That was two things he was sure of, actually. He was on St. Heliers Bay Road now, and somehow, instead of thinking how different Auckland was from Dunedin and how much worse the traffic was, he was noticing a huge pohutukawa on a corner, a tire swing tied to one of its giant limbs. An old-fashioned white bungalow glowed in the mellow early-autumn sunlight, its garden lush with palms, fern trees, and purple agapanthus. Below him, the sea sparkled with every shade of blue there was, and white sails scudded across the harbor; weekday sailors who’d got off work and taken the boat out, letting the wind blow away the cares of the day in time-honored Kiwi fashion. Marko buzzed his window down on the thought, stuck his elbow out of it, let the wind in, and felt twenty-two.
Not so bad. Not so bad at all.
He rolled up the driveway to the house, but couldn’t get into the garage. A certain yellow Beetle was in the way. And a gray Toyota SUV with a mattress tied on top of it, and an upside-down coffee table and tallboy on top of that. Nyree had the door of the SUV open and was standing on the edge and reaching overhead, tugging at the rope. Her shorts were… well, short. Also, she had a smear of sunny yellow paint on one upper thigh that extended all the way to her bum. Which he could see, because the shorts were riding up. That just-visible crease, and all that… roundness.
It took him a second to tear his eyes away enough to notice the tall redhead who stood opposite Nyree, tugging at her side of the rope while the precariously balanced load teetered overhead.
The whole lot was going to come straight down on Nyree’s head. He could see it happening now. He got there fast. “Hang on,” he told Nyree. “I’ll do it.”
“I’ve got it,” she said, still tugging at the knots.
“Well, no,” he said. “You don’t. That load’s going to slip and fall bang on top of you. And you stacked all these things instead of doing two journeys? Why? I told you I’d come help as soon as I got home from training.”
She’d hopped down, at least, but was still standing next to him, monitoring his unloading progress as if she’d resume her untying at any second if he proved unsatisfactory.
It wasn’t just the shorts, which were denim cutoffs, not the sort of thing to set a man’s imagination alight at all. No, that wasn’t enough. She was also wearing a little white blouse with some kind of ethnic-type embroidery on the front and a scoop neck. It fastened with a drawstring in the center. He wished she’d stop with the shirts that tied. Also with the shorts. And the hair that wasn’t in its ponytail this time, either, but was falling over one eye, so she had to brush it back.
She didn’t seem to notice that she was interfering with his concentration. She said, “You’re right, Captain Careful. We didn’t make two trips. And we made it here all the same.”
“We did have to stop once, though,” the redhead said. “To tighten the ropes,” she told Marko. “One of them started flapping in front of my windscreen. I practically had a heart attack. Had this vision of the tallboy and the table smashing into the car behind me. Multi-vehicle accident. Evening news. Police investigation. Et cetera.”
“None of which happened,” Nyree said. “Stop being a lawyer. And stop giving him fuel. He doesn’t need encouragement.”
Marko removed the last of the rope and told the redhead, “Hang onto the table while I take the tallboy off, will you? What I actually don’t need is another concussion. I’m Marko, by the way.”
“Victoria,” she said, following his perfectly reasonable directions and holding onto the table. “Pleasure.”
“Vic owns the house where my garage is,” Nyree said. “My landlady, who’s very excited about the rent she is now sure of receiving for the next five months. She was dreading having to pretend to want more paintings or evict her favorite tenant. Two unpalatable alternatives.”
“Untrue,” Victoria said. “And you’re my only tenant.”
Marko set the tallboy on the ground and pulled the coffee table off the car’s roof, getting it balanced over his head before setting it down, the way a careful person did it. The table was painted. He hadn’t noticed that before. He’d been overwhelmed by the rest of Nyree’s décor, probably. Red poppies, huge and exuberant, on a black background. One guess who’d painted them.
Victoria took the mattress down from the car, so that was all fine, until Nyree had to say, “See? Five minutes and we’re unloaded, instead of forty-five more of driving back and forth, because that’s the lot.”
Marko straightened up, looked down at her, considered which answer would (a) adequately express his feelings, and (b) make her listen, and decided that there was no possible statement that would satisfy both conditions. So he just concentrated on not looking down her shirt. If she weren’t so short, it would be easier to avoid. Or possibly if her breasts weren’t so bloody pretty.
The front door banged, and Ella came out, moving fast. “Hey, Marko,” she said, grabbing a couple rubbish bags out of the Beetle’s boot. “You should see my room. Already so much better, because Nyree spent her whole day off helping me. Also I’m enrolled in school, or I will be once you and Mum sign the paperwork. New uniform’s hideous. Pity you didn’t buy a house on the other side of St. Heliers instead. Glendowie College has at least heard that there might be a wedge on the color wheel other than navy blue. Too late now, I guess.”
He’d have answered, but there was a dust bunny rolling along behind Ella. Or a tiny gray kitten, meowing for all she was worth, then charging straight up his leg. He grabbed her and said, “You’re an inside cat, Cat. Stay inside.”
“Sorry,” Ella said. “She must have heard you coming and sneaked out. She’s been pining for you all day.” Then she headed inside with her bags.
“She’s a cat,” Marko told her departing back. “Cats don’t pine. If they meet you at the door, it’s because they want their dinner.”
“I told you,” Nyree said. She was starting to pick up the coffee table now, like she was going to carry something almost as tall as she was, and twice as wide, up the stairs. “She’s a Burmese. More like a dog, really. Take the other end of this.”
He said, “No. I’ve got it. Take something else. Here. Take my kitten.”
She ignored that and started removing drawers from the tallboy, and he said, “Not that. Some… bags, or something. Stop it.”
“You do realize,” she said, “that I’m a fully grown woman.”
“Not grown much,” he said, and Victoria sucked in a breath and said, “Ooh.”
Nyree turned to face him. Slowly. And said, “Try again, boy.”
“Oh?” Marko said. “Was that too authoritative for you? Could be that’s the way I am. Or could be I’m narky because somebody gave the Herald a photo of me with a kitten on my head.”
She smiled, and he stood and watched her do it. That smile was choice. That smile was the sun coming out and every dirty dream he’d ever had, all rolled into one. “Yeh,” she said, drawing the word out while the smile got a little sweeter. A little hotter. “Didn’t it come out great? You looked so good. I heard that calls to the shelter were up by twenty-one percent the past two days. What’s wrong? Did the other fellas take the piss?” She must have interpreted his expression correctly, because she started to laugh. That bedroom laugh of hers, dark and heady as whisky. “Aw. Poor baby. They did. What happened?”
“Little matter of some stuffed cats. I’ll get over it sometime, I’m sure. I may need to carry heavy things for you, though. Part of the recovery process.” He handed her the kitten and picked up the coffee table. “I’ll see you upstairs. And if you’re carrying drawers when I do, I’ll have stern words for you.”
He went inside the house without looking back, carrying the heavy coffee table as if it were a box of matches, and Nyree stuck the kitten in a carrier bag full of bedding and reached for an armful of clothes on hangers.
Victoria had a hand over her chest and was patting it. “Sorry,” she said, and used the hand to fan her face. “Can’t… breathe. Much… hotness.”
“That’s because you aren’t used to them.” Nyree may have been having a few issues with her own heart rate, but she wasn’t admitting it. “The muscles are standard equipment. Just another rugby boy.”
“That’s no boy,” Victoria said. “That is a man.”
Nyree didn’t answer that, because she’d have to acknowledge that it was true. The kitten was making some noise at being separated from the love of her life, and she needed to get the cars unloaded anyway.
“If you actually want him, and you’re protesting for the sake of your principles,” Victoria said, “tell me now. Because it’s not just the muscles, and I want it.”
The kitten was still meowing, but Nyree stood still. “What about Seb?”
“When we went to that lunch yesterday,” Victoria said, pulling out her own armload of clothes on hangers, “he said I’d dominated the conversation. Because I talked about my case.”
“All right. That’s it.” Nyree’s arms were aching. She set the bag down, juggled the clothes, and then had to grab for the kitten, who’d got tired of waiting for her prince and was trying to escape. Which caused half the clothes to slip from their stack and spill onto the driveway. “Bugger. Right. I know you’re not supposed to bash the boyfriend because if you get back together again, blah blah, awkwardness ensues, but I don’t care. Seb is a gold-plated, purebred, eyeless, slimy pink worm. Break up with him.”
Victoria sighed and shifted her own armful of clothes. “Never become a lawyer. You’re temperamentally unsuited. And yeh, that’s the plan. Which would be why…” She inclined her head toward the house.
“No,” Nyree said. Wait. Where had that come from?
“Oh.” Victoria digested that. “All right. Girl Code’s a thing. Next question. When are you telling him who you are?”
Nyree started picking up the clothes she’d dropped. Not easy with one hand, so she put Cat, still loudly protesting the tortures of separation, back into the carrier bag. “Not now, anyway. It would only complicate things.”
“How?”
“How about ‘in every way possible?’ Besides, I really will be helping here, because Marko’s going to be gone too much, and Ella’s going to need somebody. As long as I’m not sleeping with him, what does it matter? My family won’t know, because I still have the same address, Marko won’t know, because I’m here for Ella, not for him, and it’ll be fine. He’ll be focused on other things. I’ve lived with rugby players before, remember? They care about rugby, cricket, possibly fishing, and sex in its more recreational forms. With women not like me. And that’s generally all.”
“Huh. What about the ones who are married? And how do you know about the sex? Never tell me your brothers shared that with you. Or did they?” She peered at Nyree more intently. “Something you haven’t shared?”
“Could be I’m psychic. And all right, the married ones are married. Granted. Marko’s not. He’s never even lived with anybody, and he’s thirty-two. Proof positive.”
“Uh-huh. And you know this how? Oh, right. You picked it up during all that time when you had no interest in him.”
“Look,” Nyree said. “It’s a business arrangement, and a caring-for-Ella arrangement, which is fine. But he doesn’t like anything I like, and vice versa. His house may be—all right, pretty bloody spectacular—but it’s not me. You’ll see when you go in. Also, he hated my Pookie painting.”
“Well,” Victoria pointed out reasonably, “you hate it, too, a bit.”
“We don’t match,” Nyree said. “And if I slept with him, I would have to tell him who I was, and it would all blow up. It would create a whole big pile of awkward, which neither of us needs, and neither does Ella. And—yes, I need the money. I do. I wish I didn’t, but I do. It’s business. It’s Ella. It’s my life.”
She started for the house and tried not to think about the three or four contradictions she’d just tossed out, and the approximately zero likelihood that Victoria wouldn’t be adding them up.
She was all the way up the stone stairway when Marko came out the door again. So fast that, if his reflexes hadn’t been so good, he’d have bowled her over. Instead, he grabbed her by the shoulders and turned with her, his momentum carrying them in a half-circle. When her back hit the wall beside the door, though, he didn’t let go right away.
His hands were so big, it felt like he had hold of her entire upper body. His shoulders were so broad, she couldn’t see around them. He was so tall, she was looking up the entire length of his muscular neck to his black-shadowed jaw, which was set into rugby-hard lines. And he smelled like leather and darkness.
She knew rugby players. They’d never felt like this.
Finally, he stepped back, dropped his hands, and said, his voice absolutely level, “Nyree. We need to talk.”
“Sure,” Nyree said, getting her breath back. “But I need to put these away.”
Marko gave her some more of the burning eyes, but he took the bag from her, which helped. The hanging clothes were getting heavy.
She headed into the house, since he wasn’t actually chucking her out. His kitten was silent at last, probably gazing up at his hard face in rapt adoration. Ingrate. Who’d got her this sweet adoption in the first place?
It was unfortunate that Marko was behind her on the stairs. First, because she couldn’t see exactly how angry he was, and second, because her shorts were riding up. She’d made them years ago when the pair of ancient jeans, worn too thin even for fashion, had finally expired. Or more accurately, had ripped under the bum while she’d been running for a bus. A memorable moment, especially since she’d been wearing a thong at the time. Unfortunately, she’d added a couple extra kilos since then, and at this moment, it felt like all of them had gone to one spot.
Which was bad enough, but the worst part was that she cared what he thought. Her body wasn’t there for his approval. If she liked pizza too much and running too little? He was just going to have to deal with it. If he’d wanted a skinny blonde TV presenter as his housemate, he’d come to the wrong place. And if he were about to tell her the deal was off, she really didn’t care. So she slowed her pace and twitched her hips a little more, like she’d grown her bum this size on purpose. If he didn’t like it? He didn’t have to look.
She got to the top of the stairs, edged around the pile of rubbish bags in the wide passage, dragged her armful of clothes around Ella’s mattress, which had somehow only made it halfway through the door of the second guest bedroom, then turned and said, “What.”
“You’ll want to hang those up,” Marko said. Still level. Still controlled. But she could see his chest rising and falling, and it wasn’t because he’d walked up a flight of stairs.
“You’re right.” She shoved the clothes onto the rod in the closet, turned again, and said, “What. And here.” She took the carrier bag from him, pausing while he removed the kitten, and thought, The best defense is a good offense. “If you’d brought my tallboy up instead of getting emotional, I’d already be putting things away, which would mean your flash house could be restored to underfurnished perfection that much sooner.”
He still wasn’t talking. She said, “By the way—who lets somebody move into a house like this and gives them an EFTPOS card without a credit check and a look at their arrest record? How do you know I’m not going to be stealing your identity? Or, worse, selling drugs out of your house, inviting disciplinary measures by New Zealand Rugby? Of course, you can say you had no idea, but there the stream of cars will be, coming and going as mysterious plastic bags are exchanged for cash. That would be a bad look for you.”
Some kind of expression finally crossed his face. Frustration, she’d call it. He said, “I told you I’m only going to keep a few hundred dollars in that account, and that I’d be checking it. You’re not going to fund your new business venture that way. Are you done talking?”
“Possibly.” She folded her arms under her breasts. “Go.”
His eyes dropped, then returned to her face, a
nd he seemed to be gathering his thoughts again. “When I said you could paint, what could possibly have made you think I meant ‘my walls’?”
Ella chose that moment to come into the room, followed by Victoria with another armful of clothes. Victoria took the clothes across to the closet, and Ella said, “Did you see Nyree’s awesome tallboy, Marko? See, that’s home décor. Non-orphanage. Like, with a personality. She’s going to show me how to decorate the front of my drawers like that, too. We bought a used one off Trade Me, and we’re going to collect it on Wednesday. Reward for doing my first day of school. They wanted three hundred dollars for it, but she got them down to two hundred. Which is still too much, since it’s almost as ugly as the ones you liked, but it’s sixteen hundred fifty percent cheaper, which shows you how shocking those prices were yesterday. They have heaps of maternity clothes as well on there. Nyree says that everybody puts their maternity clothes on Trade Me, because they’re so sick of them by then, and they only wear them for a few months, right? So it’s almost like new. I did a budget, and we can get everything, including the clothes and the furniture and all, for less than sixteen hundred dollars. And since your way, with the Android World furniture, would have been about six thousand, that’s almost the whole cost of paying for Nyree, so you see? Plus, the room will be furnished and will actually look good.”
Marko looked stunned, and Nyree had to smile. Whatever his problem was tonight, one thing was for sure. He was outnumbered. Out-femaled. And definitely out-talked.
He got his laser vision back, unfortunately, and directed it at her before informing her, “Ella’s room is yellow.”
“Yes,” she said. “It is. But it’s not going to stay that way.”
He raised his black brows. He had a scar on his temple, she noticed. It was a good look on him. “Oh?” he said silkily. “Please. Explain. You’re painting it white again? This was merely an exercise?”
Just Say (Hell) No (Escape to New Zealand Book 11) Page 12