Just for You (6 page)

“Walking’s good.”

“I’ll collect you around seven, then, how’s that?”

She smiled again. “It’s a date.”

He did catch a snapper, to his relief. Whatever he’d said, it had mattered. He walked with her, ten short minutes to the Domain, their earlier journey in reverse, everything easier between them now, lighter. Tai was back to normal, she’d told him, the adults suffering far more repercussions than the boy had from his close call.

“What did you do this afternoon?” he asked her when he’d set the bags down on a picnic table near a barbecue.

“Had a rest,” she admitted. “Felt good.”

“Day off today, then?” he asked, pulling the bottle of chilled Sauvignon Blanc out of the bag of supplies he’d picked up at Four Square, twisting off the lid and pouring wine into the plastic glasses.

“Not the poshest,” he said, handing one to her, “but the wine should be all right.”

“Cheers.” She touched her glass to his, and he remembered their first drink of champagne together, and could tell from the arrested look in her eyes that she did, too.

“Yeh,” she said, then elaborated at his confused look. “Day off, I mean. I’m just filling in at a couple places right now, making a bit extra during the school holidays.”

“During the holidays,” he said slowly. “Are you a student, then?” He had no idea, he realized, what she did for work. He’d assumed it was the waitress thing.

“No, a teacher. A kindy teacher.” She caught his startled look and smiled. “Surprised you, didn’t I? Not how kindy teachers are meant to behave, is it?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” he said, taking another sip of wine and grinning at her. “I’d say you’re exactly the kind of kindy teacher I like best. You do that here in Russell, or someplace else?”

“Here,” she said. “I teach here. I went away to Uni, but I came back, because Northland is home.”

“What did you mean,” she asked him when they were sitting backwards on the picnic bench next to each other, legs outstretched, dinner eaten, finishing off the bottle, “when you said it was different now? Different from a year ago? Because you are a bit different, aren’t you?”

He looked up at the sky, beginning to darken into dusk now, and thought about it. “Reckon I am,” he said. “Although at the time I said that, I’m not sure I knew what I meant.”

“Because at the time you said it, which was all of yesterday, you were trying it on.”

“Well, yeh.” He flashed a smile her way. “Still am, come to that. If we’re being honest here, and I think that’s the point, eh.”

“Yeh,” she said. “That’s the point.”

“But last year,” he went on, wanting to explain it to her, “it was all new. It was all…overwhelming. Being selected, calling my family to tell them. Training with the All Blacks, thinking I’d be sitting in the reserves, just getting a taste of it. And then having to go on after all, having to start, when JT pulled his hamstring at the Captain’s Run. All of a sudden, there I was, in the spotlight, against France of all people, directing the boys round the park.”

“But you did so well,” she said. “Everyone said you did so well.”

“I was nervy, though,” he admitted. “That whole end-of-year tour was a blur. Everything was so new, and so exciting. The pressure, not wanting to make a hash of it. I was good once I got on the paddock, but before, and afterwards…” He exhaled. “It was a bit hard.”

“So you consoled yourself.”

“Well, yeh, I did. Because that was new, too,” he tried to explain. “I mean, when you play footy, the girls are interested anyway, but I guess you know that.”

“I saw that,” she said. “At the wedding.”

“Because I was an All Black, then. And it felt good. It felt good for a long time, feeling like I could have whatever I wanted. Whoever I wanted.” He stopped. “Sorry. Guess that was a bit too honest.”

“No,” she said. “Hard to hear, but still good. Honest is good, and I knew that anyway, so having you say it lets me know you’re telling the truth, that’s all.”

He nodded, so grateful that he hadn’t stuffed up utterly, and kept on. “This year, though, it started being a bit different. I started getting the feeling, is it me they want? Or is it me, the footy player? Or is it even worse, just shagging an All Black, and any one would do? And I started realizing that every girl wasn’t the same. And I’m sorry I didn’t
call,” he managed to say, because he knew he had to say it, “but I got caught up in it all again. I meant to, I meant to ring you straight away, but it was exciting, and we were training, and then traveling, and I…I guess I wasn’t ready to admit that it might have meant something after all, until I saw you again.”

“So you’ve changed, that what you’re telling me?” she asked, and he could see the little smile hovering around the corners of her mouth.

“Maybe. Not changed so much yet, maybe,” he said, throwing his hat fully into the ring, because it wasn’t going to work with her, he could tell, unless he really did tell her the truth. “But I think I’m ready to. I think I want to.”

“But can you?” she asked. “Can you really?”

“I can do most things I’ve tried,” he said, because that was true too. “When I want to. And I want to, with you. I want to do this. I know we didn’t start right, not that I’m sorry. I could tell you I was, but it’d be a lie, because I’m not a bit sorry. I’d only be sorry if we didn’t get to do it again. But I know we did it in the wrong order. Had the sex first, and now we need to go back and get the romance.”

“That what you want, then?” she asked, and the smile was there, but she was serious, too, he could tell. “The romance?”

“Well, I want the sex, too,” he admitted, and he was laughing back at her. “I want both. Can I get both? That an option?”

“Not tonight, it’s not,” she said. “Not with you going back to Auckland tomorrow. But you could kiss me, don’t you think?”

So he did. He scooted a bit closer to her on the wooden bench, smiled into her eyes in the soft twilight, put a gentle hand on the side of her face, felt her leaning into his palm as if she needed his touch as much as he needed hers.

He bent his head and touched his lips to hers, and the electricity was back, every nerve ending tingling as he continued to kiss her, long and slow and so sweet. His hand stroking over her cheek, his other arm going around her waist, because that was his spot, that deep indentation. That was where he was meant to hold Reka.

Her bandaged hands came up to his shoulders, and she hung on and kissed him back, faint sounds coming from the mouth he held beneath his own, sounds of desire and longing and needing. To go further, to have it all, to take everything he wanted to give
her. He knew what she was feeling, because he was feeling it, too. And when he dragged his lips from her mouth and began to kiss her neck, the sounds weren’t quite so muffled, and she was squirming a little on the bench, and he wanted her so much, it was hurting now.

In the end, he was the one who pulled back. He gave her one last soft kiss on the mouth, rested his forehead against hers, closed his eyes, and sighed.

“Need to stop,” he said. “If we’re only doing the romance tonight, we need to stop.”

She laughed a little, a breathy, unsteady sound that wasn’t Reka at all. “Yeh. Romance, not sex. Because you’re leaving tomorrow.”

“But I’m coming back,” he told her, not letting go of her yet, because he couldn’t.

“Are you?” she asked, and she wasn’t laughing now.

“I am. Just for you.”

He walked her home in the slowly deepening dusk of a Northland summer, held her hand—carefully, gently, because she could tell he knew it still hurt, and his care made her melt a little bit more inside. Her body was at once charged, electric with the tingling energy of being kissed and touched by Hemi, and deliciously fatigued. She wasn’t satisfied, she wasn’t even close. She was right up in the air, trembling with it. But she felt
good
.

“Home,” he said when they got there, and she could hear his reluctance to be there. He pulled her into the shadows at the side of the house, and it was like that first time, but so unlike it, too. He plunged both hands in her hair, cupping her head, and lifted her face to his, then bent to kiss her again.

He started out gentle, but when she had her hands on his shoulders, was pressed up against him, it changed fast. His mouth was moving over hers, his hands grasping her head with the same urgency that was sending her hands of their own accord down his arms to stroke the hard swell of bicep, the secret, velvety softness of the skin of his inner arms, and she could feel how much he liked having her touch him, having her want him.

“Aw, Reka,” he sighed, lifting his mouth from hers at last and stepping back a reluctant pace. “I want to take you to bed so badly. And you want it too, don’t you?”

“Yeh,” she said unsteadily. “I do. You know I do. But not tonight. Later. If you come back.”

“When
I come back.”

He dropped his hands, then, and she gathered the final tiny shreds of self-control left to her and walked away from him, feeling his eyes on her as surely as his hands and mouth had been.

But if there were ever going to be more than sex between them, they had to see what that was, and they had to let it grow. She knew it. So she walked away.

Hemi watched her go inside, and ached for her. He thought about going back to his room, or going for a beer, and rejected both ideas.

Instead, he walked. It was nearly fully dark now, and he soon left the streetlights behind as he turned up the road, climbing the hill that rose above Tapeka Point.

It didn’t take long to reach the top, and luckily, the moon was nearly full tonight, lighting his way. He walked to the edge, looked out over the dark murmur below that was the sea, out and up to the pinpricks of light that had begun to appear, the impossible, incredible multitude of stars just starting to be visible, reminding him of home, far from the light of the cities. The land, the sky, the sea, and the stars. The North.

He stood, raised his arms slowly overhead until his hands reached toward those points of light, felt his feet rooting down, connecting to this place, and let the intention, the purpose fill him.

I’m coming back
.

He told the sky above him, and he told the earth below him. He told Reka, and he told himself.