Page 24 of Kiwi Gold
Lachlan
L names. I did not need more L names in my life. And yet, when I knocked again at fifteen minutes to three, and she answered the door, I thought,Laila. Night beauty. Suits her.
She was in long trousers despite the warmth of the day. Chocolate brown like her hair, the legs loose and flowing and the fabric thin. And then she turned to collect the girls, and I saw the side view.
Well, yeh. They laced from the wide waistband halfway down the thigh. After that? The laces hung down in a casual fashion over an inset of … well, lace. The kind of lace in lingerie, this time. It was the heavy sort, and you couldn’t see all of her legs, but you could see a glimpse of skin under there all the same. She was wearing the trousers with a high-end version of jandals and a shirt the color of mangos, the mandarin collar buttoned almost to her throat and her arms nearly bare.
It was the nightdress all over again. Covered, and not. It was a graceful look again, too, especially with her abundance of hair knotted at the back of her neck.
But she was wearing the wedding ring.
I may have been a bit lost for words, so I looked at the covered plate she was holding. “I went to the supermarket,” she said, “bought a coconut raspberry slice, took it out of the plastic, sliced it, and put it on a plate. Don’t tell. I wasn’t up to baking.”
“Ah,” I said. “I brought fruit salad, myself. Looks like you made an effort, but takes about fifteen minutes.”
“We should take my car,” she said. “Booster seats.”
That was all fine, except that my phone rang while we were in the car, during the period when we’d be doing the getting-to-know-you chat. Other than, first, the presence of the girls in the back seat, which would cramp my style as far as asking the kind of questions I wanted to, and second, that I felt like I alreadydidknow her. In any case, we didn’t do it, because … phone.
I looked at the number and picked up, just in case. “Hi. Be quick, please.”
My sister Lark said, “Nice. But I’m ignoring it. Something happened last night, without you. We may have gone a bit far. To be fair, we were pissed. Other than Larissa, as she’s up the duff, but you know that she’d be useless anyway. So bloody cautious. Youare,”she said, which meant that Larissa was listening, and I should assume that I was on speaker. “We’ve decided that we need you for this, though, so sharpen your wits.”
“Uh …” I said, and glanced at Laila. “I’m a bit busy just now.”
Laila glanced atmeand said, “What, is that your girlfriend? Don’t mind me.”
I said, “No. My sister. Sisters. Geez. I’m not going to take a call from my girlfriend while I’m out with you. Give me a bit of credit.”
“Interesting,” Lark said in my ear. “Who is she? You said you weren’t coming for New Year’s Eve because you were going to a party, seeing as you don’t have a partner. And you’ve been with whoever it is since last night? You sure that’s wise? You could be giving her the wrong signals. Can’t believe I have to point that out to Mr. Don’t-Tie-Me-Down, but clearly, I do.” Making me extremely glad that I didn’t have the phone on speaker.
Lexi chimed in next. “First date, and nobody crept out quietly at dawn? Yeh, that’s weird, Lachlan.Nobodyhangs about for breakfast afterward anymore. Too awkward. Especially not after New Year’s Eve. Definition of hookup. Tell me she’s desperate without telling me she’s desperate.”
I didn’t want to answer. I settled on, “The last possible thing from it.”
“Oh,” Lexi said. A long sound, like I’d just Explained All. “Recently divorced, I’ll bet. Gun shy.Disastrousrelationship potential.Pleasetell me she doesn’t have kids.”
“Of course she doesn’t,” Lark said. “Lachlan would be running screaming. Besides, he knows you don’t meet the kids until you’re serious. At least I hope he knows. Lachlan, you don’t meet the kids until you’re serious. Hard rule. Damaging, otherwise.”
I said, “I’ve been dating since you lot were about seven. It’s possible I may know more than you do about it. I may even have managed to put together my own rules since that time, and I may have learned tobreakmy rules, too, when necessary. If I did, which I’m not discussing. Why? Because it’s my business, and nobody else’s. And because she’s sitting right here in the car beside me.”
“You may be older,” Lark informed me, “but I have two kids. Motherhood matures you.”
“Congratulations,” I said. “You said you had an issue. Tell me fast or tell me tonight. When I callyou.”
“We took steps to try to find our sperm donor some months back,” Lark said. “Well, I did the outreach, but we all agreed first. Unanimous, we thought, or no good, and wewereunanimous.”
“Wait,” I said. “What? Does Mum know about this?”
“Not yet,” she said. “It’s not really about Mum, though, is it? It’s about knowing our ancestry, and she can’t help with that.”
My head wasn’t starting to throb, because I was a disciplined man. I said, “We’ll shelve that question for the moment. Right, then. Tell me. How did you go about this?”
“First, you do one of those DNA tests,” she said, “or four of them, in our case.”
Lexi said, “Because I pointed out—what if one of us was Dad’s after all? Sordid outcome, you’re thinking, like on some kind of chat show, but it can happen, especially the way they used to do it. So many eggs loosened up, because of the fertility drugs, and Mum and Dad are emotional due to their dreams coming true, so they reach out to each other in the hotel room—and Bob’s your uncle, you’ve got sperm deposited the natural way alongside the others, all of them trying their best to do the business. Who’s to say? And Lianadoeslook like Dad. More than the rest of us do, anyway. There could be a reason she’s his favorite.”
Disciplined or not, my head was spinning now. “Leaving out that Peter’s famously sterile, but all right, what did you find?”
