Page 44 of Just Come Over
Well, it was torture, but still—it wasn’t bad.
Tonight, Zora opened the bags he’d brought, saw the lamb, and had said,“Rhys,”in the same way another woman would have if you’d brought her a diamond necklace. He said, “It looked like exactly what I wanted, and I thought it might be exactly what you wanted, too. Tomorrow’s your hard day, after all. Friday’s the deliveries to houses, right? And you have wedding flowers on Saturday as well. I’d say lamb is necessary. Anyway, I told you I’d bring something quick for tonight. This is it.”
She raised her hands, then let them fall onto her thighs with a slap, laughed helplessly, and said, “If you’re going to keep doing this, I need to plan for it instead of holding my breath and wondering what’s coming my way next. I’ll start giving you a list, once you come home from Aussie. You may as well buy the entire dinner while you’re at it. You’re practically doing it now.”
“Definitely,” he said, though he wasn’t paying perfect attention. He was, in fact, busy appreciating the hell out of the skirt she had on tonight, a fluttery little thing with blue flowers that went with her snug blue T-shirt. She’d painted her toenails a ruby red, though. That color was his favorite so far, and he was able to see it, because her feet were bare.
He was getting as obsessed with her feet and ankles as some fella from Victorian England, possibly because it was the one part of her body that he allowed himself to look at openly. Painting her toenails was her girly indulgence, he had the feeling, and if he had an image of her sitting on the bed in some kind of shortie PJs that showed every bit of her thighs, wielding that tiny little brush and blowing on her toes to dry them faster? That was his problem.
That blonde Aussie reporter, or somebody nice-looking in a bar, definitely. Somebody with a good smile and some softness to her, but not a brunette, and not short, either. He needed to draw a firm line under this and move on. For now, he said, “There’s also the question of whether you’d cook fish for me, if I brought it home to you. I’ll have some time to teach Casey to fish when I get back from Aussie. I can take Isaiah as well. Seems like a good idea. I’ll take you, too, if you’d like to come.”
“Fresh fish?Reallyfresh? Oh, yeh.” She sighed, leaned up against the kitchen bench, and looked like he’d just given her the best treat in the world. “Keep talking, boy. If you clean it? I’ll take that. But I don’t need to go. You can take the kids, some lovely, lazy Sunday, and I’ll stay home and... have a bubble bath.” She smiled, slow and sweet, and he tried not to imagine her there, her hair pinned up on top of her head, a scented candle burning, soft music playing, and a glass of wine beside her, every delicious bit of her enjoying the luxury of time alone and maybe, just maybe, anticipating him coming home.
He failed absolutely in the not-picturing department. No surprise.
“A fisherman always cleans his own fish,” he said. “Fillets it, too, especially if he’s bringing it back to somebody special. I may have mentioned that I spent a fair bit of my childhood on a fishing boat.”
“Am I special?” she asked.
“I think you know you are.” He barely knew what he was saying. Her body was swaying toward him, he’d swear it. In another second, he was going to have his hand at her waist. He wasn’t going to be able to help it.
“Why do you have to clean fish? They’re getting washed all the time, because they live in the water.” Oh. That was Casey, who’d been sitting with Isaiah in the red stools on the other side of the kitchen bench, working on her maths. Despite her terror of Year Two big words, it was the maths that had proven more daunting. They were fortunate that Isaiah was a good tutor.
Rhys went back to the salad dressing he was mixing from his too-expensive oil and vinegar, wrenching his mind off bubble baths and bare, wet skin. “’Cleaning’s a whaddayacallit,” he said. “A nicer way to say you gut the fish and take its head and tail off. Fillet it as well, if it’s a big one like a snapper or a kingfish. We’ll think positive, eh. Handing it over and expecting your—a woman—or, uh, your mate—to clean it as well as cook it, to deal with the nasty bits, is a rubbish move that gets you nowhere.”
“A euphemism,” Zora said. “Cleaning it, I mean.” She had some pink in her cheeks, for some reason.
“That’s right.”
“You take out its guts?” Isaiah asked. He and Casey looked at each other and said, “Eww,” bang on cue, which made Rhys smile.
“Yeh,” Rhys said. “Can’t eat the guts or the head, can you? And your mum doesn’t want to look at those anyway. You’ve been fishing, surely, with your dad. He wasn’t as keen as me as a kid, but he knew how.”
“No,” Isaiah said. “I don’t think he went fishing. Or maybe I don’t remember that.”
Rhys cast a quick look at Zora, but she just opened the oven and asked him, “D’you want to take the roasting pan out for me? After that, we’ll give it ten minutes to rest while the veggies finish, and then I’ll have you slice chops.”
He maneuvered the heavy pan out, setting it carefully down on a rack. “Cheers for asking me. That’s points for you.”
“Do I need points?”
“No,” he said. “You don’t.” And fell a little deeper into her mouth and her eyes, even though she barely had on any makeup, she wasn’t wearing a red dress, and she wasn’t even trying. He didn’t need a red dress or sexy shoes or lipstick or anything else. He just needed his hands on her. And his mouth. And his body. She was short, which meant that you should want her on top. It wasn’t that hedidn’twant her on top. It was just that he wanted to be on top of her even more. On his elbows, with his hands in her hair while he kissed her mouth, and then made his slow way south. Taking the scenic route. Taking his time.
She hadn’t been loved right in too long. She hadn’t had anything she should have had in too long. He wanted to give it to her.
“Your dad went fishing,” Zora said to Isaiah. “With his mates. He didn’t always catch anything, that’s all.” Her voice tightened on the words, and Rhys thought,Fishing, or something else that took him away from home,and opened the oven again to check on the red potatoes and carrots roasting in there, just to keep from showing his face.
“Well,” he told Isaiah when he’d closed the door again, “we can fix that. We’ll go out early on a Sunday morning, the three of us, rain or shine. Out on the wharf for starters, so the two of you can learn how. That’s a date.”
“Mm,” Zora said. “Lay the table, please, kids.”
“You’re going away for a very long time on Tuesday,” Casey said, opening the silverware drawer and counting out knives and forks with all her concentration. “That’s after Saturday, when we’re all going to watch the rugby game, because you’re the coach. But you’re coming back.”
“That’s right,” Rhys said.
“And you don’t have to go to work on Sunday,” she said. “Because the game will be over. So we can do fun things.”
“Also right. I wonder where this conversation is heading?”
