Just Not Mine (Escape to New Zealand)

by Rosalind James

  “Well, I admit, I checked you out online last night,” she said, “and I believe you. It must take some training to be able to go that hard for eighty minutes, and you always do seem to go eighty minutes, don’t you?”

  “That’s what it’s all about,” he said. “Going hard for as long as it takes.”

  He saw the faint flush rise, saw her lose the smile, and, even as he felt his blood quicken, was sorry he’d said it, because she so clearly didn’t want to hear it. She wanted a good neighbor, so he worked on that. “You off for the weekend? Business or pleasure?”

  “Pleasure all the way. Paying a long-overdue visit to my partner in Aussie,” she said, and that was a pretty clear message too.

  “He’s that actor fella I heard about last night?” he asked, doing his best to keep his tone casual.

  “Derek Alverson. He’s doing a film over there. They’ve been on location for weeks now, northern Queensland, deep in the bush, but they’re back in Sydney, got a weekend off at last, and he asked me to join him.”

  “He’ll be happy to see you, I’m sure.”

  “Hope so. And I’d best be off. Oh—” She turned, half-into the car. “How were the vegies?”

  “Brilliant. Healthy. Have a good weekend.” He lifted a hand and watched as she indicated, pulled into the street, and drove away to do it.

  So, no. He wouldn’t be looking at her, at the golden skin glowing against that white dress, at the waves of hair falling down her back, at the shape of her showing for a moment when she crouched in front of the candle she’d lit, at her turning to smile at him after she did it, making his heart skip a beat. Because she would be with her partner. Because he would be the one taking her to dinner tonight, the one looking at her in the candlelight. And the one taking her to bed, too, which Hugh wasn’t enjoying thinking about one little bit.

  So he stopped, or he tried to. And asked the kids all the same, after they’d all had their weekly chat with Aunt Cora, and he’d roped them into helping with the washing-up after another reasonably healthy dinner that, he noted somewhat proudly, had been part of the report, “Should we watch Josie’s show, then?”

  “Yes!” Charlie said enthusiastically, but Amelia looked at him doubtfully and said, “Auntie Cora will say we shouldn’t have.”

  “Oh, I don’t think it can be too bad,” Hugh said. “It’s on at seven, isn’t it? You may be bored, but I can’t think it’s really all that shocking.”

  They were bored, the first fifteen minutes, at least he and Charlie were. The story seemed to be all about an ambo who, for some peculiar reason, was being filmed doing what looked like his entire gym workout as he chatted with some other fellas. He was sweating far too much for the amount of effort he was putting in, from Hugh’s point of view, his form was rubbish, and he wasn’t wearing a shirt, which was unhygienic and unrealistic to say the least. A paramedic would’ve known better, he’d have thought. And it was enough that Hugh spent half his own life working out in a gym, he didn’t need to spend what was feeling like the other half watching somebody else do it, badly, on TV.

  Two of the guys looked like getting into a fight now, though. That was more interesting. Some argument about a nurse that the ambo was shagging and another fella fancied.

  “Are they going to fight?” Charlie asked. “Why are they so angry? What happened?”

  “Fighting over a girl,” Hugh told him. “They both like the same one.”

  “Oh. That’s pretty silly, isn’t it? Couldn’t they just ask her who she liked best?”

  “Somehow,” Hugh said, “that never occurs to a bloke when he’s in that situation.”

  “Shhh,” Amelia hissed, and anyway, it looked like it was going to come to blows, and Hugh was just getting interested when it ended with the other fella raising a menacing fist—with the thumb inside, Hugh noticed, just asking to get broken as soon as he landed a good punch. And besides, if you fought in the gym, you were sure to be chucked out, have to find another spot to train. Wouldn’t make any sense at all. You’d go outside, anybody would.

  And then the scene faded out, and it was an advert for some kind of special broom, some woman looking blissful because sweeping was such fun, followed by one for a retirement village, and then the show came back on, and it was Josie.

  Except … not.

  She was standing next to a rounded desk area full of computer monitors and paper charts—a nurse’s station in a hospital, Hugh would say, based on his considerable experience. Wearing a white coat with a name embroidered over the breast pocket, but it wasn’t buttoned, and she didn’t look like any doctor he’d ever had the pleasure to visit. She had a fitted black suit on under the coat that made the absolute most of her curves, combined with black stilettos that couldn’t have been practical for somebody who worked on her feet, though Hugh didn’t much care. Her hair was in a businesslike knot, and all she needed was a pair of glasses to become the sexiest librarian any man could ever dream of mussing up.

  Until she started to hiss with venom and became intimidating as hell, that is, although the woman standing opposite her looked more than capable of taking her on.

  “I’m not going to allow it,” her opponent said. She was shorter than Josie, blonde and pretty, a silky terrier to Josie’s greyhound. Dressed in scrubs, a stethoscope around her neck. “That’s my patient.”

  “Your patient?” Josie scoffed. “Let me remind you that I’m a doctor. You want to swan about and pretend you’re important, try it on an intern. To me, you’re a nurse. You’re here to follow my orders.”

  “As the head nurse,” the smaller woman said with grim determination, “I’m here to make sure my patients—and, yes, they’re my patients too—are looked after and go home safely, which includes not being harassed by their surgeon. I’ll be filing my report with the Medical Council today.”

  “Harassed?” Josie laughed, and it was nothing like the merry sound that made Hugh smile just to hear it. This laugh had a mocking edge that made him wince, because she was bloody good at her job. He hated her already, and he knew her. He was beginning to see what those women in the supermarket had been talking about.

  “I think if you ask him,” she said, a cruel smile curving her mouth, “you’ll find he was more than willing. But you wouldn’t know about that, would you? You wouldn’t know about a man dying for it, gagging for it, willing to do anything, give anything to have it. You wouldn’t have a clue, and you know it, and you can’t stand it. Why don’t you tell them, in that report of yours, what this is really about? That you’d go to any lengths to ruin my career, since I took Shane away from you? Not that it was much of a challenge. Want to know how hard it was?” She snapped her fingers in the other woman’s face. “Just … that … easy. He couldn’t wait to have me. He couldn’t undress me fast enough. He couldn’t forget you fast enough.”

  She stepped closer, lowered her voice, and the dark menace in it made the hairs on Hugh’s arms rise. “Thought you’d got yourself a doctor at last, didn’t you?” she sneered. “Well, he must not have cared much about you after all, because he was begging me, in the end. We did it right here, did he tell you that? On your desk. Think about that while you’re typing up your little reports, keeping your records like the clerk you actually are. He did me hard, on your desk.” She leaned closer, and her smile was pure feline as she enunciated every word. “And I … made … him … howl.”

  Hugh closed his mouth, grabbed for the remote, clicked it, and the screen went dark.

  “It’s not over,” Amelia protested, reaching for the remote, and Hugh held it up out of her reach.

  “It is now,” he said. “Aunt Cora was right. Not appropriate. I’ve just declared Josie’s show off-limits for both of you, d’you hear?”

  “What happened?” Charlie asked, looking seriously upset. “I never heard Josie sound like that before.”

  “That wasn’t her,” Hugh attempted to explain. “At least, it was, but it was her acting. That’s her part.”
r />   “She’s not very nice, is she?” Charlie asked.

  “No,” Hugh agreed, “she’s not.” He clicked the TV on again, switched the channel hastily to Prime, to The Crowd Goes Wild, his lovely safe sport chat show. Mark and Andrew bantering at the desk, anything off-color sure to go straight over the kids’ heads. And then the view had switched to cricket, which was safer yet.

  “Boring,” Amelia sighed. “As usual.”

  “Just you remember,” Hugh cautioned. “Off-limits.” Although he’d be watching, he knew that. In his room at night, safely delayed until after the kids were in bed. And able to fast-forward through the rest of it to Josie’s bits.

  It crossed his mind that it was odd—possibly even a little pervy—to be watching her like that, but then, he’d be watching her along with hundreds of thousands of other Kiwis, most of them women. Most of them probably mums, so how pervy could it be, really? She’d watched him, she’d just told him so. Although he doubted that it’d had the same effect on her as watching her had had on him.

  What were they thinking, anyway, having a show like that on at seven o’clock? Weren’t kids watching? It couldn’t be right.

  “D’you think she’s pretty? Josie?” That was Charlie.

  “Hmm? Yeh. She’s very pretty,” Hugh said cautiously.

  “Then I think you should go on a date with her,” Charlie decided. “You said you don’t have a girlfriend. She could be your girlfriend.”

  “No, she couldn’t.” Hugh turned down the volume on the TV with reluctance, because this was a conversation he could do without. “She has a partner.”

  Charlie considered that. “I don’t think she does. I don’t think she goes on dates.”

  “He’s in Aussie, that’s why. She’s visiting him now,” he forced himself to say. “Sometimes your partner isn’t right there with you, just like I go away when I have a girlfriend, and she stays here. She’s still my girlfriend, even so.”

  “I still think Josie would go on a date with you,” Charlie persisted. “I think she likes you.”

  “You don’t do that,” Hugh attempted to explain. “If somebody has a partner, going on a date with them would be cheating, and it would be wrong. That’s what the show was about,” he realized with relief. Good, an example, because he was damned if he knew how to explain cheating. “Josie’s character was cheating. She was going on a date”—well, a date of sorts—“with the nurse’s partner, the other girl there. That’s what the nurse was so angry about.”

  “Josie wouldn’t really do something like that, though,” Charlie said. “Not if it was wrong.”

  “Nah. She wouldn’t,” Hugh assured him. “She wouldn’t cheat.” And neither would he. Unfortunately.

  “Then I think you should go on a date with Miss Chloe,” Charlie said after another minute’s thought. “If you can’t go on one with Josie.”

  “I can get my own dates,” Hugh protested.

  Amelia cast him a jaundiced look. “I don’t think so,” she said.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Well, you haven’t been,” she said. “People who go on dates get babysitters. They stay out all night, like you did before. You haven’t stayed out all night in ages, and you haven’t got a babysitter, either.”

  “You don’t go out with just anybody,” Hugh attempted to explain. “It’s not that simple. You have to like the look of the person, and she has to like the look of you.”

  “Then what?” Charlie asked. “D’you say, ‘Do you want to go on a date with me?’”

  “Nah,” Amelia said knowledgeably. “She asks.”

  “She does not ask,” Hugh said. “Not with me.”

  “Holly’s mum says men are scared,” Amelia said. “So the girl has to ask. She has to say, ‘D’you want to get a coffee?’ Like that. Otherwise he’s too scared.”

  “I am not scared,” he said.

  “Then why aren’t you going on a date? Holly’s mum goes on a date on Friday all the time,” Amelia saw fit to inform him again. “Sometimes other nights, too. That’s why Holly watches Courtney Place. Because she and her little brother have to have a babysitter, and she likes it. The babysitter, I mean.”

  “Like I said,” Hugh tried again. “I have to find somebody I like.”

  Amelia looked at him appraisingly. “Maybe if you cut your hair. Miss Chloe would go on a date with you, I think. I heard her and Josie talking about it.”

  “You did?” Hugh knew he shouldn’t ask, but he did anyway. “What did they say?”

  “Josie said Miss Chloe should go out with you,” Amelia said with a shrug. “That’s all.”

  “She said this in front of you?”

  “Well, I heard.”

  “You shouldn’t go around listening to other people’s conversations.” He wasn’t having much success with his life lessons talk tonight, but he gave it another go. “It’s not polite.”

  “Hugh.” She sighed. “I wasn’t listening on purpose. I heard it after class, that’s all.”

  “Well, what did Chloe say?” Hugh asked despite himself.

  “She said, ‘Mmm, yeh, not too bad. Pretty fit under all that hair.’ That’s why I think you should get a haircut, and then she’d go out with you.”

  “And what did Josie say?” In for a penny, in for a pound, and he wanted to know.

  “She said, ‘He’s a bit clueless, but he’s a pretty decent guy.’” Which was a ringing endorsement if he’d ever heard one.

  “Well, cheers for that.” So much for Josie having any feelings for him, if she were trying to push her friend off on him. All right, maybe he’d done a bit of longing, but it looked like he was the only one.

  “So are you going to ask her out?” Amelia persisted. “Maybe I should tell her you like her, too. I could say that she should invite you to have a coffee, like Holly’s mum says. I could do that after class tomorrow.”

  “Don’t do me any favors,” Hugh said. “If I want to go out with Miss Chloe—if—I can ask her myself.”

  “But get a haircut first,” Amelia ordered. “That way, maybe she’ll say yes.”

  “If I did want to go for a haircut today,” he said at breakfast the next morning, “would I need to get a babysitter? Or would I just take the two of you into Auckland with me?”

  He should have checked that out before, he thought guiltily. He’d texted Vivy last night, had been glad that she’d been able to squeeze him in at the last minute, but he hadn’t even thought about a babysitter. He’d got up this morning, though, pulled on his gear as usual for a run, and hesitated. Was it actually all right to leave the kids? He thought Amelia was old enough, but he wasn’t sure. He should have asked Aunt Cora, or his mum, but it had never occurred to him.

  In the end, he’d written a note and gone. And found himself worrying, which had been annoying. And, of course, had come back to find the house not burnt down, the kids not panicked a bit, calmly eating cereal in front of the TV as usual.

  “You’re allowed to leave,” Amelia pronounced. “For a couple hours. If it’s during the day, and if you check with a neighbor first and tell her that we’re home alone.”

  “Or you could come,” Hugh felt impelled to say. “If you wanted.”

  She looked him over critically. “I think it’d be boring. But maybe I should come, so I could say how she should cut it.”

  “Excuse me? I think between the two of us, we can manage without you. I’ve been getting my hair cut all by myself for, oh, almost a year now.”

  “Well,” she said, unabashed, “you should shave your beard off, too. Girls don’t like beards.”

  He ran his hand over his jaw. “Oh, I don’t know. I think they might.”

  She sighed. “Hugh. I might know just a little more about being a girl than you do.”

  “You know about being a twelve-year-old girl, I’ll give you that,” he said. “You don’t know about being a woman.”

  She seemed about to argue that point, too, so he turned to Charlie, who
looked to have tuned out again. “What about you? Want to go with me?”

  Charlie looked up doubtfully through his own shaggy dark hair, and Hugh realized that he should see about getting his cut as well. Where did that happen? Amelia was bound to know.

  “Dunno,” his brother said.

  “Come on,” Hugh said. “It’ll be good fun. We’ll take the ferry over, get you an ice cream, maybe. Take the rugby ball to the park afterwards and do a bit of kicking, practice your passing too, if you like.” Because Charlie had finished his season playing at 10, and during the few matches Hugh had managed to get to, he’d seen that his brother had some talent. Besides, that was the one thing they had in common. He had the feeling he needed to spend more time with his brother, try to draw him out of his shell a little. So many things to think about. Pity he didn’t know how to do most of them.

  Amelia looked at him accusingly. “I thought you didn’t allow ice cream.”

  “That mean you don’t want it?” He’d realized after their latest supermarket visit that he might have been a bit harsh. He’d had the occasional ice block growing up, and it hadn’t hurt him much.

  She put her head on one side and considered. “No. I still don’t want to come. I want to go over to June’s early and practice for ballet. You’re picking us up, don’t forget. And don’t forget that you need to bring Charlie, too. You can’t leave him home alone. He’s only eight.”

  “Which is why he’s going to Auckland with me. And I’m not forgetting. That’s why it’s on the fridge, so I won’t forget.” That was the whole point of the haircut, after all. That he would be picking them up.

  He’d kept the beard, after some reflection, plus a consultation with Vivy that he wasn’t going to be telling Amelia about.

  “Nah, nice,” Vivy had told him. “Give a woman a little mystery, wondering what it’d feel like to … kiss you, if that’s what we’re talking about, and I think it is. Oh, Hugh, my darling, such a pity I’m married. And streets older than you, of course. Next lifetime.” Which had made him laugh, and made him a bit embarrassed, too.