Christmas Down Under: Six Sexy New Zealand & Australian Christmas Romances

by Rosalind James

  “Tell me,” he got out as he moved. “You need to tell me … aah … which way you like it. When I get the right spot, the right way for you.” He shifted position a bit, moved her legs wider apart, reached his hands underneath her to pull her even closer, lift her into him. “Better?”

  “Ah …” Her hips rose in his hands to meet him. “Yes. Yes. Do it like that. More.” Her own hands went to her breasts, caressing them as he moved in her, and his excitement ratcheted up another notch. She was moaning again now, calling out to him. He felt the moment when she began to go up again, and this time, when she went over the top, he was there with her, in an orgasm so powerful it was almost painful, shouting out his release with her.

  Afterwards, he grabbed a dirty T-shirt from the laundry basket at his feet, wiped both of them off with it, zipped himself up again and helped her off the table, steadied her against him when her legs wobbled.

  “All right?” he asked her.

  She laughed shakily and let him hold her against him, rested her cheek against his broad chest. “Not sure. I’m going to have to fold all these clothes again, too.”

  He smiled. “Tell you what, I’ll help you, since I’m the one who jumped you. Sorry. Not too romantic. Your fault, though. You’re too sexy. I needed to throw you down this time. But come on. We’ll take a shower and start over again in bed. I’ll make it up to you.”

  “I wasn’t exactly complaining.”

  “You were screaming, though,” he grinned. “But you’re right, it didn’t sound like complaining.”

  “Very gentlemanly of you to mention that. But I can’t. If I don’t go to the grocery store before I go meet the kids, you aren’t going to have any dinner. You wouldn’t want me to get in trouble. I have a very mean boss. You should see what he does to me.”

  “Bet if you made him happy enough, he’d take you and the kids out to the pub instead,” he suggested, his hands moving to pull off her skirt at last. “And I know how you can do that. Starting by walking up those stairs in front of me.”

  “You already got pretty happy,” she pointed out. “And I got very happy.”

  “Come on,” he urged. “Come make me even happier. I’ll tell you exactly how. And then you can tell me.”

  * * *

  “I can’t finish, Daddy,” Sophie said with a sigh.

  “No worries,” Finn said, pulling her plate towards him. “I have room.”

  “I was wondering why you didn’t insist that she get the kids’ version,” Jenna remarked. “Now I get it.”

  He grinned at her. “They do a pretty fair steak here. But their bangers and mash are choice. And you know how I feel about getting everything I like.” He speared a chunk of sausage and smiled at the kick she sent him under the table. “What?” he asked innocently, wiping his mouth with his napkin.

  “Well. Fancy meeting you here.” He turned around to see Ben Thompson arriving at their table. “Giving Jenna a bit of a holiday from the kitchen, eh.”

  “That’s right.” Finn looked Ben over. “You’ve packed on a kilo or two since the end of the season, haven’t you? Bit too much beer, maybe.” He nodded to the glass in Ben’s hand. “Want to watch that.”

  “Finn, for heaven’s sake,” Jenna protested. “Would you like to join us, Ben? We’re finishing up, but sit down for a minute and have a chat.”

  “Dunno.” Ben looked at Finn challengingly. “Not sure how welcome I am.”

  “Nah. Sit down.” Finn shoved a chair out with his foot and watched as Ben levered himself into it, taking a sip from his brimming glass. “Jenna thinks I’m rude, so I’ll try again. How’re you going? Thought you’d be in the Coromandel for the fishing.”

  “Another couple weeks,” Ben said. “Planning a trip to Tonga too, next month.”

  “Wow. That sounds great.” Jenna said. “It’s nice, I hear.”

  “You’ve never been? How about the other islands?”

  “Fiji once, years ago,” Jenna said. “But that’s it. Do you go a lot?”

  “Every year, at least once. Go with a few mates, do a bit of diving, some fishing. I went to Samoa after the semifinal this year, drowned my sorrows.”

  “Yeh. I heard,” Finn said. “And I was serious. You don’t want to come back out of condition in January. It may seem like you have heaps of time now, almost three months out. But you’d be surprised how hard it is to climb back if you let yourself go. Want to make sure you’re getting the running and the gym time in, too. You’re looking a bit soft around the midsection.”

  Harry reached out with a small finger and poked Ben in his middle. “You’re right, Daddy. Ben’s squishy. Not all hard like you.”

  “Harry!” Jenna said. “Don’t you remember my telling you that it isn’t polite to talk about how people look?”

  “You said ladies,” Harry protested. “You and Daddy said not to talk about ladies’ bottoms. When I said about the wombats. But Ben isn’t a lady. And I wasn’t talking about his bottom. Anyway, Daddy was talking about it first.”

  Ben grinned and looked from Finn to Jenna. “Ladies’ bottoms? Yeh, Harry. I’d listen to your dad. Leave that one to him.”

  Jenna looked helplessly at Finn. “That’s my cue to excuse myself. This one’s yours. Talk to your son. Come on, Sophie. We’re going to the toilet.”

  Ben watched them go. “Bit cozy,” he remarked. “Do I take it that you’ve overcome your scruples?”

  “Remember when I told you that what Jenna did was none of your business?” Finn asked, his voice carrying a distinct note of warning. “Leave it.”

  “Ah.” Ben’s cheeky good humor appeared unruffled. “No point in my trying again, then. Pity, but there you are.” He got up to leave. “No point in my hanging about, either. Because the scenery just got a lot less interesting.”

  Finn held out up a restraining hand. “Half a mo. I meant what I said, earlier. You need to step up your workouts. I’m at Les Mills most mornings around nine. Come join me.”

  “Don’t have a membership.”

  “Get one,” Finn ordered. “That’s your new assignment. And meet me there tomorrow morning.”

  “Aw, geez,” Ben complained. “I stop by to say a friendly hello, and not only do I get warned off, I get dragged into extra workouts during my holiday.”

  “Right on both counts,” Finn said. “And I know why you stopped by. So don’t start with that. See you tomorrow at nine.”

  “Right,” Ben sighed. “See you then.”

  Taniwha

  “Oh, yeah,” Jenna breathed. “That’s it. Oh, please, Finn.”

  “Daddy!” The voice registered dimly. She heard the knocking then, came back to herself with a start.

  “Finn,” she hissed, grabbed him by the hair when she didn’t get a response. “Finn. Stop.”

  “DADDY!” He heard it now, too, and froze.

  “Shit,” he groaned as he rolled off her and began to put himself hastily to rights. He pulled his T-shirt and underwear from the floor, tossed Jenna her nightgown. She yanked it on and dashed for the bathroom, shut the door and locked it behind her.

  Harry’s voice, now, coming clearly to her from inside the bedroom. “Daddy.” She heard the sobs, the panic in his voice. “I’m scared. And I can’t find Jenna. She’s gone, Dad.”

  “Nah.” Finn’s deep rumble, now. “Just went for a walk, I reckon. Come on. Let’s get you a drink of water, get you back in your bed.”

  She waited, her feet cold on the tiled floor, until she judged that five minutes or so had passed. She opened the bathroom door, crept across to the stairway, looked down cautiously, got down the stairs as noiselessly as she could, peered into the hallway. Harry’s door stood a bit ajar, but all was dark and quiet. She made it to her own bedroom, climbed, shivering, back into bed and pulled the duvet over herself, trapped her hands between her knees to warm them. That had been too close.

  “Where did you go last night, Jenna?” Harry asked as she poured his orange juice at breakfast. “I we
nt to find you, and you weren’t there. I was scared.”

  “Ah…” Jenna looked across at Finn, who raised his eyebrows at her. “Sometimes I have trouble sleeping. I have to get up and do something before I can go back to bed and fall asleep again.”

  Well, it was the truth, she thought as she saw Finn hiding a smile behind one big hand. Except that last night, between the near-discovery by Harry and her body’s unsatisfied state, it had taken her a long, long time to fall asleep. Maybe she should have gone for a walk.

  “Why did you come to find me?” she asked Harry now. “What happened?”

  “I had a really scary dream,” Harry told her. “Really scary. Bad.”

  “A nightmare? What was it about?”

  “It was a taniwha,” he said with a shudder. “That bad taniwha by Nana’s house. He was coming to eat me, like in the story.”

  Finn saw Jenna’s bafflement and explained. “It’s in the mountains above Motueka. There’s a place with loads of strange-looking volcanic boulders. All grooved and twisted. And there’s a legend about them. That there was a taniwha—”

  “A monster,” Sophie put in helpfully.

  “Reckon Jenna knows what a taniwha is,” Finn said with a smile. “Anyway, the taniwha was terrorizing the village, stealing people away and eating them. One day, it captured the chief’s daughter. The villagers decided they’d had enough of that. They tricked it, fed it meat packed with explosives, and blew it up. Those strange boulders, they’re meant to be what’s left, the taniwha’s scales. To be fair, they do look a bit like that.”

  “And you went on that walk when you visited your Nana and Grandad this time, Harry?” Jenna guessed.

  He nodded. “The scales were really, really big. And I imagined how big the taniwha must have been. He would’ve been enormous. Last night I dreamt he was chasing me. He was about to get me. His teeth were big and sharp, and he was talking to me.” He shuddered. “He was saying he was going to eat me. Then I woke up. And I looked for you, but you weren’t there.”

  “That does sound very scary,” Jenna said. “But taniwha aren’t real. You do know that, don’t you?”

  “The Maori think they’re real, though,” Sophie said.

  “A few people do,” Jenna said. “You know about myths and legends, both of you. They’re stories. Stories people made up a long time ago to explain strange things. But even something that isn’t real can be scary in a bad dream,” she assured Harry. “It’s lucky we can wake up and remind ourselves that it was just a dream.”

  “Daddy stayed with me,” Harry said. “Till I fell asleep again. I knew the taniwha couldn’t get me if Daddy was there. Even if he was real.”

  * * *

  “I came back to bed last night,” Finn said conversationally as he and Jenna walked back home after dropping the kids at school. “After doing my fatherly duty. Imagine my disappointment.”

  “What?” Jenna asked. “Did you think I’d still be there?”

  “I was hoping. We weren’t done, if I remember right.”

  “I wasn’t going to hang around there,” she protested. “What if Harry’d had another bad dream?”

  “I had a bad dream, too,” he said. “I dreamt I was making love to a beautiful woman, and she disappeared just when we were getting to my favorite bit.”

  “I’m just glad I locked the door,” she sighed. “I can’t imagine, otherwise. But, Finn. It’s made me realize, we’ve become really careless. We can’t do this anymore.”

  “What?” he asked, looking down at her in surprise. “Why the hell not?”

  “Not when the kids are in the house,” she clarified. “How many nighttime walks am I going to be able to take? And I can’t relax and enjoy myself, if you know what I mean, expecting the kids to come knocking at the door any minute.”

  “Maybe we should tell them, then, stop all this secrecy,” he said in frustration. “Because I want to be able to sleep with you.”

  “We still have the days,” she reminded him.

  “Until training starts up again,” he grumbled.

  “And a week after that, you’re off on the Tour,” she said. “When you come back, I’ll be moving out. It’s better for them if, while I’m here, I’m their nanny. If it’s clear. And after that, even if we’re dating, I won’t be their nanny anymore, and they’ll have Nyree back. They’ll have that security. Though I’ll still be their friend, I hope.”

  “Course you will. But meanwhile, what about us? Surely you can still come to bed with me. With the door locked. In the middle of the night.”

  “No,” she said. “I’m not hiding in the bathroom again. Or thinking that I’ll have to. Nothing else at night. Not unless the kids have a sleepover.”

  His eyes lit. “Friday night.”

  “All right,” she laughed. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  “And if I’m not allowed to have you at night,” he continued, “you’d better be prepared to let some of that housework go, this week. Better be planning on some takeaways too. Because I’ve just decided how we’re going to be spending our days.” He opened the gate for her and watched her walking up the steps of the villa ahead of him. “Starting right now.”

  “I haven’t done the washing-up yet,” she teased as she used her key to open the front door.

  He kicked the door shut with one big foot, his arms going around her. “Sod the washing-up. Upstairs. Now.”

  “Think you can give me orders, huh?” She smiled up at him as she toed off her jandals.

  “I know I can. And I’m doing it. Upstairs.”

  “That shouldn’t work so well on me,” she complained. “It’s not right.”

  “Oi. You’ve just restricted me, laid down the law,” he pointed out, his hands clasping her waist as she climbed the stairs ahead of him. “Have to give me some way to assert myself. Wouldn’t want me to feel powerless, would you.”

  “Oh, I don’t think that’s happening.” She smiled up at him, felt the thrill as he pushed her down on the big bed, his hand behind her head to break her fall. “I don’t think you’re going to be feeling powerless here anytime soon.”

  * * *

  “Need to talk to you,” Finn said on Wednesday morning.

  “I think you’ve been talking to me,” she sighed, settling her head more comfortably against his bare chest. “Or do you mean you actually want to have a conversation, not just tell me what to do?”

  “Seem to recall you giving me a few instructions there, too. It wasn’t me saying …”

  “OK. Moving on,” she said hastily. “What do we need to talk about?”

  “Labour Day weekend coming up,” he reminded her. “A few of the senior players are traveling to the Coromandel together, with their families. Bit of fishing, get the partners and kids together before the Tour.”

  “And you’re going,” she guessed. “You and the kids.”

  “I’ve been going back and forth in my mind about it, trying to decide. We’ve gone for years now. It would look odd if I didn’t. If you want to come too, say the word,” he went on quickly. “Keeping this quiet was your idea, not mine. Maybe it’s time to end the secrecy.”

  “No. It’ll be your last chance to spend time with the kids before you leave. Especially if you’ve been doing that together every year. I’ll bet Sophie’s already looking forward to it.”

  “Right,” he sighed. “I’m sure you’re right. But I don’t want to leave you when I’m about to go away for so long.”

  “It’s only three days,” she said. “You’ll be back after that.”

  “And doing some serious training, which means I’ll be gone most of the day.”

  “And you leave Monday, right? The second.” She thought for a minute. “Playdate, on the weekend,” she decided. “That’s what we’ll do.”

  “I thought we could have some playdates those nights, too.”

  “Not us.” She saw him grinning at her and laughed reluctantly. “A playdate for the kids, so we’ll have som
e time together before you go. And maybe a couple late afternoons as well. I’ll make sure I get Siobhan’s kids over here too, so I can ask the favor. OK?”

  “If that’s all I get,” he sighed,“OK. I’ll take a playdate.”

  “And we still have this week,” she reminded him.

  “That’s right.” He rolled over, trapped her beneath him. “We do. So we’d better be making the most of it.”

  * * *

  Jenna woke knowing this was the day. Labour Day. That was appropriate, she hoped. Anyway, she couldn’t put this off anymore. Finn and the kids would be back tonight, and her period was almost two weeks late. She’d been irregular before, but never by this much. And she’d begun feeling queasy, having a difficult time cooking. She was pretty sure, but she needed to know.

  She reached under the bed, pulled out the white chemist’s bag she’d hidden there, got up and went into the bathroom, pulled the package out of the bag and opened it, spreading the instructions carefully out on the counter. It was the same type she’d used before. She remembered everything about that day. How she’d held her breath, how thrilled she’d been as she’d watched the line form on the test strip.

  Today, she followed the instructions, then sat and watched the strip in mingled hope and fear. The two minutes stretched out, second by second. She could feel her heart beating faster as she waited. Was that a faint line forming, though? She held her breath again this time as it darkened, became clearer.

  There was no doubt, then. She was pregnant.

  She took a deep breath, then stood up, bundled the entire kit and its packaging back into the white bag, dropped it into the plastic bag lining the bathroom wastebasket, then pulled the entire thing out. She wasn’t going to risk anybody finding out about this, one of the kids getting curious when they got home tonight, however unlikely that was. Not until she had a plan.

  She went through the motions of brushing her teeth, washing her face, moved mechanically back to her room and set the rubbish bag down carefully to be thrown into the bin outside. Then she dressed in her running clothes. She’d think it through during her run, when her mind was at its clearest.