Page 28 of Just Come Over
“Next time,” Zora said, “I promise I’ll let you help with the princess flowers. Just now, though, I need to talk to your dad.”
Rhys did not have a good feeling.
Rhys leaned up against one end of the long table with his arms folded, his usual stance, and watched Zora work.
She wasn’t lighting into him the way he’d expected. In fact, she wasn’t saying anything. Gathering her forces, he suspected.
Outside, the air was warm, the breeze soft, and Casey, when he’d peeked out there to check, was lying in the hammock, one ankle over her knee and her dinosaur book in her lap, looking right at home and not one bit tentative.
If not for that moment in the airplane toilet, he wouldn’t have known what was under the toughness. Hedidknow, though, and he needed to get her set, so she wouldn’t have to worry and she wouldn’t have to cry. Worrying was his job, not hers, and if she did have to cry, he needed to be there when she did.
Her mum must have been something. She must have been special. And yet they’d been two more people Dylan had thrown away.
All of that was why he was here, in the cool of the shed, which was scented the same way Zora’s van had been, a mix of spicy and sweet. Zora’s motions were absolutely assured as she cut the stems of more white and lavender multi-petaled flowers that looked a bit like roses, but weren’t, then arranged them the same way she’d done with the others, straight into the midst of the other flowers. She started on some deeper purple orchids, and the whole thing looked even better. He said, “You don’t do it symmetrically.”
“No.” She glanced at him, then away. “It looks better like this. Less formal. More of a cottage garden effect. Lush and romantic, that’s the idea, especially when I add the snowberries and a few blackberries. Texture and color and contrast, and making it all blend together as a whole.”
“I believe you. It looks good. I just didn’t realize how it... worked.” He’d never thought about flowers much. Flowers were what you sent when you were gone on tour, or what you brought home on Friday night. At which time you picked them up from the shop, already put together and wrapped in plastic. Flowers were easy points, but they didn’t normally have this kind of—well, sensuality. The way she’d arranged them, the ones she’d chosen—it was as different from a dozen red roses and some ferns as a gold chain around a woman’s neck was different from a rope of pearls hanging down her bare back.
The ones she’d already done were interesting, too. Frankly sexual, if you asked him. The lilies, or whatever they were, had a fuzzy yellow nub inside, and a single folded, heart-shaped white petal opening around it in a delicate frill. That was nice, and so were the eucalyptus leaves around them, their solid gray-green contrasting with the fragility of the pussy flowers.
Whoops.Do not say “pussy,”he reminded himself. It had been too long since he’d been married, probably. He was losing his civilization skills.
He could get behind giving something sexy like that, though, or like the other thing she was doing, with the orchids and all. For a Russian princess, she’d said, with gold and rubies in her hair. There was a word for it. “Sumptuous,” maybe. He could try saying that, if he didn’t think she’d laugh. Better than “pussy,” anyway.
Instead of saying either, he asked, “What is it about pearls?”
“What?” She looked startled again.
“Why do pearls look like something your grandmother would have on, if you wear them in the front, and nothing like that if you wear them in the back?”
“Pardon?” She was staring at him like he’d lost his mind. “Do you wear pearls often? Are you asking for fashion advice?”
“Sorry. Train of thought derailed. Never mind.” He shook his head, trying to clear it. He was getting fuzzy.
“To answer your question,” she said, “I don’t know anybody who does after-school child care.”
Her movements had got a bit stabby, surely, with the flowers. They were getting into it, then. “Oh.” That was all he could think of to say. He tried to summon up some energy, and some thought. He blanked. “Well, I’ll... Dunno what I’ll do, actually.” He rubbed a hand over his jaw. When he’d found out about Casey, he’d thought,I’ll go get her. I’ll handle it.He hadn’t realized how much “handling” it was going to take. He hadn’t thought it through, either because he hadn’t wanted to, or because he hadn’t known what would be involved. Or both.
She turned away from the flowers with a sigh and set a palm on the table. “I’ll watch her. Of course I’ll watch her, until you find somebody.”
“You will?” He blinked. He wasn’t going to say, “That’s not necessary.” He was running out of choices.
“Of course I will. That little girl, losing her mum, having to move to a new country...” She went back to the flowers again, tweaking and arranging, perfecting what he’d have thought was finished. “How often have you visited her? How often has she visited you?”
“Uh... never. I found out about her mum dying early last week, and I went and got her. And here we are.”
Her hands stopped, then started up again. “You’veneverseen her?”
No good way to dress this one up. “No.”
“And yet she’s clearly yours. Did you know about her? I don’t know why I’m asking. Which answer is going to be better? Neither. They’re both bloody awful. In one, you’re absolutely thoughtless, and in the other, you’re absolutely uncaring.” She said the last bit like she was talking to herself.
Oh, bugger. He hadn’t even thought of what she’d think of him. He hadn’t thought about counting backward, or what any rugby player’s wife would imagine. WhatDylan’swife would imagine. He was working out how to answer when she said, sounding calmer, if no happier, “I don’t want to know, not really. I don’t need to, not to look after her. Now that I know you’d never evenseenher.” She was lying to herself, because she was clearly getting worked up again. She apparently did need to know.
“I did know she was mine,” he said. “I, uh, paid. Child support. But her mum, uh... I... it was complicated.”
He should have thought of a better lie. Some story of how her mum had refused him access, but he’d sent Casey long, loving letters and bought her a pony for her fifth birthday. Except that Casey would have rubbished it, so there you were. He was stuck with the almost-truth.
