They’d ended up watching some cartoon movie about a Yeti tonight, which was silly, but the kids had liked it. And when Casey had leaned into him on the couch, then had fallen asleep against him in her robot-intensive PJs? It hadn’t been such a bad Friday night, especially when he’d carried her to bed and tucked her in, and she’d turned toward him with her eyes nearly closed, wrapped her arms around his neck, and asked sleepily, “Do you really promise to come tomorrow?”
“I promise.” He hesitated a moment, then leaned down and kissed her cheek. “Good night, Casey Moana.”
She sighed and closed her eyes. “Night.”
“Night, mate,” he told Isaiah. “Well done on helping Casey with her cards tonight, even though I’m still calling beginner’s luck. Next time, it’s revenge.”
Isaiah climbed up the ladder and scrambled into the top bunk. “No,” he said. “I think I’m just better.” And Rhys had to laugh. The boy went on, “I have to help her, I guess. Because I’m older.”
“Yeh. I was an older brother once, myself.”
“With my dad.” Isaiah had turned toward him, resting on his elbow, his eyes sober. “You were his big brother.”
“I was. I looked after him, but I didn’t always do it kindly. You do better at that. A good heart matters, eh. Probably makes you miss him, too.”
Isaiah looked thoughtful. “I don’t think I miss him. He wasn’t at home very much until he got sick. Mostly it was just Mum, and she’s still here.”
“Tossed the rugby ball with you and all, though,” Rhys said.
“Mostly Mum does that,” Isaiah said. “I don’t remember Dad doing it. So I don’t think it happened very many times.”
Not much of an epitaph.
Now, both kids were asleep, Hayden had left, and Zora still wasn’t home. It had been three hours. How long were they planning to spend over this dinner? Or had that fella taken her somewhere else after? Rhys wasn’t sitting up here all night. He had work to do.
He was just thinking it when he heard something outside. A car, switching off. A door slamming, and then another. He’d been making a note, but his head went up, and he listened.
Thirty seconds. Sixty. More. What were they doing out there?
Never mind. He knew.
The house was silent except for the occasional barely-ticking-over sound of a fridge motor humming into life, the random pop of a not-that-well-built house settling. Surely those were voices, though, just at the edge of his hearing. He set his notebook down, headed toward the kitchen, thought better of it, and sat on the couch again.
A door opening, another soft word, and footsteps, and he did stand up. Zora came through the world’s tiniest dining room and into the lounge carrying her purse in one hand. When she saw him, though, she stopped short.
“Oh,” she said. “Hayden gone?”
“Yeh. Off to find some nightlife.” Her lipstick was smeared, surely. “Casey wanted to stay the night. I hope that’s OK.”
“Of course.” She bent and pulled off first one shoe, then the other, stood up again with them in one hand, and smiled at him. “I’m not used to heels, although I should probably wear them more. Makes me taller, eh. I’m not sure these were right, though. Too businesslike, you think? I’m out of practice.”
She sounded breathless. Also, her lipstick was definitely smeared. He said, “Nah. I was thinking that they looked good. That you looked good. Pretty. I thought.”
Yes, he was Captain Suave. She smiled a little and said, “You’re more complimentary than Hayden, anyway.” Her hand went up to pull back her tousled hair from her face, and then she shook her head and the hair settled around her again, so what had been the point, other than to heat his blood a little more? “Would you like a beer?”
“Depends,” he said. “Are you going to have one?”
“Yes.” She set the shoes down beside an armchair. “I had wine with dinner, and I have a wedding to do tomorrow, but I want a beer anyway. Decompressing. Should a date require decompressing?”
“If it’s your first one in years, it probably does. Sit down, though. I’ll get them.”
He brought back the bottles and a glass, but she waved the glass away and said, “Bottle’s fine.” She’d sat on the couch, so he sat down beside her, took a sip of beer, and said, “So.”
She tucked her legs up under her, and, yes, her toenail varnish was deep red. “So. That’s me started, I guess. Back out there in the world. Was it hard for you to do?”
Was he supposed to lie? He said, “No.” Still rubbish at lying, then. He considered telling her that he was having a hard time moving on now, and didn’t. Very bad idea.
She said, “Oh,” and twirled the bottle in her fingers.
“Something wrong? Did he do something he shouldn’t have?” He tried to keep his hands from tightening, and failed.
“No. He kissed me a fair amount, that was all. And dropped his hand a bit low on my back, possibly. I didn’t give him any signals not to. Beforehand, at least. I wanted to . . . see, I guess.”
She sighed. What did that mean? She had her hand in her hair again, at the back of her neck this time, was looking away from him, and he could smell her scent. More than roses tonight. Something spicier and darker. Exactly how far down was “a bit low on my back?” He’d known there was something shady about that bloke. Doctors. Arrogant bastards.
He should get up and leave. He didn’t need this frustration. He had a game tomorrow. Instead, he asked, “And did you see?”
She looked down at her beer bottle like she’d forgotten she was holding it. “Maybe I’m just not in practice. I thought that earlier tonight, when I was getting dressed. Or maybe I’ve lost it.”
“Lost what?”
She raised her eyes to his. “Whatever it is. The spark.” A long moment. “Desire.”
He watched his hand move, willed it back, and for once in his life, absolutely failed to control himself. He was touching her hair, twining a curl around his finger. “Or maybe,” he said, “he wasn’t the right one.”
He wished she didn’t have those eyes. He was in big, big trouble. “I think that’s pretty well established,” she said, and, yes, she definitely was breathless, and his heart was thudding like a jackhammer. “He’s a nice man. He has beautiful office furniture, and I’m sure he could fix all my problem areas. Of course, for him to do that, I’d have to show them to him. Not happening. If I’ve got a spark, it’s not with him.” She shifted and looked away, he dropped his hand, and she stood up. Moment over.
“You know—” she said, “I don’t think I want this beer. I think I’ll go to bed. Come for breakfast tomorrow, when you come to get Casey. I’ll be running to get those arrangements done, but we all have to eat. If you want to help cook it—even better. You don’t mind showing yourself out, do you?”
Eight days later, and Rhys had officially made it through more than a week as Casey’s dad. It was getting easier with practice and discipline, exactly like everything else in the world.
You see? he told himself every single night. You can do this.
Eight mornings of hair combing and teaching Casey to read the names of the days, so she could choose the right undies. She’d learned to take a shower, and he’d learned to wash her hair, as well as the many other required steps. He’d even done two plaits this morning, which had involved parting her hair and creating something called a “French braid,” which may have required a YouTube video and a bit of coaching on the phone from Zora, but he’d done it, hadn’t he? He’d fastened the plaits with twin red barrettes with sparkly stars on. The whole thing made Casey, in her green-plaid uniform skirt, look cute and cared for, which would help at school, surely, especially as she’d made a friend, a girl named Esme who had a puppy. Which Rhys was hearing about constantly.
“No puppies,” he’d said, just last night. “Absolutely not. Hard line.”
Casey had sighed, and he’d been able to predict the words before they’d made it out of her mouth
. There was no reason in the world he had to fall for those big eyes, either. “If I had rabbits,” she’d told him, scrambling up onto her bed beside him in her Mickey and Minnie PJs to read stories, “I wouldn’t want a puppy, because the puppy might chase the rabbits. If I had rabbits, I would never be lonesome.”
Zora had smiled at him this morning, though, when he’d dropped Casey off at her place, and said, “Oh, well done on the plaits, Rhys. She looks adorable.” Which shouldn’t matter as much as it did, but there was something about winning a woman’s approval that got you every time.
There’d been eight evenings, too, of sitting against Casey’s headboard at bedtime with her cuddled up beside him, and having her read to him from the “hard books” she was working to master in Year Two, because she needed to get up to speed, helping her do it was his job, and he always did his job. After that, he’d read to her from the dinosaur book, which remained altogether too focused on combat, but which she loved anyway. A rugby girl through and through.
Then there were the eight breakfasts and eight dinners, most of the dinners, somehow, eaten with Zora and Isaiah.
It was too easy to say “yes” when Zora invited the two of them to stay, and so much cozier in her tiny, warm kitchen than in his own perfectly appointed one, helping her cook something that tasted better than he ever managed for himself. You could say that he was getting cooking lessons, which was helpful in his new role, and Casey was getting time with the whanau. He and Zora hadn’t had a repeat of the moment on the couch, because she’d obviously regretted it, and he didn’t stay past washing-up time, so what could be wrong with eating dinner with both kids at the table? They didn’t talk about Zora’s personal life, or about Rhys’s, or, ever, about Dylan. They didn’t talk about rugby, and the break was welcome. It was easy to get too caught up in it, for a player or a coach. The harder the pressure got, the more you needed time away. They didn’t talk about what Victoria would say when she learned about Casey, or what anybody else would, either. They talked to the kids, he had a chance to relax and to laugh and so did she, and it was quite possibly the best part of his day.
And if those dinners were what he thought about every single night when his car was aimed like an arrow, straight toward the little house at the edge of the hills, and what he resolved to put an end to every single night when he was driving Casey home? He had a plan for that, too. When he kissed Casey good-night and headed downstairs to get in an hour of thinking time before the next day’s training, he’d remind himself, It’s a transition period, that’s all, for both of you. Next week, you’re leaving for twelve days. Heaps of time to meet somebody pretty in a bar, or there’s that reporter over there, the blonde. Chemistry there. Invite her for a drink this time, and see how it goes. Sydney’s only a three-hour flight. Once you’ve got somebody else, you’ll be over this obsession. You can cook your own dinners, and Zora can find somebody to help her rekindle the spark. You’re not helping her do that, hanging about like this. You’re getting in each other’s way for nothing, just because it’s so easy to fall into that softness. After this trip, you’ll be able to start saying no.
For now, though? He never said no.
After the first couple of dinners, he’d begun stopping by the shops on the way home from his workouts—the ones Finn had been doing along with him every afternoon, “because nobody ever got more effective by losing their structure,” which was speaking his language—and buying a few things for Zora to make the next night. He had to pick up groceries for breakfast and Casey’s lunch anyway, he’d reckoned, and it only took a few more minutes to drop another item or two into the trolley. It was the least he could do.
The first time, it had been tender, buttery rounds of eye fillet that you barely needed a table knife to cut, baby potatoes, and asparagus. She’d loved those. Another night, a packet of just-baked ciabatta rolls together with ground Fossil Farms venison that had made the best burgers he’d ever tasted. That one had been a solid hit until Isaiah had let it slip to Casey that they were eating Bambi’s mother, which had produced stricken, accusing eyes, followed by a logical discussion initiated by Zora and taken up by Isaiah about animal welfare, the merits and drawbacks of vegetarianism, and free-range meats versus factory farming. If Casey had ended up deciding to be a vegan, Rhys would have put his foot down absolutely. Hard line. Fortunately, though, she’d eaten the burger, “because the deers had a happy life.” Casey was a practical girl.
There’d been the bag of avocadoes as well, that had cost two dollars apiece and had left Zora exclaiming helplessly, but had her face lighting up, too, which he called success. For tonight, when he’d texted her and said, Picking up something quick for us to make, because telling her ahead of time was surely better, it was a bottle of walnut oil, and another of balsamic vinegar flavored with herbs, along with a couple racks of lamb. He’d reckoned the vinegar had to be good, because it cost four times as much as the other kind, and the shop assistant at the gourmet place had recommended it and the walnut oil to go with his baby lettuces. He’d picked up a six-pack of craft beer as well, because Zora liked it as much as he did.
There was no side to her, he’d realized. She was happier with a burger and a beer on the deck, he’d swear, than she’d been going out to that flash restaurant with the plastic surgeon. And if he still burned to take her out himself, to have her put on that red dress just for him and to wonder what she was wearing under it, to be allowed to tell her exactly how smoking hot she looked, to smile down at her and put his hand lightly onto her lower back, but not too low, as he ushered her through the place—so what? He knew he wasn’t going to get it, and you couldn’t help your fantasies. His fantasies were unruly bastards. But he could cook the steaks or the burgers on the barbecue and eat them looking out onto the peace of her pretty garden in the lingering warmth of the day, drinking beer from the bottle and smiling at Isaiah’s efforts to teach Casey how to sing the national anthem in Maori. And that wasn’t bad at all.
Well, it was torture, but still—it wasn’t bad.
Tonight, Zora opened the bags he’d brought, saw the lamb, and had said, “Rhys,” in the same way another woman would have if you’d brought her a diamond necklace. He said, “It looked like exactly what I wanted, and I thought it might be exactly what you wanted, too. Tomorrow’s your hard day, after all. Friday’s the deliveries to houses, right? And you have wedding flowers on Saturday as well. I’d say lamb is necessary. Anyway, I told you I’d bring something quick for tonight. This is it.”
She raised her hands, then let them fall onto her thighs with a slap, laughed helplessly, and said, “If you’re going to keep doing this, I need to plan for it instead of holding my breath and wondering what’s coming my way next. I’ll start giving you a list, once you come home from Aussie. You may as well buy the entire dinner while you’re at it. You’re practically doing it now.”
“Definitely,” he said, though he wasn’t paying perfect attention. He was, in fact, busy appreciating the hell out of the skirt she had on tonight, a fluttery little thing with blue flowers that went with her snug blue T-shirt. She’d painted her toenails a ruby red, though. That color was his favorite so far, and he was able to see it, because her feet were bare.
He was getting as obsessed with her feet and ankles as some fella from Victorian England, possibly because it was the one part of her body that he allowed himself to look at openly. Painting her toenails was her girly indulgence, he had the feeling, and if he had an image of her sitting on the bed in some kind of shortie PJs that showed every bit of her thighs, wielding that tiny little brush and blowing on her toes to dry them faster? That was his problem.
That blonde Aussie reporter, or somebody nice-looking in a bar, definitely. Somebody with a good smile and some softness to her, but not a brunette, and not short, either. He needed to draw a firm line under this and move on. For now, he said, “There’s also the question of whether you’d cook fish for me, if I brought it home to you. I’ll have some tim
e to teach Casey to fish when I get back from Aussie. I can take Isaiah as well. Seems like a good idea. I’ll take you, too, if you’d like to come.”
“Fresh fish? Really fresh? Oh, yeh.” She sighed, leaned up against the kitchen bench, and looked like he’d just given her the best treat in the world. “Keep talking, boy. If you clean it? I’ll take that. But I don’t need to go. You can take the kids, some lovely, lazy Sunday, and I’ll stay home and . . . have a bubble bath.” She smiled, slow and sweet, and he tried not to imagine her there, her hair pinned up on top of her head, a scented candle burning, soft music playing, and a glass of wine beside her, every delicious bit of her enjoying the luxury of time alone and maybe, just maybe, anticipating him coming home.
He failed absolutely in the not-picturing department. No surprise.
“A fisherman always cleans his own fish,” he said. “Fillets it, too, especially if he’s bringing it back to somebody special. I may have mentioned that I spent a fair bit of my childhood on a fishing boat.”
“Am I special?” she asked.
“I think you know you are.” He barely knew what he was saying. Her body was swaying toward him, he’d swear it. In another second, he was going to have his hand at her waist. He wasn’t going to be able to help it.
“Why do you have to clean fish? They’re getting washed all the time, because they live in the water.” Oh. That was Casey, who’d been sitting with Isaiah in the red stools on the other side of the kitchen bench, working on her maths. Despite her terror of Year Two big words, it was the maths that had proven more daunting. They were fortunate that Isaiah was a good tutor.
Rhys went back to the salad dressing he was mixing from his too-expensive oil and vinegar, wrenching his mind off bubble baths and bare, wet skin. “’Cleaning’s a whaddayacallit,” he said. “A nicer way to say you gut the fish and take its head and tail off. Fillet it as well, if it’s a big one like a snapper or a kingfish. We’ll think positive, eh. Handing it over and expecting your—a woman—or, uh, your mate—to clean it as well as cook it, to deal with the nasty bits, is a rubbish move that gets you nowhere.”
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