kind,” he said, figuring he might as well get stuck in. “I bought it because I liked it.”

  She laughed, and he didn’t have to look at Nyree to know she was stiffening. “Flowers? It’s lovely, of course, but I think I know you better than that.”

  “Come in,” he said, because he couldn’t actually throw them out when they’d barely got their shoes off. He shook Grant’s hand, though, first, and if the other man didn’t make it a pissing contest, that was probably because he knew he’d lose. “Come meet my cousin Ella. The reason Nyree moved in, originally, to give her some companionship.”

  “Oh,” Miriama said when they were in the kitchen and Ella turned from the fridge, where she was pouring a glass of water. “Goodness. Hello. When are you due, darling? Not too long now, eh.”

  “September,” Ella said. “Twins. Hi. I’m Ella.”

  “Miriama Armstrong,” Nyree’s mum said. “And my husband Grant. And twins? Heavens. That’s lovely, isn’t it? And you live here with Marko?” Her eyes went between Marko, Nyree, and Ella. “Goodness, I’ve got it all wrong, haven’t I? I thought Nyree was… but then, you said you were a carer, darling,” she told Nyree. “Grant, you should’ve known Nyree wouldn’t be with Marko. I told you that he has too much respect for you, and she does have good sense, after all.”

  “Tense” wasn’t even the word anymore. “I’m with Marko,” Nyree said. “Or with Marko. And I do have good sense, thanks.”

  “Marko’s my cousin,” Ella said, leaning up against the kitchen bench and sipping at her water, her belly making its usual emphatic statement. “He’s gone heaps, though, obviously, so Nyree keeps me company and all, as I’m still in school. She’s not, like, a carer. She just keeps me company.”

  Time to offer some support. Marko slid an arm around Nyree’s waist, and she turned to him and said, “Did you open that wine?” Like a woman who needed a glass. Or a bottle.

  Nyree wouldn’t have called the evening “enjoyable.” Marko and Grant looked like nothing so much as two male lions circling each other, the elder, canny and lean, bearing the scars of battles won, and the younger arrogant in his strength, sure that this was his time.

  It didn’t help that the Blues were playing the Highlanders tomorrow night, though Marko probably had the advantage there. Grant could want to win. Marko would actually be on the field making it happen. If he didn’t slam a few former teammates to the deck, Nyree would be surprised.

  Her mother talked about their upcoming holiday in Fiji, asked Ella about her school, and told her about Nyree’s sister Kiri. Ny
ree cut up veggies, drank a glass of wine and then another one, watched Marko cook eye fillets and sauté mushrooms, laid the table, and hoped there wouldn’t be actual bloodshed.

  When they sat down to eat, her mum turned her attention to Nyree again. “What about your friend Victoria?” she asked. “I’m confused, darling, because Kane said you still had the place. Not that I ever liked that garage above half. I always thought she had a nerve, charging you for that and still calling herself your friend. I hope you plugged in the carbon monoxide detector I bought you.”

  “Mostly,” Nyree pointed out, “that comes from cars in garages, not from special garage fumes. It’s Auckland. She could be getting twice that rent. And, yes, she’s still my friend.” Who, she happened to know, was out with Kane at this very minute in Hamilton, since the Crusaders were playing the Chiefs tomorrow. “Wearing the highest heels,” she’d told Nyree, “that I can possibly walk in. You don’t know what it’s like to kiss somebody who’s ten wonderful inches taller than you. Well, wait, of course you do. For me, it’s novel. And Kane’s so good. Did I tell you—” Which meant that Nyree was now in receipt of far more information than she’d ever really wanted about her stepbrother. She may have had a crush on Marko from the age of fourteen, but she’d never had one on Kane. As Ella would say—“Ew.”

  “Nonsense,” her mum said, and Nyree tried to remember what they’d been talking about. “I read about carbon monoxide poisoning all the time, especially in state houses and those kinds of shonky places. Explosions as well. With all that paint…”

  “Again,” Nyree said, “no open flame. Electric stove, electric water heater, heat pump. No carbon monoxide, either.”

  “Anyway,” Ella said, “that’s probably P. Methamphetamine. Somebody says it was carbon monoxide making the kids ill or whatever, but don’t you think they were probably cooking drugs and didn’t want to be chucked out?”

  Nyree could see the smile lurking in Marko’s eyes. “I don’t think Nyree was cooking P in her garage.”

  “In the state houses, I meant,” Ella said. “Obviously not Nyree. She’s not thin enough to have a drugs problem.”

  Marko laughed, the rat. Nyree glared at him and said, “Excuse me?” Which only made him laugh some more.

  “Have some more wine,” he said, filling up her glass. Probably a bad idea. Or not.

  Her mum said, “You’re looking very nice, darling. Very… bright.” She looked her up and down in her red wrap blouse. “Are those big sleeves the style now?”

  “I don’t know,” Nyree said. “Six dollars at the op shop, though.”

  “Oh, no, thanks,” her mum said when Marko hovered the wine bottle over her glass. “Too many kilojoules, don’t you think, Nyree?”

  “Not subtle, Mum,” Nyree said, and took another swallow. “And fortunately, Marko likes me curvy. Possibly drunk as well. Also fortunate.”

  Marko said, “True. First thing I thought when I saw Nyree was that she was, ah… curvy. Second thing was that she didn’t run very fast. Slowest runner I’ve ever seen, in fact, and it didn’t even matter. Maybe it was her painting that knocked me sideways like that, but I think all that did was seal the deal. I have to admit—I think it was her smile. And her eyes.”

  Grant snorted, and Marko looked at him blandly and said, “Pardon?”

  “Maybe I’m thinking,” Grant said, “that you seemed able to resist her before. Maybe I’m wondering why now.”

  “Because I met her now?” Marko asked. Quietly. Dangerously, that lion slinking through the tall grass.

  “Or because you’re not playing in Otago anymore,” Grant said. “Because you have a point to make.”

  Silence for a frozen minute, and then Nyree’s mum said, “Do you have any new paintings, darling? Or have you given it up?”

  Given it up? It didn’t matter, because Marko ignored her. He said, “I didn’t know who Nyree was when I met her again. And if one of us has been at a disadvantage since that day, it’s been me. Been a step behind the whole way, haven’t I.”

  “Also,” Nyree said, because she was tired of this, and she wasn’t that shy girl on the terrace anymore, “it could be that I have some sense. And some caution. Marko didn’t know who I was, but I knew exactly who he was.”

  “It could be, in fact,” Marko said, “that she made sure I was good enough for her before she fell in love with me.”

  Grant snorted and muttered, “That what you call it, then.”

  It wasn’t like Nyree hadn’t seen it before. She just hadn’t seen it quite like this. Marko’s energy being drawn into himself, like before a tsunami. When the water was pulled out to sea, but you knew it was coming back.

  He said, “Pardon?” Low. Dark. That wave was coming in.

  Ella actually got up and left the table. Nyree wanted to, but she wanted to see, as well. It could be the wine, and it could be the man, but she had to know what would happen next.

  “Grant.” Her mum had her hand on her stepfather’s arm.

  He didn’t look at her. He was looking at Nyree. “I’m in this fella’s house,” he said. “And I’m asking myself why.”

  Her mother said, “Grant. Stop.”

  “Don’t fool yourself,” Grant said. “He’s a bloody footballer. It’s all about winning. He couldn’t win with me, couldn’t get his way, so he ran away to the Blues. Ran as far as he could go, didn’t he, without going to France. But don’t fool yourself. It’s still about winning.”

  Nyree wasn’t waiting for the tsunami. She stood up, took her wineglass with her for luck, and said, “Then he wins. Just like you won Mum. Or let’s look at it another way. Just like Mum won you, and I won Marko. It could have nothing to do with you, did you think of that? It could be all about me, and about him. It could be that we both have a passion for what we do, and for each other. It could be that we’re a match.”

  Marko was in two places at once. He wanted to pick Nyree up off her feet, kiss her the way she loved, carry her to bed, and love her hard and sweet until the candles burned down. And he wanted to punch his former coach in the face.

  Unfortunately, he couldn’t do either thing. One of them, though, he’d get to do later, so there was that. For now, he had to take care of the other one.

  He said, “Yes, we are, baby,” and stood up himself. “Nyree’s painted something amazing. Would you like to see it, Miriama?”

  Sometimes, you couldn’t batter your way through the line. Sometimes, you had to sidestep. It wasn’t his best talent, but he’d give it a go.

  Miriama jumped up and said, “Of course. I always love seeing your beautiful things, darling. I have one she did for my birthday in the lounge at home,” she told Marko. “Everybody says how pretty it is.”

  He could see Nyree’s tension as she led the way upstairs, but he was pretty sure this visit to view her work was necessary. At least for him.

  She opened the door and said, “The thing on the easel is new. New direction, I guess. I don’t know if it’ll work or not, but… it’s where I want to go. Interiors. Out the windows, at the max. That’s what I want to do next. Painting beautiful spaces.”

  Miriama said, “Oh, it’s lovely. Truly. It’s your room. How clever. And so colorful.” And Nyree relaxed a little.

  Grant had his hands behind his back, peering at the painting. After that, he took a stroll around the room and looked at the flowers. He was about to pronounce judgment. Marko could tell.

  Grant had never been what you’d call a “player’s coach.” Marko hadn’t needed that, but there were some of the boys who’d… done better somewhere else. Marko’d seen the difference it could make when he’d played for the All Blacks, and he was seeing the difference now, at the Blues with Fizzo. Eye-opening, you could call it.

  He took Nyree’s hand, waited for that pronouncement, and tried to send her the message. He’s not your judge, and neither am I. Your talent knows best.

  He didn’t have to wait long. Grant took another look at the new painting, then
turned around, rocked on his heels, and said, “Very nice. It’s better than all that modern rubbish, at least. You can tell what it is, for one. Girls would like it, I’m sure.”

  “Thanks,” Nyree said, her face and voice both tight.

  “Her teachers always said she had so much talent,” Miriama said. “Ever since she took her first serious art class, in high school. Remember that, Grant? That first one. How he said, ‘If she keeps at it, she’ll go far’?”

  “I never said she didn’t have talent,” Grant said. “Just that talent doesn’t pay the bills. Don’t coddle her, Miriama. I told you. United front. Tell her you want to see her settled in something that pays. The girl’s twenty-seven. Time to get serious about her future. It doesn’t mean she can’t have a hobby.”

  “I have a job,” Nyree said. “I have two, in fact. Three, because I’ve been selling my work.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Marko said, and could see her thinking, What? He went on to tell her what. “Do you take his money? Do you take your mum’s? Do you take mine?”

  “Well, yeh, I take yours,” she said. “To stay with Ella.”

  He said, “You know what I mean. Henry Ford.”

  “Uh… Henry Ford what? The inventor?”

  “Yeh. And the bloke who said, ‘The whole secret of a successful life is to find out what is one’s destiny to do, and then do it.’ That’s what you’re doing.”

  “Sounds good,” Grant said, “until the rent’s due.”

  Nyree must have decided she was twenty-seven, not seventeen, because she was standing tall at last. Facing front. And telling her stepfather, “I’m paying my rent. I’ve always paid my rent. And, all right, take any All Black out there. Take… take Drew Callahan. He was a schoolboy once, wasn’t he? Spending too much time on rugby, wondering if it was worth it and doing it anyway, because it was his passion, and his destiny. Because it burned in him, and he had to try. Maybe he’d fail, like all those other blokes who tried and didn’t do it, but he didn’t fail, did he? He became an All Black, and then he became captain of the All Blacks. He led the team to two Rugby World Cups, and he won them. Or the team won them, but you know and I know that he all but dragged them on his back to that first win. He followed his destiny, and it led him somewhere special, someplace that I’m guessing nobody will ever go again. Can I do that? Who knows? All I’m asking is for the… the space to do what he did. The space to try my hardest, and not to be afraid to say that’s what I’m doing. I’m not asking for your money. I’m not even asking for your approval. Just not to be ridiculed, that’s all. But you need to give me that. You need to, or I’m not coming home again.”