Just Not Mine (30 page)

“Maybe you could get
a part where you keep your clothes on,” Rodney said. “I’ve heard there are actresses who do. Could be less embarrassing for your family.”

“Oh? You embarrassed?” She was still in her
relaxed pose, but she didn’t look as relaxed as she had a minute ago.

“
Well, when every fella who comes into my office wants to ask me about my sister,” Rodney said, “not to mention talk about seeing an advert where she had not a stitch on, yeh, it can get a bit embarrassing. For everybody.”

“Funny
nobody else has said anything yet, then,” she said.

“Maybe because they’re proud
of her,” Aaron put in quietly, and Hugh looked across at Josie’s younger brother, sitting up now, his expression serious. “Like me, and the rest of us, too.”

An assenting murmur greeted his statement, but Rodney wasn’t done.
“Speak for yourself,” he told his brother. “You really think the grandparents, the uncles and aunties are all rapt about it? Huh. I wonder. But Josie will choose for herself, I’m sure. She always has. And if you’re quite happy to have men stare at you naked, Josie—well, good on ya, I guess. I’m pretty sure Charmaine wouldn’t enjoy it, and it wouldn’t be all right with me either, but not all men have the same standards, I suppose.”

If Hugh’s
temper was still in check, and it was debatable, it was only because this was Josie’s brother, and it was Christmas. “Seems to me,” he said, and he wasn’t lounging anymore, “that most men would think they’d won the Lotto if they had a partner as beautiful and talented as Josie. But when I find the man who’s anything but envious of me, I’ll let you know.”

“Y
ou saying that doesn’t bother you,” Rodney said. “Huh. Interesting.”

“If it bothered me,” Hugh said, “I guess I’d remind myself of what Josie told me. That th
ere’s a billboard or two where you can see my teammates and me in our undies, and I don’t think it’s because the men of New Zealand are interested in studying our muscular development. My family hasn’t disowned me yet, and none of my mates have told me that their partners are packing a sad because the girls enjoy looking at them with their jerseys off.”

“There’s a difference, though, isn’t there,” Rodney said. “And the difference would be, Josie’s a woman. You’ve got a sister, eh. You saying you’d be happy to see your sister naked on a billboard, looking like she’s just been … looking like that?” he finished, because he’d probably recognized the expression on Hugh’s face.

“If my sister turns ou
t to have half the heart and brains and courage that yours does,” Hugh said, not even pretending to be calm anymore, “I hope I’ll be as proud of her as you should be of yours. I hope I’d be able to see that there was more to her than a beautiful face and a beautiful body, and that I could see the woman she was and love her for it. Because she’d be my
sister.
And I’ll tell you another thing I’m dead sure of. Any man who had anything to say about her? He could say it to me.”

Silence greeted him,
and he saw the rigid stillness that had settled over the others, the only movement that of their eyes as gazes darted from face to face. He could feel the adrenaline trying to take over, trying to push him the last little bit of the way past self-control, could see, too, how white Josie had gone, how her hands were shaking, and how she was trying to hide it.

He got up, put a hand down for her, and pulled her up with him. “Come on,” he said.
“We can walk home from here, can’t we?”

“Yeh,” she said, and her voice was shaking too.

“Then that’s what we’re going to do.” He didn’t look around again, because he didn’t trust himself to. He just got her out of there.

She walked across the field with him, and he didn’t let go of her hand. Instead, he threaded his fingers through hers.

He’d never done that, she realized. Never held her hand.
And she hadn’t realized how solid, how comforting that simple contact would be.

Her own hands still wanted to shake, and she didn’t talk, because she was afraid that if she did, she would cry.

“Let’s sit a bit,” he said when they’d left the others behind. He found a bench set in the shade under the trees and pulled her down with him.

“Thanks,” she managed to say
.

“I’m trying to f
igure out what to say right now,” he told her. “I want to say that your brother’s a dickhead, and I don’t know if it’s all right.”

S
he had to laugh a little. “It’s all right. Right now, it is. I never knew …” She took a shaky breath, blew it out. “I always knew he was a bit … jealous. More since he married Charmaine, because I think she is too. He’s always thought I was the favorite, and now he’s got her saying it as well, I’m sure. And being what he said. Embarrassed, both of them. And I don’t want …” She had to stop for a moment before she could go on. “I don’t want to embarrass my family. I don’t want to think that my mum and dad, my grandparents, are ashamed of me. I don’t know what to do about it. If I shouldn’t have done those adverts after all. If I shouldn’t be doing what I’m doing, not if it’s bringing shame to them.”

The tears were threatening now, her throat closing around the words
. “I want my family to be proud of me. I can’t stand …” She tried to go on, but she couldn’t, and she made a helpless gesture with her free hand, tried to turn away so he couldn’t see.

“Josie
.” He had an arm around her now, was turning her into him. “Sweetheart. Don’t cry. It’s all right.”

She did cry a little then, of course, and
he held her until she pulled back, tried to laugh, wiped her cheeks and nose as best she could. “Sorry,” she said again.

“Nah.” He still had his hand running over her back
, and she leaned into his chest and let him hold her some more, just because it felt so good to be there.

“I don’t think your family’s ashamed of you,” he said
at last. “If you want my opinion. I don’t know all of them, but one thing’s obvious, your mum and dad are nothing but proud of you. I don’t think you could disappoint them if you tried. I think that’s what’s really bothering your brother, but that’s not your problem. It’s his.”

“Y
ou don’t think …” She hesitated, then tried again. “You aren’t embarrassed yourself to have people know what I do. To have them know you’re with me. You don’t wish I were playing Val’s part, being the good girl.”

“I meant what I said. I’m proud to be
the man who’s with you. That would be one way of putting it. And I’m a big boy, aren’t I. I can handle your being special. I don’t have to be more of a star than you are to feel like I’m enough.”

“Well, but,” she said, and she
was laughing again herself despite her shakiness, “that’s because you
are
more of a star than I am.”

“Or because
it’s not a contest. And maybe because I know what it means, and what it doesn’t. That it’s more than having more money than the average bloke. That it’s pressure, people judging you every day, writing about you, and, yeh, being jealous because you’ve got what they don’t, and they don’t see how much effort it took you to get there. I don’t think that’s a bit different, and I know it’s not always comfortable.”

“But the naked thing,” she pressed, because she needed to know. “That isn’t
… eating at you.”

“Well, wanting to see you naked again, maybe,” he said, and she could see the smile. “That’s eating at me, no worries.
And it makes me want to be there with you when you go out, I’ll admit that. But it’s what your cousins said. Men would look at you whether you were a star or not, because you’re beautiful. Most of what’s bothering your brother doesn’t have a thing to do with how many clothes you’re wearing, though, no matter what he’s telling himself. And that’s true for his partner as well. It’s that you’re more successful than he is. It’s that he feels like he’s in your shadow. That’s easy to see.”

“
I know,” she said bleakly. “I know you’re right. I don’t know how to fix it, though. I don’t know what to say, or what to do. I’ve never known.”

“Because there’s nothing you can do. Because it’s not
you
,
it’s him. It’s his problem to get over, or not. It’s not yours.”

He’d walked home with her, had held her hand, and it had been a comfort to walk through the front door with him, not to have to face her brother by herself.
Rodney didn’t say anything, but Josie could tell by the aggrieved look on his face, and the way her sister-in-law wasn’t looking at her at all, that neither of them had forgiven her. It was a relief to have the kids there, to have Christmas Eve dinner to cook with her mum. And to have Hugh beside her for all of it. He didn’t say any more, because he didn’t have to. She knew when she looked at him, when he looked at her that he’d meant it. And she knew that, as long as Hugh was there, Rodney wouldn’t be saying it again.

They’d gone to church on Christmas morning, and then Hugh had gone with the others to the beach, had swum and played cricket with the kids, kicked the footy around with Charlie and some of the other boys, while Josie and her mum and sister-in-law had done Christmas dinner. He’d come back and helped Tana and Josie’s brothers set up the tables outside, had had dinner with Josie’s entire family, grandparents and aunties and uncles and cousins, and there had been a mountain of food of which Josie had eaten very little, and Charlie and Amelia had pulled crackers and eaten Christmas pudding and pavlova and had very nearly been sick.

He’d got the gifts right, too. Josie had helped with some clothes for Amelia,
and they seemed to have been successful.

“That’s such a cute color on you,” Josie had said when Amelia had tried on the purple skirt that Hugh still thought was too short. Josie had given her a certificate for a manicure and had promised to take her
to get it. “We’ll have our makeup done, too,” she said. “Maybe a consult with my stylist as well for your hair, what do you think? Time to glam you up a bit, now that you’re about to start Year 8. We can make a Girls’ Day of it, get you all sorted before term begins.”

“No,” Hugh said immediately. “Makeup? No. She’s too young.”

Josie looked at him in surprise. “Really? A little lip gloss and mascara, getting her eyebrows shaped? That’s what I had in mind. Pretty harmless, eh, Mum?”

“Well, I’d say,” Arama said, “but it’s Hugh’s decision,
after all, Josie. Are you saying you don’t remember the fuss your own dad made?”

“Too right,”
Tana said. “Dads never want their little girls to grow up, I suppose. I always told her she could start dating boys the minute she turned thirty. As long as they came to me for vetting first, of course.”

“All the other girls at my school w
ear makeup already,” Amelia assured her brother. “They wear eyeshadow and blusher and do nail varnish and everything. I
told
you, Hugh, I’m nearly thirteen. You act like I’m
five.
”

“Wait,” Hugh said, “what? No. That I’m sure of. No. No
… eyeshadow and blusher.”

“A little lip gloss, though?” Josie asked him. “Under carefully supervised circumstances?”

“If Josie shows you,” Hugh decided, because he was clearly outnumbered here, “it’s all right. But
only
what she says is right for a
twelve-
year-old to wear.”

“Fine,”
Amelia sighed.

“Thank you, Hugh,” he corrected her. “That would be the right answer. And thank you to Josie for showing you how to do it so you don’t look
like … so it’s all right.”

“Makeup,” he said to Josie that evening. “Geez. Did you have to spring that on me?”

He’d
read Charlie the start of a story out of his new book, had actually had Amelia join them on the double bed for it, had seen them into bed. Now, he was walking with Josie in the kiwifruit orchard, just because they had a bit of privacy there. “You could have warned me,” he told her.

“Well, it’s going to get worse,” she said cheerfully, “because I’m planning to buy her a razor and show her how to shave her legs and underarms, too. What was your Aunt Cora
doing?”

“She can’t be old enough for that, surely
,” he objected.

“Uh-huh. Have you heard of this little thing called puberty? She’s old enough, Hugh. How old were you?”

“Before I started wearing makeup? At least twenty-five. And the state of my underarms is still shocking.”

“Yeh, right. Never had an impure thought or noticed your body changing, either, I’ll bet.
Trust me, it’s time. And time for you to have that talk about boys with her too.”

“Oh, geez,”
he groaned. “I don’t know who’ll be more embarrassed.”

“All right,” she said. “Practice on me. Say I’m Amelia.” They’d got to the end of the last block
of the orchard, and she sat down on a rough bench set at its edge, crossed her arms, tucked her chin, and scowled up at him in such a good imitation that he laughed.

“
Go ahead,” she prompted. “Here I am, all embarrassed and reluctant.”

“Yeh, that’s helping
.”

“If it were easy,” she said, “you wouldn’t need to rehearse.” She rolled her eyes, turned her body away from him with
an exaggerated flounce as he sat down beside her.
“Hugh,”
she sighed with exasperation, “I don’t want to
talk
about this. I already
know.”

“Uh
…” he said. “We need to discuss it, though. Because men are … different from women.”

Another eye-roll
, which he couldn’t see but knew was there all the same.
“Duh.
Like I didn’t
know
that.”

“And sometimes,” he went on doggedly, feeling embarrassed on one hand, and wanting to laugh out loud on the other, “your body gets away from y
ou a bit. Girls as well as boys, I’m sure, but I know about boys. Those feelings can be pretty powerful. You want to try things, touch each other, maybe kiss each other, in ways you aren’t necessarily ready for. And boys will sometimes act like they like you more than they do, because they want to … um … touch so you badly.”

“This is
so embarrassing,”
Josie said, shifting farther down the bench. “I
know.
My friends talk about this all the
time,
OK? Can I
go?”

“In a minute. I just want you to know,” Hugh continued, “that if you have any question at all
about whether something is all right to do, you can say no. Any boy who really likes you will respect your right to say no. And if a boy tries to pressure you to do more—he doesn’t really like you, no matter what he says. You tell him no anyway, and don’t worry about his feelings, because you won’t be hurting them. And then you come tell me,” he said, and he didn’t have to fake the grim tone in his voice. “If you have any questions, if you wonder whether he really likes you, come ask me. Oh, and no dating yet,” he went on hastily. “I mean, if going out is walking around together, like Josie said, all right. But no going places with boys alone, not yet. Not when you’re twelve, and not when you’re thirteen either,” he thought to add. “Not until you’re …”

“You don’t have to decide that now,” Josie said, back to being herself again. “Just say, not yet, if you’re not ready to decide when it’s OK.”

“Good,” he said. “Because I don’t have a clue. So how’d I do? All right?”

“Pretty good,” she
said, “for the first time. Although you may want to sound a bit less like you’re going to be beating the boy to a bloody pulp. That was a little scary.”

He laughed. “Nah. Whatever it takes. Bet your dad and your cousins had a few talks like that.”

“Bet they did,” she conceded. “My cousins, for sure. And my dad—I think the boy would have fainted before it ever got that far. My dad can be a little scary. Just like you.”

“Mm
m,” he said, and it was a good thing she wasn’t being Amelia anymore, because he had his arm around her, was pulling her a little closer on the bench, feeling her scoot in as well. “Luckily, I’m never going to be intimidating you, remember?”

“I remember,” she said, and her hand was stroking over his
jaw, moving around to the nape of his neck, because she could tell how good that felt to him. “I thought you made a very, very good big brother,” she said. “The big brother every girl should have.”

“
Good,” he said, and Tana had been right, the smile a woman gave you that told you she was proud of you, that she was impressed by you—that was the best one of all. He kissed her in the way he’d been waiting to do all day, gently and sweetly at first, her body curving so softly into his.

He pulled back, smiled down into her eyes in the light of the setti
ng sun. “Merry Christmas. Thanks for sharing it with me.”

“Merry Christmas,” she said. “Thanks for being here so I could.”

“And this,” he told her, “is the other thing I’ve wanted to do all day.” He reached around behind her, slowly began to pull the long stick of carved jade out of her hair. He could feel the knot loosening with every centimeter, and then he had the thing in his hand, and her hair was falling around her shoulders, down her back.

“Ah,” he sighed. “
Just as good as I thought. It’s like undressing you, watching your hair come down for me.”

She reached her
hands up, lifted the heavy curtain of hair and shook it so it fell around her, smiled at him in the slow, seductive way she knew made his temperature rise, then pulled him towards her with a gentle hand at the back of his neck and kissed him exactly that slowly, exactly that seductively.

“If you’re going to give me such pretty things,” she said,
her tongue coming out to lick into the corner of his mouth, both hands in his hair now, and he was burning for her, “you’re going to get everything you want.”

After that, he couldn’t have let her go if he’d tried. He kissed her, held her, touched her as the light vanished, as the stars began to appear, the full moon struggling to make itself known through a mask of cloud. It was so goo
d, and it wasn’t nearly enough.

“I feel like a teenager myself,” he
said at last, kissing her delicious mouth once again, just because it was there, and it was his, and he needed it. “Kissing you in front of your parents’ house, feeling you up in the car, dying to have more, but knowing your dad would kill me.”

“Mmm,” she said, her hands stroking over his shoulders, down his arms. “I love your arms, have I ever
told you that? You’re so strong. You excite me so much.”

He groaned. “You’re making it worse, you do realize that, don’t you? I’ll just say this, and then we’re stopping, because there’s only so much of this I can take, now that I’m
not
sixteen and I know exactly what I’m missing. I love all of your body, and in a couple days, when we’re back home again, I’m going to lay you down on your bed and show you exactly how much I love it. Very, very slowly. And very, very thoroughly. I’m going to do it until you’re telling me exactly how good it feels, because you’ll have no choice, because you won’t be able to stop yourself telling me. I’m going to do it until you’re begging me for more.”

He
had a hand under her T-shirt, stroking over a breast, and she was gasping. “I’m about to tell you right now,” she said, and wriggled a little, and he was dying. “You’re killing me.”

“You like the dirty talk, eh,” he said, his teeth at the side of her neck, finding her favorite spot and biting a little, feeling the way she strained against him
, what it was doing to her.

“You know
… I do,” she managed to say. “I like everything you do.”

He took his hand from her with reluctance, lifted his head again. “Supposed to be stopping, and here I am,
getting carried away again. Come on.” He got up, put out a hand to pull her to her feet, kept hold of it as they walked back toward the house. “One more kiss goodnight, and something to think about for a couple more days. Make us really want it by the time we get it.”

“I already want it,” she said, and he had to laugh, and had to kiss her again, and it was a while before they made it to her door.