Kiwi Rules (New Zealand Ever After Book 1)

by Rosalind James

  “Hey, Sarge,” he said. “That’s what they tell me. Today, I hope. You?”

  “Going well. Can’t complain.”

  He glanced at Karen. “That the missus?”

  “Not yet,” I said. “I’m still working on it.”

  “I’d say you’re lucky,” he said, “like always. But maybe not so much, eh.”

  The leg, he meant. There’d been a grimace, too, when he’d said it. Pain, or something else. I asked, “Something happen?”

  He shrugged. “Nah.”

  “Girlfriend?” I guessed. He’d had a visitor, before. A frequent one, when we’d both been inpatients, me about to leave, and him just coming in. I could’ve felt some envy, maybe, back then, at the way she’d kissed him. The way she’d seemed like she always would.

  “Not anymore.” That was all he said, but it was enough.

  I put a hand on his shoulder. Sometimes, the hardest thing was not being touched. Or not being touched with love. I remembered that first night, when Karen had touched me, and I’d cried. How mortified I’d been. How grateful, and how scared of it.

  Maybe the old man had had it right, when he’d woken up that day and thought about his girl. I realized that I couldn’t think of a day when I wouldn’t want to see her face, and I couldn’t think of a future that didn’t have her in it.

  I wanted to say, “Never mind.” I wanted to say, “There’ll be somebody better.” Instead, I said, “That sucks.”

  “Yeh.”

  He swallowed and looked straight ahead, and I gripped his shoulder again and said, “Good luck today. If you need a chat, ring me. Anyplace you’ve been, I probably have too. Still got my number?”

  He nodded once. Too close to tears, and not wanting to show it. I hesitated a minute, then said, “See ya,” and headed across the room. Past the little girl, who was watching me.

  I thought, What the hell, and stopped. The mum looked up, and I held out a hand and said, “Jax MacGregor.”

  Her eyes widened. The underwear, or the family. Who knew, in Dunedin. “Moira MacDonald,” she said, and took my hand.

  “Ah,” I said. “Scotland forever.”

  She laughed, so that was better. Normally, I’d have got down on my haunches, but that wasn’t easy anymore. Instead, I stayed where I was and said to the little girl, “My name’s Jax. What’s yours?”

  “Trina,” she said. Looking shy, clutching her doll.

  “What’s your doll’s name?”

  “Pepper.” She waited a moment, then asked, “Do you have a fake leg?”

  I’d worn shorts, because I was wearing them every chance I got. Getting used to the looks took exposure, I’d figured, and the sooner I did get used to it, the better. “Yeh,” I said. “I do.”

  “Does it work?”

  “It does. It’s brilliant, actually. I’m still learning to use it, though, and it’s weird at night, because I have to take it off when I go to bed. Sometimes I forget I don’t have it when I wake up, and I try to stand up like I used to and fall over. That’s embarrassing.”

  She giggled, so that was better, and I said, “I reckon you don’t have to fall over as much when you lose your arm. Course, cutting your food’s harder.”

  “And tying your shoelaces,” she said. “And buttoning. But maybe my new arm can tie and button, when I get one.” Her one hand was clutching her doll tight, holding her to her chest.

  “They’re doing grand things with hands, I hear,” I said. “I think you’ll be tying your shoelaces. Playing netball, maybe.”

  “Or soccer,” she said. “You don’t need hands for soccer. You’re not supposed to use your hands at all, unless you’re the goalie.”

  “There you are, then,” I said. “You could be a natural.”

  “Did you have an accident in a car?” she asked.

  “No. I got blown up by a bomb.” I touched the scars on my face. “But they sewed me back up again.”

  “Oh,” she said. “That’s lucky. I had an accident in a car. My daddy was in the same one as me. He died.”

  He mother gave a choked sound, and I said, “I’m sorry. Bet you miss your dad.”

  The door behind us opened, and the nurse called out, “Trina MacDonald?” The two of them got to their feet, the mum taking the little girl’s remaining hand. Trina turned, though, halfway across the room, and told me, “Maybe they’re doing grand things with legs, too. Maybe you can play soccer.”

  My throat closed up, and I said, “Maybe so,” and lifted my hand to her, and she smiled at me, then turned and went through the door with her mum. And I thought, through a wee bit of haze, Perspective, mate. It’s not about what you’ve lost. It’s about what you have.

  Which didn’t make it that much easier when the nurse called my name.

  Karen

  It was two o’clock when we arrived at the Limb Centre. It was nearly three-thirty when Jax came through the door again. After I’d had a chance to think about the look on his face when he’d gripped the shoulder of the guy with no arm, and to wonder what he was saying to him. And, of course, after I’d seen him talk to the little girl with her doll.

  That guy—I wanted him. Who wouldn’t want him? He was special. Strong and kind.

  The guy who came out the door again, though? Not quite so perfect. His face was shut down, and he wasn’t looking at me. Not even glancing my way.

  Oh. Bad news. And he didn’t think I could help, or he didn’t think I would. My heart sank. Literally sank in my chest. Well, not literally, because organs don’t move like that. Some other physical reaction that felt like that. Sadness. Dread.

  Jax went over to the receptionist, spent a while talking to her, then came over at last, still not meeting my gaze, and said, “Ready? Want to get a coffee?” Like he was talking to the . . . coat-check person, handing over his token. Like that.

  I said, “Sure,” and walked outside with him, where the clouds were fulfilling their promise and emptying themselves onto Dunedin in the form of soaking, chilling rain.

  “Bugger,” he said. We were still under cover, because Dunedin, like everyplace else in rainy New Zealand, was Awning Central. “Wait here while I run and get the car. You’ve got an anorak in one of those duffels, don’t you?”

  “Yes,” I said, “and I’m fine to run with you to get it, and then go for coffee. It’s only a couple blocks, and it’s too hard to park here.”

  This time, when he looked at me, his face wasn’t blank. It was annoyed. “You don’t have to be fine. I’m not asking you to be fine.”

  “Fine,” I said, and he glared at me. Wrong word? Too bad. “But we’re running two blocks in the rain to a heated car with, I am very sure, heated seats. Where I can get my anorak and warm up, if the experience of getting wet robs me of my strength. Let’s go.”

  He sighed. Being patient. Man, I really hated it when a guy was obviously-patient-on-purpose. I was trying my hardest to give him the benefit of the doubt here, to remember that he was under stress—which he hadn’t told me about—but I wasn’t as good as he was at being levelheaded every second of the day. I wanted to get wherever it was that he needed to be before he could talk.

  He said, “You don’t have to get wet to prove something to me, especially when it’s the last thing I want you to prove. Let me try this again. I would prefer to go get the car for you, so you stay dry.”

  I lifted a hand, then let it drop. “Fine,” I said, using the evil word again. “Go get the car. I’m not fighting about this, not right now. I’ll fight about it with you later instead. But for the record, you’re being really stupid.”

  He almost smiled. Just not quite. He said, “Wait,” and took off. T-shirt, shorts, and hoodie, all of it soaked before he’d gone half a block. And I thought two things.

  First: What the hell? And second: Why were men so weird?

  Jax

  That had gone well.

  The truth was, I needed the run. Which wasn’t two blocks. Typical Karen, to say two blocks when it
was four, to tell me she could run it in the rain, and not to see how much I’d rather she didn’t.

  I drove back, navigating the one-way streets and the traffic around the Octagon at the start of rush hour, and finally rounded the corner and saw her under the awning. She had her arms wrapped around herself against the chill, she was peering in the wrong direction and shifting from foot to foot, and something settled into place inside me.

  I knew why I’d needed to keep her dry. And, no, it wasn’t just my ego. I was also going to have to tell her everything, even if it ripped its way out of me. I wanted to tell her, and I didn’t want to.

  When I pulled over, she ran to the car through the squall that had picked up right on cue, hopped in, and said, “Phew. It’s pouring. You’re soaked. Is that OK to say, or is it still dangerously egalitarian?”

  I had to smile. “It’s OK to say.” I would’ve kissed her, but I was in a loading zone, and the bloke behind me was hooting, so I pulled out into traffic instead. “Let’s start again. Want to go for a coffee?”

  “I don’t know,” she said, saucy again, like you couldn’t keep her down. Which you couldn’t. “Are you going to explain and let me help with whatever it is?”

  “I’m going to try. It may not make much sense.”

  “Well,” she said, “since I’m pretty much the queen of things making no sense right now, or not understanding the sense they make, I could be exactly the right person to receive your confidences. You never know.”

  Now, I was smiling. How could I not? “Right,” I said. “Coffee.”

  “And a snack,” she said. “I know we’re eating dinner with your parents, but I’m not going to make it until then, unless you think they’d enjoy the sight of me falling onto my dinner like a starved dog.”

  It took another ten minutes to navigate the few streets back to the Iconic Café, and when I pulled up in front of it, I asked, “Exactly how insulting will it be for me to suggest that you could run in and order us both a coffee while I park?”

  “It will be perfectly acceptable,” she said serenely, and before I could lean across and kiss her, she was out of the car.

  Ten minutes later, I joined her. She was sitting near the black iron stove, in which a fire was burning merrily, with a view of both the windows and the plant-covered brick back wall. She had two coffees in front of her in big white porcelain cups set on saucers, and two meat pies with salad, too. And every bit of it, and of her, looked like everything a man would most want to see.

  “Now, you see,” I said, sliding into the chair opposite her, “how efficient that was? Also, when I opened the door and saw you sitting here, I was glad.” That was putting it mildly. It was more like my heart had leapt. I’d better say that, or at least a bit of it. “Glad you were dry, and looking so beautiful, and glad you were mine. Glad I could keep you that way.”

  She smiled. All that life in her eyes, all that vitality in her slim body. “Geez, a person could almost think you were sharing. Also, I saved you the chocolate fish.”

  I picked it up and saluted her with it. “Life is uncertain. Eat dessert first.”

  She laughed, and I ate her chocolate fish and said, “Right. I apologize for being an arsehole. You were wearing your new dress, looking so pretty, and I felt like I should’ve told you to bring your anorak, because I could tell it was going to rain.”

  “And if I had,” she said, “you’d still have told me to wait, because you’ve got some need to be extra-protective right now. It makes you feel better about various things, even though, of course, I’m capable of recognizing rain clouds myself, even with my teeny-weeny girl brain. Also of reading a weather forecast, which I did. I didn’t take my anorak with me, though, because I wanted to be cute, so I chanced it. You didn’t think about either of us taking one, because you were worried about your appointment. Nobody made a gigantic, horrible, irredeemable mistake. Nobody’s lost their manhood. Nobody even has to feel bad.”

  You couldn’t have stopped me smiling if you’d tried, even though there was still a giant lump in my throat, and too much happening in my chest. I was either coming down with flu, or I was about to get emotional. For right now, I reached across the table, picked up her hand, ran my thumb over the backs of the ringless fingers, and said, “I think you’re meant to make it harder than that. Not too flash at fighting, are you.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” she said. “I thought I did OK. Anyway, fighting’s either telling the truth, in which case it doesn’t have to be horrible, because you’re just working things out, or it’s being all passive-aggressive and pretending you’re actually fighting about something else while you try to control the other person, in which case, why would you want to be together? And I’m being tactful—for me—but I really want to know.” Her mobile face changed, got serious, and she gripped my hand and said, “Whatever the doctor said, whatever you heard—you know I love you, right?”

  My thumb stopped moving. I wanted to say, “I do?” Or maybe, “You do?” But the words wouldn’t come. Everything was rising up in my chest, my throat, and the hand holding hers started to shake.

  She said, “Jax,” then shifted her chair so she was closer. Shifted it so she had her back to the window. So she was blocking anybody’s view of me. “Tell me.”

  I had a hand over my eyes, like that could hold the tears back. I heaved in a breath, and it felt like the air was having to work to get through. My leg gave a pulsing throb, and I nearly cried out with it. “I’m . . . doing better,” I got out. “Leg’s doing . . . pretty well. Doc’s going to write a letter to my CO. Commanding officer.”

  “Uh-huh,” she said. “Saying what?”

  “I’m on track. Maybe two months. Then I can go back. Once I get to full . . . full fitness.” I had both hands over my eyes, my elbows on the table. Panicking again, and not, because Karen’s arm was around my back, her other hand on my forearm, and that helped.

  “But that’s good,” she said. “Isn’t it?”

  I shook my head, then nodded. I tried to say something, and couldn’t.

  “For somebody who hates to cry,” she said, “you sure picked a lousy place for it.”

  The sobs were trying to break through, and I was laughing at the same time. “You were . . . hungry, though. Needed a mocha.”

  She pressed closer and put her head against my shoulder. “Yeah. And you needed to give me what I want.” When I nodded without looking at her, she said, “And to keep me from getting wet. OK. So . . . where do you go? Back to Afghanistan?”

  I wiped my eyes with a napkin and focused on taking some breaths. “It’s up to the Defence Force, ultimately. I’ll most likely be stationed here, though. In New Zealand. I’ve made enough sacrifice already, is the idea.”

  “Doing what?” she asked.

  “Same thing.”

  “But . . . explosives?”

  “The military’s called in when the police need help with that. We’re the experts, so they may as well use us. It’s a small country. Drink your coffee.”

  “Oh.” She considered that. “All right—first, I’m not drinking my coffee because you told me to, I’m doing it because I can tell you need to get back to normal, since this is embarrassing you horribly. That’s also why I’m scooting back to my place, not because I’m horrified by your display of unmanly emotion. I’m just saying, in case.”

  I was smiling again, somehow. “Thank you.”

  “So you’ll probably be staying here,” she said. “Someplace here.”

  “Wellington, Christchurch, or Auckland. The three places where E Squadron is stationed. My unit, explosives specialists. They’ll ask me which I want, and try to give it to me. Which would be Christchurch.”

  “And that’s really what you want to do.”

  “It’s all I’ve hoped for.” The words sat out there, bald and unadorned and true.

  “Because . . .” she said.

  “Because I know how to do it. And it matters.” The emotion came straight back ag
ain, like it had been lying in wait.

  “Then,” she said, “that’s what you should do.”

  Karen

  “Why the hell wouldn’t you just stay here?”

  The speaker was Jax’s dad, Alistair MacGregor. He looked like Jax. Just as tall, and just as gray-eyed. Even more powerful, although in his case, the power wasn’t hidden under any easygoing Kiwi-casual façade. Good thing I was Hemi Te Mana’s sister-in-law, that was all I had to say. You could say I was familiar with the species.

  The place was Jax’s parents’ house, although “house” wasn’t a good enough word to describe it. I knew all about rich people’s fancy places, too. See “Hemi Te Mana’s sister-in-law,” above. Hemi and Hope had moved from the condo he’d owned when they’d been married, because the enormous penthouse of the building on Central Park West wasn’t big enough for a family with all those kids. Now, they had two apartments, knocked together. Also on Central Park West, with a garden on the terrace where they grew their own vegetables and flowers. And the house on Waihi Beach, of course.

  This thing, though, won the square-footage battle. And the “scenery” battle, since it overlooked the harbor, the city skyline across the water, and the wilder lands to the north, and featured winding paths through a whole lot of beachy landscaping. If you looked the other way, you got a sweeping view of the Otago Peninsula, the water dotted with tiny islands and edged by rugged hills, and were reminded of the little blue penguins and fur seals and albatross colony up there, and what you couldn’t see—lonely beaches stretching for kilometers, and the wild southern sea. Once their breeding season was over, the albatrosses would be riding the winds from here all the way to Antarctica, to Chile, even all the way around the world, before they came back to nest again.

  I hadn’t been there, but I’d heard of all of it, and even I knew this was prime real estate. The house itself was absolutely modern, it blended into the landscape, it used wood and glass and curving lines in the most pleasing possible way, and it had absolutely zero view of any neighbors, since it was on about eight acres. That was one way to get privacy—you just bought everything around you. It also had a heated lap pool, a spa tub, a full guest house, a gym, and a media room. I knew that because Alistair had just reminded Jax of that fact, as in, “Why the hell would you be going all the way up to your place, where you can’t get physical therapy or massage or even a bag of bloody groceries, never mind being able to swim? Not like we don’t have room for you.”