Just Not Mine (Escape to New Zealand) Read online

  She wasn’t going to cry. She wasn’t. Instead, she summoned every bit of technique she had, lifted her chin, and stared him down.

  “And you’re not enough of a man,” she told him coldly, and walked out.

  Not That Kind of Girl

  He was on a boat. A sleek, modern sailboat, cutting across the clear cerulean waters of Waitemata Harbour under a sun-soaked sky with just a few wisps of white cloud punctuating the blue, catching the stiff breeze full in the sail, then coming about into the shelter of Motuihe Island, the sails flapping as he dropped the anchor. He fixed the handle into its fitting and began to crank, fighting the pull of the wind.

  Slap. Slap. He was cranking, but he was also watching Josie opposite him, which made things go a bit more slowly.

  “Let’s swim to shore,” she said. “Race you.”

  He could tell by the look in her eye that she meant to win, and he was a little worried that she would. She pulled her T-shirt over her head and tossed it onto the blue-cushioned bench beside her, revealing a hot-pink bikini top that he guessed was big enough, but only just. Then she stood, unsnapped the fastening of her tiny shorts, and shoved them over her hips, and, yes, he was watching Josie undress. She wriggled a little to get the shorts off, and he was having trouble turning that handle, because the bikini bottoms were hot pink too, and the vee they made was so tiny, he could tell that what was under there was smooth, and silky, and perfect.

  She was decent enough, except she wasn’t, because there was nothing decent about Josie in that tiny bikini, all that bronzed skin gleaming, her mass of dark hair tumbling down her back.

  She smiled at him, raised her arms to twist her hair back, and her full breasts were lifting, the shadow between them so deep, so inviting, asking him to pull those scraps of fabric aside and feel the weight in his palms, to run his thumbs across the nipples he could see pebbling beneath the fabric, to watch her shiver the way she was shivering right now.

  He was staring at them, and then his gaze was moving down her body to her flat belly, tracing the entire delicious path his mouth wanted to take, all the way to that miniscule vee of pink, where he’d stop. Where he’d stay, his hands gripping her, pulling her into him. While he felt her body strain against him, heard the noises she wouldn’t be able to restrain, until the moment when her knees buckled and he had to lay her down.

  She could tell that he was staring, and he could tell that she knew what he was thinking and that she liked knowing it, and the sails were still flapping.

  Slap. Slap. Slap.

  He rose slowly to consciousness, and realized as he did that he wasn’t on a boat at all. He was in bed, at home, alone, and the slap of the sails wasn’t really a slap, either. It was more of a crunch, followed by a soft thud. Over and over and over, and he thought he knew where it was coming from. But why?

  He rolled out of bed, opened his closet door and grabbed a pair of shorts and pulled them on. A quick stop in the bathroom, because these days, he brushed his teeth before he talked to Josie, and he was walking through the back door out into the garden, the grass still wet with early-morning dew under his bare feet.

  He stepped onto his Josie-chatting concrete block and leaned his elbows against the top board, dangling his hands over the other side. Her side. He looked across her garden, and there she was. Shoveling dirt as though her life depended on it, in a patch near the side of the house. Her back to him, her hair not tumbling at all but tied up in its knot, her grubby work boots a contrast to the short shorts that were the only thing this scene had in common with his dream.

  The shorts were good, though. Covering her beautifully formed backside, but only just, revealing the full length of smooth tanned leg beneath as she worked that spade.

  “Burying the body?” he asked.

  She stopped in the act of lifting another spadeful of dirt, then tossed it with deliberation before pausing and turning around, one hand hefting the spade, the other forearm going up to wipe her brow, which had a few dark hairs clinging damply to it. There was a smear of dirt across one cheek, her V-necked T-shirt had once been white and wasn’t anymore, but it was pretty tight all the same, and shorts and work boots were one hell of a good look on her.

  “I wish,” she said, and she didn’t look cheerful at all. “Digging for a vegie garden.”

  “At …” He looked up for the sun, but it wasn’t visible yet over the roofs of the houses. “Some ungodly hour?”

  “Past six,” she said. ‘Sometime. Yeh.”

  He looked at her again. “I’ll come over and help you dig, shall I?”

  “With one hand?”

  He held both of them out over the fence, turned his arms so she could admire the finished result. “Two. Just like a normal person.”

  “Oh. Congratulations. But I don’t have another spade.” She sighed and wiped her face again.

  “I do,” he said, and ran to the shed for it, then realized that he wasn’t going to be doing much digging barefoot. He went back into his bedroom, grabbed a T-shirt of his own, shoved his feet into socks and boots. He went back to the fence, picked up the spade and dropped it over to her side, tossed his shirt to join it, then shoved off from his block with both hands on the top of the crosspiece and vaulted over himself, landing in a crouch in the grass on the other side.

  She needed to mow, he noticed. Or he did. Her grass was getting pretty long.

  She stood, still holding her own spade, looking a little dazed. “You know, some people would have walked around.”

  “Nah. Too slow.”

  She seemed to catch herself, shrugged, and went back to digging. He looked at her for a moment, then grabbed his shirt from the grass, pulled it over his head and tugged it into place. He picked up his own spade and joined her, and within a few minutes, he was as sweaty as she was.

  She didn’t stop, because despite her slimness, she was strong, as he already knew, and she was determined, too. She didn’t dig like a girl, either. She shoved the metal blade into the ground with decision, sending it on its way with a firm push from her boot, then hefted the whole thing and gave the dirt a good toss, her rhythm steady.

  “You’ve done a fair bit of digging in your time,” he said, his own latest spadeful of dirt joining hers on the pile. She was clearing a good patch, a full meter wide and a few meters long. Had marked it out with stakes and string again, too.

  She looked up at him. “Sorry. What?”

  “Don’t want to talk, eh,” he said. “I should shut up and dig, you reckon?”

  She shrugged again. “You don’t have to dig at all. I just need to.”

  “Because you need to plant vegies. In summer. A bit late, isn’t it? But then, you’re a country girl. You probably know that.”

  “It’s this or do damage. This is probably better. Doesn’t feel better, though,” she said, attacking the ground with some real viciousness.

  “Going to tell me what?” he asked. “Can’t imagine you got sacked on a Sunday morning, so I’m thinking it’s something else. And you’re angry, not sad, so it’s a man. It’s him. That’d be my guess.”

  “Dead clever, aren’t you?” She stomped her boot onto the spade, and he could see her, the proud daughter of some Maori chief, shoving that foot right down onto a defeated warrior’s neck.

  “My partner,” she finally said. “If you can call him that. Some bloody partner. Derek.” She was shoveling faster than ever.

  “You were coming back tonight, I thought,” he said cautiously.

  “I thought so too. Turns out not. Back last night, late.”

  “And you’re out here working at six the next morning. Something went wrong?”

  “Yeh. Something went wrong. On our second visit in seven weeks. You’d think it was the UK, wouldn’t you, as big an effort as it seemed to be for him to arrange a visit from me? To allow me to fly across the Ditch to see him?” He could see the effort it took her to say it.

  “I did wonder,” he admitted.

  “Bet you
did,” she muttered. “Bet everybody did. Can’t decide if it feels worse that it’s over, or that it wasn’t over sooner. That he’s made me feel such a fool.”

  “If he doesn’t want you,” Hugh said, standing up and leaning on his spade to look at her, “he’s made himself look the fool.”

  She sighed and straightened, raking the ground smooth with the back edge of her spade as if she didn’t know she was doing it. “You think?”

  She was still angry, he could tell, but he thought there might be some tears close to the surface now, and no wonder.

  “I know so,” he told her. “I don’t know what he’s thinking, can’t imagine, but I’ll tell you now, he’s not worth it. He’s not as good as you, and he knows it, that’s my guess. He’s finding his own level, that’s all.”

  She laughed, and he could hear the bitterness. “Yeh, well, she’s probably blonde, and she’s probably somebody in the cast, because the stupid git hasn’t got any originality at all. Too lazy to go find somebody at a bar like a normal bloke. Like you probably do.” She looked at him, and, yes, there were a couple tears sparkling on those long dark lashes. “Know what he said? That I wasn’t enough of a woman for him.”

  “You’re enough,” he told her. “And I don’t look in bars. I don’t need to. I know what I want.”

  She dropped the wooden handle bang into the dirt beside her and stood there, her eyes glinting with anger and pain and hurt, and he laid his own spade down and put his arms around her.

  He’d only meant to give her a cuddle. But he reached a hand to her cheek to wipe the smear of dirt away, and her hands were on his shoulders, her golden-brown eyes raised to his, her gorgeously kissable mouth parting a bit, and he had to kiss her. He had to.

  He brushed his lips over hers, softly at first, a comforting thing, and tried to tell himself he was being her friend, giving her a sorry-you’re-hurting kiss, but she tightened her grip on him with the heavy leather work gloves, her mouth moved under his, and he was holding her sweet, warm body against him and kissing her harder, one hand going for the back of her head, the other around her waist, pulling her even closer, feeling the heat of her through the thin cotton of her shirt.

  She opened her mouth under his, he heard the smothered moan, and it wasn’t friendly any more, it wasn’t brotherly, it wasn’t sorry at all. He was glad, fierce with it, and he kissed her some more, dropped down into the darkness of it, into the pleasure of Josie’s delicious mouth, into the taste of her, all salt and sweetness, and yeh, she was enough of a woman for him. She was enough of a woman for anybody.

  She moaned again, and the sound pulled him back even as it pulled him in, and he stepped back a pace, fought his body and what it was urging him to do.

  “What?” she asked, and her eyes were flashing again, angry and confused and hurt. “What?”

  He looked down, shook his head, ran a hand through the hair he’d cut, there was no doubt at all now, for her. “Timing,” he told her. “Or something, because you don’t want me right now, not really. You’re not thinking about me. You’re thinking about him.”

  “So?” she challenged. “Even if I am, what does it matter, if I don’t care? And I don’t. I don’t care a bit. Maybe I will tomorrow, but I don’t right now.”

  He smiled a little painfully. “But I do. I do care. I want you to be thinking about me, just like I’ll be thinking about you. I want to be in your bed because you want me there, not because you have something to prove.”

  He did? Since when had he got so choosy? Since now, he guessed.

  “You’re turning me down too?” She looked incredulous, and he saw the flush moving up the length of her graceful neck, all the way to the fierce planes of her cheekbones. “You’ve been looking at me like you wanted to eat me up since the first day you met me, I’m offering it to you on a plate, and you’re turning me down?” She laughed, and it was angry again. “Bloody hell. I really have lost it. Cardinal actor sin, believing I’m what people see onscreen, that every man wants me, even though the one that had me couldn’t wait to let me go again. Do you know how many scary letters I get? Men want me to wear boots and tie them up and whip them. And yes, it’s true,” she insisted, flushing a bit more as he smiled, reflexively, because she’d startled him. “I could show you. And you don’t even want to kiss me? Or maybe you do believe I’m what you see onscreen, and that’s why you don’t want it. But that’s not me. It’s not me.”

  “Josie. Wait,” he said, appalled that he’d made her feel even worse, because it was clear that he had. He was rubbish at this kind of emotional stuff. He should have given her that cuddle and been done with it, but he hadn’t been able to. He took a breath, blew it out, and tried again.

  “Yeh,” he said, “I’ve been looking at you, and yeh, I want to eat you up. I believe you get those letters, too, and no, I don’t think you’re what I see onscreen.” He reached out and smoothed those wisps of hair back, because he had to touch her again. “And I want to kiss you. Everywhere. Believe me, I want it. I won’t be asking you to tie me up, though. Ever.” He smiled a little, trying to make her see what he felt, what she was to him. “That’s a promise. Because you’re not that kind of girl.”

  “How do you know what kind of girl I am?” At least she wasn’t looking heartbroken anymore.

  He smiled again. “Let’s say I have a pretty fair idea. And I can’t wait to find out more. But not today.”

  Wings, or Not

  Hugh opened his eyes on another summer morning, but it hadn’t been a dream waking him this time, or any sound, either. He frowned at the quality of the light coming around the edges of the blinds, turned his head to squint at his alarm clock. Then hauled himself up on an elbow, grabbed the clock and stared at it, and swore.

  Forty-five minutes late, because he’d been up late the night before, after the kids had gone to bed, watching the All Blacks’ game against the French for a second time, and then hadn’t been able to sleep afterwards. Keyed up by the victory, and wishing he’d been there. He’d been lucky in the past with the injuries, partly genetics, partly because he trained so hard, and had never missed an entire series like this, and he was hating it. Especially since Luke Hoeata had had one hell of a game, had impressed in the 7 jersey, had taken full advantage of the opportunity afforded by Hugh’s absence.

  In the reasonable light of morning, though, there was nothing new about players competing for their spots, or about the tenuousness of life at the top of the rugby heap, and his unease of the night was overblown and served no useful purpose. Better to spend the energy training. But for all that, he hadn’t slept, and then he’d overslept, and why hadn’t Amelia woken him up? She’d never been shy about that before.

  He walked into the kitchen, and she wasn’t there. Just Charlie, eating cereal in his pajamas, and well behind schedule.

  “Morning,” Hugh said. “Sorry. I overslept. You’ve got to leave for school in …” He looked at the clock. “Fifteen minutes, so rattle your dags. Amelia already done?”

  “Nah,” Charlie said, shoveling cereal into his mouth, speaking around it. “She’s in bed. She didn’t come out to eat breakfast.”

  “She ill?” Hugh asked with a little alarm. He was doing better at the general feeding and watering, but that would seriously stretch his capabilities.

  “She said.”

  “Well, get dressed,” Hugh decided, “and I’ll find out.”

  Her bedroom door was shut. He gave it a rap with his knuckles. “Amelia? You in there?”

  “Go away.” She didn’t sound ill. She sounded unhappy, or worse. What?

  He rapped again, then tried the door. Locked. He rattled the handle. “Amelia. Open the door.”

  “Go away,” she insisted, and he thought she might be crying. “Leave me alone.”

  What was he meant to do now? “You need to let me in,” he said. “If you’re ill, I need to see.” Not that he wanted to. But it didn’t matter anyway, because no matter what he said, the door remained
locked.

  He went and found the key, which took some searching. Charlie stood in the hall, still in his pajamas, and said worriedly, “I knocked, but she wouldn’t come.”

  Hugh looked at him in exasperation. “Why didn’t you come get me? Why didn’t you wake me up?”

  Charlie shrugged, looked away. “You were asleep.”

  “That’s the point. If something’s wrong, you come get me, you don’t just ignore it!”

  “I didn’t …” Charlie said. “You were sleeping,” he repeated. “You’d get angry.”

  “I don’t—” Hugh stopped. “Go get your uni on,” he said instead. “Get ready for school.”

  “I’m late, though,” Charlie said.

  Hugh ran a hand through his hair. “All right. Well, that’s too bad. You’re late. You still need to go.”

  “I need a note.”

  “A note? What note?”

  “For school. Saying I’m late.”

  “Won’t they see that by themselves?”

  “You have to have a note. So you’re excused. Otherwise you’re in trouble.”

  “Just—” Hugh looked at Amelia’s door, back at Charlie. Amelia didn’t seem to be in dire distress, and her voice had been strong enough, so whatever was wrong, it could wait five minutes, he decided. “Go get dressed,” he told Charlie. “I’m going to the kitchen right now to write you a note.”

  “And I don’t have my lunch,” Charlie said.

  “Well, get your lunch,” Hugh said with exasperation. “Now. Go.”

  It took another fifteen minutes, in the end, and Charlie was standing at the front door, note in hand, trepidation clear.

  “They’re not going to imprison you,” Hugh said.

  “We have a maths test, though,” Charlie said. “And I’ll have missed it. Mrs. Anderson will be angry.”

  “Nah, she won’t. Because I wrote ‘family emergency,’” Hugh told him, taking the note from him and shoving it into the outer pocket of Charlie’s backpack.