Just Once More (8 page)

He stood at her approach. “One sec.” He opened the door for Jack, made sure he was buckled into his booster seat. Her son was still sobbing a bit, and Hannah couldn’t bring herself to care. Drew was right, he was
their
son, not just hers. Drew was going to have to handle this, because she couldn’t. Not right now.

She was about to lift Grace out of the trolley, but Drew was there again. “What are you thinking?” he asked her, the impatience evident. “Lifting ten kilos? No.”

“Eleven,” she said automatically. “And who do you think has been lifting her all this time?”

He sighed. “Get in the car.”

She didn’t argue, just climbed in and leaned her head against the passenger seat. She heard him buckling Gracie in behind her, talking to her a bit, jollying her, because one grizzling child was enough. He unloaded the trolley into the boot, was back in a minute, climbing into the car and turning the key, the air conditioning coming to life along with the engine, providing blessed relief from the summer heat.

He looked across at her, smiled a little. “Here’s where you tell me I was right. Should have let me come back for the groceries.”

She tried to laugh, but her eyes filled with tears all the same. “Sorry. You were right. I didn’t realize how…close to the edge we all were. Thought we could squeeze in one more thing. Sorry.”

“Aw, sweetheart.” He put a hand behind her neck, gave it a bit of a rub. “No worries. Bath, nap. Good as gold.”

She laughed a little shakily. “Who are you talking to? Jack or me? I know I’m acting four myself.”

“Nah.” He backed out of the space, indicated left out of the carpark, and headed for home. “Just too pregnant. Most women in your shape wouldn’t be having house guests. Or a dinner party.”

“Righty-o, then,” he said as they set the groceries onto the kitchen bench, Helen following behind with Grace. “Go on up. Mum and I’ve got this.”

“The kids…” Her feet were lead, and her body wasn’t much better. All she wanted was to lie down and sleep for about fifteen hours. “They need a bath first.”

“Got it,” he repeated. “Go. Bath. Nap. Now.”

“Bossy,” she said with a sigh and a smile she couldn’t help.

“Yeh. Tell me about it later. Go.”

Hannah woke two hours later to the sound of Drew moving quietly around the bedroom, opening drawers. Changing, she realized fuzzily.

“Hey,” she said with a sleepy smile.

“Hey.” He came and sat beside her on the bed, helped her haul herself up against the pillows. He saw the ripple of movement under the tight white T-shirt, put a hand on the low, round bulge of her belly. “Whoa. Having a party in there.”

“Feels like he’s doing the haka.” She shifted a bit on the bed to get more comfortable, then put her hand over his, moving it. “That’s a foot. Feel that?”

“Strong, too,” he said. “This one’s a kicker, eh. You growing me another All Black in there? If he’s a back, Hemi’ll never let me hear the end of it.”

She smiled. “You never know. He’ll come out as who he is, we both know that. And who he is, is active. Only naps when I’m walking around carrying him, just like Jack. Hope that’s not an omen. At least Gracie’s a good sleeper.”

He frowned a bit. “Yeh. When all three of them are here, and I’m back to work…We’re going to talk about that.”

“Sounds ominous.”

“Nah. Never ominous.” His hand left her belly, came up to stroke her cheek, her hair, and she leaned into the thumb cradling her face, because it felt so good. He hadn’t put his shirt on yet, and she laid her own hand against his chest just to feel the slab of muscle under her palm.

“Finn may have worked you out too hard this morning,” she told him. “But what I didn’t tell you is, he did that for me. Our secret.”

“Feels good,” he said, smiling down at her.

“Yeah,” she said, “it does,” and smiled back.

He bent down, gave her a long, sweet kiss, fingered the heavy braid that hung over one shoulder. “Pity we’ve got all these people coming by again. I could use a bit of a reminder right about now that we’re not just Mum and Dad. Bet you could too.”

She hummed her agreement. “I look like a mum, no getting away from that. But you don’t look much like a dad to me.” Her fingers traced the white lines of old scars from a shoulder surgery or two. “What you look like is a really hot rugby player. And I hate to tell you, but I’ve always had this fantasy about a rugby player. I’d share it with you, but it’s too embarrassing. I’d blush. And I know you don’t want to watch me blush. All over.”

She saw his eyes begin to gleam, shivered a little with sleepy pleasure. It was so exciting to tease him a little, even if they weren’t being serious.

“Now you know why I insisted on the nap,” he said. “Ulterior motive all the way. I’d love to hear about that fantasy later on tonight. Maybe I could pretend to be that rugby player you want so badly. You may want to give it a bit more thought, eh.”

He got up with obvious reluctance, went to the closet and pulled a black collared knit shirt off a hanger, tugged it over his broad chest. She watched him cover his body and was sorry to lose the sight, because that muscular torso, the heavy bulk of it, the vee where it narrowed to his waist…He hadn’t lost a thing, and it all still worked for her. Boy, did it ever. He was good with clothes on. He was better naked.

“Mmm.” She smiled across the dim room at him. He’d closed the blinds while she’d been sleeping, she realized. She’d been too tired to care. “They do say that couples who share their fantasies have better sex. What do you think? Not sure what I could pretend to be at this point, but maybe if you close your eyes…”

“I don’t need any fantasy woman,” he said. “Already got her.”

“Now, I
know
that’s not true,” she laughed. “Not possible. It’s funny, though, isn’t it?”

He’d opened his mouth as if he wanted to say something else, but all he said was, “What is?”

“When you were carrying Jack out today, and I was in the queue in my sandy maternity dress, with my sticky baby in the trolley, there was Josie looking back at me from the cover of
Woman’s World
. With Hugh, at that TV awards show last month, both of them looking so glamorous. Feeling not one bit glamorous myself, being a little envious, thinking that would be nice. And then catching myself, because how many times
has that been us? And now I’ve met her. Just as sandy as me. If a lot more glamorous, still,” she admitted, “because she sure is beautiful, isn’t she? But it was pretty funny.”

“Never feels the same on the inside as it looks on the outside,” he agreed, coming back to sit beside her again, even though they had guests coming in minutes, and he had to get downstairs, and she had to get
up
. “Ever.”

“Although Hugh’s the only one of you guys who did it right,” she said. “The only one marrying a star.”

“He’s not marrying her because she’s a star,” Drew said with certainty. “He’s marrying a nice Kiwi girl from Katikati. Just like she’s not marrying an All Black. That’s obvious. Just like you didn’t marry me for that.”

“Oh, yeah?” She smiled, put her hand on his sizeable thigh this time, beneath the hem of his khaki shorts, and traced the delineated line of quadriceps, the rasp of hair providing the friction she loved. “You sure about that?”

“Dead sure.” His own smile reached all the way to his eyes. “You’re not that good at pretending.”

She laughed. “You’re right about that. Pretty sure I married you partly for your outsized Y chromosome, though.”

“The missing link, eh.” He sighed. “The truth comes out.”

He paused, looked thoughtful, not seeming in any hurry to get up, and she kept her hand on his leg, because she always felt better when she was touching him, and waited.

“Whenever I look at those magazines myself, the ones in the supermarket…” he said slowly, and stopped again.

This was rare, Drew sharing, so she hitched herself up a bit to listen harder.

“Well, you and I know it’s not really that way, is it?” he continued after a moment. “Even when they’re showing something good, that you’re meant to want. It’s not life. It’s one night of…performing for the camera. And how often are they
not
showing something good? Most of the time, seems to me. How often is it some sad Hollywood story about some poor couple breaking up? And you know the story behind it’s uglier even than what you’ll hear. Broken hearts all over the shop. Not one bit glamorous. Nothing anybody’d want.”

“Like Josie’s cover,” Hannah remembered. “‘Our Josie—Happy at Last.’ People like to hear about stars, but sometimes I think they like to hear most that stardom doesn’t make you happy. So they can feel better about their own lives. They should have got a picture of you carrying Jack out. That’d do it.”

He laughed. “Proud parental moment, eh. Bet somebody did get a snap of that. But you know, glamour’s never what I wanted. I wanted…”

“What?” she asked, trying to show him how much she wanted to hear.

“My grandfather died when I was twenty-three,” he said unexpectedly. “After a couple years of my granny nursing him. Cancer. They were married forty-nine years, I ever tell you that?”

“No,” she said. “I don’t think so.”

“Yeh. I was young, like I said, just starting to do really well with the footy.”

“Starting?”

“Well, yeh. Starting. Wasn’t the skipper yet.”

“Oh,” she said. “I see. An All Black, but not the captain. Not yet. Just starting. Got it.”

“Anyway,” he said. “I was all caught up in that. Came back home when we knew it’d be soon, sitting there by his bed with the others. He died at home, right there with her beside him in her chair. Him looking at her like nobody else was there.”

Drew wasn’t looking at Hannah now himself, though. His gaze was off in the distance, back to the past. “He looked at her,” he said again, “there at the end. Said, ‘Hate to leave you alone, Madam. But I’ll see you again. No rush. I’ll wait. You take your time.’”

“Madam?” she asked through the lump in her throat that had formed at his words. At the heart that had been able to take them in at twenty-three, had held them all this time. Had known how much they mattered.

Drew smiled, remembering. “He always called her that. Funny, eh. I asked him once. He wasn’t any kind of flash. A farmer, and she was a farmer’s wife. So it seemed…funny. He told me, though. Didn’t seem to mind telling me, and he wasn’t soft, either. Not a bit. He said it was to remind himself that he was lucky, and to remind her
that she was special, when either of them forgot. He’d started out with it as a bit of a joke, when they
were
starting out, but then…it fit, he said. It fit.”

“That’s a nice story,” she said quietly.

He shook his head. “Mum and Dad thought afterwards that now she could have a bit of a rest, maybe even…enjoy herself a little. Once she didn’t have to take care of him, you know. Spend some time with her friends. But she didn’t even last a year. Heart packed up, the doctor said, and I reckon that’s right, but not the way he thought. She didn’t complain, always cheerful enough. But I reckon she just didn’t want to be in the world without him. Not after all that time. Felt like half of her was missing, she told me once. In a…moment we had.”

He looked at her again. “And you know what I thought, when she said that?”

“No,” she said, her mouth a little dry, her own heart beating a little hard. “What?”

“I thought, that’s what I want. Not then, of course,” he said with a little laugh. “I wasn’t that noble. But someday. I knew that was what I wanted someday. I thought, I want a girl I feel that lucky to have. I want a woman I’ll want to call Madam when we’re seventy, because I’ll still feel lucky to have her. Not because she’s flash. Not because she’s beautiful. But because she’s real. Because she’s mine.”

“In her crumpled sundress, nine months pregnant and grouchy,” Hannah said, the tears that were never too far from the surface at war with her smile.

“Yeh,” he said. “That woman. That’s the one I want. The one in the crumpled sundress. Nine months pregnant and doing her best.”

He leaned over, kissed her gently once more. “And for the record?” he told her, stroking a hand over her hair. “She’s still beautiful.”