Page 15 of Just Say Christmas
Romance in Real Life
RHYS
Zora pulled up to the garage in the van and sighed. It was a faint sound, but Rhys noticed.
“Tired?” he asked.
“No,” she said, which was clearly a lie. “I’m fine. Probably even good to go out tonight, if you like, as long as I do a bit more on the wedding flowers first.”
He gave her what he hoped was a stern look. “Yeh, right. We’ve just made nineteen deliveries, and you’ll be up at five in the morning doing wedding bouquets. Also, the kids are going to be sleeping on the couch, because their rooms won’t be finished. Perfect night for romance. Or maybe a takeaway curry, a bottle of wine, a foot massage, and something French and sexy that we watch in bed. How’s that?”
“I don’t speak French,” she said, but she was smiling.
“That’s why we choose something sexy,” he said. “That way, it won’t matter. I’ll translate the dirty bits for you. Of course, you’ll be asleep, so . . .”
Now, she laughed and leaned his way. He put an arm around her, and she rested her forehead against his chest and sighed. “Tomorrow,” she promised.
“Tomorrow,” he agreed, kissing the top of her head. “You’ll have three assistants to get that wedding set up, and one of them’s even tall enough to help with the arbor. Also careful enough to handle all-white flowers. Lucky, eh. After that? I take the kids for a bit of rugby practice at the park, you have a long bath and paint your toenails, and then I take you out and we celebrate another wedding down. Romance in real life. Know what we’ve never done?”
She pulled back and blinked her Russian-princess eyes at him. Slowly. A smile tugged at the edge of her mouth, and he got a twist of pure lust low in his gut and thought,Oh, yeh.She said, “I’m scared to ask.”
That twist was still there, but he had to smile. “Nah. We’ve never gone dancing, that’s all. How about putting on that little black dress and those shoes I like? We could go down to Britomart, check out REC, and pretend we’re cool. Drink a little too much, dance a little too close, and I show you exactly why I was willing to wait ten years for you.”
She twined her arms around his neck, smiled at him, slow and sultry, and asked, “How do you know where to go dancing, boy?”
“Asked Koti, of course. How do you think?”
This time, she laughed. “Right. I’m still tired, but that’s a program I can get with. Come on. I’ll work on my flowers, and you can check on the painting and organize the takeaway and the kids. I’ll practice my come-hither look and dredge up some dirty thoughts for tomorrow whilst I arrange white roses, shall I?”
“You do that,” he said. She still seemed surprised every time he paid attention, and he wondered how long it would take to make her believe.
Never mind. As long as it took. Also, they might need to have a talk about work hours. It was good that her customer base was growing, but this was getting ridiculous. On the other hand, how did you have that discussion when you worked insane hours yourself?
It was a quandary, and he tabled it for another day, or until his subconscious had time to work on it. After that, he hopped down from the pink van, painted with a purple and green floral explosion andZora’s Floralswrittenin script along the side, grabbed two pasteboard boxes of Mason jars out of the back, and prepared to put some more time in on being a family man. It took practice, he was finding, like most important things, but he’d always been a disciplined fella.
His house smelled like paint. Hardly a surprise. He poked his head into Isaiah’s room first, and Casey twisted around from her spot on the floor, then jumped up and ran to him, leaping into his arms with absolute confidence that he’d catch her, which he did, and said, “Hi. Isaiah’s roomstillisn’t done.”
“No?” he asked, checking out the ceiling. “Looks like a night sky to me. What’s not done about it?” He eyed Kane Armstrong, crouched in the corner thumping tops onto paint cans, and said, “Ah. Could be Kane’s painted himself instead. You were meant to do the ceiling, mate.”
“Funny,” Kane said. “But not.”
“Hang on,” Rhys said. He put Casey down, grabbed an old towel from the laundry room, wet it down, then brought it back and tossed it to the big lock. “That’s going to take some time in the showers, but you could make a start with this. Cheers for being willing to do the hard yards.”
“Nyree will have to finish it, she says,” Kane told him, scrubbing at his head and face. “Last step is spraying the rest of the stars in, and I’ve been told the precision work is beyond me.”
His tone was light, but it wasn’t, quite, and Rhys frowned. Isaiah said, “Kane doesn’t know where any of the stars go, is why.”
Rhys said, “Not good enough, mate.”
It was quiet, but Isaiah looked up. Rhys held his gaze, and Isaiah said, after a second, “Sorry. Thank you for painting my ceiling, Kane. It looks very nice.”
Kane said, “No worries. Nyree will get it sorted.”
Isaiah said, “It’s because people specialize in different things. You can’t help that you’re not very good at painting, because you haven’t practiced. You’ve practiced rugby instead. Nyree probably isn’t good at rugby.”
Kane smiled at last. “You could be right. See you tomorrow?” he asked Rhys.
“Nah,” Rhys said. “See you at the wedding, though.”
