Just in Time (Escape to New Zealand Book 8)

by James, Rosalind

  “Sorry about that,” she said again.

  “No worries.” He did his best to pretend that he hadn’t cared. “She can think what she likes, though I hope I’m not as bad as all that.”

  “I can tell you’re offended. And I’m sure you’re thinking, what right does she have to say anything? When she talks about the skin trade, and what she used to do, and all that. But it’s because she’s a mom. A great mom. She’s trying to make sure I don’t make the same mistakes she did, just like she always has. She taught me that, and everything else, too. How to stand up for myself, and how to stand on my own two feet, not to depend on anybody else. That you can’t count on anyone but yourself, and how not to get sucked into thinking you can.”

  “Well, that’s a bit harsh. I’d like to think you can count on some people.”

  “Well, her,” Faith amended. “I can count on her. Because she’s still a mom. She wants me to be independent, but she has me manage her apartment complex, when she could get somebody with real handyman skills to do it, and then she pretends I’m doing her a favor. She does it because that’s what she can do for me. She couldn’t send me to college, but she’s helping me pay off the loans all the same. She does what she can do. Everything she can do. And she’s taught me how to do the rest for myself, so I can survive.”

  It sounded like such a lonely life. Such a hard life. The two of them against the world? “I wouldn’t have said that she wasn’t a good mum,” he said cautiously, because she sounded a bit defensive, and why was that?

  “She was,” Faith said again. “She went to every parent-teacher conference, even if she’d just gotten home from doing two shows a night. On her feet for hours every night in spike heels, with that smile plastered on her face. Once she got the showgirl job, that is, because before that, yeah, she was an exotic dancer, and she wouldn’t be ashamed to tell you so. So if she seems a little jaded about men, a little cynical? She’s got reasons. But she’d trade shifts so she could go to Back-to-School night, even when the other parents didn’t talk to her. That’s the kind of person she is. She’s always held her head high.”

  “But it’s Vegas.”

  “Doesn’t mean people don’t still look down on women who take their clothes off for money. And she wasn’t a hooker, if that’s what you’re thinking.” She was driving a bit faster now, speeding down Tropicana Boulevard, her hands clenching on the wheel. “In fact, that’s the one time I got in trouble in school. Fourth grade. A boy said my mother was a hooker. He didn’t even know quite what it meant, I’m sure. He’d heard it from his parents. I didn’t know, either. But I knew it was bad.”

  “What did you do?”

  She laughed, but it wasn’t her usual Faith-laugh. It was short. Dry. “I punched him. Gave him a bloody nose. Then I kicked him in the balls. Man, I’ll tell you, he went down like a rock. My mom had to come get me at school, because I got suspended. I’m a dangerous enemy, just so you know.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind. But I suspect your mum is, too. What did she say?”

  “She told me not to fight her battles. I asked her what a hooker was, and she said, ‘That’s a woman who has to have sex for money.’ You notice that? Has to. She said, and I still remember this, ‘So you know? No, I’m not a hooker. But I’m not going to look down on women who do what they have to do to take care of themselves, or to take care of their kids. We’re all just doing what we have to do to get by.’”

  He didn’t know quite what to say to that, so he didn’t say anything.

  “She was a good mom,” she repeated after a minute. “She had fun, sure she did. You just heard her tell you so, because she’s honest. But she told me I was smart, and that being smart mattered. She made sure I wouldn’t have to use my body to survive. She pushed me in school. She was proud of me.”

  “I can see that.”

  “And you know, men want women to be sexy. Then they look down on them for being sexy. Like if they’re sexy, that’s all they are. My mom’s more than that.” She shook her head, pulled onto Torrey Pines at the light, and slowed to twenty-five. “I’m not making sense, I suppose.”

  “No. You are. So where was your dad?”

  “Married.”

  “Ah.”

  “Yeah.” She sighed, pulled into the little parking lot of the apartment complex, and turned the engine off, but kept sitting there, so he did too. “She didn’t know, of course. Because men are good at lying. Some men, anyway,” she went on hastily, as if that would be a shock to him. “She didn’t tell him about me, because she didn’t want to wreck his wife’s marriage. She told me the truth, though, when I was old enough to hear it. She didn’t sugarcoat it, because life’s hard, and facing the truth is the only way through. My mom’s a decent lady, although I don’t expect you to see that.”

  “I see it. And my dad buggered off himself, didn’t he,” he found himself admitting. “Worse than that, I guess you’d say. After five kids, when I was eighteen. So I know about strong mums who do what they have to do. And I know about looking after your mum, too. About wanting to protect her. Don’t worry about me. She was keeping you safe. That’s a mum’s job, keeping her kids safe.”

  She was still sitting there in the dark, and she didn’t look like she was moving. Normally, that would have been his signal that a woman wanted him to kiss her. Normally.

  “You know,” she said, looking at him at last, “you’re just way too confusing.”

  That startled a laugh out of him. “Me? How?”

  “Would you just be one way? Let me make up my mind? At first I think you’re a player, and my mom’s completely right. And then you’re so sweet. Stop that. It’s messing me up.”

  He wanted to kiss her. He’d never wanted to do anything more. If he was sweet…she was that, too, and so much else besides. Sweet, and warm, and curvy, and so bloody sexy. Her embarrassment, and her passion, defending her mother. The way she’d blushed, the way he’d seen her breath coming a bit faster, there at dinner, when he’d looked at her. He’d known that if he’d put his palm on her chest, just above that wide vee of neckline, he’d have felt her heart galloping, and the need to do it had pulled at him. Was still pulling at him.

  So, yes, he wanted to kiss her. But he didn’t. “Your mum’s right,” he said instead, and felt the wrench of it, the twist in his gut. “I’m a player. I’m chocolate cheesecake. And I’m leaving in less than three weeks.”

  “Yes. You are.”

  He looked at her there in the dark. She wasn’t looking at him, was staring out through the windshield, her hands still on the wheel despite the fact that they weren’t going anywhere at all, and her expression was so…so troubled. So sad, and it was making him sad, too.

  “I’m never noble,” he said, “and I wouldn’t have said I had a clue how to be. I’m doing my best, though. I’m leaving, and I don’t stick anyway. So I’m going to get out of this truck, and I’m not even going to kiss you goodnight, because I like you too much. And I don’t want to muck that up.”

  She turned her head at that. “All right.” It was just a breath. Had he been wrong? Did she want him to kiss her?

  He couldn’t help it. His hand went out like it belonged to somebody else and tucked a wisp of hair that had fallen down from its knot back behind her ear, then brushed her cheek. Her skin was soft, and her eyes were, too, that gorgeous mouth had parted, and she was leaning into him a bit, surely.

  And then she pulled away like it was an effort and got out of the truck, and he followed her, and said goodnight, and didn’t kiss her.

  And why was it, he wondered as he walked down the hall to his empty apartment, that doing the right thing had to feel so wrong?

  True Confessions

  Cold Days, Hot Nights at the Roundup

  Faith sat at her little dining-room table, typed the headline, then stared at it for a minute, her fingers hovering over the keys. The weather outside might be frightful, she wrote. Well, it had rained that one day. But the entertainment
at the Roundup is always smoking-hot.

  She inserted an image of Sheila, one of the casino’s dancers, riding the mechanical bull in a pair of chaps, a G-string, and nothing else, with Robert, the principal boy dancer, up behind her, looking like he was ready to take over.

  What was she thinking? She’d get fired. Too many sexy pictures, too much looking at a half-naked Will. Too much fantasizing about a half-naked Will. She substituted the PG version, the one where Sheila was wearing a sparkly vest.

  As a valued VIP, you and your guest will have a front-row seat on opening night of our brand-new show, Lassoed. Afterwards, you’re invited to an exclusive backstage meet-and-greet with our talented dancers.

  And you’re not invited to feel up Sheila, she didn’t write. Last time, the dancers had complained.

  “Tell them not to hug me!” Sheila had said, storming into the Marketing Department during what had become the most entertaining meeting Faith had ever attended. “I don’t get paid enough for that, and the next nasty old guy that tries it? He gets a knee.”

  Faith sighed, now, and looked out the window at a slightly unkempt palm. She needed to do some pruning. She should clean the gutters, too.

  Inspiration really wasn’t coming today, if cleaning the gutters sounded better than writing the February copy for the Winners’ Circle. She stared at the palm a minute longer without really seeing it, then opened a new document. Maybe just for five minutes. Just to clear her head.

  The problem was, it wasn’t Sheila and Robert taking up all her available brain-space, or the dirty-old-man members of the high rollers’ club, either. It was Gretchen and Will, from the day before.

  Not really, though. It was Hope and Hemi.

  Hope in a pale-pink bra and a filmy white shirt that was falling open, because Hemi’s hands were unbuttoning it from behind, his mouth just grazing her neck, his jaw dark with the barest hint of stubble. Faith had had to set up a box for Gretchen in order for Will to reach her, had had to keep adjusting angles so Calvin could get the shot, with Charlotte in there redoing Gretchen’s makeup, spraying Will down again to keep his skin glistening while Faith crawled on the floor.

  It didn’t matter that she knew what was really happening behind the scenes. The images were still there, exactly as if they were real. The two of them kneeling, Hemi’s arm, bare now, around Hope, his hand on the zipper of her unbuttoned jeans, his other hand pulling her blond hair back, his mouth near her ear.

  Faith’s fingers were moving despite herself, despite every better intention.

  The elevator stopped on the 43rd floor, and my heart slammed against my chest. Because it was Hemi Te Mana himself getting in, his glance flicking over me just as it had the week before. A predatory glance, my wild imagination provided. Or a dismissive one, more likely. A little smile on his beautiful lips. He’d probably noticed my shoe. Rumor had it he noticed everything.

  “You’re here,” he said, pushing the button for 51. “Looking forward to your interview?”

  Oh, God. I was staring. At his shirt, open at the neck to reveal a triangle of smooth brown skin, glimpsed for a single glorious instant before he turned to stand beside me. Which gave me a great view of the perfectly tailored black suit jacket that clung to his broad shoulders and narrowed to his trim waist.

  It took me a moment to register what he’d said, and not just because I was stunned to be standing beside him. It was the accent. I’d heard it in interviews as well as at the shoot, but all the same, the clipped tones and New Zealand vowels fell strangely on my ear. But there was nothing a bit strange about the low voice. As creamy as chocolate, as deep and rich as his skin. As hot as a New Zealand summer. Well, what I imagined a New Zealand summer would be.

  “How did you know?” I asked, struggling to focus on what he’d said.

  “I make it my business to know everything. Because it is my business.”

  The elevator came to a stop, the doors glided open, and he put a hand out to hold them. “Here you are.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “Wish me luck.” Then I could have kicked myself. Why was I talking to him like that? Like he was…anybody?

  A faint smile warmed his brown eyes for just a moment, lightening his expression so he wasn’t the cold, forbidding figure he’d seemed at the shoot, and then the mask had slipped back into place, and my heart was fluttering, beating out a fierce tattoo.

  “I don’t think you’ll need luck,” he told me. “I have a feeling you’re going to knock them dead.”

  Shoot, Faith thought. Shoot, shoot, shoot. This wasn’t paying her own bills. And she was fresh out of inspiration for the Roundup. She just couldn’t get excited about simulated sex on the mechanical bull, not when she had simulated sex of her own to write about.

  Because hers had a story, that was why, and it was a story that was itching to be told. Who was Hemi, underneath? And who knew that Hope was desperate for this job? Faith did, that was who.

  An hour later, she’d given up on the Roundup, but at least she was working on something practical again. And she was sweating.

  “Don’t you have somebody to do that?” she heard from behind her. That same dark-chocolate voice, and too bad she wasn’t in an elevator, and that he wasn’t about to make all her financial worries go away.

  “I do.” She continued to saw, because she needed to finish this, now that she’d started. She still had one more tree to go. “Me.”

  “You do the gardening? That’s pretty heavy work.”

  The thin-bladed, long-handled wooden saw bit through the final bit of tough, spiky stem, and she leaned back. “Watch it,” she warned. “Sharp edges.”

  The heavy frond fell to the ground to join its fellows, the wicked teeth along its edges missing him as he jumped back.

  “I don’t do all the gardening,” she said, turning on her stepladder to look at him. He was in a T-shirt, shorts, and running shoes, a damp vee of sweat darkening the light-gray fabric down his broad chest, but she wasn’t looking at that. Well, hardly at all. “I have a service to do the grass and the basic stuff. But this is too expensive. And, hey. It’s a whole lot worse when it’s 110 out.”

  “So…” He kicked at the pile of fronds at the base of the tree, looked around at the two others she’d already pruned. “Need a hand?”

  “No, thanks. Besides, you already worked out today.”

  “Do me a favor.” He sounded pained. “I think I could manage that without straining myself.”

  “I don’t have gloves that would fit you,” she said, eyeing his hands. Which, as Calvin had already noted, were big. The better to touch you with. “And my insurance won’t cover it if you get hurt. No.”

  He sighed in obvious exasperation. “What d’you do with all these? The fronds?”

  “Put them in my truck,” she said reluctantly. “Take them to the dump. There you go. My afternoon plan, at least part of it, before I get back to my real job.”

  “We aren’t shooting until tomorrow.”

  “Marketing for a casino, remember? My other job, I guess I should say.”

  “Then let me help you,” he said. “Let me just run up and change, and then I’ll bung these things into the truck, how’s that? And I’ll go with you, too.”

  “You do not want to go to the dump. Plus, I have another errand afterwards.”

  He shrugged. “Why don’t I want to go to the dump? I don’t have anything else to do.”

  Which was why he was sitting next to her in the truck at the Waste Management site on West Sahara an hour later, having just grabbed the gloves from her despite her protests, wrestled them as far onto his hands as he’d been able to manage, and tossed the wickedly sharp palm fronds onto the trash pile in the concrete bay.

  “All I can say is,” she said when he’d hopped in to join her again, “star athletes must live differently in New Zealand.”

  “Not too differently from anybody else.” He pulled off the leather gloves and setting them on the dash. “Because we don’t make nea
rly as much money as they do here, probably. Maybe a tenth, if we’re lucky. Makes it harder to set yourself up as some rich boofhead.”

  “What’s a boofhead?” That was a new one. And a tenth? Wow.

  He grinned. “Dickhead, more or less. I was being polite.”

  That startled a laugh out of her, but she quickly sobered as the thought struck her. “You didn’t—”

  “Didn’t what? What have you dreamed up now?”

  She couldn’t believe she hadn’t thought of it before. “You took the modeling job because you needed to,” she realized. “And living in Mrs. Ferguson’s place— You’re not—”

  “Oh, bloody hell,” he sighed. “What am I not? Go on and finish a sentence. Are we back to the felon idea?”

  She wasn’t sure how to ask. “That you came to Las Vegas. Do you have a…a problem? You’re not…broke?” Good thing she’d gotten the rent up front.

  She cast a hasty glance across at him, saw him looking chagrined, and her heart sank. He was in trouble. She’d known it.

  Silence reigned for a few pregnant moments before he spoke. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t want you to know. I do have a problem. I need to get it sorted, I know it. I kept thinking I could keep it under control, that I could stop. But when I bet my house…” He looked away, staring at nothing, at blank concrete. “Afterwards, it was like a…like it had been some kind of bad dream. I ducked out of the hotel that day without paying, too. I didn’t want you to know, but it’s on my conscience.” He swung around to her again, his dark gaze earnest. “I’m planning to pay it back, though,” he assured her, “soon as I get the next payment from Calvin. That’s why I agreed to it, the modeling, even though it’s…” He swallowed. “Degrading. But it’s what your mum said. You do what you have to do.”

  “You—” she began. The sweetness she’d seen in him, the rare flashes of vulnerability. This was why? She’d forgotten she was still sitting in the trash bay, backed up to a mountain of junk, because he was staring sightlessly out into the yard now, watching a garbage truck roll slowly by. As she watched, he swallowed, the Adam’s apple moving in his strong brown throat.