Page 96 of Just Come Over
But then, he was a competitive bloke. He may have had a few scores to settle for Dylan, too.
Zora got back to the table and slid in opposite Rhys. Her dress rode up more than a few centimeters, and she wished she were alone with him so he could have watched it happen. She took a sip of her Mai Tai, and then another, and felt the rum burning its way down her throat, followed by the cooling touch of lime.
She needed cooling off, and Rhys... maybe didn’t. The fire inside him was turned up to the max, he’d damped it ruthlessly down, and nobody did “controlled intensity” like Rhys.
Her own fire, unfortunately, wasn’t controlled at all. Her mum’s wasn’t, either, and her dad, she realized, was looking seriously rattled, or seriously narky.
You could call that “unexpected.” You could call it “unprecedented,” in fact. Candy looked expectant, and Nils looked coolly amused. What had been going on here?
Rhys plucked her drink from her hand, took a sip, then said, “What the hell,” and finished it off, and she laughed. He smiled at her in that slow, sweet way that melted her bones, like there were only the two of them here, and asked, “Good chat? You look a little flustered, baby. But so good.” Which made everybody at the table sit up a little straighter.
The waiter came over with the wine and went through his presentation, which fortunately gave Zora a chance to gather her wits. “Oysters and sweets in two seconds,” the server said. “Not together, of course.”
Thank goodness. They were moving this thing on.
“Can I offer anybody else a glass?” Rhys asked, holding the wine bottle aloft.
“I’d love to try some,” Candy said. “But you won’t want us drinking it up.”
There was amusement lurking in Rhys’s hazel eyes now. “I reckon I can run to another bottle, if I need to.” The waiter came over with a tray and distributed tiny dishes, and Rhys asked, “Could you bring us four more wine glasses, please?”
Zora wanted to say,What are youdoing?They’ll be here all night, and all I want is for them to leave.Rhys looked back at her, and something about that look said,Anticipation is a beautiful thing. I’d like to make you feel it.And despite everything, despite her parents, despite hermum,she felt the shiver start low and move all the way up her body, and she thought he saw it.
The glasses came, Rhys poured wine for Nils and Candy, Zora’s parents both refused it, and Zora’s mum took a tiny spoonful of her already-minuscule serving of sorbet as if it contained more calories than a celery stick and asked, “Who’s minding the kids while you’re out?”
“I got a babysitter,” Zora said. This was the oddest dinner she’d ever attended. She tipped up an oyster shell, swallowed down the salty freshness, sighed, touched her mouth with her serviette, and told Rhys, “Delicious.”
He wanted her to anticipate? Maybe she wanted him to as well. He tipped his head back, drank down his own oyster, and said, “Nothing like the taste of the sea,” while Zora’s dad’s face got, if possible, even tighter.
“I didn’t realize you had more than one child,” Candy told Zora. “I thought there was only one, somehow. They must be a comfort to you.”
“One of them is mine,” Rhys said, not a bit like somebody who was dropping a fifteen-kiloton bomb into the middle of the table. “My daughter, Casey Moana. I brought her back from Chicago recently, after her mum died.”
“Oh,” Candy said faintly. “That sounds like a... change.”
“It was,” Rhys said, “but a good one. I thought a move to Auckland, my first real house, my first Super Rugby team, and my divorce were pushing the limits. I’ve ended up with a little girl to come home to, and some rabbits as well. And then I fell in love with my sister-in-law. Life can surprise you, eh.”
Bomb detonated.
While everybody was still frozen in the fallout, Rhys pulled out his phone, clicked around, and handed it across the table to Candy. “That’s my little girl, Casey, along with Zora’s son, Isaiah, with the bunnies in my back garden.”
“Oh,” Candy said, not looking witchy at all. Looking like her heart was melted all the way into a puddle. By Rhys, by Casey, or by both, who knew. “She’s adorable. What a look she has of you. Isaiah, too. They could be brother and sister. And the tiny bunnies with their ears hanging down. How old is she?”
“Six,” Rhys said. “Year Two at school. She’s had some catching up to do, as they do their schooling differently in the States, but she’s getting on by leaps and bounds. Learning to play rugby, too. She’s good, and so is Isaiah, and they’re getting better.”
“She is,” Zora said. “To all of it.”
“She’s had to start again all over the shop,” Rhys told Candy, “losing her mum and meeting me for the first time, not to mention a new country, a new school, and a new auntie and cousin. Fortunately, she does have that auntie and cousin, she’s got courage to burn, and possibly a will of iron, too. I wouldn’t have said that rabbits were on my list before, and now, somehow, I have four.”
“Got you wrapped around her finger, is what it is,” Zora teased.
“Probably so,” Rhys said, his smile making it almost all the way out. “I have my own weaknesses, maybe. Seems I’ve just laid them on the table.”
Candy showed the photo to Zora’s mum, and she started to say something, stopped, started again, and stopped again, then handed the phone back to Candy. “Beautiful little girl,” she finally said, then set her serviette on the table and asked Zora’s dad, “Are you nearly ready to go?”
Nils and Candy exchanged a glance, and Nils said, “You’re right. We should leave Rhys and Zora to their evening,” and finished off his glass of wine. “Excellent choice,” he told Rhys. “Very nice.”
Credit cards, then, and finally, good-byes. Nils shook Rhys’s hand and said, “It’s been illuminating. Good luck tomorrow.”
