“I’m talking about in bed,” I said, not getting out of the car, because I needed to establish this. “Or sexually, anyway. Different rules.”
“Ah,” he said. “Consider this foreplay, then. Get out of the car.”
I did. He had me curious, that was why. If he thought he just got to boss me around in general, I’d . . . Well, I was on vacation. I’d let him boss me a little. Just because it was hot.
We walked a block up the road, which wasn’t busy yet, at ten-fifteen on a Sunday morning, other than the half of Tauranga that was inhabiting the ubiquitous sidewalk cafes, because one thing Kiwis knew how to do was relax and enjoy themselves. Jax passed two of them and stopped in front of a jeweler’s, whose black velvet display stands were mostly empty, and said, “This is it.”
“Uh . . . Jax,” I said, reading the sign on the door. “They don’t open until eleven.” My heart was beating like a kettledrum all the same. Boom. Boom. Boom. Which was stupid, because the store was closed. The pieces that were in the window, though, were gorgeous, modern and swooping, the rose and yellow gold settings, in lush, thick curls, enclosing jade, opals, and pearls of both the blue paua-shell and the creamy-pink oyster-shell variety. It might all be semiprecious, but it sure was beautiful.
Jax had his phone out and was texting, and as I peered into the shadowy interior, a guy came out of a door in back, then turned a key and opened the door.
“Morning, Bevin,” Jax said. “Cheers for this.”
“No worries,” the man—Bevin—said. He was short, neat, sandy-haired, and middle-aged. He didn’t actually have a loupe screwed into his eye socket, but he looked like it was in the back room. “Here you are.” He went behind a counter and handed over a bag. “Always happy to help the family. Be sure to give your dad my best.”
“I’ll do that,” Jax said, pulling out his wallet.
Oh. We were picking something up for his father, because Jax was seeing him tomorrow. The place at the Mount was a family apartment, he’d said. Their holiday spot, obviously. Even the fancy car wasn’t his. I remembered the other thing he’d said. “I’m not rich. My family’s rich.”
The glass covering the counter was heavy and thick, and the case beneath it held rings, and not the kind you see at the mall. It was the kind of jewelry Hemi bought Hope, and not. The settings he chose for her were always delicate, the motifs tending toward the floral. This was bolder, more modern.
I looked at the case on the wall, because the man had slipped an invoice onto the counter—in the way purveyors to the rich and famous had of doing it, like money was a slightly dirty afterthought—and Jax was busy paying. Or, possibly, because there were some things in there I had to see. A pendant like a twist of ribbon, diamonds on gold. A shining circle of paua pearl in all its deep-blue luminescence, surrounded by diamonds in a rim of white gold, on a white-gold chain as thick as cable. Oh, that was gorgeous. A thick, wavelike chunk of yellow gold with a diamond sunk into its middle, with more diamonds set roughly into the roughly beveled edge along one side, so it looked like it had been mined that way. It was on a heavy yellow-gold chain that looked exactly like that—like a chain—and it was nothing Hope would ever have worn. I loved it.
Jax came over and said, “So. Which one’s nicest?”
“Is this where your dad buys your mom her special things?” I asked.
“Yeh. They do mostly bespoke pieces here. Why, d’you like them?”
“Well, yes,” I said. “Only extremely.” He laughed, and I said, “Your mom has good taste. By which I mean what people usually mean by ‘good taste.’ That it’s the same as mine.”
“Which is your favorite?” he asked.
“I wouldn’t know how to choose. One of the pendants. This one, maybe.” I pointed to the chunky wavelike one. “It looks like it was mined by magic dwarves. I love how the basic shape is all organically smooth and curved and pleasing, but it has that roughness where the diamonds are set, like it’s stone. Like the diamonds were inside, and they’ve cut the edge out to show them. That’s really clever. It would be amazing in other colors of gold, too.”
He studied it. “Yeh. Nice. Ready to go?”
“Awkward,” I said, “looking at jewelry like you expect it. I don’t expect it, so you know. Just to put it out there.”
“Ah,” he said. “Yes. Always good to have it out there.” We headed out again, and the jeweler locked the door after us.
“Fun to look, though,” I said.
Jax had picked up my hand and threaded his fingers through mine. Now, he said, “I think we should have another coffee before we go. You could need hydration.”
“Caffeine is dehydrating,” I pointed out.
He laughed. “All right. You can have decaf. Here.” He stopped in front of a building that didn’t have a café on the ground floor. “Upstairs. My secret place.”
We climbed the stairs, and I sat down at a table on the balcony looking at, what else, Mauao, at the end of the channel he’d carved out being hauled by the magic rope, while Jax went and ordered. When he came back, he looked at me for a minute, and I asked, “What?”
“I don’t want to ask,” he said slowly. “But I’m going to ask anyway.”
“Oh, boy. What?”
“That bloke. Josh. He was the CEO of your firm, right? Got the big payout?”
“Yes.” I wished my coffee were here. I’d like to have something to look down at. I didn’t, so I looked at Jax instead.
“But he didn’t buy you jewelry?” he asked. “Or did you just not bring it along with you on the trip? Other than the earrings and belly rings, because those are all I’ve seen.”
“The earrings were a graduation present from Hope and Hemi,” I said. “They’re diamonds, and I love them. I don’t usually wear anything else in those holes, because they kind of do the job, you know?” I touched the ones on the left, the way I sometimes did. My talismans, and my reminders. They were small, which I liked, but they shone like Hope’s eyes had that day, when I’d achieved the dream for both of us. The college degree she’d never had a chance to get, because she’d been taking care of me, the one she’d been determined I would. “The others are fake,” I told Jax. “You know, they’re belly rings. You’re not going to go whole hog there. And, no. Josh bought me kitchen stuff, the high-end type. I have all kinds of amazing Williams-Sonoma bakeware, for example, and a really pretty KitchenAid mixer. Cherry red. I’m a good baker. That’s what I do when I’m tense. I don’t eat it, because I don’t like sweets as much. I love to bake it, though, and give it away. If you’re trying to motivate a staff and create a cheerful creative atmosphere, there’s nothing like delicious baked goods, and it’s good thinking time. Call that a business secret.”
I hurried on, because it wasn’t too much fun to remember being in the Old City condo with its high ceilings and industrial black-framed windows, pulling a coffee cake out of the oven at eleven o’clock at night with the spicy smell of cinnamon perfuming the air and some brand-new idea tickling at the back of my brain, and said, “All that’s in boxes now. In my new place. I don’t really have anybody to bake for now that I’ve moved back to New York, except Hope and Hemi and the kids, and Hemi has a housekeeper the likes of which you’ve never seen. They’re all taken care of, cooking-wise.”
Wait. Why had I moved to Brooklyn, anyway? Especially into an apartment with an electric stove and an oven with a wonky thermostat? Because it had been what I could find in a hurry, and I’d been planning that move anyway, with Prairie Plus. Because I’d told all my rowing friends I was leaving, and I couldn’t stand to tell them I’d been left behind. Because the condo had belonged to Josh, and all I’d wanted was to get out of it. To get away.
I wasn’t going to be working at Prairie Plus, though, so . . . why? Because I needed another job, and they were easier to find in New York, that was why. On the other hand, I could afford an apartment with level flooring in Philadelphia. Maybe even one on the river. Maybe even one I liked.
“I’m trying to figure out,” he said, “what kind of a bloke gives a woman kitchen gear as a present.”
“I love kitchen gear,” I said. “Hey, it’s not a vacuum cleaner.” I didn’t tell him how much I’d longed to see a little box, just once or twice. Cute earrings. Or, you know. A ring. I didn’t need to actually expose more of my wounds here.
A young man in a black apron came out with our coffees. He set down Jax’s, and then he set down mine. It was a flower. A chrysanthemum, or something like that, etched in foam on the top. It was so pretty, I almost cried. I was still recovering, though. That was my excuse.
“Wow,” I said. “Thank you.”
“No worries,” he said. “Enjoy.”
I asked Jax, after the guy had left, “Did you ask for this?”
“Asked for something special, yeh. Family time’s good and all, but sometimes, you need to be alone. We haven’t had much chance at that lately.” He reached onto the chair next to him and set the jeweler’s bag on the table. “Happy birthday.”
There went my heart again. Boom. Boom. Boom. I was actually having trouble catching my breath. I said, not opening the bag, “Uh . . . Jax.”
“You know how I said you needed to trust me?” he said. “Open it up.”
“You didn’t say . . . trust you.” I still wasn’t opening the bag. I couldn’t. I was getting those shakes again.
He had his hand over mine, just like that first day, and I was staring down at it, at the scars on the backs of his fingers, wondering if they’d come on that last day, or from some earlier accident. “I’m saying it now,” he said, absolutely gently.
“But . . .” I couldn’t think what else to say, but I looked at him, finally.
“When you were in hospital,” he said, his gray eyes steady on mine, “in the ICU. When the nurses kept coming in and checking those numbers, and not telling me enough. Your face was white as paper, and you had these shadows under your eyes. They were almost purple. I’d never seen somebody’s face change as fast as that. I had this plastic bag with your earrings and belly rings inside, and I felt those little diamonds through the plastic and thought—I finally found out what it feels like to fall in love, and I’m watching her slip away. And it terrified me.”
“It . . . did?” I was going to cry again. The heat was rising in my head. I wasn’t going to be able to help it.
There was a look on his face that almost hurt me to see. Tenderness, I thought that was. The way Hemi looked at Hope, but this was for me. “Yeh,” he said. “It did. Open your present, baby. I’m so glad you turned thirty.”
All right. That was it. I cried. Jax had to go get me napkins again. I said, when I was mopping up, gulping air and then gulping water, “This probably wasn’t how you expected this to . . . go.”
“Well, no,” he said, but he was smiling. “But then, I didn’t have much to compare with. I’ve never told a woman I loved her before. At least not when I meant it.”
“Oh,” I said, wiping my eyes again and glad that I hadn’t worn more makeup, “that’s just great. That’s, like, such a character reference.”
This time, he laughed. “I told you, I was an arsehole. I haven’t done it since I stopped being an arsehole.”
I said, “OK, I’m opening my bag. Here I go.”
It was like a Chinese puzzle. Inside the little paper bag was a nest of gold tissue. Inside that was a square white box with a lid. Inside that was a blue velvet case. Not a tiny one. And inside that . . .
“I used the ones you had,” Jax said. “Took a photo and sent it over, and asked Bevin to do something like that, but different.”
They were barbells. Rose gold. One of them had a faceted, round-cut red stone on either end, set in more rose gold. The other one was the same, except that it had something else below the bottom stone. A tiny bow made of rose-gold mesh, hanging from a teeny-weeny chain. I took that barbell out of the box and held it up, and Jax said, “The bow’s my favorite,” and touched it. It swung on its chain, and he sighed and said, “I know I’m meant to be romantic here, but that’s going to be sexy as hell hanging down your pretty belly. I can’t wait.”
“Are they garnets?” I asked. “That’s our birthstone. January. And I didn’t get you anything.”
“Oh, I think you did,” he said. “You didn’t die. Worked for me. And no, baby. They’re rubies.”
The bow swayed, because my hand was shaking. “Oh,” I said. Not my most brilliant rejoinder ever.
He laughed. “Think I finally found a way to shut you up. Well, another way.” He stood up, leaned over, kissed my mouth, smiled into my eyes, and said, “Happy birthday, sweetheart. Thirty looks good on you.”
Jax
We still had to go visit the old man, even though I didn’t want to. I wanted to go home, lay Karen down, take out those sparklers stuck into her belly, and put mine in instead.
It was an ownership thing, probably. A dominant thing. That primitive instinct again, like tattooing my name on her bum. The thought of that gave me a rush I could barely conceal.
She asked, “What are you thinking?” She was driving this time, and enjoying the hell out of it. Using the paddle shifters, testing the car’s limits.
“Thinking about tattooing my name on your bum,” I said, like a man who’d never heard the words, “Too much information.” Exactly like that, because I went on to say, “Diagonally, across that sweet curve at the bottom, so if you’re wearing a bikini and it rides up a bit, everybody can see it. Written in my handwriting. And if you’re wearing a thong and I turn you around and pull up your dress, in a lift, say—I can see it. But mostly, I’m thinking about doing the tattooing.” She shot an outraged glance at me, or a shocked one, and I said, “Well, you asked.”
She downshifted, took the car around a tight turn that had us both leaning, and said, “Do you even know how to tattoo?”
I laughed out loud. “Not the question I thought you’d ask. No. I didn’t say I’d do it. I said it was fun to imagine.”
“Geez,” she said. “One weak moment, and I unleash the beast. I’m scared to fall asleep now.”
She was smiling, though, and so was I. “Why is that so hot?” she asked.
“Dunno. That’s what I was wondering. It’s a new fantasy for me. Hasn’t cropped up before. Speed limit’s a hundred most places in New Zealand, by the way.”
“I’m going a hundred.”
“Around the corners, maybe.”
“Too bad, buddy. This is my time. You had your chance to drive. This is a great car, too. I forgive you for it being a Lexus.” She was slowing as we got near the turnoff to her grandfather’s place. “You do realize that expensive presents early in a relationship are red flags. Like moving too fast is in general.”
“I can see that,” I said.
Up the hill, now, and another of those quick glances at me. “You can?”
“Of course. A fella who gets obsessed, too possessive. Too much too fast, like he doesn’t want you to have a life outside him. Stalking, and so forth. Entitlement. I’ve known a few like that in the military, and I’ve seen to it that they left it, when I had something to say about it. They join up for the violence, and they tend to wash out, too. Anger management issues tend to come out, and the Defence Force isn’t too keen about giving blokes like that automatic weapons.”
“And, see,” she burst out, “I’d be worried, if I saw that. Wouldn’t I? I mean, obviously, I’ve been rejected, so it’s going to appeal to me to be desperately wanted, but wouldn’t I know if it was something pathological?”
“Well, I’d hope so,” I said, “and so would I, hopefully. It’s not like I haven’t been seeing a therapist who’s been poking and prodding into my brain. She’d be pretty quick to point it out, I imagine.”
; “Oh.” Karen considered that, and I thought once again that I’d never in my life known a more upfront woman. “That’s true. Also, if you were that kind of guy, you’d have a history, and you’ve got pretty much the opposite one, from what I’ve seen. And if I had that kind of issue, I’d have a history, and seeing as the guy I was with didn’t exactly break down in heartrending sobs at my departure, much less come running after me, I don’t. I’ve got ninety-nine problems, but a stalker isn’t one of them. Maybe sometimes, rubies just mean—” She waved a hand. “Whatever. Rich boyfriend.”
“Passion, power, courage, and life force,” I said, “supposedly. In other words—you. That’s why I chose them, not just because I thought they’d look good against your skin, which I did. I had heaps of time to look it up, sitting in the room with you. It could be they were a . . .” I stopped.
“A what?” She’d slowed down again, like she didn’t want to get there quite yet.
“A talisman,” I said. Reluctantly. I wasn’t the bare-your-soul type. The lose-your-self-control type. I’d never broken down in heartrending sobs at anybody’s departure, other than a dog when I was eight. He was a golden retriever, though, and we’d had him ever since I could remember, so there you were. I’d also never gone running after anybody, not even the golden retriever. I’d sure as hell never stalked anyone.
She pulled over at the entrance to somebody’s drive, and I asked, “What?”
“I have to concentrate.” She held out an arm. It was covered in gooseflesh.
“Not sure what I’m seeing here,” I said, but my heart was sinking. I was remembering the thing I should have noticed before. That I’d told her I’d fallen in love, and she hadn’t said it back.
“That’s what I’ve always thought about my earrings,” she said. “I’ve never told anybody. How could you say the same word?”
Kiwi Rules (New Zealand Ever After Book 1) Page 30