Just in Time (22 page)

“Will’s partner,” Miriama was saying. “You will have read about her, maybe. She’s got the Kiwis up in arms, hasn’t she, about losing another All Black to the Yank girls, but you can see why, can’t you? Will’s brought her down for a wee visit this week, seeing as he’s been stood down anyway.” Which was so forthright, Faith blinked. She’d thought
her
mother was honest.

“Well, we did notice that,” one of the women said. “Noticed Will, too. Lovely photos, I have to say, and some
very
naughty stories. Stood down or not, I’ve been enjoying them, and I don’t mind admitting it.” She seemed to catch herself. “But I shouldn’t say that to you,” she told Faith. “How are you enjoying New Zealand so far?”

“I just got here yesterday.” Faith wished they would move outside, because if she didn’t get some air soon, she was going to keel over. “But so far, it’s very…pretty,” she finished lamely.

“First time doing hot yoga, eh,” the woman said with a smile.

Faith laughed, then decided it had been a bad idea, because laughing took too much oxygen. “It shows, huh?”

“It does, a bit,” the woman said, and they all laughed. “Never mind, we’ve all been there. Come every day for a month, though, and you’ll have a new body and a new outlook on life.”

Or I’ll be dead.
And what? Her body was bad? She thought she was looking all right these days. There was still too much of her in a bathing suit, of course, and she’d just make absolutely sure Will didn’t see that, not that she’d planned anything different. But this thing wasn’t going to work if she didn’t look like anybody Will would really date. Not that she hadn’t thought that from the beginning. Not that she wasn’t feeling so gloomy right now, she wanted to lie down and cry.

“We’ll get on, then,” Miriama said. “Let Faith breathe. See you tomorrow.”

Maybe
she
would. Faith wouldn’t.

“A bit much?” Miriama asked chirpily when Faith had made it to the front door at last after swimming through the soup of water and sweat molecules that was the studio’s air supply, and was taking in deep lungsful of the crisp autumn atmosphere outside.

“You could say that,” Faith managed.

“Well, a lovely ride home and a shower will help,” Miriama said, and Faith remembered with horror that she was supposed to ride a bicycle back to Will’s house. Maybe she could call him to come get her instead. And maybe he’d laugh at her if she did. Maybe she should just suck it up and try to make it without falling off.

She did, in the end, though her legs felt so shaky, she could barely pedal, and once again, she was having difficulty keeping up with Miriama.

“Go take a shower,” Miriama instructed when they got back to the house and were stowing the bicycles beside one of the garages. “Meet me in the spa pool afterwards. Best part.”

Half an hour earlier, climbing into hot water would have been the last, the very last thing Faith would have wanted, but she was shivering a little now from cool air meeting sweat-soaked clothes, and she muttered agreement and staggered her way upstairs and into Will’s bathroom. She was glad he wasn’t here. She couldn’t negotiate one more thing today, and she didn’t even care anymore that she would be sharing a bed with him tonight. If he didn’t make moves on unconscious girls, she was all good, because she was going to be unconscious for sure.

She twisted the taps of the shower, peeled her soaking-wet clothes from her abused body, climbed under the spray, and let it wash the sweat away. It worked, and in about five minutes, she felt a little better. And in about ten minutes, she was realizing that if she didn’t get out now, she was going to stay in here until the water ran cold, and have to explain to everyone that Will’s grandmother had kicked her butt so badly in yoga that she’d fallen asleep in the shower.

She turned the water off with reluctance, toweled dry, dug her swimsuit out of the drawer, and started to put it on, then realized that the bedroom door wasn’t locked and ran hastily across the room to do it. She caught sight of herself dressed only in her black bikini bottom in the mirrored closet door and groaned a little. No question, Will wasn’t seeing her in this, boot camp or no, flirting or no. He’d signed up for the photo shoot because of Gretchen, she knew, and there was about twice as much of her as there was of Gretchen. She fastened the top, pulled on her robe, and headed downstairs to the spa. She was going to fall asleep in there for sure, but right now, that sounded great.

Will lay back and let the heated water do its work. He opened his eyes when he heard the ranch slider moving in its track, and then he kept them open. Faith was standing there in her dressing gown, her hand still on the door, looking like she was about to turn around and go back upstairs.

“There you are,” his grandmother said from her spot across the spa pool from him. “Don’t just stand there getting cold again. Get in. We have company, you see. Isn’t that lucky.”

“Uh…yeh,” Will managed to say. “Get in. Please.”

He could see Faith swallowing hard, could sense her hesitation. Then she looked at him, took hold of the tie fastening her dressing gown, and tugged it loose. She shrugged out of its pale-blue folds and dropped it over a chair, and she was walking towards him, lowering herself to slide into the water, and coming to rest beside his grandmother.

She gasped. “Whoa. Hot.”

That was the understatement of the year.

Will was looking. He shouldn’t be, he knew, because that wasn’t going to do him any good at all, but he was looking anyway, because—because bloody hell. Her bikini was black, and it wasn’t that it was so small, it was just that it had to cover so much luscious territory. He wished she’d get out again. He wanted to watch her climb out. Except that he wanted her to stay in. With him. He very nearly groaned. He was in so much trouble.

He got his voice back, said, “Bubbles,” then twisted around, reached for the controls, and turned the jets on. He was going to need all the camouflage he could get. He turned the temperature down while he was at it. It was already too hot in here for him, and he wasn’t going to be able to get out for a while.

It got worse, too. “What are you doing all the way over there?” Kuia asked Faith. “That’s no way to greet your man after months apart from him. He doesn’t want to sit with his granny when he could be sitting with you.” She gave Faith a shove. “Go on.”

“That’s all right. I don’t—” Will began, then shut his mouth. What was he saying? He wanted her over here. True, it might kill him, but what a way to go.

Faith looked at him, took a deep breath that did interesting things to the black bikini, and slid around the square spa pool until she came to rest ten cautious centimeters away. She bounced in the rush of the jetting water, her knee bumped his, her elbow brushed his side, and she jumped and blushed, which all made him harden that much more. He was downright aching by now, and every encounter only made it worse.

“Don’t mind me,” his grandmother said cheerily.

“Did you—” Now he was the one swallowing. “Have a good time?”

She laughed, seeming to lose a little of the tension. “Not exactly. I’d tell you the truth, but I’d have to kill myself out of sheer humiliation. How was the gym?”

“Oh, you know,” he said. “It was the gym.” And then he sat there like a fool and perved at her, trying not to look down her top and failing utterly, and she stared across the water as if something extremely fascinating were going on in the garden.

Kuia rose from the water. “That’s enough for me. Enjoy yourselves.”

“I’ll get out, too,” Faith said, and all but levitated across the pool to scramble out.

“You were in there two minutes,” Kuia said in surprise.

“That was enough. I’m still really tired. I think I’d better go upstairs and lie down. I mean, take a nap,” Faith hurried on, wrapping herself in her dressing gown again. “I mean, I need a rest.”

She fled into the house, and his grandmother watched her go, then turned back to Will.

“I’d say,” she told him, “that you’ve got a bit of work to do there, in the girlfriend department.” And then she went inside, too, and Will was left alone again.

He sat down there for ten more long minutes, staying in the water until he could trust himself to get out again, then sitting on the side of the pool, keeping his feet in for warmth, giving Faith time to shower off and get dressed.

His mum came out to collect the washing. “You’ve been in there for ages,” she had to comment. “You and Faith having trouble already? She went up the stairs fast.”

“It’s a bit of an adjustment, that’s all,” he said.

“What adjustment?” She turned to face him, the washing basket still on her hip and the clothes on the line forgotten. “Having a holiday with you? If it isn’t working now, it isn’t going to work any better later, when the bloom is off the rose and you’re just another man. Drama isn’t excitement, it isn’t romance, and it isn’t true love. It’s just drama. I should know. Got five kids out of drama, out of breaking up and making up.”

Will winced inside. He hated to hear this. He’d been trying to make it better for ten years, and he never could, because it wasn’t something he could fix.

It had been a mistake not to tell the truth to his family, but he hadn’t trusted Mals and Talia not to spread the word, and to be honest, he hadn’t wanted to disappoint his mum again, either, have her look at him in that way that meant only one thing. That he was exactly like his dad.

It would have been all right if he and Faith could have kept their distance, the way he’d planned. The trouble was, Faith wasn’t a good enough actress to be able to spend a week with his family and pretend to love him.

He should have done what his agent had suggested and hired somebody to play the part of his girlfriend. When Ian had suggested Gretchen, though, it hadn’t just been her pregnancy that had had Will saying no. He’d seized on Faith from the beginning. If he were going to do it, he’d thought, he’d do it with somebody he liked. Somebody he actually wanted to be there. It had been—well, an excuse, maybe, to see her again. If it looked like it had been a mistake—well, this whole thing had been one giant mistake, and he just kept digging himself in deeper.

“Yeh, well,” he said, and then didn’t know how to go on. “Guess we’ll see how we go.” He stood up, collected his towel and wrapped it around his waist, then began to unclip clothes from the line. “I’ll do this.” He took the basket from her, set it on the wooden deck, and bent to kiss her cheek. “Go on in, Mum,” he said gently.

She put her arm around him, held him close for a moment, then stood straight, blinking a bit. “I’ll go finish dinner, then. Hope Faith will make it this time.”

“I hope so, too. But jet lag’s a bugger. And Mum,” he added impulsively, “no worries. She’ll be right. It’s a week’s suspension, that’s all, and then it’s all over.” She was worried, he could tell, and he understood the worry, a bit. But he hadn’t failed her yet, had he? At least not in that way. Not financially.

She opened her mouth to say something, probably that that was what his dad had always said too, and then closed it again. “Thanks,” she said instead, and walked into the house.

He folded the clothes, took them in to her, and then went upstairs. He didn’t need to worry about forgetting himself with Faith again, at least. He wasn’t feeling too cheerful just now.

He knocked softly at the bedroom door, glad nobody was around to see him do it. He hadn’t thought out the details of this thing nearly well enough.

“Come in,” he heard, and went inside. She was dressed, of course. Wearing the purple tunic and leggings, sitting on the bed, propped against the pillows with her laptop, although the lid was shut again, her hands held protectively over the cover.

“You can use the desk over there, if you like.” He indicated the built-in area under the windows. “I’m quite happy to shift myself downstairs.”

“Thanks. I will, but this is more comfortable right now.” She hid a yawn behind her hand. “Your grandmother really did kick my butt,” she confessed, and he smiled and felt better. He sat down on the edge of the bed beside her, and she shifted over, but not in an avoiding way, even though he was wearing nothing but a towel. In a companionable way.