Just Not Mine (Escape to New Zealand) Read online

  The doorbell rang, and he hustled back through the house, opened the door to find Chloe. Looking, yes, pretty similar to Juliette, elegant in a green-and-white print wrap dress, a chubby toddler on one hip, a heavy-looking bag slung across the other shoulder, both of them seeming like too much weight for her slim frame.

  “Hi,” he said, stepping back to let her in. “Let me take that from you,” he offered, reaching for the bag. “Everyone’s on the patio. And introduce me, please,” he added belatedly.

  “This is Zavy,” she said. “Xavier.”

  “Hi, Zavy,” Hugh said. The boy looked at him unblinkingly out of big brown eyes and clung to his mother, and as a buttering-up tactic, Hugh thought, that hadn’t gone too well.

  “Here we are,” he said, taking them out back and seeing Zavy’s solemn face light up, his arms go out for Josie. She had the knack, no question.

  “Bag’s over here,” Hugh said, setting it down near the wall. Nappies, he guessed.

  “It’s got his blanket in it,” Chloe told Josie. “And a toy or two. He’s already in his jammies. But sorry,” she caught herself with a laugh. “You can see that.”

  “Hi, Zavy!” Amelia said chirpily to the boy. “You get to play with us tonight! And you get to sleep in my bed! Won’t that be fun?”

  “He’s got plenty of minders tonight, doesn’t he?” Chloe asked her. “She knows him because I bring him to the studio sometimes with me,” she explained to Hugh. “In a pinch. Got a pen in the corner. He’s not much of a one for fussing, luckily.”

  “How about if Charlie and I clean up here,” Josie suggested, “and you and Zavy can check out his toys, Amelia? Then we can all watch a film. I rented a couple for us to choose from, and I predict some heated negotiations ahead.”

  “No princesses,” Charlie said immediately. “And no kissing. Amelia always wants to watch ones with kissing. Lame as.”

  “I do not,” Amelia said. “You just think that because they have adult themes that you aren’t mature enough for.”

  “Wait a minute,” Hugh said. “Adult themes? No adult themes.”

  “I think she means young adult themes,” Josie said with a smile, “which can occasionally include a kiss or two. But no worries, Charlie. No kissing in these, or if there is, only at the end, and I’ll alert you if it’s looking dodgy, give you a chance to make a timely dash for the toilet.”

  “Sounds like the entertainment options will be pretty good,” Chloe said. “Maybe we should just stay here, Hugh.”

  He realized that he’d got distracted. He was meant to be kick-starting his love life, not having cozy family time, however appealing that suddenly and unreasonably sounded. He was meant to be concentrating on Chloe. He reminded himself to do just that for the rest of the evening.

  He managed it pretty well, in the end. He’d booked them in at Five Forty in Takapuna, close enough to home and her son to keep her comfortable, flash enough to make it look like he was trying. He’d chosen snapper for his meal, because he could eat it with one hand and still look reasonably civilized, had ordered their best white wine, had asked her more questions about her life.

  “Josie and I were best of friends at school,” she said, which he already knew. “Even though she boarded and I didn’t. I took her home, lots of weekends, because she’s a home sort of person, and I knew she was lonely. Although of course she’d never have said, and you’d never have known.”

  “A good actress even then, eh,” he said.

  “Always a good front,” she agreed. “That’s Josie. If she’s hurting, you don’t know it. When my partner left me while I was pregnant with Zavy, that was a hard time for her too. She’d come over and spend the night with me, leave in the morning, and I’d realize that she’d never said anything about herself, and that I’d never asked. Of course, I was such a wreck at the time, between the hormones and the studio and the stress and all, I was in a fog.”

  “It was a hard time for her?” Hugh asked. “Why?”

  “Oh.” Chloe looked a little taken aback. “Just some things she was going through herself at the time.”

  What kinds of things? Hugh wondered. Chloe was right, Josie never seemed fussed. He should turn the conversation back to Chloe, though. He was just trying to think of a smooth way to do it when he heard the voice at his elbow.

  “Another wounded warrior on the town.”

  He turned around, the smile already on his face, because it was Hemi Ranapia, and he had company.

  “Fancy meeting you here,” Hemi’s partner Reka said, and Hugh stood to give her a kiss, nod his hello to Kevin McNicholl, balancing on his crutches in the confined space of the little restaurant, his booted foot stuck out in front of him.

  Reka was studying him—and Chloe—with interest, and Hugh made introductions. “Just get here?” he asked.

  “Nah, just finished, mate,” Hemi said. “Around the back, on the patio. Our usual wild night. Taking Kevvie out, because I took him along to the gym with me yesterday and he was looking like I needed to do something, stop him talking to the walls.”

  “Join us, why don’t you,” Hugh said. “We’ve got a good bit more wine here that needs finishing off, could get another few glasses.” He lifted a hand for the waiter and asked for them.

  Reka looked at him speculatively. “For a minute, then,” she decided, and Hemi and Hugh adjusted chairs, pulled the table out to allow Kevin to get himself and his boot in.

  Chloe gave Kevin an assessing look. “I recognized Hemi straight away, so I’m going to guess that you’re a rugby player as well, and that that’s the source of that injury.”

  “My sad fate,” he said with his cheerful grin. “Hemi and Hugh look like footy players, and I look like the farmer I ought to be, ginger hair and all.”

  “I didn’t say that,” she protested, laughing.

  “Don’t let the false modesty fool you,” Hemi said. “Kevvie saves all his flash for the paddock, that’s all. Scored some pretty spectacular tries during the Championship. Had a hat trick against the Wallabies a couple months ago, in fact. He’d be on the Tour along with Hugh here if they hadn’t been left behind to mend their broken bits.”

  “Perils of the game,” Reka said. “I have to admit, I always enjoyed the injury breaks. I did,” she protested at Hemi’s indignant snort. “Only way I got to see you. Now,” she sighed, “I wonder what I was thinking. Always underfoot, now you’ve retired.”

  “Too right,” Hemi said. “Looking after the kids, doing the cooking. Bloody nightmare.”

  “That looks like it was a pretty bad injury, though,” Chloe told Kevin. “If you’re still on crutches, because it seems like Hugh’s had his hand in that cast for a few weeks. Haven’t you?” she asked him.

  “Yeh,” he said. “We both copped it in the last match of the Championship, three weeks ago now.”

  “You’re right,” Kevin told Chloe, “feels like I’ve been in this boot for a good while. Hemi and Reka took pity on me tonight, because it was true, I was going stir-crazy at home. Not being able to drive, it’s the worst, eh.” He looked appraisingly at Hugh’s hand. “You driving with that? Bit of a menace, aren’t you?”

  “No more than usual,” Hugh said.

  “Wait a minute,” Chloe said. “You both got injured in the same game? Must have been quite a game.”

  “It was,” Kevin said. “I take it you didn’t watch it.” He was smiling, though.

  “Well, no,” she admitted, smiling back. “I didn’t.”

  “And Kevvie’s foot wouldn’t have been as bad as it was,” Hugh told her, “if he hadn’t kept playing on it almost the entire game. Pounded that bone till it was more than cracked, till it was well and truly broken, is what he did. By the time we got on the plane, it was swollen to twice its size.”

  “And you’d have done exactly the same,” Kevin said. “Anyway, I’ll be fighting fit by January.”

  “If you need a lift anyplace in the meantime,” Hugh said, “ring me.”


  Kevin looked at Hugh’s own cast, doubt written all over his good-natured countenance. “Don’t think so. What d’you do, club the car into submission?”

  “If I’m fit to drive kids, reckon I could drive one whingeing winger as well,” Hugh said, “even if he has to cower in the back seat and hide his eyes. I drive the ballet carpool, and if the twelve-year-old girls are brave enough to handle it, there might be hope for you yet.”

  “Ballet?” Reka asked, looking interested. “Would that be your sister? What’s her name again?”

  “Amelia,” Hugh said. “Chloe here runs a ballet school. Uh …” He looked at Chloe.

  “North Shore Dance,” Chloe said. “In Bayswater. We do ballet, jazz, tap. Got a class for adults too,” she said with a meaningful smile. “Great for fitness.”

  “Recipe for humiliation,” Reka laughed.

  “None of my ladies is there to win any scholarships,” Chloe said. “Just to enjoy themselves, get a good workout, feel more graceful when they leave, maybe.”

  “You should do it,” Hemi urged.

  “Saying I’m not fit?” Reka asked. “Watch it, boy.”

  “Nah,” he grinned. “Saying I’d like to see you in a … what do they call those things?” he asked Chloe.

  “Leotards,” she said with another smile.

  “I’ve had four kids,” Reka protested, but she was laughing again, looking gratified.

  “If you’ve had four kids and are still managing to look that good,” Chloe told her, “you should come along to ballet and show the other mums how it’s done.”

  Which was true, because Reka always looked good. Not quite like Josie, because Reka was darker, her features not as sharply carved, and she was even curvier, not confined by some ridiculous standard about how thin a woman ought to be. But with the same air of outsized vitality, that spark of life, of happiness to be here living it that made the room light up a little because she was there.

  “A dance teacher, and a saleswoman,” Reka told Chloe. “Good on ya. I was really thinking about my girls, though. Ariana would love to do ballet. She’s nine. That too old to start?”

  “Not at all,” Chloe assured her. “Hugh’s sister is twelve, and she only started a few years ago herself. It’s not necessarily about a career in dance, just like every boy who plays rugby won’t grow up to be an All Black. Present company excepted, of course.”

  “I know Amelia won’t,” Hugh said. “You don’t have to be tactful, by the way. Already saw that.”

  “Well …” Chloe admitted, “It could be her real talent lies elsewhere. Even a different type of athletics.”

  “I never thought of dancing being athletic,” Hugh said, “but I guess it is.”

  “I have a niece who’s dead keen on ballet,” Kevin put in. “She likes to inform me that pound for pound, dancers and jockeys are the strongest athletes there are.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t want to arm-wrestle you,” Chloe told him. “So I don’t know how we’d test that.”

  “We’ll take it as read,” Kevin said, smiling at her again, and Hugh’s date seemed to be getting away from him.

  Reka stood up, pulling Hemi with her. “And we’ve barged in on your evening out enough, Hugh. We’ll be off, leave you to get on with it.”

  “No rush,” Hugh felt constrained to say.

  “Oh,” Reka said, “I think there may be.” As Hugh stood to say goodbye, he saw Chloe reach down to grab Kevin’s crutches from the floor and hand them to him, and he saw that Reka saw it too.

  “Got a babysitter at home who’s probably tacking on the surcharges by now,” Reka said. “Good to meet you, Chloe. Hope to see you again sometime soon. Who knows, maybe I’ll try that ballet class after all.”

  “Could be I’ll get my leotard after all,” Hemi said. “Happy days.” And off they went.

  “Nice mates you have,” Chloe told Hugh when they’d sat down again.

  “Yeh. Sorry about that, though. May not have been quite the intimate evening we had in mind.”

  “No worries. I’m not that used to dating, tell you the truth. It’s been a while. Glad to have a little of the pressure off.” She smiled at him, her wood-elf’s face lighting up, and he laughed.

  “I know what you mean,” he confessed. “It can be a bit of an ordeal at times, can’t it, getting through the early stages, seeing if it’ll work?”

  “It can. Not that I do it much. Nothing like a baby to complicate the social life. Not to mention thinking about our own babysitter at home, no doubt regretting her kind offer.”

  He indicated the door. “Ready to put her out of her misery, then?”

  She smiled again and stood, accepted his help with her jacket, his hand on the door, with a gentle grace that he enjoyed watching.

  When he’d pulled into his drive and turned the car off, though, he was brought up short, realizing that Josie was in his house. Well, this was awkward.

  “This was nice,” he said across the dark car.

  “It was,” she agreed.

  He reached across the seat for her, grateful that he had his good right arm, at least, turned her face to his, and kissed her, a soft thing. And it felt … nice.

  “But not going to work, is it?” she asked when he’d pulled back again.

  He laughed, he couldn’t help it. “That good?”

  “Nah. Just no chemistry, is there? I like you, you like me, but … no. Is it Josie?”

  “Pardon?”

  She indicated the house with a quick movement of the dark head. “Who you want to be sitting here with? Who you’d rather be kissing?”

  “No,” he said. “No. Of course not.”

  “Uh-huh.” She opened her door, got out of the car, and he hastened to join her. “Good to know.”

  Just Not Me

  “So,” Josie asked, shoving the nappy bag into the back of the car while Chloe buckled a thankfully still-sleeping Zavy into his car seat in the rear of her tiny Fiat, “how’d it go? Hard to tell.”

  And she’d been looking, she admitted, though neither of them had given anything away. Hugh had offered Chloe the same circumspect peck on the cheek he’d given her. That said something right there, didn’t it? Although if it had had the effect on Chloe that it had had on her, there might be more to it than had met the eye.

  She’d been wondering for weeks what Hugh’s carefully-trimmed stubble would feel like, and just the hint of a whisper against her skin had made heat pool inside her, had had her forcing herself not to lean into him. She’d touched his broad shoulder, her fingers brushing lightly over the layer of jacket and shirt, and had wanted to keep holding him. To have him hold her, because he would have felt so solid. It would be so restful, leaning into all that strength, and yet not restful at all.

  But this wasn’t about her, it was about Chloe, so she looked the inquiry at her friend.

  “No,” Chloe said with decision, and Josie tried to still the rush of satisfaction. “Not happening.”

  “Why not?” Josie asked. “I didn’t expect love at first sight, maybe, but I thought you seemed well suited. I wasn’t surprised at all when he asked you out.” Disappointed, maybe. Surprised, no.

  Chloe shrugged. “You’d think, because you’re right, he’s a good bloke. Who knows why it happens and why it doesn’t? It wasn’t just me, either. Maybe he minds about Zavy after all. But whatever the reason, there’s somebody standing here he wants to get with, and that somebody isn’t me.”

  “Me?” Josie laughed. “I’m just the babysitter. The helpful neighbor.”

  “I don’t think so,” Chloe said. “I had my doubts as soon as I got here tonight, because that was a cozy scene. And when a man’s having dinner with you and talking about somebody else, that’s a pretty sure sign too.”

  “Mentioning,” Josie remembered. “That’s what Clive calls it.” She considered explaining, abandoned the idea. Too complicated. “Really? He mentioned? Maybe he was trying to make you jealous, though. If he really did talk about me. Tr
ying to up the heat a bit, if he saw it wasn’t happening for you.”

  “He really did,” Chloe assured her, “and it wasn’t to make me jealous. I don’t think he could be anything but straightforward if he tried. I wouldn’t say that man’s got a devious bone in his body. He’ll make a fab partner for somebody, I have no doubt. Just not me.”

  Animal Magnetism

  He’d gone a bit long at the gym after his visit to the doctor, Hugh thought guiltily on a November Wednesday ten days later. He’d been so excited by the news that his cast was about to come off, though, he hadn’t been able to keep himself from doing some extra training in preparation.

  Now, his foot touched the brake yet again, and he swore at the unusually bad mid-afternoon backup nearing the approach for the Harbour Bridge. If it didn’t let up, he was going to be late to collect Amelia, June, and Holly from dance lessons, and Amelia was going to think he’d forgotten again, he was going to be apologizing and ringing June’s mum again, and Chloe was going to think she’d got off easy.

  And then he forgot about Amelia, and June, and Holly, and Chloe, and June’s mum, too, because he saw it, there to his right, the reason the traffic was slow. Had to be.

  It was a billboard. A billboard that, yesterday, had been advertising, what, Tui? Some beer, anyway. And today, was advertising Josie.

  Well, probably not Josie, he thought as his attention returned to the creeping traffic ahead. He put on the brake again and slowed nearly to a stop, which gave him the chance to check out the sign once more. It was an attention-getter, right enough, but as a product advert, it was a dead loss, because nobody was going to remember what it was meant to be selling.

  She was lying atop a horse, a horse so white it was nearly silver. Stretched out flat along its back, her cheek against its neck, a wreath of frangipani around her head providing one single splash of color. One perfectly shaped golden leg hanging down the horse’s side, her long, slender fingers twined in the white mane, her eyes huge and slumberous, the expression on her face, the slight parting of her full mouth saying that lying on a horse was a very pleasurable experience indeed.