Page 69 of Catch a Kiwi
“Who’s Roman?” Priya asked. “Don’t tell me there aremorepeople coming.”
“Priya,” Daisy said, a snap in her voice.
“Daisy saving the world,” Frankie said, despite being bent over the counter with a mechanical pencil in one hand and the fingers of the other hand punching buttons on a graphing calculator. Worrying and worrying at that problem, unable to let it go. I knew the feeling.
“He said he has something to give me,” I said, wanting to laugh. And I’d thought our arrival atRoman’shad been dramatic.
“Roman d’Angelo, eh,” Gray said. “Well, spag bol stretches, and I’d like to meet him, ask him about wind power. I wonder if he does solar as well.”
“I, uh, don’t know,” I said. “And he won’t be thinking of staying for dinner. I’ll keep it brief.”
“He’s sitting up at the gate now?” Daisy asked. “I’ve got it. Wait, I don’t have my phone.”
“I do,” Gray said, and punched a few buttons.
“I’ll just go outside, then,” I said. “And let him in. And then come back and make dinner.”
“Excellent,” Priya said. “You can come over and watch TV with me, Delilah. Oh. You can come too, Dove, if you like, but it’s a cop show. Bullets and blood.”
“I could stay here and help cook,” Dove said. “If that’s OK?” she asked me.
“Sure,” I said. “One minute. Let me go, uh, get Roman.”
Fortunately, I was used to chaos. I’d married a footballer.
29
HEAVENLY
Roman
Esther headed down the drive and parked near a garage that seemed to be the end of the car track, and I climbed out of the back seat as she got out of the front. I’d found it odd at first that she insisted on driving me like a chauffeur and would never allow herself to be driven, but had grown used to the luxury of being able to work in the car.
The house was older than I’d expected, clearly built around the end of the nineteenth century, with a wide covered porch on two sides. Below it, flowerbeds and lawns sloped down to what looked like orchards and well-tended gardens. A rooster crowed somewhere, a breeze rattled the seedpods in a grove of eucalyptus, and a faint hum of honeybees came from a flowering shrub. We were about fifteen minutes from downtown Dunedin, and a lifetime away, and I thought,This woman’s a nurse?This was a multimillion-dollar section, of that I was sure. Then I forgot that, because Summer stepped out onto the porch. T-shirt and shorts, her arms wrapped around herself as if she were cold.
“Hi,” I said, from the bottom of the steps, and smiled. Itwas good to see her, that was all. Her blonde hair was down for once, tumbling around her shoulders. She smiled, and I got that surge her smile did tend to give me. I realized what it was, too. Unlike most women, she didn’t smile unless she meant it. When she meant it … it was something.
“Hi,” she said, then looked at Esther, who followed me up the steps.
“My assistant,” I said. “Esther.”
“Hi,” Summer said, and Esther nodded. “But, uh, Roman … why?”
“Why what?” I asked.
“Why do you need reinforcements?”
“Oh. You’ll see. This will take a few minutes.”
“Let’s go inside, then,” she said. “I need to start cooking dinner.”
“Thought it was going to be a caravan,” I said, eyeing the fairly large house.
“It is,” she said. “It’s a long story,” and headed inside.
The first thing I noticed was the smell of scorched food. The reason for the smoke alarm, clearly. The second thing was the nurse, Daisy, whom I remembered from the hospital, standing at the foot of the stairs in a dressing gown and surveying me with the same lack of enthusiasm I remembered. With her was a big bloke whose face was familiar.
Oh. Tamatoa. Daisy Tamatoa. Gray Tamatoa, former All Black and current large-scale commercial builder. The house started making more sense.
