Stone Cold Kiwi (New Zealand Ever After Book 2)

by Rosalind James

  I was still laughing, but I was also grabbing her and hauling her off. Not soon enough. She was laying something along the way to the toilet, but it wasn’t eggs. And I couldn’t remember where the toilet actually was.

  Beside me, Hamish was hopping along, looking anxious, and shouting, “Livvy, stop pooing.” From my bedroom came the raspy, squeaky mouse-noises that were Isobel waking up and starting to fuss. Behind me, Karen was laughing some more. Gasping with it, banging into the wall, wrapping her arms around herself. I was laughing, too, helpless to stop, doing some dancing myself, and trying to get the words out. “I have to use the toilet too. I’m bursting. Stop making me laugh. Where is it? Oh, bloody hell. She just did it again. I’m about to wet myself. Why aren’t the Kegels working?”

  It took a moment to hear the voice from behind us. “Maybe this is the wrong time.”

  Karen said, “On the right! Right! It’s there!”

  Which was the exact moment I started to wee a little despite all those Kegels, clamped a hand over my crotch, hauled Olivia up with the other arm, and dashed for the bathroom door.

  I didn’t manage to close it behind me. That was the least of my worries. I set my daughter down, threw the lid of the loo up, yanked down my PJ trousers, and was halfway done before my bum hit the seat.

  I was still laughing when my eyes met Matiu’s.

  Oh, well.

  Matiu

  Well, this wasn’t what I’d expected.

  I’d come over to invite Karen to dinner tonight at Tane and June’s. We’d heard through the grapevine only a couple days ago that she was arriving for the holiday weekend, because her visit had apparently been impulsive, as usual, but the Maori hospitality machine had got itself in gear already.

  Nobody’d said anything about Poppy and the kids, though. I’d knocked, but had heard no answer, just heaps of shrieking, and had barged in to help with ... whatever was going on. Which hadn’t quite worked out, had it?

  Karen pulled the bathroom door closed and turned a laughing gaze to me. “Whoops. Awkward much? We were being albatrosses, and one thing led to another. Want to clean up poop, or get the baby?”

  I could hear Isobel crying from down the passage. That same rusty-hinge noise, but stronger now. It was pulling me toward it already, but then, humans had evolved to respond to that sound. “I’ll get the baby,” I said over my shoulder.

  “Loser,” Karen said, and I laughed.

  Isobel had worked herself up by the time I found her. The rusty hinge had progressed to some medium-sized wails, but when I got my hands around her and carefully lifted her out of the Moses basket, she quieted. Her eyes still had those flecks of gold amidst the blue, and as I gazed into them, her face lit up and her rosebud mouth stretched into a smile. And my heart turned over.

  “Kia ora, little one,” I said softly. “You’re a beauty, eh. What a good girl you are. What a sweet girl,” and pulled her into my shoulder for a cuddle. I had my fingers on the back of her head and my palm against her back, and she felt warm and solid against me, doing her best to hold her head up as she nuzzled my neck. “Nah, no joy there,” I told her, setting her onto the unmade bed with regret, because I wanted to keep holding her. “You’ve got big, haven’t you?” I said, in that way you had of talking to babies as if they understood you, as I unwrapped her flannel swaddling blanket, found a nappy and wipes in the bag on the floor, and set about changing her while she stiffened and started to fuss a bit again, with waving arms and tight little fists, her mouth still searching for that meal.

  The voice came from behind me. It had the light sound to it again, the one I’d heard during our breakfast weeks ago. “You made the right choice. Well, depending what that nappy looks like. Karen doesn’t realize what she’s signed up for, inviting us to stay.”

  When I turned, keeping one hand on Isobel’s tummy, Poppy was smiling. So was I. “Nah,” I said. “Girls just want to have fun. And some boys, too.”

  She wasn’t in the pink flannel PJs this time, maybe because it was so much warmer in subtropical Tauranga than in still-chilly springtime Dunedin, or maybe because she was feeling pretty again. I hoped that was the reason she was wearing pale-blue knit trousers and a matching top, its crossover neckline edged with creamy lace. For nursing, that would be, but it all looked soft and pretty and so feminine. Her hair was in a bit of a tangle, but her curls had a shine to them, and she had that light back in her flower-pounamu eyes.

  I said, finishing up the nappy change, “The smile looks good on you. Glad to see it again.”

  It had gone all the way to mischievous, in fact. She was laughing, like she’d always see the funny side. The woman I remembered from the wedding, who’d set aside the fact that she was there without her husband and danced like nobody was watching, like you couldn’t quench her spark. I finished snapping Isobel’s yellow-duck-printed Babygro, and Poppy took her from me, sat on the edge of the bed, uncovered a breast, and set the baby to it as if it were the most natural thing in the world. Which, of course, it was. And still, I wanted to touch that white skin with my fingertips, there at the base of her neck where the blue veins showed.

  Awkward much? Karen had asked.

  Awkward heaps.

  She said, “I could be embarrassed about that exhibition before, but I’m going to assume you’ve seen worse. Sit down and talk to me. Make me forget about it, so I can wave it off.”

  “You assume correctly,” I said. “About seeing worse. This doesn’t even register, other than ...”

  I broke off, and she looked at me and asked, “What?”

  I cleared my throat. “Nah, not saying it.”

  She was laughing again. “Oh, wait. I was so alluring, taking my trousers down to have a wee? Come on, boy. You can do better. At least make it believable.”

  I ran a hand over my hair. “Bugger. How’m I meant to answer that?” I had to laugh myself, though.

  “Question for you,” she said, sobering some. “As a doctor.” She took a breath, blew it out, and said, “Right. I’m asking. Does a man ... do men ... sexually ... what do they ...” She shook her head.

  “Do men what?” I asked.

  “A bit embarrassing.” Her embarrassment was clearly warring with her sense of humor, though. “Again. Pity I don’t know who else to ask. Jax, but first, he’s my brother, and second, he’s a soldier, so we can take it as read that he’s not squeamish. And then there’s the ‘brother’ part again, and—no. So—not Jax. And Grandad? Too much information, surely. Which means ...” She smiled at me. Winsomely. “Seems I’m back to you, if I want to know. And sadly, I always do want to know. And as you are an emergency doctor, presumably having seen it all ...”

  “The mind boggles,” I said, laughing again. “Nah, go on and ask. I’ve been doing this job for a very long time. Hard to embarrass me. Do men what sexually? I’m trying to guess. Take fantasy too far? Experience erotic disasters on a truly spectacular scale? Let’s assume the answer is ‘yes,’ and that I have a long and varied list of examples. I could share some of the highlights, but Isobel’s too young to hear. Let’s just say that when you have to send somebody to a DIY store in the middle of the night for a diamond-tipped saw, because some fella didn’t have an, ah, appropriately sized ring made of an appropriate material for his evening’s activities, so he decided the steel one in his shed would do, the one meant for a plumbing job ... Well, when you say that sparks flew, that isn’t the kind you want to be talking about.”

  She was laughing halfway through, her eyes dancing with horrified amusement, and then she detached Isobel and was patting her back, slipping the PJ top up along the way. She’d taken off her own rings, of the platinum-and-diamond variety, either for the night or for good, and that hand looked just bloody fine without them. She said, “Right, then. I’m asking. It’s not as bad as that, anyway. I’m trying not to imagine, but ...”

  “Yeh,” I said. “Every fella in that room was saying a prayer and mentally crossing his legs. Nobody more than
me, as I was the one holding the saw. Talk about your precision jobs. Go on and ask.”

  “Does seeing a woman at ... call it at less than her best. Like you did just now.” There was some pink creeping its way up the white skin of her chest, into her cheeks. “On the loo, or, say ...” She waved her free hand. “Giving birth. For instance. Does it ...” She hesitated, then: “Oh, bugger it. I’m just going to ask. Does it give you a sort of ... permanent disgust? Or semi-permanent, anyway? Does it interfere with the erotic element of the picture? The next time you see the picture?”

  I no longer felt any urge to laugh. I said, “If you’re married to a dickhead, maybe. If he thinks life’s meant to be a porn video. But if you’re married to a dickhead, that’s your problem, not that you gave birth to a baby with all the strength and grace in the world. If, say, you’re lying on the grass in the worst pain of your life, still holding onto your little girl’s hand. Any man who saw you do that? Any man worth having? He wants you more.”

  I’d said too much. I was out there in a way I never put myself. I said, “And I could answer the part about the loo, too, but it could be a bit creepy,” and she laughed again, in surprise this time.

  And possibly disbelief, because she said, “That was not attractive. That was anti-attractive. I refuse to believe it.”

  I said, “I could have a bit of an issue with your skin.” She was putting Isobel on the other breast now, as it happened, and there were those blue veins again. I had to clear my throat, but I went on anyway. “Also, and I’m going to be general here, so as not to be creepy—a fella who gets put off that easily probably isn’t much chop at sex anyway. It does tend to be a messy business.”

  “Only if you do it right,” she said, with that pink still in her cheeks. “That’s what they say, anyway.”

  “That’s what they say,” I agreed, and got a bit of a lump in my throat. Tenderness, maybe.

  “So,” she said, going for “brisk” now, “tell me why you’re up here, how you got the Labour weekend off. I’m here trying to avoid a breakdown, obviously. I could say I was looking for adventure, but all my adventures lately seem to be of the toilet variety. Why are you here, though? Do they normally give those kinds of desirable three-day weekends to the new boy?”

  That was it on the smiling. “Not quite,” I said. “Or not at all.”

  She looked at me more sharply. “Oh? It’s a story?”

  “Well, yeh. It is.” What was I going to tell her? I was gobsmacked at seeing her at all, and I definitely wasn’t at my best, speaking of making oneself attractive to the opposite sex. Women could be fastidious, and I normally tried to present something vaguely resembling “polish.” At the moment, though, I was wearing shorts and an ancient T-shirt, I hadn’t shaved for about three days, possibly because I’d been a bit depressed, or at a total loss, and as I’d popped by after playing some basketball with my nephews, I was sweaty as well. I wouldn’t say I’d shown myself at my suave best with Poppy so far, and today was just continuing my streak. It hadn’t been my most wonderful week, though. Poppy might not be the only one trying to avoid a breakdown.

  Wait. She was having a breakdown? Really? I should ...

  Wait again. What the hell was I going to tell her? Could I possibly look less in-control, less the master of my own destiny, once I revealed my suspension? And then, to explain it, I’d have to tell her exactly how much of a dickhead Max-the-Magnificent was, and did she need to know that? My brain shouted Yes, but I suspected my brain was lying.

  Karen poked her head in the door, saving me from the decision. “Hey,” she said. “I’m doing breakfast. Want to stay, Matiu? Poached eggs with smoked salmon, goat cheese, and smashed peas on bruschetta. With lemon zest. Yum. I’m so good. Also, I love New Zealand. What do you say?”

  “How can I say no to that?” I said, and stood up. “I’ll come out and help with the kids, shall I?” Complicating my life, but what were you going to do. I’d worked on the premise of not complicating my life for over four decades now. Maybe I just wanted to try something else.

  Yeh, right.

  “Take them down to the water, would you?” Karen asked. “Oh, and maybe convince Olivia to get dressed, if you can. She says she can too lay an egg if she turns into a bird, and birds don’t wear clothes. Does your patented line of girl-charm work on three-year-olds? What am I saying. It works on everyone. What was I, sixteen when I succumbed? And how much practice have you had since then?”

  I could all but feel Poppy drawing back from me. I said, trying for lightness, “Not sure how much charm I’ve got at the moment, but I’ll put it to work.”

  Taking the kids to the beach. Not my favorite.

  Why was I such a keen swimmer, though? Because I knew that avoidance was absolutely no cure for anxiety. Which was why I wasn’t going to be avoiding this.

  Well, probably not the only reason.

  20

  Changing Times

  Poppy

  It was pure luxury, feeding Isobel with nobody else asking for breakfast, especially once Karen brought me a cup of tea and a piece of toast spread with butter and rewarewa honey. The toast sliced diagonally, the way I liked it, on a hand-painted plate with a bright-blue border and cheerful yellow flowers in the middle. Why do diagonal slices taste better, and why does everything taste better on pretty dishes?

  Wait, though. Matiu’d taken the kids down to the water. I’d forgotten all about the drowning thing. How could I have done that? And why had he agreed to take them at all?

  I’d be more careful after this, I promised myself. Unfortunately, for some reason, I didn’t appear to be leaping out of bed and racing down to the shore to relieve him of the burden. Instead, I seemed to be trying to fall asleep again.

  Five minutes. Well, maybe ten. I told Karen, “This is choice, the tea and all. It’s brilliant, in fact. Cheers.”

  “Really?” she asked. “Didn’t Max do that?”

  I laughed. “No.”

  “Oh. Huh. Jax does, if he wakes up first, which he usually does. I love being a consultant. Hemi does it, too. Of course, Hope’s always pregnant, so ...”

  “Has she had the baby?” I asked. Actually, Hope’s three—four?—kids were years apart, which sounded like a vacation to me, but then, doing it this way had been my choice. Absolutely my choice. Max had been ready to stop at one.

  Life lesson: Don’t have kids with a man who doesn’t really want them. So easy to see, looking back, but life lessons are like that. Also, I was crazy about my kids. If I’d traded Max for the three of them, I’d got the best of the deal.

  “No,” Karen said. “They’re still waiting. She’s late, which is novel for Hope. It’s driving me kind of crazy not being there with her, but I thought it was better to go once she’s actually had it, so I can help with the other kids and all. But if I’m going nuts, I’ll bet Hemi’s going through the roof, waiting. He’s been working at home for the past ten days, Hope says. If you knew Hemi, you’d appreciate the significance of that. He swears every time that that’s it, they’re done, he’s not watching her go through that again. And then he goes ahead and gets her pregnant anyway, and swears it all over again. They’re like fertility gods. Aroha, my oldest niece, told them when she was here for the wedding—” Karen put on what I had to assume was an exasperated-teenage-American voice: ‘You guys. It’s embarrassing. The other kids think I’m, like, in a cult, like I’m going to start wearing prairie dresses and braiding my hair.’ She laughed. “What can I say. I’ve been there. They are embarrassing. But I’m disappointed about the non-universal tea-and-toast thing. I was hoping it was a Kiwi tradition, once you had a baby. On the other hand ... the power of suggestion. If I knew how to be tactful, anyway. I expect I’ll end up telling Jax that’s the new deal forever, once it happens. I wonder how long I’ll manage to wait?”

  “So what’s the plan for that?” I asked. I couldn’t be too bitter, I realized with relief, because her happiness made me smile.

  “Ja
x is being patient. You know how he is. Acting cool, like I can take my time, like, ‘Whenever you think it’s right, baby,’ but I caught him putting a book in his duffel for his training course. Guide to a Healthy Pregnancy. Can you imagine? He’s going to be sitting on some ... some log, reading that thing in breaks from showing those guys how to defuse a suicide vest. If he weren’t such a badass, everybody would be teasing him.”

  “Good thing he is such a badass, then,” I said.

  “Also that he has all those sexy scars,” Karen said dreamily.

  I felt deliciously warm and sleepy, despite having managed so many REM cycles last night. “I expect Jax will come through with the tea and toast,” I said. “As he’s happier than I’ve ever seen him.”

  “Really?” Karen looked, for once, a bit hesitant.

  “Sit down a minute,” I said. “Keep me company.”

  “Breakfast,” she said. “Though I gave the kids cereal earlier. I’d say we should relieve Matiu, but ...”

  “But you think they’re good with him. Me too.” I realized that I was, in fact, fully confident of it. Even Olivia, egg-laying and all. Maybe you felt that way about a man who’d looked into your eyes during the most panicked moment of your life and told you he’d take care of you, and then did it. Or maybe it was that tree thing he did. The shelter.

  In any case, Karen sat down, took Isobel from me, since she was finally done eating, snuggled her close and rubbed her back, and said, “You may not be able to count on Matiu for much, but you can probably count on him for that. He’s a responsible guy in some ways—professionally, at least—even though he isn’t what you’d call ‘serious.’ Not compared to Tane or Hemi. Or Koro, for that matter. Or did it seem like he took them because of you? Like a flirtation technique?” She laughed. “That’d be awkward, huh? Nah. He’s like that with everybody. Well, every woman. You should see him with the older ladies.”