Page 90 of Just Say (Hell) No
“Bugger decorative. It’sbeautiful,is what it is. It’s got all this detail and all this color, and you can look at it forever and find more to see. It’s at a whole different level from the flowers, and you must know it.”
“It’s how I feel when you play the guitar,” she said, then shook her head. “I can’t explain. How I felt looking at the stars with you, and sitting in your mum’s kitchen, talking to your grandmother. Sitting in the church with you, looking at the lake and the mountains. Being on the beach in Northland, with the wind blowing and the tide coming in and the sea wild and nobody else around. It’s about being whole. It’s about being home.”
“Yeh,” he said. He’d have been looking for a place to put his overflowing heart, except that he already had one. It was right here. “It is. It’s about being home.”
“What do you mean,” Marko said three days later, “you aren’t bringing them here? And you’re moving the mattress back? Why? The night before the match, and you’re going to spend it at the garage? That’s rubbish.”
He wasn’t shouting. Nyree remembered somebody saying, a while back, that Marko didn’t shout, because he didn’t have to. Tom, she thought that had been. Well, Tom had been right. The raw power that was Marko standing over her, vibrating red, black eyebrows slamming together, was enough all by itself. No shouting necessary.
“Stop,” she told him, still holding the salad tongs she’d been using to mix in the dressing. “Back up. Backoff.”
“Whoa,” Ella said, coming into the kitchen and wheeling around again. “I’ll be coming back later, then.”
Nyree barely heard her. Marko turned off the fire under the snapper he’d been cooking, and she barely noticed that, either. Marko could give off that much intensity and still remember to turn off the stove. She couldn’t. Too bad. She said, “If you want me to talk to you, dial it back.”
He stood there another second, poised out on the edge, and then he took a breath. “Right,” he said. “It’s dialed. But I’m exactly as not-happy as I was two minutes ago.”
“You do not need to see my stepfather the night before your match,” Nyree tried to explain, “and to have him know you’re sleeping with me. That I’mlivingwith you. You also don’t need my mum telling him about it, but youreallydon’t need to see him.”
“How about if you assume that I know what I need?” Not dialed all that far back after all, because his next words were, “And that I can handle anything Grant Armstrong throws my way? You could assume that as well, while you’re at it.”
“All Blacks selection is in, what? Two weeks? You want Grant telling the selectors you’ve got character issues? You know he would.”
“I’ve been an All Black for more than ten years. The selectors know my character. Which includes not hiding, and not backing down. From anybody.”
“Injured all last year,” she pointed out.
“Playing allthisyear. Every minute of every match. I’ve given my best every one of those minutes. I’m ready to stand on my performance.”
She sighed. “It must be nice to be you. So uncompromising.”
“Not always nice, no. It’s not feeling nice right now. And I’d like to know who’s more uncompromising than you. Who’s going toe to toe in my kitchen with me? Who won’t bloody back down, even though I’mright?”
“What is it you’re looking for?” she asked. “What is it you want from me?”
He stared down at her. Dark eyes burning, unshaven face hard. “The truth. Which is that you’re here with me, and with Ella, and you’re staying here. That I’m in love with you, and that maybe you’re in love with me, too. I want the truth.”
He’d swear she hadn’t heard him, or that she had and she didn’t want to. Neither one was a wonderful option. “Pardon?” she finally asked.
“If I knew how to say it in sign language, I would. Can’t be a surprise to you, since I don’t do any of this, and you know it. I don’t get possessive. I don’t get… personal.”
“Excuse me? You get nothingbutpossessive. And what we did last night? That was pretty bloody personal for me. More personal than I’ve ever got, in case I didn’t mention it. Also, what do you call this particular moment?”
“Frustrating.” He took the tongs from her and set them on the kitchen bench. “The standard response is, ‘I love you, too.’ Or, ‘I’m very fond of you as well.’”
“Maybe I’m not feeling all that loving at the moment,” she said. While scowling. Not exactly how he’d expected his first-ever declaration of love to be received.
“Neither am I. But I still know that I love you. In the abstract right now, maybe. But still.”
She laughed.Laughed.A hand running through her wild waves of black hair, and wearing a shirt with too much lacing across her breasts. A temptress, and a witch. The woman he couldn’t walk away from. She raised both hands high, dropped them against her snug gray jeans with a slap, and said, “Right, then. I love you, too, you arrogant…" Another breath. “And I still don’t see why you want to have this… this confrontation with Grant until after the selection, but all right. All right. My mum loves to take me out, as if I won’t get a meal otherwise. She’s going to suggest it for Friday, I promise. I’ll tell her I’m bringing my plus-one, and we’ll do the big reveal. If we’re lucky, Grant will be eating with the coaches anyway. It’ll be a non-issue.”
“No,” he said.
“What d’you mean, ‘No’? Here’s a clue for you. You won. We’re doing it your way.”
He was starting to smile. Starting to pull her into his arms, where she belonged. “We’re going to invite them here. We’re going to cook for them. I’m not a plus-one. I’m Marko Sendoa, arrogant bastard, and you’re in love with me and I’m in love with you. We’re going to let them know it. And here’s a tip foryou,one you already know, because I’ve seen you do it. When the pressure’s hardest? That’s not when you walk away, and it’s sure as hell not when you run. It’s when you walk straight into it. It’s when you say, ‘Come on, then. Come on and try it. Take your best shot. I’m standing right here.’”
“Life’s not…” She had her arms around his neck in that way he loved, her whole sweet body pressed up against him, and this fish was going to have to wait. “Not a battle.”
