Just My Luck (29 page)

“I shouldn’t have . . . I pushed too hard. I tackled you, for a start. Can’t believe I did that. And then, on the beach like that, where anybody could see. But the worst thing, when you said that bit about it not being exciting enough, I went too far. Something just . . . snapped.”

“Hmm.” She ran her hand over his chest, leaned over to kiss his shoulder. She did love his shoulders, the smooth, firm bulge of muscle there, the way it curved down and then back up again into the swell of bicep and tricep. She did love
him.
How fierce he was, and how sweet. How worried he was right now.

“You lost control,” she suggested.

“I did,” he admitted. “All the way. And I don’t do that. I said I wouldn’t force you.”

“And you didn’t, did you?” She sat up and looked down at him where he lay, his eyes troubled. “You might have
felt
out of control, but what did you actually do? Made sure we fell so I wouldn’t get hurt. OK, you touched me out in the open, on an empty beach, without either of us taking any clothes off. Big deal. If someone had come by, I guess you’d have had to do the perp walk, pull your T-shirt over your head on the way home. Which would probably have made me laugh, sorry to say. I kind of wish it had happened now.”

He shuddered. “Don’t even say it. But that wasn’t all I did, and you know it.”

“Yep,” she agreed. “You carried me off, which was pretty hot, by the way. And then told me to take off my clothes, and did some things to me that I enjoyed too, thank you very much. Just a little more . . . forcefully than usual, that’s all. Which isn’t the same as forcing me. What would you have done if I’d said no, during any of that? If I’d told you to put me down? Asked you to stop?”

“I’d have stopped,” he said immediately. “If you’d said to stop, I’d have stopped.”

“That’s right. You would have. I was never worried that you’d hurt me, or that you’d do anything I didn’t want, if I told you I didn’t want it. I know you won’t do that. I trust you, Nate. I know who you are, and I trust you. So it’s not so bad if you let me push your buttons a little. You don’t have to be careful all the time. You can show me your wild side, because it seems I’ve got a pretty good one too. Just an adrenaline junkie through and through, I guess.”

He was looking up at her, an arrested expression on his face, speculation beginning to dawn in those sharp eyes.

“Ally,” he said slowly.
“Were
you pushing my buttons?”

“Well, yeah,” she admitted. “Of course I was. What?” She started to laugh. “You really think you didn’t excite me enough, catching me like that, giving me one heck of an orgasm, right there on the beach?”

She braced her hands on either side of him, bent to kiss him.

“You excite me,” she told him, still leaning over him, smiling into his eyes. “You thrill me. The things you do, the things you say. And then thinking about them later gets me going all over again, even when you’re not around. Even when you’re in South Africa for two
very
long weeks. I’m pretty much in a perpetual state of arousal here, haven’t you noticed?”

He laughed reluctantly, reached to push her hair behind her ear. “I can’t believe I let you play me like that. That I let you get to me. You’re a pretty naughty girl, aren’t you?”

“I’m working on it,” she assured him, getting up and brushing off a bit more sand. “Plus, I’m guessing not too many women can say they’ve been tackled by the captain of the All Blacks.”

“Nobody but you,” he agreed, rolling over and standing up himself. “Not
this
captain, anyway. And you’d better make some room in that shower, because I’m coming in with you.”

Some of Us Are More Important Than Others

“This is a lot of days off for you too, isn’t it?” Nate asked her a few hours later. They’d cooked breakfast together, both fully dressed this time. Had gone to the Sunday market in Foxton, bought fish and vegetables for dinner. Now, they were going for a regular, suitable-for-public-viewing beach walk, since it was miraculously still not raining. And walking barefoot on the beach with Nate, his hand warm and strong around hers, was just as good as all those online dating profiles suggested.

“It is,” she agreed. “A three-day weekend.”

“Mac gave it to you, then?”

“Huh. Not hardly. I earned it. Traded a bunch of hours with Robbo and a couple of the other guys, the last few weeks. Ended up working all the weekend days. It didn’t really matter, since you were gone and nobody else asked me out.”

“Joke,” she added hastily as he swung around to frown at her.

“I know I’m not here all the time to take you out,” he said, beginning to walk again, still wearing that frown, she saw with a quick peek at his face. “That I can’t give you that much attention, and that I won’t be here much at all, the next month or so. But I don’t care. I don’t want you seeing anybody else.”

“You’re jealous,” she realized.

“Too bloody right I’m jealous. I told you I would be.”

“When?”

He gestured in exasperation. “When you asked me how I’d feel if you went off to live in another country without me.”

“Back
then?
You still remember that? That was just a hypothetical question! If you’d
hypothetically
been with me for six years, remember?”

He was walking faster now, and she had to skip a little to keep up, as he still had a tight grip on her hand.

“I don’t care if it’s six years or six weeks,” he said. “It’s you and me, and that’s it. You said no other people, and that’s the way it is for me too. I don’t share.”

“I said no other people in
bed
with us
,”
she said with a little laugh. Wow. He really
was
jealous. That should bother her, right? So why was it giving her a little glow of pleasure? And why was it kind of . . . hot? “I meant, I’m not having some threesome with you and one of your teammates.”

“All right,” she went on hastily when he glared at her again. “I’m just teasing. I don’t want to date anybody else. Are you kidding? When I have you? You’re worth waiting for. I thought I already made that pretty clear.”

“Good,” he muttered, looking a bit embarrassed now. “Why do you always get me so bloody worked up?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “Why do I? And it goes both ways, you know. I don’t care how famous you are, or how far away you are. Nobody else for you either, buddy. You’re all mine.”

“I am, am I?” he asked, beginning to grin.

“You are. And if you have any doubts about that, remember, I still have those scarves, and I’m not afraid to use them.”

He laughed. Swung her around by the hand, then up into his arms. Lifted her right off her feet for a kiss.

“Kissing me on the beach again,” she said severely when he let her go. “Getting pretty far out there, Mr. Proper.”

“Kissing’s allowed,” he protested. “Geez. I need to go back to work just to get a rest. You turn my head all the way around. And you never answered my question, you know. Why was it so hard for you to get the days off? Why couldn’t you just have asked Mac for them? Seems like he should be happy enough with you. I made it dead clear that you were the reason we did the team thing there, back in January. And the reason I’ve been coming back, and you can’t tell me that hasn’t helped. Gave him that signed jersey for the wall and all, too. He loved that.”

“Wait a minute,” she commanded. “Back up.
You
set up that team thing? The one in January?”

“Course I did. Why, what did you think?”

“I thought maybe Liam,” she said slowly.

“It was the backs, remember? And I know rugby isn’t your game, but you have sussed out by now that I’m a back and he isn’t, right?”

She refused to be diverted. “You did that? Really? Why?”

“Why d’you think? Because I wanted to see you again. And because it was a good idea,” he added honestly. “It really
was
a good team-building exercise.”

“Wow. I’m reevaluating like crazy over here.” She snuggled her hand a little further into his, felt her heart give a funny little skip. He’d done all that, just to be with her? “And to answer your question, no, I don’t think any of that’s helped me that much with Mac. But I’m awfully glad you did it anyway.”

“Not as glad as I am,” he said. “Got one hell of a birthday present out of it, for one thing. But let’s back up again. So hard to stay on the topic when I talk to you. Why couldn’t you ask Mac for the days? That’s not going any better? Still not interested in your suggestions?”

She shrugged, didn’t say anything.

“Ally,” he demanded. “Answer me. You’re always talking about me, but you never tell me anything, d’you know that?”

“But it’s not—” She stopped.

“Not what?” he prompted.

“My work problems are so . . . small,” she tried to explain. She laughed, tried to make a joke of it. “Way below your pay grade.”

He looked down at her, eyes troubled. “You don’t trust me to be interested in you, is that it? Because you think I’ve got an important job, and you don’t? I play footy, I’m not the bloody prime minister.”

“But you’re successful, that’d be the difference,” she said wryly. “About as successful as a person can get. And I’m not.”

“Whether your work problems are important—that’s got nothing to do with how much money you make,” he protested. “If I were playing club rugby, I’d still be taking it seriously. Because it’s what I want to do. Because I love it. So why don’t you take yourself, what you want, seriously?”

“It’s complicated,” she said weakly.

“So explain it to me.”

Those eyes weren’t letting her get away with anything. This was the bull again. And he wasn’t going to let up, she knew, until he got his answer.

“Mac doesn’t think I’m anything special, that’s all,” she said at last. “I show up on time. He likes that. I show
up,
period. I don’t call in sick. I’m reliable. Go, me.”

“Still not listening to you, eh.”

She shrugged. “Oh, well. Maybe someday.”

“Maybe someday what?” he pressed. “What is it you want to do? And why don’t you think it matters?”

“Because the only dream I have is impossible, and kind of ridiculous. Not serious. And other than that, I still don’t know what I want to be when I grow up.”
She shrugged again, gave him a rueful smile.

“Know what my dream was, growing up?” he asked. “Being an All Black. Which was only the dream of about a million other Kiwi boys. You want to talk about impossible, I’m it. So come on, tell me. What’s your dream?”

“OK,” she sighed, “it’d be doing what I’m doing, but being in charge. Getting to do it my way. That’s what I want to do, have my own gym or climbing guide company or kayaking company, something like that,” she finished in a rush. “You can laugh now.”

 “Why would I laugh?”

“Well, it’s not a real prospect, is it? My parents sure don’t think so. They’re still waiting for me to do something with a ‘career track.’ They keep reminding me that they’ll pay for grad school. I might not know what I want to do, but I’m pretty sure I don’t want to do that. Not with no plan, at least.”

“Grad school in what? I know you went to Uni, but you didn’t tell me what you did there.” He grinned at her. “Physical education? Basket weaving?”

She laughed reluctantly. “My degree’s about as incongruous as yours. Math, with a minor in Business. Marketing statistics, that was what I was really interested in. Go figure. I still like it. If I were Mac, I’d . . .”

“You’d what?”

“I’d have a Facebook page, a better website, be running polls, contests, all sorts of things. Finding out what people wanted, and doing those things. Collecting data on my membership, crunching those numbers. You know, the basic stuff.”

“So what happened, between that and this? Between studying all that maths, and spending your valuable time teaching boofheads to climb?”

“I guess it was that my real minor was in ‘things I can do outdoors,’” she said thoughtfully. “I learned to kayak and climb in college, then I taught people to kayak and climb, then I just kept doing it, because I liked it so much. And I still do, and I think it’s great for other people to do it too, and I want to help them do it. Especially women. Climbing’s great for women, because you just have to lift your own weight. You get strong, you get flexible, you conquer your fears, all those important things.”

“So what’s wrong with that?” he pressed.

“Well, you can’t make a real living at what I’ve been doing, for one thing. I’ve never wanted to be rich, but I don’t want to be renting a room in a house forever either. I’ve never bought a car, not even a secondhand one. I’m going to have to get a real job sometime here. My dad keeps pointing out that statistical analysis is a hot area right now, and he’s right. I keep dragging my feet, though, because I really don’t want to work in an office. So there you go. That’s where I’m stuck. Can’t make a living doing what I like, can’t stomach doing anything else.”

“That’s a problem,” he admitted.

“Yep,” she sighed. “And Mac won’t even let me
help.
At least back home, I was the assistant manager. Which doesn’t mean all that much, just that you have the keys, but at least I got to share my ideas a little. At least I got to do
something.
So I don’t know.” She shrugged. “My family said I was just spinning my wheels coming to New Zealand, and even though I love it here, I know they were right. I’m not going to get anywhere doing this.”

“Not if you give up, you’re not,” Nate said. “That’s one thing I’m dead sure of.”

This was why she hadn’t wanted to tell him. Because she’d known it would make her feel inadequate, and that’s exactly what it had done. She could manage to feel inadequate all by herself, during her down moments. All she had to do was compare herself to her college friends. Comparing herself to Nate, though . . . that was just depressing.

“Come on,” she said instead, dropping his hand. “Let’s run.” And did what she always did to get out of a funk. Moved.

All Good Things Must End

“OK,” Ally said the next morning, pushing “Send” on her mobile. “I’ve told Joanne we’re out of here, and we’re good to go. I don’t even have to hide you in the car again.”