Stone Cold Kiwi (New Zealand Ever After Book 2) Page 14

  “I haven’t accomplished that much,” I said. “Not compared to Dad. Or Jax. I started out with all sorts of advantages, and I’m not defusing any bombs. I just invested in some properties. Or if you mean the books—that was luck, that something I enjoyed worked out so well.”

  “No,” he said. “It wasn’t, and neither was the glamping business. It was talent and hard work and intelligence and judgment and maybe a wee bit of magic. Or call it ‘intuition,’ if you like. Not magic that happens to you. Magic that you make happen. Do you know how rare it is for all those things to exist in the same person? I taught for forty-five years, and I know, if you don’t. I also know that you can’t compare people. They’re too different for that. Too complex.”

  “If you say that,” I said, “you’ll be telling me next that I can’t be angry with Max. Bloody nightmare.” I didn’t address the rest of it. I didn’t feel rare at the moment, unless you meant “undercooked, with a bloody red center.” Figuratively speaking, because I was healed. At least my body was. My spirit? Not so much.

  “No,” he said. “You can be as angry as you like. Angry as you need to be. But you asked me what I’d do if I were you. Go on holiday, that’s what. Take the kids and go.”

  “Hamish is in school,” I said.

  “Labour weekend next week,” he said. “Three days, eh. Four or five, if you let Hamish miss a day or two. I doubt he’ll fall far behind. Seems not to be too dull so far.” His eyes twinkled from amidst a starburst of wrinkles when he smiled. “Go see your brother. Spend some time with him and Karen. She’s a live one, eh. She’ll have you laughing again. Drink a bit of wine, maybe. Stay up late, or go to bed early. Do what you like. Sit in the sun. Sketch because you want to, not because you think you have to.”

  “Jax is on a training course,” I said slowly. “Training other people, that is. Karen told me. She’s going up to Katikati for the weekend while he’s gone, to sort out how to outfit the kitchen in the new house.”

  “Better and better. You go and stay with her, keep her company, help where you can. Perfect plan.”

  Well, not so far. Because beside me, Olivia was now saying, “I have to go potty. I have to go now.”

  Maybe tomorrow, it would be a perfect plan.

  18

  A Missing Piece

  Matiu

  On Friday afternoon, I’d been suspended for exactly one week, and I’d been in Katikati almost that long.

  Why? I was doing that same thing as when I’d come to Koro with my troubles all those months earlier, but in reverse. A Maori boy with his spirit darkened, returning to his whanau, his marae, his mountain and his river and his ancestors. Coming home to heal.

  Or, possibly, running away from Dunedin because I couldn’t think what else to do or how to fix it. Any of it. That was true, too.

  I always knew what to do next. School, university, medical school, internship, residency, and so on, I’d done them all until I’d landed here. My life was regimented, bordered by the rigors of my work schedule and the clear head the job required. I owned a home because it was a wise investment, and I exercised because that was a good investment as well, keeping my body, my mind, and my emotions primed for that next shift, keeping my energy level and my equilibrium where they needed to be.

  If I hadn’t been as disciplined as that in some personal areas of my life—well, everybody needed an outlet.

  I liked women. I liked their faces and their bodies and everything else about them, the humor and the life and the softness and unexpected steel of them, and I always had. They liked me back, so why not?

  Today, I wasn’t thinking about women, or, rather, I was trying once more not to think about one particular woman who wasn’t in any spot to think about me, or, for that matter, about the effect of a letter of censure sitting on my record like a big black melanoma, the kind you saw on a bloke’s upper back at the beach. The kind that had to be addressed, because otherwise, it would poison everything.

  How did I do that, though, without it poisoning Poppy, too? Without dragging her through the mud in a city where everybody knew her name?

  New Zealand wasn’t a big place. Four and a half million residents in all, only a million of those on the South Island, and only a hundred twenty-five thousand of those in Dunedin. Usually, the coziness of the place, the interwoven webs of connection, was a virtue. When you were talking about a scandal, though? Not so much.

  I hadn’t worked out what to do about all that, so I was weaving my way amongst the trolleys in the overflowing holiday-weekend Mount Maunganui New World. I’d gone for a swim on the main beach already, the sun and the sea temperature making me wonder why I’d gone to Dunedin in the first place, and now I was earning my keep by doing Tane and June’s shopping, picking up a few things for Koro’s place, and thinking about what to cook for dinner Sunday night, when I’d volunteered my services. Besides fish, because there would definitely be fish. If Tane didn’t want to go out on the boat with me, I’d be going out by myself. I needed the sea.

  I was also thinking that staying with my brother this long was making me more than restless. There’s only so much basketball a man can play and so many times he can swim. Nikau and Vanessa had Koro’s garden weeded, and I’d already sanded and painted the trim on his windows and chopped firewood he wouldn’t be needing for his little wood stove until next winter. A week was a long, long time for a man who didn’t have a job to do.

  The whole thing felt, in fact, too much like school holidays, with me as the sulky teenager, especially when you added in staying with my brother. When you’re Maori, though, getting a hotel room isn’t really an option, unless your family actually hates you, so if I wanted to spend some time with Koro—and I did—I was sleeping in Tane and June’s guest room for a few nights more before heading back south myself. I could try out the surfing down there. Dunedin’s beaches had some wild waves when the wind was right, and now that we were into November, I might not actually freeze off the wedding tackle.

  Just in case I needed it again.

  I came around the corner of the fruit and veg, headed toward dairy, and heard a voice say, “Matiu.”

  A female voice.

  Not the female voice I wanted to hear. A blonde, all pale hair and big blue eyes, still petite and pretty as anything. A radiology tech who’d moved on from the hospital a while ago, and whom I hadn’t seen since.

  I wasn’t rapt to see her now, even though you’d think I might have been, because, yes, we’d had some adventures before she’d left. Hospital-based and otherwise. She hadn’t been nearly as angelic as she looked, and I’d still been addicted to that risk. The stairwell had come into it, as I recalled, and a few other places, too. And she’d had that pretty brunette flatmate, the one with the knowing smile that told you she’d heard everything, and that she’d enjoyed hearing it. Things had gone pretty far with the two of them, in fact, on one memorable wine-fueled evening, when a dinner party had turned into an after-dinner party, before the blonde had pulled back.

  I’d pulled back myself, then, of course. I’d got out of there with a kiss, a smile, and a “No worries, we’re all good.” No choice. There’d been some awkwardness afterwards even so, and some tears, too, because, as it turned out, it hadn’t all been fun and games for her after all. That night had been the end of it, and the end hadn’t been smooth. It had felt bad, even though I hadn’t been the one who’d initiated that final adventure.

  You were the one who jumped at the chance, though, my honest half reminded me. Which was true enough.

  I remembered all of it, but for the life of me, I couldn’t remember her name. Or why I had to run into her today, of all days.

  Because she probably still lives in the Mount, genius, it’s a holiday weekend, and here you both are with the rest of the town, stocking up.

  “Hi,” I said, making it enthusiastic. “What a surprise. How ya goin’?”

  It was an M-name, I thought. Something cute. Maddie? Millie? I still couldn’t rem
ember, so I smiled instead.

  “Going well,” she said. “How long has it been?”

  I said, “Can’t remember.” There, that was true.

  She studied me, and I had the sudden, awkward feeling I might not quite measure up. She said with a laugh, “Oh, God. Seeing you again brings it back. Oh, did I make a fool of myself.” Still laughing, though, and I breathed a sigh of relief, but then she went on. “I cried my eyes out over you so many nights. Yeh, I was all kinds of fool, but then, you specialized in that, didn’t you?”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, because what else could you say?

  “Nah.” Her color had heightened, but she met my gaze, and she was still smiling. “You taught me a lesson. A hookup is never going to turn into the real thing, no matter how exciting it is or how good he is at it. Never mind, I know it now. Anyway, I’m long since over it, got a better fella. Every woman’s got to kiss a few frogs, and today, I get to go home and remember that I called you one. That’s enough. That’ll do.”

  She moved off, to my extreme relief, and I didn’t watch her go. How did you respond to that? Unfortunately, I heard my name called again, which meant I had to turn around. Reluctantly.

  This wasn’t going to be anything I wanted to hear.

  She was standing at least three meters away. Maybe four. An older lady trundled her trolley past me, and a dad in shorts and jandals came toward me with a baby in the little seat in front of the trolley. The baby was gnawing on the plastic handle in a way that had me thinking about pathogens, and I stepped to one side with a word of apology and waited with no enthusiasm whatsoever for whatever was coming next.

  “What’s my name?” the blonde called across the gulf, and a couple doing their shopping with three kids, one of them a clearly reluctant preteen boy, looked between us with interest. I had the feeling I’d seen the fella before. Professionally. As in “patient.”

  Oh, bugger. I decided on smiling and waving goodbye, pretending I hadn’t heard.

  “Come on, Matiu,” she said, and she hadn’t come any closer. “After nearly four months together? The stairwell? The roof? That other thing? And you don’t even remember my name? Right, then. I just changed my mind. I’m not over it.”

  People had stopped to listen. Of course they had. At least she hadn’t said “threesome,” so there was that.

  Did I consider saying, “Remember how we didn’t actually get through that ‘other thing,’ because you wanted to stop, and I stopped?” Yes, but I didn’t say it. First, because I wasn’t discussing this at the top of my lungs in the Countdown dairy section, and second, because I did my best to be a gentleman. Some sort of gentleman, anyway. All right, a minimal gentleman.

  Which was why I moved toward her instead of running away. Reason One, that is, not Reason Two. Being a gentleman was one thing, but I wouldn’t have volunteered for this. Whatever “this” was, because what the hell? If she’d wanted closure, she’d got it already. She’d called me a frog. No choice but to engage, though, if I didn’t want her shouting the details all the way to the meat aisle.

  There’d definitely been an on-call room involved. And a back seat in the hospital carpark, more than once, during a late-night meal break. And, yes, the roof. What kind of reckless fool had I been?

  Somebody stepped around me with a carry basket, moving with purpose, her clean-as-rain scent leaving a barely-there trace behind her, and I thought, Oh, no.

  Although there was surely no need. That kind of escalation only happened in romcoms, not in real life, and this woman, I saw all the time. Or I had.

  Dr. Constance McKinsey. I recognized the scent, too. Myth, it was called. Sexy, subtle, and sophisticated, and it suited her. Another blonde, close to my own age, tall, rangy, decisive, and funny. Very good surgeon. She probably noticed the look on my accuser’s face, because she turned around and saw me.

  “Matiu,” she said. “Hi. Thought you were in Dunedin now.”

  “Visiting,” I said. “Hi, Connie. How ya goin’?”

  “Going well,” she said, then, “Hi, Mikki.” (I gave my forehead a mental slap here.) “I haven’t seen you in a while.” She looked between us some more. “Something wrong?”

  Mikki said, “Nothing important. Just the player, playing games. He didn’t even remember my name.” She was still smiling, but it wasn’t quite right. “I wouldn’t be telling you that if I still worked at the hospital, no worries. Since I don’t? I’m saying it. He needs to hear it, and anyway, I reckon we’ve all done stupid things.”

  Connie laughed, but it was kind. “Ah, well, that’s Matiu, eh. And no worries, you can tell me. Let me guess. He never made a promise, but you reckoned that nobody could be that attentive, that charming, or that good at it without it meaning something.”

  “Yes,” Mikki said. “Exactly.”

  Did Connie leave it? She did not. She said, still absolutely bloody cheerfully, “Always collected you at home, always paid when you went out, held the car door for you, even sent flowers. If you’d been out to dinner first, of course. Not after those other times, because flowers would’ve ruined the illicit thrill, and he knew it, because he was an expert. You had the adventure of a lifetime, but you never went to his place, always to yours, and he never quite spent the night. Always working in the morning, always that easy exit. And so hard to resist. So sexy and funny, and so bloody pretty that he made your heart turn over when he smiled at you. There’s no turning that into love, though, is there?” A pause, probably for an understanding smile, then, “Never mind, you’re in good company. Talk of the ladies’ toilets wherever he goes. What a thing for a man to have on his tombstone. We can laugh it off now, though, fortunately. He’s got a piece missing, that’s all. Not his fault, maybe, that he’s turned into a bit of a cliché. And you’ve got a ring on your finger, I notice.”

  “Yeh,” Mikki said. “And it was nearly four years ago. Who cares, really?”

  “There you are, then,” Connie said encouragingly. “You’ve moved on and moved up, and I’m thinking he’s squirming. Have a wee peek and check. Yeh? Good. It’s healthy for him, I’m sure. Someday, he may find that missing piece and find out what it feels like when you actually care, and you know what they say. The bigger they are, the harder they fall, and won’t everybody enjoy seeing it happen.”

  The two of them had a jolly laugh about that, and Connie turned back to me, still smiling cheerfully, and said, “Consider that the hard but necessary truth, Matiu, if it stings. Surgeon’s job, eh. Got to hurt to help, or so I like to tell myself. And no worries, no complaints here. I’m all good. For some of us, shallow works.”

  19

  Irresistible Appeal

  Poppy

  I woke up slowly. That was rare. Generally, I woke with a start, either because of crying from one source or another, an alarm clock, or an insistent hand tugging at my arm while a little voice said my name, if my name was “Mummy.” This morning, I came awake in a way I’d almost forgotten. Softly, you could call it. Luxuriously, rising from the depths, if the depths were made of clouds.

  Not Isobel, I thought as I emerged from the wisps of that final sleep-cloud and opened my eyes. The Moses basket beside the bed, which Karen had provided, “just like everything else, by raiding Hemi and Hope’s house, because they’re not there, and sharing is caring,” was quiet. The baby’d had a good night, her best one yet, maybe because somehow, despite a chaotic dinner at the airport café accompanied by some more crying, the minute I’d come through the door into Karen and Jax’s barely-furnished new place, in a town I’d set foot in exactly once, I’d relaxed. Never underestimate the power of physical distance. I’d fallen asleep beside Isobel at barely eight-thirty, and I’d only had to wake two or three times to change and feed her. Or four, possibly. It was hard to remember. Now, though, the sun was streaming through the slats in the blinds, and I could hear voices outside the bedroom door.

  Children’s voices.

  Loud children’s voices. A sort of ... wailing. Oh,
no. What?

  When I bolted onto the scene, though, my heart beating like a drum, I blinked. Karen, her hair sticking up and still in her shortie PJs, seemed to be doing some sort of interpretive dance in the middle of the very posh kitchen, and Hamish and Olivia were doing it with her. They ducked down low, waggled their bums, and jerked their heads back and forth, then stood on their toes and lifted their faces to the sky. Karen uttered a sort of foghorn sound, Hamish and Olivia did their best to imitate it, and then it was back to the bum-waggling and head-jerking again. What was more, they each had a chopstick between their teeth, sticking out like spears, and they were dueling with them. Whacking each other’s chopsticks, so the air was full of a click-click-click. When they weren’t making the wailing-foghorn noise.

  I thought about saying, “You’ll put somebody’s eye out,” but I didn’t, possibly because I was laughing. Imperfect motherhood once more. Hamish swung around, doing his bum-waggling, and shouted, “Mum! We’re being mating albatrosses!” Which made his chopstick fall out.

  “Oh,” I managed to say. “Well done.”

  “Yes,” Olivia said. “And a elbowtoss can lay an egg, and I want to lay an egg too. You poo the egg out, and then you sit on it and it makes a baby.”

  “You can’t lay an egg,” Hamish said. “People can’t lay eggs.”

  “Yes, I can,” Olivia said. “I’m a girl, and girls are the ones that lay eggs. You can’t lay an egg ’cause you’re a boy, but I’m a girl.”

  “You have to be a girl albatross,” Hamish said patiently.

  “No,” Olivia said. “I can do it now.” She yanked her shorts down, squatted, and started to demonstrate.