Just Once More (3 page)

“How many times did you practice scrummaging?” Hannah went on. “You’d think you’d have known how to do that too, after about thirty years of it. And you still practiced it, just about every single day.”

“Got me,” Drew said with a grin. “And if you feel anything, anything at all,” he said, exactly as he’d been saying for the past two weeks, “ring me. I’ll be fifteen minutes away, and I’ll be here in fourteen. Don’t wait until you’re sure. Ring me.”

“Yes, sir,” she sighed.

He didn’t bother to answer that. “Come on, then, Mako. If you’re not going to disgrace your country with that scrummaging you’ve probably forgotten how to do already, we’d better go give you your workout.”

“Hmm. Command performance?” Hannah asked, teasing in her turn now. “You called around, and suddenly seven of you guys are going to the gym? You don’t get to boss them anymore, I thought.”

Drew actually looked surprised, and this time, she
was
amused. “I’m not bossing anyone. I suggested it, that’s all. And if you want to talk about bossing—that’s Finn’s department. When you see me creeping home, a shadow of my former self—that’ll be all down to him. He’s going to tell me I’ve got soft without him there urging me on, count on it. But nah. Nothing serious. It’s just for fun.”

He should have told Finn that, Drew thought a couple hours later, because that force of nature was his usual stern taskmaster, calling out the reps and holding the boys to good account. Drew was blowing a bit, sweating more than that by the time the two of them were in the corner of the gym, selecting dumbbells for some bicep and triceps work.

“Glad you’re not on the park,” Finn told his erstwhile skipper, casting a critical eye over him as they began to lift the weights that, for anybody else, would have looked impossible, but for the two of them, were just another day out. Or at least would have been a couple years ago, Drew thought grimly, determined not to betray any sign of weakness before his former teammate.

“Yeh,” he said shortly, his body falling into the perfect form that came with doing this for more than twenty years, because it was your job. Your life.

“Too many nights over the game film and spreadsheets, eh,” Finn said.

Drew released a quick breath of laughter. “Yeh. Probably.”

“Coaching’s a bigger ask than playing, I reckon,” Finn said, and that was true too. “All the stress, and you can’t even get out there on the paddock with the boys and bash some heads to relieve it.” He offered Drew a smile that didn’t mask his message one bit. “More important than ever to keep up the training, eh. All that adrenaline’s got to go somewhere.”

“Sure you’re the conditioning coach?” Drew asked, keeping up the reps and pretending he hadn’t heard. “Not auditioning for that
mental
conditioning spot? Earned your psychology diploma yet?”

Finn laughed, his gruff “huh-huh” that Drew had heard for fifteen years on the practice field, in the gym, sharing a beer, and Drew grinned back at him.

It was a relief to have the big fella with him again. Not to have to be the strongest. Not to have to be the boss, just for a few minutes. Nobody was tougher than Drew, nobody was a harder man than the skipper, or, now, the coach. Nobody but Finn.

He missed that. And the way Finn had always been there backing his skipper up, too. Wherever, whenever. At training, or before the match. At halftime in the sheds, talking to the boys. And most of all, in the heat of battle. Knowing that every opponent they faced knew that a cheap shot on Drew—and there had been enough of those—meant nearly two meters of Finn coming at you.

It wasn’t just that, either. It was the way he never gave less than his utmost. Practicing as hard as he played, a towering example to the younger fellas, an intimidating figure to any unlucky soul who dared to drop his workrate. Not afraid, either, to blister the paint, to say the things that Drew’s taciturn style didn’t allow.

A born coach, and Drew would have loved to have had him here with him in the Bay, with him and Hemi, except that he’d never pry Finn away from the Blues, not for the step down that was provincial rugby. Finn was headed for a spot with the All Blacks, it was all but written out for him. So not now. Not yet. But someday. Someday.

“I’m keeping up,” he told his former teammate now.

“Running enough?” Finn asked, not ready to let it go until he was satisfied.

“Could do more,” Drew admitted.

“Then do it.” Finn switched to triceps extensions, and Drew followed along automatically.

“Hannah doing all right?” Finn asked after a minute.

“Why?”

The slightest twitch of a big shoulder. “Jenna wondered. When we saw her yesterday.”

“Yeh.” Drew finished the set of fifteen, switched the heavy weight to the other hand and started up again. “All right, but nineteen months between these two, and Jack not five yet…” He exhaled a little harder than he strictly had to. “It wouldn’t have been what we planned. Except it doesn’t always go like you plan, eh.”

Nothing but a nod in answer to that.

“I’ve been a bit worried,” Drew confessed, as he never had. “She’s tired, that’s hard to miss. And she always gets so skinny. They’re meant to get bigger all over, but she never does. Never gains enough, though she swears she’s good. I always wonder if…” He stopped.

Finn looked at him. “If she’s not gaining on purpose? Trying to keep her figure, not that it’s possible? Or to get it back quicker afterwards?”

“Yeh,” Drew said reluctantly. “Except she wouldn’t, not really. Not if it weren’t good for the baby. And she’s not vain, never has been. I don’t think she’d do that. It’s just that she’s all belly. It’s like the baby’s eating her up from inside. And this time…yeh. Especially. Not that she complains,” he hastened to say. “Never. You know Hannah. But…” He exhaled. “Goes quiet, or I can tell she’s getting weepy and trying to hide it.”

Finn switched hands himself. “Tiring time for them,” he said after a minute. “Doesn’t get easier, either. Third baby, and she’s a bit older than Jenna, I think. That matters, just like it does for you and me. Can’t pretend it’s as easy as it was in your twenties. That’s a lot of stress on her body, and she takes pregnancy hard. Jenna gets more…alive with it, after she’s not sick anymore. But every woman’s different.”

Back to the biceps again, Drew’s muscles fatiguing, but keeping up with Finn, because there was no choice. “Yeh,” he said. “I’ve got my mum here now, and that helps, but there’s nobody to carry that baby for her. She feels bad she can’t do more, can’t do as much as usual, and that makes me…” He exhaled. “Doesn’t she see I don’t expect it? That nobody expects it?”

“And how’s she doing…in herself?” Finn asked, with more delicacy than he customarily showed. “Scared about how she looks? You think so, don’t you? That she’s not sure about you?”

Drew’s eyes narrowed, shot to Finn’s, but the other man was concentrating on the weight clasped in his fist, the heavy bicep bulging as he lifted the dumbbell close to the shoulder, but not too close. Perfect form, as always.

“About me,” Drew said flatly at last. “No. She’s sure about me.”

“Mate.” Finn was looking at his former skipper with not one lick of deference. “She knows what’s out there for you. She’s not stupid.”

“And she knows I wouldn’t take it,” Drew snapped. “Because like you said. She’s not stupid.” His normally controlled temper was rising, and he took it out on the movement, just as Finn had told him to. Hannah wasn’t the only one on edge these days.

“She knows you wouldn’t, yeh,” Finn said. “Because she knows you. But she worries you want to. That you wish you could. Because she’s big, and she’s awkward, and she doesn’t feel pretty anymore, and she’s worried you aren’t interested anymore.”

“That’s rubbish,” Drew bit off. He didn’t want to have this conversation. Not one bit.

“Nah. It’s not. You don’t think that. Course you don’t. But she does. They all do. If they’re used to feeling beautiful, they worry they’re not anymore. And if they weren’t used to feeling beautiful in the first place, they worry more. They know we care how they look, no matter what we say.”

“But I like how she looks,” Drew said with exasperation. “Why wouldn’t I? So she’s pregnant. So’s Jenna. You not like how she looks?”

“Not about what you and I think,” Finn said. “We love seeing them like that. You and I both know that. But they don’t, not unless we tell them.”

“She knows,” Drew said again.

“Does she?”

Drew shrugged, kept up the rhythm. “What is this,” he growled, “marriage counseling, or a workout?”

Finn shut up, and Drew switched to triceps again, lifted in silence for a minute.

“So what…do you do?” he asked reluctantly. Jenna was having Finn’s fourth, after all. He’d know.

“Make her feel beautiful,” Finn said, clearly having been waiting for Drew to ask. “Let her know you still think she is. Let her know you still…” He stopped. “Yeh. Well. Let her know. Show her.”

“I show her,” Drew said shortly, leaning over and setting the heavy dumbbell back in the rack.

“Well, mate,” Finn said, shoving his own weight into its spot, those damning two spaces to the right. “Show her more.”

“Nervous?” Liam glanced across at Kristen.

“Oh, no,” she said automatically. “No, of course not. I’m fine.”

He smiled a bit at that. “OK.”

She laughed a little, wished it sounded more convincing, and scrubbed her hands over the lap of the blue paisley sundress that stretched over her taut belly. Her nervous habit, and he noticed that too.

“You’ve met some of them before,” he reminded her. “Not too bad.”

“But I haven’t talked to them much,” she said. “I only know Nate, really, and he’s not here yet. And Drew, of course.”

“Ah…yeh,” Liam said. “So I’d say you’re good.”

“What? The captain thing?” She still felt distracted. “That matters?”

“Oh, yeh. It matters. And anyway, this’ll be easier. I promise. A beach day, and more of a chance to have a chat, when you’re not busy being the bride and all.”

“Was I too…self-centered, you mean? At our wedding?”

He let out a breath. “No. You were the bride. That’s the point, isn’t it.”

“Sorry.” She smoothed a hand over her stomach again. For comfort, and for the pleasure of touching the place where her little girl lay, the ripple of movement along her skin that was a healthy baby getting more comfortable.

“She’s dancing,” she told Liam, and he smiled again.

“You know what?” she added impulsively. “However pretty she is or isn’t, I’m going to love her just the same.”

“Well, of course you are,” he said with surprise.

She barely heard him. “Because I’m sitting here thinking that I don’t look good, so nobody will like me. Well of
course
I don’t look good! I’m more than eight months pregnant! Why should I worry that nobody will want to talk to me because I’m not pretty? That isn’t all I am!”

She was getting heated, even though she knew he wasn’t the one she had to convince. It was herself.

“No,” he said calmly, pulling into the Papamoa Beach Reserve carpark, full of activity on this Sunday afternoon. “It isn’t. But you’re wrong, you know. You’re still pretty.”

“Maybe to you.” She got out of the car, waited until he handed her her beach bag, leaving him to take the rest of it, to stick the beach umbrella under one arm and heft the chilly bin full of snacks. She’d have offered to carry something, but he’d just look at her with that pained resignation again and tell her no, so she didn’t bother.

“To everybody,” he assured her, making light of his burdens as they moved down the path onto the long, broad expanse of sand. “Pregnant pretty, but pretty all the same. But you’re right. That’s not what matters. That’s not what all these fellas, and their partners, too, are going to care about. That’s not what matters, and thank God for that, or you couldn’t love me. And fortunately, you don’t just have a gorgeous face to offer—and a beautiful body too, pregnant or not. You have a beautiful soul as well.”