It was all so peaceful, you might go to sleep. Dust motes floating on beams of sunlight, and that piano.
Then he found the room, and it wasn’t quite so peaceful. You could say, in fact, that she hit him hard.
Chloe Donaldson. A woman he’d seen first over a year ago, one night in a restaurant, when she’d been out with somebody else. And what was worse—when she’d been out with his teammate. He’d liked her too much that night, under the circumstances, and she wasn’t going to like him one bit after today. He didn’t need a crystal ball to figure that out.
She hadn’t turned many lights on, and she didn’t see him standing in the shadows by the door. She had one hand on the wooden bar that ran the length of the hall, and was watching herself in the wall of mirrors opposite. Checking her form, not admiring it. The difference was clear, the same way you could see it in the gym. This was serious business.
She was wearing a plum-colored leotard that scooped low in front and back, a matching skirt made of some fluttery material, and pink tights, and the way they showed off her whisper-slim figure wasn’t letting him look away. As he stood and watched, she put her willowy form through a set of motions as stylized as ... well, as ballet.
A leg rising high in front, then straight up to the side, impossibly far over her head. Then her leg went to the back, and she was dropping down on the movement, her head ending up near her standing foot, with her impossibly long, slim, sculpted leg almost straight overhead. Coming up, then, her arm moving with her leg and body, her leg bending in, the toes pointed perfectly. And then she was rising on the toes of her standing foot, turning to the other side, and switching legs as gracefully as she’d done everything else.
She didn’t even look real. Nobody had legs that long. Nobody could move that way. Nobody.
He didn’t have to interrupt her. He could wait until she was done. It was only polite. She kept on, and he recognized the movements for what they were, although they were completely alien to anything he ever did. They were the same training he performed every day. Basic skills, basic steps. A warmup, but more than that. Body learning. Body memory. Training that went so far beyond what you knew in your head that the moves felt instinctive, so your body knew what to do before your brain had worked it out.
Ten minutes, nearly fifteen, and still she ... danced. They were exercises, he guessed, but they were dance. And surely nobody’s arms worked like that, as if they were formed differently from other people’s. As if they were birds’ wings, full of tiny muscles and bones, every movement precise, delicate, and complete, from her shoulder blades to the tips of her slim fingers.
It wasn’t possible to be that strong and flexible, and that soft and feminine at the same time. Except that she was.
Pink and plum. Grace and steel. Effortless beauty that wasn’t effortless at all. And, always, fierce concentration. Absolute focus. She danced, and he watched.
Until she finished, stood and breathed a few times, walked forward to shut off the music. And saw him.
When Chloe turned and saw him in the doorway, she stopped moving.
At first, she thought it was some dad, here to collect his child from art class and finding a more appealing way to spend his waiting time. Annoying, but not as bad as when she had to chase them away from a class full of teenaged girls. She always wanted to send those blokes home with a note pinned to their shirt.
He moved a step into the room, and she realized she knew him.
It was the size of him, for one thing. Not just his height, but the breadth of his shoulders and chest. He looked like a battering ram, and like no dancer ever. And then there was the dark red hair cut short and brutally neat, the dark eyebrows that formed a harsh line straight across his face. And the broken nose with its hump at the bridge, hinting at a less friendly side.
It should have been a good-natured face. It almost was, except for those eyebrows and that nose.
He spoke, then. “Chloe.” Calm and level, not like a redhead at all. Nothing like his eyebrows, either.
She said, “You’re Hugh’s teammate. Aren’t you? The rugby player?” Seen first in a restaurant, then again at Josie and Hugh’s wedding. Which he’d attended with another woman.
Except that she was seeing him. He was here.
He smiled, and the furious line of his eyebrows gave way to something softer. “Kevin McNicholl. I may cry myself to sleep tonight that you didn’t remember.”
She walked over and bent at the waist to switch off the music, taking the opportunity for a quick hamstring stretch while she was at it, her head all the way to her knees, her palms briefly touching the floor. “I remember meeting you,” she said as she came up. “Twice. You were on crutches both times.”
“Yeh. It happens.”
She felt lighter, suddenly. Better. Good enough to tease. He'd remembered her, too, enough to come find her. “Some people,” she said, unwrapping her skirt, pulling off her ballet slippers, and reaching for her sweater and a pair of shorts in her dance bag, “ask for a woman’s number instead of looming in the doorway. I’m just saying.”
He seemed to be distracted. By her putting on her sweater. Wasn’t that nice?
After a moment, he said, “Instead of perving at her while she dances and scaring her to death, you mean? Could be.”
“Oddly enough, I’m not scared to death.” She tied a bow at the side of the pink wrap sweater and began to pull on her shorts. She took it slowly. Flirting didn’t come her way too often these days, and she’d almost forgotten how much fun it was. “There’s an art class going on just down the passage. And I’m very strong.”
He smiled at her again. Nothing like seductive. Everything like amused.
She said, keeping it sweet, “Would you like me to show you how hard I can kick? Or how fast I do it? I’m fierce. You could be surprised.”
“Yeh, nah, I’ll believe it. Don’t show me, eh. I’m scared myself now. And you’re right, I could’ve asked for your number. I’m kicking myself, no worries.” He was watching her fasten her shorts now, and she wasn’t imagining the heat in him. When she did up the final button, he sighed and said, “But this isn’t precisely a social call.”
“Oh.” She ignored the stab of disappointment. It had been fun while it had lasted. “If you want to enroll your ... daughter? for class, there’s a number to ring. I don’t have the paperwork, I’m afraid.”
There’d been a spark. She hadn’t imagined that. But then, he’d smiled at her then in exactly the same way when she’d been out with another man. With his mate. Then there’d been Josie’s wedding, when he’d smiled like that again, and he’d been with another woman. He clearly wasn’t too discriminating with the sparks he struck. She might not be looking for forever, but she wasn’t after another woman’s man.
“D’you always show this many prickles?” he asked. “I didn’t remember that. Could be challenging.” He’d come fully into the practice space now and he truly wasn’t any kind of polished gem. T-shirt, shorts, and jandals, but that wasn’t all. It was the slabs of muscle clearly evident under them, the whole presentation about as subtle and sophisticated as a wrecking ball.
“Yes,” she said. “Fair warning. And I do need to go home, so ...”
“That’s why I’m here. About that home.”
Somebody had punched the air out of her lungs. She didn’t say anything. She couldn’t. She just looked at him.
“You’re joking,” she said after a minute.
He rubbed a hand over the back of his head and grimaced. “I was hoping to lead up to this better. I came to talk to you about it here, because I didn’t want you to get the notice in the post and be hit with it like that. And I didn’t want to barge into your flat like I, ah ...”
“Owned it.”
“Well, yeh. I do, as of yesterday. I guess I’m your new landlord. And I need you to move.”
Yes, you could call it Another Fabulous Monday.
Wait, Kevin thought. That hadn’t come out quite righ
t. He had meant to lead up to it. That was why he’d come—to get started. Before he led up to it over coffee. Or a glass of wine. Or dinner. Or a long, slow, sweet kiss at her doorway—their doorway—after dinner, with his hand at the back of that graceful neck.
He may not have been keeping his mind on the program. Or being one bit realistic.
He’d seen her exactly twice. She’d hit him like a ton of bricks both times, and he hadn’t even seen her dance then. Which wasn’t—he knew it wasn’t—meant to be sexual. If there was anything more sensual, though, or more feminine than the flowing lines of her body, the delicacy of her curves, the way she moved, the way she took off her skirt, he couldn’t imagine it. Absolutely different from the way he was made. Absolutely perfect.
She lit him up. All he had to do was look at her. Pity the feeling wasn’t mutual. Also a pity he hadn’t acted on before. But he’d been seeing somebody else at the time, and you couldn’t dump your girlfriend because you’d seen another woman out with one of your best mates and been ... hit by a ton of bricks.
The girlfriend—Heidi—was a thing of the past, though, as of his latest tour. They’d been getting more serious, and then they hadn’t. She’d thought dating a rugby player would be exciting and glamorous, and had discovered her mistake. That the better you did it, the higher you got, the less exciting and glamorous it was.
On the other hand, that meant he was single.
And mucking it up. He could have done this better. A lot better. That was why he’d come here, after all, instead of sending her that letter or knocking on her door. To do it better, once he’d found out who his new tenant was.
As he was casting about for a way to retrieve the situation, Chloe said, “You bought the house. And you want all of it.”
He scratched his ear and tried to think of a better way to put it.
Forget it. There was no better way to put it. “Well, yeh. I did. And I do. Family, you know. Housing shortage. All that.”
“Congratulations. So what do I have? Forty-two days?” He must have looked surprised, because she said, “I know what the law says. I checked when the Campbells put it up for sale. You’re telling me you’ve settled on the property, you’ve decided you want me out, and the forty-two days start now.”
“I could give you a bit more,” he found himself saying. “Not easy to find a place to live in six weeks, not in this market. I need that space for my brother and his family, that’s all. The reason I bought a house with a flat attached. But you know ...” He smiled at her again, trying to make it better. Trying to get back to where he could swear they’d been for a moment there. Which, considering that he was the villain turfing her out of the apartment she’d been renting for nearly three years, maybe wasn’t reasonable, but just now, he didn’t much care about being reasonable. “My brother’s got a wife and baby and all. Could be I’m not rapt about him being there this minute. Noisy things, babies.”
If he’d been trying to ease the mood, it hadn’t worked. She went poker-straight, and he wasn’t getting “cool” from her anymore. He was getting heat, and not in a good way. “I guess you don’t know,” she said. “I have a child.”
“Oh. Maybe I could I get a re-do on that last one, then. Ah ... I’m sure yours is a much nicer baby? A sweet wee girl, maybe?” Oh, wait, he thought, too late. Partner? Please, no. Wait again. She has a baby? What?
“No,” she said. “A boy. And he’s three. He could pound on the floor with his bricks from time to time. He might even cry occasionally. You’d better call it forty-two days. We wouldn’t want to disturb you. And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’d like to finish here and go get him.”
“I’ll be moving in tomorrow,” he said. “With my sisters. I won’t expect a welcoming committee. And you have ninety days.”
“Thank you.” She picked up her bag with the same grace she’d showed all along. She was a nymph, still. An angry nymph. A nymph chasing you out of her pool for seeing her bathing, maybe, when all you wanted to do was stay. Except that he was chasing her out. He had his myths confused, clearly. “But forty-two will be enough, I’m sure.”
“No,” he started to say, but she put up a hand and said, “No. Don’t. You’re within your rights. Of course you are. I was lucky that the Campbells didn’t chuck me out when they put the house up for sale, and I know it. Now it’s yours, and that’s fair. This isn’t your studio, though. It’s mine, and I’d like to lock it up. Excuse me.”
No tidepools after all. Chloe had lost any sense of fun, and her equilibrium had headed south along with it.
It was hard to believe, though, when she got home with Zavy. The big white house was as echoingly empty as it had been for the weeks since the Campbells had moved out, and the whole thing seemed like a bad dream that wouldn’t really happen.
Well, almost, except that she was too realistic for that. She’d spent an evening woefully short on Fred Astaire, instead clicking resolutely through the “For Rent” section of a real estate website, short-listing the least horrible prospects and reconciling herself to a commute and the crashing end of her lovely view and beach access.
Nobody got lucky in everything, right? She was fortunate to be able to afford North Shore rents—the lower ones, anyway—and if the move meant paying more and getting less ... well, she wasn’t the first to discover that the Auckland rental market was tight and getting tighter. She’d make do. She was good at adapting. Accepting what she couldn’t change, moving on, not succumbing to panic. All that good stuff. Overcoming obstacles was the story of her life.
It was a wonderful pep talk, but then, she was good at pep talks, too. She wasn’t going to dwell on the fact that for some women, a fit All Black with muscles to spare turning up at their place of employment might mean embarking on a lovely romantic adventure rather than being told to shift house. She wasn’t looking for a relationship anyway, and even if she had been, it wouldn’t be with a too-rich, too-privileged rugby player who’d never had to learn to get over himself.
Right? Right.
Bolstering thoughts for a Monday, and they worked, too. She kept the black clouds at bay through sheer effort of will. You did what you had to do.
Tuesday, though, was different.
To begin with, when she arrived at her babysitter’s apartment after work that evening, her once-agreeable son looked up from the paper he was covering with scrawls of red crayon and said, “I don’t want to go home. I’m drawing.” He frowned ferociously at her from his booster seat at the kitchen table. This was the Week of the Male Eyebrow, it seemed.
“Finish your picture,” she said, picking up his bag, “so we can put it on the fridge when we get home. Are we being contrary?” she asked Carolyn.
“Oh, you know.” Her babysitter gave a stir to a pan of curry on the stove and hefted Theresa, her own eighteen-month-old, on one comfortable hip. Theresa had her thumb in her mouth and her head on her mother’s shoulder, the way Zavy had used to do before he had blown out two candles on his cake more than a year earlier and discovered the joys of Having My Own Way at the same instant. “Short nap today, that’s all.”
“I don’t want to take a nap anymore,” Zavy said. “I’m big.”
“Yes,” Chloe said. “I’m hearing that. What have you drawn, love?”
Zavy held up a page. A red circle, another circle, and some lines. “Sam. He’s in the sky because he’s flying. He’s a cat airplane.”
Sam, an enormous black cat with a crook in his tail, a wise animal who generally had one wary eye on the kids and the other on his escape route, chose that moment to walk into the kitchen, and Zavy shoved at the table and began to slide to the floor.
Sam eyed Zavy and made the prudent choice to depart, but Chloe wasn’t taking any chances. She scooped her son up out of the chair, grabbed the drawing, and said, “Give Mummy a kiss, then,” when Zavy wriggled to get loose. Sam deserved a break.
Zavy gave her a smack on the cheek, and she said, “That’s my boy. Come help me drive home,
and you can choose beans or eggs for tea.”
“Beans,” Zavy said. “Beans beans beans. I don’t want a bath tonight. I don’t want a bath any more nights. Just beans.”
They could discuss the bath later. After the beans.
She was outside buckling him into his car seat when her phone rang in her dance bag. By the time she found it, she’d missed the call. A quick look at the screen, and she was ringing back.
“Hey,” she told Josie as she slammed Zavy’s door and slid into the driver’s seat. “I have news for you. Not good news. It’s fair to say you could be surprised. I know I was.”
“I’m not going to be surprised. And why am I just hearing it?” Josie’s voice sounded vibrant despite her own long workday. But then, Josie was an actress. It was her job to fake it. Except that she probably wasn’t.
“Imagine my surprise,” Josie went on, “when Hugh rings me and asks if I want to bring the kids over to his mate’s new house for dinner, seeing as the boys are still working on moving him in and they could use a couple extra pairs of hands. And then he gives me your address. Why did I not know?”
“Because I only just found out,” Chloe said. “I was digesting the information.”
“Well, come digest it with me. I’m at your house, and you’re not.”
“If I could get off the phone,” Chloe pointed out, “I could get there.”
Josie laughed. “Rattle your dags, then. But really, I’m telling you that I’m going to be calling for a takeaway. The boys are doing pizza. I thought lovely slimming Thai for you and me. Chicken and veg.”
“Maybe I’d rather boycott,” Chloe said.
“What?”
Chloe gave up. She might erupt eventually, but Josie would understand. “Tell you later. Chicken and veg sounds brilliant. The rest is too hard to explain on the phone. Fifteen minutes. See you soon.”
Just Say Yes (Escape to New Zealand Book 10) Page 2