Just for Now: Escape to New Zealand Book Three

by Rosalind James

  He raised his eyebrows. “In person, eh. So it’s done?” At her nod, he added, “Most people just apply once the two years’re up, wait for the order to come in the post. What made you decide to go to the trouble?”

  “Oh,” he realized at the look on her face. “Somebody has a new partner, wants to get married again straightaway. And we know that isn’t you.”

  “Not exactly new,” she said, unable to keep the bitterness out of her voice. “But yeah, they want to go ahead. And I was just as glad to get it over with. I thought I was, anyway.” The tears threatened again. “I don’t know why I’m reacting like this. It’s a long time to be in limbo, and now that’s over. I’m free. So why do I feel so sad?”

  “Because it isn’t what you expected, when you got married,” he told her gently. “When you see it in writing like that, you remember all the dreams you had. The way you thought it would be. And you know that dream’s gone.”

  She couldn’t hold back the tears this time. She groped for the tissue box on the end table, wiped her eyes, got herself back under control. “You sound like you know. But your wife died. Is that the same thing? Does it feel like that?”

  “Reckon it doesn’t, not if she died loving you,” he said. “But she didn’t. So I’ve had those same feelings. You tell yourself, while you’re married, that it’s all right. That nobody’s marriage is perfect. You lie to yourself, eh. And then, when it happens . . .” He shrugged. “You can’t do that anymore, can you.”

  “Some things you can’t close your eyes to,” she agreed. “No matter how the person’s tried to explain it away.”

  “I was right, then. He lied,” Finn guessed.

  “Yeah. And then some.”

  “He had someone else, and you found out. How?”

  “The hard way,” she admitted. “Classic. An evening meeting that got canceled, so I came home. And there they were, in our bed. You wish you could walk away, forget what you saw. But you can’t. I realized that I’d known all along, but I didn’t want to see. I wanted to believe that I had a marriage.”

  He nodded. “I know all about that.”

  “It happened to you too? And you found them?”

  “Nah. Thank God. Who knows what I’d’ve done. But after Nicole died, I found out why she was on that road. Who she’d been going to meet. And that it had been going on for a while. She’d probably have left us, in the end. Well, she did at that, didn’t she? But it was all such a shock, I was just . . . numb for a long time. Would have gone round the bend if it hadn’t been for the kids. Even so, I drank too much, did some things I regret. It took a long time to get myself right. To see that we weren’t suited. It wasn’t about him. It was about the two of us, who we were. What she wanted that I couldn’t give her.”

  “But you’re so great,” Jenna protested. “I mean,” she went on at his surprised glance, “such a good dad. And such a strong man. A good man. Why wouldn’t she want that?”

  “I could say the same thing,” he pointed out. “I can’t see why your husband didn’t want you, either.”

  “That’s different,” she assured him. “I wasn’t his type, trust me.”

  “Well, I wasn’t Nicole’s either, as it turned out. And she wasn’t mine. She was Aussie, and a model, you remember. Very beautiful. A bit spoilt, I realize now. We met over there, when I was playing. Had a long-distance romance for a few months before we got married. But she wasn’t prepared for what my life really was. She just saw the publicity, the travel. She thought it'd be some kind of glamorous existence. Turned out she didn’t like anything about it.”

  “She hated living in Dunedin,” he went on. “I was playing for the Highlanders at the time. It was too cold for her, too small, too quiet, after Sydney. She was used to the bright lights, and God knows Dunedin doesn’t have much of that on offer. Then, being married, being a mum. She’d always had heaps of attention, men being after her all the time, telling her how beautiful she was, taking her out. Even leaving out that I was gone so much, I’m not the best at that. Pretty simple bloke. I’d rather stay home, most of the time.”

  “Of course you would,” Jenna said, outraged for him. “As hard as you work.”

  “That was the other thing. She resented giving up her career, the modeling. She was starting to have some pretty fair success when we got married. She didn’t like what having kids did to her body. And she couldn’t do much from Dunedin anyway, not with a baby at home. When Harry came along, it made it that much worse. I signed with the Blues, moved to Auckland so she could have a bit of city life, hired Nyree. I thought she might be happier here. But it wasn’t enough.”

  “She must not have realized how much she’d need all that,” Jenna mused, “if she said yes in the first place. You must not have, either.”

  He looked at her wryly. “Three guesses why we jumped into it so fast.”

  “Oh,” she realized. “Sophie.”

  He nodded. “We were careless. Stupid. But I wouldn’t have given up Sophie, not for anything. Harry either.”

  “So,” he shrugged. “Reckon I’m an expert on marrying the wrong person. And on how bad it feels when you find out. You look at the wedding photos, your wedding ring, after you take it off that last time, remember all your high hopes. It’s like all that, all your feelings, were a lie. When you find out she was seeing someone else, and lying to you about it.”

  “You really do know,” Jenna told him. The combination of fatigue and emotion had made the wine go straight to her head, and she had to concentrate to set the empty glass back on the coffee table. “That’s exactly how it feels. It’s all . . .” she made an expansive gesture. “Gone. Wiped out. And I don’t know how to fill that space now. What my life is going to look like, when it . . . starts up again.”

  “It’s going to look better,” he promised. “It’s hard now. Got to expect that, when you see the paperwork signed. Or in my case, when you face life without your wife in the house. When you’re Dad, and you’re all there is. But it gets better. Because you aren’t living that lie anymore. Not spending all that energy trying to convince yourself it’s going to work out, when you know deep down it isn’t. That whatever was there once is gone.”

  “Shoot.” She was crying again. “Sorry.” She reached for another tissue. “I hope you’re right. Thank you for talking to me, sharing that with me. It helps.”

  “No worries,” he smiled ruefully. “If hearing my sad story helped you, I’m glad. All I can tell you is, you wouldn’t be normal if you weren’t sad. Because it hurts.”

  “Yeah.” She wiped her eyes again, got up with a watery smile. “I need to take a shower and go to bed. And figure I’ll feel just a little bit better in the morning.”

  He rose with her, bent down to kiss her cheek. “Reckon you will.” He gathered up her glass, his own beer bottle. “See you then. Sleep well.”

  “Still OK with bringing the kids down to Welly this weekend?” Finn asked the following afternoon. He’d been gone to practice by the time she’d come back from walking the kids to school, and although she’d fixed him breakfast as usual, this was the first time they’d had to talk alone since their conversation of the evening before. But now the kids were in the lounge working on their homework and Finn was keeping her company in the kitchen, filching bits of apple as she prepared a crumble for tonight’s pudding.

  “Of course. That’s the plan. Unless you’ve changed your mind.”

  “Nah. I’d like it. But I thought, bad memories. Didn’t realize when we set it up.”

  “I’d like to go, actually. Heaven knows I never went to a rugby game when I lived there. I’d like to take the kids to Te Papa too. And the Botanic Garden. It’d be kind of nice to have some different experiences there,” she tried to explain. “Other associations.”

  He nodded. “I can understand that. Wait for Te Papa till Sunday, if you don’t mind, so I can go too. I’ll have to educate myself anyway. You know how Harry likes to discuss. Can’t have him thinking his dad�
��s ignorant.”

  “We’d both better be taking notes,” she said with a smile. “There’s a lot to learn. It’s a wonderful museum. Have you been?”

  “I’m ashamed to admit that I haven’t. This’ll be my chance, eh. And your chance to experience the Cake Tin.”

  “I’m not so interested in the stadium. I’m much more excited about seeing you playing with the All Blacks. Since I’ve never seen the team play in person. I hadn’t seen any All Blacks games at all, for that matter, until these past weeks.”

  “Those were the first test matches you’d ever seen?” he asked in surprise. “After all this time in En Zed?”

  “It seems astonishing now,” she agreed. “But my husband didn’t care about rugby, and neither did his friends, so we never had it on at home. And I didn’t grow up with it either, of course. I didn’t know what I was missing.”

  “Not even the World Cup?”

  “Nope. I did realize you’d won,” she hastened to assure him. “I could hardly miss that. And I’d catch glimpses of rugby games at the pub, restaurants. But since I didn’t have Sophie to explain the game to me, I never knew what I was looking at, so I wasn’t very interested.”

  “She’s a good teacher, eh.”

  “She certainly is. And she’ll have another chance to instruct me on Saturday.”

  “The paper says the Springboks could win tonight,” Jenna said to Sophie as they found their seats in Wellington’s circular stadium, so aptly nicknamed for the metal-walled cake tin it resembled.

  Sophie scoffed. “Just because we lost last time against them, and we’ve had some injuries. We have a deep side, though, you’ll see. The Boks think they can win again with that boring kick-and-chase footy, but they’re wrong about that too.”

  “Where they kick the ball downfield, then chase after it, race for it,” she explained at Jenna’s bewildered look. “Watch, and I’ll show you.”

  Despite Sophie’s confident words, Jenna knew the little girl was nervous. Harry was more keyed up than usual, too. Clearly, watching a game in person was different from seeing it on television.

  “Here they come!” Harry shouted. The crowd was on its feet, roaring its approval as the team took the field behind their captain, and again when they lined up facing the Springboks to perform the haka. When the Maori player pacing between the rows called out the first words of instruction for the traditional challenge and the players dropped into their squats, hands beginning to slap their thighs, the noise grew to almost overwhelming proportions, stayed that way throughout the ferocious movements and shouted chant. The team finished as a staring, intimidating mass of black, and the stadium erupted.

  Harry was still jumping up and down with excitement as the crowd took its seats to await the kickoff. “Did you see that, Jenna? Did you see Daddy doing the haka?”

  “I did,” Jenna smiled, pulling him down to sit next to her. “He looked fierce, didn’t he?”

  “Because he’s feeling that way inside too,” Sophie explained.

  “He told me,” she went on as Jenna looked at her in surprise. “He has to get himself right to go hard all night. Most of the boys listen to music once they get on the bus, and in the sheds before the game. But Daddy just concentrates. He thinks about what he’s going to do, till he feels dead fierce and strong.”

  “Daddy isn’t really fierce, though,” Harry protested. “He’s nice.”

  “Not when he’s playing,” Sophie told him patiently. “He has to be able to hurt people. He can’t do that if he’s feeling nice.”

  Sophie was right, Jenna decided. She’d never have recognized her thoughtful companion of a few nights ago in the warrior she saw attacking the ball carrier, or carrying the ball himself like a battering ram through a line of South African defenders. Whether he was pushing from the back of the scrum, leaping for the ball in a lineout, or racing to the breakdown, Finn emanated focus and determination. She marveled at the strength and stamina it took to work that hard for forty minutes straight, then back for another forty after a brief break.

  Midway through the second half, the All Blacks captain, Drew Callahan, made a sudden turn to tackle an opposing player, pulled up short, and went down on the turf. The crowd seemed to hold its breath until he limped off, supported by the trainer and a huge round of relieved applause from the crowd, as a substitute ran from the bench to take his place.

  “That’s bad, right? He seems like an important player,” Jenna said to Sophie.

  Sophie looked at her in mild exasperation. “Yeh. He’s the blindside flanker, remember? He does heaps of tackling, and the Boks are strong. But Matt Ropata is pretty good too. We can still win.”

  She seemed to be trying to convince herself, and Jenna reached for her hand. “We’ll just have to see. What happens when the captain’s gone, though? Who does . . . whatever it is that he does?”

  “Daddy,” Sophie said in surprise. “He’s the vice captain. Didn’t you know?”

  “No. Really?”

  “Yeh. Daddy’s been on the squad almost as long as Drew. He’s been vice captain for ages.”

  “So what’s he doing now that’s different?” Jenna asked, watching Finn arriving at the breakdown, where the ball carrier had just been tackled, to help get the ball to the backline.

  “Talking to people more,” Sophie explained. “Especially the No. 10. About what they’re going to do. But it’s hard to see from here.”

  The lead shifted back and forth twice more in the final fifteen minutes, the most gripping of a tense match, with the All Blacks scoring a drop goal after the final buzzer had sounded to win by a single point. By the time it was all over, Harry was asleep with his head in Jenna’s lap, his enthusiasm no match for the day’s excitement and the late hour. But Sophie was even more wound up than before, leaping and cheering the All Blacks’ narrow margin of victory.

  “I told you, Jenna!” she exulted as Jenna picked up a drowsy Harry, settling him on her hip for the slow exit from the stadium. “I told you they could do it!”

  “And you were right,” Jenna agreed. “They did great, didn’t they? Stay close to me, now. Hold onto the strap of my purse. I don’t want to lose you in this crowd.”

  “Is Daddy coming back to the hotel tonight?” Sophie asked, still bright-eyed and overexcited on the way to the carpark. She let go of Jenna to dance ahead of her, facing backwards. “Can I stay up and wait for him? I want to tell him well done.”

  “No, he said he’d be going back to the team hotel. We’ll see him in the morning, though,” Jenna promised. “And we’ll all go to the museum together after that. Once he’s had a good sleep, and a nice big breakfast.” She could tell he was going to need both.

  Chapter 16

  “The Colossal Squid was actually found very close to New Zealand, did you know that, Jenna?” Harry asked the following afternoon. “It’s from Antarctica. That’s not very far away, did you know that?”

  “That’s true,” Jenna told him. “We can look at the world map when we get home and figure out how many kilometers it is.”

  Harry bounced happily along next to her on their way across the expansive pedestrian bridge and plaza beside Wellington Harbour, clutching her hand and still talking about the huge squid that had so taken his fancy in the museum, but Jenna had stopped listening. Her heart sank at the sight of the two men approaching, recognition dawning on their faces as they drew closer. She found her steps slowing until she came to a stop. Harry stopped too, his face turned up to her questioningly. Finn, noticing, turned back with Sophie as well.

  “Jeremy.” Her mouth had gone dry. “And Alan.” She took a breath and continued. “Finn, I’d like to introduce you to Jeremy Davies, my former husband. And his partner, Alan Green. This is Finn Douglas, my employer, and his children.” She went on to introduce Sophie and Harry as well, and Finn reached out to shake both men’s hands. He had his game face on, Jenna saw. His stone face.

  “What are you doing back in Wellington?” Jeremy ask
ed her curiously, his eyes darting from her to Finn.

  “I brought the kids down to see their dad play. Finn’s an All Black,” she explained as Jeremy and Alan still looked blank. “They played the Springboks last night.”

  “Right.” Alan nodded, looked at Finn with renewed interest. “I heard about that.”

  “You’ll want to catch up, Jenna,” Finn told her. “I’ll take the kids back to the hotel, get them into the bath. Take your time.”

  “I’ll just be a few minutes,” she hastened to assure him. He nodded again at Jeremy and Alan, then took both children’s hands and continued across the bridge.

  “Major hotness,” Alan told Jenna approvingly. “And an All Black too. New boyfriend?”

  “No,” Jenna frowned at him. “My employer, like I said. I’m the nanny.”

  “Whatever,” he shrugged. “Though I’d have a go, if I were you. Because you look good. Jeremy told me, but I didn’t realize. We’ve all come out of this better in the end, haven’t we?”

  “Uh . . .” Jeremy had the grace to look a bit ashamed as he saw Jenna stiffen. “Anyway. I’m glad we ran into you. I was about to email you an invite to the wedding. We’re doing it in two weeks, down here, and I’d like you to be there. We’d like you to be there,” he corrected hastily, with a glance at Alan. “We were always good friends, weren’t we? I thought we could get some of that back, now that all this is behind us. Will you come?”

  Jenna flushed, hating being put on the spot. She couldn’t think of an excuse, settled on the truth instead. “I’m sorry, Jeremy. I do wish you well. But I can’t do that.”

  “Oh. Right.” He chewed his lip, then nodded. “Whatever you think.”

  “What about your family?” she asked. “Are they coming?”

  He gave a bitter laugh. “You’re joking. Clarissa and Elaine both told me they’d like to, but they’re not going to go against Mum to do it. And Dad does what Mum says. You know that by now.”