Page 16 of Kiwi Gold
Not Hamlet, and not Romeo. But maybe a hero.
I felt that hand like it was on my skin.
The life line is deep, but it is short.
Why did I have to think about that now? Just because you talked to a man, and danced with him, and possibly fantasized a tiny bit about him in anextremelyjuvenile manner, that didn’t mean you were a part of his future, longorshort. Whatever my mum had believed, the New Zealand mandidn’twant a virtuous woman who’d be true for a lifetime, who’d make his home beautiful and cook all his favorite foods and greet him every night with a passionate kiss and keep her beauty and her sensuality for him alone. New Zealand men wanted a sexy, confident partner for now, one who’d be … well, sexy and confident. And if it worked out, if she was sexy and confident enough, I guessed, or … or whatever it was they went by,thenthey wanted her for a lifetime.
Or, of course, less time.
As you can see, I was still pretty unclear on the concept.
The man turned to me, on the edge of the dance floor, held out a hand, and said, “May I?” Which is a fairly devastating question, asked by a man with a bullet wound on his face.
I took a breath, said, “Yes,” and put my hand in his, and he …didn’t smile, exactly, but something in his expression softened.
He said, “I’ll mostly guide you by this hand. Hold your arm strong, so you can feel the pressure from mine, and let your body get the message. Your other hand is just resting on my upper arm for balance.”
After a moment of hesitation, I put my hand on him, barely touching. Now, my right hand was wrapped around his, and my left was on that satisfying bulge of muscle that was a strong man’s upper arm and shoulder.
The deltoid muscle, that was called. I was thinking it so I wouldn’t have to feel the closeness quite so much.
As for his hand? It was on my back, and I felt it, same as before.
Through two layers of fabric. Not to mention that I was wearing a sword.
I wasn’t straight across from him, at least. He positioned me off-center, so I was looking over his shoulder instead. That was easier. That, I could do.
He was coaching, and we were moving. “Back, side, together,” he was saying. “Left, right, left, and shift your weight to your right foot as soon as your left foot meets it. Foot to foot, eh.” Dancing me backward, revolving as we went, in the same way the rest of the crowd was doing. Waltzing in a nightdress and his tunic and a pair of ballet flats, with his heavy leather belt around my hips and the sword banging against my thigh. Holding the hand of a man who wasn’t my husband, letting him turn me, feeling the way he held the space between us and didn’t try to close it. I could feel his gaze on me like he was holding me close again, though, the way he had when I’d been up against the wall, and the thought was a shivery thrill.
I couldn’t have said when I stopped counting my steps, when I stopped thinking about what we were doing and relaxed into it, when I let go. I just knew that we were twirling around and around the edge of the dance floor along with the others, like colorful autumn leaves spinning their way down a stream, and sword or no, the skirt of my nightdress was swirling around me as we went as if it were a ball gown. I was dancing on my toes like I was feather-light, and my partner wasn’t saying anything, so I didn’t need to, either. I could twirl in the low illumination of the chandelier and the fairy lights twining around the stone columns, and just for now, just for this brief window in time, I could trust him to hold me.
One song, then another. Pop songs, they were, easy to play, easy to listen to, and possibly easy to waltz to. Songs for a well-heeled crowd that didn’t want to work too hard on New Year’s Eve.
And then the music changed once again and I recognized the first few tinkling lines of Passenger’sLet Her Go.Written to close the throat and bring the tears, about loss and regret and the things we realize only too late, it had made me weep to the point of sobbing the first time I’d heard it, remembering my mum and how I’d thought, when I was fourteen, that she’d been put on earth to keep me from doing anything fun, until she was gone and I realized thatshe’dthought she’d been put on earth to love and protect me. The song had made me ugly-cry again, during one particularly low point last year, for what I’d lost, or what I’d never had.
Real love.
The guitar plucking out the notes, the singer holding the microphone, his eyes closed as if he knew what the words meant, and as if they hurt.
You let her go.
What a song for New Year’s Eve. Who neededthis?I thought it, but at the same time, the tears were wetting my mask, then trickling down my cheeks below it, wet and warm. I was trying to breathe through the constriction in my chest, but it was getting harder.
I only realized that he was dancing me off the floor when he’d done it. When he was standing, one hand still on my shoulder blade, comforting and solid, his thumb was brushing the tears away from my cheek, and he was saying, “What is it? Wrong song?”
“Yeh,” I said, wiping my face on the sleeve of my nightdress and doing my best to laugh. “Sorry. They write them on purpose that way, you know. I used to work in advertising. Manipulation of your feelings. Easy to do, if you know how. Emotional night, though, one way and another. Too much excitement for me. Not for somebody who’s got a bullet wound, maybe.”
“Bullet scratch.” He was smiling himself, but in a concerned sort of way, if you see what I mean. Exactly the way you didnotwant an extremely hot man in a black mask and scruff of beard to be looking at you as his arm muscles showed under a black T-shirt and his thigh muscles showed through his jeans. A man who had barely-healed scratches on those arms, who’dhitsomebody for you and carried you through the streets to safety and waltzed with you like it was all he wanted to do.
“Yeh,” I said. “Like that’s not making it worse, having you say that.”
His smile changed, possibly becoming relieved, and he said, “It’s working, then, not making a big thing of the bullet? I’ll have to tell a mate of mine that. Wait. Here he is, and his wife. That’s good, as she’s the one who needs to hear it. Karen, my dance partner tells me that downplaying the bullet wound was the right move. Good news, since I’ve been trying to convince her all night that I’m not a prat.”
I turned, hastily scrubbing a hand across my cheeks, and came face to masked face with …
Well, yeh. Myownteenage crush. Jax MacGregor, with his wife, Karen. I’d seen them at Poppy’s wedding. It wasn’t hard to recognize him now, even masked, given the blue scar down the side of his nose, and the thicker one emerging from below the mask near his hairline. I hoped he didn’t recognize me, though, because this didn’t feel like my finest moment.
“Hi,” my dance partner was saying. “This is, ah …” He looked at me, and my mouth opened, then closed.
