Headstrong

by Meg Maguire

  Reece scowled at the pair of them. “I’m off until supper. I’ll see you later,” he said to Colin, then let a pointed gaze pose it as a question to Libby. His body tensed, angry. It was unfortunate, and a bit irritating, considering how indulgent she’d gotten him to be the night before. His protective, controlling instincts asserted themselves. He didn’t like the thought of Libby letting Colin get too close to her, even if they’d been upright and fully clothed.

  Colin waved at him and yawned broadly. “See you.”

  Libby spoke after what seemed like a brief period of consideration. “Hey, wait. Are you working tonight? Downstairs?”

  Reece nodded. “Yeah.”

  “How about tomorrow?”

  “No.”

  “I have to go to Karori for a night visit, if you want to document me.”

  There was some quality to this invitation that Reece couldn’t interpret, one that made him distrust her. Everything about this morning made him distrust her. The affection he’d let himself feel the night before disintegrated.

  “Let’s just meet tomorrow afternoon, like we planned,” he said. “I can’t photograph you in the dark, plus your dad’s not going to buy that I managed to slip into a wildlife sanctuary after hours.”

  “You could have joined a night tour.”

  He shook his head. “Too complicated. Let’s stick to our plan.”

  “Fine,” Libby sighed. How anyone could be this theatrically petulant so soon after waking, Reece couldn’t understand.

  “I’ll see you in town tomorrow,” he said.

  She gave him a dismissive wave, clearly displeased to have had her plans thwarted.

  Bloody spoiled, Reece thought.

  His eyes flicked to Colin. Bloody doomed.

  Libby took a breath as the door shut behind Reece, unsure how she was feeling…but it was too early in the morning for self-analysis. She’d put that off until she had some breakfast in her stomach. She and Colin went about the business of waking up, waiting for one another to finish in the bathroom so he could leave for work, her for the university.

  She tugged on her shoes as Colin did the same beside her on the couch. His energy was a bit off, darkened by that palpable cloud still hovering over his usual good mood.

  “I think this one’s yours.” He held a slightly smaller sneaker against the bottom of the one he’d just laced. They swapped.

  Libby had a brainwave. “So, you aren’t working tonight.”

  “Nope.”

  “Would you like to come to Karori with me?”

  “I always want to do stuff with you,” Colin said simply. He seemed to perk up a bit, clouds dissipating.

  Libby brightened too. “Oh, good. I have to get some samples, which will take like three minutes, but I get from about five until ten to wander around before I get officially locked in or suspected of bio-sabotage.”

  “Delightful.”

  “Can you meet me at the cable car?” she asked. “Is four thirty too early?”

  “That’s fine. I’ll bring you a coffee.”

  Libby smiled. If only polygamy were in fashion…or if she could just combine the two Nolans into one man. They’d make one hell of a good boyfriend.

  Chapter Eleven

  Colin watched as the woman he was rapidly and inescapably falling in love with came swishing toward him, out of the rush-hour sidewalk traffic and into the cement courtyard beside the cable-car terminus building. He held up Libby’s coffee as she spotted him, and her smile was like two hands—one holding his heart and the other his groin, either or both poised to cause him great pain or pleasure should she so desire.

  Libby only knew about the hand that had him by the balls. She had to know, since she used it to her advantage with each and every man she encountered, each and every day. Well, every man save one, as best Colin could tell.

  “Thanks, Tiger.” She took her coffee and lifted the lid to inspect its contents.

  “Flat white,” he said. “No sugar.”

  “Pale and bitter, like I like my men.”

  Colin smirked. “You should let it go cold then.”

  She cracked a tiny smile, looking grudgingly relieved that he’d been the one to make light of the previous evening. Her eyes darted around. “Where’s your precious bicycle?”

  “At the dispatch. I’ll get a ride in with Reece tomorrow.”

  “And how’s the other bike?” she asked. “Your new green steed?”

  “The Helyett? I’m waiting for an ancient derailleur from Minnesota. The post just about cost me what I paid for the whole flipping frame… I’m starting to reconsider this French-bicycle fetish. They’re such bloody prima donnas about what parts they’ll take.”

  Libby shook her head in mock solidarity. “Bitches, man.”

  Colin noticed she was dressed differently than normal. Not professional, necessarily, but prepared—hiking pants and boots, a puffy red vest over her thermal shirt. No bracelets today and her hair was pulled back in a comparably tame ponytail. He held her cup as she slipped a backpack off her shoulders and extracted a few dollar coins from its front pocket.

  “You don’t have to do that,” he said.

  She glanced up. “Do what?”

  “Pay for the coffee. I’m not bothered.”

  She laughed. “Oh sorry, I wasn’t. You owed me a coffee anyway. But this is for the cable car. You’re my official research assistant this evening so I can at least pay for your transportation.”

  “It’ll be weird to see you doing actual work.”

  “Ahem, I am your brother’s employer, in a twisted sort of capacity. You should be nicer to me.” She took her coffee back and gazed at him pompously over the lid as she took a sip. Her eyes were the dark, stormy blue of an unwelcoming sea. No wonder she scared the shit out of Reece.

  Then Colin remembered that far different look on her face from the night before, after she’d been alone with Reece in his room doing God-knew-what. It made Colin sad to think Libby probably wasn’t in as much control as she was accustomed to, or would like to have everyone believe.

  They paid the ticket woman and went inside the building that housed the trolley’s lowest stop. The tourists had faded with the daylight, and Libby picked them a bench inside the empty car.

  Colin watched her peel labels from a printed sheet and paste them around a dozen prescription-sized bottles filled with blue liquid. “What exactly will this research entail?”

  “Sample collection.”

  “Larvae snatching?” he translated.

  “I know, sexy work. Don’t forget the mucous. Did I mention I went to both Harvard and MIT?” she added dryly, trying to reassert some of her impressiveness.

  “What will my exact role be?”

  “You’re just here to entertain me,” she said. “Every time I study these guys, it blows my mind how cool they are, and there’s never anybody there to share it with.”

  “You could have just as easily done this during the day, couldn’t you?”

  She shrugged. “Sure. But skulking around in the pitch-black woods is so much more fun. And exclusive. I had to sign a ton of waivers and affidavits to get this privilege. Plus maybe we’ll see a kiwi!” She jostled Colin’s shoulder with excitement.

  He smiled and settled into the sensation of simply sitting beside her, going nowhere. Still, he couldn’t ignore the sad fact that manifested and also undermined this pleasure.

  “I’m sorry Reece couldn’t go with you.” Why he said it, he wasn’t sure. Perhaps to let her know that he still understood his role in all this.

  Libby shrugged. “Eh. You’re more fun.”

  More permissive, you mean. “I do what I can.”

  Libby’s body jerked as the cable car lurched into motion, and she slopped coffee across her knees.

  God, he loved her.

  The walk from the summit of the cable car through Kelburn to the Karori Wildlife Sanctuary took a good twenty-five minutes, winding them through the pretty suburbs. It w
as a nice change from the commercial sprawl of the Nolans’ neighborhood, and Colin envied the people who lived here. It would mean a murderous commute for a cyclist though, and anyhow, who knew how many years lay ahead of Colin before he’d be able to escape the shackles of the family debt…assuming Reece’s ridiculous gig as Libby’s double agent didn’t prove to be the fix they’d dreamed of.

  “You’re quiet,” she said, interrupting Colin’s increasingly anxious internal monologue.

  “Yeah.”

  “Penny for your thoughts?”

  “I’ll need a fair bit more than that… Just the pub. Money stress.”

  “Tonight is not the night for grown-up concerns,” Libby announced. “Tonight is about magical glowing larvae and nocturnal, flightless birds. And owls. And giant crickets and silver ferns.”

  “You’re the boss.”

  “No more heavy thoughts, Nolan.”

  When they reached the information building, Libby turned into a different person. She was greeted cordially by the tour guides, and she chatted with them in a soft, professional tone of voice Colin had never heard her use before. It didn’t come off as fake, either—more like a well-kept secret.

  She introduced Colin around, and they had their bags searched for any stowaway rodents. A single mouse let in from the outside could spell disaster for the native plants and animals housed within the high fence that bordered the park. Such was the magic and misery of living in one of the final places on the planet to be discovered and settled by humans. Millions of years spent evolving birds so specialized and unthreatened that they didn’t bother to retain the ability to fly, or the common sense to run from the dogs and vermin that had arrived a few hundred years ago with the colonists from Europe.

  A staff member walked them to the massive chain-link gate and locked it shut behind them. “Your car’s going to be here at nine forty-five, and they’ll wait until half-ten for you.”

  “Thanks, we’ll be there.” Libby waved goodbye, and they set off toward the lush hills in the distance. She craned her head to the clear, darkening sky. The sun was just setting, and the moon and stars were already promising to put on a good show.

  “Man, we picked a good night for this,” she murmured, voice still soft.

  Colin didn’t reply. He felt spacey and reflective, and feared anything he might say would come out incriminatingly sentimental.

  “I’m sorry you guys have such crappy skin-cancer statistics,” she went on, “but I have to say, your freakish lack of air pollution and that ozone hole you inherited from Antarctica sure makes for some beautiful stars.”

  “You’re a poet, Libby.”

  She elbowed him in the ribs, and he nudged her back with his shoulder. He wanted this to feel like a brother-sister exchange, but it never could. He doubted he’d ever stop feeling that impulse to spin her around and cross his mouth over hers—it was as real and undeniable as the sounds and smells and the breeze that surrounded them. They continued into the dark woods.

  As they walked, they pointed out the sounds to each other—the morepork owls’ trilling hoots, lumbering, noisy kaka parrots crashing around in the trees. These things were nothing exotic to Colin, but Libby lit up like a child each time she heard one.

  “This must all be boring to you, your so-called exotic species,” she said after a half hour’s trekking.

  “Yeah. But I’m sure if I came to Boston I’d be excited about your birds too.”

  “Maybe. But ours are way less exotic than yours. You’ve got pukekos. We’ve got pigeons and mallards.”

  “We’ve got those too.”

  “Show-off. Are you one of those obnoxious New Zealanders that’s totally taken for granted that you live in like the most beautiful country in the entire world?”

  “Yeah, probably. I don’t leave the city much, anyhow.”

  “Oh yeah, because Wellington’s so hideous. I don’t know what’s more horrid—the endless waterfront or the swaying palm trees or the botanic gardens…”

  “Yeah, yeah.”

  “If I get my visa extension,” she said, “we should take a trip to the South Island. See some penguins or glaciers or something before I have to head home. Scenic train ride, maybe?”

  Colin could think of nothing better on the face of the earth, aside perhaps from holding Libby’s face in his palms and giving her a taste of the sorts of things he’d found himself almost painfully preoccupied with for the last couple of weeks. “If I ever have a day off work before I’m seventy, you’re on.”

  “I think my visa will definitely expire by then,” Libby said.

  “Better find yourself a sham husband, quick.”

  “That’s not such a terrible idea, actually.” Libby poked him with her bony elbow again. She wiggled her eyebrows and hummed the first bar of the Wedding March.

  Colin decided to change the topic and draw his mind away from the obscene amount of uninvited pleasure now pulsing through him. “I’ve never actually seen the glowworms here.”

  “What? This is practically up the street from you.”

  “Well, I’ve been here,” he said. “For school trips and things. But not at night.”

  “Where did you see glowworms?”

  “I’ve seen them a few times. The time I best remember was when I was about six and our family went on holiday up north. We did one of those naff canoe-rides-through-the-glowworm-cave deals. That was pretty choice. For me and Annie at least, since Reece refused to go.”

  “Why?” Libby asked.

  “Heh. You didn’t know he’s petrified of water? I figured between your boat and the surfing you’d have caught on by now.”

  “I didn’t,” she said, nodding slowly. “It makes sense though. And it totally wrecks my belief that I may have at one time successfully intimidated him.”

  “Yeah, sorry. He’s always hated it—oceans and lakes and swimming pools. Mad he keeps choosing to live on islands.”

  “Where besides here and England?”

  “He spent a year in the Philippines too. Some kind of teacher-exchange program with a karate school or something. Actually, the water phobia’s the whole reason he even got into martial arts.”

  “Oh?”

  Colin nodded. “We took sailing lessons one summer when I was about seven. Me and just about all the kids in the neighborhood. Reece refused, of course, so he took tae kwon do instead, while we were out in the bay all summer. And the rest is history. It was sort of fate, really. He was such a weird little kid. No ten-year-old should be that serious and disciplined. And it was good for him—he got picked on a lot, before that. That’s what Annie told me, anyhow.”

  “Can he swim?”

  Colin smirked. “Not yet…but he’ll have to learn, and soon. It’s a requirement for the police.”

  “Huh. And why do you think he’s afraid of water?”

  “Oh, I dunno. Just one of those things, I guess. He never got pushed off a pier and almost drowned or anything. Just irrational.”

  “I’m that way with mice.”

  He laughed. “How did you ever get through university? Isn’t biology nothing but little white mice?”

  “Don’t remind me.” She made a shuddering noise. “I’m okay with dead mice, thankfully. Although the ones skittering around my various shit-hole apartments were very much alive… Shrinks are scary too,” she added. “Worse than mice, and more parasitic. And more expensive.”

  “I’ll take your word for it.”

  “So what are you afraid of? Wait, let me guess…” She tapped a finger against her lips, thinking.

  “Have at it.”

  “Snakes?”

  “Nope.”

  “Not head injuries, that’s for sure, Mr. No-Helmet. Not needles,” she said, presumably meaning the tattoos. “How about creepy-crawly things? You okay with spiders?”

  “Spiders are fine.”

  “Okay, I give.”

  “I’m not afraid of much. Not silly stuff, I mean. I’m afraid of childbirth n
ow, thanks to Annie.”

  “Well, that makes two of us.” Libby paused to squint at the map. “What are you afraid of, though? There must be something.”

  Colin swallowed. “I’m terrified of driving. Not riding in a car obviously, just driving one. It gives me panic attacks.”

  Libby nodded thoughtfully for a moment. “That’s so weird. Given how fast you whip around between them all day.”

  “Yeah.” Just talking about this made his throat constrict.

  “Well if it makes you feel any better, I don’t even know how to drive.”

  “Really? I thought you just didn’t do the whole left-hand-lane thing.”

  She shook her head. “Nope. I was sort of… I was supposed to take Driver’s Ed when I was sixteen, but something came up and I never got around to it. And you don’t need a car in Boston, anyway.”

  “Well, good to know I’m not the only one.” And it was.

  Colin stopped to pull his jacket out of his bag. Darkness was descending fast. There was a moon out somewhere, blocked by the canopy. “You have a torch, eh? We’re almost out of daylight.”

  “I have two, but I don’t want to use the white one. I’m hoping to spot my kiwi.”

  “What does that leave us with, then?”

  “One with a red bulb. I hope you aren’t scared of the dark as well.”

  “Nope. Lead the way, Captain.”

  Libby rummaged in her bag and pulled out a flashlight. She switched it on and trained a red beam on the ground in front of them. It was intense but had no range. If she’d been wearing her usual sneakers with their white laces and toes, Colin might have stood a chance at following her with some kind of ease, but this…

  “You really need to see this kiwi?”

  “Shhh. The hunt is on.”

  Colin switched to a whisper. “There’s a one-legged one in Wellington Zoo you can see any old time.”

  “I hate zoos,” Libby whispered back, closing the topic.

  They wandered along the packed dirt trails. Colin smiled each time Libby snapped to attention at the smallest sound from the undergrowth, training her flashlight into the foliage and emitting tiny, desperate noises.