Page 61 of Just Come Over
“Because you keep your promises,” Casey said. “And you’re my dad.”
“That’s right. Because I’m your dad.”
“OK,” she said again.
Rhys kissed the top of her head, and his voice was a little rough when he said, “Let’s go, then. We’ll get you sorted with Finn and Jenna, and then I’ll take Auntie Zora out to dinner.”
“You give lots of things,” Casey said. “But nobody gives you things.”
“Oh,” he said, “I wouldn’t say that. I wouldn’t say that at all.”
Zora didn’t say much on the way to the restaurant, and Rhys was glad. He’d well and truly choked himself up there. He’d meant to give Casey her pendant, and to say a few things that might help her believe in the runaway bunny idea. He hadn’t meant to lay himself so raw, in front of an Uber driver and all.
When Rhys had followed Zora’s swaying hips and pretty legs across the room and avoided looking at anybody, because he didn’t want to have a chat tonight with anyone but Zora, and she’d slid into her chair, though, half-hidden behind a discreet wall in the cozily elegant, dimly lit space of The Grove, he said, “You could show Casey how to get her pendant off at night, maybe. Not safe to have that cord round her neck while she sleeps.”
“I’ll do that,” she said, smoothing her white serviette across her lap. “And you’re right, she probably will want to sleep in it. I think you convinced her that it was magic. You just about convincedme.That was good, Rhys. That was so good.”
“I didn’t quite mean to say all that. It just came out. Can’t even remember exactly what Ididsay.”
Her eyes went soft, and her hand came out to cover his. He wished she’d worn the red dress, but he didn’t hate this one. It showed her arms and her legs, at least. If she’d had the red one on, though, her lipstick would have matched. A Russian princess, with rubies in her hair and pearls down her back. “You did gorgeously,” she told him. “I think I cried. IknowI cried. The driver cried, too. It was beautiful. The pendant, and everything you said. When did you think of that?”
“First day. She didn’t want to go with me, in Chicago, since she’d never met me, so we talked about it. She’s watchedMoanatoo many times, in case you don’t know. She thought I was Maui, especially once she sawmypendant. I think she’s given up on that one now, at least.”
“Well, I can see that. Youarefairly Maui-like. Temperament. Size. Demigod. And so forth.” A smile. “Fully Maui, I’d say. Or fully dragon. Or both.”
Wait, what had they been talking about?
The waiter came over with a pitcher of water, and Zora took her hand away. Before she could look at her menu, Rhys said, “They have a tasting menu. We could do that, if you like. Fewer decisions. Those wine pairings, too. Nobody’s driving, all I have to do tomorrow is get on a plane, and Isaiah said that Tuesday is your easy day. What d’you reckon? Time to indulge a little, let yourself be spoilt for once?”
“Oh,” she said with a breathless laugh, “why not. I’ll just sit here and be... surprised.”
He handed the menus back to the waiter, then told Zora, once the man had left, “Surely, letting yourself be surprised is good, if somebody wants to dedicate himself to pleasing you.”
That had come out too intense, probably. Too bad. He was over her in the bathroom again, his hand on her cheek, her mouth under his. She was wearing the spicy-sweet perfume again tonight, too. He’d smelled it when he’d taken her hand to help her out of the car, and she’d stepped out in those delicate little shoes, swayed a wee bit close, and said, “Thank you,” on a breath.
She didn’t say anything, and he wondered if he’d gone too far, and hoped she couldn’t read his mind, or wished she could. One or the other. She said, “I was just thinking that last night. Drinking wine then, too, if I have to confess the truth, when I shouldn’t have. Watching a movie with too much redemption. I didn’t get enough sleep, either. Depending how many of those pairings we do, you may have to carry me out.”
He shouldn’t answer that. He should ask her instead why Isaiah didn’t have a pendant from his dad. If Rhys had been dying, he’d have made sure his son had a moment like that to remember, and something to touch to remind him that his father was still with him. He needed to fix that. He needed to talk to Zora about it. It should come from both of them, maybe. From him, because he was the uncle, and he was the one who was Maori, the link to the whanau and the iwi, and from her, because she was the mother.
He didn’t talk to her about it. Instead, he said, “I’ll carry you out, no worries. Go on and enjoy yourself. I didn’t sleep so well last night myself. Could have been too eventful a day for sleep, possibly.”
After that, he ate a tempura soft-shell crab in a dollop of custard that tasted like the sea, watched her tip her head back and slip a Waiheke oyster into her mouth, swallow it down, and smile at him, and lost a little more of his equilibrium. The sparkling wine, crisp and light as the sunlight shining like diamonds on the wave tips of Tasman Bay, didn’t help.
Another fifteen minutes, and he watched her eat a forkful of butternut ravioli, silky pasta layered with scampi and tiny cubes of pumpkin, and close her eyes before reaching for her latest wine glass, tasting the creamy, fruity Viognier, and giving him another slow smile.
“I am drowning in food lust,” she said when they were eating perfectly crunchy asparagus in a mustard vinaigrette, topped with a generous swirl of Comte cheese foam, and sipping on a massively intense Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc that knocked you out with tropical fruit. “You’re pacing yourself on the wine, and I’m trying. If only it weren’t so bloody delicious.”
“Youdoseem a little drunk,” he teased. The music was more than classical, a rising and falling chorus of voices, winding together like ribbons, that belonged in church, but that sounded like a dance, too, slow, urgent, and sensual. “And I like this music. What is it?”
“Mm. Dunno. I like it too, though.”
The waiter arrived again to take away plates, and Rhys asked, “What’s the music, can you tell me?”
“I can find out,” the waiter said. “Back in a minute with your next course, which is my favorite. Saddle of lamb, and a 2014 Pegasus Bay Pinot Noir from Canterbury that’s just gorgeous. Velvety, I’d call it. Heaps of mouth feel. Silky. You’ll see what you think, though.”
He swanned off again, and Zora drank a little more of her Sauvignon Blanc and laughed at him with her witch’s eyes. “Silky,” she said. “Mouth feel. Mm. Sounds sexy.”
“It does,” he said. “Like a woman in a red dress, maybe.”
