Just Not Mine (Escape to New Zealand)

by Rosalind James

  And not happy that she hadn’t been quite as sympathetic as he could have liked. “You just pull them off, though, don’t you?” she’d asked when he’d told her.

  “It isn’t quite as easy as that,” he’d answered. “We didn’t all grow up in the bush, you know. If you had a vampire bat latch onto you, you’d have found out it was some tribal cure and been pleased to have the cultural experience.”

  “I didn’t think we were talking about a vampire bat,” she said. “Thought this was leeches.”

  “Yeh, it was leeches,” he said. “And next time they have me go in that water, it’ll be crocs, no doubt. Maybe that’ll get a reaction out of you.”

  “When you’re bitten by a croc,” she said, “I promise to take notice. Sorry, I’m sure it was awful.”

  “I’m sorry too,” he said. “I’m shattered, that’s all.”

  “How’s Vanessa taking it?” Josie asked. “Was she in the leeches too?”

  “She was, because I was kissing her under a waterfall. Romantic, eh. Sexy. Not too sexy when you have slugs latched onto your legs, swelling up on your life’s blood.”

  She laughed again. “Ugh. Did you cope, though? Manage to be romantic after all? You can be a pretty romantic fella when you put your mind to it.”

  “I did. She didn’t. Not a hearty country girl like you. I had to carry her out of there, she was shaking and screaming so hard. They’re having to scout another location, because she refused to get back in.”

  “Hard luck. Still, it gave you a chance to be extra-manly and heroic, and that’s a good look on you.”

  “So they say,” he said. “Found the bright side, didn’t you?”

  “That’s my job in this partnership,” she said. “Designated sunshine.”

  “Guess you’ll find out how he is at the weekend,” Clive said now as Gregor finished up and Josie rose from the chair with a smile of thanks, let Clive take her place. “This is the big visit, right? After how long?”

  “A month. And no.” She sat down beside him, concentrated on the sight of Gregor adjusting the smock carefully around Clive’s tanned neck. “They’ve had so many problems with the filming, they’re carrying on with the location work. So it’ll have to wait.”

  “Again?” Clive’s eyes darted to hers in the mirror.

  “Yeh. Oh, well, can’t be helped,” she said, pasting a smile on her face. “We’ll get it next week. He’s suffering more than I am. I’m lonely, that’s all, and from the sound of it, he’s being eaten alive by the Aussie wildlife.”

  “Couldn’t you go anyway?” Clive asked. “They’ve got to be giving them a day off, at least.”

  “Yeh, nah. Too long to get there, and anyway, he says he just wants to sleep.”

  “You know what I’m going to say,” he told her.

  “That he’s not that into me. That’s not it. I’ve told you, we don’t have that kind of relationship. We’re easy-peasy. Comfortable.”

  “I know, you’re low-maintenance Josie, comforter of the downhearted, soup-bringer and plaster-provider. Every man’s dream, their fondly-remembered kindy teacher’s heart in Angelina Jolie’s body. But …” He hesitated, unusually for Clive. “We’ve been friends a long time, and I hope good ones. Can I say this?”

  “Go ahead,” she said, and braced herself, her heart pounding a little despite her best efforts at calm unconcern.

  “That’s exactly why he should be begging you to come, doing whatever it takes to get you there,” Clive said. “He should be worried about leaving you over here by yourself, for God’s sake. Why isn’t he? Not like he doesn’t have competition. If I weren’t actually a married man, you know I’d have tried it on by now.”

  “Nah, you wouldn’t. We know each other too well. Practically brother and sister, aren’t we.”

  He laughed, got a disapproving cluck from Gregor. “Not quite. You underestimate the effect you have. Even on me, sad to say. Not as impervious as that, not yet. Still looking at the menu, even if I’m not ordering. How many times do you get chatted up, anyplace you go?”

  “Heaps,” she admitted. “But that’s been happening since I was fourteen, and Derek knows it. I wouldn’t, and he knows that, too.”

  “That’s the problem,” Clive insisted. “He knows it. Better if he weren’t quite so sure of you. Takes you for granted, doesn’t he. How long’s it been?”

  “Almost three years,” she said. “Which you know.” Seeing as how their romance had blossomed under the rest of the cast’s nose.

  “And … sorry, darling, but has he talked about making it permanent? Did you buy that new house of yours together? D’you have a ring I haven’t seen?”

  She flushed a bit under the heavy makeup. “You know I don’t. We haven’t got there yet.”

  “Because you don’t want to? Not thinking about kids, staring down the barrel at thirty like you are? That it?”

  “You trying to depress me?” she asked him, attempting to rally. “How’m I meant to cheer the place up today if you get me moping about?”

  “Well, why hasn’t he pushed for it, then?” Clive insisted. “Because he doesn’t think he has to, that’s why. Men want to have to compete for the prize. We want to win, and we want to beat the other blokes out for it. We want to have to fight for it.”

  “Is this meant to be a relationship, or a sporting match?”

  “I didn’t say it was politically correct. I said it was true. Am I right or am I right, Gregor?” Clive asked the makeup artist who was working on his eyes now.

  “You’re right,” Gregor confirmed. “Sad but true.”

  “Since I’ve stuck my neck out this far,” Clive said, “may as well go all the way. I’d do something about that, if I were you.”

  “Like what? Have an affair? Start flirting with other blokes? How’s that going to improve my relationship?”

  “I’m not talking about that. Just a little … uncertainty. We can’t actually make him jealous with me, alas. Much as I love you, my darling, I’m not willing to risk my own hard-won marriage over you. But you could mention somebody else, next time you’re on the phone. Just casually, get his antennae quivering, get him wondering a bit, give him a reason to think that seeing you might rate above a lovely long sleep. Try Trevor, maybe, eh, Gregor.”

  Gregor put his head on one side. “Maybe,” he said dubiously.

  Josie made a little face. “Don’t think I could pull that off.” Trevor was the show’s resident heartthrob, playing a fit paramedic who created almost as much havoc as Josie’s character amongst his colleagues at the hospital. Unfortunately, he thought as much of himself as his eager fans did, and Derek knew it.

  “Somebody, then,” Clive said. “You can’t lack for somebodies.”

  “I could mention my new neighbor,” she admitted reluctantly. “He’d do.”

  “Good?” Clive asked, a look of decided interest on his clean-cut face.

  “Oh, yeh. Good.”

  Good wasn’t the half of it. When she’d peered out from behind the chain that morning and caught sight of said neighbor taking up far too much space under the glow of her porch light, looking so incongruous amidst the spindles and ornately curved woodwork of her chocolate-box villa’s front porch, she really had almost shut the door on him. It had taken some effort to open it again, to assume the amused detachment in the face of masculine interest that she’d been practicing for more than fifteen years now and had down to an art form.

  It wasn’t that he was so good-looking, because he wasn’t, not really. He was a man, that was all, in a way that so many of her actor friends, gorgeous as they might be, couldn’t match.

  The size of him, for one thing. The bulk of his arms, the width of the chest straining that plain gray T-shirt—a chest she’d be willing to bet he’d never waxed in his life—and the extent to which she’d had to look up to see his face.

  And what she’d seen when she’d looked. A nose that was probably too big, too uncompromising, a little crooked, too.
Eyes that were definitely too deep-set under the brows that nearly met in the middle, but were so dark, their expression so intense. And then that firm mouth in the midst of the dark shadow of beard covering the square chin and jaw. That wasn’t bad either.

  All in all, it was a pretty potent package, and that was before she’d opened the door the rest of the way and really looked at all of him. She’d restrained herself from glancing below the waist, but she hadn’t been able to help wondering. Because he was big.

  Stop that, she chided herself. It was nothing other than idle curiosity, and anyway, size didn’t matter, any more than her own fair-sized breasts offered anything more truly satisfying to a man than any other woman’s, once the looking was done. And she didn’t do this. She was happily involved in a mutually satisfying long-term relationship, and she’d never got around much anyway. She was reasonably intelligent—all right, more than reasonably—but you didn’t have to be a rocket scientist to know that most men had pretty much one thought in their head when they looked at her, and Hugh had been no exception, that was obvious. She hadn’t missed the way his eyes had lingered on those same breasts, because he clearly hadn’t got the memo about size not mattering. But instead of the faint contempt she normally felt at the attention she inevitably aroused, she’d been … Well, face it. She’d been aroused.

  It had been too long, clearly. She had a partner that any woman in New Zealand would have given her eyeteeth to be with. Tall, dark, and handsome, that was Derek, and perfectly satisfactory in the size department as well, if it came to that. If she turned heads, so did he, and it had always been a comfort and a relief to know she was with the one man who wasn’t awestruck by her looks, because he was exactly as beautiful himself. They were a matched set, and that had always worked for her. And it still did.

  Anyway, what did she know about Hugh? That he lived with his aunt, brother, and sister, some of the time, when he wasn’t “away”? That he could barely sit still for his sister’s recital piece? Probably dragged there kicking and screaming. Probably on the dole, judging by that shaggy head of hair and the beard. Probably spent his time fishing off the jetty, when he wasn’t lifting weights in some mate’s homemade gym to build that physique, spending his evenings drinking beer in somebody’s basement. Probably broke that hand punching his fist through the wall while he was drunk. She’d gone to school with boys like that, who’d grown into men like that. Responsibility wasn’t high on their list, and nor was career focus. And they were definitely, most definitely, not her type.

  “Yeh, he looks good enough. Not that I’m tempted. But I couldn’t use anybody anyway,” she told Clive now. “Not sure I could play this game at all, really. Not fair to either of them, is it, and I don’t like women who manipulate men.”

  “You don’t have to use anybody,” Clive promised. “You aren’t manipulating, or if you are, only a weeny little bit, not enough to count. Just mention him. Just drop him into the conversation. How helpful he’s been, how he offered to mow your grass.”

  “To mow my grass?”

  Clive waved an airy hand. “If I had a neighbor as fit as you? First thing I’d do is tell her I had the mower out anyway, why don’t I do her garden at the same time as mine, because it’s really no trouble at all. Take my shirt off while I did it, maybe. Before you know it, she’s inviting me into the kitchen, offering me a cuppa, one thing leads to another …”

  Josie laughed. “So that offer’s a signal Derek will recognize as a threat, and he’ll want to come back and wee around the boundaries to let the other dogs know this is his territory, that what you’re saying? Because my neighbor offered to cut my grass?”

  “That’s exactly what I’m saying. Mention. And see if I’m not right.”

  Team Effort

  When he was awoken by the insistent beep-beep-beep of a reversing truck, followed by a metallic grinding that boded no good at all, Hugh wasn’t, somehow, entirely surprised. This had been his first chance to sleep past seven since Aunt Cora had left, so naturally there would be a truck making what sounded like the delivery of a lifetime to the dairy, first thing Saturday morning.

  When he got outside, though, it wasn’t the dairy at all. It was Josie’s house, and the truck whose liftgate was now lowered to the street, allowing the driver to hop into a forklift and maneuver it onto the road, was apparently delivering her a very large early Christmas present, judging from her look of excitement as she hustled backwards to get out of the way.

  More beeping from the forklift, more maneuvering, and the first of two shrink-wrapped pallets was deposited in her driveway with the man headed back for the second.

  She caught sight of Hugh, raised a hand in greeting, and he crossed the few meters of footpath to join her, wishing he’d combed his hair. Or even cut it, as Amelia had suggested. Shaved, maybe, because he had a feeling he looked like a wild man. And she looked as choice as always.

  Not wearing the silky robe today, unfortunately, but then, if she greeted a deliveryman dressed like that, the bloke would never leave. No, she was in a deep red T-shirt, well-worn brown shorts, and work boots, her hair pulled back in a knot, and she shouldn’t have looked nearly as good as she did. She looked like a Hollywood actress playing the part of an undercover cop posing as a site inspector, the casting and the deception both ridiculously improbable.

  “Morning,” he said with his usual impressive form, once he reached her.

  “Morning.” She glanced quickly at him, then back at the driver again. “Woke you again, eh.”

  He raked a hand through his mess of hair, doing his best to finger-comb it into place. “Could be.”

  “Sorry. This was the only delivery time they had. Least I let you sleep the rest of the week. Did my singing at the back of the house,” she explained.

  He nodded. He’d looked out for her, actually. But her car, a not-new Toyota Corolla wagon, had always been gone from the drive by the time he’d left the house for his early-morning walk up Mt. Victoria, even though it was only six-thirty. She really did have the early shift. Didn’t get home early, though, because the car hadn’t been back again until seven-thirty or eight. He wasn’t proud that he knew that, but he did. The window of the room across from his own was always dark, too, by the time he went to bed. Whether that was because she’d gone to sleep or because she’d gone off again, he didn’t know. He wasn’t that much of a stalker.

  He’d wondered what she did to be able to afford to live in Devonport. Something that required long hours. A lawyer, maybe. She had the cool, assessing stare for it. Or, more likely, got the money for the house in a divorce settlement, because she had “trophy wife” written all over her. Although why any man would’ve let her go, he couldn’t fathom. If Hugh had had a woman like that, he’d have held onto her.

  The driver was maneuvering the second pallet onto the arms of the forklift as Hugh stood beside Josie and watched. “What is it?” he asked her, trying to see inside the thick layer of opaque plastic surrounding the solid cube lashed to the pallet at their feet.

  “Bricks. For my patio,” she answered absently, her eyes on the forklift driver, though he wasn’t much of a beauty spot. Dressed pretty much exactly like her, shorts, boots, wool socks, and T-shirt, and not looking nearly as good in it.

  “Having a new one built, are you?” Hugh asked her. “Sounds like a good idea. I think Mrs. Alberts’s husband must’ve laid that concrete back around the Dawn of Man. Made a dog’s breakfast of it, too, as cracked as it’s got since then. The spirit was willing enough there, but the flesh was weak. You’re probably living with a fair few of his subpar DIY projects. He was a banker.”

  “You could be right. That was why I could afford the place, because it didn’t show well. Still doesn’t, for that matter, but at least the concrete’s gone. First step toward the back garden of my dreams. And this,” she said, laying a caressing hand on the plastic, “is the second.”

  “Who’ve you got putting it in for you?” he asked.

&nb
sp; He had to wait for her to thank the driver, who wheeled his machine sharply round again, headed it back into the truck bed, and commenced to prepare for departure.

  “Hope you asked around, got some names,” Hugh persisted over the sound of the liftgate slowly grinding back into place. “I could’ve given you a couple.”

  She laughed. “Got a name, haven’t I. Me.”

  “You?” He couldn’t have been more gobsmacked. “You mean you’re helping?”

  That detached, amused look was back on her face, to his annoyance. “No, I mean I’m doing it. A couple of my mates came by and gave me a hand with the demo, because that sledgehammer’s hard to swing after a few goes, but I couldn’t really ask them to give me another weekend. But that’s OK. This bit’s just time and patience.”

  She’d been using a sledgehammer? Yeh, he’d bet it had been hard for her to swing. But that she’d done it at all … “Could be a bit more work than you realize,” he said cautiously, feeling his way over what he could tell was shaky ground as she raised a hand to the departing driver.

  “No worries. I’ve got all weekend to do it. More, if it comes to that. Brick doesn’t have a time limit. Not like a concrete pour, is it.”

  “Yeh, nah,” he agreed, still bemused. “It isn’t. But I’ll give you a hand, how’s that. Make it go a bit faster.” And avert disaster, he hoped.

  She looked at him, and he had the uncomfortable feeling that she could read his mind. All parts of it. “A hand would be about what it’d be. Seeing as you’ve only got one.”

  He looked down at his cast. “Yeh, well, I’m not too bad with one.”

  “Oh, wait,” she said. “This is cutting the grass.”

  “Pardon?” What? What grass?

  “I appreciate the offer, but before I let you spend your day like that, I should tell you, I’ve got a partner.”