Page 78 of Just Say (Hell) No
He took the microphone from the head, looked around, and said, “Cheers, guys. Thanks to my teammates for taking the time as well. Maybe you’ve heard, but we’ve got this match tomorrow. You’ll be wanting to support the North Island, and I hope blue’s your favorite color. But we’re here for another reason as well. It’s been a wee secret, but my cousin’s a pupil here now, which makes this place pretty special to me.” He jerked his chin at her and said, “Come on over, Ella, and say hi.”
She was nervous. He saw it. And handling it the same way he would have, the same way she’d handled all of this. With her head up and her eyes forward, walking towards the pressure.
She hadn’t known they were coming until they’d arrived, but you’d never have known it. Her belly was that much bigger than it had been on Monday, seeming to grow every day, and she could have looked awkward in her navy maternity shorts and the white top that stretched over her bump. Instead, she looked tall and strong and confident. Like a warrior. And he’d never been prouder.
She came up to him, facing away from her fellow students, and for the first time, her chin trembled. “Thanks,” she said, then looked across at the other boys. “Thank you for coming.”
Marko gave her a cuddle for everybody to see and said, “Nah. What else is family for?” He held up the microphone again, then, and said, “Right. If any of you kids wants an autograph, we’re here for ten minutes with our signing hands ready. They’re also our passing hands, so get in quick. We don’t want to wear them out.”
After that? The deluge began. He scrawled his name in the usual black felt pen, over and over again, on rugby balls, P.E. uniform shirts, and last-minute sheets of paper, and did his best not to look, as Ella had said, like he was going to hit somebody. And when the first rush was over and he had time to look around, he did.
Koti and Hugh, each with a crowd around him still. Koti showing off, flipping the ball between elbow and hand, back and forth, and Hugh shaking his head, calling something across at him that probably had to do with show ponies and saving your flash for the paddock. And Kors standing a little apart, his signing efforts abandoned, holding hands with Ella. Carefully, like it was the first time, and like she was precious. As Marko watched, she tucked a lock of hair behind her ear, looked down, then looked up again. Kors was talking, and she was smiling up at him, her face prettier than ever. Glowing. And there was some sort of blockage in Marko’s throat.
Five more minutes, and it was all over. They were all shaking hands with the head and deputy head, and it was back to the cars.
“Thanks,” he said when they got there. It wasn’t enough to say to fellas you’d been playing with only a few months, who’d given up their precious personal time anyway, the day before the match.
Another kind of family. Teammates.
“Nah, mate,” Hugh said. “No worries.” Marko thought he was going to say something else, but he didn’t. “See you tomorrow,” he said instead, then climbed into his car, reversed, and was gone.
Koti followed suit, and Marko was left with Kors, whowasn’tgetting into his car.
Kors said, “Before you say whatever it is, I have something to say myself. I haven’t got pissed since Dunedin.”
That wasn’t what Marko had been expecting. “Oh,” he finally said.
“Yeh,” Kors said. “Embarrassing, wasn’t it. I heard it from my dad. I heard it from my Koro. I heard it from everybody. Call it a turning point. Look, mate. This is the chance I’ve been working for since I was six, and I’m not going to stuff it up. I’m not going to stuff things up for Ella, either. If I was looking for something easy, I’d be looking someplace else.”
Marko smiled, and Kors looked confused. He actually took a step back, in fact. Marko’s smile might not look as friendly as he’d assumed. Kors checked himself fast, though, and stepped forward again.
“Mate,” Marko said. “Message received.”
Nyree woke slowly on Sunday morning, swimming her way up from the black depths, then breaking the surface like a whale breaching.
To be fair, though, it had been a busy night.
She didn’t open her eyes, but it was definitely morning, because the birds were singing outside. Closer to home, Marko was kissing the spot between her shoulder blades. She stirred, but she couldn’t go far, because he was on top of her. He pressed his lips to her spine again, then moved his mouth on down, and she sighed.
The hands that had pulled down his opponents with brutal strength the night before were stroking down her arms now. Her shoulders, her upper arms, her forearms, then all the way to the pillow she grasped in both hands. She lay face-down, naked on the bed, and felt the wonderful weight of his body pressing her into the mattress, the strength of those big hands wrapping around her wrists, the heat of his lips brushing over her skin, lower and lower, sending shivers up her body from every place he touched…
The deep voice, low and amused. “Time to get up.”
She moaned. “No. Can’t be.”
He laughed and closed his teeth gently over her skin. “Wake up, princess. I called Air New Zealand and explained what an important bloke I am, but they won’t hold the plane. Bastards.”
“No, you didn’t. And if somebody would get off me, I could.”
He rolled off her, giving her a slap on the bum along the way, and she sat up, let the duvet drop around her hips, stretched her arms over her head, laughed at the look on his face, and said, “Boy, you’re too easy. How long do I have?”
“Half hour.”
She yelped and jumped out of bed. “A halfhour?Your mum’s picking us up at the airport. I’m going to look like…”
“Did youmeetmy mum? And I tried earlier. You sat up and yelled, ‘But the carpet!’ Youlookedawake, but I came back in and here you were, still asleep.”
She was already pulling on her black silk dressing gown, which was all she’d been wearing when he’d come home from the match the night before. She may have been lying on his bed with that robe barely closed, waiting for him, but hehadtackled with all that ferocity, and what was a woman to do? And he ought to realize why she’d dreamt about the carpet, as much time as she’d spent on it.Sheremembered it. It had been that kind of night. The kind where you used all the furniture, and he used all of you. When her head and back had been draped over the foot of the bed, her palms pressing into the floor, and his big hands had spread her thighs wide while his mouth went to work on her… it should have been uncomfortable, and maybe it had been. It had also been helpless, and erotic as hell.
