Stone Cold Kiwi (New Zealand Ever After Book 2)

by Rosalind James

  I’d filled my sketch pad. I needed more paper. I also needed to know how a South American jaguar was sharing roaming space with a pride of African lions, but never mind, I’d come up with something. I’d already discovered, through some hasty research, that a male jaguar could be larger and more dangerous than a female lion. That had felt important to know, even though the whole thing was a pure figment of my imagination.

  Sexual-politics-wise, I probably should’ve made the lioness larger, even if the jaguar was more powerful and definitely more menacing, a solo hunter and fighter rather than a pack animal. But my hand drew what it wanted. It always had. And it wanted the jaguar bigger. It wanted to feel his heat.

  When the shadow fell over my paper, I knew who it was before I looked up. The faint hint of cedar, spice, and salt air, and something in the way he disturbed the air around me.

  He said, “You’re drawing them again.”

  “Yes.” I wanted to say so much. I didn’t know how to start.

  “Is it for a book?” he asked.

  Was it? I said, “I don’t know.”

  “It feels personal, maybe,” he said.

  “Yes. And not for kids. I don’t know who it’s for, actually.” I looked down at my drawing, tracing my hand over my lioness’s flank, smudging shade into her defiant form.

  “Maybe it’s for you,” he said. “Maybe you’re allowed to do something that’s just for you. Maybe you deserve it.”

  The day was warm and bright. Blue sky, wisps of white cloud, faint breeze from the sea below, that hint of clean ozone in the air. Nothing like the dark shadows of the jungle, except for one thing. The golden-brown eyes that stared into mine.

  I said, knowing my voice was too breathless, “I’m so confused. Everybody says you’re casual, but then there was last night, when you weren’t, at least I don’t think you were. I think that was what was going on. And anyway, I keep drawing you this way instead. Intense. Focused. My mind can be wrong, but my hand is never wrong, so this must be you.” I tried to laugh, but I couldn’t. “And I’m not doing it right myself. I’m meant to be funny. I’m always funny.”

  His face gentled, and I knew I’d be drawing my jaguar like that later. The lioness might be leaping into the darkness, and she might be terrified to do it, but he’d be with her all the way. He said, “Maybe you don’t feel funny just now.”

  Any minute now, Isobel would wake up, Hamish would come tell me something absolutely urgent, like, “Olivia’s weeing in the grass,” or, “Can we have ice blocks?” Or if not, somebody would come over and draw us into the web that was Matiu’s whanau.

  If I was going to say this, I had to say it now. I got it out fast. “I hurt you. I assumed too much. I’m sorry.”

  His face changed again. I wasn’t sure what I was seeing anymore. He crouched down beside my chair, and I could see the blue-black edges of the woven-flax tattoo below his T-shirt sleeve, the swell where his bicep began, the black shadow on his jaw where he hadn’t shaved today. And the gold in his eyes.

  He didn’t touch me. He said, “No. You assumed correctly. You assumed I wanted to give you the kind of sex you need. The kind where your head’s banging, your legs are shaking, and you’re still walking funny tomorrow. You assumed I could do it, and you were right. You also assumed that it wouldn’t be anything serious. You could be forgiven for thinking so.”

  And there I was, falling again. “W-wait,” I said, which was when Hamish did come running up and say, “Mum! Matiu and I taught Buddy a new trick! Watch this!” He ordered the dog, who’d come scampering up after him, “Buddy, Bang!”

  On cue, the little black dog fell onto his side, then rolled onto his back, his white paws in the air, his white-tipped tail waving, his ears flopped out and one white-rimmed, rolling black eye finding Hamish.

  “He looks much too happy to be dead,” I said, trying to get my equilibrium back as Hamish came down on hands and knees and began rubbing Buddy’s belly. “You’ve been here a while, then, Matiu.”

  “Yeh,” he said, giving Buddy, who’d jumped up now, but still had one floppy black ear inside out, a rub of his own. “You looked so peaceful and pretty under your tree, though, I didn’t want to disturb you. Or, of course, maybe it was the other thing.”

  What I’d said the night before, he meant. How I’d made him feel.

  “He brought chocolate biscuits for Koro,” Hamish said, “and Koro said we should all have a biscuit, and we did, and then Matiu helped me teach Buddy tricks. Also, Mummy, I was right that you don’t have a partum body, because Matiu said you were pretty too!”

  “I did,” Matiu said. “You’re right, mate.”

  “I’m wearing shorts,” I protested, but I was laughing. “And a top with cherries on that I thought was funny six years ago. I still think it’s funny, because the cherries look so happy, but I’m not sure it’s much else.” It buttoned up the front, had no sleeves, and tied at the waist, which helped make you look like you had a waist. Unfortunately, the cherries had smiles drawn on, which took any Sex Factor the shirt might have otherwise possessed and dialed it all the way down. I’d thrown it in with my other clothes when I’d packed, though, because I’d been tired of covering myself up like my body wasn’t fit to be seen until all the weight shifted, and this morning, I’d decided to wear it. It wasn’t exactly fashionable, but who cared?

  “Must be the hair,” Matiu said. “Still liking the hair.”

  Did he want me, or did he not? My hand, the one that had drawn the jaguar, said that he was as pulled to me as I was to him. That there was no resisting this. My mind said that he’d told me no, pretty bloody convincingly, about twelve hours ago. I’d say that he was being kind now, aware of my fragile state, doing the doctor thing, except that it couldn’t have felt less like a doctor thing.

  Possibly because of that head-banging, walking-funny-tomorrow part. That hadn’t been a doctor thing.

  “And helping Hamish teach Buddy a trick?” I asked, venturing back onto firmer ground. “Was that part of what I should have been assuming?”

  His hand, which had been on the dog, stilled, and he was quiet a minute, as if he didn’t know what to say. Hamish ran off with Buddy again, and Matiu watched him go, then said, “He’s a great kid. Steady. Kind.” Which wasn’t what I’d been expecting.

  “I know,” I said. “He always has been.”

  “Kids are what they are,” he said. “That’s what you told me. Maybe I am what I am, too.”

  My chest, suddenly, was tight with an emotion that I’d only felt for my children, but that was completely different from what I felt for them. I was more confused than ever, but as always, my hand knew what to do. I put it on Matiu’s cheek, feeling that scruff for myself, and for a few seconds, we hung there as the bees buzzed and the apples grew. I asked him, “What is it that you think you are? What are you afraid you are?” When he didn’t answer, I said, “Because I know what I see. The boy who put his baby niece to bed on his birthday, and who searched until he found her and did his best to save her. Who thinks he’s shallow, because he can’t stand to feel that much again. I think you’re wrong. I think you do feel it. I think you’re the person you’ve always been. You just haven’t let yourself know it.”

  Matiu

  This was no kind of love scene, and it certainly wasn’t a sex scene. You did those by being confident, intense, and in control. That, I knew for sure.

  I’d never thought of myself as “seducing” anybody. I’d just thought I was giving them what they wanted. From what I’d heard at New World a couple days earlier, though, I may have been exactly wrong. Surely, if you knew you were wrong, you needed to do better. That was why, instead of reminding Poppy that she needed this, and that I was quite happy to give it to her, like any sensible man with my sexual history would’ve concluded was the best way to ... well, to have great sex with a woman who’d told me that all she wanted was great sex, I said, “I’d be much smoother here if my legs weren’t cramping,” and Poppy la
ughed, clear and joyous. After that, she slid her hand behind my head and kissed me, and I forgot about my legs.

  Her lips were warm, and the touch of them on mine was so sweet. I touched that little gap between her teeth with my tongue, got my own hand behind her head, another on her shoulder, and a knee on the ground, and she was halfway out of her chair, falling into me, her sketchpad slipping down onto the grass.

  She’d have fallen, but I was holding her up. I didn’t want to, though. I wanted to pull her down. I wanted to kiss her forever. I wanted to tumble her onto the grass.

  I wanted her underneath me. I wanted to take it slow. I wanted to do it all.

  So much for my resolutions.

  She broke it off first, because that was never going to be me. She pulled back, put a hand to her hair, tried to laugh, and said, “I can’t believe I did that. I was just thinking that I ... I ... that I’m not ...”

  Now I was the one with a hand on her cheek. I was trying to calm my body. It wasn’t working, and restraint had never been harder. Somehow, though, I smiled at her and asked, “What aren’t you?”

  “Oh, you know.” She gestured a bit wildly. “Sexually exciting.”

  I did laugh at that. “Says who?”

  “Says me.”

  “Well,” I said, “you’re wrong. I should know. I’ve had my hands all over you. I know how you shiver when I touch you, how you suck in your breath when I take off your clothes, and the sounds you make when I kiss your neck. And I’m going to set that aside, much as I don’t want to, because I forgot what I came over to tell you. Karen says she’s got to leave soon, because she’s flying out today. And Koro says, if you’re leaving yourself, come have a chat first. He’s got something he wants to ask you.”

  32

  Face to the Sun

  Poppy

  Was the man trying to keep me off-balance? I said, “Right. Fine.” I couldn’t exactly feel my legs. I clearly needed to get out of here, though, so I bent to pick up the baby, and Matiu said, “I’ll watch her, if you like, so she stays asleep.” He picked up my sketchpad from the grass. “Can I look?”

  I hesitated, then said, “Since we appear to be going for ‘brutal honesty,’ I’ll tell you that I normally don’t like people to look until I know where I’m going with a project. It throws me off, getting their impressions, having them mix with mine in my head. It makes it hard to hold onto my direction.”

  “Right,” he said, and flipped the pages over so the pad was covered again.

  “But,” I said, hardly believing I was saying it, “as the jaguar’s clearly you, tattoo and all, and since I’m trying to make him ... well, manly, and sexual, and exciting, and since that’s pretty much foreign territory, given my normal audience, maybe I want your impressions. Or I’m scared to get them, but I want them anyway. And, yeh, this is new.” I was trying to laugh. Could you be both brutally honest and breezy? Probably not. I had a feeling it came off more like mental instability.

  “I could look,” he said, “and not tell you unless you ask.”

  “You’d tell. Nobody has that much self-control. Or if they do, they still say, ‘Huh,’ in this extremely judgmental way, so you know that they actually hate it. That’s worse. Don’t do that.”

  “All right. I won’t.” He held the sketchbook lightly, cover closed. “And I do have that much self-control. It’s your choice.”

  There were still jolts of liquid silver shooting down my body. From my jaguar. From that kiss. From what he’d said. And from him not smiling. I needed to draw my lioness feeling those jolts, and my jaguar looking at her the way Matiu was looking at me right now. I needed to ...

  That not-smiling. Why was it so hot? Matiu smiled heaps. I’d seen him do it. It was part of his “charming” thing. He didn’t smile while he was working, though, and he didn’t smile when he was touching me. Or when he was telling me the truth. I said, “You should look,” and headed toward the front of the house. Or maybe “fled” was more like it. I couldn’t watch his face while he looked.

  When I got around the corner, Karen wasn’t sitting with the old man, and the car she and Jax had driven here was gone. Which meant I needed to leave, too. Leave the house, and leave Katikati. I’d come to visit Karen, but Karen was off to the States. I’d wanted to have an adventure, but as much as it had hurt to hear, Matiu was right. It had been too much about me. His reputation, his whanau, his heart—they hadn’t mattered enough.

  One thing I was sure of, amidst the vast universe of things I wasn’t sure of at all. You didn’t build anything good by making it all about you, and I needed to fix what had happened to Matiu.

  Right, that was two things. I knew another thing, too. I needed to draw. I needed to sit in a pool of light, the house silent and dark around me, let everything else go, and draw.

  So, three things.

  Nobody was out here now but Koro and Hamish, the old man sitting in his peacock-painted chair and Hamish sprawled on his back in the grass with the dog lying next to him, panting softly. The duck waddled around in a self-important way that made me long to write a book about him and gave out a raspy quack between nibbles at the grass.

  Sort of a Rudolph-the-Red-Nosed-Reindeer thing. A call duck, found in a box by the side of a roadway, who was too noisy and didn’t lay eggs and didn’t fit in with the other animals. The flock of chickens losing their rooster, and the duck waddling and flapping his way to the top of the coop and quacking like mad, warning the farmyard about the advancing fox.

  Before, the ideas hadn’t come. Month after month, they hadn’t come. Now, I couldn’t keep them away. My head was its usual jumbled, confusing mixture of thoughts and feelings and lists, and the most confusing of all was Matiu.

  Less than two months ago, I’d been married. It couldn’t happen this fast. There were books, I was sure. They’d say something about waiting a year, about rebounds and hormones and brain chemistry.

  My body didn’t care, though, and it was taking my mind along with it.

  As I approached, Hamish said, “There’s one that looks like a rabbit. It has long ears, anyway.”

  Koro told me, “We’re spotting clouds, wee Hamish and I. Maybe you should go on into the house now, though, mate. See if there’s a sandwich for you in there. I’m guessing there may be.”

  “I’ll take them home,” I said. “I didn’t realize it was lunchtime, or that Karen and Jax had left.”

  Koro waved a hand. “Let him have his tea here. We’re all glad of the company.”

  “I could see if Buddy needs a drink of water, if I went inside,” Hamish said. “You’re supposed to look after an animal first, because they can’t get their own food and you can. I heard it in a story about cowboys.”

  “Too right, mate,” Koro said. “You go do that, then.”

  When he’d gone, Koro said, “Come sit by me a minute.” When I did, he went on. “Loves that wee dog, doesn’t he.”

  “Yes,” I said. “He does.”

  “His dad’s allergic, he says.”

  “He is. But his dad doesn’t live with us anymore.”

  “Ah.” It was a sigh. “That’s hard, maybe.”

  I untied the knot in my silly-cherry blouse, then retied it. “It is. But it’s over, and it’s better. I hope it is, anyway, for the kids. Some people say you should stay together for them, but I can’t believe that. At any rate, I couldn’t do it, and here we are.”

  The corners of his eyes were webbed with lines, the irises a little filmy with cataracts, but they were gentle. “Some people in your whanau say that, maybe.”

  “My father,” I admitted. “And maybe my mum. I don’t know what she thinks. Or maybe I’ve been scared to ask.” Why was I telling him this? I couldn’t have said. It was like it was tumbling out. “And maybe I think so, too, a bit, seeing how hard it is on the kids to go back and forth between us. I tell myself they’ll get used to it, and that it’s better to know both their parents want them. I hope both of those are true, because I don’t
seem to have a choice here.”

  “You couldn’t be married any longer,” he said. “Not if it wasn’t what you thought.”

  “Yes.” The word burst out of me. “Even if it’s selfish. I couldn’t pretend anymore. It was like trying to believe in magic once the magician shows you how the trick’s done. When you know where the vanishing lady really goes, you can’t believe anymore. But now, everything in my life feels like I’m doing it for the first time, and I don’t know how. I have to find a new way, though. For myself, and for the kids.”

  “Always better to be living with the truth,” the old man said. “Bad things don’t go away just because you hide from them. Maybe better for your kids to live with the truth as well. Better to live with a mum who’s telling it, hard as the truth can be. Some things can help, though. Things like a dog, eh. Somebody to play with, and to sit with if your dad doesn’t come after all.”

  My head came up. “Hamish told you about that?”

  “Went in the house a while ago, didn’t he, to check whether his sister needed to use the toilet. Sometimes his dad’s very busy, and he can’t come even when he said he would, so maybe he won’t want them to come visit if he’s too busy. But if his sister isn’t so naughty, maybe he’ll still want them to come.”

  My heart. I couldn’t stand it. “I ask him to help too much,” I said. “I make him feel too responsible. I know I do.”

  The old man sighed and looked up at the green mountains, his hands on his stick. His old voice was rough and gravelly as sandpaper when he said, “It’s good for a boy to help. Maybe good to have fun, too, though. Good to be able to let things go. Old men, eh. We know about letting things go.”

  “Is that the secret, then?” I asked. “Being able to let go?” If it was, I was doomed. I held on hard. Too hard, maybe, or maybe not. Wasn’t it a good thing to be able to love hard, and to want to be close to the people you loved?

  He smiled. He was missing some teeth, but I doubted he cared. “If you’re ninety-six, maybe. Could be your hold gets lighter then. Take Matiu, now. He thinks I need him. Says he’s going back to Dunedin, but anybody can see he’s torn. He’s wondering if he made the right choice after all. If he should be staying close to me, as if that would make a difference. As if that would be what I want, him running over here every chance he gets to check whether I’m dead yet instead of living his life.”