“Who’s a pussy now?” the kid said, then laughed, elbowed his mate, and said, “See what I did there? Because she’s actually got one, eh.”
I didn’t lose my temper. Not ever. Not anymore. My job called for absolute cool, and I was very good at my job. Except that I didn’t have my job anymore, and I apparently didn’t have my cool, either. I said, “Ten seconds.”
“What?” the kid asked.
“Ten seconds to accept the challenge, piss off, or find out what Option Three is,” I said. “Make that four seconds now.”
“I’m doing the swimming bit,” the kid said, “and Dougie here’s doing the running.”
Karen was practically bouncing on her toes now. “Or better yet,” she said, “both of us against both of you, so everybody has to run and swim. Since you care so much about fairness. What do you think? Think you can take a girl and a one-legged man? Think so? Huh?”
I’d have said, “Hang on,” except that she was still talking. “We can run down to Tay Street, where that dead tree is, then back up to Moturiki Island. Swim around the island and back to shore. The other two of you can be the timekeepers. Simple. Let’s hear you try to back out. I can’t wait.”
“Hang on,” I did say now. “That’s a pretty long swim.” And—wait. She’d said she just got here. How did she know the streets that well? How did she know the name of the island, and why did she pronounce it like a Maori? Who was this woman? She was as no-worries-rich-American as it was possible for a woman to be, perfect teeth and glorious skin and confidence and all, and yet she knew all that? And had laid out the rules of engagement like she was in charge of them?
“Not that long,” she said. “One-point-two kilometers. Not even three quarters of a mile. They have a race, is how I know. I was looking at it on the flight over. A much longer race than this, I’ll point out. And surely our friends here—” She snapped her fingers at the ringleader, who blinked and stared like she’d been summoning demons—“wouldn’t have agreed to race at all unless they were as good at swimming as you and me. Right?”
“Run’s all right,” I said. “Five kilometers or so. We may want to shorten the swim, though. Get back here, say, then swim to the end of the beach and back.” I pointed to where the strip of gold ended and the rocks began, at the base of the Mount. Six hundred meters total, maybe, and sheltered the entire way, which made much more sense.
“You scared, bro?” the leader-kid asked. “You sound scared.”
“I’m concerned about your safety,” I said. “How old are you?”
He said, “Never mind,” then puffed up his chest and glanced at Karen, like he wanted to see if she’d noticed.
She noticed. Unfortunately for any hope of de-escalation, she laughed and said, “What, I’m impressed? I’m here with a guy whose leg is gone. Look at his face, too. I’m not going to be impressed by you.” Not a statement that was going to encourage any seventeen-year-old bloke to set sensible limits. Not one that was setting me on fire, either.
“Cheers,” I told her. “Next time? Don’t help.”
She laughed.
The kid said, “I’m starting. Three—two—”
“Wait,” I said. “Names.”
“What d’you mean, names?” he asked.
“In case we’re informing the police at some point,” I said, “I think names are in order.”
He scowled. “Artie Kamana, then. Me. And Dougie Daniels.” He jerked his head at the kid next to him, a tall, skinny bloke with an oversized Adam’s apple that had bobbed at the prospect of swimming around the island.
“Artie,” I said, putting out my hand. “I’m Jax, and this is Karen.” After a moment’s hesitation, the leader-kid shook it. He would’ve tried to squeeze too hard, if I hadn’t anticipated him and got my index finger onto his wrist, aligning my knuckles so he couldn’t crush them. He needed to work on that predictability of his if he wanted to be a tough guy. “And Dougie.” I shook his hand, too, and told him, “You don’t have to do this. You and Karen can sit it out with the other fellas here. It’s between Artie and me.”
His brown eyes shifted, because he wanted nothing more. His Adam’s apple bobbed again, and he said, “I’m doing it.” His voice broke on the words, though.
Beside me, Karen was kicking off her jandals, then peeling off the black shorts, and all four of the boys got a bit distracted, even the one with the swollen nose. I may have done as well. When would the sight of a girl wriggling her pretty bum as she slid a tiny pair of shorts over it and down her endless legs, revealing an even tinier bikini, not be distracting? Never. I shot a hard glance at the boys that had them shifting their gaze, then put out a hand to her. She took it, which I was halfway surprised at, and used it to balance in the sand as she got the shorts off, though she probably didn’t need it.
Her hand was warm, she smiled at me happily, like she was doing nothing but looking forward to this, and there was some more of that supercharging happening in the air. Her dark-brown hair was cut sleekly around her tidy ears, and her earlobes were the attached kind, shining with that row of winking studs. Then there were her high-cut bikini bottoms, which were only a few centimeters wide at the edges. Her togs were functional, I guessed, if you ignored her legs. And her endless length of flat belly, the sweet dip of her navel and the sparklers taking that downward path, the curve of her waist, her bum, which had some roundness to it that you might not have expected from somebody that thin, and the pretty bit of cleavage she was showing, pale against her tan, the just-visible inner swells of her breasts.
It was a lot to ignore. I’d have to take care to stay in front of her during the run, or I’d be forgetting what I was meant to be doing here.
“We ready?” she asked, and the two boys stripped off their shirts. I did, too, and everybody stared at the scars on my shoulder and chest. That was fun.
They could underestimate me. That was nothing but helpful. I was all good. Although it had dawned on me for the first time that racing hadn’t been on the curriculum over the past three months.
Pushing past my comfort level had been, though. When it came to the willingness to do whatever it took to finish, even if you had to crawl? I’d be the winner there, every time.
Except that I didn’t want to crawl. I felt fairly strongly on that point.
Too late for reservations now. Time to go.
Karen
I’d probably always known I was going to volunteer. Should I hold back, though, and not outrace Jax? Men could be so weird about things like that, like just because you were better at one physical thing, you were cutting off their junk and putting it in your purse. He only had one leg, which anybody—well, anybody female—would assume gave him a great excuse not to win a foot race.
He wouldn’t think so, though. And—nah. If I had to damp myself down that much in order not to threaten a man, he wasn’t a man worth having. Or, since I wasn’t going to “have” him, or anybody, until I was normal again—he wasn’t worth caring about. Surely, being with Josh had taught me that much.
Josh—Jax. See? No. Absolutely not. You didn’t need to be struck by lightning to recognize a friggin’ sign.
All of that took me about two seconds to work out. Or I may not have worked it out at all right then, or even thought about it until later. Maybe I just took off, once Jax got through the rules and regulations and let me. He was one of those guys who had to plan everything, when I would have just started running.
He said, “We circle the dead tree, then run back and touch the rock at Moturiki. An untimed stop for me to get my leg off, and then we’re all off again, into the water. Race ends when you touch that same rock again. Stay close to the island. Shorter swim. Safer, too.” He told the other two guys, Bloody-Nose-Boy and I’d-Rather-Be-Gone, “You lot can start the stopwatches on your phones on my ‘Go,’ bring everybody’s gear along, and meet us at the island for the check-in. Take care you make a note of both times. You—” He gestured to the redhead. “You’re timing Kar
en and me. Your mate’s timing Artie and Dougie. Got it? At their nods, and the sight of their fingers hovering over their phones, he said, “Counting down from three. On go. Three, two, one . . . Go!”
The kids took off in a dead sprint, exactly like you’d have predicted. I got that surge of adrenaline, the way you do, nearly sick-making, and forced myself to hold back. Which meant Jax took off ahead of me, which—OK, I was surprised by. He didn’t start out as fast as the kids, but he ran more easily than I’d have imagined, like he knew how, leg or not. The sand was firm at the edge of the water, as New Zealand sand tended to be on the wide beaches, but the ground still sloped a bit, especially at high tide, which was where we were, and that always made things harder.
I’d been on those planes for a long, long time. I forced myself to take it easy until I felt my muscles loosening, kept the breath coming slow and even, then lengthened my stride, caught up to Jax with some effort, and said, “You can run.”
He glanced at me and said, “So can you. And I wouldn’t have suggested it if I couldn’t, would I.” He didn’t sound at all winded. I was getting that way, a tiny bit. Holding back or not, the pace he set was fast, and I may have done a little too much lying on the bathroom floor this past month or so. Suffering wasn’t all that aerobic, apparently.
The kids kept looking back. Slowing them down, getting them in the wrong mindset, trying not to lose instead of trying to win. I got that racehorse-at-the-gate adrenaline surge again and said, “You’d better be here to win.”
Jax smiled that almost-smile. “I usually am. Shut up, so we can do it.”
I could have been outraged, but he was right. It was a decent run, and a fairly long swim. That would be the real test. I knew how well everybody ran now, and that was going to be no problem. I had no idea how well they swam, and Kiwi kids tended to be strong in the water. The boys hadn’t increased their lead any, and when they’d rounded the tree, with its spindly brown branches, and were headed toward us again, I could see their chests heaving, their arms pumping. Dougie was in front, and Artie had fallen behind. He’d been supposed to be the swimmer, though. Figured. He was the bigger guy, while Dougie was the string bean.
Jax and I went past them, the two of us running together, in stride. His legs were longer, but I had two of them. Dougie went by with a sidelong look like a panicked racehorse and didn’t say anything, but Artie looked over, veered up onto the softer sand, and wasted his breath saying, “You’re dead slow, mate.” On a gasp.
Jax didn’t even answer him. He just kept going, letting out his stride a little more, heading up the beach, touching the tree, then running around it. I was starting to breathe a little harder myself, and asked, when we were on our way back, “Doesn’t it . . . hurt? Your leg? The . . . pounding?”
“A bit,” he said, “as it’s new.” And that was it. He sure wasn’t slowing down, though, and the boys were only about ten meters ahead.
Or nine, now. Then eight. Seven. The land bridge to the island was still some way off, and the boys’ gaits were getting choppy, their steps smaller, their heads down. They’d be laboring now, their legs leaden, their lungs on fire.
Jax said, “Pass them in the sea. I’ll go around up high.”
I said, “Harder. You go first. In the water. I’ll follow.”
“Can’t,” he said. “Leg isn’t waterproof.”
I just about stopped running. “You . . . idiot. That’s got to be expensive . . . equipment. Not . . . worth it.”
“Keep up,” he said. “I’m going around.” And did.
Maybe he should be letting me win. Wasn’t that what a gentleman would do? I found my fifth gear, finally, and went for it. The timekeeper kids were close now, standing on the sand facing us, their phones out as we slapped our hands onto the rock. And, yes, if you’re wondering, Jax was a good three or four strides ahead of me doing it. He didn’t stop, just slowed his pace, jogged it out, and circled slowly back, joining the timekeepers with me as Dougie came up, blowing like a locomotive. The kid hit the rock and doubled over right there, his hands on his knees.
Artie was about a football field behind, and hurting. When he finally got there, he threw up.
I laughed. It wasn’t nice, but it sure was satisfying.
Jax waited until Artie was done, then told the kids, “Go get a drink at the fountain by the Cenotaph.”
“We don’t need a break,” Artie said. Unfortunately, it came out more like, “We don’t . . . need a . . . break,” and he was hunkered down, his palms on the sand, his soaked hair dripping into his eyes, as he said it. Dougie looked at him and said, “Yeh. We’re good,” like that would convince us. Or himself.
Jax was sitting down himself now, sliding the mechanical part of his leg off as casually as if he were taking off a shoe. He peeled down the sleeve, or whatever you called it, that went over his knee, and took that off, too, and I saw some redness at the end of the remaining limb, no matter what he’d admit to. Skin didn’t lie.
“Go get a drink of water,” he said, “and then get another one. The sea will still be there in ten minutes.” He glanced up at me and saw the direction of my gaze, and his face . . . hardened, I guess you’d say. He looked like a different man when he did that. That intense one again, like the calm face was his mask. All he said, though, was, “You too, Karen, if you need one.”
“You don’t, of course,” I said, “because you’re just that tough, and 5K is nothing.” Actually, I could use a drink. Hey, flying was dehydrating.
He gave me a lopsided smile that was nothing but charming. Mask back in place, then. “You’ll embarrass me.”
That made me laugh. Maybe he had messed himself up doing the helicopter-rescue deal, and not in a drunken motorcycle crash. “You could’ve let me win,” I told him. “It would probably have been gentlemanly, or something.”
“Would you have let me?”
“Well,” I said, “no.”
He took off his other shoe, his shirt, and his male-model-pretending-to-be-a-nerd glasses, and I didn’t watch, or not straight on, even though the sight of him pulling his sweat-soaked khaki T-shirt over his head was something to see. That was a lot of lean muscle, just enough black hair to say, ‘I’m groomed, but I’m still a man,’ and abs like you meant it, and the web of drunken-spider scars at the top of his chest just made him look tougher.
It was all pretty appealing. Fortunately, I was about ten years smarter than I’d been a couple months ago, so instead of throwing myself down on the sand at his feet like a woman asking to get used—or, possibly, a puppy—I told the boys, “Come on. Let’s go get a drink and do some stretching. You too,” I told the redhead, who wouldn’t meet my eyes. Possibly because one of his was swelling. “What’s your name?”
“Colin,” he muttered.
“Well, Colin,” I said, “let’s go. All of you.” If I didn’t do it, they wouldn’t, it was going to be a pretty long swim, and being a jerk wasn’t a capital offense. Besides, I kind of liked Dougie. Dragged along out of loyalty, and doing his best. Dougie was all right.
Jax
Was I surprised that she’d kept up with me? Yes and no. No, because I wasn’t anywhere close to my best. Yes, because even so, I was fast enough.
Was I bothered that she’d kept up with me? That one took more thought.
Nah. She’d pushed me, and that was good. So why was my balance so off? The sympathetic look on her face when I’d taken off the leg, that was why. That was nothing I wanted to see. I’d rather have seen disgust.
She came back with the kids, eventually, and said, “Everybody ready to go? The tide’s turning, but it’s still high.”
I said, “If anybody wants to quit now, or if both of you do, there’s no shame in that. You did well. We can call it good.”
Karen snorted, which I heard, then glanced at Dougie, who hadn’t been too keen on any of this, and said, “Right. No shame.”
Artie said, “Nah. We’re all good.” Dougie just nodded.
&n
bsp; I shrugged. “Let’s go, then. If you need a break along the way, take one. Let me get out into the water a bit, and you lot wade out as well, so we’re starting even.” I told the timekeepers, “On my go.”
Karen asked, “Want my shoulder to get out there?”
“No.” It came out too harsh. She’d asked it quietly, matter-of-factly. I was an arsehole. She stiffened, opened her mouth, and shut it again, and I said, keeping it quiet myself, “Came out wrong. Maybe that’s not how I want to touch you.”
She didn’t flush, not exactly, but there was possibly a little more color in her cheeks. She said, “You wish.”
“Yeh,” I said. “I do.”
“I’m sweaty,” she said. “I’m dirty.”
I didn’t say that dirty suited me. The kids were right there, they looked anxious, and I wanted to get this swim over with and take Karen’s dirty, wet self back up to my apartment. After that? I had a few ideas. Maybe she did, too.
Meanwhile, here we were. I lowered myself down, got onto my knees, “walked” into the water, tried not to let that matter, and said, “Let’s go.”
The first half was all right. I was glad for the swim earlier, and knowing how to compensate for the foot. The outgoing current was giving me a boost, though I took care to stay clear of the tumbled rocks that lined the island. You could bash up against those if you weren’t careful, and that wouldn’t feel good. One-point-two kilometers was half an hour’s easy swim, or twenty minutes’ hard one, at my pace, and once again, Karen was doing a good job of keeping up, or at least staying close. It was fine.
She got ahead, then, because I turned around and treaded water to check on the kids. Artie was a splasher, and out in front, but Dougie was coming along all right, when I finally spotted him. All good, then. I swam across the top of the island, checked on the kids again, then headed back.
Kiwi Rules (New Zealand Ever After Book 1) Page 5