“How come you’re both being all fancy?” Casey asked.
“We’re not being fancy,” Rhys said when Zora didn’t answer. “We’re going out to dinner, that’s all.”
“Oh,” Casey said. “My mom says that high heels means you’re going on a hot date. High heels hurt her feet, because she stands up all day being a waitress, and Zora stands up all day doing flowers and doesn’t wear high heels, either. So I thought it was a hot date. That means you kiss at the end.”
“Ew,” Isaiah said.
“Kissing is romantic,” Casey informed him. “Like, they kiss at the end of movies, because it’s romantic.”
“Shall we go?” Zora asked. “Otherwise, we’ll be late.”
Once again today, Zora was in a car pulling up at Finn’s house. This time, she wasn’t driving. Rhys had said, when she’d seen the car and driver, “Better, I thought. We may want wine. They do these pairings.” Score one for Hayden. Score two, three, and four, actually, because Rhys was wearing a suit, and a blue shirt with it, and the top two buttons were undone. The jacket and trousers were tailored to his shoulders and his chest and his thighs and every other outsized part of him, his hair was neat, and he was clean-shaven, and still, the dark energy all but pulsed out of him. You know that tattoo was under there, you knew that body was under there, and you could almost see his fire.
Dragon.
Now, she opened her car door, and Rhys said, “Hang on a second, everybody.” He asked the driver, “Could you turn on the overhead lights?”
“Sure,” the woman said, and did it, and Zora turned in her seat to see what was going on.
Rhys pulled a tiny pouch out of his pocket, but he wasn’t looking at her. He was looking at Casey, sitting in the middle. “I’m giving this to you now,” he said, “because there’s some leaving coming up, and then there’s more leaving. Leaving, and coming back. So I thought you might need it.”
He set the flax kete—the woven pouch—in her hand, and she asked doubtfully, “What is it?”
“I told you that every Maori has a pendant,” he said. “And that it has to be a present. Remember?”
“I don’t have one,” Isaiah said. “So not every Maori does.”
Rhys’s gaze flicked to Isaiah, then to Zora. She said, “You’re right, love. You should have one. We’ll have to take care of that.”
Casey asked, “Is this mine?”
“Yeh,” Rhys said. He showed her how to loosen the fastening, drew out the thing inside, and laid it in her palm.
It was small, because Casey was small, but it was gorgeous, and like nothing Zora had seen before. One twist cradling another one inside it, with a koru at the heart of the smaller one. The graceful curves were carved from a luminescent mid-green jade, with drifts of lighter green like the path of feathers drawn through the stone, the arcs of color within echoing the graceful lines of the carving.
Rhys told Casey, “Ahakoa he iti he pounamu. ‘It is small, but it is greenstone.’ Means it’s precious, given from my heart, and meant to be worn near yours.” He drew his own pendant out from under his collar and said, “I’ve got the fish hook, remember?”
“Like Maui,” Casey said. “But you have a whale tail, too.”
“That’s right. Strength and determination and protectiveness. That means I protect you.” Which had Zora putting a hand on her own heart.
“Mine isn’t a fish hook, though,” Casey said.
“No. Everybody has their own special one, with its own meaning. Yours is a rau kumara, and it’s a twist inside another twist. The twist is for people bound together, who’ll always come back again. For you and your mum, and for you and me. It tells you that the people in your life who love you will always be part of you, even if you can’t touch them any more. You have them in your heart, and nothing can ever take away the people in your heart. He hono tangata e kore e motu; ka pa he taura waka e motu. That’s Maori, too. Means, ‘One can cut a canoe rope, but the bond between two hearts can never be severed.’ That’s a saying you could remember.”
Casey traced the curve of the larger twist with her finger, then touched the smaller one nestled inside it. “It looks like my mommy is holding me.”
“Because she is. Always. The little twist has a koru at its heart, see? That’s for strength and starting over, and that part is you.” He drew the braided cord over Casey’s neck, pulled on the ends to tighten it, and said, “You wear it between your collarbones, just below the hollow of your throat, because that’s a special place, an open place, where you can feel your breath and your blood. When you’re lonesome, when you’re sad, you put your hand on your pendant, feel how it’s warm from your skin, and remember that you’re a strong girl who knows how to start over. Remember that your mum’s still there in your heart, and that you’re in mine, and I’m coming back.”
Casey said, “OK.” It was a whisper. The driver, Zora saw, was wiping tears away with the heel of her hand. She caught Zora’s eye and mouthed, “Oh, my God,” and Zora had to agree.
Rhys stroked his hand over Casey’s hair, plaited into a single French braid tonight, and said, “I’m coming back. Tomorrow, twelve days from tomorrow, and every time. You can count on it.”
“Because you keep your promises,” Casey said. “And you’re my dad.”
“That’s right. Because I’m your dad.”
“OK,” she said again.
Rhys kissed the top of her head, and his voice was a little rough when he said, “Let’s go, then. We’ll get you sorted with Finn and Jenna, and then I’ll take Auntie Zora out to dinner.”
“You give lots of things,” Casey said. “But nobody gives you things.”
“Oh,” he said, “I wouldn’t say that. I wouldn’t say that at all.”
Zora didn’t say much on the way to the restaurant, and Rhys was glad. He’d well and truly choked himself up there. He’d meant to give Casey her pendant, and to say a few things that might help her believe in the runaway bunny idea. He hadn’t meant to lay himself so raw, in front of an Uber driver and all.
When Rhys had followed Zora’s swaying hips and pretty legs across the room and avoided looking at anybody, because he didn’t want to have a chat tonight with anyone but Zora, and she’d slid into her chair, though, half-hidden behind a discreet wall in the cozily elegant, dimly lit space of The Grove, he said, “You could show Casey how to get her pendant off at night, maybe. Not safe to have that cord round her neck while she sleeps.”
“I’ll do that,” she said, smoothing her white serviette across her lap. “And you’re right, she probably will want to sleep in it. I think you convinced her that it was magic. You just about convinced me. That was good, Rhys. That was so good.”
“I didn’t quite mean to say all that. It just came out. Can’t even remember exactly what I did say.”
Her eyes went soft, and her hand came out to cover his. He wished she’d worn the red dress, but he didn’t hate this one. It showed her arms and her legs, at least. If she’d had the red one on, though, her lipstick would have matched. A Russian princess, with rubies in her hair and pearls down her back. “You did gorgeously,” she told him. “I think I cried. I know I cried. The driver cried, too. It was beautiful. The pendant, and everything you said. When did you think of that?”
“First day. She didn’t want to go with me, in Chicago, since she’d never met me, so we talked about it. She’s watched Moana too many times, in case you don’t know. She thought I was Maui, especially once she saw my pendant. I think she’s given up on that one now, at least.”
“Well, I can see that. You are fairly Maui-like. Temperament. Size. Demigod. And so forth.” A smile. “Fully Maui, I’d say. Or fully dragon. Or both.”
Wait, what had they been talking about?
The waiter came over with a pitcher of water, and Zora took her hand away. Before she could look at her menu, Rhys said, “They have a tasting menu. We could do that, if you like. Fewer decisions. Those wine pairings, too. Nobody’s d
riving, all I have to do tomorrow is get on a plane, and Isaiah said that Tuesday is your easy day. What d’you reckon? Time to indulge a little, let yourself be spoilt for once?”
“Oh,” she said with a breathless laugh, “why not. I’ll just sit here and be . . . surprised.”
He handed the menus back to the waiter, then told Zora, once the man had left, “Surely, letting yourself be surprised is good, if somebody wants to dedicate himself to pleasing you.”
That had come out too intense, probably. Too bad. He was over her in the bathroom again, his hand on her cheek, her mouth under his. She was wearing the spicy-sweet perfume again tonight, too. He’d smelled it when he’d taken her hand to help her out of the car, and she’d stepped out in those delicate little shoes, swayed a wee bit close, and said, “Thank you,” on a breath.
She didn’t say anything, and he wondered if he’d gone too far, and hoped she couldn’t read his mind, or wished she could. One or the other. She said, “I was just thinking that last night. Drinking wine then, too, if I have to confess the truth, when I shouldn’t have. Watching a movie with too much redemption. I didn’t get enough sleep, either. Depending how many of those pairings we do, you may have to carry me out.”
He shouldn’t answer that. He should ask her instead why Isaiah didn’t have a pendant from his dad. If Rhys had been dying, he’d have made sure his son had a moment like that to remember, and something to touch to remind him that his father was still with him. He needed to fix that. He needed to talk to Zora about it. It should come from both of them, maybe. From him, because he was the uncle, and he was the one who was Maori, the link to the whanau and the iwi, and from her, because she was the mother.
He didn’t talk to her about it. Instead, he said, “I’ll carry you out, no worries. Go on and enjoy yourself. I didn’t sleep so well last night myself. Could have been too eventful a day for sleep, possibly.”
After that, he ate a tempura soft-shell crab in a dollop of custard that tasted like the sea, watched her tip her head back and slip a Waiheke oyster into her mouth, swallow it down, and smile at him, and lost a little more of his equilibrium. The sparkling wine, crisp and light as the sunlight shining like diamonds on the wave tips of Tasman Bay, didn’t help.
Another fifteen minutes, and he watched her eat a forkful of butternut ravioli, silky pasta layered with scampi and tiny cubes of pumpkin, and close her eyes before reaching for her latest wine glass, tasting the creamy, fruity Viognier, and giving him another slow smile.
“I am drowning in food lust,” she said when they were eating perfectly crunchy asparagus in a mustard vinaigrette, topped with a generous swirl of Comte cheese foam, and sipping on a massively intense Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc that knocked you out with tropical fruit. “You’re pacing yourself on the wine, and I’m trying. If only it weren’t so bloody delicious.”
“You do seem a little drunk,” he teased. The music was more than classical, a rising and falling chorus of voices, winding together like ribbons, that belonged in church, but that sounded like a dance, too, slow, urgent, and sensual. “And I like this music. What is it?”
“Mm. Dunno. I like it too, though.”
The waiter arrived again to take away plates, and Rhys asked, “What’s the music, can you tell me?”
“I can find out,” the waiter said. “Back in a minute with your next course, which is my favorite. Saddle of lamb, and a 2014 Pegasus Bay Pinot Noir from Canterbury that’s just gorgeous. Velvety, I’d call it. Heaps of mouth feel. Silky. You’ll see what you think, though.”
He swanned off again, and Zora drank a little more of her Sauvignon Blanc and laughed at him with her witch’s eyes. “Silky,” she said. “Mouth feel. Mm. Sounds sexy.”
“It does,” he said. “Like a woman in a red dress, maybe.”
She made a face. “I knew I should have worn the red one. It’s better, no matter what Hayden says.”
Now, he was the one laughing. “Nah. You look beautiful. I can’t help it if I like red best, just like all those other blokes who answered the question. We’re programmed, that’s all.”
The waiter came back, eventually, with the lamb and the Pinot Noir. “The music was Palestrina,” he said. “Whoever that is. And Osculetur me, whatever that is when it’s at home. Song of Solomon, is the CD. Try this, though. and tell me what you think.”
He waited, and Zora took a sip. Rhys couldn’t let her drink alone, so he took his own sip. He didn’t know about “silky,” but the wine was rich, all right, asking you to dive down into its ruby depths, take your time, and explore. Possibly for hours.
“Gorgeous,” Zora said with a sigh. “Thanks.” He looked at her red mouth, thought about slipping off one of those shoes and holding her foot in his hand, and burned. The waiter left, and she looked at Rhys and said, “I’m loving this. Thank you.”
“So many courses to go,” he said. “Who knows what they are? Are you still up for being surprised?”
“Right now,” she said, “I’m up for everything. I’m meant to be asking you serious questions about life and love and kids and . . .” She waved her wine glass. “Life choices. I don’t want to. I want to enjoy myself. That’s why I’m really wearing this dress instead of the red one, if I’m honest. You can’t see my waist in it.”
He knew he was smiling more than he ever let himself, and he couldn’t help it. Maybe he was a little drunk, too, but it wasn’t on the wine. “I’ve seen your waist,” he said. “Your waist is fine. So is the rest of you.”
“I’m also not wearing a control garment,” she said. “I asked Hayden, and he said no. Besides, I don’t have one.”
Now, he was laughing. “What the hell is a control garment? Do I want to know?”
“Makes my bum look smaller.” She lifted her glass to him, took another sip, and smiled, absolutely deliciously. “But—flared skirt, and you can’t see my bum anyway, because I’m sitting on it. Also, as I mentioned, I don’t own a control garment, so you would’ve been out of luck in any case. Not because I don’t need it, but because I don’t go on dates, except with the plastic surgeon. He didn’t get a control garment, either. Sad. That was rebellion, probably. I wanted him to look at my problem areas, and I wanted to say, ‘Sez you, mate,’ when he did.” She sighed. “I have a rebellion issue. Always have had. My secret side, that is. Not so secret, I guess, because there’s my life and all, proving the point. And I know this isn’t a date. It’s practice, that’s all.”
He’d just thought it was practice for her. What had that been, an hour or two ago? He said, “It’s not practice. And you don’t need to make your bum look smaller.”
“My mum says I do.” She took another sip of wine. “Which is sad, don’t you think? My mum thinks I’m a nasty, nasty girl.”
She was floating along, except that wasn’t the right word. Floating was something you did on clouds, and she wasn’t on a cloud. She was in the bath, the warm water pouring over her, stretching out luxuriously and letting it come. Or, possibly, drowning in Rhys’s eyes, which, if they’d ever been hard or cold, weren’t that way now.
He was looking at her across the piano, that was what it was. She felt it. She knew it. The cool touch of the wine on her tongue, the layers of it, the rich taste in her mouth . . . she knew it. She said, “Kiss me. That’s what the song means.”
He blinked those dark-lashed, green-gold eyes. Slowly. “Pardon?”
“It’s Latin. Song of Solomon.”
“Ah. ‘Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth, for your love is sweeter than wine.’” When she must have looked gobsmacked, he said, “I looked it up. No excuses, eh. You said it was sexy, so I looked it up. I know another part as well. ‘Behold, thou art fair, my love; behold thou art fair, thou hast doves’ eyes.’”
She shuddered. She couldn’t help it. He saw, and she knew he recognized it for what it was: a hot rush that had gone straight down her body and settled in her core. The buzz had become a hum, insistent and too warm. A smoke alar
m was going off, somewhere in the back of her mind, and she wasn’t listening. She wanted to burn.
His eyes got hotter, and he lost the smile. “My beloved is mine,” she said, letting the words fall out and lie there, exposed, “and I am his: he feedeth among the lilies.” She tried to smile herself, but wasn’t sure it was working. “That one got me thinking, when I was fourteen or so. Rebellious even in church, eh.”
“There’s so much more to you,” he said, “than a mum.”
Her hand was on his, somehow. “And there’s so much more to you than rugby. Could be most people never look deeper.”
He looked down at his plate like he wasn’t seeing it, then up at her again. “Right,” he said, then sat up, pulled out his phone, and texted something, and she thought, What? He put the phone away and began working his way through the lamb, and she thought, All righty, then. That’s told me. She tried not to look at the breadth of his shoulders in the open suit coat, at the way his blue shirt lay over his deep chest, and failed.
She’d had too much to drink. She might have embarrassed herself forever with him. The smoke alarm was louder now, more insistent.
Then don’t ask me out, boy, she thought, and tell me I should’ve worn the red dress, and drank a little more wine. This is me, and if you don’t like it? That’s not my problem.
Another drunken thought. But her own.
Five minutes later, the waiter took away the lamb and the glasses, and Rhys asked her, “How much do you want the sweet courses?”
“Uh . . . pardon?”
“I probably shouldn’t eat them,” he said.
“Oh, no,” the waiter protested. “They’re lovely, truly. Pressed strawberries, buffalo milk, and lime, and a figgy pudding like you’ve never tasted in your life.”
Zora said, “I don’t . . . I don’t need them.” She was having trouble talking. She was having trouble breathing. She wasn’t going to do this. Not possible. She also considered saying that pressed strawberries and buffalo milk didn’t sound nearly as lovely as, say, chocolate torte with salted-caramel drizzle, but she didn’t, because that was how this moment felt. Like rich dark chocolate and warm salted caramel, melting on your tongue.
Just Come Over Page 23