Just Not Mine (Escape to New Zealand)

by Rosalind James

  And, when he stayed behind a minute while the girls changed and Charlie waited with his usual quiet patience, fading into the background, Chloe said yes.

  She said more than that when they were having coffee the next day, though. He’d started by talking about Amelia, segued, he hoped smoothly, into asking about the school. Asking about her instead of banging on about himself, because that tended to work better, in his experience.

  “Must have been quite an undertaking, setting it up,” he said. “How long ago?”

  “Four years,” she said.

  “Seems to be getting quite successful. You have some other teachers there as well, don’t you?”

  “Five.”

  “Lots of work, organizing all that, teaching as well.” Geez, he was dull. He was putting himself to sleep here, and her too, judging by the brevity of her responses.

  “Yes, it is,” she agreed. “Especially,” she said, looking directly at him out of the brown eyes, “since I have a son.”

  “Oh.” Now he wasn’t bored. Was anyone single and unencumbered? Apparently not. He struggled to find an answer. “How old is he?”

  “Nearly two.”

  “So …” Had she thought this was some sort of parent-teacher conference, then? But the kids had said that she’d talked about him with Josie. He was seriously floundering with reading the signals here. “But not a partner,” he said cautiously. “Or … yes?”

  “Or no,” she said, and there was a little smile there, and his signal-reading was back on track. “Not a partner. Just a child. Like you, I take it?”

  “They’re not exactly mine,” he said.

  “Oh?” Her dark eyebrows lifted. “Is that temporary?”

  “No,” he realized. “Well, temporary in that it won’t be forever. New, I guess you’d call it. I’ve only been living with them for eight months or so,” he tried to explain, “and on the road a good half of that or more, and my aunt’s been here, so I haven’t been in this …”

  “The full-on mode,” Chloe guessed. “And now you are, and it’s new.”

  “It is.”

  She nodded. “Imagine what it’s like to have a baby, then.”

  He couldn’t, not really, and this wasn’t the kind of easy date he’d envisioned, either. But he liked her, and if she had a son, well, maybe that was even better. She wouldn’t be running screaming away from the very idea of Charlie and Amelia’s existence. She knew Charlie and Amelia, she seemed to like them all right, and they liked her, too.

  Worth a try, he decided, and asked her to dinner. And she said yes to that, too.

  The Lucky Country

  “So how was it?” Clive asked Josie from the makeup chair on Monday. “Did you make a dramatic return to the Lucky Country? Our boy Derek sufficiently re-impressed with your x factor?”

  “It was fine,” Josie said, looking up from her script. “It was good to see him again.”

  He raised an eyebrow. Showing off, because he was one of the few people she knew who could actually do that. “Fine? Good? Thought I told you to mention.”

  “I did. I mentioned like billy-o.”

  “And? Didn’t work? Has he gone off you, then?”

  “No, I wouldn’t say so,” she said. “No. But … he did some mentioning of his own.”

  Of people, and of places. He’d met her at Sydney Airport, had taken her off for an evening with the rest of the cast in a private area of a popular club. And she’d enjoyed meeting them, most of them, although the pounding music, the laughter and chat and dancing and drinking had all been a bit much after a day of painting her bathroom and the long flight. She’d been glad to leave the club soon after midnight. She’d been to it often enough during her own Sydney days, and she wouldn’t have called it her favorite spot in the world, or the best place to re-connect.

  “Can you believe Vanessa?” Derek asked, laughing, still excited, still high on the excitement of it all as he pulled her close, his arm around her before the driver jumped to open the door of the private car that had been dispatched to take them back to the hotel. “A little above the Courtney Place standard, eh,” he added, sinking back into plush leather. “Finally living in the style to which I ought to be accustomed, not having to build my own patio so nobody will think I’m a tall poppy. Why the hell not be a tall poppy, if that’s what you are?” He laughed again. “I could get accustomed to it, waving my good-looking head up above the rest without fear. But seriously, Vanessa?”

  Josie inclined her head toward the driver, shot Derek a questioning look. A studio driver, she knew.

  “Oh, don’t worry,” Derek said. “Rog knows where all the bodies are buried, don’t you, mate?”

  “You could say that,” the driver agreed with a glance in the rear-view mirror.

  Josie waited to answer anyway. In her experience, drivers—and the rest of the crew—did indeed know everything, and that was the problem.

  “You’re so bloody cautious,” Derek said again when they’d climbed out of the car, ascended the lift and were in the hotel suite with its stunning, iconic view of the Harbour Bridge and the Opera House. “Not everybody has to like you, you know. But seriously, now you know what I’ve had to deal with, with Vanessa. Always has to be the center of attention, always something wrong. If it’s not the food, it’s the heat, or the flies, or her lines. Now, if we’re talking about poppies, she’s the tallest. And she’s been that way the whole bloody time. Makes me appreciate you all the more.” He pulled her to him, nuzzled her neck. “Mmm. I missed you. Let’s talk about how much.”

  “Not sure if complaining about somebody really counts as mentioning,” she told Clive now, “but he did that, and my mentioning?” She passed her palm over the top of her head. “Just about that much effect. Glad to see me, wanted to show me everything, tell me everything. But jealous? Not so much.”

  “Hmm.” Clive considered as Gregor brushed foundation over his cheeks, blended with the big sable brush. “If he’s mentioning, and he’s not caring that you’re mentioning … I don’t know, Josie-Girl. I’d say it doesn’t look too good. How was the sex?”

  “None of your business. As usual.”

  But when she was catching up with Chloe on Tuesday night over an early dinner with her friend and her godson, and the subject came up again, she was more forthcoming.

  “Yeh, it was good,” she told Chloe, taking a bite of the couscous salad they’d fixed and watching Zavy work through his with his usual determination from his high chair. “But it wasn’t … great.”

  “Talking, or …?” Chloe asked with an expressive tilt of her head.

  “Both,” Josie admitted. “Oh, it happened, but he wasn’t all over me like you’d expect after more than a month. Happy enough to wait until the end of the evening. Guess I was hoping he’d be going to the door for the room service we’d finally managed to order, wrapped in the sheet with me hiding in the toilet, know what I mean?”

  “Only the faintest recollection,” Chloe said. “But the other way around? Yeh, I remember that, from before Rich did his runner. He said it was because I was pregnant and he didn’t fancy me as much, but I think it was just that he didn’t fancy me, period.”

  She caught the red sippy cup just as Zavy dropped it over the side of his chair. “Do that,” she warned him, holding the cup in the air, “and no more milk for you. Drink it or leave it. Which is it going to be?”

  “Drink,” he said, reaching for it.

  “All right, then,” she said, handing it back. “No more nonsense.”

  “Yeh,” Josie sighed. She’d got the knack a while back of mum-conversation. You had to hold your train of thought through the detours, that was the trick of it. “He said he missed me, but mostly, he just seemed caught up in it all. All the glitz, the money, feeling like a star at last.”

  “I thought that was how you felt too, though, when you first went to Aussie,” Chloe said.

  Josie laughed. “This is the problem with having been friends so long. You rem
ember all the inconvenient bits. I did feel that way at first, caught up, holding on for the ride, enjoying the thrill. But then I got over it. Got over myself, more like, and realized that so much of the rest of it that I’d been so impressed by was just …” She skimmed her hand flat over the table. “Surface.”

  “You thinking that’s going to happen with Derek?” Chloe asked, and Josie wished she didn’t look so doubtful.

  “I don’t know,” she forced herself to say. “Guess we’ll have to see how we go. He’s been there for me through my own roughest patch, you know that. I was far from perfect myself, wasn’t too sensitive to what he needed. He’s due a bit of patience from me.”

  “Nothing like the same thing,” Chloe said.

  Josie shrugged. “Another life change. Good change, bad change, all transitions are tough.”

  “Talking of transitions,” Chloe said, getting up and grabbing a face cloth hanging on the towel rack next to the sink and rinsing it under the tap before coming back to begin wiping Zavy down, “your neighbor asked me out.”

  “Who? Hugh?”

  “Got another neighbor like that?” Chloe finished her cleanup of Zavy’s plump cheeks and started on the chubby little fingers. “Yeh, Hugh. He seems like what you said, a pretty good guy, even though he did forget to collect Amelia and the other girls once.”

  “In fairness,” Josie said, “I think the kid thing is pretty new to him.”

  “He said. When we went out.”

  “Oh.”

  Chloe lifted Zavy out of his chair and set him on the floor, where he immediately headed for the Playskool bus he’d only reluctantly abandoned for his dinner, plopped himself down on his padded backside and began to pluck out the round plastic passengers, while his mother picked up the dishes Josie hadn’t already collected and took them to the sink.

  Josie forced herself into patience, and Chloe began washing plates, then finally went on to say, “We went for a coffee on Sunday after I finished up at the studio, since I had Carolyn already. Just a quick one on Victoria Road.”

  “Babysitter-worthy, you think?” Josie asked, keeping her tone light—and showing some major acting chops in the process, she thought, appalled at the—well, at the jealousy, because there was no other word for it, the crab that nipped its evil pincers into her at the thought of Hugh taking Chloe out. She wasn’t, she truly wasn’t some Black Widow who had to pull every man she encountered into her web, who had to be the focus of male eyes, the center of male attention wherever she went. Hugh wasn’t hers to lose, and Chloe deserved a good man, a man who’d spend an entire day helping his neighbor with her patio when there was nothing in it for him. A man who was willing to take on kids who weren’t his own, because that was the real test, wasn’t it? And the real issue.

  “Guess we’ll find out,” Chloe said. “He asked if he could see me again. We’re going out on Saturday night, if I can get a babysitter. Carolyn can’t do it.”

  “Does he know about Zavy?”

  “I told him. He seemed a bit … surprised, but he still asked me again, so …” Chloe shrugged. “Worth a try, I thought. Plus, he’s fit, isn’t he? Got a cast on that hand and all,” she said with a smile, “but I figure, by the time I’m ready to see what he can do with his hands, maybe the cast will be a thing of the past, and who knows? Maybe my long drought will be as well.”

  I can do quite a lot with one. She heard him say it, saw the look in his eyes while he had, and felt another pinch of claws as she imagined him saying it to Chloe, looking at her like that.

  But, as Josie had been at some pains to remind him, she had a partner, Chloe would be good for the kids, and Hugh … Hugh would be good for Chloe, she told herself firmly. Her friend had dated little enough since her solo pregnancy and Zavy’s birth, all her energies going into the school that was her other baby. She deserved some happiness, and if Hugh could provide it, well, why wouldn’t that be just wonderful for everybody?

  “I’ll be here this weekend,” she said, “and I have no plans. Why don’t I babysit the kids? You could bring Zavy over to Hugh’s, and I could look after all of them there. Easy as.”

  “Sure?” Chloe asked doubtfully. “Not much of a Saturday night for you.”

  “Better than the one I’d have otherwise. I’d love to do it.” And by Saturday night, she hoped, she’d have convinced herself that it was true.

  Chemistry

  “Hi.” Hugh smiled at Josie as she stood outside on his porch, dressed down in skinny black trousers and a purple jersey and still looking pretty bloody fantastic. “Come on in.”

  “Nice haircut, by the way,” she told him as she did.

  “Thanks.”

  “You kept the beard, though,” she said.

  “Yeh.” He ran his hand over his jaw. “After some thought. Should I have shaved it?”

  “Mmm, I don’t think so,” she said. “If you’re asking me. Manly, isn’t it.”

  “Not too manly? he asked. “Rough?”

  “No. Or if it is …” She smiled into his eyes. “That’s not so bad. Chloe will like it, I’m sure.”

  Right. Chloe. “Come on in,” he realized he should say.

  “This is nice,” she exclaimed as she followed him through the broad rimu-floored passage with its paneled walls that ran, in true villa style, straight back to the end of the house.

  “You’ve never been here?” he asked in surprise.

  “Just for a minute, when your aunt was here. That’s my ulterior motive tonight,” she said cheerily, “get some ideas for how I want my place to look when it’s done, or restored, I should say. If they’d had the sense to leave well enough alone, it’d be cake. Those DIY projects you mentioned, though.” She gave an expressive shudder. “Brr.”

  He’d felt awkward about this, about having her babysit while he went out with somebody else, with her friend. Clearly, though, he was the only one who’d felt that way. “Kids are in the back,” he said. “Early dinner.”

  “Oh, I don’t get to cook?” she asked, and actually sounded disappointed.

  “Only so much I was willing to ask of you,” he said.

  “You can ask,” she said, and he looked down at her, his eyes met hers, and it was another of those electric moments, or was that just him? Because as always, she looked away first, made a little gesture towards the back of the house, and he led the way into the kitchen, having another talk with himself along the way.

  “Oh,” she said when they reached it. “This is nice.”

  Hugh looked around. He guessed it was. White glass-fronted cabinets gleaming with rich paint, pale-yellow walls with glossy white trim, folding glass doors running the entire width of the back wall opening into the garden, onto the wooden deck where the kids were sitting.

  “Josie!” Charlie hopped up, came over for a cuddle.

  “I was just looking at your mum’s beautiful kitchen,” Josie told him. “I can see that she loved to cook, just like you said. But then, she was French.”

  “Yeh, she cooked better than Hugh,” Amelia said, poking disconsolately at her dinner. “She cooked better than anybody. But,” she added fairly, “Auntie Cora cooks better than Hugh too. And June’s mum cooks better than Hugh.”

  “We made this dinner together,” Hugh pointed out. “So if anything’s lacking, it’s on all of us.”

  “Shepherd’s pie?” Josie asked, looking at the pan. “Moving up, I’d say, mince and potatoes. Looks yum. Got some carrots in there too, I see. Bonus points for nutrition.”

  “Not that yum,” Amelia said.

  “Have some,” Hugh urged Josie. “If you think you can risk it. You can tell us how to improve for next time.”

  “I don’t—” she began, then smiled ruefully.

  “Let me guess. You don’t eat shepherd’s pie.”

  “Well, no. Mince and potatoes? No.”

  “You can’t eat potatoes?” Charlie asked. “Are you allergic? A kid in my class is allergic to peanuts, but I never heard of anybody be
ing allergic to potatoes. You need to be careful, though, if you’re allergic.”

  “I’m not allergic,” she assured him. “Just can’t eat potatoes. Make me chubby, eh. But I’ll have a wee taste of your pie all the same, give the two of you some pointers if I can. That way, the next time you make shepherd’s pie with Hugh, you can put him right, show him up.”

  “Was your mum a good cook too?” Charlie asked. “Like ours?”

  “A very good cook. Not French, nothing flash. But she can turn out dinner for ten on two burners, and make it look easy and taste better.”

  “Is she alive?” Charlie asked. “Or did she die?”

  “She’s alive,” Josie said, looking a little taken aback.

  “That’s good,” Charlie said. “So she can still cook for you and give you cuddles and things.”

  She gave him a cuddle of her own, and Hugh thought she might have teared up a bit. “I hope she stays alive a long, long time,” she said. “Because you’re right, she gives awesome cuddles.”

  “Then if you had kids,” Charlie said, “you’d know how to cuddle too.”

  She didn’t say anything, just held on a moment more, and Hugh had definitely been right about the tears. He realized, too, that neither of the kids ever came to him for cuddles, not these days, not for years, and that he hadn’t thought of offering them.

  His own mum had never been much of a one for cuddling, though. Always in motion, always on the phone or at the computer, or both, talking and planning, flapping a hand at him to wait, not to interrupt until she’d worked out measurements, coaxed a reluctant client to abandon the “darling” idea she’d found in some magazine, then throwing a dinner together for the two of them before rushing off again. She’d been a fine mum, had done the right things, cared the way a mum should, but she hadn’t been much of a cuddler, and she still wasn’t.

  And neither had his dad been, at least not with him, not as far as his sketchy memory could recall from the early years. He’d mellowed with his marriage to the much younger, effervescent Juliette. A woman who, Hugh realized, Chloe resembled more than a little. No wonder the kids wanted him to date her.