Page 35 of Just Say Christmas
Luke hefted it in one big paw. “Yeh. I could do with a cup of tea more, though. Not drinking much these days. I’ll go make that, and put these back. You can come find me once you get yourselves sorted. Show me where, and then get out of here.”
Kane said, “It’s good to have you back, bro.” He was swamped, suddenly, by the memory of all those times. Running in the snow. Doing fifty press-ups and fifty sit-ups before bed. Of Luke showing him how to do whatever it took to meet their dad’s expectations, and ultimately, to leave him behind.
His father might have been his driver, the relentless force pushing him to excellence. Luke was the one who’d shown him how to push from the inside, because he wanted it.
“It’s good to be back with you, too,” Luke said. “Time to be back here anyway, I reckon. Past time for a lot of things.”
19
Past Time
Sunday,December 13
LUKE
By the time he got himself onto the leather couch and pulled the duvet over himself, Luke’s eyelids felt like sandpaper. Travel between the hemispheres was always hard on the body, but he was used to that. He should think about tomorrow, how he was going to do this. He should . . .
He fell asleep before he’d finished the thought.
He wasn’t sure what had woken him. It was black dark in the room, but he fumbled for his phone and checked. Two-thirty. It was . . . some different time in Paris. He gave up on figuring it out around the time he realized why he’d woken.
Somebody was getting lucky next door. A woman. Trying to be quiet, and not succeeding, because she was having too good a time for that. Not too surprising, given what he’d seen during his brief excursion into massage-world.
Well, never mind. It was a party. He turned over, flipped the pillow to the cool side, wished the couch were wide enough for his shoulders, and went back to sleep.
When he woke again, it was after five, and everything was quiet, but there was no more falling asleep. It was late afternoon in Paris, and he might not be awake at six o’clock tonight, but he was awake now. He flipped on the light, and five minutes later, was in the kitchen, making another cup of tea, and carrying it into the nearby lounge. There were some books on the shelf in here, and he found a thriller and a couch and settled down to wait for dawn in the homeland.
He finished his tea around the time he began to hear the sound of birds from outside. He’d opened the ranch sliders to the deck and was leaning against them, sipping another cup of tea and looking out at the pale-pink light of dawn glinting against silver water, the pinprick of a star or two still visible above, when he heard a quiet noise from inside the house. A door closing, the pad of bare feet down the passage. Another few seconds, and Nic Wilkinson came into the kitchen, blinking against the light, and headed for the electric jug.
“Morning,” Luke said.
Nico stared at him, still looking a bit fogged by sleep, and then the tumblers clicked over in his mind, because his good-looking face split into a grin, and he bounded over and was shaking Luke’s hand, clapping him on the back, and asking, “When did you turn up?”
“Last night. You lot were busy outside, so I left you alone.”
Nico laughed. “Yeh. You could say that. Victoria—Nyree’s friend—organized a massage class. A bit awkward, as it turned out to be unexpectedly close to the erotic end of the spectrum, but never mind. You reckon everybody’s got their girl, and you’ll focus on yours. Least that was how I handled it.”
Luke said, “Nyree doing all right, then? Haven’t seen her yet.”
Nico smiled. “Nah, Marko took her out of there pretty smartly.” The jug boiled, and he made his tea and headed over to sit at the breakfast bar. Which was when Koti James turned up, and the greeting happened all over again.
“Why are you buggers up so early?” Luke asked, taking a seat beside Nico. “I know why I am. Time zones. What’s your excuse? It’s barely six.”
“Kids,” Koti said. “I’ve got two, and another one on the way. They change your clock, even when Nana’s looking after them and you could be having a good long lie-in. All those parents telling their babies for thousands of years that five A.M. isn’t an acceptable hour to start your day, and yet they never get the message. Reckon Nico’s about the same. Do you have kids yourself? Sorry, can’t remember.”
“No,” Luke said. He was almost ready to do this. Not quite, though, or maybe that was his feet trying to run backwards, to get him safely back behind the line.
“Good to have a chance to catch up, anyway,” Koti said. “What did you decide, on the retirement? Nico and I are chuffed at the idea of playing with you at Paris Racing next year. Better than playing against you, anyway. I think my ears are still ringing from that hit you laid on me on that Northern tour, and it was two years ago.” When Luke had been captaining England in the internationals, fronting up against the All Blacks, and his brother.
“One more year, I reckon,” Luke said. “We’ll see. The body’s still all right. It’s more the mental gearing up for every week, isn’t it, having the desire. I’d rather go out on a high note. You two’ve already done that, of course. Two World Cup wins on the trot? Hard to go out on a higher note than that.”
Nico stared into his mug of tea a moment, then said, “Hard to wrap my head around retirement. Baby steps, I guess. First to Japan, then to France. Get a couple more years out of it, I hope, and get the funding sorted, too, if I’ve looked after the body as well as I hope. The money’s good, of course, and Emma’s chuffed about both places, but Paris especially. She does design. Knitwear. She and my boys are ahead of me on the French, I’ll tell you that. They’ve decided that we’re only allowed to speak French at dinner, and the three of them rattle away all through it, even George, the little one. By the time I’ve worked out whatIwant to say, dinner’s over.”
“Ah,” Luke said. “Design, eh. Paris will be good for that. Japan as well. Exciting.” What would that be like, having kids? He’d always assumed that was off the table. However he’d manage it, he’d reckoned that he wouldn’t know how to be any good at it. That was probably the reason Kane had never done it, either. Letting them laugh, letting them cry? Nyree was doing it, but Nyree didn’t ask anybody’s permission to laugh, or to live. Or to cry, for that matter. She never had.
“Yeh,” Nico said. “That’s what we thought. She’s taken a back seat to my career long enough. It’s a chance to stay closer to home, too. Better for the family life, eh. Have some time with my kids.”
“How old are they?” Luke asked, because it was a question people did ask.
