Stone Cold Kiwi (New Zealand Ever After Book 2)

by Rosalind James

  And Matiu. In a singlet and shorts, shoving his bulkier, older brother out of the way, laughing, joking. Energy to burn and optimism to spare, like no matter what had happened last week, he’d be fine. I’d call it a charmed life, except that I knew it hadn’t been. Just a confident one.

  I’d put a sketch pad and charcoal in the nappy bag. I’d brought them on the journey out of hope rather than expectation, but tonight, I’d shoved them in anyway. It was Karen, saying, “You don’t get to do that, since you aren’t drawing right now.” It had stung, or maybe it hadn’t. Maybe it had been permission to do it or not, whichever I liked.

  Just now, I wasn’t thinking of animals and stories, or not much. I was sketching the basketball players, for no reason other than that it was a challenge to capture their personalities. Jax, his face more austerely beautiful than ever since he’d been wounded, frowning in concentration as he leaped from long meters away to take his shot, the ball rolling off the tips of his fingers as if it were floating, making it look smooth and easy. Karen, jumping high to block him, waving her arms and shouting, and then another quick sketch, a matter of a few lines, when Jax came down again as the ball swished through the net, and gave her a smirk and a slap on the bum as he pivoted away.

  Tane, a laugh coming all the way from his belly as he spread his arms wide to block his brother. And Matiu. Sweat dripping, legs driving, feinting and passing and leaping high to shoot. Fierce in his need to win, no matter how much good-natured sledging he did.

  “Eh, fat boy,” he called now, diving around Tane and flicking the ball off to Karen. “Keep up. Got to stay in it to win it.”

  “That’s ... all muscle, bro,” Tane managed to get out through great puffs of air, a comment that was greeted by whoops of laughter. My charcoal was moving furiously, but I’d turned another page, and I wasn’t sketching Matiu with the ball anymore. I was covering the entire sheet with an image of a man leaping across a chasm, dark intention on his beautiful face, a ring of leaves slung low on his waist and his tail thrashing behind him.

  Not running away. In pursuit.

  I was putting cat ears on him when I realized I was drawing Avatar. Also, this wasn’t what I wanted to do. Not quite right. I whipped the page over and started again. Faster and faster, and there he was. A jaguar making that same leap from head-on, his eyes Matiu’s, and my charcoal was flying. Drawing in the chains of triangles, the intricately entwined chevrons like a necklace of spear points that made up the tattoo I’d seen only in flashes, until his face, his powerful forelegs and shoulders were all covered by it, leaving his fangs and the whites of his eyes gleaming against the darkness.

  Another page. Another idea, and I was flying. My brain. My hand. The paper was lit by the thick white candles on the table and the fairy lights overhead, but I almost didn’t need to see to draw this. My mind saw it, and my mind was enough.

  A shadow fell over the paper, and I looked up and blinked. Matiu was standing over me, his chest nearly bare, rubbing a white towel over his head. Nearly the same picture as that night in my sitting room, and I was staring at the tattoo, studying it. There, the way the chain of spearheads wrapped around the shoulder and on down like a wide ribbon of woven flax, as if the design was an organic part of his body. I’d never seen anything like it, and I needed to get that down better. And his mouth. I needed to get the fullness and firmness of his lips. I’d got the larger-than-usual eyes right, the beautifully carved ears, the broadness of cheekbone, the shape of his nose. Strong and straight at the top, broad at the bottom, the curve of his nostrils as finely made as the rest of him.

  Symmetry was beauty, and Matiu was perfectly symmetrical.

  He said, “You’re drawing. Awesome,” then sat down beside me, his scent a little deeper than before, the clean, spicy smell of Christmas underlaid by a bit of musk that was just as delicious as the rest of it.

  What does it mean if you like the way a man smells, even when he’s been sweating?

  Nothing good for your peace of mind, that’s what.

  He glanced at the pad, open in my lap, and looked up again, eyebrows raised. No smile.

  Oh, God.

  I looked down myself. It wasn’t that I didn’t know what I’d drawn. Of course I did. It was hard to connect it, though, to the conversation. Or to the moment.

  It was the jaguar again, because Matiu wasn’t a menacing, brutal tiger or a streamlined cheetah. He was a black jaguar, dark and graceful and rare, as suited to close encounters, to stalking, closing, and fighting, as he was to the running and leaping I’d started out with.

  In the picture I’d just sketched, though, he wasn’t running and leaping. He was with another animal. A lioness, long and lithe, who was turning her tawny head toward him, her teeth showing. A snarl, or a grimace of another kind, because the jaguar was halfway over her, one paw pulling her upper body in closer, his mouth closing over the back of her neck, his tail thrashing, curling over hers as well, like in another few seconds, he’d be all the way there. Not delivering a killing bite. Holding her, because there was tenderness in the pose, too.

  But mostly, there was power.

  Maybe he wouldn’t see, wouldn’t realize, I thought for a second, then gave it up. The tattoo was a pretty good clue. I’d sketched in just a bit of that. On his shoulder, down the top of the foreleg. Yeh. In exactly the same spot. A pretty good clue.

  His golden-brown eyes, the eyes I’d imagined as I drew in deep-gray charcoal, stared into mine. Not on the paper. In reality. He was breathing hard from exertion, and I was breathing hard from something else. From the emotional release that was creating, and from excitement. Physical or mental, I couldn’t tell, or rather, I could. Physical. Mental. Everything.

  I said, “I should ... take the kids home.”

  He said, “Yeh.”

  Other people were saying other things, getting up to leave. Jax and Karen were laughing, off to one side of me, and I was vaguely aware of Jax putting his hand on Karen’s waist, bending down to kiss her. The air was full of that sort of thing, somehow. Soft laughter and familiar, loving touches. The sweet scent of jasmine mingling with the lingering hint of lemon and orange blossom from the trees edging the garden, and the smoky undertone of the roast lamb we’d eaten earlier. A sensuality and a peace that you could sink into like a feather bed, but no peace at all in my body and mind.

  Matiu asked, “Are you going swimming later? Taking advantage of that full moon?”

  “Kids,” I said. It was hard to breathe. It was harder to think.

  “Ah.” It was a long sound. “Could be, of course, that by the time you get the kids to bed and asleep, Jax and Karen will have done their swim, be back in the house.” He glanced over at them and gave me a faint smile. “Could definitely be.”

  Back in the house and gone to bed, he meant. I’d tried not to think about that, earlier today. I did my best not to go around noticing other people’s sex lives, especially my brother’s, but sometimes, it was right there, heady as the scent of night-blooming jasmine, and besides, I wasn’t that good at not thinking about things.

  The words fell out of my mouth like a string of pearls. Round. Luminescent. Solid. “If you wanted to come by a bit later, we could take that swim together.”

  “Mm. Dangerous to swim alone.” His voice was gentle, but in the way my jaguar’s teeth had been gentle. On the back of the lioness’s neck. The hair was rising on my arms, and as he watched, a shiver made its slow way down my body at the message I got from his.

  He stood up. “I’ll help clean up here first, though. Give you some time to get the kids sorted.”

  “Nice of you to help,” I said, for something to say.

  “Nah,” he said, and there was that flash of white teeth again. “No choice. I’m staying here. There are babies on my bed. One of yours, in fact.”

  “Oh.” That took me aback, somehow. He hadn’t seemed, before, to be quite of his whanau. Standing a bit aloof, always. More sophisticated than the others, and more d
etached. Like his cousin Hemi, but different. Lighter, less scary, without the undercurrent of brooding near-threat.

  “Yeh,” he said. “Rented out my house, then went and got myself suspended. Bugger.”

  “Maybe you don’t have good sense,” I said.

  “I used to,” he said. “Not anymore.”

  26

  Untransformed

  Matiu

  Everyone had left at last, and I was walking Koro down the road to his house and trying not to count the minutes since Jax and Karen had driven off, with Poppy behind them. The old man’s steps were steady and slow in the dark, one hand on his stick and the other grasping the forearm I held out. Nikau and Vanessa walked ahead, Nikau carrying the baby and Vanessa carrying the remnants of the food she’d brought along.

  Koro said, “That was a good day.”

  “Yeh,” I said. “It was.”

  “Good to see Karen and Jax, too,” he said. “Good to know they’ll be around more. Karen will need the whanau.”

  When I die, he meant.

  “Poppy and the kids as well,” Koro said. “Feels good to have ... kids around. Good to see the ... life.”

  That wasn’t hesitation. It was breathlessness. I asked, “All right? Feeling dizzy? Chest pain?”

  He didn’t wave a hand, because he didn’t have one free. He said, “I’m old, that’s all. You can let me be old, my son. You don’t have to fix this.”

  You can’t fix this, he meant. I knew it was true. My own chest was hurting all the same, the muscles tightening, making it harder to breathe myself. An ailment that sent victims to Emergency every year when it got bad enough, because it felt serious even when it wasn’t. The Japanese had a term for it. So did we, actually. Broken Heart Syndrome. That might not be the official diagnosis, but it was the real one. When it hurt too much for your body to go on. When you’d lost too much.

  “She’s a bit like ... Karen, Poppy is,” Koro went on. “Or maybe more like Hope. Got a spirit to her, a spark, but a sweetness as well. Sadness, too, I’m thinking. A good mum’s going to hurt when her kids hurt, and that wee boy, Hamish ... he’s doing some hurting.”

  “Yeh,” I said, wondering where we were going with this. “He is, and she is. A good mum, I mean, and she’s all those things you said. Though I’m not sure she’s exactly like anybody. Doesn’t feel that way to me.”

  “No,” Koro said. “Nobody’s exactly like anybody else. A good thing. Everybody should be their own somebody.”

  “So what’s all this about? Going to warn me off?” I asked, trying to keep it light. There wasn’t a hope. My body felt like a runaway train headed down the track, and I wasn’t sure I could stop it anymore, because I kept seeing that jaguar. His paw over the lioness’s shoulder, pulling her in, his teeth at her neck. The gray shading around them, because it was happening at night. Secretly. In the dark.

  The tattoo on his shoulder.

  Interspecies. Forbidden. Wrong.

  I didn’t care.

  “No, my son,” Koro said. “No need to warn you. You’ll do what’s right.”

  So, no pressure.

  I got him into the house, headed up the hill again, and set about doing the washing-up with Tane and June. I was loading the dishwasher, wondering how long I needed to give this. Which meant calculating how long it would take Poppy to put the kids to bed, and how long Jax and Karen would “swim” before they were in the house again. I didn’t know Jax all that well, but I knew Karen.

  So, not that long.

  June said, “Never seen anybody get as many dishes in that thing as you do, Matiu. Reckon that’s an organized mind.” She laughed. “Not me. I bung them in any old way and call it good.”

  “Not sure Matiu’s as organized as he once was, all the same,” Tane said, scrubbing the roasting pan at the sink.

  I said, “You could be right about that,” and thought, I do not need another dissection of my life. Cheers, but no.

  “What is it, d’you reckon?” June asked. “Midlife crisis, maybe? Normally, that’s a flash car and a divorce, but you’ve had the flash car for yonks, and you’d have to be married to be divorced.”

  So much for what I didn’t need. I was getting it anyway.

  “If a midlife crisis is when you do everything differently, when you take the other fork in the road,” Tane said, “reckon Matiu will be trading in the BMW for a people-mover and training to be an accountant. Getting married as well. Going to the farmers’ market on Saturday mornings with the missus and the baby in a pushchair. What happened to the fella who didn’t want a car with a back seat, because then you’re well out of it when anybody wants the boring stuff done?”

  “Back seat can be useful, though,” June said. “At least you and I used to think so, eh, Tane.”

  “Still could be,” Tane said. “Though we wouldn’t fit now.” I smiled, and June slapped him with a tea towel. “But nah, Matiu won’t be using the back seat. That’s kid stuff. It’s all about the couch now, I reckon. Smooth, eh. Sophisticated, even. Soft music. Patented line of sexy chat. Black shirt opened one button extra, two glasses of red wine, and an arm around her shoulders.” June started to hum something, possibly the opening bars of “Let’s Get It On,” as Tane held up his hands, fingers spread wide, setting the scene, and went on. “Touching her hair, then pulling it back and kissing her neck, taking it slow. Only once the good song comes on, though, which is when you take the glass of wine from her hand, set it down, and let her know you’re getting the party started. Yeh. That’s it. So smooth.”

  They were both laughing now. “Are you about done?” I asked, slotting cutlery into the basket handle-up, so you wouldn’t end up with bacteria on the eating surfaces when you removed them. Which was medical knowledge and practicality, not stuffiness, whatever Tane said.

  “Nah,” Tane said. “Just getting started. Imagining my future bachelor life, once June chucks me out.”

  “Yeh, right,” June said, laughing some more. “Nobody’s going to be sitting on that couch with you, mate. Not unless you get a cat.”

  “Yeh, nah.” Tane sighed. “Cats don’t like me, so I’m out there. Reckon you’re stuck with me. Need to cuddle somebody, don’t I.” Then he added, as if it were an afterthought, “She’s pretty, eh, that Poppy.”

  “Very pretty,” June said. “You’re never going to date a woman with three kids without a back seat, though, Matiu.”

  “I have a back seat,” I said.

  Tane snorted. “If that’s what you call it. You won’t be getting three car seats in that. What are you doing there anyway? Not like you to ignore all that complication.” His eyes weren’t humorous now. “Single mum trying to find her way, and all.”

  “A new way,” June said. “A hard road.”

  “Little kiddos, too,” Tane continued, because they’d been married so long, they finished each other’s thoughts. “They’re pretty confused, I’m guessing. I’m saying it, because Koro doesn’t push in unless he’s wanted. Seems I don’t have that much self-control. Don’t do it if you aren’t willing to walk that road with her, bro. She doesn’t deserve your usual.”

  Your usual. I said, “I don’t hurt people.” A bit stiffly, probably. I didn’t say he had it wrong about the couch and the red wine and the music and all, because he didn’t. What was I meant to do, though, have all my encounters in stairwells? I was romantic with women because women liked romance. What was wrong with that?

  “Don’t you?” June’s voice was quiet. “You sure? And then there’s those kids. Kids don’t get ‘just for now.’ Kids think that new bloke in Mummy’s bed is there to stay, until they can’t think so anymore. That can be a sad day. Losing their faith. Losing their trust.”

  “What makes you think I’ll be in her bed?” I asked. “I told you, the suspension was rubbish.”

  “Never kissed her,” Tane said. “Never held her hand. Not interested. Yeh, nah, mate. We’ve got eyes. And rubbish or not, sounds like you’ve got a problem there. You ma
y want to pay attention to that, as it’s meant to be your life’s work. And I’ll say this as well, since I’m talking and all. If you’re not going to care more about her than you are about yourself—walk away. Other women in the world, aren’t there. Women who want what you want.”

  “Red light, green light,” I said. “Yeh, bro. I heard it from you when I was ten. I got it then. I’ve got it ever since.”

  “There’s more to this than a traffic light,” Tane said. “Such a thing as a work zone, eh, and people out there with no protection, trying to rebuild. Got to slow down in a work zone. Got to have a care.”

  I recognized the current rise in my heart rate for what it was. I knew that my arterial tension and testosterone levels were rising, and that my cortisol was dropping. Nothing pathological about it. Anger, that was all. Somehow, though, the knowledge wasn’t helping a bit. I didn’t look at them when I said, “Why would you think I don’t know all of that? Why would you imagine I don’t care?”

  “Maybe because you’re doing it anyway,” Tane said.

  I shut the dishwasher door. Carefully. I tried to think of something to say. I couldn’t do it.

  June said slowly, “Or maybe it’s happened after all. Maybe you’ve actually fallen in love. That could be even worse.”

  Poppy

  It took ages to get the kids into bed. Hamish and Olivia needed a bath first, much as I wanted to move on to my post-bedtime activities instead. They seemed to have spent the day smearing every substance possible over themselves.

  “You’ve got geologic layers of dirt here,” I told Olivia, scrubbing the back of her neck. “How’d you get strawberry juice back here, too? It’s either that or blood, and I didn’t hear anybody screaming. And I think you have honey in your hair.”