Just Not Mine (13 page)

“No more than usual,” Hugh said.

“Wait a minute,” Chloe said. “You both got injured in the same game? Must have been quite a game.”

“It was,” Kevin sai
d. “I take it you didn’t watch it.” He was smiling, though.

“Well, no,” she admitted,
smiling back. “I didn’t.”

“And Kevvie’s foot wouldn’t have been as bad as it was,” Hugh told her, “if he hadn’t kept playing on it
almost the entire game. Pounded that bone till it was more than cracked, till it was well and truly broken, is what he did. By the time we got on the plane, it was swollen to twice its size.”

“
And you’d have done exactly the same,” Kevin said. “Anyway, I’ll be fighting fit by January.”

“If you need a lift anyplace in the meantime,” Hugh said, “ring me.”

Kevin looked at Hugh’s own cast, doubt written all over his good-natured countenance. “Don’t think so. What d’you do, club the car into submission?”

“If I’m fit to drive kids, reckon I could drive one whingeing
winger as well,” Hugh said, “even if he has to cower in the back seat and hide his eyes. I drive the ballet carpool, and if the twelve-year-old girls are brave enough to handle it, there might be hope for you yet.”

“Ballet?” Reka asked, looking interested. “Would that be your sister?
What’s her name again?”

“Amelia
,” Hugh said. “Chloe here runs a ballet school. Uh …” He looked at Chloe.

“North Shore Dance,” Chloe said. “
In Bayswater. We do ballet, jazz, tap. Got a class for adults too,” she said with a meaningful smile. “Great for fitness.”

“
Recipe for humiliation,” Reka laughed.

“No
ne of my ladies is there to win any scholarships,” Chloe said. “Just to enjoy themselves, get a good workout, feel more graceful when they leave, maybe.”

“You should do it,” Hemi urged.

“Saying I’m not fit?” Reka asked. “Watch it, boy.”

“
Nah,” he grinned. “Saying I’d like to see you in a … what do they call those things?” he asked Chloe.

“Leotards,” she said with another smile.

“I’ve had four kids,” Reka protested, but she was laughing again, looking gratified.

“If you’ve had four kids and are still managing to look that good,” Chloe told her, “you should come along to ballet and show the other mums how
it’s done.”

Which was true, because Reka always looked good. N
ot quite like Josie, because Reka was darker, her features not as sharply carved, and she was even curvier, not confined by some ridiculous standard about how thin a woman ought to be. But with the same air of outsized vitality, that spark of life, of happiness to be here living it that made the room light up a little because she was there.

“A dance teacher,
and
a saleswoman,” Reka told Chloe. “Good on ya. I was really thinking about my girls, though. Ariana would love to do ballet. She’s nine. That too old to start?”

“Not at all,” Chloe assured her. “Hugh’s sister is twelve, and she only started a
few years ago herself. It’s not necessarily about a career in dance, just like every boy who plays rugby won’t grow up to be an All Black. Present company excepted, of course.”

“I know Amelia won’t,” Hugh said. “You don’t have to be tactful, by the way. Already saw that.”

“Well …” Chloe admitted, “It could be her real talent lies elsewhere. Even a different type of athletics.”

“I never thought of dancing being athletic,” Hugh said, “but I guess it is.”

“I have a niece who’s dead keen on ballet,” Kevin put in. “She likes to inform me that pound for pound, dancers and jockeys are the strongest athletes there are.”

“
Well, I wouldn’t want to arm-wrestle you,” Chloe told him. “So I don’t know how we’d test that.”

“We’ll take it as read,” Kevin said, smiling at her
again, and Hugh’s date seemed to be getting away from him.

Reka
stood up, pulling Hemi with her. “And we’ve barged in on your evening out enough, Hugh. We’ll be off, leave you to get on with it.”

“No rush
,” Hugh felt constrained to say.

“Oh,” Reka said, “I think there may be.” As Hugh
stood to say goodbye, he saw Chloe reach down to grab Kevin’s crutches from the floor and hand them to him, and he saw that Reka saw it too.

“
Got a babysitter at home who’s probably tacking on the surcharges by now,” Reka said. “Good to meet you, Chloe. Hope to see you again sometime soon. Who knows, maybe I’ll try that ballet class after all.”

“Could be I’ll get my leotard after all,” Hemi said. “Happy days.”
And off they went.

“Nice mates you have,” Chloe told Hugh when they’d sat down again.

“Yeh. Sorry about that, though. May not have been quite the intimate evening we had in mind.”

“No worries. I’m not that used to dating, tell you the truth. It’s been a while. Glad to have a little of the pressure off.” She smiled at him, her wood-elf’s face lighting up, and he laughed.

“
I know what you mean,” he confessed. “It can be a bit of an ordeal at times, can’t it, getting through the early stages, seeing if it’ll work?”

“It can
. Not that I do it much. Nothing like a baby to complicate the social life. Not to mention thinking about our own babysitter at home, no doubt regretting her kind offer.”

He indicated the door. “Ready to put
her out of her misery, then?”

She
smiled again and stood, accepted his help with her jacket, his hand on the door, with a gentle grace that he enjoyed watching.

When he’d pulled into his drive and turned the car off, though, he was brought up short, realizing that
Josie was in his house. Well, this was awkward.

“This was
nice,” he said across the dark car.

“It was,” she
agreed.

He reached across
the seat for her, grateful that he had his good right arm, at least, turned her face to his, and kissed her, a soft thing. And it felt … nice.

“But not
going to work, is it?” she asked when he’d pulled back again.

He laughed, he couldn’t help it. “That good?”

“Nah. Just no chemistry, is there? I like you, you like me, but … no. Is it Josie?”

“Pardon?”

She indicated the house with a quick movement of the dark head. “Who you want to be sitting here with? Who you’d rather be kissing?”

“
No,” he said. “No. Of course not.”

“
Uh-huh.” She opened her door, got out of the car, and he hastened to join her. “Good to know.”

“So,” Josie asked, shoving the
nappy bag into the back of the car while Chloe buckled a thankfully still-sleeping Zavy into his car seat in the rear of her tiny Fiat, “how’d it go? Hard to tell.”

And she’d been looking, she admitted, though neither of them had given anything away. Hugh had offered Chloe the same circumspect peck on the cheek he’d given her.
That said something right there, didn’t it? Although if it had had the effect on Chloe that it had had on her, there might be more to it than had met the eye.

She’d been wondering
for weeks what Hugh’s carefully-trimmed stubble would feel like, and just the hint of a whisper against her skin had made heat pool inside her, had had her forcing herself not to lean into him. She’d touched his broad shoulder, her fingers brushing lightly over the layer of jacket and shirt, and had wanted to keep holding him. To have him hold her, because he would have felt so solid. It would be so restful, leaning into all that strength, and yet not restful at all.

But this wasn’t about her, it was about Chloe, so she looked the inquiry at her friend.

“No,” Chloe said with decision, and Josie tried to still the rush of satisfaction. “Not happening.”

“Why not?” Josie asked. “I didn’t expect love at first sight, maybe, but I thought you seemed well suited. I wasn’t surprised at all when he asked you out.” Disappointed, maybe. Surprised, no.

Chloe shrugged. “You’d think, because you’re right, he’s a good bloke. Who knows why it happens and why it doesn’t? It wasn’t just me, either. Maybe he minds about Zavy after all. But whatever the reason, there’s somebody standing here he wants to get with, and that somebody isn’t me.”

“Me?” Josie laughed. “I’m just the babysitter. The helpful neighbor.”

“I don’t think so,” Chloe said. “I had my doubts as soon as I got here tonight, because that was a cozy scene. And when a man’s having dinner with you and talking about somebody else, that’s a pretty sure sign too.”

“Mentioning,” Josie remembered. “That’s what Clive calls it.” She considered explaining, abandoned the idea. Too complicated. “Really? He mentioned? Maybe he
was trying to make you jealous, though. If he really did talk about me. Trying to up the heat a bit, if he saw it wasn’t happening for you.”

“He really did,” Chloe assured her, “and it wasn’t to make me jealous. I don’t think he could be anything but straightforward if he tried. I wouldn’t say that man’s got a devious bone in his body. He’ll make a fab partner for somebody, I have no doubt. Just not me
.”

He’d gone a bit long at the gym after his visit to the
doctor, Hugh thought guiltily on a November Wednesday ten days later. He’d been so excited by the news that his cast was about to come off, though, he hadn’t been able to keep himself from doing some extra training in preparation.

No
w, his foot touched the brake yet again, and he swore at the unusually bad mid-afternoon backup nearing the approach for the Harbour Bridge. If it didn’t let up, he was going to be late to collect Amelia, June, and Holly from dance lessons, and Amelia was going to think he’d forgotten again, he was going to be apologizing and ringing June’s mum again, and Chloe was going to think she’d got off easy.

And then he forgot about Amelia, and June, and Holly, and
Chloe, and June’s mum, too, because he saw it, there to his right, the reason the traffic was slow. Had to be.

It was a billboard. A billboard that, yesterday, had been advertising, what, Tui? Some beer, anyway. And today, was advertising Josie.

Well, probably not Josie, he thought as his attention returned to the creeping traffic ahead. He put on the brake again and slowed nearly to a stop, which gave him the chance to check out the sign once more. It was an attention-getter, right enough, but as a product advert, it was a dead loss, because nobody was going to remember what it was meant to be selling.

She was lying atop a horse, a horse so white it was nearly silver. Stretched out flat along its back, her cheek against its neck, a wreath of frangipani around her head providing one single splash of color. One perfectly shaped golden leg hanging down the horse’s side, her long, slender fingers twined in the white mane, her eyes huge and slumberous, the expression on her face, the slight parting of her full mouth saying that lying on a horse was a very pleasurable experience indeed.

Because, oh, yeh, she was naked. No naughty bits showing; her position astride the horse, the strategic placement of her arm saw to that. But they’d made sure the glossy waves of long dark hair didn’t obscure anything important, and there was enough swell of bare breast and bottom to allow any man to fill in the blanks. And enough square centimeters of glowing golden skin to ensure that every bloke looking at this would have her in his dreams tonight, with every single luscious bit of her present and accounted for.

Bang.
He hit the bumper of the car in front with a jolt that jerked his head forward, followed a fraction of a second later by a second, harder impact that had it going backwards again. He’d barely had a chance to register what had happened when he felt another jolt, then another, and wondered fuzzily if the driver behind was ramming him on purpose, but the impacts were coming too fast.

They stopped, finally, and Hugh
pressed the switch for his hazard lights. He couldn’t move, jammed between the car in front and the one behind, but he saw the driver ahead staring into his rear-view mirror with a look of panic on his face out of proportion to the severity of the prang. Hugh made a wide gesture toward the side of the road, motioning him to pull over, and the other driver finally got the message and started moving.

They’d been in the right-hand lane, since Hugh had been in a hurry, and there was a shoulder here. Good thing it hadn’t happened on the bridge, but then, there wouldn’t have been a bloody billboard on the bridge, Hugh thought as he followed the car ahead onto the shoulder and got out, ran forward to where the other driver was exiting his car, the traffic flowing past again now, or maybe inching would have been a better word.

It was a kid, he saw. Skinny and blond, face white, already starting to stammer.

Hugh cut him off. “Put your hazard lights on,” he said.

The kid looked confused, so Hugh reached into the car, found the switch, and put them on himself.

By that point, they had company. An older man and woman, with a younger fella bringing up the rear. Four cars, then. Hugh sighed. He was
definitely
going to miss out on collecting Amelia.

“Hang on a tick,” he told the others, and sent Christine a quick text.

Sorry held up can you get the girls. Will do 2x next week.
He hoped she’d see it. Well, Amelia was twelve, not five, and the girls could walk to the bus stop if they had to, he told his nagging conscience. And he couldn’t have helped this. Well, he could, obviously, but he hadn’t, so that was that.

And
right now, he had something else to see to. The younger fella who’d been in the fourth car along was talking to the kid, and things were getting a bit heated.

“What the hell were you on, stopping bang in the middle of the roadway?” the new arrival was demanding.

“Sorry,” the kid said. “It was going so slowly, and I only took my eyes off the road for a second.”

“Just like you did,” Hugh put in, leveling his best calm-but-intimidating rugby stare at Angry Man. “Or you would’ve been able to stop in time yourself.”

“Yeh, and what’s your excuse?” The fella wasn’t backing down, not yet.

“No excuse,” Hugh said, keeping his tone level. They didn’t need a stoush at the side of the road.

The woman snorted aloud and spoke for the first time. “I think we all know what all of your excuse was, and pretty silly you’re going to look when you’re asked why you weren’t watching the road. I
told
you to look out,” she reminded the man who had to be her husband, Hugh thought, from the look of exasperation—and a touch of amusement—she was casting his way, a look that said she’d be telling this story at their Golden Anniversary party. “I said, watch the road. What were they thinking, putting up that great thing where every man passing would be bound to gawp at it?”

“Exactly that, I reckon,” her husband said. “Hard luck it was us, that’s all.”

“Look,” Hugh cut in. “Let’s just exchange details, wait for the police to get here, and get on with our day. Not much harm done, I shouldn’t think,” he said, casting a glance for the first time at the rear bumper of the kid’s car, the front of his own. “Just cosmetic.”

“Easy for you to say,” the young fella muttered. He’d lost a little of his bluster, though. “Hundreds of dollars, the panelbeaters charge.”

“You’ve got insurance, haven’t you?” Hugh asked.

“Well, yeh,” the other man admitted.

Hugh shrugged, pulled out his own wallet. “Right, then. Let’s get to it.”

“Hang on,” the kid said. He looked at Hugh’s license, then at his face. “You’re Hugh Latimer.”

“Yeh. Like it says,” Hugh said.

“You are, aren’t you?” the older man said. “Can’t believe I didn’t notice, but then, we were all a bit shook up, I’m thinking. There you are, love,” he
told his wife. “We’ve just run into an All Black.” He laughed at his own joke, and Hugh smiled a bit painfully.

“Thought you were meant to have faster reactions than that,” the younger man said, still not having forgiven Hugh for putting him right earlier. “No wonder the Blues were rubbish this season.”

“Maybe it was your hand,” the kid said, eyeing Hugh’s cast. “That must make it tougher to drive. That could be why you couldn’t stop.”

“I work the brake with my foot, like most people,” Hugh said impatiently. “My hand had nothing to do with it. Did it make you
…” He glanced at the license he held in his hand, “John, smash into me?”

“Nah
,” the other man said, grinning a bit now. “The missus is right, I think we all know what happened here.”

“My dad’s going to kill me, though,” the kid, Quade, said in some desperation. “I’ve only just got my Learner plates off. He’s going to say I got reckless, and I didn’t. I mean, we all looked, didn’t we?”

“We did,” John said. “I think we can all agree on that.”

“So if you
could just say it was your hand,” Quade continued earnestly, “that’d make it so much better, don’t you see?”

Hugh looked a
t him with some exasperation. “I’m not going to say that. Sorry and all that, but I’m not.” And be disqualified from driving? Yeh, right.

Thankfully, the police arrived and put an end to the discussion, but Hugh didn’t much relish the dry look the officer gave the four of them as they attempted to explain their moment of inattention, or the amusement on recognizing Hugh that cracked the professional mask entirely.

It was nearly six before he pulled into his driveway. At least he’d had a text back from Christine saying
OK can do,
which had been a relief, although he had a feeling that Amelia wasn’t going to be quite so forgiving, and he went into the house with a fair bit of cowardly dread.

Except that she wasn’t there, and neither was Charlie. He could tell they’d come home, because their backpacks were flung down haphazardly in the back porch, but there was no sign of them, inside or out.

He wasn’t worried, of course he wasn’t. They’d gone for a swim or something, that was all. They should have left him a note, and he’d remind them about that. He put his own gear away and started to pull out stuff for dinner.

When they weren’t home by six-thirty, though, his brain started conjuring scenarios in spite of himself, because it had started to rain, and if they’d gone for a swim, they wouldn’t still be there. Where could they have gone that they wouldn’t have come back from by dinnertime? And, what was more worrying, with whom, both of them together like that? He gave up the fight and rang Christine.

After he’d apologized, he said, as casually as he could manage, “So you dropped Amelia home as usual, did you?”

“Yes,” she said, sounding a little surprised. “Why?”

“Did you happen to see her go inside the house?”

“Yes, like always. I always wait. Why, has something happened?”

“Nah. She and Charlie’ve gone off somewhere, I guess. You didn’t see Charlie, did you?” he asked as an afterthought. Had he not come home from his aftercare? Could that be where Amelia had gone, to try to find him? He felt the stab of pure fear, then the relief a half-second later. Because backpacks. Charlie had come home too, then. Come and gone.

“No,” she said. “They’r
e both gone?”

“Yeh.”

“Well, they’ll turn up, I’m sure,” she said. “Gone to visit a friend, most likely, since you weren’t there. Probably better anyway.”

He could hear the judgment in her voice, that he wasn’t looking after them well enough. He knew it, he didn’t need anybody pointing it out. He rang off, went to the door, looked up and down the street. Nothing, but Josie’s car was in her drive, which was unusual for this hour. Maybe she’d seen them. He dashed through the rain, up her steps, and rang her bell.

She showed up after a minute, in shorts and T-shirt, feet bare. He didn’t even take a moment to appreciate her, though, or to contrast his cheerful, casual neighbor with the Polynesian vision on the billboard.

“Have you seen the kids, by any chance?” he asked her, trying to be cool about it. “Because they seem to have gone missing.”

She looked surprised. “They’re here.”

“With you?”

“Yeh. Come on back. We’re just having some nibbles, because they’d got hungry.”

The TV was on in the lounge, and the kids were sitting backward on stools at Josie’s kitchen counter to watch it, scoffing hummus and carrots and cubes of feta and apple slices and looking perfectly comfortable.

Amelia looked at him accusingly. “You missed again,” she told him unnecessarily.

“Yeh, I know it,” he said. “I didn’t forget. Couldn’t help it this time. Got into a wee accident.”

“Oh, no,” Josie said. “At the gym? Are you all right?”

“Not that. With the car. No worries, just minor.”

“What happened? Did somebody hit you?” Charlie asked, looking anxious. “Was it a drink driver?”

“No
,” Hugh assured his brother, resting a hand on his shoulder for a moment, because he was so relieved that they were here, and safe. “A bit of a prang, that’s all.” He certainly wasn’t going to explain the circumstances. He just hoped nobody else would. How did you tell your neighbor, “I smashed my car because I was looking at you naked?” You didn’t, not if you still wanted to see your neighbor, and Hugh
definitely
wanted to see his neighbor. They’d been getting on fine, because he’d been keeping it casual. He’d spent all morning with her the Saturday before, had helped her set up her fountain, as best he could with one hand, had even talked her into having lunch with him—and the kids, of course—afterwards, and so far, so bloody good.

“But,” he went on, “I was worried myself, when I got home and found the two of you missing.”

“We weren’t missing,” Charlie said. “We were here, visiting Josie.”

“Why? You can’t just barge in on her anytime. Josie’s a busy person, got things to do. She didn’t sign on to be your babysitter. And why didn’t you leave me a note?” He knew he was snapping, but he
had
got a bit worried, and knowing they’d been next door in blithe unconcern was making him narky.

“We were
helping
her,” Charlie said, looking agitated himself now. “She needed help, and we helped, and then she
invited
us.”