Just Once More (Escape to New Zealand Book 7)

by Rosalind James

“If I remember right,” Hugh said, “it was more to the point than that. Can barely recall, to tell you the truth. I was pretty terrified at the time.”

  “You were not,” Josie said. “And he did not.”

  Hugh laughed. “You think not? Think I’m making that up? Trust me, I’m not making it up. Never mind. I understand it. A Dad thing, that’s all.”

  Hugh was raising his brother and sister, Kristen remembered. Taking it seriously, she guessed.

  “Where are the kids?” Liam asked, echoing her thoughts.

  Hugh gestured towards the water. “Out there on the raft. No worries, Reka and Kate are out there too. The others aren’t here yet. Our job to wait for you. And Hemi and Koti are putting the boat into the water.” He nodded across the beach where a tractor was backing into the surf, launching Hemi’s gleaming white powerboat. “Josie’s keen to show me how much better she is than me at water sports. Turns out she won some sort of wakeboarding championship, back in the day.” He sighed. “And I only find this out today? Too late to back out of marrying her, I reckon.”

  Liam smiled. “She’ll be better than me too, then,” he assured Hugh. “I’m not good on boats. Pity Toro isn’t here, because he’s the worst, bound to make us both look good. Can’t float. Something about not enough body fat.”

  “Aw, backs,” Hugh said with a shrug.

  “Not an issue for us fat boys up front,” Liam agreed. “That’s not my problem. Got nothing to blame but my own shrinking heart.”

  “It means you can babysit with me,” Kristen said.

  “Well, yeh,” Liam said. “That too.”

  “When’s Toro coming?” Hugh asked. “Bringing his partner, right? Ally? Haven’t met her yet. She’d be another one to school us, from what I hear. Some kind of sportswoman herself, eh.”

  “Climbing guide. And yeh, she’s been known to show him up a time or two. Or more than two. Going to do it more, too, because she’s his fiancée now,” Liam said with satisfaction. “He did it in front of a whole crowd last weekend. Got her parents, his parents, everybody together for it. No backing out now.”

  “Really.” Hugh laughed. “That’s awesome.”

  “Liam,” Kristen protested. “Maybe they wanted to make an announcement.”

  “You reckon? Oh, well. Can’t be helped. If they make an announcement,” he told Josie and Hugh, “do me a favor and act surprised.”

  Josie laughed. “I’m going for a quick swim before we get started,” she said. “Anybody?”

  “No, thanks,” Kristen said.

  “You go on,” Hugh told her.

  Josie tossed her sunglasses to the towel, ran down to the water with athletic grace, kept running through the shallows, and dove. And only then did Hugh stop watching her.

  A couple hours later, and everyone was there on the towels, picking at the remains of their picnic lunch in the shade of three huge umbrellas.

  Josie was heaps wetter, heaps sandier, and heaps happier. She’d been a bit nervous about this—well, add it to the list of things she’d been a bit nervous about. But, as it turned out, there’d been nothing to worry about.

  “I’m knackered,” Hugh sighed from his spot beside her. “And all right. Josie wins. I officially concede defeat. Who knew you could grab the board and do those turns in the air like that?” he complained. “That’s above and beyond, surely.”

  “You don’t win a wakeboarding contest because you can stay on the board,” she said smugly. “You win it because you can do tricks. And I’ve got tricks.”

  “Yes, you do,” he agreed. “I’d say you’ve got tricks and then some.”

  “But Kate didn’t do badly either,” she said graciously.

  “No tricks,” Koti’s pint-sized wife said. “But I stayed on, even though it was my first time. Koti beat me for sure, but it wasn’t his first time. Give me some practice, buddy,” she told her husband with her usual outsized attitude, “and we’ll see.”

  “Remind me never to give you any practice, then,” Koti said. “And anyway, I didn’t beat Josie. Hugh’s right, she gets the trophy. Or an extra slice of pavlova, in this case. About all we have to offer.”

  “Which she won’t eat,” Hugh said. “Hungry all the time. That’s the price you pay for this.” He put a hand on her side, fingered the gold chain that hung around her hips, weighted in the middle by the end that dipped down to the top of the extremely brief bikini bottom, a straight line to glory.

  Josie smiled and let him finger it. She’d known he’d love that chain.

  “But at least Hemi lost too,” Koti said. “That makes me feel a bit better.”

  Hemi laughed. “Only because I’ve got a wee bit of restraint. Not actually looking to knock the mother of my children into the sea.”

  He and Drew had taken turns giving the kids rides on the tube behind the boat, and then had taken Nic’s wife Emma out, at her request. And when Reka had wanted a turn, that hadn’t surprised anybody at all.

  Hemi had done a few circles, crossed the wake a couple times, and Reka had held on, to the cheers of the women on the shore. And then they’d seen her swim to the boat, pull herself in, and Hemi dive over the side to climb onto the tube. Drew had moved over, Reka had taken the wheel, and…look out.

  “Every single dirty maneuver a person could do,” Hemi complained. “Every single one. And I held on through all of them. Until she did that circle, got that wake so high, and flipped my tube.”

  “A woman has few pleasures,” Reka sighed. “So few simple pleasures in life. Surely flipping your hubby off his tube is one of them. One small compensation for everything we endure.”

  “May want to watch yourself there, my queen,” Hemi said. “I have my ways of taking my revenge.”

  “Well,” she said smugly, “there’s that too.”

  “And now we know,” Koti grinned, “how they got those four kids. Nothing like a challenge.”

  “I should never’ve fallen in love with a Maori girl, that’s what it is,” Hugh complained. “Notice how Emma didn’t show Nico up, Josie? Rode on the tube, happy to take a nice quiet ride around the sea with Drew’s steady hand on the wheel. I think she’s the woman for me. Suit you, Nico?”

  “No,” Nic said. “Taken me all this time and another baby to get her to this point. My hard work’s done. Do your own.”

  “To what point?” Emma demanded. A pretty, petite blonde in a pink bikini, she indeed didn’t look like she’d be giving Nic any competition in the toughness stakes.

  Hemi dropped his head in his hands and groaned. “Mate. I can’t even…No. Epic fail. Do not take notes,” he ordered Hugh. “Erase that one from the memory banks. That’ll get you no place you want to go.”

  “Speaking of going,” Josie said, “we should be getting back.”

  “Oh, not yet,” Reka said. “Let the kids finish their game. Give us a chance to chat with you.”

  Josie glanced at the broad stretch of firm sand near the water’s edge, the tide almost fully out now. Six of the older kids, a couple of extras joining in as well, were well into a cricket game. All of the older ones, in fact, except Finn’s son Harry, who was helping the littlies build a sand castle nearby, showing a patience that made Josie smile, while Hannah and her quiet sister kept an eye on them.

  Amelia, meanwhile, bowled a gentle ball to Hannah and Drew’s son Jack, who didn’t seem to need the gentleness, because even though Jack wasn’t even five yet, he gave it a good whack that had the fielders running and Jack charging for the wicket. No lack of inherited athletic ability there, that was clear.

  Hugh’s sister looked pretty happy to her. Had been that way all day, in fact, despite a little show of sighing and flouncing around when she and Hugh had invited the kids to come along for the afternoon.

  “I’ll be the oldest, though,” Amelia had objected, “and the other kids are so immature. Nobody else is even a teenager. What would I do?”

  “Aw, come on. Just makes it more fun. Means you can be the proper little m
adam you are, put them all right.” Hugh grinned at his sister, rumpled her hair.

  She shrieked, grabbed for it. “Hugh! I just finally got it right!”

  “Oh. Sorry,” he said, though he didn’t look all that guilt-ridden. “But you’re just going to get wet anyway,” he said reasonably. “Come with us, and you’ll have about a minute for Ariana and Sophie to admire your new short hair and how perfectly it’s…fixed, or whatever it is, and then you’ll all be in the water and it’ll be a lost cause anyway.”

  Amelia didn’t hear the last part of that, because she’d already been dashing into the bathroom to restore her carefully mussed style.

  Josie understood. She’d taken Amelia for the tousled shoulder-length cut a week earlier, knowing its symbolism. That Amelia had finally given up the ballet dream, had accepted that she would never be a bun-head. The riding lessons Hugh had arranged for her had had a fair bit to do with making the change easier.

  “All right,” Amelia said, coming back into the room. “I’ll come. But don’t muss me anymore, Hugh.” She glared at her brother like the Drama Queen she was, and he laughed.

  “No worries,” he told her. “Your perfect hair is safe from me. Until you get to the beach and forget it.”

  Which she hadn’t done, because there had been a couple of cute boys diving off the raft, and that had meant a fair amount of showing off on their part, a good bit of giggling on Amelia’s and Sophie’s parts, even eleven-year-old Ariana’s, who had blossomed early and was already showing signs of being as pretty—and just as curvy—as her mum. The boys had joined the cricket game as well, which had Hugh, Hemi, and Finn all keeping an eye on them, and made Josie laugh to herself. Any boy looking to get close to any of those girls was going to have a job of it. Because Ariana had a Maori dad, just as Josie did herself, and as for Finn—well, Josie wouldn’t want to be the boy coming to pick Sophie up for a date. And Hugh wasn’t too far off in the protective ferocity department. Not any too far off at all. One look at those hard eyes, not to mention the size of him, and a boy would be thinking twice, Josie thought proudly.

  “Well, I’m not really in that big a hurry to get back,” she told Reka now, her attention back on the group, which, to tell the truth, she’d been more than a little nervous about joining herself. But these were Hugh’s mates, and just because there were going to be two All Black captains at her wedding…All right, maybe it wasn’t so mad to be nervous. There was celebrity, and then there was celebrity. But in the end, it had all been easy, because that was how they were. Easy.

  “It would just make me jumpy,” she confided to Reka. “Being back at the house. Well, jumpier. Nobody will let me do anything anyway. There’s nothing my mum loves more than cooking for a crowd, and you know all the aunties are so thrilled that I’ve snagged a man at last, they’re all pitching in as well, making sure he doesn’t beg off at the last minute.”

  Hugh laughed from his spot on the towel beside her, his eyes more than appreciative. He hadn’t got tired of looking at her, it was clear. She’d brought a cover-up, but she hadn’t put it on, because the heat in his gaze sent tingles through her that told her their wedding night was going to be a special one after all these days apart, her old-fashioned parents making anything else unthinkable. And maybe they were right at that, because anticipation was definitely doing the business for her. And, unless that look in Hugh’s eyes was deceiving her, for him as well.

  Maybe she should be thinking more about love and marriage and less about sex, but she couldn’t help it. Thinking about the wedding just made her nervous, and thinking about sex…didn’t. Anyway, she wanted him, he wanted her, and wasn’t that a beautiful thing?

  “So, yeh,” she went on, trying her best to keep it casual, “I wouldn’t have enough to do. And Hugh would be helping my dad cut the grass. Although actually, he’d probably enjoy that. Always looking for an excuse to cut the grass, isn’t he.”

  Another laugh from him, and he knew exactly what she was thinking about, she could tell. “Josie sussed that out right away,” he told Reka. “Why I was always so eager to cut her grass. Get in there however I could, that was the idea. Thought I was being subtle. Turns out not.”

  Hemi snorted. “An openside, subtle. Yeh, right. You’re about as subtle as a brick to the head, mate.”

  “Well,” Hugh said with a satisfied sigh, stretching himself out on the towel and shoving a forearm under his neatly-cropped brown hair, “she’s marrying me in two days all the same, cold feet and all. I’m going to see to it that she does. And by the time she realizes her mistake, it’ll be too late. She’ll just have to spend the rest of her life working on changing me.”

  “Nah,” Josie said, but she was laughing herself now. “I like you all right the way you are.”

  “She says that,” Hemi informed Hugh, “but she doesn’t mean it. Trust me.”

  “I do too mean it,” Josie objected.

  “Now you do,” Hemi said. “Let’s have this conversation next year. See if you’ve trained him to put the seat down yet.”

  A shout of laughter from Hugh. “Already happened,” he told Hemi. “I can aim and everything now.”

  “Convo’s in the toilet already,” Reka observed. “Boys, eh. So how is the prep going, Josie? Need me to come over tomorrow and lend a hand?”

  It was a serious offer, Josie knew. She hadn’t spent much time with Reka, given the other woman’s move to Tauranga, but she already knew that much. Reka was exactly the same as her, a Maori girl from a Maori family. She didn’t have to think about whether she was comfortable, not with Reka.

  “Thanks,” she told her, “but we’re all good. Like I said. Heaps of help. Feels odd not to be doing more myself, but they say I’m the bride, meant to do…bride things. Which for me, seems to be wakeboarding. Could have done the hen party, the male strippers, but I’ve decided a beach full of All Blacks in their togs may just be a wee bit better. Hardly looked at Hugh once, have I. Wondering now if I should’ve been a little pickier, but all this lot’s taken, I guess. Pity.”

  Hugh pulled her down with him. “Never should’ve invited you,” he told the other men. “Whatever was I thinking? She keeps looking at Koti, she is going to beg off.”

  “Another December wedding,” Koti said, ignoring that except for a twist of his beautiful mouth. Because he did have one, and Josie didn’t have to want him to appreciate it. “How many of those every single year? Think everybody here got married in December, didn’t we?”

  He got nods of agreement in response, went on. “Rugby wedding season. And baby season following straight away, like clockwork. Who had their first one less than a year after the wedding?” he demanded, and most of the hands went up. “More like ten months for most of you randy buggers, the way I counted. Better look out, Josie. I know I was a poor performer in that regard, and Nico was pretty shocking too,” he added with a dig in the ribs for his roomie. “The forwards probably have a theory about that that I’d just as soon not hear. Something about testosterone levels. I’ll just state for the record here that it wasn’t my fault. Some people needed a little…convincing to take the leap.”

  “Uh-huh,” Kate said. “Blame it on me, go ahead. Because it’s true,” she admitted. “But all it took was one more northern Tour away from you, another romantic wedding, and I was toast, wasn’t I? Or maybe that was just the Maori influence. I’m sure Josie will make sure Hugh’s keeping the forwards proud.”

  “And as for me,” Nic put in with exaggerated dignity, “I’d already made one, remember? Did it in a week, as everybody is now fully aware. And I’ll have you know that I tried my hardest on the honeymoon, too.” He would have said more, but Emma was laughing, blushing, pulling him down on the sand with her, and he grinned up at the assembled company from his prone position. “Never mind. We’re not sharing, I guess. Think what you like.”

  Josie had seen Hugh sit up, had felt his hand come out for hers even as her heart had sunk, the familiar pain twisting in her chest. S
he looked at him, saw the acceptance in his eyes, and knew that whatever she said or didn’t say would be all right with him.

  She went with honesty, because she didn’t want to hide this. It was too big a barrier, would sit like an invisible elephant in the room between her and Hugh’s other family, this rugby family, and that meant not telling would be worse than telling.

  Harden up.

  “That won’t be happening for us,” she told Koti. “I can’t have children. So…” She lifted her chin, put a brave face on it. “It won’t be on Hugh.”

  Reka was the first to break the silence that fell at her announcement. “I’m sorry,” she said gently, and Josie choked up a bit despite herself. Reka, of all people, would know exactly how much this admission had cost her. “We’ve been insensitive. Not thinking that it doesn’t happen that easily for everybody.”

  “No,” Josie said immediately. “Of course you haven’t. How could you have known?” She was so grateful that Hugh hadn’t told his mates, or that, if he had, they’d kept the information to themselves.

  Jenna, quiet until now, took her hand on her other side. “I thought that might be true for me too,” she said, her gentle face conveying nothing but sympathy. “I had some problems myself. Are they…sure?”

  Josie nodded. This was just about as awful as she’d expected, but it was such a relief to get it out there. “Don’t have the equipment,” she said, and left it at that. She felt the press of Jenna’s hand, though, and knew that she really did understand everything that meant.

  “Yeh, you do,” Hugh said, his arm going around her. “Got the heart, haven’t you. Got everything it takes to be a mum to our kids. Got everything I need.”

  Finn nodded soberly from Jenna’s other side. “Hugh’s right. A mum’s a mum, and your family’s your family, however it comes about. Parts or no. Jenna is Sophie and Harry’s mum every bit as much as she is to the others. That’s the way I see it. Seems to me you’re going to be exactly the same.”

  “That makes it sound easy, though, Finn,” Jenna said. “And it isn’t easy. You don’t just…adjust like that. It’s so hard, when you’re dealing with that. When it matters so much to you. At least it was for me. Being around babies, pregnancy. We don’t have to talk about it, at least. We can stop right now.” She looked around, got nods of agreement from the other women, and Josie really had put a damper on the day.