Just Not Mine (21 page)

Hugh didn’t share that he’d been one of those blokes. “Yeh, I saw it,” he said.

“I saw she’d broken up with her partner, too,” Will said. “I wonder if that was the reason. I might not be too happy to have my girlfriend naked on a billboard for the world and all my mates to see.”

“Wouldn’t date a lingerie
model, eh,” Kevin said. “Against your principles.”

“Well, now you mention it,” Will laughed, “rules are made to be broken, aren’t they. So is it true, Hugh? She single now?”

“It’s true,” Hugh said reluctantly. “Not dating yet, though.”

“And ‘yet’ would be the operative word,” Will said. “A
lonely woman needs consolation, and I’m the understanding type.”

“I have my doubts about that,” Kevin said. “You seem pretty clueless to me, I have to say. Does the fact
that you’re here with Josie,” he asked Hugh, “mean something?”

“Means she’s my neighbor,” he said. “And,” he added, “my friend as well. And that you should quit staring at her.” He shot Will a look that he thought should get the message across.

“Can’t do it anyway,” Will said, “not when she’s in the water. I’ll have to wait for her to come out again, won’t I.”

“And what about Chloe?” Kevin asked, ignoring him.

“Chloe?” That was Will. “Who’s Chloe? You got more than one supermodel you’ve been hiding from me? It’s always the quiet ones, isn’t it.”

“Josie’s friend,” Hugh said. “My sister’s ballet teacher. Very nice girl,” he told Kevin. “But not my nice girl.”

“Ah,” Kevin said.

“
I remember now,” Will said. “And I think I ought to have been spending my time with Hugh instead of Hemi, because you seem to have found all the live ones. And to have thrown them back, too. It’s not a catch and release sport, you know.”

Hugh opened his mouth, but Kevin got there first. “Really,” he
said. “Because it sounds to me like that’s exactly what it is. For you.”

Josie had had her swim with the other women, and had been glad she’d come, because it was so easy being here.

There was a reason, she thought,
striking out for the point behind Reka and Kate, that she’d dated actors for so many years. They understood each other, not just the job, but what it was like to live in the public eye. But being an actor, no matter how well known, was nothing like the pressure and expectations on an All Black, and she had a feeling that Hugh and his mates knew all about the effort it sometimes took to make strangers walk away talking about how “natural and friendly” you were, when you’d actually been feeling unnaturally cross. She suspected that Koti James could teach her a thing or two about being a sex object, too.

The calm spread through her
, the pleasant, faint languor filling her as they swam on. Nobody seemed in a hurry to get out of the water, so deliciously cool against their heated skin, such a pleasure to know that there was no need to rush, to get to the next thing.

Finally, tho
ugh, they emerged from the sea, back where they’d started. They ran for their towels, wrapped up, shivering and laughing, and Josie saw that they hadn’t been the only ones who hadn’t wanted to leave the water. The older kids were still out there, clustered around the wooden raft set not too far from shore. And not just the kids, because she recognized Hugh hauling himself up onto the structure with a quick, athletic heave, and as she’d already noticed, he had some strength in those shoulders and arms.

Well, of course he did.
They all did. He was crouching, reaching a hand down for Charlie and pulling him up to join him, hauling Hemi’s son Jamie in as well, while the older girls scrambled up on their own.

She could see Will
, too, still treading water beyond the raft, and now the kids were jumping off again, seeing who could make the biggest splash, until Hugh was the only one left standing. He waved off the others’ encouragement to jump until they were shouting and beating the water with their palms, then backed up, ran, and took a mighty leap, his arms wrapping around his knees, landing with a truly magnificent shower of spray that drenched everybody and created a commotion Josie could hear all the way from the beach.

“Pretty good bloke, Hugh,” Reka said beside her. Kate had already
left them to join Koti, Hemi, and Kevin, all of them sitting with the littlies and working on building a castle. And on keeping the babies from stuffing sand into their mouths.

“He’s all right,” Josie agreed cautiously.

“Taking a real interest in those kids at last too,” Reka said. “Good to see.”

He was on the raft agai
n, saw the two of them watching and gave her a wave, and she waved back, feeling a little self-conscious.

“Well,” she told Reka, “it’s a change for him, isn’t it?” She shivered, wrapped her towel more tightly around her. “Brrr. I’m going to go get out of my togs.” She picked up her bag.

“I’ll come with you,” Reka said. “Leave the boys in charge a while longer, since they’re doing so well.”

Afterwards, they ate the picnic to which Josie hadn’t contributed one bit, the older kids
headed off to the play structure again, Amelia apparently having forgotten her mature status, and nobody else seemed inclined to move too much. Hemi had his baby daughter Anika in his lap, her thumb in her mouth, her heavy eyes continually drifting shut, then opening again. Everyone else lay or sat, pleasantly stuffed and relaxed, on blankets spread on the grass in the shade while family picnics and impromptu rugby games happened around them.

Reka
plucked Kate and Koti’s daughter Maia out of the bouncy seat where she was kicking her plump little legs, lifted her into the air, then brought her down to sit on her knee. “Oh, I’m going to miss this girl,” she said. “What am I going to do without you?” she asked as Maia raised her bright eyes to her, laughed out of her rosebud mouth. “I’m going to have Maia-withdrawal, aren’t I, and so’s Anika.”

“Not as bad as my withdrawal,” Kate complained. She was propped back on her hands
, Koti stretched out with his handsome head in her lap, looking the picture of domestic bliss. “First Hannah leaves, then you? I’m not going to have a single friend left.”

“Got me, haven’t you.” Koti had tu
rned his head to look up at her, scowling a little in what was clearly a well-rehearsed routine.

“You’re all right as far as you go,” she conceded. “But you fall woefully short in the companionship stakes about half the time. When you’re, you know,
gone.
Maybe you need to get demoted, or whatever you call it, so you can go play ITM Cup rugby for Drew and Hemi.”

“Bite your tongue,” he said.
“Anyway, Bay of Plenty’s not my club, so you’d be out of luck there.”

“You can come stay with me while Koti’s off
with the squad, Kate,” Reka promised. “As long as you bring my girl along.”

“Aw, no,” Hemi sighed. “There’s my secret plot foiled, the real reason we’re moving. Here I’d meant to get Reka out of the danger zone, stop her drooling over other people’s babies. I can hear the hormones talking now.”

Reka
laughed and bounced Maia on her knee, prompting a chortle or two. “I don’t think that’d do it. Babies everywhere you go, aren’t there, or are you forgetting that Hannah’s got one for me to cuddle as well? And I don’t make them all by myself, boy. If you’re worried about it, you know the answer.” She made a scissors-gesture with two fingers. “Snip snip.”

“Aw, nice,” Koti groaned as everyone laughed. “Ouch.”

“You just made every man here cross his legs,” Hemi complained. “Snip snip? Geez, Reka. That’s me switching off right there.”

“Yeh, right,”
she scoffed. “That’s happening. Men are such babies, aren’t they, Kate? One weeny little poke either side, and you’re done. Twenty minutes, and I’m driving you home with the icepack clamped to the wedding tackle. Just say the word, boy. Say the word, and all your worries are over.”

Josie laughed as Hemi groaned again
. She couldn’t help it, because one thing was sure, none of the five men taking up so much space around her was a baby.

“
Four kids,” Will said to Hemi lazily from the spot where he lay stretched out on his back, one big arm behind his head, the bicep bulging out in a perfectly satisfactory fashion beneath. Josie had grown up looking at brown arms and broad chests decorated with Maori tattoos, but rugby players, she was rapidly realizing, took it to a whole new level. “That’s a fair few. But not as many as you’re going to have, sounds like.”

“
Four’s right,” Hemi said with satisfaction. “Saw them, didn’t you. Or can’t you count that high? My hopes for you boys next season just plummeted.”

“Making me shudder just thinking about it,” Will said. “
Four? Too much responsibility for me.”

“Aaaand
… the bookmakers just shifted the odds again,” Hemi said.

“Responsibility on that
field is one thing,” Will said. “And being responsible at home’s another one altogether.”

Josie saw Hugh look at Will
, could see the agreement he didn’t voice.

“How many do your parents have?” Hemi asked. “Tell the truth, now.”

“Five,” Will admitted with a flash of white grin.

“Uh-huh,” Koti said. He
sat up and gave the soles of his daughter’s bare feet a tickle, making her kick her legs some more, giggle up at him. “The brown boys tend to win this derby. You can run, Will, but you can’t hide.”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I’m pretty fast.”

“That sound you hear?” Koti asked, giving in to what was clearly a powerful impulse and taking Maia back from Reka, lifting her to give her a kiss on one deliciously rounded golden cheek, making her coo and pat his own cheek with a little hand. “That’s destiny breathing down your neck.”

Josie smiled and laughed with the others, watched Koti with his baby girl, and pretended that that was all there was. That the pain wasn’t there, filling the part of her that was empty, that would always be empty.

She’d come a long way, because e
ven pretending would have been impossible a few years ago. She was a pretty good actress, but there had been no amount of skill that would have hidden what she’d felt then. Taking the long daily walks she’d known were necessary for her recovery, coming home drained every time, because Reka was right, there were babies everywhere.

More babies, surely, than there’d ever been before. In pushchairs,
wheeled along by distracted mums who took their good fortune for granted. And the worst of all, the new ones in their prams, or held by a proud dad the way Koti was holding Maia now. Starfish hands waving, tiny fists clutching a blanket, gripping a handful of T-shirt, unfocused eyes blinking at the world around them from the secure haven of their fathers’ arms.

Yeh, she’d done more than her share o
f feeling sorry for herself, until she hadn’t been able to tell if the ache in her abdomen was a knitting wound, or a deeper scar that would never heal.

When Chloe had fallen pregnant, it had
been almost too much to bear. Especially when her friend had confessed Rich’s reluctance, her own doubts. Josie had had to physically hold herself back from begging Chloe to have the baby and give it to her, because it wasn’t her decision. It wasn’t her life, and it wasn’t her baby and never would be, because she’d known Chloe would want Zavy in the end, and she’d been right.

Josie had
been a friend, and a godmother, because that was what you did. She’d held Zavy when he was born, minded him as often as Chloe needed the help and she could provide it, had faked pleasure and interest for months—for years, if she were honest—until, now, she could actually feel it.

Most of the time, anyway. Most of the time.

“That was a good picnic,” Charlie sighed sleepily when they were in the car heading back to Devonport, the kids clearly as worn out on sun, sea, exercise, and food as Josie was feeling herself. “I like it best when there are other kids and it’s not boring. Jamie said they’re moving away soon, though. That must be hard, to move away.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Hugh said. “People do move. Not so bad. I moved to Wellington myself when I
wasn’t quite your age. New school, new friends. Left my dad behind, too, come to that. And it wasn’t bad at all, after a bit. You’d get used to it too.”

“Are we going to have to move?” Josie could hear the edge of alarm in Charlie’s voice. “Away from here?”

“What? No. Of course not,” Hugh said. “That’s not the plan. You’re staying in the house, in Devonport. That was always the plan. That’s why Aunt Cora came, so she could stay with you. That’s why she’s here, so you don’t have to move.”

“Are
you
going to move?” Amelia asked, and she didn’t sound sleepy herself, the way she had been when they’d got in the car. She sounded very much awake.

“Just moved here, didn’t I,” Hugh said.

“To play for the Blues,” Charlie said.

“Yeh. To play for the Blues, and to live with you. And
as the Blues still seem to want me, now that the thumb’s all good, that’s still the plan.”

Josie broke the silence that fell
, because it wasn’t quite as comfortable now. Had Hugh realized what he’d said—and what he hadn’t? “Charlie’s right, though,” she said. “That was a good day. Thanks for that. And for the chance to meet my costar, of course.”