Page 4 of Just for Me
Also, Nyree was pregnant, in addition to the imminent-bride thing, and her energy apparently didn’t match her enthusiasm anymore. So he was helping.
He was a good brother, and a good uncle. He hoped. He’d been there for Zora and her son Isaiah at their hardest times, and Zora’d been there for his. Zora didn’t need him that way anymore, though, because she had Casey’s dad, Rhys. Zora had found a way to get loved back.
Hayden? Not so much, other than George the marmalade cat. But he was here for Zora anyway. Old habits died hard.
All he was really doing, of course, was painting the blades of grassaroundsome bunnies. Blades that Nyree had helpfully pre-drawn onto the wall with colored pencils, so he’d know which shade. It was paint by numbers, was what it was. Artistically, Hayden was apparently eight years old.
He was thinking about all that, because you had to think about something when you were sitting on the floor painting blades of grass, and bunnies and little girls were a better spot than most. Besides, Nyree was concentrating too fiercely for conversation.
He wasn’t the only one helping today. There was some New Zealand rugby talent around that, as always, made Hayden feel seriously undersized, not to mention desperately unfit, including Nyree’s enormous stepbrother, Kane Armstrong. Kane played for the Crusaders, and Rhys Fletcher, the owner of this bedroom, was the coach of the Blues, but love conquered all, apparently. Especially as Nyree’s own stepfather, and Kane’s father, was the former coach of the Highlanders, which meant that three of the five New Zealand Super Rugby teams were more-or-less represented here today.
Of course, Grant Armstrong hated Nyree’s fiancé, Marko Sendoa, and vice versa. On the other hand, Rhys Fletcher, the aforementioned homeowner, was Marko’s coach now—and Hayden’s soon-to-be-brother-in-law—so … here Nyree was. Here Hayden was. Here they all were.
It was all very incestuous and tortured, before you even got into the fact that Zora wasalsomarrying her late husband’s brother, who’dalsobeen a rugby player. New Zealand was a small country, but notthissmall.
He was thinking that, and then he wasn’t. Somebody else had walked into the room, somebody big and stolid and unsmiling andstill,and Nyree was talking.
“Everybody who doesn’t know him—wait, the rugby boys will know him, obviously, so it’s only Hayden—this is Luke. Armstrong. My brother. Well, stepbrother. Son of my stepdad, again obviously, but we can’t hold Grant Armstrong against anybody, or I’d have to hate Marko, since he played for him for yonks. Also my mother.”
“And you’d have to hate me,” Kane said. “I played for him myself,andwas raised by him. That’s exposure. Hi, Luke. Sorry I didn’t ring you yesterday. I was—”
“Yeh,” Nyree said, a little absently, since she’d begun to paint what seemed to be a fairy riding a bird, sketching in a pointed chin, a wide forehead, with a few swift strokes. Nyree could make anything have a personality. “But you’re both OK anyway despite the parentage. I’d give you a cuddle, Luke, but I’m too painty. Do my trees over there on the other wall, please, since you actually have talent.”
“Oi,” Kane said mildly, because Kane said most things mildly. Hulking as he was—Hayden didn’t think he could count as high as Kane was tall, and at this moment, he was painting clouds onto the ceiling without a ladder—Kane didn’t radiate much but good humor off the pitch.
Unlike Luke. Hayden couldn’t get a read. He could get gooseflesh, though, and it was happening.
He wasn’t attracted to rugby players, possibly because rugby players weren’t attracted to him, and he refused to be that needy.
Normally.
No.
“Well, he does,” Nyree said, painting in the suggestion of feathers on the bird’s blue wings. “He’s got fingers like sausages and knuckles like ping-pong balls, but he used to draw wicked cartoons of our weird family to make me laugh when I was an awkward teen, with the specs and the brace on my teeth and all. Oh—Luke, Hayden.” She jerked her chin in Hayden’s direction and kept painting her bird. “Zora’s brother. Lawyer. Luke’s a rugby player.”
“You could say that,” Kane said.
Hayden couldn’t just sit here cross-legged and stare at the bloke like the dimmest lawyer ever to be admitted to the roll of barristers, could he? “Why could you say that?” he asked.
“Plays for Racing 92,” Nyree said. “Paris. Tighthead prop. That’s the front row. Also captain for England for the internationals. Here for the wedding, and missing two matches for it. That’s loyalty, eh.”
“Captain the last two seasons, that’s all,” Luke said, the first time he’d opened his mouth. “Doesn’t mean I will be again.”
“Right,” Nyree said. “After you won the Six Nations last year? The European Championship,” she told Hayden.
“Excuse me,” he said. “That much rugby knowledge, I have. I’m Zora’s brother, remember? I also know that a prop’s in the front row, thank you very much. Iama Kiwi.”
Luke wasn’t looking at Hayden, and he seemed not even to have heard him. Had he been that obvious? Please, no. Luke was looking away, though, so probably yes. In fact, he picked up a brush and began studying the outline of trees that Nyree had sketched onto the end wall as if they fascinated him. One mangled, deeply cauliflowered ear was glowing red, though, and the color was creeping up the back of his thick neck, too, all the way to the edge of his close-cropped dark hair.
Oh, bloody hell. Hehadnoticed. Hayden wanted to laugh, it was so squirm-worthy. On the other hand, he was also pathetic, so maybe not so much on the laughing.
Luke was the size of a boulder. He was the size of atank.His voice seemed to come from all the way from his barrel of a chest, quiet and deep and powerful as the waters of the Waiau River, born in the harshness of the Southern Alps and flowing to join some of the coldest waters in the world.
At least that was how he seemed to Hayden, and he couldn’t get his breath, even though, yes—pathetic. Luke’s thighs were the size of tree trunks, his forearms corded with muscle and sinew. His nose had been broken much more than once, and he had a scar over one eye, another on his cheek, and, Hayden was sure, heaps more under his neatly-trimmed scruff of dark beard. Even hishandslooked strong, and Hayden knew they would be. A prop’s job was to hang onto his man in the front row of the scrum and push against the opposite line like a freight train. A prop didn’t do any kicking, and he almost never carried the ball. All the guts and none of the glory, but when he tackled a man, that man went down.
Hayden kept painting grass, wishing that his usual cheerful line of chat hadn’t deserted him, that his body wasn’t tingling, that his very scalp wasn’t prickling. He hoped nobody was watching. He hoped nobody could see.
“And I don’t know whether I’m meant to say,” Nyree went on, painting furiously but precisely on her bird, “but the secret’s out to half the New Zealand rugby world since Luke turned up unexpectedly at our hen-and-stag night and spilled it, and anyway, secrets block my painting chi. Last chance to stop me, Luke. Three, two, one—everybody, Luke’s gay. If you wanted to tell Kane privately, sorry and all that. But you’re not here for long, and you never tell anybody anything, and he needs to know now, I reckon, so he has time to absorb before you leave again. Come to think of it, the gay thing is probablywhyyou never tell anybody anything, and why you never stay long, either. How have you kept that secret? Why haven’t you told us before?”
