Page 7 of Just Say Christmas
“Oh. Sorry,” Kane heard. “I was just . . . looking for Nyree.”
He turned to face her. No choice. Maybe the paint would mask his expression. He hoped so.
Another thing about being big: You were meant to be tough. Especially if you were a rugby player, and most especially if you were a big unit in the second row. If your job was all about smashing your opposition, and you were very good at your job, that might be even more true. In reality, though, a lock had probably spent too much time feeling awkward off the field to always be comfortable there. A lock tended to be a quiet man rather than the reverse, and a family man, too, glad to find the place and the people where he could relax and feel normal. A lock also didn’t talk unnecessarily on the field, and he wasn’t pushy off it, either. He didn’t have to be.
Kane had the “quiet” part taped. He wasn’t doing so well on the “family” bit.
“Hi,” he said, because Victoria hadn’t actually left. She was staring at him instead, apparently forgetting about leaving. “I’m doing a bit of painting,” he said. “Helping Nyree, eh,” and then ran out of things to say. How did you telegraph,I haven’t spared a thought for you,when you were actually thinking,I’m gobsmacked to see you, and not prepared for it at all, and I don’t think I’m hiding it nearly well enough?He’d taken a shoulder to the solar plexus and was lying, his diaphragm paralyzed, on the damp grass, staring at the floodlit night sky and trying to suck in a breath that wouldn’t come.
She looked so different. Why? Her hair was down, but the wild corkscrews of her curls were tamed, instead of being pulled back in a knot that had always had wayward curls escaping it, especially toward the end of the night. Especially if you’d been dancing, fast at first, laughing and uninhibited, and then, when the music slowed down, close and dirty-sweet as a too-recognizable All Black could be in public, restraining yourself and burning all the hotter for it, counting the minutes until you might be able to tumble her onto a bed and come down over her the way you were surely meant to do.
He’d loved the look of those coppery curls against the back of her slim neck, how soft the hair had felt between oversized fingers that should have been too calloused to appreciate anything that fine. He remembered, too, how she’d shivered the first time he’d brushed those curls aside, held her shoulder in the other hand, gently, because you had to be gentle with somebody like this, and kissed the tender skin beneath, and then, slowly, moved his mouth to the side of her neck, down low, in that little dip just above her collarbone. She’d shuddered as if it were the first time, and he’d got a rush of heat all the way from his chest to down where he wasn’t civilized anymore, and had been fiercely, triumphantly glad to know it. He’d thought,Make it good, then, mate,and forced himself to slow down, and it had all got even better.
That had been anight.When he’d been over her, kissing her slow and deep, the fingers of one hand threaded through her curls, the other hand on her face, his thumb stroking over an impossibly soft cheek, because she had hair and skin finer than anybody else’s in the world, as if she’d been made by elves, and she’d kissed him back like this much passion was new, she couldn’t believe it, and she could barely stand it . . .
Yeh, you could call that triumph.
Now, her hair didn’t have any of the deceptive neatness or the glorious messiness he remembered. It fell instead in disciplined, loose curls from a side part, the whole perfectly orderly, shiny mass of it ending above her shoulders. Her face, too . . . It was like she’d been smoothed over. Like she’d been tamed. Her skin was still milky-pale, but he could see more of it than he remembered. That was because she was wearing a skirt that wouldn’t have been short on anyone else, but showed off heaps of leg on her. She also had on a stretchy tee, as if she were hitting you across the face with all of her, wanting to show it off at last, and sandals with a wedge heel that made her legs look endless.
“How’re you going,” he added, when the silence stretched out. Even the kids weren’t saying anything. Atmosphere, you could call this, like you were swimming through soup. “You did something to your face.” He couldn’t tell what, but then, he was rattled. She looked the same, and she looked completely different.
She’d look the same naked, though. Or had she changed there, too, polishing herself ruthlessly down until she was exactly the same as everyone else? Would she laugh like that after an orgasm, still, like it had been so good, it had shocked her into pure happiness? Would her face still get serious, later, as her fingers twined through yours? Would she fall asleep mid-thought, absolutely honest, right there with you? Or had barriers come along with the other changes, like she was afraid to be different anymore?
He’d never know, because she said, “You did something to yours, too,” in a cool tone that was nothing like the Victoria he’d thought he’d known, but was probably exactly like the Victoria who’d left him hanging, his stupid heart in his hand. Who’d never turned up, and never explained. “I think mine looks better,” she said. “I’m off to find Nyree.”
* * *
It waseighteen months ago all over again, and he got a jolt of winter cold like it was that Saturday night in June. Cold here in Dunedin, on the southeast coast of the South Island, with a frost in the air, but it wasn’t raining, and it didn’t matter anyway, because they’d be under the roof at Forsyth Barr Stadium. Where you were close to the crowd, and they were close to the action. A good place to play a game, for most people. A place where you had to win, for him.
The Crusaders had come down to play the Highlanders in Dunedin that Saturday night, and Victoria had come down to watch them do it. Not the first time she’d come to watch him play, just three months into what had seemed, to him, like a fairytale romance. If the fairytale wasShrek,that is, where the too-big, funny-looking fella got to be the hero, and the two of you didn’t have to do this like anybody else. Tonight was meant to be one of the turning points in that fairytale, because she wasn’t just here to watch, she was here to meet his father and stepmother, too.
Or, rather, to see his stepmum again tonight, in the stands, and meet his father tomorrow at breakfast, because tonight, his dad wasn’t his dad. Grant Armstrong was coaching the Highlanders, which meant that tonight, Kane wasn’t the son who was the image of Grant in his youth, or the boy Grant had coached and pushed and bullied from the age of twelve to eighteen until he was a battering-ram weapon of rugby strength, speed, and skills. Tonight, he was just the opposition. Grant had been more than clear about that from the start, and that he’d be spending the week before a game planning ways to counter his son’s strengths and take advantage of the cracks in his armor, because he only played to win.
Only one problem with that. He’d taught his sons the same thing.
You could say that this game was fraught, in other words, which was why Kane had played his bloody heart out. To show his dad he could, the way he did every time he played the Highlanders, to win the game with his team and beat his father’s, and because Victoria was watching.
Except, it turned out, she wasn’t.
She had to know what the game meant to him, because he’d told her the very first night they’d met, which was also the first night they’d kissed, and the first night they’d made love. All of it together, on a day and a night when he’d felt light, leaping from crag to crag like a mountain goat, surefooted and strong, or playing one of those matches where you couldn’t put a foot wrong. In the peace that had come after, they’d lain together and talked, his heart opening as if he’d been in the wars, but had come home at last and could strip off his armor and leave it by the door.
It wasn’t the sort of story you shared if you were wise, the kind of let-me-tell-you-about-my-sad-life post-sex pseudo-therapy session that you’d cringe to remember afterwards, but then, he hadn’t been wise that night. She’d lain beside him, her hand on his bare chest, his heart beating into the palm of her hand, and listened. She hadn’t just heard. She’dlistened.
He couldn’t even have said how the whole thing had happened, except that everything about that day had felt like magic. Effortless. When he’d closed the door of Marko’s car for her, after he’d offered to drive her home from dinner at Marko’s, and she’d said yes, and she hadn’t even had to tuck her skirt inside first the way a girl usually did, because she’d been wearing something sensible. Something that had let her kick off her shoes and play soccer on the grass that afternoon with Kors and Ella and a bunch of kids and dogs, laughing like it was the best possible way to spend a Sunday, then sitting beside him around a dinner table and laughing some more. White skin like china, endlessly long legs, hair that flashed copper-bright in the sun and kept trying to escape its knot, blue eyes that shone when she laughed, cheekbones with a dusting of freckles, and a smile that felt like it was just for him.
He climbed into the car beside her, slammed the car door, and thought,I don’t want this to be over.Which was why he asked her, “Want to go dancing?”
“Yes,” she said. “That sounds like magic. But I’m not dressed for dancing. Also, I don’t really know how to dance, so there’s that.”
He grinned. “Both things true for me as well. Why should that stop us? I don’t know much about playing soccer, either, but we did it anyway. You move your feet and feel your partner, that’s all. We can do that.”
“They won’t let us in.” She was laughing again, though. “You’re wearing jandals and rugby shorts, and I’m not much better. You’re dreaming.”
“Oh,” he said, “I think they will.”
“Ah. The All Black thing? Think it’ll work? Bit embarrassing for you if it doesn’t.”
He couldn’t stop smiling. “One way to find out.” He turned the car on. “What do you say? I don’t want the night to be over. Let’s go dancing.”
