Just Not Mine (Escape to New Zealand)

by Rosalind James

  “Give her a chance to back out.” Hugh wondered if it was too late to change his mind. Yeh. It was. But the only thing worse than trying to be cool about kissing Josie on screen, he very much feared, would be trying to be cool about her kissing Will. “Oh, wait,” he said, doing his best on the cool thing. “She’s an actress. It’s her job to pretend to fancy the unfanciable.”

  “You wish,” Will said.

  “Can’t wait to see what they do with this one,” Brenda said. “Now let’s sort out which day, and I’ll let them take it from there. We’ll email you with the details.”

  All the Live Ones

  Hugh thought he had everything ready at last. It had been a truly impressive organizational effort, involving togs and towels, sunblock and mozzie repellent and forgotten sun hats. Fortunately not involving food, because he’d got away with supplying the drink, which had stretched him enough. He’d had to ring Reka in desperation for instructions, though he’d concealed that from Amelia by doing it from the back garden. But now, the boot was loaded with bottles and the car was about to be loaded with kids, and their Sunday outing was finally underway.

  Until Josie’s car pulled into her driveway, and she hopped out and opened her own boot with a wave at them, and he saw that it was loaded down as well and crossed her front garden to find out more.

  “I thought we had to go,” Amelia said from behind him. “You said we were late.”

  Hugh glanced back at her. “No worries. It’s a picnic, isn’t it.”

  “That’s not what you said,” he heard her mutter, but he wasn’t really listening.

  “Hi,” he said to Josie. “What’s up?”

  “Just doing a bit of gardening.” She smiled at Charlie, who hadn’t hung back one bit. “You look like you’re off somewhere exciting.”

  “A picnic,” Charlie told her. “And swimming.”

  “Looks like you may need a hand before we go,” Hugh said. “Now that I’ve got two and all.”

  “A few bags of soil amendment and some plants,” she said. “I’ve got it.”

  “Nah,” he said, reaching in for them. “I do.”

  “Whoa, impressive,” she said as he pulled two out at once and hefted the load.

  “Why d’you think I have to do it?” he asked with a grin. “Just get the plants,” he told her when she reached for another of the heavy bags. “You and the kids.”

  “Hugh,” she sighed, but she grabbed a tray, Amelia took another, and Charlie ran ahead for the gate.

  Hugh dumped his bags at the spot Josie indicated, in the shade under the tree at the back of the garden, then went back for the rest.

  “So you’re going to spend this gorgeous day in your work clothes,” he said to Josie when they’d emptied the boot. “Doesn’t sound right. I think you should go on our picnic with us instead.” Which sounded, he hoped, appropriately casual and child-chaperoned.

  “I should get these plants in,” she said. “Now that I’ve bought them.”

  “How about if I promise to help you with that afterwards? It won’t take long with two of us. And I think you need an outing.”

  “You do, eh.” She was laughing a little at him now.

  “I do.” In truth, she was looking a bit weary, though he wasn’t going to say that. Telling a woman she looked tired was a mistake he’d been put right on some years back. “Besides, it’d be a chance to meet another one of your, um, volunteers,” he added, “as Koti James will be there. Some of the North Shore boys are getting together, doing a farewell picnic with Hemi Ranapia and his family. He’s off to the Bay of Plenty in the New Year to take up a job as the backs coach, working with Drew Callahan. So, farewell picnic. Good fun, and a chance for you to give Koti and me some acting tips so we won’t disgrace you.”

  “Really.” She looked interested in that. Or maybe just in Koti, because that was the usual reaction. “I’d heard that that’s where Drew had gone.”

  “And here I thought you didn’t follow rugby,” he sighed. “My only consolation for my lack of an impression on you’s just been shattered.”

  “Knowing what the captain of the All Blacks is doing isn’t following rugby,” she said. “It’s unavoidable. And I didn’t make an impression on you either, remember?”

  “Yeh, you did. And former captain.”

  “Forever and always captain. And no, I didn’t. You didn’t know who I was either.”

  “Doesn’t mean you didn’t make an impression,” he said. “Doesn’t mean that at all.”

  “Hugh,” Amelia reminded him. “Picnic.”

  “Yeh, so …” Hugh said, and looked at Josie. “Picnic? Long Bay? Swim? Completely safe. Partners, kids, the works.”

  “You should come, Josie,” Charlie said earnestly. “It’ll be fun. I’ll talk to you, if you feel shy.”

  She smiled at him. “Thanks. I’d have to get my things.”

  “We’ll wait,” Hugh told her. “We’ve got all day.”

  It didn’t take her long at all. Not more than ten minutes, and they were on the road. Only his second time with her in his car, and very nice indeed to have her there. It might be well chaperoned, but it felt like a date all the same, because she had on her white dress and a pair of oversized sunglasses that spelled glamour all the way, her long legs were folded elegantly together in the passenger seat beside her big straw bag, and there was nobody he’d rather have had next to him on his way to a picnic. Or a swim.

  They found the picnic already in swing, of course, because despite what he’d told Amelia, they were late. A couple tables were shoved together on the wide expanse of grass near the big play structure, and everyone else had arrived, everyone he’d expected and then some. Reka and Hemi Ranapia with their baby, Kate and Koti James with theirs. Not all happy families, though, because Kevin had come, out of his boot now but still limping a bit. And, unfortunately, Will had too, and he was looking all too pleased at the sight of Josie.

  “Oh, good, you’re here with the drinks,” Reka said as they approached, the kids in the lead, Hugh bringing up the rear with the big chilly bin. “And you’ve brought company. Awesome.”

  “My neighbor,” Hugh began. “Josie Pae Ata.” He wished there were some way to introduce her that would make her think this was a friendly outing and make Will think that it wasn’t, but if it existed, it was eluding him.

  Reka took the introductions out of his hands. “Hugh didn’t need to tell me who you are,” she said at the end of them, “because I’m a fan. Come to meet the new recruits, have you? What a nice surprise for us.”

  “Not going to be such a nice surprise for her, not when she sees how stage-struck these two show ponies are,” Hemi said. “Thank goodness Hugh’s going to be there to settle things down like a good solid forward, because otherwise, I’d have felt duty-bound to come along and keep them from getting excited, deciding they needed more camera time. You get them improvising all over the shop, and things will be out of control before you know it.”

  “Not me,” Koti said. “Strictly a bystander in this drama. I have exactly four lines, and I’ve memorized them. Will’s the one convinced he’s going to be a star. He’s been lying about for a week practicing his barely controlled wincing, asking us for feedback on his look of noble anguish.”

  “Nice,” Will complained. “She’s meant to be overcome by my appeal. How’s that going to happen now?”

  “Nah, mate,” Koti said. “The way I read it, you’re meant to be overcome by hers.”

  “Well, that might be easier,” Will said, and Hugh wondered if he were going to regret his impulsive decision to bring her along.

  “The other kids are over there on the structure already,” Reka told Amelia and Charlie, standing at the edge of the group. “You can head on over there and find them. You remember them from the pizza party, don’t you?”

  “Yeh,” Amelia said doubtfully, “but I’m a bit old for playing.”

  “Nah,” Reka said. “Enjoy it while you can. Don’t tell, but I
took a turn on the flying fox myself with them earlier. Tried to get these boys to do it too, but they were too scared.”

  Her husband snorted. “Scared we’d break it, you’re right about that.”

  “Besides,” Reka went on, “Ariana’s looking forward to seeing you. I’ve found a ballet school for her, and she wants to ask you about it. She’s a bit nervous about it. Be a love and chat with her, would you?”

  “Sure,” Amelia said, looking a little happier. “I can do that.”

  “You could help her with Luke, too, if you wouldn’t mind,” Reka said. “She could use somebody older to lend a hand, just until we go for our swim.”

  “Thanks,” Hugh said as Amelia and Charlie headed over to the big wooden structure that had become a beehive of kids on this warm summer Sunday. “She thinks she’s eighteen.”

  “They swing back and forth at that age,” Reka said. “The trick is to give them jobs, make them feel helpful. Plus,” she said with a laugh, “you do get their help, that way. That’s the upside.”

  They decided to wait a bit on the alcohol, in the end—well, Reka decided—and have a swim first, and after another effort of rounding up kids and making arrangements, the entire party was headed down to the beach.

  “You should swim too,” Ariana had told Will once it had been settled that the women wanted a good long swim and the men were being left to mind the kids. “There’s a raft and everything.” Will had already begun to make his mark on the Kiwi women, Hugh thought, because even the nine-year-olds were clearly smitten.

  “Well, if there’s a raft,” Will said, “how can I resist?”

  “We’ll all go,” Hugh said. Especially if he were going to see Josie in her togs at last.

  Pity he wasn’t the only one looking. It turned out that Josie’s bikini wasn’t pink, and it wasn’t as tiny as the one in his dream, either. But it was black, and it was good. She didn’t make any production of undressing, any more than Reka and Kate did, but the three of them stripping down made for a show any man would have been hard-pressed not to watch, though Hugh knew which one he was looking at.

  He reminded himself that he was meant to be keeping an eye on the kids, dutifully checked on them, in the water already, splashing and shrieking. They didn’t seem to need his help, so he pulled his own T-shirt over his head, tossed it to the sand with the rest of the gear, and sneaked another peek to see that the other two women were already in the water, but Josie wasn’t. She was reaching up to pull the pins out of her knotted hair, then working to fasten the heavy mass into a long braid, and it was enough like his dream that his body was threatening to embarrass him.

  “You can quit perving any time now,” he told Will, because Will wasn’t looking at the kids at all. “Weren’t we meant to be swimming?”

  “In a minute,” Will said, sounding abstracted. “Bloody hell. Welcome to New Zealand, Will Tawera.”

  “You’d think you’d never seen a girl in a bikini before,” Hugh said. “Thought they had a few in Aussie.”

  “Not many like that, they don’t,” Will replied, unabashed. “Just remembered what I’ve missed most about the homeland. And I had to rest my eyes somewhere, didn’t I, because I’m not looking at Reka and Kate getting their gear off. It always gives me a chill when I realize I’ve been perving at somebody’s mum. And a hell of a chill to think about Hemi watching me perve at his wife. Discretion is the better part of valor, or so the man says. And anyway, Josie’s got to be used to fellas looking at her. If you’re going to be taking your clothes off on camera at every opportunity, it’s going to happen. Did you see that billboard with her on it? Fwah,” he sighed. “I nearly drove off the road. Pure luck that I didn’t crash like those other poor blokes.”

  Hugh didn’t share that he’d been one of those blokes. “Yeh, I saw it,” he said.

  “I saw she’d broken up with her partner, too,” Will said. “I wonder if that was the reason. I might not be too happy to have my girlfriend naked on a billboard for the world and all my mates to see.”

  “Wouldn’t date a lingerie model, eh,” Kevin said. “Against your principles.”

  “Well, now you mention it,” Will laughed, “rules are made to be broken, aren’t they. So is it true, Hugh? She single now?”

  “It’s true,” Hugh said reluctantly. “Not dating yet, though.”

  “And ‘yet’ would be the operative word,” Will said. “A lonely woman needs consolation, and I’m the understanding type.”

  “I have my doubts about that,” Kevin said. “You seem pretty clueless to me, I have to say. Does the fact that you’re here with Josie,” he asked Hugh, “mean something?”

  “Means she’s my neighbor,” he said. “And,” he added, “my friend as well. And that you should quit staring at her.” He shot Will a look that he thought should get the message across.

  “Can’t do it anyway,” Will said, “not when she’s in the water. I’ll have to wait for her to come out again, won’t I.”

  “And what about Chloe?” Kevin asked, ignoring him.

  “Chloe?” That was Will. “Who’s Chloe? You got more than one supermodel you’ve been hiding from me? It’s always the quiet ones, isn’t it.”

  “Josie’s friend,” Hugh said. “My sister’s ballet teacher. Very nice girl,” he told Kevin. “But not my nice girl.”

  “Ah,” Kevin said.

  “I remember now,” Will said. “And I think I ought to have been spending my time with Hugh instead of Hemi, because you seem to have found all the live ones. And to have thrown them back, too. It’s not a catch and release sport, you know.”

  Hugh opened his mouth, but Kevin got there first. “Really,” he said. “Because it sounds to me like that’s exactly what it is. For you.”

  Destiny Breathing Down Your Neck

  Josie had had her swim with the other women, and had been glad she’d come, because it was so easy being here.

  There was a reason, she thought, striking out for the point behind Reka and Kate, that she’d dated actors for so many years. They understood each other, not just the job, but what it was like to live in the public eye. But being an actor, no matter how well known, was nothing like the pressure and expectations on an All Black, and she had a feeling that Hugh and his mates knew all about the effort it sometimes took to make strangers walk away talking about how “natural and friendly” you were, when you’d actually been feeling unnaturally cross. She suspected that Koti James could teach her a thing or two about being a sex object, too.

  The calm spread through her, the pleasant, faint languor filling her as they swam on. Nobody seemed in a hurry to get out of the water, so deliciously cool against their heated skin, such a pleasure to know that there was no need to rush, to get to the next thing.

  Finally, though, they emerged from the sea, back where they’d started. They ran for their towels, wrapped up, shivering and laughing, and Josie saw that they hadn’t been the only ones who hadn’t wanted to leave the water. The older kids were still out there, clustered around the wooden raft set not too far from shore. And not just the kids, because she recognized Hugh hauling himself up onto the structure with a quick, athletic heave, and as she’d already noticed, he had some strength in those shoulders and arms.

  Well, of course he did. They all did. He was crouching, reaching a hand down for Charlie and pulling him up to join him, hauling Hemi’s son Jamie in as well, while the older girls scrambled up on their own.

  She could see Will, too, still treading water beyond the raft, and now the kids were jumping off again, seeing who could make the biggest splash, until Hugh was the only one left standing. He waved off the others’ encouragement to jump until they were shouting and beating the water with their palms, then backed up, ran, and took a mighty leap, his arms wrapping around his knees, landing with a truly magnificent shower of spray that drenched everybody and created a commotion Josie could hear all the way from the beach.

  “Pretty good bloke, Hugh,” Reka said beside
her. Kate had already left them to join Koti, Hemi, and Kevin, all of them sitting with the littlies and working on building a castle. And on keeping the babies from stuffing sand into their mouths.

  “He’s all right,” Josie agreed cautiously.

  “Taking a real interest in those kids at last too,” Reka said. “Good to see.”

  He was on the raft again, saw the two of them watching and gave her a wave, and she waved back, feeling a little self-conscious.

  “Well,” she told Reka, “it’s a change for him, isn’t it?” She shivered, wrapped her towel more tightly around her. “Brrr. I’m going to go get out of my togs.” She picked up her bag.

  “I’ll come with you,” Reka said. “Leave the boys in charge a while longer, since they’re doing so well.”

  Afterwards, they ate the picnic to which Josie hadn’t contributed one bit, the older kids headed off to the play structure again, Amelia apparently having forgotten her mature status, and nobody else seemed inclined to move too much. Hemi had his baby daughter Anika in his lap, her thumb in her mouth, her heavy eyes continually drifting shut, then opening again. Everyone else lay or sat, pleasantly stuffed and relaxed, on blankets spread on the grass in the shade while family picnics and impromptu rugby games happened around them.

  Reka plucked Kate and Koti’s daughter Maia out of the bouncy seat where she was kicking her plump little legs, lifted her into the air, then brought her down to sit on her knee. “Oh, I’m going to miss this girl,” she said. “What am I going to do without you?” she asked as Maia raised her bright eyes to her, laughed out of her rosebud mouth. “I’m going to have Maia-withdrawal, aren’t I, and so’s Anika.”

  “Not as bad as my withdrawal,” Kate complained. She was propped back on her hands, Koti stretched out with his handsome head in her lap, looking the picture of domestic bliss. “First Hannah leaves, then you? I’m not going to have a single friend left.”

  “Got me, haven’t you.” Koti had turned his head to look up at her, scowling a little in what was clearly a well-rehearsed routine.