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

  Nyree took a good long look at Pookie. She’d painted his younger, better-natured self lying on his back, emerging halfway out of a studded motorcycle boot, with his tongue hanging out and a paw draped casually over the front edge like a boy racer hooning around with his elbow out the car window. His long ears flopped around him, and he had an “I’m too cool” expression on his face. “He’s meant to be a badass dog,” she said. “As he’s black. His owner and her husband have Harleys and think they’re badass, and he was cuter as a puppy. To say the least.”

  Marko seemed to be groping for a response, and she said, “You’re thinking it’s one step away from cigar-smoking dogs playing poker. It’s a commission. It’s psychology. Not of the dog. Of the person paying for the painting.”

  “I thought artists were meant to be, like, all hung up on artistic integrity,” Ella said.

  “Yeh, well,” Nyree said. “Rent. Rich people don’t have enough ways to spend their money, I make them happy, and I stay out of an office for one more month.” She added, just in case Ella needed to hear it, “Not always easy to support yourself even with a degree, eh.”

  “I thought you had a job,” Ella said. “You said you had to go to work today.”

  Marko was watching her too closely, and Nyree was starting to feel narky about that. “I’d love to hear what you’re thinking but not saying right now,” she told him.

  He gazed at her for a long moment, then said, “I reckon everybody does what they have to do.”

  It took her a second to switch out of combat mode. “Yeh. They do. So I paint dogs. And have a job. I need to be at that job today, so if you’re looking for a lift to Sylvia Park, we’d better go do it.”

  When they arrived at the enormous shopping mall, though, and headed into Hunter Furniture, Ella wandered the aisles silently, walking more and more slowly. Five minutes. Ten, as she picked up price tags and dropped them again. Marko was standing back, not helping, and Nyree suppressed a sigh. Couldn’t he see?

  Finally, she asked the girl, “What do you have already? What do you need?”

  Ella shrugged. “A bed, that’s all, so I need… a tallboy, I guess. A table for beside the bed. One, anyway. A desk, too, and a chair. Some sort of carpet, because it’s a wood floor. But it’s only for a few months, and…” Her voice dropped. “Some of these tallboys are thirty-five hundred dollars. And they look like they were designed for an orphanage. Like all your walls are gray, and you eat lumpy porridge for breakfast, because pretty things are bad for your character. Marko probably likes them, though. That’s what his furniture looks like. What he actually has.”

  She looked around glumly, and Nyree had to agree. Orphanage for sure. “Besides,” Ella went on, “even if I got the very cheapest ones, it would be thousands, and then there’s a duvet and sheets and all, and the carpet. He only has one pair of sheets for my bed. White. Also two extra towels. White. And I need a desk, because he doesn’t even have a kitchen table. I’m going to need other things, too. Clothes. All new school uniform. Which is more money. D’you think he saw the prices on this stuff?”

  Marko said from behind them, “I don’t need a table,” and Ella jumped and looked guilty. “I have the kitchen bench for that,” he said. “And stools. I’m all good. I saw the prices, yeh. Pick out what you need, desk and all, and we’ll get your duvet cover that isn’t brown and the rest of it, and we’ll be done. When you need the special clothes and the new uniform, we’ll buy those as well. We don’t need to talk about it. You just need to do it.”

  “What about when I leave?” Ella asked.

  “Then I’ve got a guest bedroom furnished. Choose, and we’re done with this and can move on.” Marko didn’t appear to lose his temper easily, and he wasn’t doing it now. He was definitely getting more curt, though, and Ella was starting to look agitated.

  Nyree put up a hand. “Hang on. Stoppage of play.” Ella was running her thumbs over her fingertips in a way that Nyree guessed was meant to stop her biting her nails. “Here. We’re going to sit down.” She led the girl over to the bed display—Ella was right, a starker and more dreary collection of furniture could not be imagined, however much it cost—sat on a plastic-covered mattress, and pulled Ella down beside her. Marko didn’t sit, but since he didn’t look like he was about to cry, that was fine. He could stand in front of them and glower. “Tell me what the plan is,” she said to Ella. “You’re pregnant, and you’re here to go to school. That’s all I know. Here for how long?”

  “Until the baby,” Ella said. “Is it OK to sit on their ugly beds?”

  “That’s why they’ve got plastic on. When is the baby due?”

  “September sometime. Probably. They won’t know until they do a sonogram, they said. With a midwife, I guess. I have to find somebody.”

  Where was this girl’s mother? “Which means you’re, what, four months pregnant?”

  “Uh, yeh,” Ella said. “Somewhere in there. I don’t remember exactly.”

  When her last period had been, Nyree guessed. “And when the baby comes,” she asked, “what happens?”

  The thumbs were working overtime. “It gets adopted. And I go home. That’s the plan.”

  “So,” Nyree said slowly, “you’re worried that you’re asking Marko to buy you all this, and that you should get what he wants. But you don’t know exactly what he wants, and this stuff is more expensive than what anybody you know could afford. And then there’s the fact that it’s horrible.”

  “Oi,” Marko said, but she ignored him.

  “It’s just that… “ Ella took a deep breath. “That the room’s so white. Like somebody’s going to do surgery any minute. All right, I know it’s ungrateful, and it has a beautiful view and all, but I wish it could be a place like yours. More cozy, to hang out in. Not so…” She swept an arm around. “Land of the Future. Android World.”

  “I know what you mean,” Nyree said. “I need my nest. Place to hide, eh.”

  “Yes.” Nyree thought she might be seeing some tears, and then not, because Ella blew out a breath and said, “But maybe it won’t look so bad if I get colored sheets and some cute pillows. I should just pick, I guess. Sorry.”

  She stopped talking and stood up. In her too-tight shirt and too-short skirt, because she’d outgrown her bra and her clothes and hadn’t known what to do about that. And Marko said, seeming to choose his words with care, “You should get what you want. If you don’t like this, we’ll go somewhere else.”

  “Except that you don’t know where,” Ella said. “And I don’t, either. Besides, you like this, and it’s taking too long, and it’s your day off. I can’t pick, though. I just can’t see anything that looks… any better. So I wish you’d pick something instead. Get it over with. And then we can go to the Warehouse and buy a duvet cover. White. Better than brown, at least.”

  Could anybody look more miserable than a sixteen-year-old girl? Could every little thing matter more to anyone than it did at that age, even if she weren’t facing pregnancy and a new school?

  As she always did at times like this, Nyree thought, What would Nan do?

  Just now? That was easy. “Cup of tea,” she said, and stood up herself. “Food court. I need to go find the toilets first, though. Come with me, Ella.” She told Marko, “We’ll come join you. Cup of tea. Herbal. Get one for you and me as well.”

  It took her a second to realize why he was standing there staring at her. Because she’d ordered him.

  He went, though. So oh, well.

  When Marko saw Nyree next, she was alone. Which was good, because he needed to talk to her. And bad, because he’d swear she was going to talk to him. And that he might not want to hear it.

  He’d just loaded up the tray, and she said, “Over here,” and led him to a quiet corner. “Ella needs a few more minutes. I think she cried in the stall. Not a crier, I’m guessing. She could need some recovery time.”

  “No. Girls get odd, though. Emotional. She’s normally much calmer than this.”


  “Well,” Nyree said, and he didn’t miss the dryness in her tone, “she is pregnant. Hormones, eh.”

  “I’ll take your word for it. And I don’t care what furniture she gets, although that looked fine to me. Not if it’s going to make her miserable. How can furniture make somebody miserable? It’s a bloody tallboy, not a Dementor.”

  “Harry Potter. You’re a man of many surprises.”

  “A man of three little sisters, that’s all. But misery-inducing furniture?”

  “Because it’s hideous. I’d be miserable, too.”

  “Cheers.”

  “You’re welcome. Beyond the furniture, though—she needs maternity clothes. She needs them now. Where’s her mum?”

  “Got a job.”

  “Still. Having the baby and giving it up? Not the usual path. Was that Mum’s idea? If it was, why is Ella here?”

  “No. The opposite. Jakinda’s a bit dramatic, I guess you’d say. And a crier. That’s why Ella’s here. For some calm, maybe. I don’t know why she decided on this, but she did, and she seems sure.” He took a sip of his tea and said, “It’s not what you may be thinking. This morning, when it sounded like she was saying I was responsible…”

  She sighed. “I know you’re not. It’s obvious.”

  “Well, cheers. But it sounded bad, and I know it, and after all—here I am buying her bedroom furniture. Why is it obvious?”

  A long silence while she stirred three packets of sugar into her tea and he tried not to wince. “I see people in color,” she finally said.

  He blinked. “What?”

  “What I said. It’s called synesthesia. Where you stimulate one pathway in your mind or your senses, and it stimulates another. Mostly, it’s seeing letters or numbers in color. Or musical notes.”

  “This is a thing?” he asked cautiously. “Sounds…”

  “Like your mum’s Tarot cards,” she finished. “Like the kind of rubbish you’d expect from somebody who fancies herself an artist. But I was doing it well before I could read, so whatever you’re thinking, it isn’t true. But what you’re thinking? That’s why I don’t tell people.”

  She sounded more than defensive, but then, he could imagine why. “Since you were a kid?” he asked.

  A long pause, and some of the tension left her. At least, she stopped ripping her empty sugar packet into pieces and dropped them on the tray. “Yes. I didn’t know everybody didn’t do it. Then one day when I was five or six, I asked Mum why her boyfriend was brown.”

  “Ah. Bet that went over well.”

  “Got a long lecture about pride in being Maori. And I said, ‘But Mummy, he doesn’t match you, because you’re blue.’ She was confused, as you’d imagine, but eventually, I managed to explain.”

  “What did she say?”

  “Took me to the doctor to see if I had a brain tumor.” She laughed. “I didn’t. But that’s why I knew about you.”

  “Huh.” He considered that. “What about the boyfriend? Your mum’s?”

  “Ah, well. Cleaned out her bank account and buggered off. So there you are. He was brown after all.”

  “And you knew I wasn’t lying because I’m…”

  “Red. You’ve always been red.”

  “Always?”

  “Oh. I mean, both times. All the times.”

  “Red doesn’t sound so good, either.”

  “It’s not what you think. Your color is what you are all the time. It’s not a mood ring. If you were angry all the time, hostile—you’d be muddy green. Black. Something else. Red’s just passionate. Physical.” She looked up at him from under her dark lashes. “Strong. Et cetera. And too direct to be a liar.”

  He’d have been quite happy to keep talking about his strong, passionate nature, but Ella would be coming back any moment. “Right,” he said instead. “I’m seeing that this situation I’ve got is going to be more complicated than I realized. Especially as I’m here this week, then off to Aussie for two weeks, and it goes on like that. Rugby, eh. Meanwhile, you’re living in a garage and worrying about paying your rent.”

  Those green eyes were staring into his. It would be hard to lie to those eyes. She was right about that. “I am.”

  “And painting horrible pictures of dogs.”

  “If that was meant to soften me up,” she said, “it didn’t work.”

  “Right. Sorry. What are you paying for the garage?”

  He could swear he could see her heart pounding. He could definitely see her breasts rising and falling. It seemed the King of Swords was making his move. She said, “Two hundred a week.”

  “For that? Auckland housing, eh. Still not used to it.”

  “It can happen. When the place is actually attractive to people.”

  “Someday,” he said, “we’ll have to talk about what you have against Dunedin. But not now. I’ll pay you two hundred fifty dollars a week to move to my house for the next five months instead and help out with Ella. Cover your whole rent with some left over. I’ll buy the food as well. An even better deal.”

  It took her a minute. Finally, she said, “That’s a cheap housekeeper.”

  “How did I know,” he said with a sigh.

  “I like Ella,” she said, “but it sounds like you need more than a companion, and I don’t want to be a housekeeper. That’s why I live the way I do. Well, one reason. Besides that I can’t afford anything else. I also have a job.” She lifted her chin. “In a restaurant, and you can go on and say it. You’ve talked about my art already. Go on and slag off my job as well.”

  “I’m not saying anything. I have somebody who does the heavy cleaning every couple weeks, and you don’t have to cook for Ella. Or for me, either. Just cook something with her, maybe, like you’d do anyway. Go to the midwife with her. Help her find furniture she likes. A couple hours a day max. Look at it that way. She likes you, too, and I won’t be here enough. I’m not going to be good leaving her alone, so I either need to get her some company or send her home.”

  Nyree sat still a moment, and he sat and wondered why on earth he’d be this reckless. And had a feeling he knew exactly why.

  “Where is it?” she asked. “Your house?”

  “St. Heliers.”

  “As in,” she said slowly, “next door to where you left your car. As in, you probably could’ve run home for your keys in twenty minutes.”

  “As in maybe I wanted to take you up on your offer. Could be I wanted to spend more time with you. Though right now, I can’t imagine why.” She just looked at him, and he sighed. “Three hundred a week. You’re killing me here. I’m not even getting a cook.”

  “No strings. No sex,” she added, because he must have looked blank. “You’ve got a separate room for me.”

  All right. That was just insulting. “Of course I do. And I don’t pay for sex.”

  “Goody for you, because I don’t have sex for pay. And I have to be able to paint.”

  “Dogs.” Wait. He should probably have spelled out the sex thing a bit more. Was she saying no sex? Or… Wait. She had said “No sex.”

  Well, bugger.

  “Yes, dogs,” she said, and he struggled to get back to the point. “Dogs are what will keep me out of an office. Dogs are my only hope.”

  “Did you paint the mandarins? In your garage?”

  A long couple seconds. “Yes.”

  She’d said it cautiously. Completely differently. He said, “And that’s the kind of thing you want to do. Not dogs.”

  “It’s one thing I want to do. I can put a tarp down, but if I can’t paint, I can’t come. I’d want to come, because Ella does need somebody, and I need the money. But I can’t.”

  “Oh, now you want to do it. Now that you’ve squeezed three hundred from me.”

  She smiled. Sweetly. “Does your mum think it’s good for you to have everything your own way? Or doesn’t that come up, Tarot-wise?”

  He shouldn’t answer. He did anyway. How did she do that? Draw the truth out of people? “Ma
ybe,” he found himself saying. “She told me this week that I needed a reality check. What color are you, so I know? I’m hoping you’re not brown. Could be you’ll empty my bank account. I’m taking a risk here as well, you know.”

  “I don’t know. I can’t see myself.” She looked over his shoulder. “Ella’s coming. Better decide.”

  “What? I decided.”

  She fixed him with her stare, and he thought, Snow White was never like this. And then he gave it up. “You can paint. Anything. Just help me.”

  “And be your reality check.”

  “Maybe not that.”

  What color was she? Whatever color spelled T-R-O-U-B-L-E. And it looked like he was jumping straight in.

  “I’ll help Ella find some bedding, for today,” she said. “And a carpet, maybe. As a favor and as a friend, not for money. We’ll collect your kitten, and I’ll drive you home. I’ll take a look, and we’ll talk. And then we’ll both decide.”

  When Marko got to his car on Monday afternoon after training, there was a cat on his windscreen. It was white. Also fluffy.

  He didn’t swear, because he was a disciplined man. Instead, he located Koti’s flash car in the players’ carpark and stuck the cat under his wiper. Then he went back to his own car, found the bonus cat stuck in the roof rack, and put that under Koti’s other wiper.

  They’d done both photo shoots together, which he’d reckoned would reduce his exposure mightily. But whose image had been on the front page of the Living section of the Herald on Sunday with a kitten on his head, a grin on his face, and enough bicep in the frame that it looked like he’d meant to show it? Not Pretty Boy’s.

  And whose cubicle had been filled with stuffed cats today? Not Koti’s there, either. Marko wasn’t being presented to Auckland as any kind of hard man, that was for sure. The SPCA had better get a few more animals adopted in return for his sacrifice, that was all he had to say.

  On the other hand, he wasn’t driving home to an empty house. He may even have pushed the speed limit a bit when the motorway opened up. One thing he was certain of—he’d be moving furniture tonight, and he’d be hearing something that made him laugh and a couple things that confused him. Because Nyree was moving in.