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

  “I saw the photo,” Kate said. “Of her on your head. That was great. I laughed so hard. I’ll bet everybody did.” That was wonderful news. She shifted her hold on the baby, who was in a carrier, and told Koti, “Time to go, buddy. The natives are restless.”

  They headed for the car, and Marko picked up his Cat Gym, wrestled it into the house, kicked off his trainers, and tried to pretend that his pulse rate hadn’t kicked up.

  Did he get a warm, affectionate female greeting? He did. Was it a soft, deliciously curvy Nyree putting her arms around him and snuggling up close until she got lifted off her feet and kissed breathless, with his hands all over her? Not even close. Instead, the kitten, alerted by some cat-sense, came skittering and sliding across the polished floor, meowing all the way, and did her best to climb his bare leg.

  He plucked her off him and put her onto one of the Cat Gym’s many leopard-printed platforms. “Alternative destination,” he told her. “Good for your fitness.”

  In answer, she launched herself through the air at him, forcing him to reach out a hand to grab her so she wouldn’t fall. As soon as he did, she climbed his shirt and headed for her favorite destination. He hadn’t adopted a kitten so much as a limpet. He put her back on the gym, on a higher platform this time, and said, “Look. You climb the ramp and go through the tunnel. Then you sit up there and act aloof. It’s a cat thing.”

  In answer, she meowed at him, and she kept on doing it. When he walked away, the meowing got more urgent. He turned and said, “Right. You don’t want to exercise? Climb down, then.”

  If a kitten’s face could be said to be woebegone, that was how she looked. The meowing grew louder, until she was making a truly astonishing amount of noise for something the size of your basic lab rat.

  He sighed. “You’re a pathetic excuse for a cat. Harden up.”

  She put a tentative paw on the ramp, then drew it back again and sat, a huddled, pathetic, fuzzy tennis ball, until he said, “This is the last time,” and picked her up. Then she climbed his shirt once more and curled up happily on his shoulder, and he went upstairs to find the rest of his girls.

  Easy enough to do, because of the music. Upbeat pop. The song ended when he reached the landing, and somebody laughed. Ella. It wasn’t coming from her room. It was coming from Nyree’s. He heard the lilting Maori accent and was moving faster, already smiling, when he heard something else.

  Another laugh. A man’s.

  Nyree didn’t realize he was there until the music stopped. She was stretching overhead, pressing the sponge into the wall with care, when the song cut off in the middle of a word and Ella said, “Hi, Marko. Check it out.”

  Nyree turned, pulled down her paint-spattered T-shirt, and said, “Hello, honey. How was your day?”

  He looked… she wasn’t sure what. Confused, maybe. She said, “Joke. Hi.” Did he think that she’d fallen in love with him over his guitar playing? Maybe she had, a tiny bit, but cooler heads had prevailed in the light of day.

  He didn’t answer her. Instead, he said, “Kors. What are you doing here?”

  Tom set the paint roller in the pan, then straightened. And didn’t answer.

  “Whoa,” Nyree said. “Tom came by with Koti and Kate and stayed to give us a hand.”

  Marko was leaning against the door frame, the only vertical surface in the room that wasn’t wet with paint. His arms were crossed, his ankles were, too, and he had a kitten on his shoulder. He still didn’t look casual. “Yeh,” he said, his gaze not moving from Tom. “Thought it must be something like that. I’m still wondering why.”

  Tom Koru-Mansworth, who until that minute had seemed like a nice Maori boy who reminded Nyree of her younger cousins, had folded his own arms. That would have looked more menacing if they hadn’t been liberally speckled with orange, making his brown skin look like a kid’s autumn splatter painting. He said, “Giving the girls a bit of a hand with the painting. I was invited. If I’m not invited anymore, I’ll leave.”

  Nyree put her sponge down and told Ella, “Keep going, would you? And Tom, I’d love it if you’d finish that wall.” After that, she headed for the door. When she got there, she gave Marko a little shove in the chest to get him going and said, “Come on, boy. Come talk to me.”

  She walked down the hall to Ella’s room like she was sure he’d follow her. Fortunately, he did. She couldn’t hear him, exactly. She could feel him, though. When they got there, she turned around and said, “What?”

  He wasn’t looking any happier. “What d’you mean, ‘What?’ I asked him why he was visiting. Fair question, seeing as he’s in my house.”

  “Uh-huh.” She sat on the bed like a woman she wasn’t. A casual woman. “He went to look at dogs with Kate and Koti, as he’s interested in getting a dog himself, then got a lift here with them. To get closer to home, not because he anticipated being bowled over by my beauty.”

  “How’s he getting home, then?” Marko didn’t look any happier. “Flying?”

  “I expect you’ll find he’s taking the bus, or even walking, the same way you would. He lives in Mission Bay. He’s lonely, I’d say. Sharing a flat with a couple other boys, far from the whanau. In the Big Smoke and feeling the pressure. Looking for some family time.”

  “Yeh, well,” Marko said, “he can pick somebody else’s family to have it.”

  She laughed. His head jerked back, and she said, “You must be joking. You think he’s here for me? Flattering, I guess, except that that boy can’t be much more than nineteen. I’ll bet that not having his mum to do his washing anymore looms large in his life. And if I’m not allowed to have a mate stop by, you’d best tell me now.”

  “Do you happen to remember,” he said, “whose head I bashed with the knitting bag?”

  “No. Really?”

  “Really.”

  “Oh.” She considered that. “No, I didn’t remember. I mostly saw you. You were impressive. In the photo. Drew the eye. Compositionally.” That explanation still wasn’t quite working, so she moved on. “But let’s consider that. You were the one doing the bashing, eh. Maybe I shouldn’t be sitting here with you.”

  “You’re not sitting here with me. You’re sitting, and I’m standing over you being intimidating.”

  “With a kitten on your shoulder? Nah, boy. Not so much.”

  He reached up, took the kitten off his shoulder with deliberation, set her on the floor, and came to sit beside her on the bed.

  He wasn’t touching her. But she felt him. And she couldn’t get her breath.

  “Better?” he asked.

  “From an—” Her voice cracked. “Intimidation standpoint? Yeh.”

  A muscle moved at the corner of his mouth. “More intimidating, or less?”

  “More.”

  “Good.”

  “You don’t want to intimidate me, though.”

  “I wouldn’t have said so. And yet… maybe. Or could be I just want you to notice.”

  “You could…” Her mouth was dry. “Assume I’ve noticed. So. Tell me what the bashing was about.”

  She couldn’t smell his scent today, the spice and leather of him. She’d been painting too long for that. But she could feel him. His heat, and his color.

  He didn’t answer the question. He asked another one. The last one she expected. “When you say I’m red, what does that mean? How do you see that?”

  She drew in a breath and tried to get her pulse rate under control. “I don’t… it’s hard to explain. You don’t glow or anything. I’m just… aware. I see you and I think, Red. I feel the color, I guess. Or I sense it. I just know it, like when you touch something lovely and smooth or when it’s something rough and hard. Your brain knows which it is even if you aren’t looking. It’s like… instead of five senses, I have six.”

  He wasn’t laughing at her. He was listening. And surely nobody listened with more concentration than Marko. Surely nobody gave off as much energy even when he was still, like when you struck a tuning fork and didn�
��t just hear the humming tone, you felt the vibration, too.

  “What color is Ella?” he asked, which wasn’t what she’d expected.

  “Uh… green. Grounded. Whole.”

  “Ah. Good, then.”

  “Yeh. She is. Both of you are very… real.”

  She was staring up at the squared-off lines of his jaw and chin. Three days’ worth of scruff, and the outlaw in full force tonight. His corded forearms and swell of biceps showed dark against a white T-shirt, and his chest was broader and more solid than ever this close up. Or maybe she was just more aware of it.

  He raised one of those huge hands. Not fast. Slowly, like he was waiting to see what she did. Or like he couldn’t help it. He drew his fingers along her jaw, then cupped her face, brushed his thumb along her cheekbone, and said, “You can’t see yourself. That’s a pity. But today, you’re orange.” He smiled. “Paint, eh. It suits you.”

  One moment, she was staring up at his mouth. Which was very… nice. Firm. Determined. The next, Ella was in the room, then practically backpedaling. “Whoops,” she said. “Sorry.”

  Nyree had already jumped up. “No. We were just, ah, talking.” What was she doing? Two days in, and she was about to kiss him? Disaster. “All done now.”

  Ella came back into the room one careful step at a time. “It’s just that I wasn’t sure what to do next. I didn’t want to sponge the color on, chemicals and all, but…”

  “No,” Nyree said. “I’ll come do it.” She told Marko, “We’re sponge-painting in my room. Getting some richness into the color.”

  Tom had shown up now. He glanced fast between Marko and Nyree, then said, “I’ve done all that orange coat for you, Nyree. Show me how to do the brown, if you like, and I’ll sponge it on and let Ella do her bit with the water. We could finish those three walls, anyway.”

  “An even better idea,” Nyree said. “And maybe Marko and I can make dinner. Tell me pizza’s an option,” she said to Marko, trying her best to keep it breezy. “Make my knees weak.’

  He was doing his stare that could melt steel again, and she wouldn’t swear that her knees weren’t weak this very second. All he said, though, was, “I can put a couple steaks and some veggies on the barbie. Pizza as a side dish. That would work.”

  She sighed. “I guess KFC’s out, then.”

  He smiled. Incongruously sweet, transforming his hard face into something else, becoming the man who’d played his guitar in the dark and talked to her about the stars. “Yeh, it is. For me. But you can have it. No reason you can’t have what you want.”

  Making dinner with Marko, for some reason, wasn’t bad at all. Maybe because her part of it was calling for a pizza delivery, chopping a few veggies, then going out to the deck, where he had the barbecue warming up. She took a couple opened beers with her. It had been another long day.

  He was sitting on one of the black chairs with the kitten in his lap and his feet on the rail, and she handed him a bottle. “I took a chance you’d want it,” she said. “Pizza in forty minutes or so. I got a veggie one. Turns out pregnant women aren’t meant to have processed meats. I got extra cheese, though. Ella’s hungry all the time, and you can see some of her ribs above that belly.”

  “Good to know. Cheers.” He took a long swallow, and she sat in the other chair and looked out at his back garden, which extended in an unbroken sea of green all the way to the edge of Dingle Dell Reserve.

  “This must be the view from the master bedroom as well,” she said.

  “Yeh. There’s another deck up there. Spa tub, too.”

  “I’m surprised you didn’t buy a house where you looked out at the sea. That’s the usual preference. The view from my room’s choice, by the way. Painting heaven. So much light.”

  “Yeh. I saw this house, and it was nice up there. Treehouse, I guess you’d say. It looked…” He trailed off.

  “What?” When he didn’t answer, she said, “I was probably giving you stick about it earlier because I can get a bit defensive about success. Money that comes from success. Et cetera. There’s nothing wrong with your house, other than a serious lack of ornamentation.”

  “People in your life don’t approve of… what? Painting?”

  “I’m meant to have a real career.”

  “Ah. No worries here. That’s not how I judge.”

  “How do you judge, then? And what was it you liked about this place? You never answered that one.”

  Another pause, then he said, “That it feels open, I guess. The light. And it’s nice at the back, with the bush out the window like this.”

  “Peaceful,” she suggested. “Relaxing. A retreat.”

  “That’s it.”

  Most men would have offered a slightly creepy suggestion at this point that she check out the view from his bedroom, not to mention his spa tub. When he didn’t, she said, “You don’t judge by money and success? Hard to believe, since you’ve got both.”

  He shrugged. “What I said. Hippie mum. Farm family. It tends to stick. Wherever you go, there you are, as that hippie mum would say. The money’s nice, but it’s not why I do it.”

  “Why, then?”

  He twirled his beer bottle in one huge hand. “Because I’m good at it. Because I like it. And because I want to win. I want to be the best before I hang up the boots. That’s not too hard to measure in my line of work. Everybody has a driving force, I guess. What’s yours?’

  He was rattling her. Again. “Not…” She started, then stopped.

  “Yeh,” he said. “Not so easy to say. Here.” He handed her the kitten. “Time to put those steaks on. You can think about your answer.”

  She needed her armor, but right now, it was hard to find it. She sat and watched the setting sun tinge the clouds an impossibly soft pink, the color of a baby’s blanket, sipped at her beer, bitter with hops, stroked the kitten’s velvety fur, and felt the rumble of her purr as the birds called from the trees and a tui swooped overhead, its plumage gleaming blue and black.

  He was right. It was relaxing. And she wasn’t even in the spa tub.

  She heard the sizzle behind her, smelled the rich, heady scent of meat on a grill, and he sat down again. “Five minutes,” he said, “before I turn them over.”

  “What was your card of the day?” she asked.

  “Temperance.” He took another sip of beer. “If I’d been eighteen, I would’ve had a couple more of these just to show her.”

  “So is that what it means? ‘Don’t drink too much tonight, love?’”

  “Nah. She never goes with anything that obvious. Seems I’m being guided by my better angels to find the right outcome, and it’s within my grasp. I didn’t even know I had better angels. ‘Remember your priorities and work toward your perfect balance,’ was the actual message. ‘You’re on the right path. Eyes on the prize, baby.’ Which, considering it’s the story of my life, and also considering it’s the sort of encouraging text she always sends me no matter what card it is, isn’t front-page news. What’s yours, though? Story of your life?”

  “My driving force? I guess… showing the world, or at least some tiny part of it, what I see and how I see it. Sharing my colors. It’s not a practical ambition. Hence the restaurant.”

  He was silent a minute, then said, “Not practical doesn’t mean not possible. That’s why it’s called a driving force and not an ambling-along-aimlessly force.”

  “Crawling force. Creeping force.”

  He laughed. “Maybe the strength of the force is up to you. What time did you leave for work this morning? You were gone when I got up, and it was early.”

  “Five-thirty. I went to work, I painted my bedroom orange, and that was my day. Not much driving force involved, sad to say. What did you do?”

  “Oh, you know. The usual. Lifted heavy things. Bashed my body against a scrum machine. Performed impressive feats of footwork.”

  “I see what you did there,” she said. “Very nice. I notice you bought this cat of yours a present, too. An
enormous present. I’m not going to tease you about that. Much.”

  The doorbell chimed, and Marko said, “You go get the pizza, and I’ll turn these steaks over. Get Ella and Kors as well, will you? Reckon we’re eating on the floor again.”

  Dinner was on the floor. But then, Marko had exactly two chairs. Tom had said something about heading home, and Marko had said, “Nah. Cooked you a steak already, mate. Better eat it.” Which showed either that his bark was worse than his bite, or that he hadn’t been jealous after all, just momentarily affronted by an uninvited guest. Nyree was going to have to figure that one out. Later.

  For now, she ate pizza, listened to Ella explaining about sponge painting to Marko, and thought about the space she was in. The dining room was different from the rest of the house. Closed off by French doors from the kitchen, and fully open to the deck, if one wanted, via retractable multi-fold glass doors that would allow indoor/outdoor living in the summer. It needed a table, of course. Pity the one it would get would be chrome and glass.

  A silence fell, and she remembered her manners and roused herself enough to ask what she should have from the start. “Where’s your whanau, Tom?”

  “The Far North,” he said. “Near Kerikeri. I’m Ngatiwai. And you?”

  “Whangarei,” she said, and smiled. “Ngatiwai as well. Small world, eh.”

  “What does that mean?” Ella asked.

  “Same iwi,” Tom said. “Same tribe. Ngatiwai. Different hapu—subtribe—or we’d probably know each other. Not cousins, or we’d know that as well.”

  “I know what iwi is,” Ella said. “But not too much more. Not so many Maori where I am. Tekapo, same as Marko. On the mainland.”

  “Going to school in Auckland, though, eh,” Tom said. “For sport, or what?”

  Nyree wanted to jump in, but she held herself back. Opposite her, Marko looked exactly as ready to leap into battle to defend his cousin. He might not be Maori, but some things weren’t so different.

  “I’m only here for five months or so,” Ella said. Her color was rising again, but she heaved in a breath and said, “Because I’m pregnant. I’ve come up here to have it, and have it adopted after.”