She did, to find him standing over her, frowning, running a hand through his dark hair, and a dark-blue paper bag on the bed in front of him.
She looked at it, then at him, and said, “Uh . . . is this a good thing, or a bad thing?”
“Good thing. I hope.”
“Then . . .” She scooted over. “How about coming and sitting with me? And not looking like you’re about to breathe fire?”
“Oh.” A smile, a slow one, and he climbed onto the bed, got an arm around her, and said, “Open it.”
She did, and pulled out a square, flat velvet case in royal blue. Not a small one. She said, “Rhys,” and he said, again, “Open it.” Like he was holding his breath. Like he wasn’t sure.
She thought, Three two one go, flipped the case open, and stared at what was inside, then at Rhys, then back at the thing in the case.
He said, “Can I put it on you?” and she raised a hand, let it fall, and said, “Yes.” It came out on a breath, because she couldn’t get her breath.
The touch of the nearly luminescent, pinkish-white pearls was cool against her skin as Rhys draped the rope around her neck and fastened them. He pushed her hair aside with one hand, kissed her softly on the side of her neck, and said, “I’ve wanted to do this for so many years. You can put the clasp anyplace you like, all down the strand. It’s a lariat. And it’s exactly as beautiful on you, and exactly as sexy, as I knew it would be. I bought it, and I wanted to see you naked in it. I want to keep you in it for days, and take away all your clothes. Come into the bath and look.”
She got out of bed, still feeling like somebody had stolen all the air out of her lungs, and followed him into the bathroom, where he turned the dimmer switch on low, put both hands on her shoulders, and turned her to face the mirror above the sinks.
She ran a hand over the rope of pearls, then touched the diamond clasp. Lightly. He’d fastened it so it caught at her collarbones, leaving a single line of pearls draped to her breastbone.
“This is what I’ve always thought,” he said. He picked the necklace up off her breast with light fingers, then turned it around and laid it gently down her back, where its coolness made her shiver.
“Turn around,” he said, “and see.”
She did, and he handed her a shaving mirror.
It wasn’t what you’d wear for dinner with your parents. The pearls formed a choker over her throat and dipped down her back, lying white, shimmering, and sensual against her skin, and Rhys was stroking his hand down every single lustrous bead, then all the way down to the small of her back. He said, “You have the most gorgeous back. Like a cello. Like something from another age. I want to buy you a dress. Black velvet, dark blue, something like that, cut low here. When you turn around, every man’s breath will catch.”
“It will?”
His smile was slow, and when he bent to kiss her, just below the nape of her neck, his lips were soft. “Yeh, baby. It will. Because you’re beautiful.”
He did take a bath with her, once she took her necklace off and stowed it carefully back in its velvet box, and they watched their reflection in the black windows as Rhys stroked a facecloth over her breast and belly, down her thighs, and back up again.
She said, “I should hate that you bought me a present like that. I should say it’s too soon. Where am I going to . . .” She had to stop and breathe, because he had the facecloth dipping into those secret spaces. “Wear it?”
“Or you could say,” he said, dripping some bath gel onto the facecloth, getting his hand under her thigh, and beginning to wash it, “that I’ve been waiting forever to do it. And that I’ll make sure you have a place to wear it.”
She hummed, then said sleepily, “The first night I met you . . . you made me shiver. I didn’t know what it was. I thought you hated me. And then you never came around, and I was sure of it.” It was easier to say when she could only see his reflection.
He said, “I didn’t hate you. I wanted to take you to bed. Or on the car. Or anywhere else I could get you. It was too hard to control my thoughts, if I was with you. And you know . . . if this is going to come out anyway, we should practice. Friday night.”
“Friday night isn’t a . . . rugby date night.”
“It is if you’re not playing. And I’m going to buy you a dress. Maybe shoes as well.”
“If I wear high heels, that means it’s a hot date. With kissing.”
His mouth brushed over the side of her neck, and he said, “Then I’d better buy you some very high heels.”
It wasn’t even nine o’clock on Monday night, and Rhys’s eyes were closing. Too many time zones, and too much emotion. After the third time he’d started awake, he put down the book he was reading, headed for bed, and fell fathoms deep almost instantly.
He sat up in the dark, not knowing whether it had been minutes or hours, or what had woken him, and was rolling out of bed in almost the same motion. Whatever it was, he needed to be standing up to deal with it. Outside, the wind had risen, and he couldn’t hear anything over the ever-shifting rustle and moan that was palm fronds clacking against each other, tree branches rubbing together, and a hundred thousand leaves trembling and shaking.
He was at the doorway, then beyond it. Still nothing to see, and no change in the faint glow of the night light in the kitchen, but something had woken him.
Casey.
He was across the room and up the stairs on the thought. And there was that noise again, barely audible above the wind. Something wrong.
Into Casey’s room, and he heard it again. A hitch of breath. A whimper. A rustle that was the bunnies in their cage, and the glow of her pink crystal casting a dim pool of light near the door.
“Casey?” he asked. “What’s wrong? Feeling ill?”
“Th-there was a . . .” He couldn’t hear the rest, so he made his way across the castle rug to her bed, wincing when he stepped on one of the eighty-five surprises in the L.O.L. Surprise House with a bare foot. He was only wearing a pair of sleep pants, but that was OK, surely. She’d seen his chest before.
She was sitting up against the headboard of the white iron princess bed they’d picked out a few days before he’d left on the latest trip. It had a canopy top wrought in the shape of a pumpkin coach, and the iron of the headboard formed a butterfly. She’d loved it, it had cost too much, and he’d bought it for her anyway, along with white net curtains to hang at the head and foot, and a bedside table whose legs were more twists of butterflies. Zora would have said that it was important to match, and it all looked much better now. Like the bedroom of a little girl who was loved.
He sat down beside her on the ruffled white duvet, got his arm around her, and said, “Eh, monkey. What is it?”
“There was a . . .” Another hitch of her breath. “A very mean wolf.”
“Nah. Really? What did it do?”
“I can’t tell you. Or he might come back.”
“If you tell, he won’t come back. Telling takes away his power.”
He couldn’t see her expression that well, but he could see enough to know it was skeptical. “It does?”
“I promise. Tell me what happened.”
She was still crying some, and he lifted the edge of the sheet and wiped her face with it. Probably not what a mum would’ve done, because mums probably remembered to buy tissues. He wasn’t a mum, though, so there you were.
“I was in your car,” she finally said, “and you said to wait inside, and then you went away, and I didn’t want to wait anymore, because I was getting scared. And it was a very long time.”
“Which I wouldn’t have done. What, leave you in there alone? Nah. I’d take you with me.”
“Maybe it wasn’t a kid place, though. Maybe it was a grownup place.”
“I’m in the casino, gambling away my pay packet? Not happening.”
“Oh.”
“So where does the wolf come in?” he asked.
“I was waiting in the car, and then the car was driving,
and you looked in the mirror and I saw your face, but it wasn’t you. It was a wolf, and he had gray hair and big teeth that were pointed. And he smiled really big, but it was a mean smile, and he was driving very fast.”
She was shaking some now, and he wrapped her up tighter in his arm and said, “Good thing I’m Maui, then, and I can ride on the wind and the waves and come through the car window and get him.”
“No, you can’t. Because you said you weren’t Maui, and anyway, Isaiah says Maui is only a story. He’s not really real.”
“He’s real in a dream. And I’d come anyway, even if I wasn’t Maui.”
She’d stopped crying, at least. “You would?”
“Course I would. Just like the Runaway Bunny story says. Because you are my little bunny.” It was easier to say in the dark.
“Except you always say monkey.”
“You’re both. Bunny and monkey. Depending.”
She had both hands wrapped around his arm, like she needed to feel its strength. He might not remember to buy tissues, but strength was one thing he did have on offer. She said, “And you have a tattoo like Maui, and a fish hook like Maui, so maybe you could come.”
“I could definitely come. And I would. Plus, there’s you. You could fight the wolf.”
“I can’t fight a wolf. I’m a kid.”
“My daughter, though, aren’t you? Casey Moana. Fierce and strong. Yeh, that’s it.” He sighed. “I’m afraid that wolf’s going to be wolf meat. He’ll be lucky if you don’t eat him for dinner.”
She giggled, which was much better. “I don’t think wolves taste good.”
“How do you know? Have you ever tasted one?”
She was the one sighing now. “That’s silly. And I don’t think that’s the right way to say it, when you have a bad dream. You’re s’posed to hug me and say that there are no bad wolves, and it won’t get me, and go to sleep now. That’s what my mommy would say.”
“I call that unfair. Here I am, hugging for all I’m worth, giving you a better alternative, and this is what I cop?” He gave her hair a stroke and pulled her in a little tighter. “You’re missing your mum, maybe.”
“She used to smell very nice.” Casey might sound a wee bit drowsy, which meant he was doing it right. “Like flowers. Zora smells kind of like my mommy, and she’s got a nice voice like my mommy, too. You have a big voice, like Maui, and you aren’t soft like Zora, but you’re kind of like my mommy anyway.”
“That’s because I’m your dad.” He kissed the top of her head. “Dads don’t smell as nice, maybe, but we have our good points. I can teach you how to fight the wolf, for one. Could teach you to use the taiaha, when you’re a bit older. That’s a fighting staff. Maori are fierce warriors, you know. That was the first thing I thought when I saw you in Chicago, sitting on that lady’s couch. Thought you were fierce, and you were strong.”
“You did? I was scared, though, because I didn’t know who you were, and I missed my mommy very much.”
“That’s when you need to be fierce most, is when you’re scared. You can run away, or you can fight back. You and I fight back, and we don’t give up. That’s how I recognized you, even though I’d never met you before. It’s how I know you’ll be eating wolf meat, too. I’ll get there, riding on the wind, and you’ll have dealt to him already and won’t have left anything for me to do. Won’t I be disappointed then.”
She snuggled in closer. “You aren’t really like a mom,” she said, “but you’re kind of like a dad, I guess.”
“I’m exactly like a dad. Because I am one.”
Ten hours later, and he was stuck into his work again, watching the training, going down his checklist from the Tokyo game.
“Hugh,” he said, pulling the captain aside after one of the endless series of drills that were the reason New Zealand played the best rugby on the planet. “You got beat three times on Saturday getting to the breakdown, which is why their No. 8 could get in under you and snaffle the ball. What I’m seeing is you hanging in there at the last one a second too long. If the ball isn’t there, let it go. Focus on getting in and out.”
Hugh nodded, his dark, bearded face intense, and said, “Right,” and Rhys flipped a page on his clipboard and headed over to where the tight forwards were working on their tackling, each man holding up a pad for his mate, who hit it hard, over and over again.
Tom Koru-Mansworth, the young lock who’d come off the bench in Tokyo and earned a yellow card in the seventy-first minute for a high tackle, was going at it too hard, he thought. Not methodical. Nearly frantic.
It mattered too much, maybe.
You can’t coach hunger, he’d told Finn, but what he was seeing was hunger. It was more than that. It was desperation.
His push on the kid had hurt as much as it had helped, surely. He didn’t usually stuff up with his players. Why had he done it this time? Because Kors was good-looking, Maori, and quick with a laugh? Reminding Rhys of Dylan, possibly, and frustrating him into too-hasty judgment?
What was it Casey had said? I think it’s very hard when you can’t yell at people, so maybe you should just say, ‘Good job,’ or something. Or give them a sticker.
He headed over and pulled Kors aside. The kid looked nothing but apprehensive. Rhys said, “Your first yellow card, eh.”
“Yeh,” Kors said, and looked even more nervous. Which wasn’t how anybody learned, was it? It was good to care. It was bad to obsess. The line was fine.
“High tackle,” Rhys said. “How long ago did you finish growing?”
“About a year,” Kors said. He was all arms and legs, the way young locks tended to be. Six foot six could take you by surprise, and so could that extra fifteen Kg’s of muscle you’d put on. Power and height and athleticism were all well and good, but judgment took time and focus.
Rhys said, “You had seven inches on Izu. Didn’t get down low enough, that’s all. Didn’t know what was low enough, maybe.” He pulled a roll of athletic tape from his pocket and called to Iain McCormick, “Bring that pad over, mate." Iain obliged, and Rhys attached a strip of tape halfway up. “Nipple height,” he told Kors. “That’s what you’re visualizing. Go through and switch off partners. Practice adjusting to that height difference.” He put a hand on Kors’s shoulder. “You went well for twenty minutes beforehand, got through a load of work, though you’re hesitating out there at times, like you don’t trust what you’re seeing, which makes you a fraction of a second slower to the tackle and makes it harder to get it right. Your judgment’s good. Commit to it. As for the yellow card—take that one and move on. I saw a mistake. When I see a pattern, I’ll let you know.”
“OK,” Kors said, and something crossed his face very much like relief.
Rhys said, “Right there. Your shoulders relaxed and dropped down. That’s the space you want to be in. You’re overthinking it. You don’t have to be four steps ahead, not now. Focus on doing your role, and trust your mate to do his. The rest of it will come.”
Kors nodded, trotted off with Iain, and started in, and Rhys stuck his hands in his pockets and thought, Thanks, monkey.
He’d have given Kors the same feedback a season ago, but he would’ve given it differently. It wasn’t a sticker, but it may have worked.
Also, Kors may not have been the only person who’d been getting too intense.
Another hour, and the group trotted off for lunch. Rhys picked up rugby balls along with Finn, tossed them into the bin, and headed in after them. His phone dinged, and he pulled it out of his pocket.
That was another change. He checked, now, during the day, in case it was something he needed to know. Zora was there to get any calls from the school about Casey, but still—he checked.
It was Zora. First time she’d texted him during the day. One photo, and then another. Dresses. Not on her, unfortunately.
Pink with black flowers? she asked. Or black with pink flowers?
Black with pink, he answered. The dress had little spaghetti straps. He
loved straps like that, the kind you could push right off her shoulder. He hoped the dress wasn’t too long. He couldn’t tell.
Black shoes or nude? Good news for me. They’re having a sale.
Black, he answered. Don’t show your toes. Save them for me. And I’m buying this. All of it.
You forget, she texted back. I’m not broke anymore.
Don’t care. I’m buying it.
Why?
That one had him stumped. Finn had gone on ahead, through the tunnel, and nobody was out here but Wally, the equipment manager, collecting gear. It was going to rain later, Rhys judged. Good. They needed the practice.
Finally, he texted, Because it’s hot. I want to buy everything you wear for this, all the way down to the skin. I want you to think about me when you buy it, and I want to walk in behind you and know it’s all mine.
A long pause, then her answer.
That’s primitive, boy.
One last text, and he would put the phone away.
I know.
Once again, Zora was in her bathroom, and once again, she wasn’t quite ready, because she’d had to feed the kids and help Casey with her bath. She could hear Adele Simpson, the older lady who minded Isaiah from time to time, out there talking to Casey. And then she heard the doorbell.
She wished Hayden had been available to babysit. Going out there like this felt too revealing. Too momentous. Nobody would look at her tonight and think, Out for a nice dinner with her brother-in-law. Probably talking about the kids.
She blotted her deep-pink lips, set the color with a little powder, dropped the lipstick into her evening bag, and thought, That’s good enough. She’d reapply it at the table, make a bit of a fuss over it, and drive Rhys crazy.
One last look in the mirror, then another deep breath, and she bent from the waist, got a hand in her hair, straightened, and checked it out.
That was it. With her hair like this, absolutely nobody would think this was anything but romance. She wasn’t dressing for them, though. She was dressing for Rhys. She opened the bathroom door.
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