A removal van stood outside the long drive, blocking her access. She had to park far down the street, in fact, as both curbs were lined with vehicles.
Fords, she saw in the flash of her headlights. That meant All Blacks. The company sponsored the national rugby team, which meant every new cap got a new Ford to celebrate the achievement. She knew that from Josie. She counted one pickup truck, three good-sized SUVs, and a flash red sports model that sealed it. All Blacks, definitely. And that red one was probably Kevin’s.
She’d probably want to move, in the end. Parties. Beer. Girls. Not what a working mother needed going on into the wee hours. Ha. Upside.
And, yes, the press would have you believe they were all model citizens, but she didn’t believe everything she read. The one All Black she knew was a reasonably sober fella, but he was the captain of his Super Rugby team, which would make him an exception. They were sportsmen. They were more than that. They were rugby players.
You’ll be glad to be out of it, then. It had always been above her touch, really, this flat. She was only here because Maeve Campbell had loved the ballet, and the Campbells had been patrons.
Kevin McNicholl, on the other hand, didn’t look like pointe shoes were his passion. Sucked, but there you were. She got out of the car, hefted her ballet bag and Zavy’s bag, took his hand, and started the trek to the house, passing Josie’s serviceable little Honda along the way. See? Another upside. Josie would be here to lend support.
“Truck!” Zavy announced bang on cue. “The men can go inside. The truck is open. It’s open, Mummy. We can go inside too.”
“It’s a removal truck,” Chloe said. “It’s working.” As they watched, two men emerged down its ramp carrying an enormous leather couch between them and began to haul it up the floodlit drive.
Zavy said, “I want to go in the truck.” He dragged on her hand, which wasn’t something she needed at this moment.
“We can’t go inside now,” Chloe said, as another man came down the truck’s ramp with an armchair upside-down on his head. “The men are busy. It’s a working truck. See? Just like you can’t go in the rubbish truck.”
“I want to go in the rubbish truck,” Zavy said. “When it goes squish. I want to go all day.”
By the time they reached the house, the two sofa movers were coming out. Looking like a removal crew, or possibly a not-very-well-disguised Mafia hit squad, all size, facial hair, and hulking muscle. Like you’d be wise to scream and run.
One of them smiled, white teeth flashing in a darkly bearded face that only needed a gold earring and a bandana to command a pirate ship. “Hi, Chloe,” he said. “Josie’s inside. One sec.” He loped for the door and shouted, “Josie!” in a voice that would have carried to the bowels of the pirate ship or the far reaches of the ... Mafia hit squad clubroom. Or more accurately, a voice that would have carried over the din of tens of thousands of rugby fans in full-throated roar. The pirate in question being Hugh Latimer, the captain of the Blues and Josie’s partner. The one rugby player Chloe knew, besides The Evictor.
The jury was still out on the other fella, since he was even bigger and more ferocious-looking. She’d never seen him. She’d have remembered. “Iain McCormick,” he said. “How ya goin’. Who’s this?” His voice rumbled out of his enormous body. A mutant, maybe. Or another rugby player.
“This is Zavy,” Chloe said. “He’s three.”
Mr. Hulking Enormous put out a paw, and Chloe said, “Shake hands, love.” Zavy did it, Iain shook his little hand gently between two fingers and a thumb and smiled, and Chloe wasn’t sure if that was an improvement or not.
Zavy informed Iain, “I want to go in the truck. It’s a ’moval truck ’cause it moves things. But it’s working, so we can’t go inside.”
Iain answered, “Well, yeh. Obviously you want to. Trucks are awesome, eh.” Which made Chloe laugh despite herself.
Josie came out the door, then, accompanied by Hugh. “Hi,” she said. “Welcome to the madhouse. I’ve been helping Kevin’s sisters get the kitchen unpacked. First job when you move, because if you can’t have a cup of tea, what’s the point in living? And you lot had better get your skates on,” she told Hugh, “if you expect to finish this tonight. I’m about to collect that pizza.”
Hugh grinned again, told Iain, “Stay away from Maori girls, eh. Bossy as,” and the two of them headed back down the drive.
Josie said, “Can’t imagine what they’ve been doing all day. Some of them have already been here to help and gone again, and they’re still not finished? I wouldn’t want to take an inventory on the beer stocks.”
“I was just thinking that,” Chloe said. “About the beer.”
Josie said, “Nah. They have a bye this week, that’s all. Can’t blame them for cutting loose a bit, really. It’s a long season.” She grabbed the bags off Chloe’s shoulder and said, “Come on. We’ll go upstairs to your place, and in a few minutes, I will go collect that food. But I want to know why I didn’t know.”
When they got upstairs, after managing to distract Zavy somehow from the blissful dream of going inside a truck, Chloe didn’t know how to start. Instead, she fixed Zavy a dinner of baked beans, plus his current favorite vegetable—broccoli, for some odd reason—and wholemeal toast. When she had him in his booster seat, though, Josie gave her a measuring look and said, “Go take your shower. I’ll take over here, and get him ready for his bath as well.”
“Your pizzas, though,” Chloe said, even though at this particular moment, Josie’s offer sounded like a massage and facial.
“Not ready yet,” Josie said. “I only said that to light a fire under the boys. Go.”
“I don’t want a bath,” Zavy said. “Josie, I want to know a question.”
“Yes, love?” she asked.
Chloe decided to seize her chance and let Josie handle this one. She had to stop around the corner, though, to listen to the question. Maybe you weren’t supposed to find your own child funny, but she did.
“Do human beans live on land or in the water?” Zavy was asking.
“On land, of course,” Josie said. “Silly billy.”
“Then why do I have to have a bath?” Zavy asked. “I’m a land animal.” Which was when Chloe escaped.
Josie appeared to be a glutton for punishment, too, because when Chloe was done in the bath, Josie practically shoved her out of the room, and the next thing Chloe knew, the water was running in there. She’d have to ask later how Josie had got over the “land animal” bit.
Fifteen minutes later, Josie had Zavy dressed in his favorite gray truck pajamas, with an enormous yellow bulldozer on the front of the tops and bottoms featuring every other kind of construction equipment imaginable. Josie looked Chloe over in her own less-than-formal attire and asked, “Does this mean we’re coming downstairs prepared to make a certain fella think what a cozy housemate we’d be, or that we’re not coming downstairs at all?”
“Haven’t decided,” Chloe said.
“Uh-huh,” Josie said. “Kevin had a bit of a hunted look about him when I asked him about you. Can’t wait to hear why.” She bent and gave Zavy a kiss. “Good night, sweet boy.”
“Ribbet,” Zavy said with a sly grin.
“Ribbet,” Josie said back. Ah. They were playing amphibian, then. Land and water. Brilliant. Trust Josie.
“I really do have to go get that pizza, now that I promised,” Josie said. “But do come down, love. You can meet his sisters. They’re sweet, and you’ll be living with all of them, after all. More or less.”
She left before Chloe could explain what “more or less” really meant, and leaving the question entirely open.
Harden up, Chloe told herself twenty minutes later. Zavy was in bed and asleep, Josie would have arrived back again with delicious if low-fat Thai food, and Chloe was going to be living here for another six weeks. Or two months, possibly. She hoped desperately that it wouldn’t be three. If this had to happen, she wanted it to happen fast, so she coul
d take the blow, adjust to it, and move on. Done and dusted.
So—two months with her new neighbors. She’d put a good face on it and meet them. She was composed. She was elegant. She was serene.
She was a woman who was losing her beautiful top-floor tower apartment.
Pity it was easier to be serene from a stage, too. Wearing stage makeup, for preference. Instead, her face was bare except for lip gloss, and she was wearing navy leggings, an ivory camisole trimmed with lace, and a tiny ice-blue cardigan. Lounging clothes. Lazy clothes, because she’d strip off the leggings and cardigan and be ready for bed.
Before she could contemplate changing, she thought, New neighbors. And that’s all. What does it matter? With that, she grabbed the baby monitor and began to run down the narrow, steep flights of wooden steps at the far side of the house that were her own private access.
She very nearly cannoned into Kevin. He came around the landing for the second flight at a run himself, and only his arm, thrown hastily out around her waist and lifting her straight off her feet, averted the collision.
The shock of it took her breath, and he didn’t let her go straight away. He set her down, but kept holding her close on the tiny landing. “All right?” he asked. “Sorry.”
“Nice ... welcome,” she got out.
She wasn’t breathless from shock, or from fright. It was something else. He’d lifted her like a dancer. Like a partner. Swinging her down, away from danger. As soon as his arm had closed around her waist, she’d felt that strength, that certainty. She could still feel it, for that matter, because he hadn’t gone anywhere.
It was what was in his eyes, too. Warm. A little chagrined, a little amused. Green eyes vibrant under the dark brows, over the broken nose. He seemed to realize he was still holding her, that she was pulled tight against him, because he finally dropped his arm and said, “Tell me you’re coming down to join us. Should’ve asked you myself, I know. I was putting beds together. I was coming upstairs to fix that. Ah ... not the beds. To ask you.”
Her hand wanted to go to her hair, or to check how low her camisole was dipping. She didn’t do either thing. Instead, she regathered her composure and said, “I was just coming down. I’ll be your neighbor for another few weeks, anyway. I should meet your ... your sisters, right?”
If he noticed how close he still was, he didn’t let on. He certainly didn’t move. “Where’s the baby?” he asked. “I didn’t mean I didn’t like babies. You can bring him. You don’t have to leave him upstairs.”
“He’s asleep. And not a baby, really.” She held up the gadget in her hand. “Monitor. Do you think we should go downstairs now?”
“Oh.” Now, he grinned at her, and the ferociousness of eyebrows and nose changed again. “I should stop keeping you trapped on your landing, you mean? I could do that.” With that, he turned and led the way downstairs, still running, giving her the feeling that he didn’t do much at a walk, and that he’d always rather be moving than sitting still.
Exactly like her.
The interior of the house didn’t look much like it had under the Campbells. For one thing, it had a lot of people in it, and half of them were supersized. For another, it was filled with pasteboard cartons. You couldn’t change the elegant proportions of the 1920s design, though, that looked like nothing from the outside and, from its secluded courtyard, like an Italian villa, with a railed veranda and deck running the length of the first two stories for even more indoor/outdoor space. You couldn’t miss the wall of windows that opened from kitchen and lounge onto the formal walled garden, either. Meticulously tended ferns and vines covered the wall that separated the house from its neighbor, punctuated by perfectly trimmed cypress, flanked by manicured green lawns interrupted by paths of warm stone tile in golden cream, and finished off with the full-sized statue of a nude, graceful nymph pouring an unending fall of water into the stone fountain outside the master bedroom.
The courtyard wasn’t anything like large, and the house was in the middle of a crowded suburb, but it was something so secret and special all the same, and she’d loved it since she’d first set eyes on it. It was a retreat, even if her part of its garden charms was only a tiny tiled space tucked into one corner with her own round wooden table and chairs, her own lemon tree in a terra-cotta pot, and her own baby fountain flowing from pool to pool against the vine-covered wall.
She was going to miss her lemon tree. She was really going to miss her fountain.
“Not what I’d call a rugby player’s preferred digs,” she murmured in a last-minute burst of honesty before she entered the throng.
“Maybe you haven’t known the right rugby player,” Kevin said, and there was that warmth again. If he stood any closer, he’d have his arm around her again.
“We’ll see, shall we?” she tossed back, then stepped into the dining room from the open sliders of the veranda.
The first people who greeted her had nothing to do with rugby, but that was partly because the rugby players were sitting on the floor, paper plates in hand, working on slices of pizza and beer from the bottle and looking not one bit elite. Meanwhile, Hugh’s nine-year-old half-brother Charlie jumped up from the table and said, “Hello, Miss Chloe!”
He didn’t come over to give her a cuddle, and neither did his thirteen-year-old sister Amelia. Even though Amelia wasn’t taking ballet lessons anymore, she still treated Chloe like her ballet mistress, a slightly awe-inspiring figure. Ballet, unlike so many things in life, had stern rules, and it enforced them.
Kevin said, “These are my sisters sitting beside Amelia, in case the ginger hair didn’t clue you in. Holly and Noelle, both eighteen last Christmas. And this is Chloe Donaldson, our new upstairs neighbor.” He nodded to two girls, both with red-gold hair that shone like beacons under the overhead lamp. “They’ve started Uni this year, and you can blame your shocking new neighbors on that sad circumstance. When it was just my brothers with me, and one at a time as well, I was all good. But I discovered that two baths were going to be necessary if we were having three years of this. And here we are, moving up the neighborhoods.”
One of the girls, the slimmer one, her hair carefully tousled into a shining, artless mane, made a face at him and said, “I’m Holly. I’m older. Well, by ten minutes. Kevin doesn’t want to tell you about the times he had to wee in the garden because we were doing our hair.”
Kevin slapped a hand over his face, then said, “Yeh. Thanks, Hol. Got that out of the way. And this fella,” he added, nodding at a spectacularly handsome specimen who all but shouted “The Best of Maori,” “is Koti James. The other ugly bloke with him is Ben Thompson.”
The men murmured something appropriate, and Chloe thought, Casual. Breezy. That was how Kevin sounded, as if she really were his neighbor. As if this were all right. She wasn’t going to show him any differently. She had pride, if nothing else. “I noticed Koti,” she said. “Hard not to know that face, or the rest of him, for that matter. Even if I hadn’t met him at Josie’s wedding.”
New Zealand was rugby-mad, and although the ballet world didn’t much care, you couldn’t turn on the television without seeing an All Black advertising something. And that went double for Koti James, still the resident heartthrob even with a wife and baby.
Kevin was looking decidedly tense, and Chloe realized he was glancing at Ben as if—what? Daring him to make a move? As if Ben would spring forward at any moment and plant a kiss on Chloe. And as if she belonged to Kevin, which was ridiculous.
She decided to tease a bit. She couldn’t change the situation, so she might as well lighten up. “Seems to me,” she said, “that I may have seen most of you on a billboard or two in your undies, which is a bit awkward. I also suspect, now I think of it, that it was you, Kevin, that I saw plastered over the backside of a bus I was following the other week. What was that for? Hair product? Unless that was another ginger fella with a broken nose, showing more bicep and chest than seemed strictly necessary.”
“An unf
air selection,” Ben said, “as he isn’t even that pretty.”
“That’s why,” Koti said. “Some of us are too intimidating in our awesomeness. Kevvie’s everyman. He may be a try-scoring machine, but he’ll help you fix your fencing and then have a beer with you, and won’t make a move on your missus.”
“I actually can fix the fencing, and nobody ever asks me to sell anything but toilets,” the monster of the party, Iain, said with a sigh. “Not too flash. I don’t think many girls linger on those delicious adverts where I’m grinning and pointing at the plumbing fixtures.”
“Join the club,” Hugh said. “It’s the forward’s curse. Nobody likes us.”
“I do,” Josie said.
“You have to,” he said. “You’re married to me.”
“Excuse me? I do not have to. I choose to. I like my men big and ferocious. Not that you backs aren’t sweet.”
“Sweet,” Kevin said. “We’re sweet, Koti.”
“Never mind,” Koti said. “I found somebody to marry me anyway. There could still be hope for you, Kevvie.” Chloe didn’t miss the speculative look in his eyes. Koti had a reputation for being sharp as well as beautiful, and it looked like the reputation was deserved.
Josie, meanwhile, had been dishing up a plate of food for Chloe, and now, she thrust it at her. “Got ginger in there,” she said. “Good for you. Come sit with us girls and eat. Recover from the shock of finding out about your new landlord.”
“Such a Maori mum, Josie,” Koti said, and for just a moment, Josie’s face lost some of its brightness, her hands stilling before she shook herself into action again.
It was more to fill the pause than anything else that had Chloe saying as she sat down, “I see Kevin hasn’t filled you in after all. Seems I won’t be here long. I’m counting on you to volunteer to help me shift house as well, Josie, in a few weeks.”
Just Say Yes (Escape to New Zealand Book 10) Page 3