Just in Time (35 page)

“This is how it starts?” she asked when they had lined up in several rows.

“Nah,” Will said. “This is that thing you wanted to watch. This is the haka.”

The camera zoomed in on a burly figure with a Maori tattoo even bigger than Will’s decorating one massive arm. He stood solid for a moment, then began to pace on legs like tree trunks, shouting out what was clearly a Maori challenge at the top of his lungs.

His voice could have cleared a room, his battered face was twisted into a savage mask, and if he’d been coming at Faith like that, she’d have been running in the opposite direction. She barely wanted to look at him, and as far as playing a game against him, where he’d be charging her at full speed like an enraged rhino, intent on bringing her to the ground, and probably killing her while he was at it…no.

A shouted instruction, an upraised arm, a clenched fist, and every man on the squad sank into a crouch, feet planted wide, bodies and faces signaling nothing but male aggression. The group began to slap bulky thighs and heavy biceps in unison, shouting out their own chant in the gaps between the leader’s fierce exhortations. The stadium erupted in cheers and applause, and the hair was rising on Faith’s arms.

The camera switched back and forth between the menacing men in black and the white-clad team who faced them, chests incongruously decorated with the red rose of England, their arms around each others’ shoulders, expressions determinedly stoic as they waited it out.

It shouldn’t have been so impressive, not from a group of men wearing tight, short-sleeved jerseys, little shorts, and knee socks. They could have looked ridiculous, but they didn’t. They were too big, too strong, too fierce for that. They looked ready to go to war, and even with the distance of television, Faith’s heart was beating faster, her breath coming more quickly.

She looked across at Will to see his reaction, and caught that same expression on his face. Hard. Set. Intent. She knew, as surely as if she were inside his head, how much he needed to be out there with his team, and how much it was hurting that he wasn’t.

The men on the field stomped once more, slapped their biceps one last time, and shouted a final “Hei!” as gouts of flame flew skyward from the four corners of the field and a roar erupted from the capacity crowd. The Englishmen offered one final hard stare in response and turned their backs. The game hadn’t even started, but the challenge had been flung down, and it had been accepted.

“Not an easy thing to face, the haka,” Talia said proudly as the teams lined up for the kickoff and Faith tried to get her breath back. “Especially when you’re facing the best team in the world, and you know they’re about to come at you exactly like that.”

“Be coming at them harder if our Will were kicking off, the way he should be,” Miriama said from her chair. “Next week, eh.”

Faith was starting to get it, and she didn’t need to understand anything about the game to do it. This mattered. It mattered to Will’s family. It mattered to the crowd. And it mattered to New Zealand.

But mostly, it mattered to Will. He was sitting forward in his chair, his elbows on his knees, his chin resting on his clasped hands, his eyes scanning the big screen.

The team in black kicked off, and Faith was immediately lost. Except that it was brutal. That part, she got immediately. The intensity of the collisions, the sheer physicality, the pace, the skill…it took her breath away. This couldn’t be what she’d be seeing from her sweet, funny, relaxed Will, except that it had to be. These were the best of the best, and he was one of them.

But they weren’t always the best in the world, maybe. Not every week. Not tonight, because the All Blacks were struggling, and even Faith could see it, if it hadn’t been evident from the tension in the room, the rigidity of Will’s posture. The little box in the corner of the screen was telling her so. The score was 13 to 13, and the clock was ticking down.

A blare from a horn that meant time had run out, and Faith sat back and exhaled.

“A tie,” she said, but nobody was listening, and nobody onscreen had stopped. The All Blacks still held the ball and were battering down the field with it, going down in tackles from an equally determined English side, but getting the ball off again and going some more.

“Not over till the whistle,” Talia managed to tell Faith, then caught her breath with a hiss, because the ball was on the ground, and the referee was blowing his whistle, his arm in the air, pointing towards the All Blacks.

“Now
it’s a tie,” Faith said.

“Nah,” Talia said. “Now it’s a penalty. One of the Poms came in from the side.”

Whatever that meant, but what it meant, apparently, was the All Black kicker lining up and putting the ball on the tee from what looked like the center of the field. A kick. It didn’t matter how many points it was worth. One would be enough.

He stood back from the ball, braced himself, and Faith could see his chest heaving from the exertion of the previous eighty minutes. An excruciating pause while the crowd, and the group in Will’s lounge, seemed to be holding its collective breath, and he took three steps forward, gave the ball a mighty boot…

And missed, barely. Wide to the right by what looked like inches. A groan from the crowd, the referee was blowing his whistle, and this time, it really was over.

“What happens now?” Faith dared to ask into the silence as the players on the field gathered themselves, began to form a line, to shake hands and slap the backs of the opposition, nobody on either side looking happy. A tie didn’t seem so bad, except that it did. “There are three games, right?”

Will’s grandmother was the one who answered. “Yeh. The All Blacks won the first one, and with a draw—we win next week, and we win the series.”

And if we lose,
she didn’t have to say,
we don’t.

“Would a tie for the series be really…really bad?” Faith asked tentatively.

“Yeh,” Emere said. “It would.”

“Losing’s part of sport,” Will said. “Except for the All Blacks. There, it’s not acceptable.”

“Isn’t that too much pressure?” she asked.

“Sometimes,” he said. “Or it’s exactly what it takes to earn that record, and to hold onto it, too. Depends how you look at it.”

“And after that,” she asked, “after this…this series, you go back to play the other games? The…regular games?”

“Yeh.” He stood up and began to gather paper containers from the coffee table as if he needed to do something. “Got the rest of the Blues season.”

“And then more of the All Blacks?”

“That’s the idea, eh. If I’m selected. The Rugby Championship. Aussie, South Africa, Argentina. Depending how I go next week, of course,” he said with a shadow of his usual grin.

“Depending how well you kick? If you make those long ones?”

“It’s heaps more than that,” his mother said. “It’s how he manages the match, his decision-making on the pitch. The first-five drives the game.”

“Lucky he’s up to the challenge, then,” his grandmother said briskly. “You’ll be all right on the night,” she told Will. “You would’ve been tonight, if the selectors had had any sense at all, and next week? No worries. When the pressure’s on, that’s when you show what you’re made of. Come the hour, come the man.”

“Thanks.” He bent to kiss her cheek. “I’ll be busting a gut, you can count on that.”

She nodded, and Will smiled again and headed into the kitchen with the containers. Faith stood to gather plates herself, and realized, however much of a front he put on, that he wasn’t always as confident as he appeared. That sometimes, he was pretending.

“Here’s that first time you wanted,” she told him a half-hour later as she pulled her tunic over her head, then wriggled out of her leggings. “Our first time getting ready for bed together without any moves, when you can roll over and kiss me goodnight without a single pillow in the way.”

She’d wanted to make him smile, and she’d succeeded. “No moves?” he asked. “Those the rules? Hope I get to take off your necklace, at least, because I loved doing that.”

She turned her back on him, even though she didn’t really want to, because he was standing there in only his boxer briefs, in all the glory of lustrous brown skin, hard muscle, and swirling tattoo. But sacrifices sometimes had to be made, so she pulled her hair away with one hand and looked back over her shoulder at him. “Well, since all I want to do right now is make you happy…” She sighed. “I guess you’d better come over here and do it.”

He was there before she’d finished speaking, and there was nothing for her to do but lean back into him and enjoy it. His hands were at the back of her neck, unfastening the clasp, and he was handing it to her. She clutched it in one fist, then started at the brush of his lips over her nape. It wasn’t long before she was pressed back against him again, though, because he was so solid, so strong behind her, and every bit of him felt so good.

“Wanted to do this so badly the other night.” His voice was husky in her ear as he pulled her back into him with one big hand on her belly. He used the other hand to turn her head so he could kiss her mouth, and just being held by him like that, controlled by him only that much, was sending tendrils of excitement curling into every secret spot. And then she caught sight of their figures in the mirror, and felt the moment when Will did, too.

“Look at you,” he said, turning her so she could see better. “And look at me. Look what I’ve got.”

“Mm.” It was all she could say, because she was breathing hard now. “I…Yes.”

“And that necklace…” He sighed, his breath a warm caress against her skin. “That’s so sexy, and so are you. I know you’re trying to make me feel better, give me a consolation prize, and so you know…it’s working.”

“My necklace is
sexy?”
she managed to ask. “Uh…how?”

He stroked a thumb over her cheek, down her jaw, and she shivered. “Sweetheart. You’ve never noticed that it’s a pussy?”

She actually jumped.
“What?”

His voice was so deep and dark, his hands so sure. “That a bad word in the States? Not a bad word to me. One of my very favorite words, in fact, when I’m thinking about a girl. When I’m thinking about you.”

The heat was flaming in her cheeks, and the thrum at her core had long since started up again. She wouldn’t have thought he could possibly want anything else tonight, or that she would have, either, not after all the time they’d spent today, all the things they’d done. But the arousal was sending its tingling message to her breasts, so deliciously heavy and aching for him, up along inner thighs that were more than ready to part for him, to every last bit of her that needed him to cover it, to fill it, to let her know that she was his.

He put a hand over hers, took the pendant from her, and ran a big thumb over the little pearl nestled into the mother-of-pearl folds, over the delicate, ruffled edging of silver.

“Baby,” he told her, “whoever made this had exactly one thought in mind. It works, too, because whenever I look at it, I have that same exact thought.”

She closed her eyes, embarrassment warring with arousal. “I can’t believe it. I’ve worn this so much. Don’t tell me every guy who’s seen it around my neck has imagined—”

“Maybe not,” he said, although she could tell he didn’t mean it. “Maybe it’s just because I can’t help but go there anyway when I look at you.” He set the pendant onto the bedside table, and then his hands were on her again. Stroking over her breasts now, feather-light touches around the lacy edges of her satin bra, and then one hand was sliding slowly inside to tease and torment, and just like that, she was squirming, and watching herself do it. “But maybe better just to show it to me, eh,” he whispered in her ear. “Just like the real thing. Just like all of this. Just like these pretty undies. I love that necklace, and I love these.”

“You’ve mentioned that,” she managed. “Or maybe you’ve just mentioned how much you like to take them off.”

“Then lie down for me.” His lips were brushing her ear, and her knees had begun to tremble. “I know you want to make me feel better, and I know exactly how you can do it. You can lie at the edge of that bed, let me take them off, let me kiss you and touch you everywhere until I find that little pearl. You can let me play with you, and you can watch in the mirror while I do it.” His other hand had drifted down her belly, a whisper of sensation, and was tracing the wide edging of cream lace that sat low on her hips. She held her breath as slow fingers found their stealthy way inside, stroked over sleek folds that parted for him, exactly the way her legs were parting now.

“Ah,” he sighed. “Oh, yeh. That’s it. That’s mine.” And she would have said exactly the same thing. If she could have talked.