Kiwi Strong (New Zealand Ever After Book 3)

by Rosalind James

  “Both,” she said. “Not much meat in it. I’m sure that won’t be good enough.”

  I smiled. Iris had that effect on me. “Yeh,” I told her, “I’ll probably hate it, but no worries. You can despise me for it, eh. Win-win.”

  She snorted, which was Iris’s version of a laugh, and said, “I didn’t dress up, either.”

  She was, in fact, wearing a skirt, which was a first. I said, “No? Looks like it to me. You look quite nice.”

  “Better than you, anyway,” she said. “Came straight from work, eh.”

  “Yeh,” I said, “and I’m going to miss the next bit of the party, too. Got a date with Daisy.” Who was right there to see, standing at the end of the kitchen island, dressed in her little running shorts and cropped top, doing some quad stretches.

  That had been my date idea. I’d thought pretty hard about it, in the snatches of time I’d had to do it, and had come up with this. I hoped it was right. I said, “Hey,” and she said, “Hey,” back, and smiled. Pretty bloody radiantly. High, swinging ponytail, strong thighs, curve of waist, pretty breasts, trim ankles in little white socks. Everything I wanted to see.

  She said, “Dorian and Chelsea came to dinner to see the girls. Iris and Oriana are cooking it, and everybody’s promised to save some for us.” She lowered her voice as she came closer and said, “Hope that’s OK with you. My brother, I mean.”

  “Of course,” I said. I got an introduction to Dorian’s wife, a petite, pregnant blond named Chelsea, the possessor of an assessing stare that startled me a bit, and a wave from my mum, who was sitting with Frankie out on the deck, a glass of wine in her hand and her feet up, looking not much like a woman who’d been dragged kicking and screaming from her work. I said, “I’ll run home and change, Daisy, and meet you out front.”

  “Can we bring Xena?” she asked, giving the Labrador a pat.

  “We’ll have to,” I said. “She pines, otherwise. She loves me.” Then I gave her a kiss—Daisy, not Xena—just in case she needed another public announcement, enjoyed it as much as always, promised, “Five minutes,” and Xena and I left again.

  Step One.

  Daisy

  Oriana, who was at the stove, stirring risotto, said, “Gray kisses you heaps. Like—out in the open. Does everybody do that, Outside? I’ve only seen him do it so far.”

  “Dunno,” I said. “Nobody else has kissed me much in public, but I’ve seen heaps of other people doing it, so maybe.” I didn’t mention that nobody else had done it much because of the freezing-up thing. One almost-boyfriend had told me that kissing me was like kissing a block of wood. It had been his parting shot.

  “PDA,” Chelsea said. She was sitting at the breakfast bar, eating a carrot from Iris’s garden. “Public display of affection. Not a positive connotation. It’s usually more of a high-school thing. Embarrassing for the people watching, too. But that was more of a peck. A quick peck’s all right.”

  I wouldn’t tell her about the one on the street this morning. That hadn’t felt quick. That had felt like he wanted to do it forever. Embarrassing for people watching? Maybe. Nothing but thrilling, though, if you asked me. To know that he wanted me that much, and he didn’t care how old we were, because he’d needed to do it, and maybe he’d thought I did, too. Which I had.

  It wasn’t that I wasn’t scared. It was more like … rock climbing. Mountain biking. Something like that. Where you didn’t know what you were doing and you knew you might make a hash of it, come off the rock or tumble over your handlebars, but you also had an idea of what an adrenaline rush it would be if it worked out, and you wanted that to happen. Also, it was Gray, and I wanted to touch his chest and arms, the one place I’d managed to go in my fantasies. I wanted to touch him, and to see if I could make him feel good, too.

  “Dorian didn’t mention that he was so good-looking,” Chelsea shared next. “I heard ‘rugby’ and thought—well, all right. You know.” She waved her carrot in the air. “Broken nose, probably gone to fat after this many years out of the game, maybe not the sharpest tool in the shed. Posts silly things on Instagram and mixes up his homonyms in embarrassing ways.”

  Chelsea taught high-school English. You’d think that would make her a sweet little thing, but no. Teachers could be even tougher than nurses, and Chelsea was a Jack Russell terrier, a big dog in a little dog’s body. She went on, “He does have the broken nose, of course, and I can’t tell how bright he is. Didn’t seem too dull, but he didn’t have much to say, did he? I thought you didn’t date, though, Daisy. Dorian said—”

  Dorian said, “We’ve both had an odd past, haven’t we, Daisy.” Like he didn’t want me to hear what he’d said, which I was sure was true. It had been uncomfortable, knowing I was being dissected like that, feeling like the odd woman out, especially when I’d lived with Dorian, which I had until a couple years ago. Grotty, dimly lit apartment or not, I was better off.

  “Dorian said you were going out with him tonight, though,” Chelsea said. “Going for a run isn’t going out, darling. Not exactly candlelight and flowers, is it? You need to get him to spend a little money on you if he wants to be with you. You want him to have to do a little chasing. I had to educate Dorian on that at first, how to treat a lady. If he was a rugby player, though, he may not have any more idea than you did, Dorian. They don’t have to work very hard at it, do they? A girl in every bar, from what I hear.”

  Chelsea’s heart was in the right place, I reminded myself once again. I said, “Well, we’re living in his house, which you could call some effort.”

  “Still,” Chelsea said. “Or maybe that’s it. He moves you in, and hey presto, he’s done. Temporary girlfriend, sorted.”

  Iris, who’d been taking the meat off a couple of roasted chickens, now banged a plate down hard and said, “Because he can’t pull any other way. Gray Tamatoa. Yeh, right.”

  I breathed in and out through my nose under the pretense of doing some stretches and said, “The candlelight and flowers could be overkill, first date and all.” I did my best to disguise the lurch in my stomach that idea gave me. Sitting over dinner in some dimly lit, terrifyingly expensive place, offered food I didn’t understand, expected to look mysteriously glamorous and make sultry conversation. I didn’t have sultry conversation. I had breaking-your-penis conversation. Then driving home and knowing that, whatever he’d said, Gray expected sex to happen.

  Probably best not to hyperventilate in the middle of the party. Also, after one more minute of this line of chat, Iris was going to be calculating whether you could slap a pregnant woman. And then Gray’s mother would hear, after which all bets were off. I didn’t think the yurt was big enough to hold all this drama, so I said, “See you later. Off to run. Can’t wait to taste that risotto!” in a nauseatingly cheerful, Nurse-Nancy tone, and bolted.

  41

  Beat of a Heart

  Gray

  I was standing in front of the house when Daisy came jogging up. Or, rather, when she came running up. She said, “Let’s go,” and headed out. Straight up the drive, running like she was on fire. Or, maybe, running like a woman who loved to run. Except that wasn’t how she looked.

  Sometimes, physical activity was the way you burned off stress, and the faster you went, the faster you burned. We were all the way to the beach, and I’d let Xena off her leash, during which time Daisy jogged a circle around me, anxious to get going again, before I said, “I took five minutes to change, and all this happened?”

  “What?” she said, and took off again as if she couldn’t wait another minute.

  I caught up and said, “This. Who said something, and what did they say? Tell me.”

  She waved a hand and kept going. “Oh, nothing. Except that—where to start. Oh, here’s a good one. You’re probably not too bright, but we must concede you’re good-looking. Though we’re surprised by that, especially that you haven’t put on more flesh since your playing days. So you’re not fat, but you’ve got a broken nose, which is unfortunate.
We’re also not too sure about your use of the proper homonym.”

  “Homonym?” I asked.

  “Don’t say it with a question mark,” she said. “Horrors. You know: ‘their baguettes are here,’ versus, ‘they’re going to get baguettes,’ with an apostrophe, versus, ‘the baguettes are over there.’ And so forth. What do I care about your use of apostrophes? What does it say about your intelligence? Nothing, that’s what.”

  “I appreciate the encouraging words,” I said, “but I reckon I’m not too illiterate. I can usually sound out the big words if I say them aloud.”

  She smiled, which was good, and I said, “Nah, no worries. Nothing I haven’t heard before. So who was this? Let me guess. Got to be Dorian or Chelsea, and Dorian’s too mild. Chelsea, though …”

  “Jack Russell,” Daisy informed me. Her speed had slackened a wee bit, which was good.

  “Pardon?” I asked.

  “Jack Russell terrier,” she said. “Can’t be a pit bull, because she’s not big enough.”

  I laughed. “Yeh, I can see that. Never tell me Iris didn’t leap to my defense. Or my mum. I’m wounded.”

  “I left before blood was spilled,” Daisy said. “But Iris had access to sharp knives, so it’s possible. Your mum wasn’t within earshot, but then, surely even Chelsea wouldn’t have said it if she had been. Not in front of your mother.”

  “Not too bad, though, I guess,” I said. “I’m good-looking but dim. Could be worse.”

  “It is worse,” she said. “You’re also moving me in so you’ll have a temporary girlfriend on the premises, easy-peasy. Which means, come to think of it, that she must think I’m cute enough to make that worthwhile, so that’s flattering, I guess. I’m getting no candlelight and no wine and no flash dinner, though. Nothing but a run on the beach. You’re not putting in enough effort.”

  I laughed out loud, and then I kept laughing. A dog-walker looked around and smiled. Of course, he was a young bloke, and he was mostly smiling at Daisy, who was looking particularly fetching. Honey-colored skin, flashing dark eyes, that lush mouth, and tiny clothes? I knew why he was looking. I stopped laughing and shot him my own look, and he turned around again. I told Daisy, “An easy-peasy girlfriend? The mind boggles. Is there any possible way for you to be a harder girlfriend? Let’s count up, shall we? I’ve jumped into a freezing river for you. At night. I’ve let you drive my ute, which was possibly the scariest part of the whole exercise, because you’ve got a lead foot. I’ve adopted a dog. I’ve come near as anything to having my dangly bits fried on an electric fence. I’ve threatened grievous bodily harm. I’ve climbed through an awkward window, possibly the dumbest act of my life, just to try to impress you. What have I left out?”

  She said, “Got the road rash of a lifetime? Moved me and my sisters into your house? Lent me your gorgeous car?”

  “Nah. That was the easy part, moving you in. She may be right about that. And as for the road rash—if you can’t bear to lose some layers of skin, you’re in the wrong sport.”

  Daisy

  We were running back again thirty minutes later—Gray’s dinner was going to be extremely late—when he said, “So. You have a night off tomorrow.”

  My heart picked up the pace, just like that. “Yeh,” I said. “After five o’clock or so, I’m free. Of course, I’ll be working tonight, Friday night, to pay for it. Students do the dumbest things on Friday night. You climbed through a high window once. No telling what they’ll do, summer coming and all. Nudie swimming in a rip tide, with the water eleven degrees. Mountain biking from the roof onto the front steps. And then there’s the drinking.”

  He waited through the entire nervous, rambling speech, then said, “Can I take you out, then? On a proper date? Not that this morning wasn’t special, but …”

  “Yeh,” I said, “with the broken penises and all. I don’t have date conversation, I’ve decided.”

  “I’m attempting to wipe that from the memory banks,” he said. “Chelsea could be right, though. Candlelight and wine. Romance.”

  “We’re running on the beach,” I pointed out. “The sky’s turning pink, and the light’s turning gold. How is that not romance?”

  He didn’t stop running, but he was quiet for a minute before he said, “Is there some reason you don’t want to go out to dinner with me?”

  “Geez, you’re direct,” I said.

  “Yeh,” he said. “I am. Fortunately, so are you. So what’s the trouble?”

  “Oh, just …” I said. “That I was reminded today that I don’t always measure up. Your mum helped Frankie at the lawyer’s, you know. She didn’t want me. Frankie.” Saying it still hurt. “She’s not sure she even wants to … stay with me. So you could be disappointed. Expectation-wise. I don’t seem to have … even the skills I thought I did.”

  Silence for a minute, and he said, “Taking those in order. Frankie’s a bit like you, don’t you think?”

  “What, married to the same man? Trauma? Lashing out inappropriately?”

  “No,” he said. “I mean trying with everything she has to start over, maybe going too hard out of the blocks. Trying to establish her independence when she’s never had any. Also being afraid she’ll never live up to your example.”

  “I don’t want her to live up to it, though,” I said. “Or I do, but I want them to go further than me. I just want their lives to be better. Shouldn’t that be obvious? Shouldn’t they know?”

  “Maybe not,” he said. “Not if she’s not sure what it means if she accepts that much help. Who does that remind me of? Oh, yeh. You again. And what do you mean, you want them to go further than you? What do you want to do that you haven’t done? Besides the baby, because you mentioned a baby.”

  “Oh, you know,” I said. “Things.” I’d mentioned a baby? What all had I said to him? I knew what. I’d said I didn’t want sex and did want a baby. How to attract a man. Not.

  He asked, “What things?”

  I hadn’t told anybody this. I’d told myself I wouldn’t, not until I was on the road. I told him anyway. “I wanted to do the extra schooling to be a nurse practitioner, so I could prescribe, could diagnose. It’s a big ask, though. Master’s degree, when I scraped my way through high school and University as it was. All that science and maths, when I had to do so much work just to get to the starting gate.”

  “But you did it,” he said. “While you worked as a cleaner. Which means you can do it again. How much sleep were you getting back then?”

  “Not much,” I said. “And—here we go, then. I’d like to buy a house as well. One with an ensuite bath. Don’t laugh. That’s a big one. Don’t ask me why.”

  “And now you can’t do those things,” he said, “or you can’t do them yet, because of the girls.”

  “It’s a delay, that’s all,” I said. “Someday, eh. How about you? What do you want? What are your dreams? Though you’ve probably already done them.”

  Our bodies moved in rhythm. Working hard, and hardly working, because our hearts and lungs and legs were used to it, and they knew what they were doing. Breathing hard, but breathing hard was good for you. Filling your lungs with sea air, your feet hitting the sand and rebounding again, your thighs and calves and glutes helping you push off. Feeling here. Feeling strong. Feeling alive.

  Gray said, “I see what you’re doing, you know. Turning the conversation from you to me. But I’ll answer you, because it can be tough to shine the light that deep inside. What do I want? To have the firm do well. To keep all those fellas in work, keep them bringing their pay packets home. To see them able to start families, buy houses. And to build things that last. To drive past a place and know that was mine. My effort, and my result. Makes me feel good, building something that lasts. Not a bad way to spend a life.”

  “Not rugby, then,” I said.

  “Not anymore,” he said. “I’ve cried those tears. Anyway, it doesn’t matter what the challenge is. It just matters that there is one.”

  I didn’t
want to ask this. I needed to. “And all the TBIs? Is that all good, then?”

  More silence, except for the murmur of the sea, the slap-thud of our shoes, then: “I don’t know. I won’t know. Nobody will. Not unless there’s an autopsy.”

  “If you hurt somebody, you mean,” I said. “If you develop dementia.”

  “Well, yeh,” he said. “If you want to put it out there.”

  “That’s something to be living with,” I said. “CTE.”

  “You think?” he said. “Life is uncertainty. If you don’t accept that, you’ll never be a sportsman. We think we can have control. We can’t. We can influence the odds, and that’s it.”

  “The reason it’s so hard on people,” I said, “when they have an accident, or when they’re diagnosed with something awful. When they realize for the first time that it’s true. That any time could be the last time.”

  “Reckon you do know,” he said.

  “Reckon I do. This woman last night …” I hesitated.

  “Yeh?” he asked.

  “When they lose a baby,” I said. “When they lose the dream. When you’re holding her hand, and her partner’s crying. When they both realize they can’t count on it happening, no matter how much they want it. And when they go ahead anyway and try again. Daring to hope that this time, it’ll work.”

  “That’s it,” he said. “When you try again. That’s the hard part. That’s where the strength comes in.”

  “So,” I said. “I shouldn’t be so scared that I’ll disappoint you, if we go out. That I’ll disappoint myself. I should try again. Right. Fair point.”

  “How are you going to do that?” he asked. “Disappoint me?”

  Was he trying to be obtuse? To make me spell it out? Of course, I’d made him spell out the potential for dementia and rage that he was living with, so I couldn’t really complain. Besides, you didn’t get over an obstacle by going backward. You got over it by going forward.