Sweet Talk Boxed Set (Ten NEW Contemporary Romances by Bestselling Authors to Benefit Diabetes Research plus BONUS Novel) (96 page)

He’d had one final dinner with Solomon and his family, had made an early night of it because of the kids, as usual. He could have gone out again afterwards, found himself the female companionship he hadn’t had since he’d got here. But he hadn’t, and not because he needed the time to pack. After nine years in professional rugby, he’d packed so many times that he could have done it in fifteen minutes.

He could still go out, though. He could go out right this minute. It had barely gone nine, and he had a whole long day of flying tomorrow to sleep.  Vegas to LA, then LA all the way to Auckland, and home. And he was restless. He sat on the couch, picked up the remote, and switched the TV on. He started flipping channels, settled on basketball, then muted the sound and watched the action with half his brain, the other divided between thinking about the day before and the time ahead. About whether he was sorry to be leaving Vegas, happy to be going home, or both. And about when Faith had come in last night. He hated to admit that he’d fallen asleep listening for the sound of her door closing, the soft little noises that meant she was in her bedroom, on the other side of the wall from his own. He’d gone to sleep without hearing them, and that wasn’t good at all.

He picked up the remote again and turned the sound up to drown out the thoughts. His hand stilled when he heard the bump, and then the footsteps. Directly outside. Not in the corridor, on the roof that covered the carpark.

Somebody breaking in? His blood stirred a little at the thought. That would be the perfect way to end his American odyssey, and the perfect cure for his restless doldrums, too. And then he realized that it might not be his apartment they were breaking into. It might be Faith’s.

He was moving on the thought. He flipped the light switch on the wall, then edged to the window, slid it open as quietly as he could manage, and peered cautiously out.

At first, he couldn’t see anybody. But he hadn’t imagined that noise. He got his head out there a bit more, and that’s when he saw her, sitting against the wall, wearing a jacket over her jeans, her arms wrapped around her knees. Her face shining in the light of the moon, nearly full tonight, while the glow of the Strip competed for attention to the east. Faith, on the roof.

He grabbed his jacket, shoved the window open the rest of the way, got a leg up there, and swung up and out. “This a private party?” he asked, keeping his voice low. “Or can anybody play?”

She turned her head, her cheek on her knees. “You still here? Not out…saying goodbye?”

“Nah.” He decided to take her answer as a ‘yes,’ went over and sank onto a bit of the blanket she had brought out to sit on. “There’s nobody I want to say goodbye to more than you.”

She laughed, sounding startled, and he realized what he’d said. “Aw, geez,” he groaned. “I didn’t mean that. I meant…I’ll be sorry to go. In one way. In
that
one way.”

“Mmm. Still. Funny.” She reached for something beside her, held up a wine glass. “Want some? Got the bottle right here. I can grab you another glass.”

“Mind sharing?”

“No.” She handed the glass to him.

She wasn’t touching him. Not quite. Or he wasn’t touching her. Not quite. But she was right there all the same.

He took the glass from her, sipped, and handed it back. She took a drink of her own, not bothering to turn the glass. Her lips were where his had been, and for some reason, even that…

Her eyes caught his over the rim for one arrested moment before she looked away and set the glass down again.

“So how was your date?” he asked, and then could have kicked himself. He didn’t want to know.

“Well…” She sighed. “He was a back-door guy.”

“Sorry?” he managed to ask through a mouth that had gone dry.
What?

“No! Not…not that,” she stammered, then laughed. “Well, probably, but only if he’d bought you a really expensive dinner. The hundred-dollar bottle of wine, which he’d have made sure you saw the price of, and if you didn’t, he’d have told you. He’d have had a whole conversation with the wine steward about it, too. Then he’d have thought you owed it to him. Oh, man. I never thought of that, but he would totally have been that guy. But, no. Not what I meant. I’ve never said that to a man, obviously. All right. Rephrasing. He was a
leave-
by-the-back-door guy.”

“Oh. Good. Brilliant.” His heart settled down again. “Explain.”

“When it’s so bad that you excuse yourself to go to the ladies’ room, and then you leave by the back door?”

“Women do that?”

“Well, not to you, obviously. And I didn’t either, actually. These days, I try to be a little more up-front.”

“So tell me.”

“You really want to know? You want me to describe my
date
to you?”

“Well, now that I know it was bad, I do, because I know you’ll make me laugh.” He smiled into the eyes that looked up at his own. “Before, when it was the back-door thing? Not so much, then.”

“You’re not…” she began, then stopped.

“Not what?”

“Not…jealous, are you?” She laughed a little. “Of course you aren’t. Forget it.”

“Yeh,” he found himself saying. “Yeh, I am. Last night? I was jealous.”

“Oh.” She looked nothing but startled.

“Can’t help myself, it seems,” he said. “Surprised myself all over the shop with you, haven’t I. I’m not used to being friends with women, and you don’t make it easy.” She wasn’t coming up with an answer to that, so he went on. “So…date?”

“Oh.” She seemed to pull herself back under control. “Well, you know. He works in one of the casinos, and I met him at a work party. I guess he did better in a crowd, because it turned into one of those interview dates, and I kept flunking. What I did for a living, where I went to school. Apparently I’m not impressive.”

“Yeh, you are.”

“You might think so,” she said solemnly. “But you don’t have an MBA, and he does. I went to UNLV for my undergraduate degree, and he went to Harvard. Know how I know?”

He laughed. “Because he told you?”

“Yeah. Sneakily, the way people who go to Harvard
always
tell you. They say ‘Cambridge.’ It’s like a little code, because Harvard is in Cambridge. ‘I played lacrosse for a while, back in Cambridge. Of course, you’re competing with all the kids who grew up playing it at their prep schools, because lacrosse is big on the East Coast, but I managed to acquit myself pretty well.’”

“Sounds like a dickhead.”

She laughed out loud, and he could see the little gap between her teeth in the moonlight, and the tiny, perfect spot of her mole, too. “He was. I was already planning on an early end to my evening when he asked me what my five-year plan was. Can you believe that? My five-year plan?”

“Well, I’ve never asked a girl that, put it that way. What did you say?”

“I told him I was working on getting my criminal record expunged so I could pass the employment checks and get a more prestigious job.”

Will’s bark of laughter rang out in the night. “And then what?”

“He sat there with his mouth open, looking like a very expensive fish, and I said, ‘But when it’s a violent crime, it’s so hard to get them to even consider it. Even though the guy
totally
deserved it, because don’t you think all pimps deserve to roast slowly to death?’ She grinned happily at Will. “I could see him writing the memo to my boss at the Roundup in his head, even as we spoke. Luckily, my boss has a great sense of humor. I’ll be livening up our next meeting for sure. And then I stood up and said, ‘But you know what? I’m getting that same vibe off of you, and I’m working on my anger-management issues. So I think we’ll call this a night.’ And I walked out.”

He liked her. He liked her so much. “So tonight, you’re up on the roof instead.”

“I am. Much better date. One of my favorites.”

“Come here often? And, yeh,” he said with a smile. “I meant to do that.”

“Sometimes. Especially if the moon is full. I look at the lights, and pretend…” She laughed again, sounding a bit embarrassed.

“What?”

“That they’re…stars. I always wanted to see a whole sky full of stars. You know?”

“Yeh. I do. That’s why I’m going home. So I can see a whole sky full of stars. So I can see the Milky Way, and the Southern Cross, too. So I can see the moon the way it’s meant to be.”

“What? The moon’s different there?”

“Upside-down here. Or we’re upside-down Down Under. Something like that. Didn’t you know?”

“No. I didn’t. So you’ve missed it a lot? But still, you came here. You thought about staying, too. I guess you didn’t know that you’d miss it.”

Why was she living in Las Vegas, if she wanted to see a sky full of stars? He’d ask her about it, he decided. Later.

“I didn’t know what I’d want, when I came,” he said. “I was looking to get away. But I got away from all the good, too. And I brought all the bad with me.”

Her cheek was on her knees again, and she was looking at him, her eyes soft in the moonlight, and the mood had shifted completely. The traffic noise was there, a constant, dull hum in the background, the neon lights of the Strip glowing harsh to the east, and the asphalt of the roof cold beneath him. And Faith beside him, the opposite of all those things. She didn’t say anything, so he took another sip of her wine, and after a minute, he continued.

“My grandfather died,” he found himself telling her. “In December. Just before Christmas. Sounds like a normal thing, doesn’t it? Not like a thing that should knock you sideways.”

“I suppose,” she said, “it depends how much you loved him.”

“Yeh,” he said. “Yeh,” he repeated after a moment. “And what happened. Because I was there. Because of…what he said. What I did. We were on a boat, on the lake. On Lake Rotorua. We were fishing.”

***

“Come fishing,” his Koro had said that day, as he would so often summon one of his mokopuna. You didn’t say no, because it meant the old man had something to say, and you were meant to listen, like it or not.

Koro waited until they had motored across to the mouth of the Waiteti Stream, where the trout would be biting in early summer. He waited until they had their rods out and were casting into the deep pool in the center of the stream, just downstream of the big rock. The spot where the big trout spent their days, fins beating lazily to hold them steady in the cool water of the pool.

“Glad you’re home at last,” Koro finally said. Taking the long way round, as always. “Been away too long, haven’t you.”

“Yeh.” Will shot a glance the old man’s way before flicking his arm back and casting again, letting his line settle as the day settled into his bones. Surrounded by the bowl of blue sky, the gentle breeze, the reflections of mountains and fern trees and the mighty giants of the forest shimmering in the blue of the huge volcanic lake. The young land, the old legends, both of them so alive here, as if you could touch Ranginui, the Sky Father, and Papatuanuku, the Earth Mother. As if they were still touching, still kissing each other, here at the heart of the world.

“And you’re glad to be here, I can tell,” Koro went on after another long minute. “Makes me wonder, though.”

“Wonder what?” Will asked despite himself, because he still cared. He’d always care. There was nobody whose opinion mattered more.

“You play rugby hard,” Koro said. “You play with heart. I see it more and more in you. You give it everything. You play with mana.”

“But?” Will cast again, his heart thudding despite the serenity of their surroundings. At the praise, and at what lay behind it.

“So when are you planning to take the rest of your life that seriously? You play like it’s work, like it matters. And you treat your life like it’s play.”

“Oh.” Will laughed a bit. “Is that all? You scared me.”

Koro was frowning at him. His hair might be gray now, but his face was still carved out of the hardest teak, and Will sobered fast.

“Sorry,” Will said. “Tell me.”

“Life isn’t a game,” Koro said. “But the game’s the only part you really care about, seems to me. And that hurts my heart to see.”

“I care about more than that,” Will protested. “It’s why I’m back here, back in En Zed.”

“Because you want to be an All Black.”

“Yeh. But I care about all of you, too. What else is there? I’m too young to think about the mokopuna.” Will laughed a little, tried for something lighter. “Got to have kids before you can have grandkids, eh.”

“Twenty-eight last birthday,” Koro said, because you’d never stir him from his course, not once he’d decided on it. “Not too young at all. Getting too old not to think about them, aren’t you. I want to know that you’ll be sitting in a boat right here someday, long after I’m gone. I want to know that you’ll be passing it all along to them, teaching them how to cast a line. And more, too. Teaching them everything they need to know. And I don’t see you getting there.”

“I’ll get there.”

“Yeh, you’ll have grandchildren. One way or another. We can all see that. But will you be sitting with them? Or will they be something you found out about, just like you found out about their mum, or their dad? That boy, that girl you paid the maintenance for, and barely knew? Somebody whose dad you never were?”

Will had forgotten about his line, was holding his rod slack in his hand. “I’m not…I don’t…I’m careful. I don’t have any kids.” As far as he knew.

Koro swung his arm back, cast his own line again, the transparent filament singing through the summer air, landing with a delicate kiss in the center of the pool. “And that’s a good thing?” he asked, not looking at Will. “That what you want your life to be about? That you’re careful, and there are no kids running around looking like you? Nobody running to you, asking for a ride on your shoulders when you come back from one of those overseas tours? No woman whose eyes are lighting up because you’re home, and this is the day she’s had circled on her calendar?”

“I’m twenty-eight,” Will repeated. He was a failure because he didn’t have a woman? Because he didn’t have
one
woman?

“What are you afraid of?” Koro asked. “That if somebody sees you, really sees you, she won’t be impressed? Your dad left, yeh. That doesn’t mean you will. You can stay. You can stick. Your choice. Your life. You can run away from it. Or you can run towards it.”