“A euphemism,” Zora said. “Cleaning it, I mean.” She had some pink in her cheeks, for some reason.
“That’s right.”
“You take out its guts?” Isaiah asked. He and Casey looked at each other and said, “Eww,” bang on cue, which made Rhys smile.
“Yeh,” Rhys said. “Can’t eat the guts or the head, can you? And your mum doesn’t want to look at those anyway. You’ve been fishing, surely, with your dad. He wasn’t as keen as me as a kid, but he knew how.”
“No,” Isaiah said. “I don’t think he went fishing. Or maybe I don’t remember that.”
Rhys cast a quick look at Zora, but she just opened the oven and asked him, “D’you want to take the roasting pan out for me? After that, we’ll give it ten minutes to rest while the veggies finish, and then I’ll have you slice chops.”
He maneuvered the heavy pan out, setting it carefully down on a rack. “Cheers for asking me. That’s points for you.”
“Do I need points?”
“No,” he said. “You don’t.” And fell a little deeper into her mouth and her eyes, even though she barely had on any makeup, she wasn’t wearing a red dress, and she wasn’t even trying. He didn’t need a red dress or sexy shoes or lipstick or anything else. He just needed his hands on her. And his mouth. And his body. She was short, which meant that you should want her on top. It wasn’t that he didn’t want her on top. It was just that he wanted to be on top of her even more. On his elbows, with his hands in her hair while he kissed her mouth, and then made his slow way south. Taking the scenic route. Taking his time.
She hadn’t been loved right in too long. She hadn’t had anything she should have had in too long. He wanted to give it to her.
“Your dad went fishing,” Zora said to Isaiah. “With his mates. He didn’t always catch anything, that’s all.” Her voice tightened on the words, and Rhys thought, Fishing, or something else that took him away from home, and opened the oven again to check on the red potatoes and carrots roasting in there, just to keep from showing his face.
“Well,” he told Isaiah when he’d closed the door again, “we can fix that. We’ll go out early on a Sunday morning, the three of us, rain or shine. Out on the wharf for starters, so the two of you can learn how. That’s a date.”
“Mm,” Zora said. “Lay the table, please, kids.”
“You’re going away for a very long time on Tuesday,” Casey said, opening the silverware drawer and counting out knives and forks with all her concentration. “That’s after Saturday, when we’re all going to watch the rugby game, because you’re the coach. But you’re coming back.”
“That’s right,” Rhys said.
“And you don’t have to go to work on Sunday,” she said. “Because the game will be over. So we can do fun things.”
“Also right. I wonder where this conversation is heading?”
“We could go to a rabbit store and buy rabbits,” she said. “Then I wouldn’t be lonesome for you while you’re gone.”
“There’s no such thing as a rabbit store, I don’t think,” Isaiah said. “Rabbits don’t do anything useful, like lay eggs like chickens, or find lost people like dogs, or catch mice like cats. That’s probably why people have other animals instead of rabbits.”
“People do so have rabbits,” Casey said. “Lots of people do. So there has to be a rabbit store.”
“Maybe they only have that in the United States,” Isaiah said. “Not in New Zealand. Rabbits are only useful for eating. I’ve seen them in the butcher’s before. Parts of them, anyway, because they’re butchered.”
“They are not,” Casey said. “You don’t eat rabbits.”
“You didn’t think people ate deer, either,” Isaiah said. “But they do.”
“People do have pet rabbits,” Zora said firmly. “We won’t talk right now about butchering, Isaiah.”
Casey didn’t look tearful, like another girl would have. She looked fierce, like she’d defend her nonexistent rabbits to the death. She might not be Rhys’s, and yet she most definitely was.
He looked at her with as much sternness as he could summon, and she looked back at him with those killer eyes and sighed, all the way from her skinny chest. She was wearing the red shirt tonight, the one with the sparkly heart. A heart that knew what it wanted.
“Rabbits are my replacement, eh,” he said. “Good to know. You’ll be happy to know that I’ve been researching hutches, then. I may possibly have ordered one, and a pen as well. They’re arriving—when was that? Oh, yeh. Tomorrow. In about a hundred boxes, I’m guessing, requiring assembly. Of course, I’ve spoilt the surprise now.”
Her mouth opened, and for once, she seemed stuck for something to say. “Yeh,” he said. “I see that I did surprise you. I told you, I keep my promises.”
She ran straight at him like the world’s most ambitious tackler. He pivoted, got her around the waist, swung her into the air, and pulled her in. She was still holding the silverware, but she wrapped her arms around him anyway, bashing him in the back with it in the process, buried her face in his neck, and said, “I love you very, very much.”
There was something in his eye, maybe. Zora was smiling, but her eyes were bright. “Rhys,” she said, “that’s so . . . that’s very sweet.”
“Except for two things,” he said, hanging onto Casey, who felt exactly right there, in his arms. “First, that we still need to get some rabbits, or there’s no point. Maybe Isaiah wants to come help us put the hutch together tomorrow evening, and have dinner at my house for a change. He could even stay over and give Auntie Zora a night to herself. And maybe Zora and Isaiah want to go bunny-shopping with us on Sunday, what d’you reckon? I could take us out for that brekkie I promised weeks ago. After that, there’s the wee issue of my absence. I had an idea about that. Just temporary, of course, until we get our situation sorted and get you a nanny.” Which would be progressing faster if he’d actually done anything about it.
“Hmm.” Zora was looking skeptical now. “I can’t wait.” He wondered if she’d guessed about the non-nanny-hunting. He’d meant to do it. He just hadn’t managed it yet. Which was unlike him, and which would change, once he got back from Aussie with his head on straight.
“Of course,” he said, “there’s bunny-visiting instead, but that would be so much extra work. Every morning and every night, probably, and who knows what kind of vicious, feral beasts you’d have at the end of it, with nobody to pat them? Killers, most likely. I’d have to pay Zora much more for that, too, even than I’m doing for full-time care, and I’m a cheap fella. Or there’s another way. It seemed to me”—this part, he said cautiously, because this wasn’t the precise way he’d meant to broach this idea—“that you and Isaiah may want to do some commuting, Zora. Flowers-wise, instead of bunny-wise. Or not, because I have a shed myself, as it happens. I’ve also got this flash house. It’s a fair size.”
“His house looks like a doctor’s office,” Casey said. “Except it’s not. It doesn’t have a bathtub for kids, and it has scary stairs, but it’s very jungly, which is a good thing, because we could play soldiers in the jungle, Isaiah.”
“All true,” Rhys said. “Good kitchen, also, which the decorator outfitted with the basics, fortunately. The only issue is that it has, ah, three bedrooms. The master has a view you may like, though, and, of course, I wouldn’t be there. That would be the idea.”
“I’m sleeping in your bed, that what you’re saying?” Zora asked. “Rhys—”
“With clean sheets, so it’s like I’ve never been there at all. And as I mentioned,” he hurried on, wondering exactly how shot down he’d feel when she quite rightly rejected the entire mad idea, “the house comes with a shed, and I don’t have anything in it. It even has a sink outside it, under a shelter. I confess I was thinking of it more in terms of that fish-gutting, but I haven’t had a chance to put it to use yet, so it’s pristine as far as flower arranging goes. I’m a dead loss as a Kiwi bloke just now. Been gone from the
homeland too long, and haven’t had a chance to acquire much of anything in the way of tools, or even any tackle for camping and fishing and that. If you wanted to shift the floral operation over entirely during my absences, the buckets and clippers and all, that would work.”
Zora did that thing again where she lifted her hands, then slapped them against her thighs. Her palms left a faint pink mark on her skin. He couldn’t help but notice. “Kids,” she said, “go do . . . something in Isaiah’s room.” She reached out and took the somewhat grubby silverware from Casey’s hand. “We’ll call you when it’s time for dinner.”
“I’m very hungry, though,” Isaiah said as Rhys set Casey on her feet. His eyes went from his mother to Rhys, and he looked off-balance for once.
Zora wrapped an arm around his shoulders. “Uncle Rhys and I need to talk for a few minutes. We’ll eat dinner very soon, and we’ll talk about everything we decide. I’ll answer all your questions then. I promise.”
Zora waited until the kids had left the room and asked Rhys, “Why, exactly?”
“Because it’s—” He stopped.
She needed to get him to slice the lamb. She needed to lay the table. She needed to hear his answer.
Hayden had rung the night before and said, “Just to let you know, I’ll come cut your grass again on Sunday. Also, I could take Isaiah to Kelly Tarlton’s afterwards, if you like, especially as Mum and Dad have invited us to dinner. Well, they’ve invited me, and I’m sure you and Isaiah are about to be summoned as well. I’ll fulfill all my family obligations in one day, and learn some natural history at the aquarium at the same time, because that’s so valuable in my life. Did you know that Antarctica is both the windiest and the driest continent on Earth? You wouldn’t think it, with all the ice, but it’s true. Your son knows it, and so do I. It also has an active volcano. Ask me how I know. They have new rescued sea turtles at Kelly’s, too. I may have had a voicemail about them.”
“No on the grass,” she’d said. “Rhys did it, and I’m guessing he’ll do it next time. He was here on Monday to drop off Casey, and he noticed it was getting long, so . . . For that matter, I can cut my own grass. Why do men always think they have to cut the grass? No man ever says, ‘I see you need dinner cooked. Why don’t I take care of that?’ Which generally takes longer than cutting the grass, and you have to do it every single night.” It helped if a man did your grocery shopping, though, especially when he brought the kind of melt-in-your-mouth steaks that cost fifty dollars a kilogram, which you couldn’t indulge in no matter how many flower subscriptions you sold, not if you were saving for a new van. And then barbecued them for you. And then talked to you like he wanted to be there, and smiled with his eyes.
All right, some men did take care of dinner.
“Wait,” Hayden said. “What’s that note I’m hearing? Why aren’t you interested in my turtles? Wait again. I’m not interested in my turtles. Why aren’t you interested in my turtles?”
“What note?” she said. “There’s no note. The date didn’t go anywhere, just like I told you. I’m the same as ever, and I’m fine. I’ll say yes to Kelly Tarlton’s all the same, though. Do you mind taking Casey as well? She’d love to see the penguins, and I’d kill for a couple hours alone. Face mask, pedicure, very long bath, architecture magazines. Heaven.”
“So many avenues to explore,” Hayden said. “First—Mr. Plaid Shorts wasn’t interested? Too right he was interested.”
“But I wasn’t.” She was just glad Rhys and Casey had left and weren’t hearing this. “No spark.”
“Mm-hmm,” Hayden said. “Surprising me not at all.”
“Would it—” She stopped, then tried again. “What would a man think—other than you—if I told him that? That there was no spark with somebody? If I mentioned that I—”
“Oh, boy,” Hayden breathed. “If you mentioned that you what?”
“Had sort of lost my—desire. I can’t believe I said it,” she hurried on. “Why did I say it? Too much to drink, possibly.” Or the look in Rhys’s eyes. She hadn’t melted once during all that kissing, but the minute he’d looked at her? Oh, yeh. She’d done more than melt. She’d burned.
“Let me get this straight,” Hayden said. “Who did you say this to? Not to Dr. Plaid, because we both know what he’d say. ‘Thanks for nothing, see you at the office, and by the way, you’re getting saddlebags.’”
“I am not getting saddlebags. I exercise.” She ran her hand down the back of her thighs to make sure. Her tummy and bum were possibly not as tiny as they might have been, but she wasn’t getting saddlebags. She had good legs. It was her best thing.
“But if you said this to, say, Rhys Fletcher?” Hayden went on. “As in, ‘Why can’t I get excited anymore, even when a man kisses me for hours and uses his tongue the way I like? Why didn’t I get that panty-melting buzz tonight? Is there something wrong with me, Rhys? Will I never be satisfied by a man’s touch again?’”
“Ugh,” she moaned, then rolled over and hit her forehead against the mattress. “Ugh. Ugh. And I did not say the thing about the tongue. It’s bad, though, isn’t it?”
“To the most competitive man in the world? Possibly. Or not. Not bad at all, unless you didn’t mean him to take it as a challenge.”
“I thought so. Bugger.”
“Did he take it as a challenge? I wouldn’t have thought it, and yet I would. So many interesting cross-currents there. Most upright fella in the world, I’d have said. Boringly so, if he weren’t so smoldering hot. Mana up to the eyeballs. Your brother-in-law, too. Don’t tell me I have to defend your honor, please. I’m too young to die.”
“No. Of course not. I may have embarrassed myself a bit, that’s all. Oh, well. It was one time, on one night. We’re friendly. I’m helping with Casey, as you know. And by the way? The most upright fella in the world doesn’t run around on his fiancée and make babies with somebody else, and then waltz off and go on with his life.”
“Is there more than one baby now?”
“No. Figure of speech.” She was feeling more than cross.
“He’s doing all right by her now, it seems,” Hayden said. “Back to fully honorable status, I’d say. Exactly how friendly are you?”
“Never mind. I’m sorry I told you. Kelly Tarlton’s on Sunday sounds awesome. Thanks.”
Now, she knew she’d be ringing him up and canceling Kelly’s, because they were shopping for rabbits on Sunday instead, and she wanted to do it. Seeing Rhys and Casey together did something healing to her heart, maybe, despite the lying-and-cheating aspect, and her heart needed healing. She told Rhys, “Go on and slice that lamb now,” and got the veggies out of the oven. “And tell me again why moving into your house makes more sense than us staying here.”
He picked up the carving knife and fork and got to work. He’d got his hair cut on Tuesday. Although it was as dark and thick as ever, it was more under control now, like the rest of him, the hair pushed back from his forehead, furrowed both by lines and scar tissue, with its distinctive hairline that was exactly like Casey’s. His hair fell only to his chin, and he’d shaved, too. Chin dimple present and accounted for, and if anything, more visible muscle than ever. She wished he wouldn’t wear white T-shirts that showed his tattoo, his golden-dark skin, and the swell of his biceps. He’d been working out more, he’d mentioned, but surely it wouldn’t show that fast. Maybe she’d just had more occasion to look, especially since her eyes were about at the level of his chest. Which meant she looked at his chest a lot.
“Could be that staying at my house doesn’t make sense, of course,” he said, “other than the rabbits, if we end up with rabbits. But I think we’ll end up with rabbits. Or it could be that I thought it might be a treat. Which doesn’t sound good until I say that your bath is surely not big enough for you to stretch out, and mine is, and has a view besides. I don’t care—I’ve never used it—but I thought you might. Like going on holiday to a posh hotel, possibly, since I won’t be there. A holiday with
two kids and your job still to do, but you can’t have everything, eh.”
She stared at him. “How did you know that I was thinking about lying in the bath?”
He stopped carving lamb. “What? Uh . . . you told me. A bubble bath, and painting your toenails.”
She had not told him about her toenails. She’d never have done that. It was her one indulgent time, at night, which for some reason, was fantasy time, too, or had become so. Whatever she’d told Hayden, whatever she’d told Rhys, her buzz was back.
She needed to find somebody, obviously. That had to be why she was reacting so inappropriately. How did you find somebody when you never went out? It was a daunting prospect. “Never mind,” she said. “We’ll do the rabbit-minding, one way or another. Although I don’t know anything about rabbits, fair warning. If I kill one, you’d better tell me how to get a replacement fast.”
He smiled. “No worries. I’ve researched. Also, I expect Casey will put us both right.”
Going to a Blues game again was weird. More than weird. Surreal.
She hadn’t been for four years, not since Dylan had left New Zealand to play a final season in England, and hadn’t taken her with him. “It’s for less than a year,” he’d said, “and Isaiah’s in school. I’ll visit.”
It hadn’t been hard to convince her. She hadn’t wanted to go. Dylan wanted to pretend to be single, and she wanted to actually be single. Going to the games had been hard for a couple years by then. Smiling and cheering with the other wives and girlfriends, and wondering how late Dylan would come home. It wasn’t a time in her life that she wanted to revisit.
As she walked up staircase after staircase in Eden Park, holding Isaiah by one hand and Casey by the other, she thought that however hard her life sometimes felt now, it was so much better than the last time she’d taken these stairs. She didn’t have to pretend anything anymore, to anyone. She might have had to put a bucket in the corner of her bedroom last night when it had rained and the water had dripped through the roof, but she had heaps of buckets. Her van might be making a worrisome knocking noise, but she was going shopping for a new one in another month or two. Her life might not be one bit glamorous, and nobody would see her photo in the newspaper and envy her, but she was free to live her own life and not be lied to, and what could be more enviable than that?
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