So, yes. Just a bloody wonderful afternoon all the way around.
Karen
I’d been planning to visit Koro tomorrow morning, before my meeting. Once I’d had a chance to do those things you did—shower, and then eat something, preferably something full of salt and grease, the two essential food groups. Fish and chips from the Waihi Beach takeaway, for instance, not that I’d been thinking about that much. Eaten properly, through a hole ripped in the top of the paper wrapping so the heat stayed in, with vinegar and salt sprinkled over them and Wattie’s tomato sauce for dipping. Mmm. Possibly—oh, let’s face it, definitely—with a beer. After that, I planned to fall across the bed in the time-zone-change coma, and wake up about twelve hours later as a human being again. Which would also mean that the humiliating spectacle of Jax being kind to me, after I’d messed up as badly as a person could do, would be twelve hours in my past.
When I was headed northwest, though, past flax plants and fern trees, kiwifruit blocks and a whole lot of general sleepiness, the car just . . . aimed itself, and once I’d made it into town, no other destination was possible.
Colorful little kiwifruit-centric Katikati, with its murals covering most of the downtown buildings. Perched at the edge of the sea, below the mountains, beside the river, and in nobody’s tourist guidebook, because all it was—was perfect. The place where my sister and I had found a family.
Through the roundabout Hope had driven three times, squeaking all the way, before she’d had the nerve to take the turning. Down the street where we’d learned to parallel park, me by the bump-and-go method and her by inching cautiously forward and back about seventeen times before she finally got in. Past the Dave Hume Pools, where she’d become a slightly less timid swimmer and I’d learned how to go fast. And, of course, along the beach where I’d walked for hours, luxuriating in the delicious pain that was my undying love for Hemi’s cousin Matiu, Sexiest Man Alive, glamorous single doctor, and our driving instructor.
I’d come up with so many scenarios in which Matiu would save my life in some extreme medical way, and then discover, as he held me in his arms and looked down into my beautiful, pale face, that he loved me deeply, passionately, and with every fiber of his manly being, and he couldn’t live without me. They’d all tended to end the same way, with him casting aside the twelve-year age barrier between us as an artificial construct that couldn’t hold back our timeless love. And kissing me in a way that made me understand that I’d never really been kissed before.
Too bad nobody I’d ever kissed in real life had done it as tenderly, as patiently, and then as absolutely possessively as a dream-man who’d never actually kissed me at all. Men kissed at the beginning, in my experience. It was a means to an end, the salad they had to eat before the main course came. After that, the kissing died down, because they didn’t have to anymore, and most guys weren’t all that crazy about salad.
Of course, there’d been the inconvenient fact that Matiu had been in love with Hope, even though she’d been pregnant—by his cousin—not to mention engaged to that cousin, with a three-carat rock on her finger and no eyes for any other man. I’d felt like—did every guy in the world secretly long for an ultra-feminine tiny blonde, so his manliness could blossom in full contrast? Because if so, I was doomed.
Oh, wait. I still felt that way.
Fortunately, I didn’t have too long to stew in my misery, or maybe I just wasn’t sixteen anymore, because I was coming up the hill, with the sea sparkling behind me and the mountains looming above me, to my favorite house in the world, and already feeling so much better. I pulled into the driveway behind a battered ute and a boat on a trailer, which meant somebody was still going out to fish for snapper and trevally for their tea, and probably gathering mussels and pipi from the rocks, and whitebait from the river in spring. Good times.
No second car anymore, because Koro had given that up five years ago, when he’d turned ninety. He’d said, “Handing over my keys before you lot take them from me, eh. A man doesn’t need that humiliation.” Or maybe he’d just been happy to stay at home with his garden, with the trees and the birds, the paddocks and orchards spreading out below him like a rumpled green quilt all the way to the sea. With the wind and the rain and the sun, and, of course, the whanau who loved him almost as much as he loved them. Well, most of them. The part of his whanau that didn’t suck, anyway.
He was sitting under the avocado tree in the front yard, wearing a white T-shirt and baggy old-man pants, in the wooden Adirondack chair I’d painted for him ten years ago as a Christmas present. The moment my car pulled in, he was leaning on his stick and struggling to his feet, every line in his brown face creasing into a smile, until he looked like a man with a full-face moko. Like an ancestor. As for me—my chest was tight, my heart felt like it would burst straight out of it, and the tears were right there.
I couldn’t even feel myself tumbling out of the car. I was across the yard, putting a careful hand on his shoulder, and feeling his ancient, gnarled hand come up to grip my own shoulder as he bent his head, touched his forehead and nose to mine, and we breathed together in a hongi.
I was breathing with my Koro again. I was here, in this place that had never been home and always would be, as long as he was here.
“I had a feeling you’d come today,” he said after a minute. His own eyes were bright with old-man tears, and the hand that came up to touch my cheek was shaky. “I’ve been waiting, in case.”
I was crying, and I couldn’t care, a few tears that insisted on spilling over. “You should have told me you wanted me to,” I said, brushing them back with the heel of my hand. “I almost didn’t. I haven’t even had a shower yet. I’m covered with sand.”
“What do I care about that?” He lowered himself down into his chair again. Slowly, but I knew better than to try to help him. “You’re here. That’s good enough for me. Bring a chair and talk to me.”
I dragged over another chair, made of weathered wood like he didn’t have a billionaire grandson, or like he was more comfortable with familiar, homey things, and said, “Somebody’s been keeping your peacock throne looking flash. Gave it a new coat of varnish.” I’d painted it with bright blues, greens, and golds, and every slat was a peacock feather, with its iridescent eye.
He said, “Me, that’s who.”
“Koro. You know Hemi or I would do it. You know Nikau would do it. You know anybody would do it.”
“Not dead yet, am I. I can still do a bit of sanding and varnishing, thank you very much. I’m old, though. Got no time to talk about this dull stuff. Tell me why you’re bleeding.”
“Oh, you know.” I checked out the impressive scrape along my shin, which was stinging from the salt, and tried to laugh. “Doesn’t everybody get off the plane after twenty-four hours, get into a stoush with a bunch of dumb teenagers absolutely immediately, because she gets all flustered by a sexy amputee, make two of the kids do a race that’s way beyond them, which ends up with the sexy guy having to rescue one of them from drowning, and have to slink away in shame? What, how do you take a vacation?”
He smiled, or maybe he just looked amused, in Te Mana style, but his old eyes were wise. Also in Te Mana style.
It was no wonder I couldn’t find a great man. My standards were too high, or they were too low, because I kept thinking that other men were like him and Hemi, and finding out too late that I was absolutely, positively, couldn’t-be-wronger wrong. He said, “Sounds like you’re getting over that fella, then, if you noticed the other one. That’s good. Let him go. You worked hard, did your best. Got that company going, eh, and made sure all those people had work to do that’ll keep their families fed and make them proud. You’ll do it again, no worries. Why d’you reckon God gave you so much energy and made you so clever, if not to do that? And if you made a mistake today, you learned, that’s all. That’s what young people are here for, to learn. But you mean to tell me that this other fella, the one who rescued somebody, didn’t want a stro
ng, beautiful girl like you? No good, then. You can do better.”
“I know,” I said, and bit the inside of my cheek to keep from crying. “At least I keep trying to tell myself so. Why do I keep meeting guys like that, Koro? You’ve got to think it’s me by now. You must have been wondering with Josh. Eight years, and I didn’t even have a ring? I know I’m not Hope, but that’s pretty lame.”
“I wasn’t wondering,” Koro said. “I was glad. Meant you weren’t being stupid, marrying him because he was pretty. You could get out fast, and you did. And of course you’re not Hope. That’s not who you were meant to be. Work on being Karen instead.”
I sat back in my chair, stuck my legs out in front of me, and sighed. “You hated him, too. Why didn’t you say so?”
“Thought you had enough with Hemi telling you, maybe. And you weren’t listening to him, so why would you listen to me? You’ve got a hard head, same as Hemi. Have to learn everything the hard way, don’t you. Never mind. You’ve learnt it now.”
His hand was trembling on his stick. I said, “You’re tired. You know what? So am I. Also, if I don’t take a shower soon, I’m . . . I don’t know. Something drastic will happen, anyway. Let me help you into the house, if that’s where you’re going. I’ll give Vanessa and the baby a kiss, and then I’ll go to the beach house and collapse.”
Vanessa was a local girl who’d married my almost-cousin Nikau a few years back. They’d come to live with Koro after he’d had flu, and stayed to care for him and be company for him, because Maori were like that. Nikau was exactly my age, and Vanessa was somewhere around that, too. Now, they had a baby, like everybody in the world except me.
A couple more trips down Memory Lane, and I’d be curled on the bathroom floor again. At least it wouldn’t slope this time.
“That’s good,” Koro said, hauling himself slowly to his feet, leaning on his stick a whole lot more than the last time I’d seen him, which had been six months ago. Too long ago. “I’ve seen you. Now I’m ready to take a nap. Vanessa went by the house earlier, ran the hoover, took you some milk and eggs and bread and avocadoes and that. The avos are doing well this year. Heaps of rain for them last winter. You go have your tea and a good sleep, then come back tomorrow. Back with the whanau now, aren’t you. Home again, and that’s good. Better for you, and better for us. Lucky for me, too, I think.” He gave a sigh, or maybe he just breathed. “Lucky for me.”
Jax
I crossed the street to the Coffee Club the next morning at one minute past ten. It was what I’d told Karen: You wanted to arrive just late enough for the other party to wonder whether you were turning up. Every soldier learned to wait, but I’d noticed that most other people didn’t. Every soldier also knew what that wait could do to your head.
I might only be here for my sister’s sake, but that didn’t mean I wouldn’t do my best.
I was thinking that, and then I wasn’t, because she was there. Karen, that is, sitting at a table on the pavement despite the breeze ruffling the patio umbrellas. Choosing to be outside rather than inside every time it was remotely possible, exactly like a Kiwi.
She didn’t look up at my approach. Maybe because she was frowning in absolute concentration, her laptop open in front of her as she wrote furiously in a spiral notebook.
It was like she had personality-rays all around her. I might not be spiritually evolved enough to tell what color her aura was, but it was definitely something bright. She also happened to be wearing a copper-colored T-shirt with a high neck. That would’ve been nothing out of the ordinary, except that the front had two sides that gathered at her collarbone, then opened up into a sort of narrow triangle whose bottom edge skimmed her cleavage. It didn’t show much, but it showed enough, and it was knocking me flat. The middle-aged blokes at the next table seemed to agree, because they were checking her out like they were waiting for their moment, or waiting for their courage.
Too bad. I was here first. I was here now.
It could also have been the narrow blue skirt that didn’t reach her knees, the length of thigh she was showing as she crossed her legs, and maybe even the blue canvas trainers she had on. Another woman would’ve done some kind of pretty sandals, maybe, with that outfit, but another woman wouldn’t have looked like she’d leap to her feet at any moment and start chasing down villains, or possibly transform into a superhero. You needed to be wearing trainers for that.
And, yeh, I noticed all that. Noticing was my job. I also noticed that she was wearing a new earring in addition to the line of three sparklers in each lobe, a sort of gold cuff thing that crossed in an X on the edge of her upper ear. Whatever that part was called.
How could an earring look sexy? Unless, of course, you’d spent the last six years of your life around too many men who’d taken too few showers. After enough of that, almost anything a woman did started looking sexy, especially if she was the right woman. Taking off her coat? That worked. Wearing earrings? That, too. Showing a triangle of smooth skin, so close to everything you were dying to get your hands on, that had you wanting to trace along the edge of the fabric with your fingertips while you watched her eyes drift shut and, possibly, kissed her neck? That absolutely worked.
“Morning,” I said, stopping at her table. Not that there had been any other choice. “You’re looking intense. Diary entry? Ransom note? Hit list?”
She was frowning as she looked up, and then she wasn’t, not quite. “Oh. You.”
I had to laugh. “Don’t throw yourself at me like that. It’s embarrassing.”
“Ha.” Finally, she was smiling. “Guess we both recovered. Did the kids get home OK?”
“Yeh.” I considered telling her that I’d wished she’d been waiting when I got home. That I’d had a long and frustrated night, broken up by a pretty special dream. Or rather, I didn’t consider telling her. Telling a woman you’d had a dirty dream about her—a woman who’d run away from you the last time like she couldn’t move fast enough—might not be the best way to her heart. Instead, I said, “I’m here to meet somebody, but if you give me your number, I could text you later, as we’re both still here. We could go for a non-competitive swim. Have a drink. Indulge in a lively game of Chinese Checkers.”
“Even though you’re here to meet somebody,” she said.
“Didn’t say it was that kind of somebody.”
My phone chose this inopportune moment to ring, and I pulled it out of my pocket, glanced at the screen, and told Karen, “Bugger. Hang on,” before I put it to my ear and said, “Hi. Hang on a sec, would you?”
Karen had gone back to her writing, though, like I wasn’t there. I was going to have to work on my X factor. I told my sister, “Nothing to report yet. Not a single over-stylish Maori billionaire in sight. You should’ve had him carry a red rose or something.”
“I forgot to tell you,” Poppy said. “He’s not coming.”
Karen was looking at me oddly. I thought back over what I’d said. I told Poppy, “Hang on,” and told Karen, “No, I’m not into the gay dating scene. Haven’t become an escort, either, lucrative as the amputee fetish market probably is. It was a joke.”
She looked startled, or something like it, but Poppy was talking fast into my ear. Karen wasn’t actually going anywhere, so I told Poppy, “Hang on. Let me look for him inside.”
“I just told you.” Poppy’s voice was rising. “Bloody hell, Jax, listen a minute. Hemi’s not the one coming. I forgot to tell you. It’s somebody else.”
“Right,” I said in resignation. “Who?”
“I can’t remember. Some relation of his. I wrote it somewhere, on a sticky note.” Poppy carried sticky notes the way other people carried tissues. Stuck into pockets, up sleeves, down her bra. Her pen was normally stuck safely through a topknot of hair, which was the only reason the sticky notes ever got written on. “I can’t find it, though,” she said, surprising me not at all. “I was being sick directly after, I think. Could’ve fallen into the loo, I suppose.”
&
nbsp; I did not roll my eyes. Before she’d first fallen pregnant, Poppy had been—well, not a model of rigorous efficiency, but brilliant all the same. Now, with two kids under the age of four and another on the way, the brilliance came in flashes, between bouts of sickness and other domestic emergencies. “You need a minder,” I told her. “What am I meant to do, wander around every table and ask people if they’re here to meet me?”
“Not you,” she said, “me. No! Not in the bamboo! In the potty!”
I assumed that one wasn’t meant for me, so I waited through some more urgent instruction, and eventually, she came back and said, “Olivia. She wants to be a kitty, and she says they go in the garden. I keep catching her trying with my plants. In the house. My bamboo’s leaves are turning yellow. It’d be disgusting if it were somebody else’s kid. It could still be disgusting, in fact. Potty training’s hard enough when they don’t want to be a cat. Why did I do this? Why?”
“Dunno,” I said. “Research? To be fair, though, I suspect Max had something to do with it as well. Could be his fault. Maybe he has cat genes.”
“You think you’re funny. Wait until you have a kid who wants to be a dog. I’ll be laughing then. Or a horse. A rhinoceros.” Her voice got a faraway sound to it that I’d heard before. “That would be good, actually. Where’s my pen?”
I recognized the signs. My sister wrote kids’ books. I had about two seconds here. “Wait,” I said loudly. “Stop. Why does this person expect to meet you and not me?”
“Oh. Because I think I forgot to ring him back and tell him it was going to be you instead. I meant to do it, but I have a feeling I forgot.”
“Now I’m asking people if they have a date with my sister,” I said. “I’ve gone from being an escort to being a pimp. Brilliant.”
“Don’t be silly,” she said. “Oh, bugger. I’m going to be sick again. Oh, no. Why do bodily functions have to be so revolting? Hang on. No. Don’t get up. Here. Talk to Uncle Jax.”
Kiwi Rules (New Zealand Ever After Book 1) Page 7