He sighed a little inside. He was seeing his gypsy on Sunday morning, his one full day off. He’d planned for an entire uncluttered afternoon, in case their breakfast morphed into… more. Now, unless Nyree’s dream date was shopping for furnishings with a pregnant schoolgirl, that wasn’t going to be happening.
He wondered if Ella still liked Hello Kitty, and got a bona fide shudder down his spine.
Comfortable, yes. Of course she should be comfortable. But he was going to draw the line. It was his flash house and his money, and it was going to be done to his taste. No pink. No flowers. No mouthless cats.
He made the bed himself, in the end, while Ella was in the bath. If he hadn’t, he’d had a feeling she would have lain down on the bare mattress. She looked that knackered. After that, they sat side by side there, Ella in pink flowered flannel PJs that promised nothing good, future-décor-wise, and Marko with his kitten, and she rang home.
“Mum?” she began, and Marko could hear the rapid, high-pitched sounds on the other end with no trouble at all. “No,” Ella said. “I’m with Marko. Didn’t Caro tell you?” Another minute, then, “Well, I am. Yes, in Auckland. That’s where he is.” Another pause. “With my birthday money, of course. Yes. I’m fine.” And after a long few minutes of quacking, “I want to finish school. That’s the point. I’ll come back after. After winter term, I guess. Sometime in there.”
Finally, she held out the phone with a sigh. “She wants to talk to you. Dunno why I had to do it. She never listens to me anyway.”
Marko recognized that for the narkiness it was. Too tired, too young, and too scared. He took the phone and told his aunt, in his calmest, most in-control tones, “Hi, Jakinda. She’s here. She’s all good.”
“I rang her up after school,” Jakinda said, her voice missing all the lower-register tones. This was going to be fun. She was only five years older than Marko, but at times, he felt that much older. “Because she ran out of the house this morning like it was the last time. I didn’t have a good feeling. No answer. Ever. And when I got that robocall they do from the school saying she’d bunked off all day, I rang your house, because she’d said she was going there, but she wasn’t there, and Caro was so odd, I rang the police. They said she’s sixteen, and she’s allowed to leave home and stay on her own as long as she isn’t in danger. How did I know she wasn’t in danger? How did they know? They didn’t, that’s what. Your mum and dad have been just as frantic. You might have told me sooner. I’ve been beside myself. And Caro knew? Why would she keep it a secret, when she saw how worried I was? All she would say was, ‘She has a plan.’ Some help that was. Imagine what the two of them might have thought was a good plan.”
Marko would’ve been willing to bet that his mum and dad hadn’t been as frantic as all that. “As it happens, though,” he said, “she did have a decent plan.” He brought the intensity levels down the same way you did in a match. By breathing in, breathing out, and refocusing on—yes. The plan. Then you communicated it. Calmly. Settled everybody down and gave them the belief, and no panic stations. “They decided she should come stay with me until the baby’s born, go to school here away from the gossip, and have the baby adopted here as well, so she won’t be running into the mum and dad—and the baby, too—on the street. Then go home with a fresh start. Sounded reasonable to me. How does it sound to you?”
He got her to pause, anyway. “The gossip will still be there,” she said. “Mackenzie College has two hundred pupils. They all live here. They all know her. There’s no outrunning this. You did your school in Dunedin. You don’t know what it’s like.”
“I was born there. I went to primary school there. I know what it’s like. It won’t be a secret, but it won’t be the same as if she’d stayed, either. Nine days’ wonder.”
“Easy for you to say,” Jakinda said. “When it could have been done and dusted already and everything back to normal. Say what you like, it would be better than this. She’s sixteen.”
“Not so easy for me to say,” he said. “I’ll be the one dealing with it, won’t I, while she’s here. But it’s for, what? Five months?” he said to Ella as much as to his aunt. “You can do anything for five months. Anyway, this is her choice, not mine.” Or yours.
“You can’t want to take that on,” Jakinda insisted. “And I certainly can’t come stay with her. I can’t leave the practice, not during breeding season.” His aunt was a vet tech for a large-animal clinic, and there were a lot of sheep in the Southern Alps. “Maybe one of the girls could have her stay. Otherwise, she’ll have to come home. Like it or not, uncomfortable or not. If this is her choice, it is.” She didn’t say, You made your bed, you lie in it, but he had the feeling it wasn’t far off.
“I’ll check about the girls,” Marko said, although he doubted that his sisters would be volunteering. Terese, four years younger, was remotely possible, he guessed. Living across the Ditch in north Queensland with her husband and two little boys, she had only two bedrooms and the noisiest flat in Australia, but she’d know heaps more than Marko did about pregnancy and girls. Sabine, third in line, was studying to be a doctor in Dunedin. Probably not an option. Sabine was very good at focusing on one thing at a time, but not so good at paying attention to anything else. “If not, we’ll cope.”
“You wouldn’t have the first idea,” Jakinda said.
He knew better than to react out of male ego. He did anyway, of course. “Oh, I dunno. I expect I could figure it out. The occasional man has hung around to help a woman during her pregnancy before. It’s only for a few months.”
“If it’s his baby,” Jakinda said. “What reason would you have to do it?”
Marko took a breath before he answered. Always wise. “That she’s my cousin. That she’s sixteen. She needs a place to stay and somebody to stay with, and here I am.”
A textbook example of how a man got in over his head.
By the time he rang off, Ella was hugging her pillow to her midsection. Marko couldn’t tell how much chubbier she was there. Must be a fair bit, if she couldn’t button her skirt.
“All right?” he asked.
“Yeh,” she said, but she didn’t sound it. He sat still and waited, and she finally said, “I should’ve asked first. I didn’t think of everything there’d be. When I was thinking maybe I was pregnant, I tried to put all the things in order like I’d normally do, the baby and school and all, but there are just… it’s so many, and…”
She’d started to rock with the pillow. He thought for a minute, then said, “Can you use the internet?”
“Wh-what? Yeh. Of course.”
“Use a phone?
“Uh… Marko.” The panic had receded. “I just used a phone.”
“Then I reckon you can do this. We’ll make a list, add things to it as we think of them, and you’ll use the internet and the phone, make some calls, and start ticking them off, the most important ones first. One at a time. If you can’t find the answer, you’ll ask me, and we’ll look for the answer together. But you’ll look first, because it’s your life and your choice.”
She swallowed. “Yeh. It is. My choice. But…”
“Yeh?”
She hugged her pillow more tightly. “What about money? For the clothes and all? I used most of my money to get up here. I started thinking about it on the plane, though, and I think… I’ll need a whole uniform. And new jeans and all. And if I have to go to school on the bus… Fares. All that.”
“I think I can run to a few clothes, and whatever else you need.” That was enough of that. He stood up. “We’ll start getting that list sorted tomorrow morning. I’ll wake you at six.”
Suddenly, she looked like every teenager in the world. “Six? That’s, like, barely morning.”
“Can’t be helped, though. I’m at work at eight, and I have a routine.”
“But you don’t work. Not at a real job.”
He laughed. He couldn’t help it. Unfortunately, it startled the kitten enough that she dug her claws in
to his skin. “That’d be a nice idea if you could get it. The trouble is—you can’t get it.” He headed to the door, taking the furball with him. “Six. No worries. You don’t have any curtains, and that window faces east. I’m guessing you’ll be awake.”
Nyree may have watched some rugby on Saturday night, even though it was only Week Four in the season and nothing but a match against the Chiefs was on the line.
On the other hand, Victoria had it on the TV. If she glanced at it from time to time, that was because TV was distracting.
At this particular moment, Marko was hitting the ball carrier so hard, the other fella bounced off him and went down in a heap. Considering that the other man was Samoan and had thighs like trees, that was some feat. Afterwards, the color commentator shouted “Boom-fa!” exactly as Nyree had known he would. She’d watched enough rugby by this point in her life that the soundtrack played in her head automatically.
The camera lingered on Marko, standing up again from a ferocious contest of bodies and wills at the breakdown, and it stayed there as he wiped an enormous hand over his jersey, set his black-shadowed jaw, and readied himself to go again while the announcers kept talking about him. Specifically, about his “massive engine.”
“. . . a bloody enormous prick,” Victoria said beside her.
That got through. “Pardon?”
Victoria looked startled. “Why? It’s true.”
“How do you know what size he is?”
Victoria sighed. “I didn’t say he had one. I said he was one. The judge in my sex crimes case, before he summed up like he was representing the defense.”
“Oh,” Nyree said. “Sorry.”
Victoria went on, “And I know Seb’s right. When we went to dinner last night, he said, ‘Let it go. It’s over. It’s one case.’ But sometimes, that’s harder to do. Because it’s also one damaged little girl.”
“I think you realize it’s over,” Nyree said. As always, she longed to shout, “Dump him!” And possibly do a ceremonial dance, in case it helped. Seb was just so… smug. “Being sorry for one day isn’t exactly marinating in the loss. I’d be sorry, too. I am sorry, and it wasn’t my case. Go ahead and be sorry.” She finished her drink, picked up the basket of washing she’d been folding, and stood up. “Got to go, though. I have some work I need to think about, and an early date tomorrow.”
“Oh?” Victoria sat up straighter. “New work? Painting work? And what date?”
“Not the kind you’re thinking, on the date. Photographing the rugby boys again. I’m not… I can’t talk about the work yet.” An idea she had, tickling at the back of her mind. If she talked about it, she’d lose it. She had to find her way through to it with a charcoal pencil.
Victoria glanced at the television screen, where Koti James was powering his way through one tackle with his freakish upper-body strength, going down at last under the pressure of two more, and somehow flicking the ball away one-handed, without looking, in the split second before he hit the turf. The wing, Kevin McNicholl, plucked the ball out of the air as if he’d known it would be there, put his red head down, and charged for the tryline. Another tackle, and there Marko was again in the breakdown.
You couldn’t see much of him. It was a rear view.
Which was enough.
Time to go.
Victoria said, “I could come with you. I could look, at least. I know you don’t like them, but I think I could see my way.”
That was good news. Non-Seb good news. Of course, a rugby player might not be any better than Seb, since Victoria’s attraction would be based on the same things, the things that also made them arrogant. Height. Muscles. High testosterone levels. Money. Et cetera. And then there was their disturbing tendency to be twenty-two, or married.
Marko wasn’t either, though. And he wasn’t Seb. He was kind to puppies and kittens. Seb probably kicked them. In short, Marko could be the best thing that could happen to Victoria.
And yet, somehow, Nyree was saying, “It’s better if I do it alone, sorry. I’m trying to keep it low-key so I don’t spook them or come off like a fan. And, no, I haven’t told them who my stepdad is, so don’t ask. I don’t need the complication. It’s business.”
It’s business, she repeated to herself at nine the next morning as she found a carpark on Tamaki Drive not too far from the Mission Bay fountain and opened the crate. They had a perfect day for it. Glorious sun, puffy white clouds, and the patented sparkle to the turquoise waters of Waitemata Harbour. Perfect.
For business.
She headed to the fountain, where the Art Deco urn and the three bronze sea monsters sent their sprays of white high into the early-autumn sky. Not too busy out here, she saw with satisfaction, thanks to the early hour. A fair number of kids, though, running and shrieking around the playground, which gave her an idea. If she could get Marko posing with a dog and a couple kids? That would be good. She’d brought photo releases just in case.
One of the kids, a little girl of two or so, was running towards her right now, in fact, followed by a couple with a baby in a pushchair. She’d be perfect, because she was adorable. Marko’s harsh face showcased beside that golden skin, those shiny dark curls, and all that life? The little girl was waving her hands in excitement as she ran, then looking back at her father, who was pretending to chase her.
Oh. Well, yeh. Dad was Koti James, his glorious body resplendent in shorts and jandals. She’d told Marko, “No uniforms. We’ll go with mufti this time, the casual look,” and he’d evidently passed along the message.
He’d brought his kids as well? Better and better. She dropped the leash to the ground, stepped on it fast, told the dog, “Stay,” and got out her camera with her heart beating faster. This was manna from heaven.
“Already focused on the show pony,” the deep voice behind her said. “And here I brought the kitten and all.”
She was already smiling when she turned, and then she wasn’t.
It wasn’t because of how Marko looked. He’d shaved today, which wasn’t about her. His usual post-match routine, that was all. He looked good scruffy, and he looked good cleaned up. Tough both ways. He had a gash on his forehead covered with surgical tape, and that didn’t hurt his looks, either. The fluffy gray kitten sat on the shoulder of his black T-shirt, which stretched over the acreage of his arms and chest as per specifications. It all created a nice contrast. Aesthetically speaking.
It wasn’t that. It was the girl.
“How ya goin’, Nyree,” Koti said, and Nyree turned to face him again, feeling like a human fidget spinner. Focus. Koti, who as usual looked as if he’d only watched a rugby match, had the curly-haired toddler in his arms now, a shot that would make any newspaper editor sing for joy. He said, “Marko said you were bringing a dog. I made the mistake of telling Kate about it in front of my daughter, and here we all are. This is Maia. She longs for a dog with every beat of her heart. You can probably tell.”
The little girl was indeed leaning out of her father’s arms, stretching her hands out for the dog and making urgent noises. Koti tightened his grip on her and said, “Oh, sorry. My wife Kate, and that lump under the blanket is our son Mikaere. Asleep, which is a lucky thing, as you’ll be able to hear yourself think. This is Nyree, baby, who’s doing the thing for the SPCA.”
“Hi,” said the brunette with the pushchair. She was even shorter than Nyree, and her accent was American. “Right upfront—Koti can get his picture taken, but we’re not going home with a dog today, so nobody”—she cast a meaningful look at her daughter—“should get excited.”
Koti flashed the famous grin and told Nyree, “Our bad cop, eh.”
“I want to pat the doggie,” Maia announced.
Nyree said, “You’ll get to pat her, I promise. And no worries,” she told Koti and Kate. “You have to do some paperwork to get one of our dogs. This is a meet and greet, that’s all. And a few photos, of course.”
Koti glanced at Kate, then back at Nyree, and said, seriously for
once, “No photos of the kids, OK? We try to keep them out of the press.”
“Of course.” Disappointing, but understandable. Surprisingly private of him, considering his own exposure in the media, but surprisingly thoughtful, too. If he kept on like this, she was going to have to admit that more rugby players than her stepbrothers were OK.
Just not the one behind her.
Professional, she reminded herself. No matter that she’d had a truly embarrassing dream about him just last night.
They’d been on the coast. Not like here, where a sweep of golden sand met the barely ruffled waters of the harbour and the sun shone mellow on it all. No, this had been the west coast, clearly. A bluff above a wild, rocky coastline, with the hiss and roar of the waves hitting the rocks below filling her head, and the wind blowing her hair like streamers. She’d run the track along the edge of the cliff, too close to danger and knowing it, and he’d run after her. When she’d looked back, the wild wind carrying her along, she’d seen him catching up, nearly there, his face dark with purpose or passion, had felt the thrill of danger, fear, and desire all down her body. And had stepped into nothing.
A frozen moment when her mind had tried to catch up and resisted knowing. A very bad moment.
He’d caught her. His long arm around her waist, sure and strong, plucking her out of midair. Their momentum carrying them to the ground, away from the cliff’s edge, and Marko twisting to take the impact of the hard ground. Even as he’d hit, as she’d felt the jolt all the way through her body, he’d rolled with her on the tough, wet, wild grass until he was above her. He’d held her fast, not letting her up one bit, and there’d been nothing tender in his touch.
“You bloody little fool,” he’d snarled. “What the hell were you thinking?”
Not the most romantic dream. Her subconscious appeared to think Marko was either a threat or a savior. The minute she’d seen him with the tall, pretty blonde, she’d realized which. Or you could say that she’d woken up again. The girl—whose blonde came from a bottle, because her skin was too naturally brown for it, as well as flawlessly unlined and poreless, damn it—was wearing a bright-blue crossover-front top she was nearly bursting out of and a short skirt that showcased her barely-legal legs. She was, in fact, everything Nyree wasn’t.
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