Page 43 of Just Say (Hell) No
She sighed. “I guess KFC’s out, then.”
He smiled. Incongruously sweet, transforming his hard face into something else, becoming the man who’d played his guitar in the dark and talked to her about the stars. “Yeh, it is. For me. But you can have it. No reason you can’t have what you want.”
Making dinner with Marko, for some reason, wasn’t bad at all. Maybe because her part of it was calling for a pizza delivery, chopping a few veggies, then going out to the deck, where he had the barbecue warming up. She took a couple opened beers with her. It had been another long day.
He was sitting on one of the black chairs with the kitten in his lap and his feet on the rail, and she handed him a bottle. “I took a chance you’d want it,” she said. “Pizza in forty minutes or so. I got a veggie one. Turns out pregnant women aren’t meant to have processed meats. I got extra cheese, though. Ella’s hungry all the time, and you can see some of her ribs above that belly.”
“Good to know. Cheers.” He took a long swallow, and she sat in the other chair and looked out at his back garden, which extended in an unbroken sea of green all the way to the edge of Dingle Dell Reserve.
“This must be the view from the master bedroom as well,” she said.
“Yeh. There’s another deck up there. Spa tub, too.”
“I’m surprised you didn’t buy a house where you looked out at the sea. That’s the usual preference. The view from my room’s choice, by the way. Painting heaven. So much light.”
“Yeh. I saw this house, and it was nice up there. Treehouse, I guess you’d say. It looked…” He trailed off.
“What?” When he didn’t answer, she said, “I was probably giving you stick about it earlier because I can get a bit defensive about success. Money that comes from success. Et cetera. There’s nothing wrong with your house, other than a serious lack of ornamentation.”
“People in your life don’t approve of… what? Painting?”
“I’m meant to have a real career.”
“Ah. No worries here. That’s not how I judge.”
“How do you judge, then? And what was it you liked about this place? You never answered that one.”
Another pause, then he said, “That it feels open, I guess. The light. And it’s nice at the back, with the bush out the window like this.”
“Peaceful,” she suggested. “Relaxing. A retreat.”
“That’s it.”
Most men would have offered a slightly creepy suggestion at this point that she check out the view from his bedroom, not to mention his spa tub. When he didn’t, she said, “You don’t judge by money and success? Hard to believe, since you’ve got both.”
He shrugged. “What I said. Hippie mum. Farm family. It tends to stick. Wherever you go, there you are, as that hippie mum would say. The money’s nice, but it’s not why I do it.”
“Why, then?”
He twirled his beer bottle in one huge hand. “Because I’m good at it. Because I like it. And because I want to win. I want to be the best before I hang up the boots. That’s not too hard to measure in my line of work. Everybody has a driving force, I guess. What’s yours?’
He was rattling her. Again. “Not…” She started, then stopped.
“Yeh,” he said. “Not so easy to say. Here.” He handed her the kitten. “Time to put those steaks on. You can think about your answer.”
She needed her armor, but right now, it was hard to find it. She sat and watched the setting sun tinge the clouds an impossibly soft pink, the color of a baby’s blanket, sipped at her beer, bitter with hops, stroked the kitten’s velvety fur, and felt the rumble of her purr as the birds called from the trees and a tui swooped overhead, its plumage gleaming blue and black.
He was right. It was relaxing. And she wasn’t even in the spa tub.
She heard the sizzle behind her, smelled the rich, heady scent of meat on a grill, and he sat down again. “Five minutes,” he said, “before I turn them over.”
“What was your card of the day?” she asked.
“Temperance.” He took another sip of beer. “If I’d been eighteen, I would’ve had a couple more of these just to show her.”
“So is that what it means? ‘Don’t drink too much tonight, love?’”
“Nah. She never goes with anything that obvious. Seems I’m being guided by my better angels to find the right outcome, and it’s within my grasp. I didn’t even know Ihadbetter angels. ‘Remember your priorities and work toward your perfect balance,’ was the actual message. ‘You’re on the right path. Eyes on the prize, baby.’ Which, considering it’s the story of my life, and also considering it’s the sort of encouraging text she always sends me no matterwhatcard it is, isn’t front-page news. What’s yours, though? Story ofyourlife?”
