Just in Time (Escape to New Zealand Book 8)

by James, Rosalind

  Dancing with her eyes closed, her body swaying to the pumping music. Running her hands down her sides, feeling exactly what he was, he could tell. So aware of her body, of every aching, tingling centimeter of it, and so aware of his, too. Opening her eyes again to smile at him, to move into his arms. The feeling when he’d wrapped her up in them, had held her, and had known he had the right to do it. That he wasn’t pretending, and neither was she.

  They had stayed until after midnight, then had stepped out of the doors of the club and walked the short kilometer home, and despite the fact that they had still been in the city, there’d been stars.

  She’d tipped her head back to look at them. “A sky full of stars.” And she’d sounded so happy.

  “Not as good as it’ll look when we’re out in the bush,” he’d told her. “On the coast, or out on a boat, maybe. Do a bit of a cruise, and I can really show you something. But still. Good, eh.”

  “Good.” She’d snuggled a little closer, one hand tucked into the crook of his arm. “And you’re right. The moon’s upside down.”

  “Or right way up. I like to think of it like that.”

  They’d reached the house again, had climbed the stairs and got ready for bed together with no pretending, and no pillows.

  They’d spent some time there, navigating in the dark. Sighs and murmurs, languid touches and slow, sweet kisses. Learning the curves and hollows of each others’ bodies, eager explorers mapping their newfound terrain with hands and mouths, steering by sound and sigh. He’d slid his hand over the curve of her waist, down the swell of her hips, into that most wonderful indentation where her thighs began, feeling the shiver that ran over her skin at his touch. Over the slight curve of belly, then, and up over her sensitive midriff to the delicious roundness of her breasts. Over everything that had told him he was touching a woman. That he was touching Faith.

  He’d kissed his way down her neck, had lingered again, had felt her hands on him, holding his shoulders, caressing the muscles of his back, his arms, and had known that she felt exactly the same way. That she wanted to touch him, because when she did, she knew he was a man, and she knew that it was him. And then, as he moved down her body, those eager hands were stroking over his nape, curling into his hair as if she couldn’t stand not to. As if she couldn’t bear to let him go.

  So, no, he hadn’t had much sleep. But then, sleep was overrated.

  “Hmm?” Faith stirred now, rolled over, and opened her blue eyes, and he almost changed his mind about getting up.

  “Go back to sleep.” He tugged the duvet up a bit to cover her more snugly.

  “Is it morning already?” she murmured, her eyes drifting shut again.

  “Yeh.” He smiled at her, because she was so pretty, all mussed and sleepy like that. “But early, eh. I’m going to the gym, and then the rest of the day, I’m all yours.”

  She didn’t even hear that, because she was already asleep again. He’d worn her out, he guessed, and that was fine by him.

  He headed downstairs, the house still Saturday-morning quiet. He didn’t stop for breakfast, but he stopped in the kitchen all the same. His grandmother was in there having an early-morning cuppa, and that made his morning a lot less complicated, because she had the information he needed.

  “Want me to fix you breakfast?” she asked after he’d got his intel from her and put his phone back in his pocket again.

  “No, thanks. I’ll get it at the café before the gym.” He gave her a kiss on one soft, finely lined cheek and headed out the door, feeling as light as the birdsong all around him.

  He reached his destination, a shabby house at the edge of town with grass that needed cutting. Not so different at all from the house he’d grown up in, except for the garden. Koro had cut the grass, or Will had. Their house might not have been flash, but it had always been tidy.

  He got out of the car, walked up the concrete path, and a dog barked from behind a chain-link fence.

  “No worries,” Will told the animal. “Purely an exploratory journey.”

  He leaped up the steps to the porch and rang the bell, waited long seconds until he sensed movement inside, and then the front door was opening.

  He smiled at the middle-aged Maori woman. Dressed in black leggings and a long T-shirt, her figure heavy from a bunch of kids, her hair in its knot, her face a bit careworn. She had a toddler on her hip, dressed only in a red shirt and nappy. A grandson, probably.

  Not an easy life, and he knew it. He wasn’t going to add to her cares, not if he could help it. He was here to make sure he wouldn’t have to.

  “Morning,” he said. “I’m here for Chaz. He around?”

  She blinked at him. “Will Tawera, isn’t it?” The baby on her hip stared in fascination, fingers stuffed into his mouth, black ringlets springing up in wild profusion all over his head.

  “Yeh.” Will smiled again.

  “He’s not awake yet. He works nights.”

  “I know. I’ll just nip in and have a chat all the same, if it’s all right.”

  “Course,” she said, because she was too polite to say anything else.

  Will stepped into the little entryway with its worn lino flooring, and she waited while he bent to take off his shoes. “Down here,” she said, leading him to a narrow passage. “Second on the right.”

  “Brilliant. Cheers.”

  She nodded and disappeared into the back of the house, and Will knocked on the wooden door.

  “Bugger off,” he heard. “It’s Saturday.”

  Will opened the door and stepped inside, into musty air and a carpet made of dirty clothes strewn across the floor. A beer can lay on its side on the bedside table, another one sitting beside it. Chaz was a slob and no mistake.

  “Nice way to talk to your mum,” Will said, shutting the door behind him.

  “What the hell—” Chaz was sitting up, blinking, groping on the floor for something to cover himself. “What are you doing here?”

  “Came to talk to you. Get dressed and come outside.”

  “You think I’m bloody stupid?” Chaz gave up the search for the nonexistent shirt and crossed his arms across his pathetic excuse for a chest instead. “I’m not doing that.”

  “Then I’ll open the door, get your mum in here, and say what I’ve got to say to her, too. That sound like a plan? Or better yet, I’ll drag your skinny arse out there myself. Get dressed.”

  Chaz opened his mouth again, then apparently thought better and closed it. He shoved the rumpled bedclothes back, got out of bed, and shuffled around in his boxers until he picked up jeans and a T-shirt from the floor over near the dresser and shoved them on.

  He could just bring Talia in here and have her see the place for herself, Will thought. That might do the business. But on second thought…no. She might think it was romantic.

  Chaz still wasn’t talking, though his eyes were shifting back and forth under the tousled hair, his cheeks looking a bit gray under the stubble. He’d done some partying after the show the night before, Will would’ve bet.

  At last, Will was following him through the house, putting his shoes back on, although Chaz didn’t bother. Chaz followed him out the door and down the steps, and the dog offered up a desultory bark or two from behind his fence.

  Chaz stopped at the bottom of the steps. “I’m not going anywhere with you,” he said, his expression sullen. “This is as far as I go.”

  Will smiled. Anyone who had ever played against him would have recognized that smile, when the easygoing mask dropped and the warrior emerged. Chaz’s eyes widened, and he took a step backwards. Pussy.

  “You’ll go anywhere I take you,” Will told him. “And if I have to come back here, I’ll be taking you somewhere good. But I’m not going to have to do that, am I? Because I’m not going to know you. I’m going to be able to forget you ever existed.”

  “What are you…” The boy’s Adam’s apple bobbed in his scrawny throat. “What are you on about?” he tried again.

>   “You know exactly what I’m on about. Did you think, because she doesn’t have a dad around, or a granddad either, that she didn’t have anyone who would care?”

  “I didn’t—I haven’t done anything.”

  “You’ve done enough.” Will made sure his face and body were sending the message, just in case Chaz was too scared to hear. “You’ve done more than enough. It’s time for you to get to know some girls your own age. Time for you to stay away from the lake after school. Time for you to find out, so sadly, that your taste doesn’t run to fifteen-year-olds anymore. Or fourteen-year-olds,” he decided to add, because Talia wasn’t the only young girl in Rotorua without a dad in the house.

  “You can’t tell me what to do.” Chaz was doing his best to bluster, but his eyes had darted towards the front door, and Will had seen it.

  “Yeh. I can. And I am. This is my home, and that’s my sister. Stay away from her. Because if I hear that you’ve touched her, that you’re still hanging around her…” His voice had got quieter, not louder. “I know the taiaha, yeh. Know it better than you. But I won’t even need it. I can kick your arse without it. I can beat you blind without any trouble at all. And I will. Do you understand me?”

  He could read the thoughts chasing their way across Chaz’s thin features. The defiance. The realization. And, finally, the angry defeat.

  “Well?” Will prompted. “I’ve got a workout to do. I can start it with you, or I can start it at the gym. Your choice. Say yes and go inside. Or say no and stay out here with me. You might be able to crawl inside later. And you might not.”

  “Yes, then,” Chaz muttered. “That what you want to hear? Going to stop threatening me then?”

  “Oh, I’m not threatening. I’m telling. But, yeh. ‘Yes’ will do me. Go inside. And clean your room. It smells disgusting. Cut your mum’s grass while you’re at it. Time for you to step up and help out. Be a man instead of a bloody disgrace to your whanau.”

  Chaz shot him one last glare, then turned and headed up the stairs, thin shoulders hunched.

  Will stood and watched him go, then stood planted on the path and counted to sixty. So the boy could look out the window, could sweat it, wondering if he’d changed his mind, if he would come after him after all. So he could imagine what would happen next. Then he turned, went back to the car, and started it up.

  Breakfast, and the gym, and then the next thing. One down, one to go.

  He’d been ashamed, when he’d woken that morning, to realize that he’d forgotten all about Talia the day before. Faith had driven all thought of his sister completely out of his head. But being with her had also, somehow, showed him what to do. Had caused him to stand at the water’s edge and, instead of his eyes going to his goal, that distant view, to look around him instead. And to see.

  He’d had a bad moment this morning all the same when his grandmother had told him that Talia had spent the night with her friend.

  “You sure?” he’d asked sharply.

  “Course I’m sure. Called to tell me, didn’t she.”

  “But are you sure that’s where she actually is? That she isn’t…with somebody else instead?”

  “Talked to her mum myself, didn’t I, to make sure she was really invited. Should I be thinking she could be with somebody else?”

  “Maybe. She’s gone a bit quiet, hasn’t she. And I’m not sure about all her friends.”

  “Huh. This is new for you.”

  “Well, you know, sometimes new is better.”

  “Sometimes it is. But, yeh. She’s at Sophia’s, home around ten.”

  Which was why Will was here, his hair still wet from the showers, knocking on another door. A tidy little white house this time, not nearly as flash as his own, but kept in Kiwi style, the garden neatly tended, the paintwork fresh. And another woman coming to the door, a younger one this time.

  “Morning,” he said. “Will Tawera, here for Talia. The girls up yet?”

  He waited outside until Talia came out, reluctance evident in every bit of her shuttered face and hesitant step.

  “Why are you here?” she asked, halting on the threshold. “Can’t I even spend the night with my friend now? Am I a prisoner?”

  It wasn’t the best start. “Course not,” he said, and tried a smile. “I thought you might go for a walk with me, have a chat, that’s all. Please,” he amended.

  She wanted to say no, he could tell. But she didn’t dare, because the old ways were too ingrained in her, and because maybe Faith was right. Maybe she wasn’t too far down that road yet.

  He thought about the lake, but that was a bit fraught, so instead, when she came out again with her shoes and jacket on, he turned his steps in the direction of Kuirau Park.

  They walked in silence for a couple minutes while he tried to figure out how to begin. He finally decided on honesty, for lack of a better option.

  “It was heaps easier,” he told her, “when I didn’t have to do this. When Koro was here to be the man. He was wise, eh.”

  “Yeh,” she said, the word coming out pinched.

  “Hard, having him gone.”

  “Yeh,” she said again. “You’d know that if you’d been here.”

  “I was here. I know.”

  “No.” She was walking faster now. “You weren’t. You weren’t. Everybody went home after the tangi, and you left. You went to the States.”

  “I wouldn’t have been any use, though. And Mum and Kuia were here.”

  She shook her head, but didn’t answer.

  “What?” He tried to keep his voice gentle, to ask rather than demand. “What was wrong?”

  She shrugged, hunched into her jacket, still not looking at him. “They were just…sad. It was all too…too sad.”

  “Too sad to notice how you felt, eh. Nobody paid any attention to you, maybe.” It was what Faith had said, and it looked like she might have been right.

  “My friends did. And now you don’t even want me to have them.”

  He bit back the first retort that came to his lips, took a moment, and tried again. “Nah. That’s not it. I do want you to have friends. And I’m sorry I got it so wrong yesterday, didn’t talk to you in the way I meant to. Lost my temper, eh.”

  She cast him a quick, startled glance, but didn’t say anything. They crossed the road, still quiet before ten on Saturday, and took the crushed-stone track through the trees.

  “You learnt to ride your bike here, did you know that?” he asked her. “With me running behind you holding the seat. You probably don’t remember that, but I do.” He hadn’t thought about that for a long time. “You were pretty determined. Did it over and over again until you could manage by yourself. And when you could do it, you were so happy. Missing a couple of front teeth, and you had this little lisp. You rode back to me and said, ‘Will! It’s just like flying!’” He smiled, remembering it. “That was a good day.”

  “I remember,” she said. “I remember riding. I didn’t remember it was you, though. Thought it was Dad.”

  “Nah. Dad had already left.”

  “I don’t remember him much.”

  His mouth twisted a little at that. “Well, I don’t remember him that much either. He came and went, you could say. And when he left that last time, he didn’t come back.”

  “And then you left, too.”

  “Yeh. I did. For the rugby. Koro and Kuia and Mum were here, though, with all of you, and I needed to go. I needed to…” He stopped. This wasn’t something he’d ever talked about with her, but maybe it was time. “Dad paid the maintenance for a bit. And then he didn’t. So I had to go.”

  “I thought—I thought you just wanted to leave.”

  “Yeh, nah. I did, partly.” Today, for once, he needed to be honest. “Whichever it was, though, I wasn’t here, you’re right about that. And with Koro gone, maybe I need to do more. I’m rubbish at doing more, though,” he confessed, and was rewarded with a little quirk at the corner of her mouth that was the start of a smile, and he smile
d back. “Yeh. We both know that, eh. I don’t even know what doing more looks like. Except that maybe it’s time to try. Can’t get better unless you start. Spend more time here, maybe, when I can.”

  “You’re not just saying that because of her, are you?” She had both hands stuck into her jacket pockets, was looking away again, into the trees. “Did she tell you to, the way she told you to come get me yesterday?”

  “Who, Faith? She didn’t tell me to talk to you today. Doesn’t even know I’m here. And yesterday—no. She told me not to do anything like that, in fact. She told me to talk to you when you were by yourself. She said calm was good. I didn’t do too well with any of that, did I? Trying to do it now, though. What d’you reckon?”

  “Better than yesterday,” she said, that hint of a smile there again.

  “But, yeh,” he said. “Maybe it’s because of her at that. And maybe it’s because of Koro. Because of being back here without him. It hit me yesterday when I was running home, after I tried to talk to you and stuffed up so badly. I was wishing I could talk to him, ask him what to do. And I realized…” He had to stop for a moment and take a breath. “I realized that you would be wishing that, too.”

  Her mouth was trembling now. He saw the unsteadiness in the hand that rose to swipe at her eyes, and his heart twisted with tenderness for the little sister who had been left so lonely, with nobody to even realize it.

  “Yeh,” he said gently, and stopped walking. “I miss him so much. But you miss him even more.”

  She was trying to answer, but she couldn’t manage it, and Will did what he so rarely had, what she needed right this minute from a man who loved her, a man who only wanted to protect her and cherish her. He held her.

  They stood like that for minutes, there in the center of the track, with Talia’s face buried in his jacket, the sobs racking her shoulders. Will wondered who had held her since they’d put Koro in the ground. Since the unbreakable had broken, the totara had cracked and fallen. Since their family had lost its center.