“You go on,” Brenna told Kevin. “Zavy’s all good here. Go for a walk.” And then she spoiled it all by adding, “When you come back, Chloe, maybe you wouldn’t mind showing us the apartment. I’d love to take a few measurements.”
Chloe’s face showed full-on “shut down” now. “Please,” she said, “go on and have a look at whatever you like. It isn’t locked.”
What a wonderful breakfast. He was sure Chloe felt much better now.
When Chloe had fetched her anorak and met Kevin outside, he looked at her with everything like “rueful” in his expression, and she had to laugh.
“I want to say ‘Nice brekkie,’” she said, heading down the drive and toward the beach, “but I’m not sure I can. I’m guessing that wasn’t what you had in mind.”
He took her arm as they waited to cross the road, and she realized why. Because there was a car coming, and he was the most protective of men. And maybe, at this moment, she didn’t hate that.
“Not what I had in mind at all,” he said when the car had passed and they were across the road and stepping onto the beach. “What did my loving family leave out? I started being a tall poppy a long time ago, or maybe it’s that I’m dull. Not sure which, or maybe it’s both, somehow. I consider myself a king amongst accountants, I don’t put the seat down, and by the way, could you please move out today?”
She smiled and picked up the pace, because the wind was blowing and the sea was wild. Only Kevin would have suggested a walk out here, but maybe that was because Kevin knew the side of her that wasn’t dull, that refused to stay buttoned down. She kicked off her jandals on the thought and ran lightly to the water’s edge, where the wind hit her with full force. Whitecaps foamed on the gray sea, the air carried a spray of salty water, and the threat of rain hung in the lowering clouds. The enormous stretch of golden sand that curved away to the south was all but deserted on this Sunday morning except for the odd dog walker or hardy jogger, and this was exactly where she wanted to be.
As always, she felt infinitely better once she was moving, as if she truly were shaking off the terrors and fatigue of the night. And there was something new about it, too. She was here with Kevin, and he wasn’t dull, whatever his family thought. He had a wild side all his own, and he wasn’t one bit buttoned down. Not once the right woman was undoing those buttons, and she was the right woman. She danced backward in front of him, saw him respond to her in exactly the way she’d counted on, and said, “So. Why are you so responsible? Not the man who fell on me last night like a wild animal, or who came across that rugby ground, lifted me straight off my feet, and kissed me that hard in front of the cameras and all. I wouldn’t call that ‘responsible.’ ‘Dominant,’ maybe, but not ‘responsible.’
His eyes had started to gleam, and she added innocently, changing it up, “And don’t you have an elder sister as well? Where’s she when all this taking charge is happening?”
“Safely in Aussie,” he said. “And I’m not sure I’ve had much choice on the rest of it. There my family’s been, and here I’ve been, ready and able to offer a bit of help. And maybe I’ve got a few other desires repressed. Could be. But I thought we weren’t teasing me anymore.”
“Did I promise that?” She stretched her arms to either side and ran into the day, into the wind.
Some people hated the wind. She loved it. Wind was the opposite of stability, but that was what she loved about it. Wind was motion. Wind was freedom. Wind was change. All the things she missed most. Now, she ran along the hard-packed sand and choreographed her own wind dance. Grand jetés and pirouettes, leaps and turns and movement.
Kevin was running with her, keeping pace easily. However easygoing and steady he might appear, and however serious and controlled she acted—they were the same underneath. Wild as the wind.
He called out, “I’m here to catch you. Show me how,” got well past her with a sprint that was clearly nothing but easy to him, and began to run backwards in front of her just as she’d done with him, his feet as agile as any dancer’s, his energy as endless.
She wasn’t turning that invitation down. She danced her way to him, and then she leaped, and he held her fast around the waist and turned her in a circle as she did the splits in the air. And it felt wonderful.
“Next time,” she told him as he lowered her again, “catch me under one arm, and under the thigh on the other side.”
He nodded and kept running backward, his eyes on her. The rain started to spatter around them in huge, heavy drops, and she didn’t care. She unzipped her anorak and tossed it up the beach, where the wind picked it up and carried it like a sail, and then she danced into the sea, heedless of the wet, and out of it again. Channeling a sea nymph, a water creature, all grace and fluid motion. She picked up her speed, launched into a whole series of grand jetés, and then, on the last leap, jumped for him. No hesitation, and no reservation. She launched, and she soared.
She’d been dropped before, and there would come a day when she’d be dropped again. But it wasn’t going to be this day. She leaped, and Kevin grabbed her exactly where she’d told him to, and this time, he lifted her straight over his head, seeming to know without being told why she’d asked for that hold. That it would allow her spine to bend back, creating that wonderful C in the air, and her free leg to bend as both feet pointed behind her. That it would let her become part of the rain that pelted them, the wind that pummeled them. Part of the day and the moment, existing only now and only here. So she could stretch her arms overhead, could take the fear and frustration and sorrow of the night before and toss it into the wind.
He turned, and he turned again. He held her high, and he didn’t set her down until she’d let it all go.
Surely his heart had never beaten like this, as if it were beating in time with hers. He held her, so light and so strong at the same time, and when he finally set her on her feet again, she was laughing. Her hair streaming with rain, her tunic and leggings clinging to her, her smile reckless and wild. Nothing like that woman standing outside her son’s door last night, or the one who’d walked into his kitchen this morning. Nothing like wary and watchful. Nothing but free.
He kissed her, of course. How could he have helped it? His palms against her cheeks, his thumbs tipping her deliciously pointed chin up, his mouth taking her laughing one. He held her against him, kissed her the way he’d longed to ever since ... well, since the last time he’d kissed her like that, and when he’d done it, he asked her, “How’s a man to keep from loving you, eh? How’s a man’s heart ever going to be safe again?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “How’s a woman’s any different?”
“I’ve got my feet on the ground,” he said. “I’m earthbound.”
“Yeh. You are. That’s what makes it so good.”
It was cold, walking back, and it was wet, and he ran for her anorak and helped her put it on when the wind tried to carry it away. Then he wrapped an arm around her and didn’t try to talk. Too hard, in the storm. And besides, what was between them didn’t need words. And he was going to take her out again that evening.
Of course, he had to leave again on Tuesday, but that was always true. Meanwhile, he had tonight. You could do a lot with a night, and he intended to.
A child who wouldn’t listen, wouldn’t settle down, and was learning the alphabet starting with “T is for Tantrum” wasn’t the worst thing in the world. It just felt like it.
In the supermarket, when Zavy refused to ride in the trolley, Chloe reminded herself that he was still reacting to trauma. When he knocked down a toilet paper display as he careened around the corner, she picked him up, buckled him into the trolley, ignoring his screams and the sidelong looks from other customers, re-stacked toilet paper packets, and said to the sympathetic older lady who murmured something encouraging, “You could film this moment as a birth control ad.” She got a laugh for it, too.
But when she took him with her to look at a modern apartment in Takapuna with a balcon
y that looked out onto a bit of greenery and a good slice of sky, and he decided to run around the edges of the empty lounge, rolling his fire engine along the wall and making siren noises? The letting agent didn’t look one bit impressed. Chloe scooped Zavy up, ignoring his attempt to squirm out of her hold like Plastic Boy, and said, “He isn’t normally like this.” It worked about as well as you’d expect, since the agent’s expression went all the way to “skeptical.”
What was worse, she could have avoided it. Kevin had offered to take Zavy for a few hours, she’d said no, and that had clearly been a mistake. But—yes, Kevin was Superman, or at least Batman. He’d flown to her rescue so many times, though, and if a woman was supposed to be shrouded in a veil of mystery, having him look after Zavy in this mood would have been one enormous rip in the veil. Even Batman might not hang around for more of that.
“You realize that that was our best one yet,” she told Zavy in the rearview mirror on the way home to do the washing. In Kevin’s machine. Which she wasn’t even going to feel conflicted about, because she didn’t have the energy. “We’re going to be living in a dog kennel at the rate we’re going.”
“What’s a dog kennel?”
“A house for dogs.”
“Oh,” Zavy said. “I want to live in a dog kennel, ’cause it would have a dog, and it could be a very big dog. And we would have a cat like Sam. And a bunny and a donkey.”
A donkey. Wonderful. She laughed in spite of her annoyance. So that was good. For five minutes.
The evening went even better than the afternoon. By the time Kevin turned up with Noelle in tow ... well, how did you spell “disaster?” So much for any romantic plans she may have harbored. And as for any transformation into a sultry seductress? Not happening.
“Hi,” she said, opening the door and shoving at her hair, which was overdue for a cut, to cite only one of its problems. “Limp” was a word. “Limp” was the word. “Sorry. It’s not going too well.”
Kevin took a look at her in her leggings and jumper, and another at Zavy, who at this moment was imitating a break dancer, in the sense that he was lying flat on his back on the floor and spinning in a circle. And not, in the sense that he was providing his own music.
She said, “Maybe next time, eh,” over the unmelodious sound of her child crying, and tried to make it sound casual.
Kevin said, “I have an idea. You want to run with it, or do you want me to leave?”
“Oh,” she said with a sigh, “I’d say I want to run with somebody else’s idea. I’m all out.”
“Right.” He pulled out his wallet and handed Noelle twenty dollars. “Our twenty,” he told Chloe. “I knew we’d need it sometime.” He told his sister, “That’s not for dinner. Use the card for dinner. The twenty’s your fee, same as for babysitting, except it’s for collecting a takeaway and bringing it back.”
“What kind?” Noelle asked.
Kevin looked at Chloe. “What kind?”
“If I had a preference,” she said, “I lost it about three meltdowns back.”
“Thai,” Kevin told Noelle. “Go.”
She went, and after that, Kevin went over to Zavy, picked him up off the floor, and tossed him face-down over his shoulder.
Zavy was surprised, Chloe guessed. At any rate, he stopped crying.
“Two-person job,” Kevin said. “You start the bath, I throw him in.” And she was just desperate enough to laugh.
Zavy started crying—or continued crying, more like, because that had been more “pause” than anything else—but Kevin ignored that. Instead, once the bath was full and Zavy was in it, he started a parade of plastic animals walking up and down the porcelain, their voices squeaking.
“Oh, Mr. Bear,” he said in falsetto, waggling the fox, “I think I’ve got your berries. I can’t eat these. I need a nice fat goose.”
“What?” The goose was waggling now. “Eat me, will you? I’ll show you!” Kevin bashed the two of animals together, plunged them into the water with a splash, and then pulled the goose out and zoomed him through the air.
“And then the fox chases it!” Zavy said, grabbing the fox from Kevin.
“Ha-ha,” Kevin proclaimed in what was apparently goose-quack. “You forgot one simple fact. I can fly!”
At this moment, Chloe didn’t much care about whether she was a good mum or a bad one. If there was no screaming, that was good enough for her. She went to Zavy’s bedroom, and by the time she came back with his pajamas, Zavy and Kevin seemed to be writing their own book. In fifteen more minutes, she had Zavy’s hair washed, his teeth brushed, and his pj’s on.
“I want Kevin to read me my story,” Zavy said. “I don’t want you, Mummy.”
“If you’re trying to manipulate me,” she said, “you’re out of luck, because all that thought makes me is happy.”
Kevin laughed, and she had to smile, too. She even took five minutes, after she’d drained the bath and put Zavy’s toys away, to wash her face, put on a bit of makeup, and make some attempt at her hair. She didn’t change her clothes, because the effort was beyond her. Kevin was doomed to harsh reality tonight.
When Zavy was finally asleep and Noelle had returned, handed over two plastic carrier bags, and left again, saying, “Easiest twenty dollars I’ve ever made,” Chloe looked at Kevin and said, “Tell me the rest of this evening involves my couch.”
“Yeh,” he said, “as it happens. That was the idea.”
“And something on the TV that’s not sport.”
“You always let the girl choose the film,” he said solemnly, and she had to smile.
An hour later, they were still watching, but not very attentively. She was more interested in lying against Kevin’s chest, and to tell the unromantic truth, she was pretty close to falling asleep.
Kevin was rubbing a lock of her hair between his fingers when he said, “We could keep on like this.”
“Hmm? Like what?” she asked, though it came out lazy.
“Has it occurred to you that there’s an easy answer to your problem?”
She twisted around to look at him. “You offering to murder Rich? Tempting.”
He smiled, but said, “You need someplace to live. So do Connor and Brenna.”
A jolt at that. Fear, maybe, because it sounded too much like a nudge. “I know I’m nearly out of time. I’m trying, and I’ll try harder.” She tried to joke, but it wasn’t easy. “Zavy suggested a dog kennel today. He thought we could have a donkey. Do I look like a woman who needs a donkey?”
Kevin wasn’t smiling now. “I’m serious. I have a big house. The part downstairs, I mean.”
She pushed herself up to sit. “What?”
“Got a library next to my bedroom as well. At least I think it’s meant to be a library, because it has shelves. Or maybe it’s an office, which I’m not using either. I’m not so much the accounts type, in case you haven’t noticed. I don’t have enough furniture for that house, and that’s the truth. You could move yours in, at least some of it. At least Zavy’s. Into that whatever-it-is room.”
“Right.” She got up and began to pick up paper containers. “After a month, I move in with you.”
“Stop that.” He pulled her back down to sit. “I’m talking to you. Don’t run away.”
The anger was rising, hot and red, up her chest and into her cheeks, shocking her. No self-control at all when she said, “I’ll run away if I like. I don’t answer to you. I can move around as much as I like while I talk to you, and this is still my apartment, because I’m still paying the rent.”
Kevin was looking at her as if she’d sprouted horns. She held her breath, but she wasn’t going down this road again. She was responsible for her life—hers and Zavy’s—and nobody else. And then he said, “Right. Shows me. Starting over.”
She stared at him. “That’s it? That’s your fight?”
“No point losing the game while we’re still setting up the pieces.”
She did get up, then, took the cartons to
the tiny space that was her kitchen, and tossed the empties into the rubbish. Kevin came over himself, leaned against the kitchen bench, and crossed his arms.
“Defensive posture,” she informed him.
“Oh?” He raised his eyebrows at her. “Do I sound defensive? Maybe I’m just showing off my biceps, hoping that’ll soften you up.”
She stopped in the act of putting the cartons into the fridge. “You’re really terrifyingly adult, you know that? And you’re absolutely bloody useless at fighting.”
“So are you. Adult, I mean. You’re a fair hand at fighting. I’m starting over. Putting it out there, as adults do. I’d like you and Zavy to move in downstairs. That way, we could spend time together when I’m home, you could have built-in child minders when your babysitter can’t do it, Brenna and Connor could have their space, Rich could be even more scared of me than he already is, and as much as you won’t like my mentioning it, you could save some money.”
She shoved at her limp hair again, leaned back against the bench herself, and said, “You could take a survey of fifty child psychologists, and every one of them would tell you what a bad idea it is to move in with the new boyfriend.”
“No.” Kevin still sounded much too controlled for somebody contemplating major life changes. “They’d tell you what a bad idea it is to move in with him and then move out again. To get Zavy attached, and then break that attachment.”
“And how do we know whether that would happen?”
“I don’t know. How?”
“Men change their minds, especially when real life hits.”
“Some men do. And some men stick.”
“Kevin.” She tried to laugh, but she couldn’t. Her emotions were everywhere. She couldn’t even have named them. “It’s been—what?—a month since you walked into my studio? Maybe?”
“Right. So let me ask this. How does that month compare to your first month with anybody else?”
Her feet were moving, as always. She dropped into a plié in first, came up onto her toes into a relevé, said, “We are being honest, eh,” and did it again.
Just Say Yes (Escape to New Zealand Book 10) Page 24