Just Not Mine (Escape to New Zealand)

by Rosalind James

  “See?” Josie smiled down at him. “You do remember.”

  The doorbell rang while she was hacking away at a pumpkin. “Get that for me, will you, love?” she asked Charlie. “That’ll be your brother. And your sister,” she added hastily.

  She’d resisted the urge to glam up too much, at least, even though she’d found herself putting on a dress, which the apron was covering up just now. Well, it was a party. Of sorts. And if her hair was down, and she was wearing a bit of makeup, that wasn’t for Hugh’s benefit, because she had a partner. But she’d been out and about, and even in casual New Zealand, her image required more polish than she’d been featuring today. Anyway, Hugh had looked at her all day in her work clothes, and her pride demanded a better showing.

  But he was standing just the other side of the kitchen bench now, and she was looking at the depth of his chest, being reminded about the size of his arms, and he was smiling at her, and her hands had stilled on her knife.

  “Do the ballet run, then?” she asked him, forcing herself to start cutting through the dense orange flesh again.

  “Yeh. I take it you finished the job? Get your swim?”

  “Yeh.” She smiled herself. “Bet I had a better time.”

  He laughed. “Bet you did. I was going to say I’d take the kids home, because we all need showers, but d’you need a hand here first?”

  She needed to stop smiling at him. “Again, a hand’s what it’d be. Don’t think you could do too much with one.”

  “I can do quite a lot with one,” he said, the look in his eyes letting her know exactly what he could do, and suddenly, her oven wasn’t the only thing warming up. All he was doing was standing there, and he was still sending tingles to places they had no business being, evoking every shivery, delicious sensation that the most heated on-screen kiss failed to arouse, and it took all the training she had not to show it.

  She looked down again hastily, resumed her hacking progress. “Nah, got this. Go take your shower. Then come back and help me christen my new deck.”

  He glanced sharply at her, opened his mouth to say something, then shut it, and she realized what she’d said and very nearly blushed. She never got flustered with men, and she’d worked with, dated, been chatted up by men infinitely more handsome, polished, and urbane than Hugh could dream of being, but she was flustered now.

  All he said, though, was, “Right. See you in a bit. Hour or so OK? Enough time?”

  “Perfect,” she said. “See you then.” And kept chopping her vegies, moving around her dark little kitchen in her bare feet, and did her best to pretend that this was about a thank-you and nothing more.

  “A feast,” he said when she let them back in again, led them back through the kitchen, and he saw the vegies and salad laid out, the fish ready to cook.

  “Could you drink a beer?” she asked him, opening the fridge.

  “You going to drink with me?”

  “I don’t drink beer.”

  “Don’t drink beer, don’t eat pizza? What do you do?”

  “Only low-kilojoule pursuits,” she said, pulling out one of the bottles of Monteith’s she’d chilled for him, holding it up with a questioning lift of her brows.

  “Even after all that work today, not to mention the swim, and as slim as you are?” he asked, taking the bottle from her. “Because my mum would say, get that girl a sandwich. I’d think you could have a beer without fear.”

  “Your mum’s opinion notwithstanding, no, I can’t.” She realized she was snapping, took a breath. “Sorry. I hear that a lot from people who don’t understand, and it can get annoying. I’m an actress, and the camera adds the kilos, even if you don’t have any extra. And if you do … forget about getting parts.” She took a sip of her own chilled water and tried to pretend it was wine. She’d used up her wine ration for the week already, though, so for tonight, it was water.

  “It’s me who’s sorry,” he said, and it sounded genuine, and she relaxed. “None of my business how much you eat. Or drink. An actress, though, eh. Would I have seen you in anything?”

  “I doubt it.” Somehow, she didn’t think he was a regular Courtney Place watcher. “Charlie thought ginger beer would be acceptable for the two of you,” she told Amelia, pulling out a couple more bottles. “Glasses over the sink,” she told Hugh, and watched him reach to pull them down, appreciating the open-necked dark-blue knit shirt he wore, the way it clung to his shoulders and upper back, and the way it didn’t cling around the waist and hips, because if any man could be said to have a V-shaped torso, that man was Hugh. Whatever the mysterious profession was, she’d decided it was active, because he hadn’t built those layers of muscle in the gym. He’d changed to dressier clothes for tonight, too, dark jeans and that shirt, and she needed to make sure she kept her distance. Asking him to dinner had probably been a bad impulse move, because she’d clearly given him the wrong idea. The only problem was, she very much feared that she had the wrong idea as well.

  “Can I do something?” he asked once he’d poured the drinks. “Or can my five assorted hands do something?”

  “Carry the plates and cutlery out to our new patio for me,” she suggested. “Going to get too cold to stay out there much past dinner, but I need you all to admire it, so we have to at least try it.”

  “Christen it,” he said.

  “Yeh.” She cleared her throat. “Right.” She turned to the stove and turned the fire on under her frying pan. “Less than five minutes.”

  He got the kids set up out on the patio, she saw with a glance as she added a bit of olive oil, waited for it to heat, and then he was back in the kitchen, leaning against the edge of the bench and taking a careful sip of his beer.

  “Looks good out there,” he said. “Professional, I’d call that. I like your furniture, too.”

  “Yeh, thanks,” she said. “Suits me, I think.” She’d found the café table and chairs in a shop in Parnell, and had known they were hers. The table was a robin’s egg blue, the four chairs lemon yellow, cherry red, lime green, and grape, and the entire thing made her smile, looked so cheerful and fun set on the distressed brick, exactly as she’d envisioned it. “I want a fountain next, set in a fern garden. I had that shady spot in mind at the back, under the tree. What do you think?”

  “I think you’ve got it done in your head already, probably got all the steps mapped out, and it’s just a matter of time. Planning to put it in yourself?”

  “Course I am. But you already knew that.”

  “Wait till I’ve got two hands, and I’ll help you do it. You’re clearly multifaceted. I’m going to have to ask how you do that, too, because it seems like a quick prep.” He motioned to where she was setting her dukkah-coated terakihi fillets carefully into the pan, where they immediately began to sizzle.

  “Just buy the dukkah ready-made,” she said, pointing with her spatula to a plastic container filled with the mixture of pulverized nuts, herbs, and spices. “Pour some into a plate, press your fillets into it, fry them up in a bit of olive oil, and you’re all good. Charlie said you sometimes found cooking a bit challenging.”

  He smiled. “You could put it that way. Or you could just come right out and say that I’m rubbish at it.”

  “Well, this is a quick option,” she said. “Even faster than hamburgers.”

  He made a face. “Charlie told you about the hamburgers, eh. And the pizza.”

  “He did.” She flipped the fish. “I’m guessing you’re a bit new to the full-responsibility mode?”

  “Yeh,” he said, watching her slide the fillets out onto a platter, then taking it from her and carrying it out to the patio. “You’re guessing right.”

  “I have to say,” he said while they were eating, “not only can’t I cook like this, I wouldn’t have known how to build a patio, not without asking around a fair bit, at least. I’m guessing the trailer in your drive is yours, too, not borrowed off a mate. Genuine Kiwi, that is. Handmade all the way, a few spare boards and two ti
res somebody took off an old car.”

  “It is,” she said. “I was so excited to find it on Trade Me and have a way to haul all my DIY stuff. Because I’ve got projects.”

  “Guessing you can back a boat down a ramp, too,” he said with a grin.

  “Of course I can. I drove a tractor before I did a car. A truck as well, come to that.”

  “A country girl, eh. Where’s your family?”

  “Katikati. You know it?”

  “Murals,” he said. “Close to Mt. Maunganui.”

  “Close geographically, nowhere near otherwise. Not nearly so flash. But it sounds like you’ve been there, if you’ve seen the murals, so you know that.”

  “What are murals?” Charlie asked.

  “Paintings on buildings, or walls,” Josie explained. “Almost all the sides of shops, the fronts, all that, in Katikati? Anywhere there’s space, really, has got a painting on it, mostly things from the past. They’re pretty cool. You could look online if you wanted to see them.”

  “I’ll show you,” Hugh told him. “When we go home.”

  “So you’ve been there,” Josie prompted.

  “Well, driven through. On the way to Mt. Maunganui,” he said with another smile. “The only other thing I know about it is kiwifruit.”

  “Josie used to pick kiwifruit,” Charlie informed his brother. “That’s why she’s so strong.”

  “Does your family have an orchard?” Hugh asked her.

  “Only a few blocks. My dad’s a contractor. Organizes the teams, sends them around.”

  “And you picked,” he said. “Hard work, isn’t it?”

  She shrugged. “Everything on a farm’s hard work. During school breaks, is all. I blame my lack of a ballet career on that, though. Very convenient excuse, when the truth is that the problem wasn’t my broad shoulders, it was my tendency to galumph around the stage like I was on the netball court, and my general lack of talent.”

  “Did you want a ballet career?”

  “Sure. That’s how I met Chloe. We were at grammar school together. Boarding school, because I came to St. Theresa’s for that, here in Auckland.”

  He raised his eyebrows, and she added with a laugh, “On a scholarship, of course, as you’ve guessed. My parents thought I’d be a lawyer.”

  “I thought that too,” he said. “At first, when I met you. That you were a lawyer. Something about the way you stared me down.”

  “Disappointed you too, then,” she said, keeping it cool.

  “I wouldn’t say disappointed.” He was looking at her in the gathering dusk, and she got up, found the matches she’d set ready, and lit the candles on the table, then went around the corners of the patio, crouched and lit the others she’d set ready, careful not to set her floaty white dress alight.

  “There,” she said with a satisfied sigh, coming back over to the table. “How’s that?”

  “Beautiful,” Amelia said with a sigh of her own. “It’s so romantic.”

  “Candles are always romantic,” Josie told her. “Everybody looks better, too, because it’s all about the lighting, always.”

  “I don’t think you look better,” Charlie said. “I mean, I think you always look nice, doesn’t she, Hugh?”

  “She does,” he said, and Josie looked at him again and got a little flutter, because his eyes were even warmer in the soft glow of the candles. He was leaning back in his chair, smiling at her, big and solid and strong, and she had to remind herself that one day of helping her build a patio wasn’t a true test of his character, because a man would do just about anything to sleep with a woman, especially one who looked like her.

  And he did want to sleep with her, that was clear. But she had a partner, and Hugh was her neighbor, and she wanted to live in this house until they carried her out feet-first, so that wouldn’t have been happening anyway.

  She fought to remember what they’d been talking about. “Chloe was the star,” she told Amelia. “You should have seen her. She went on to dance with Auckland Ballet Theatre as soon as she left school. Oh, she was good.”

  “She’s awesome,” Amelia said. “I want to dance like her. But why does she keep saying I’m not ready for my pointe shoes? I practice every day, heaps more than June or Holly, but she still says I’m not ready, and I don’t see why. I know all the steps.”

  “Because you don’t look anything like her when you do them,” Charlie said with a little brother’s frankness. “You look like you’re, I don’t know, stomping or something. And she looks like she’s floating, when she shows you. Like she’s on strings, like a puppet.”

  “I wouldn’t say Amelia stomps,” Josie said hurriedly, “but I think I did. Sometimes, when you’re athletic, it can actually be harder.” She had a feeling that Chloe had been referring to Amelia when she’d been talking about being reminded of Josie’s own less-than-stellar technique, and she knew exactly what it was like to yearn for mastery that didn’t come, for a career that she couldn’t possibly attain.

  She saw Charlie shiver, realized she was feeling the evening chill through her own lacy sweater, and said, “Much as I’m loving my new patio in the candlelight, it’s time to go inside, I think.”

  Hugh stood, picked up his plate. “We’ll help you clear up before we go.”

  “You’ve done more than enough today already,” she said. “You don’t have to do that as well.” She didn’t press him to stay. She wanted to keep sitting with them, and that was exactly why she wasn’t going to do it.

  “Yeh,” he said. “We do.”

  They did, loaded the dishwasher too, Hugh brushing aside her protest with, “I may be pretty average in the kitchen, but I can just about manage to bung dishes into the dishwasher,” and then they left, and Josie finished clearing up, sat herself down on the couch and turned on the telly for a half-hour of relaxation before a well-earned early night, and wondered why, when she finally had the house she’d longed for, had ticked off one more box toward the life she’d been planning for herself ever since she’d given up the ballet dream, and that other dream, too … why, despite all that, all she felt right now was lonely.

  Celebrity Gossip

  She did her best to mention, the next day. Derek called her on Sunday morning, and she was glad to hear from him, glad to remind herself that he was there and that he cared, but she mentioned all the same.

  “Wrapping up this week, then?” she started out by asking. “The crocs, the leeches, the heat soon to be a distant memory?”

  “Nah.” He sighed. “It’s been a nightmare, one bloody thing after another. Over time, over budget, you name it by now. Wondering why I signed up for this. You’ve had your big break, turned your back on it, and that’s fine for you, but this was meant to be mine, and I wanted to make the most of it.”

  She knew her greater success had always nagged at him, so she ignored the dig. “What’s happened now?”

  “You can’t make this stuff up. The kitchen served up some dodgy chicken, that was the latest, most of the cast and half the crew taken ill, spent Friday night hugging their toilets. We were meant to shoot yesterday, and we couldn’t do it. Dragging on into next week after all.”

  “Oh, no. You sound OK, though. You didn’t get the bot?”

  “Nah. Vanessa’s a vegetarian. Says looking at people eating meat makes her sick, and since we were talking over a scene together during lunch, I skipped as well. A heroic effort, but anything for the good of the film, you know. And as it turned out, lucky for me.”

  “I’d call that very lucky,” she laughed. “Looking at people eating meat makes her sick? She must do a lot of eating alone.”

  “High-maintenance and then some,” Derek agreed. “Makes me realize what a bullet I’ve dodged with you. No dramas, that’s my easy-peasy Josie.”

  It wasn’t the first time he’d said it, and in the past, she’d appreciated it. Now it made her feel like some kind of a jolly mate.

  “So what have you been doing?” he asked. “Got your work b
oots on, I’ll bet, building that patio all weekend. Now you know the real reason I’m over here. Otherwise, I’d feel compelled to help. I don’t know why you can’t just hire somebody like everybody else does, let me off the hook.”

  “Because I like to.”

  “Don’t I know it. So how’s it going?”

  “It’s done, actually.” Time to mention. “My neighbor came and lent a hand, and we knocked it over in a day.” She wouldn’t mention the kids. Let him think she’d had a solo work date.

  “Your neighbor, eh. Did he try to run the show, put your back up?”

  “No, he didn’t,” she said, and realized it was true. “He just provided the muscle, and as he’s got a fair bit of that, we got along well. Probably better than anyone I could’ve hired, so it’s all working out. He said he’d help me with my next job, too,” she added, heaping on a bit more mentioning in case Derek hadn’t got it. “The fountain and that.”

  “His partner didn’t mind?” he asked, and she smiled. Things were looking up.

  “He doesn’t have one. A single neighbor with muscles, what could be better?”

  “Sounds like I should be worried,” he said, but he was laughing again, and she was annoyed, because he so clearly wasn’t a bit worried. “But then, if I worried about you every time some fella wanted to help you across the street, I’d be in trouble, wouldn’t I? Good thing I know I can count on you. That’s what I love about you. Beautiful, and loyal and dependable, too. The perfect woman.”

  “Or the perfect cocker spaniel.”

  He laughed. “You know what I mean. And I like cocker spaniels. Just like I like you.”

  So much for mentioning.

  She was pushing her trolley through New World once again. Five o’clock on Wednesday afternoon, because she’d had a couple days where she wasn’t called, which meant she’d been able to deal with her bright-pink bathroom, which was thankfully and finally no longer bright pink. It had taken some serious effort with the primer to cover the glaring hue, and it was going to take most of tomorrow to return it to a tasteful off-white that wouldn’t assault her eyes every time she walked in.