“You know,” he went on, and she let him talk, glad to listen, to focus on climbing. “That first season, before they got the old stadium fixed up so they could play there, those boys played every game on the road. Away from home nearly every night, all year long, while their partners and kids, their parents and grandparents rode it out, sometimes more than one quake a day. Not able to be there when one hit, when their kids were crying. Not knowing whether the next one would be the really big one that’d do the whole place in. That was rough.”
“Tough season,” Ally got out, clambering up and over a big boulder that surely had no place in the middle of a marked trail.
“Yeh,” he agreed. “How’d you imagine they finished on the ladder, that year?”
“Not too well, I’m thinking,” she said.
“You’d be wrong, though. Lost in the final. Barely. All that, and they nearly won the whole thing.”
“Wow. What do you think it was? That they were, what you said? Playing for everybody at home? Or do you think other teams, maybe, didn’t play them quite as hard?”
He laughed. “Not bloody likely. That’s not the way it works. You’re always busting a gut for the win. After the match, you can be mates. While it’s happening, you’re bashing the hell out of each other, no matter what. That’s footy.”
He stopped a moment, turned around. “Doing all right?”
So he had noticed her breathlessness. “I’m good,” she said. “As long as you keep your elbows to yourself.”
“Have a bit of compassion on my tender male ego,” he complained. “We’re putting the ‘Epic Fail’ tag on that one and shoving it to the back of the cupboard.”
“What about you?” she asked as they began climbing again. “Planning to change teams? Going back to the land of your childhood? The Mainland?”
“Nah. I’m the loyal sheepdog type, I guess. Make a decision, stay with it.”
“Toro,” she said. “The bull. No going sideways, no going back. Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead.”
“You’ve got a bit of a metaphor problem there,” he pointed out. “But that’s the idea.”
“You know,” she couldn’t help mentioning, “in some places, when people build a trail up a mountain, they put in switchbacks. They don’t just go straight up it.”
“Those places wouldn’t be in En Zed, then,” he decided.
She laughed in spite of herself. “Probably not.”
Another half hour, and they were done with the roots, to her relief. Were coming out above the treeline, into an alpine environment of yellow-green grasses, blowing in the chilly breeze. The clouds were still heavy around them, obscuring any view. Ally looked ahead, could see the track winding up. And another two ridges rising, one behind the other, above the one they were crossing. Whatever lay ahead disappearing into the mist again, but surely they were near the top now.
And still the track stretched up, and up some more. Always another ridge or two appearing through the mist, no matter how many they crossed. She wasn’t trying for conversation anymore, was just concentrating on putting one foot in front of the other. On following Nate’s back, climbing steadily.
Nate slowed as they approached a young couple, the first people they’d seen on the track, who were sitting in the shelter of a large boulder, screened from the wind blowing across the open ridge. Great. A break. Because no Kiwi seemed able to run into anyone without stopping for a chat.
“How’re you going?” Nate asked. “Been to the top already, or just having a bit of a rest?”
“Deciding what to do,” the young man said in what Ally’s untrained ear thought might be an English accent. “How much farther is it to the top, do you know?”
“You’ve got a fair bit left,” Nate admitted, and Ally suppressed a groan. She hadn’t dared ask, because she’d been afraid to hear the answer. And “a fair bit” definitely sounded ominous.
The man looked at his girlfriend.
“Go back,” she said instantly.
“They told us at the I-Site,” she complained to Ally, “that this was a nice walk. This isn’t a nice walk. This is a death march.”
“Oh, not that bad,” Nate protested. “And if we get the mist clearing, you’ll get a view to make it all worthwhile.”
“I’ll look online and pretend I was there,” the woman said firmly, making Ally laugh.
Ally’s attention was diverted by a large, drab-colored bird that had flown up behind the couple and landed on an open day pack. “Look, Nate,” she said, pointing. “What is that? It looks like some kind of parrot!”
“It is a parrot,” Nate said. “You’ll want to watch your—“
Too late. The big bird had reached into the pack with a formidable beak and one taloned foot, and was now half in and half out, dragging out the contents. The young woman gave a little shriek, and the man grabbed for the pack, dislodging the bird, but not before it had stolen a packet of sandwiches, with which it flew a little distance off, proceeding to rip open the cling film and starting to work on the couple’s lunch.
“What was that?” the young man asked in frustration, stuffing the contents of his pack inside again and closing it up.
“That would be your kea,” Nate said, keeping a straight face. “Got to watch yourself up here in the mountains. They’re bad enough with your lunch. What they really want, though, are the bits of rubber round your car windows. They’ll take those straight out, strip the whole thing. Thieving little buggers.”
“Ready to go?” he asked Ally.
“Sure,” she sighed. “What the heck.”
Nate had been right, she thought when they were finally at the bottom again, several grueling hours later. Near the top, when they’d been carefully traversing a razor-backed ridge of shale that dropped steeply off on either side into slabs and chunks of black rubble, the mists had cleared in patches, revealing a vista of steep, forbidding peaks, lonely mountains rising out of the fog, even more spectacular for being so briefly glimpsed.
But when they had turned to make their way down the slightly less vertical descending track, she had wished that, instead of parrots, there were some giant eagles up here to take them off what looked exactly like the slopes of Mount Doom, and felt like it too. Because she’d been tired. And that was before her knees and ankles had taken the brunt of kilometers of down-climbing.
“We’ll go for lunch,” Nate said when they were back in the little village again, a few buildings scattered amongst the trees, the mountains rising sharply on either side. “Have a beer.”
She groaned. “I’m so grubby, I’d like a shower first. But once I have one, I’m not going to want to move again. So I guess we should do lunch.”
“What?” he asked when they were in the little café. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
“Here’s the question,” she said, pinching one of his chips, as usual, and fixing him with what he could only describe as a glare. “Why did we just do that?”
“If you want chips,” he couldn’t resist pointing out, “I’ll get you some.”
“I don’t want chips,” she said. “I just want a few of yours.” Which made him roll his eyes.
“Why?” she insisted again.
“What, the walk? Because I thought you’d like it,” he protested. “That it’d be a challenge for you.”
“Uh-huh,” she said skeptically. “It wouldn’t be that you wanted to do something where you’d be so obviously better than me, would it? Because that was the hardest damn hike I’ve ever been on. That was ridiculous. And it looked to me like you could have run the whole thing.”
“There is a race every year,” he pointed out helpfully.
She groaned. “I so did not need to know that. New Zealanders are crazy. But come on. Was that why?”
He started to laugh. He couldn’t help it. “I hope not. Because that would be pretty low of me, wouldn’t it?”
“Yeah, it would,” she scowled.
“Never mind,” he consol
ed her, reaching for her hand. She looked so cute with that frown drawing her dark brows together. So severe, like the world’s sexiest librarian, about to shush him. “I’ll take you somewhere else tomorrow, and you can outperform me.”
“And Susan there, back at the guest house,” he added with another smile. “She does massage. A shower and an hour or so with her, and you’ll be a new woman.”
And both of those things did help. But when he reached for her that evening, she looked at him in astonishment.
“You have got to be kidding,” she told him. “You have no idea how sore and tired this body is.”
“”Oh, I have a pretty fair idea,” he smiled, leaning over to kiss her. “And sex is a pretty good anesthetic. Come on. Let me make you feel better.”
“You’d better be prepared to do all the work,” she sighed. But her protest was pitifully weak, because his fingers were running softly over the sensitive skin between her breasts in the low-cut undershirt she had worn to bed.
“It could be like having sex with a blow-up doll,” she got out, “because I’m not moving. But if you want a sex toy to play with . . .” She squirmed a little. He was using one finger to trace the outline of her shirt now, and that felt good.
“I’ll play with you,” he promised. “I’ll do it all. You just lie there and be my toy.”
And she did. He went so slowly, his hands, then his mouth gentle against her sensitive skin until she could swear she was aware of every separate nerve ending. He was pulling the edge of the shirt a bit further down, still concentrating on the tops of her breasts, the valley between them, his touch so light it nearly tickled. And then, when she was moving a little underneath him despite herself, he transferred his attention to her inner thighs, finding erogenous zones she hadn’t even realized she had.
By the time he was slowly pulling up the undershirt, caressing and kissing every centimeter he uncovered along the way, she was moaning. And when he had finally finished playing with her and was sliding inside, beginning his long, slow ride, she really was as limp and boneless as any sex doll. And feeling a whole lot better.
“Goodnight, toy,” he murmured at last with a gentle kiss, pulling the duvet over her.
But she barely heard him, because she was already sinking into sleep.
Ally Gets Her Card Back
“And here we are,” Nate said. They had come down out of the high pass into wide-open expanses of hill shading into river valley, a few sheep the only living things visible for kilometers around. He pulled into a large carpark, populated with only a few cars on this Monday morning.
“Get your climbing shoes and come on,” he told Ally. But she was ahead of him, had already reached back and rummaged them out, was yanking off her shoes and socks.
“Slow down,” he grinned. “The rocks aren’t going anywhere.”
“So many boulders, so little time,” she said happily. “That’s limestone. Oh, wow.”
“Thought you’d like it,” he said modestly, getting himself into his own shoes. “Course, I’ve never stopped here before, but I did a bit of checking around. This was actually the point of the whole journey. Saving the best for last.”
And, he thought an hour later, as she tackled yet another of the weirdly shaped monoliths that studded Castle Hill, the huge gray knobs and pinnacles standing sentinel over the rugged terrain, he might have taken her up Avalanche Peak the day before to soothe his own ego after all, just as she’d suspected. Because he couldn’t believe what she was doing now, how she made those microscopic shifts in balance that enabled her to somehow smear her way up a seemingly sheer boulder with none of the obvious handholds of the climbing gym.
“How did you do that?” he complained when she’d reached the top, a good three meters above him, and then, even more incredibly, had made her way back down again.
“Here,” she pointed out. “Get your toe on this. And your hands here.”
He looked, and could barely see the protrusion. Tried a few more times, and couldn’t even get off the ground.
“Never mind,” she laughed. “I’ll find you something easier.”
“Bit different from the gym,” he admitted as they climbed the hill together. No mist today, not down here, just white clouds scudding across the blue sky in the cool breeze. Gray stones, green grasses, the mountains rising steeply to the west, the sheep grazing in the paddock beyond.
The Mainland, and his heart felt easy, as it always did down here. He liked Wellington, had built a good life there. But this was something else. The peace, the vistas, the endless space of mountain, plain, valley, and sea. This was home, and someday, he knew, he’d be coming back.
“It is,” Ally said, and he had to work to remember what they had been talking about. “It’s so much better, isn’t it? Being here? Outdoors?” She gave a spin, arms flung wide, ponytail flying, her broad smile reaching all the way to those sparkling dark eyes, and his heart filled just a little bit more at the sight of her, the way she fit here.
“Come on,” she urged. “Race you. First one to the top of that big one that’s shaped like an M, there.” She pointed to a stone near the apex of the slope. “First one there wins. Ready, set, go!” And before he could say anything, she was running.
He made it there first, of course, by a fair margin. And that was as far as he got. Because while he was still struggling to get off the ground, she had caught up, wriggled and stretched her way to the top, following a path he couldn’t even begin to pick out, and was lying on her stomach, peering over the edge at him.
“I win,” she pointed out unnecessarily. “And, yes, I now forgive you for the horrible hike yesterday, which goes down in history as another one of Nate’s Bad Ideas. Do you want some help finding your way up here?”
“Yes,” he was forced to admit. “I do.”
“I even feel better about being your sex toy now,” she said when she’d climbed back down and coached him up the thing, which, thankfully, actually did have a few places where a normal person could put his hands and feet. “I was worried last night that they were going to take away my Feminist Card for all the things I’ve done with you.”
“Nah.” He was looking down at her now. “Help me get down off this, and I’ll personally give you your card back. And as far as the other thing, tell you what. You can be on top tonight, show me who’s boss. I’m putting my hand up here and now to be your sex toy. It’s a hell of a tough job,” he sighed, “but somebody’s got to do it.”
Her eyes were full of mischief as she looked up at him. “I won’t say your idea doesn’t have potential,” she said. “Quite a relief, actually. I was half expecting that I was going to have to pretend to be a maiden while you dressed up as a Crusader. I was thinking that I could get a sword, too, so I could dance around the house for you. Or maybe you’d like to have a sword battle. I’m sure I’d be supposed to lose, right? Would that be some good sexytimes for you? Unfortunately, I’m afraid I’d just laugh.”
He laughed out loud at that himself. “One thing you can be dead sure of,” he promised her, “I’ll never be dressing up as a Crusader. Boots or no.”
Knee-Deep in It
Nate swore as he shoved a recalcitrant cow off the slow-moving rotary milking stand, got spattered with manure again in the process.
“She got you there, mate,” Ned laughed. “She’s a clever one. Knows if she stays on, she gets more treats.” He moved the next batch of Jerseys up, each animal moving obediently into her slot, as familiar with the twice-daily routine as the man supervising them.
“Missing the glamorous life of a farmer yet?” he asked Nate with a grin an hour later, hopping off the ATV in the cold light of a Southland winter morning, opening the back of the trailer to let the dogs out, their morning’s work done after moving the cows to fresh pasture.
Nate pulled his beanie down a bit against the chill, looked wryly down at his manure-bedecked gumboots. “Remembering why I play footy. Allergic to hard work, I guess.”
&nb
sp; His older brother shot him a glance. “Nobody thinks that, bro,” he said gruffly. “We all know.”
Nate looked at him with surprised gratitude, but didn’t reply, just nodded.
“Dad’s thinking of selling up,” Ned said abruptly when they were in the house again, showered and changed, and finished with their mother’s hearty breakfast of eggs on toast, ham, and bacon. She’d fed them, then headed out with their dad to pick up a load of hay, and the brothers were sitting over a second cup of tea, relaxing after the morning’s chores.
Nate looked up from his mobile, his attention pulled abruptly from the text he’d been reading.
Haven’t been this deep in bullshit since you read me that Farrell column, he’d texted. Can’t wait to stop working hard and come home. Get the sword and boots ready.
To which Ally had just replied, Dream on big shot, which had made him laugh.
Now, though, he set the phone down, stared at his brother. “He is? Why?”
Ned shrugged. “Sixty now, says he’s done it long enough, and so has Mum. Thinking of moving into town. And you know he can get a fair bit for the herd, and the place. We’ve got nearly four hundred, and there’s a good market for Jerseys just now.”
Nate was still reeling. His dad and mum off the land that had been his grandfather’s, and his own father’s before him . . . it was too big a change to contemplate. “What about you?” he asked. “You own a good bit of it yourself. Have you thought of buying Dad out? Because if you wanted to, you know, I could help out with a loan.”
He held his breath a little after saying it. He’d never offered money to his brother before, and wasn’t sure it would be welcome. But he needed to do it all the same.
Ned waved a hand. “Nah. Bad enough that you don’t have more of a share.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Nate said brusquely. In fact, he’d long since told their dad to leave him out entirely. That he hadn’t worked the farm since he was fifteen, that he was investing a fair bit of the money he was earning, looking ahead to the days when he wouldn’t be playing. And that he wasn’t entitled to anything, and wasn’t expecting it either.
Just My Luck (Escape to New Zealand #5) Page 30