Page 62 of Just Say (Hell) No
Ella said, “What? Marko…” but he wasn’t listening. He headed over toward Kors’s car, and when he got there, he turned and said, “She’s sixteen. And she’s my cousin.”
If he’d been thinking that Kors would back off, he’d been wrong. “Yeh, mate,” Kors said. “I see all that. And I see that she’s doing something pretty hard just now, too.”
“So this is, what?” Marko asked. “Your good deed?”
The brown eyes didn’t shift under his glare. “No. It’s because I like everything about her. And, yeh, that includes that she’s pretty.”
“And too young for you.”
“More than two years younger,” Kors said. “Seventeen in June, and that’s too young. I’ve noticed everything else that wouldn’t work about it, too. Pretty bloody obvious. And I like her anyway. So we’re going to New World, and we’re getting an ice cream and taking a walk on the beach and having a chat about her school and Aussie and maybe even the match, if she wants to, and then I’m bringing her home. If you’ve got a problem with that, it’s your problem, not mine.”
Did Ella stay where she was and let Marko do his meager semi-parental best? She did not. She’d come to join them. “Are you, like,warninghim?” she asked Marko. “Could you be more embarrassing? Look at me. I’malreadypregnant. Withtwins.What else do you imagine could happen? Who’s going to be making a move on me anyway, unless he has some weird fetish? And I’ve already learned that blokes don’t necessarily stick around, by the way, so you don’t need to have a talk with me about that, either. I can take care of myself, no worries.”
“You don’t have to take care of yourself,” Marko said. “That’s what I’m here for.”
She opened her mouth to say something, but before she could, Kors said, “Mate. Message received.” Marko stared at him some more, and Kors didn’t say anything else, just stared straight back.
“Fine,” Marko finally said. “New World. Ice cream. Walk. Home.”
What the hell, though? Was this OK, or was it not? He wasn’t used to being unsure about things. He wasn’t enjoying it. He needed to talk to Nyree.
Who hadn’t answered his text.
When he finally got into the house, he didn’t manage to get rid of his shoes straight away. That was because Cat was on her Cat Gym.
“Look at you,” he said. “Got bigger, eh. Got brave as well.”
She hadn’t climbed far. She was only on the first platform, not even half a meter from the floor. But she was bigger than a tennis ball at last, even louder than before, and just as determined. Now, she gave her funny little cry, bunched herself up, and launched herself at him.
He caught her in the air with one hand and said, “You need to stop doing that. Only nine lives, eh.” In answer, she climbed his jacket, sat on his shoulder, and started to purr.
He got his shoes and socks off, then put her back on her platform, stroked her fuzzy gray body a few times, which made her arch her back with pleasure, shrugged off his warmup jacket, said, “Good to be loved, I guess,” and headed upstairs with his bags.
Nyree’s car was there, but she wasn’t. She’d known when he was coming home, and she hadn’t cared.
Fine. Back to shielding his soul. He knew how.
He smelled the paint halfway up and started moving faster. When he got to the top, he saw the half-open door down the passage, and he heard the music.
And now? The shields were down.
Flamenco guitar. Energy and passion, with that sensual edge driving the melody. The violin joining in, weaving around the steadying notes of the guitar like a beautiful woman dancing around her man, seductive and sure, beckoning him on. The music of his grandfather and his father. The music that lived in his bones and heated his blood.
He stood in the half-open doorway, and there she was. In the room that had been bare and white, before Nyree. Now, the terra cotta walls belonged in a house in Spain with jasmine climbing to the windows. Her bed was a rumpled invitation in blue velvet and orange silk, and on every wall, unframed canvases all but exploded into the space.
Flowers and fruit, that was all. It was enough. Blue flowers in a ceramic pitcher on a rough wooden table, in front of a gold silk scarf pinned to the wall. How he knew it was silk, he couldn’t have said, but he did. Red flowers in a basket on a checkered tablecloth. That was nice. Purple flowers in a white vase beside glass jugs and bowls of peaches in front of a window, looking out onto a garden. And more, too, all of it bursting with color and texture and femininity and… abandon. Delicate strokes, strong result. Absolutely nothing like the picture of the dachshund. And Marko realized he hadn’t understood anything at all about her, because he’d never seen her driving force.
Nyree. Standing in front of a huge canvas that was twice as large as the flower paintings, in the corner of the room. She was right there, but she didn’t see him.
She wasn’t looking at the painting. She was frowning at her phone, those straight dark eyebrows drawn together in fierce concentration. Wearing the ice-blue nightdress he’d last seen on a hook on her garage wall. Thin blue ribbons over her pale shoulders, silken fabric dropping into the valley between her full breasts, skimming her hips, covering not much at all of her thighs, and ending in a delicate edging of lace. Dark hair falling around a square little face set in lines of concentration. And the music playing on, every note falling into him like molten wax, liquid and warm.
He didn’t move. He couldn’t. She looked up anyway. Alerted by his scent, maybe, or his color, or the feel of him. He knew when she became aware of him, and he watched her changeling’s eyes widen.
No makeup. No games. Just Nyree.
The guitar played on, a driving force, with a subtle clapping of castanets adding a rhythmic accompaniment, making her need to move. The screen in her hand nearly pulsed with the words.
I know it’s hard to take that leap. But there’s more than one kind of courage, too.
