Christmas Down Under: Six Sexy New Zealand & Australian Christmas Romances
Page 82
smack: spank. Smacking kids is illegal in NZ.
smoko: coffee break
snog: kiss; make out with
sorted: taken care of
spa, spa pool: hot tub
sparrow fart: the crack of dawn
speedo: Not the swimsuit! Speedometer. (the swimsuit is called a budgie smuggler—a budgie is a parakeet, LOL.)
spew: vomit
spit the dummy: have a tantrum. (A dummy is a pacifier)
sportsman: athlete
sporty: liking sports
spot on: absolutely correct. “That’s spot on. You’re spot on.”
Springboks, Boks: South African national rugby team
squiz: look. “I was just having a squiz round.” “Giz a squiz”: Give me a look at that.
stickybeak: nosy person, busybody
stonkered: drunk—a bit stonkered—or exhausted
stoush: bar fight, fight
straight away: right away
strength of it: the truth, the facts. “What's the strength of that?” = “What's the true story on that?”
stroppy: prickly, taking offense easily
stuffed up: messed up
Super 15: Top rugby competition: five teams each from NZ, Australia, South Africa. The New Zealand Super 15 teams are, from north to south: Blues (Auckland), Chiefs (Waikato/Hamilton), Hurricanes (Wellington), Crusaders (Canterbury/Christchurch), Highlanders (Otago/Dunedin).
supporter: fan (Do NOT say “root for.” “To root” is to have (rude) sex!)
suss out: figure out
sweet: dessert
sweet as: great. (also: choice as, angry as, lame as … Meaning “very” whatever. “Mum was angry as that we ate up all the pudding before tea with Nana.”)
takahe: ground-dwelling native bird. Like a giant parrot.
takeaway: takeout (food)
tall poppy: arrogant person who puts himself forward or sets himself above others. It is every Kiwi's duty to cut down tall poppies, a job they undertake enthusiastically.
Tangata Whenua: Maori (people of the land)
tapu: sacred (Maori)
Te Papa: the National Museum, in Wellington
tea: dinner (casual meal at home)
tea towel: dishtowel
test match: international rugby match (e.g., an All Blacks game)
throw a wobbly: have a tantrum
tick off: cross off (tick off a list)
ticker: heart. “The boys showed a lot of ticker out there today.”
togs: swimsuit (male or female)
torch: flashlight
touch wood: knock on wood (for luck)
track: trail
trainers: athletic shoes
tramping: hiking
transtasman: Australia/New Zealand (the Bledisloe Cup is a transtasman rivalry)
trolley: shopping cart
tucker: food
tui: Native bird
turn to custard: go south, deteriorate
turps, go on the turps: get drunk
Uni: University—or school uniform
up the duff: pregnant. A bit vulgar (like “knocked up”)
ute: pickup or SUV
vet: check out
waiata: Maori song
wairua: spirit, soul (Maori). Very important concept.
waka: canoe (Maori)
Wallabies: Australian national rugby team
Warrant of Fitness: certificate of a car's fitness to drive
wedding tackle: the family jewels; a man’s genitals
Weet-Bix: ubiquitous breakfast cereal
whaddarya?: I am dubious about your masculinity (meaning “Whaddarya … pussy?”)
whakapapa: genealogy (Maori). A critical concept.
whanau: family (Maori). Big whanau: extended family. Small whanau: nuclear family.
wheelie bin: rubbish bin (garbage can) with wheels.
whinge: whine. Contemptuous! Kiwis dislike whingeing. Harden up!
White Ribbon: campaign against domestic violence
wind up: upset (perhaps purposefully). “Their comments were bound to wind him up.”
wing: rugby position (back)
Yank: American. Not pejorative.
yellow card: A penalty for dangerous play that sends a player off for 10 minutes to the sin bin. The team plays with 14 men during that time—or even 13, if two are sinbinned.
yonks: ages. “It's been going on for yonks.”
Links
Sign up for my mailing list, and receive a free book!
Find out what’s new at the ROSALIND JAMES WEBSITE.
“Like” my Facebook page or follow me on Twitter to learn about giveaways, events, and more.
Want to tell me what you liked, or what I got wrong? I’d love to hear! You can email me at Rosalind@rosalindjames.com
BY ROSALIND JAMES
The Escape to New Zealand series
Reka and Hemi’s story: JUST FOR YOU
Hannah and Drew’s story: JUST THIS ONCE
Kate and Koti’s story: JUST GOOD FRIENDS
Jenna and Finn’s story: JUST FOR NOW
Emma and Nic’s story: JUST FOR FUN
Ally and Nate’s/Kristen and Liam’s stories: JUST MY LUCK
Josie and Hugh’s story: JUST NOT MINE
Hannah & Drew’s story again/Reunion: JUST ONCE MORE
Faith & Will’s story: JUST IN TIME
The Not Quite a Billionaire series
Hope and Hemi’s story: FIERCE
The Paradise, Idaho series (Montlake Romance)
Zoe & Cal’s story: CARRY ME HOME
Kayla & Luke’s story: HOLD ME CLOSE (December 2015)
Rochelle & Travis’s story: TURN ME LOOSE (April 2016)
The Kincaids series
Mira and Gabe’s story: WELCOME TO PARADISE
Desiree and Alec’s story: NOTHING PERSONAL
Alyssa and Joe’s story: ASKING FOR TROUBLE
Cover design by Robin Ludwig Design Inc., http://www.gobookcoverdesign.com/
Read on for an excerpt from JUST FOR FUN (Escape to New Zealand, Book Four)
Just for Fun—Chapter 1
Nic Wilkinson wasn’t looking to change his life. He just wanted to go home. Instead, he quit watching where he was going, stepped in a puddle, and swore. It had rained the night before, and this part of the field was still muddy. The hundred or so boys gathered for the last day of Rob Euliss’s rugby camp weren’t helping a bit. They’d churned up the grass good and proper this week, Nic saw with disgust as he felt the water squelch inside his shoe. This wasn’t his idea of a fun way to spend a Sunday morning during a rare bye week. The kids were OK. He wasn’t always too keen on the parents, though.
But Rob was a neighbor, and a mate. Anyway, when a legendary former All Black asked a favor, you didn’t say no. So here he was, trying to avoid the rest of the muck around the edge of the huge field that made up the North Harbour Rugby Club, and preparing to do his duty.
Nic squinted around the clusters of boys, playing their final matches of the Easter-week camp under the watchful eyes of volunteer coaches and a sprinkling of dads who’d been pressed into service. He finally spotted the still-imposing figure of Rob, issuing impatient instructions to a hapless dad, and made his way toward the pair.
“Get them to stay onside,” Rob was barking at the harassed-looking volunteer, intimidating the poor bloke with his trademark volcanic frown. “They know better.”
Nic waited until the chastened dad took himself off, then offered, “Morning, Rob.”
“Nico. You took your time,” Rob grumbled. “I said ten.”
“Sorry. Claudia wasn’t rapt about my plan for the day. Where do you want me?” Nic could see a few of his Blues and All Black teammates, each surrounded by a little knot of starstruck boys, their parents hovering close. “I’ll help out here, if you like.”
“Don’t want to meet the mums, eh. Don’t blame you. Stay with me a minute, then. I’ll find a spot to pop you into.”
They fell silen
t, watching the boys in front of them play. “Second year?” Nic asked, watching as a pass fell uncaught at a small pair of feet.
“Yeh. Six,” Rob answered briefly.
“That one’s good,” Nic remarked as a boy from the opposing team picked up the ball, made two defenders miss with his abrupt changes of direction, then passed the ball accurately behind him to a teammate who ran in for the score.
“Yeh. Got a boot on him, too. Can’t use that in Rippa, of course. But he’ll be making his mark in a few years,” Rob said. “Hell of a kick.”
“Some talent there,” Nic agreed as the boy darted in, on defense now, and ripped an opposing player’s flag from his belt. “Fast-twitch fibers, I reckon. Reminds me of someone. Somebody’s kid?”
Rob looked at him oddly. “You. Who he reminds you of, I mean. Good pair of hands, reflexes. And a boot as well. They usually aren’t much chop at this age, but he’s different. Been watching you, I’d say. Got your moves. Even has a bit of a look of you. They’re about done here. Stay here and you can see for yourself, when you do your meet and greet.”
It was on them soon enough. The boys crowded around, offering up mud- and grass-stained backs for autographs. Nic signed jerseys with the Sharpie Rob wordlessly handed him, offered a bit of chat to the kids. The boy with the skills, he saw, hung back a bit, waiting for the crowd to thin, his eyes on Nic. A good-looking kid, straight dark blond hair getting a bit long over the forehead and at the back.
The boy came forward at last, turned his back. “Can you sign huge?” he asked. “I want yours to be the biggest.”
“Can’t turn that down, can I,” Nic answered good-humoredly. “There. Straight across. Nobody’ll miss that.”
“Thanks,” the boy said. He stood aside as Nic signed the jersey of a boy with a comical, mobile face and a mop of wild red curls.
“I saw you hurt your leg last week,” the blond boy offered as Nic finished. “Has it got any better? Will you be able to play in South Africa?”
“Not too bad,” Nic assured him. “Bit of a crocked thigh, that’s all. Be right as rain by Saturday.” Which wasn’t strictly true, but it was the kind of niggle you expected, midway through the season.
“Would you run, though, normally?” the boy asked hesitatingly. “When you have a bye like this, I mean? If you weren’t injured? On your days off?”
“Yeh, I would,” Nic answered.
“See, Graham. Told you,” the blond boy said triumphantly to his redheaded friend. “Graham said you just rested. But I said you have to keep training, if you really want to be good.”
“You’re right,” Nic said. “Plenty of blokes with talent. You have to have more than that, if you want to make it to Super level. Takes a fair bit of discipline. Do you do some training yourself, then? You’re pretty good.”
The boy flushed with embarrassed pride. “Yeh. I run before school, lots of days. With my mum. She likes to go too,” he hurried on to explain. “Not because she has to take me.”
“Good on ya,” Nic said. “You’ve got a pretty fair boot, too, Dan tells me. What’s your name?”
“Zack. Zack Martens,” the boy said.
“Good to meet you.” Nic shook the offered hand. Manners, he saw. “And who’s this?”
“Graham MacNeil,” the redhead said, offering his own hand and turning a violent shade that clashed with his hair.
“Well, Graham, your mate’s right. Do all the running you can. You boys better get off and get some more signatures on those jerseys, though. Ben over there looks like he’s about to pack it in.”
“C’mon, Zack,” Graham urged.
“Thank you for signing,” Zack said politely. Dark brown eyes fringed with long, thick lashes looked shyly up at Nic’s own before the boy turned to run off with his friend.
“Nice kid, that Zack,” Nic told Rob a bit later from the middle of another group of kids.
“Got a nice mum, too,” Rob said, nodding toward a group of parents on the sideline. “Quite pretty. Think she’s single, too. Most of them don’t show up without a dad, the last day.”
“You old goat,” Nic chided him. “Lucky I don’t tell Rebecca.”
“Still got a pair of eyes, haven’t I,” Rob countered. “That one there, see? Kind of blonde. The small one. Tell me I’m wrong.”
Nic looked where Rob was gesturing. Suddenly his sodden feet seemed to be sending a chill straight through his entire body. He saw Zack again, excitedly showing off his newly collected autographs to the slim, graceful figure bending towards him. The honey-blonde hair was shorter now, but her curls still fell around her face in the way he remembered. She straightened, turned. And stood stock-still at the sight of him.
He wasn’t more than twenty meters away, but she moved fast. With a quick word to Zack, she’d melted behind the group of parents and was lost in the taller crowd within moments.
Nic stood, poleaxed. He recovered his wits as another group of boys crowded around him, signed jerseys and rugby balls mechanically, offered encouraging words. But kept an eye out for that slight figure. He didn’t see her again, though. And to his frustration, by the time he could look for her properly amidst the thinning crowd, she was gone.
* * *
Rob was issuing more instructions to the volunteers who were helping to round up equipment. He turned, though, at a hand on his elbow. “Still here, mate?” he asked in surprise. “Thought you’d left with the rest of them.”
“Need to ask you a question,” Nic said. “I need to know something about that kid. Zack.”
“Rightyo, then.” Rob was surprised, but agreeable. “Hang on a tick whilst I finish up here. Or better yet, give us a hand.”
“Now,” he said fifteen minutes later, packing file folders into a carrier bag inside the Rugby Club’s office. “What did you need? Are the Blues scouting them that young now?”
“Zack Martens.” Nic brushed the joke aside. “You said he was six. When’s his birthday?”
“Why? You planning on sending him a present? Too late, I reckon. He’s one of the young ones. Just turned six, I think. That’s what surprised me about the skills. They usually can’t even offload worth a damn that young, let alone kick like that.”
“His birthday,” Nic insisted. “When is it?”
Rob sighed. “Hang on, then.” He pulled a ring binder from the bag he’d been loading, found the sheet. “February 15th. Barely made it under the cutoff. Happy now?”
Nic felt his mouth go dry as he subtracted in his head. Saw those dark eyes again, raised to his own. The way they turned down at the outer corners to give him a sleepy look, fringed by lashes his mum had always said were wasted on a boy.
“I need his mum’s address,” he told Rob.
“Mate. You know I can’t give you that.” Rob was puzzled now, and a bit alarmed as well. “What’s this all about? Better not be something about you I don’t know.”
“Don’t be bloody stupid,” Nic said impatiently. “I need his mum’s address. Emma’s address. Because that’s my son.”
JUST FOR FUN
Available now for the Kindle.
Promising Penny
By
Joanne Hill
Copyright 2014 Joanne Hill
All Rights Reserved
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is coincidental.
Chapter One
PENNY PORTMAN had had enough. She’d been run off her feet, had been short staffed, and the last thing she needed was someone banging on the door at six in the evening, when the café was clearly closed.
They banged again.
She took a sip of her tea, and glanced back down at the laptop. She scrolled through another page of rental properties as her spirits plummeted further. There was nothing. Not a thing.
She ignored the heavy feeling in her
chest, and tried a different website. Nothing the right size, in the right Auckland location, and for the right price.
She looked back at the homepage. The one advertised at the top was perfect. Just perfect for a cake shop. It was close to town, enjoyed main road traffic, and was snuggled in between a book store and a kid’s party outfit shop. There was a flat at the top she could live in, too. It was so perfect.
And completely unattainable.
She went over to check her email instead.
She hadn’t a hope of ever being able to afford a lease in a location like that, let alone run a viable shop.
I’m stuck, she thought. Just like this time last year when, with everything bad going on with her family, she’d decided – had vowed – that by the time next Christmas rolled around, she’d be running her own place.
Well, what do you know? ‘Next Christmas’ was just around the corner, and the only way she was any closer was by the hours of work she’d put in to designing her business plan.
The fruitless hours.
The bang at the door sounded again, this time louder and more impatient. She pushed herself up from the table, and glanced out at the shop front.
A male voice called out. “Penny? Are you still there?”
“Michael?”
Cautiously, she walked out into the café, and through the plant shop, and stared out through the front door, at the figure illuminated by the street light.
Stared with shock and disbelief, and with something else she hastily tamped down on.
“Michael?” she called out again.
He lifted his arm in a wave.
Michael McGuinn.
Her heart skipped a beat.
She hadn’t seen him in months - well over a year. Even though she could bet that not a day had gone by when she hadn’t wondered what he was doing. Where he was. Wondered if she would ever see him again.
She never had. She had never even caught a glimpse of him walking down a street, or sitting at a café, or passing him at a set of traffic lights. Even all the times she’d been in the city where he lived and worked, she had never seen him.