Page 2 of Just Come Over
He should play. His uncle should know whether he played. Rhys hadn’t been doing his job, and he always did his job.
No excuse, not for this. He could say he’d been overseas. He could say he’d been busy. He could say heaps of things. He knew the real reason.
He told Zora, “You could put the heat on,” and she looked at him out of those sloe eyes that should have belonged to a Slavic princess, then turned the car on and did it.
Check, check, and check. The eyes. The broad cheekbones and wide forehead, and the unexpectedly pointed chin. The perfectly soft, wonderfully pink mouth with its lush bow that made you think about kissing her, no matter how hard you tried to stop yourself. Just now, that mouth was saying something, but he’d lost it in the distraction.
“Pardon?” he asked.
“I’ll pay you for the car,” she said. “Just tell me how much.”
He blinked. “The car?”
Isaiah piped up from the back. “Because I bashed it with the trolley, Mum means.”
“Let me know how much,” Zora said again. “Let’s hope they don’t have to replace the entire fender. Why do I think that BMW will require complete replacement?”
“If it’s heaps,” Isaiah said, “we could do a payment plan like we’re going to do for the van, Mum. We have two hundred and forty-five dollars a week extra,” he told Rhys, “because we have a better house now, but you can’t spend all your extra, because things happen, and Mum needs a new van, too. And then a heat pump and a new roof, but the van matters more, because that’s her live... live...”
“Livelihood,” Zora said. She had some pink in her cheeks. “Nah, love. We’re all good.”
“Maybe we could spend a hundred dollars a week to fix the car,” Isaiah said. Clearly, a boy who knew how to keep to the topic. “Then we’d still have a hundred forty-five to save for the van, and for emergencies.”
“You don’t need to worry about that, mate,” Rhys said. “It’s just a prang. Adds character. Sometime or other, when somebody bashes me from behind at a stoplight, I’ll get it fixed.”
The color deepened on Zora’s cheeks. Temper, embarrassment, or something else. Outside, the storm had picked up even more. She’d turned on the windscreen wipers, but they could barely keep up with the driving sheets of rain. The sky was an eerie deep purple until it was lit by a sudden flash, the ground nearly shaking with the crash of thunder. The carpark’s lights, which had come on hours before schedule, flickered, then revived.
The air in the van, though, smelled sweet. Scented. And Zora’s hair was as mink-brown and wavy as ever, and looked as soft and touchable. A little disheveled from having her hood up, like she’d just got out of bed. It was cut shorter now, to above her shoulders, and fell in a fringe across her broad forehead. She said, “You’re thinking something. Something unflattering.”
“I am?” He tried to think how to answer that, and couldn’t.
“Isaiah is interested in money,” she said. “And brilliant at maths. He likes to budget. I don’t...” Her mouth closed on the words.
He filled in the rest of the sentence. “You don’t put your worries onto him.”
Another crash of thunder. The van nearly shook with it. “It’s empowering,” she said, still sounding stiff. “To understand your circumstances and help to cope with them. Even for a child.”
“Especially for a child,” he said, and she gave him another startled look.
Silence for a moment, and he was reaching for the door handle when she said, “I should ask you why you’re in Auckland at all, let alone in the Pak ‘n’ Save carpark. I should ask you to dinner.”
“Well, not if you’re going to ask like that, you shouldn’t.” He couldn’t help smiling, and after a second, she did, too.
In fact, she laughed. “You’re right. I shouldgraciouslyask you to dinner. Considering that it’s raining buckets out here, and you’ll be in some hotel and not wanting to go out again. So. Just—come over.”
“Actually,” he said, “I’ve shifted up here. Coaching the Blues now, with Aleke Fiso gone off to Wales. Didn’t anybody tell you?”
“Ah... no. They didn’t. You have?” She hesitated, then asked, “Are you... on your own, still? Or not?”
“Yeh. I am.” His marriage had done its final spectacular bit of falling apart around the same time Dylan had died. The two things could have been connected. When he felt pressure, he tended to throw himself more deeply into his work, or to go out on the water. Alone. Neither of those had been marital benefits for Victoria, he could see now. He’d had time enough to admit his part of the disaster, or maybe it was even simpler than that, and they’d both just married wrong. Whatever the reason, he was still waiting out the separation period to make it final. Two years could feel like a long time, when all you wanted was to move on.
“Oh,” Zora said. “I’m not sure I ever said it at the time, but I’m sorry.”
“I’m not. Anyway, I was coming in for provisions, as my furnishings arrived today and were unloaded, from what I hear, and this is my day to get out of that hotel. Unless they dumped it all on the driveway, in which case, I’m buggered. But yeh, I’m a resident. And a hungry one.” He threw all caution to the winds. He needed to know how she was doing, and Isaiah as well. What was that about her needing to do a payment plan? He needed to find out. Also, his housewouldbe shocking. It would also be empty.
That was why he said yes. Surely.
Rhys drove his own car to the house, which gave Zora a few minutes to collect herself. Or it would have, if Isaiah hadn’t asked, “Why don’t you like Uncle Rhys?”
