Just Not Mine (26 page)

“Mm. Maybe,” she said
, feeling the smile curving her lips. “May just be your lucky day.”

He laughed
. “I think yesterday was my lucky day. How’d you go at work? You’re ringing me at five-thirty, so I’m guessing it was another long one.”

“Yeh,” she said with the hint of a sigh. “You’d be right.”

“And somebody kept you up last night,” he said. “Bet the alarm came early. I know it did for me, not that I’m complaining. So can I tempt you to come by and have dinner with us tonight? Not sure I’ll be able to impress you much with my skills, but I’m hoping for points for effort.”

“I’d like to,” she said, “but no. Got to go work out still, and you’re right, I’m a bit tired. I need to make sure I
get to bed on time.”

“Ah. So does that mean no visit
over the fence tonight either? Even if I take it easy on you?”

“Wish I could say yes, but
… no.”

“Disappointing,” he said. “As it happens, though, I’ve got another suggestion, because Amelia’s got an end-of-term dance tomorrow night.”

“Ballet?” Josie asked with surprise. Chloe hadn’t said anything about a recital.

“Nah. Dance-dance. You know, boys and girls staring awkwardly at each other from across the room, until the girls finally take the boys in hand in desperation.”

“Really,” she said. “Well, I guess that’s about right.”

“Doesn’t seem possible to me,” he said, “but as she keeps telling me, she’s twelve. But the pertinent part of
all this is that she’s staying the night with friends tomorrow, and that I used my new skills to get Charlie sorted that way as well. Which means that, from about seven tomorrow night until nine-thirty on Saturday, your Demon Lover’s all yours, if you want him.”

“I want him,” she said, because, oh, yes, she did.

“Good,” he said, and she could hear the satisfaction in his voice. “That’s good. We’ll have a proper date this time, dinner and all, how’s that? Think you could see your way clear to dressing up for me, maybe even wearing a bit more of that secret armor of yours? You started a whole new train of thought there, I have to tell you. If you don’t satisfy me soon, I may just explode, and wouldn’t that make a mess in the neighborhood.”

“Sounds like you want it,” she said
, and saw the smile spreading across the face in the mirror. She wasn’t Dr. Eva, and that was the truth. It was one thing to be desired by strangers, but it was a whole different thing to be desired this much by the one and only man she wanted.

“Oh, I want it,” he assured her. “So, what? Collect you at seven-thirty? Dinner, wine, dress, pretty undies I get to look forward to taking off you?”

“All of the above,” she said, a rush of unaccustomed recklessness overtaking her at the thought. “I’m all yours.”

“Ah,” Hugh sighed when Josie opened the door to his knock the following evening. “That’s what I love to see.”

She was wearing a black dress. Nothing low-cut, nothing short, not even too tight. Sleeveless, with a neckline that barely showed her delicate collarbones, a skirt nearly to the knee. But skimming every delicious curve of her, showing off the golden skin of her shoulders and arms, and every bit of it worked. Her hair was down, too, pulled straight back off her face and falling down her back in lustrous waves, her makeup was low-key and perfect, her heels were high, and she was gorgeous.

He leaned in for a kiss, felt her hands come up to clutch at his shoulders, and that was even better.

“You look very handsome, too,” she said when he’d managed to pull himself back. She looked at his white shirt with its subtle stripe, his black trousers and shoes. At the effort, he hoped, she could see he’d taken, new haircut and all.

“I’m just the backdrop,” he assured her.

“Not to me.”

He had to kiss her again after that. Well,
maybe he just had to kiss her again.

“Got my undies on, too?
” he asked, once his mouth had made its slow way across to the underside of her jaw, once he felt the way she was leaning into him.

“Mmm
,” she sighed, “you’ll have to find that out for yourself, won’t you?” Her hand was stroking the nape of his neck, and he wasn’t at all sure he was going to make it through dinner.

“
I think you need a challenge,” she told him, her voice promising so much. “Something to look forward to, and I’m going to give it to you. But I will show you this.” She turned in a graceful circle, spinning on a toe, the other foot cocked up in the wicked black stilettos. He saw the stockings, and they weren’t the least little bit decorous.

“You
liked the seamed ones,” she said when she was facing him again, “as I recall. Aren’t they pretty?”

“Not the word I’d use,” he managed to say, “but they’re bloody effective. What’s holding those up, that’s what I’d really like to know.”

“And … another challenge for you,” she said, her voice full of smoke. “Another mystery for you to solve. Later. Think you can handle that?”

“Oh, I know I can,” he assured her. “I can handle you, no worries. But before I do, I’m going to take you
to dinner.”

He didn’t even have to remind himself to listen to her, to ask questions, he realized when they were sitting at one end of the low-ceilinged Auckland pub with its dark wood paneling, the doors open to the cobbled courtyard beyond. She was just so much fun to be with, her face so alive, her hands moving as she talked. He asked about her day, listened to her account of her two meetings with the writers, and was swept irresistibly into her world, frowning and laughing in equal measure as she talked.

“What do you think?” she asked when she’d finished. “I thought, pretty good, though I’m a bit disappointed.”

“Why?” he asked. “Because it sounds like a pretty good stretch, a chance to be a bit … different, eh. And that’s good, right? Seems like you’d want to keep … moving?”

“Yeh,” she said. “Exactly. I’m surprised you know.”

He shrugged. “That’s how it is when you’re playing, too. You can’t stay in one place. Get overtaken by somebody else then, for one thing. You have to keep getting better. In our case, you can lose a bit of edge with the years and the injuries, once you’re aimed at thirty. But if you’ve got the skills, the experience, the mental game, as well as training hard, you’re still better, on the whole, then you were five years earlier, at least you hope so. Must be about the same for you.”

“You’re righ
t,” she said. “Getting older matters, but it’s more than what you look like, when you’re an actor. At least the kind I want to be. If it were just the face and the body, I could’ve stayed with the modeling, made the most of the early years, although I’d be more worried about the age now if I’d gone that route.”

“So
…” he pressed. “Why wasn’t this good news, today?”

“It was,” she said. “Just not my preferred outcome, I guess. It doesn’t really expand Dr. Eva’s character, doesn’t show any other side of her. And it certainly doesn’t offer me a chance to play anything but evil, even if it’s evil thwarted. And evil’s a bit limited, isn’t it? I’ve always thought of Dr. Eva as a sociopath, and sociopaths are boring, aren’t they?
No real emotions but anger and frustration, no ability to care about anybody except themselves. I guess I wanted to think she was more than that.”

She paused, took a final bite of fish and vegies, a sip of white wine while she
thought, and he waited.

“W
hat it is,” she finally said, “is that I’ve been playing these brilliant, heartless—well, these horrible characters, really, for five years now. My Aussie lawyer was pretty much Dr. Eva with a law diploma. I was thinking I might be able to do more, but it’s hard to turn your back on a good thing, isn’t it.”

“What would that look like, doing more?” he asked. “What would you like to play, if that’s the right word?”

“Somebody totally different,” she said immediately. “Mad, I know, but … I’d like to do somebody who could be funny. A whole person. Women aren’t one thing or the other, you know, not really. Not sexy,” she said, gesturing with both hands, a chop on one side of the table, “or complex. Complete.” Another chop on the other side. “At least I hope they’re not.”

“They’re not,” he assured her. “At least this one isn’t. What else?
What else do you want to do?”

“Well
…” She hesitated. “I had an idea. But it’s for a show that doesn’t exist.”

“What kind of show? Funny? A comedy?”

“Not strictly. Not just that. Everything.”

He made a beckoning motion with one hand. “Let’s have it. I can tell there’s a whole world worked out in that clever brain of yours.”

“You think I have a clever brain?”

“Oh, I don’t just think. I know. So
… what’s the show?”

“Well,” she said, “it’s this. It’s somebody—well,” she said with a laugh, and he liked her so damn much, “it’s me. Guess you know that.
My character. Somebody making a big change, what that’s like. And not in the direction you expect. She was living a glam life before, that’s my idea. In Aussie, maybe, or just in Auckland. Living the dream, you know, in the Big Smoke. Trophy wife, maybe.”

He didn’t share that that had been his own guess, at the beginning. “And?”

“And something happens. Hubby dumps her, or she loses the glam job, gets humiliated somehow, whatever. Not sure. So she goes back to the homeland, back to her roots, her whanau. Because, of course,” she said with another sparkling smile, another sip of wine, “she’s Maori. You probably guessed that. She has a primary school qualification from her beginnings, before all the flash happened. And now she’s back, in Northland, or the Eastern Cape, maybe. Someplace picturesque, lots of gorgeous, exotic location shots. Very Maori, very remote. Because she grew up like that. Simple.”

“Again, like you.”

“Yeh. And then it’s just funny, and tender, and maybe a bit dramatic. With the schoolkids, and the parents, and the blokes, because of course, she’s a hot property, right?”

“Right,” he said, smiling at her. “Again, because she’s you.”

“And being back with her family,” she went on, “all the conflicts and exasperation of it, trying to date, having her dad sitting up for her, wanting to have a chat with the bloke beforehand. The whanau, the marae, the songs. It’s all just normal to me, but I think it could be interesting to other people, that whole aspect. I think it could work really well in En Zed, but other places, too. Aussie, the UK. Even,” she said, taking a breath, “the States.
Whale Rider
was a hit, why couldn’t this be? Why wouldn’t people enjoy something as different as that?”

“No reason,” he said,
“especially with you doing it. Sounds fun, and interesting, and pretty awesome, really. I guess you know that I’d watch you in anything, but I think everybody would watch you do that. I think so.”

“You do?” she asked, her eyes searching his. “You’re not just saying that to—
” She stopped, smiled. “To get my knickers off? Because it’s working, for that. I’m liking you a lot right now.”

“Nah,” he said, smiling back. “Not that that’s not good news, but I
’m pretty sure I’m going to be able to get your knickers off all by myself. But, yeh. I think it’s brilliant.”

“Thanks,” she said with a sigh, and he realized how much his opinion had mattered to her, and how much he cared that that was true. “I haven’t told anybody about it,” she confessed. “You’re the first.”

It was a new way to be a woman’s first, but it was a good way.

“
All I need,” she said, “is somebody to write it. I’ve got the whole pilot worked out already, half the first season too. I wake up with the characters talking in there, like it’s a show already, projected in my head.”

“Well, why don’t you?” he asked.

“Why don’t I what?”

“Why don’t you write it? It’s your show. You’re the one with the idea, the characters. Why wouldn’t you do it?”

“Because …” She seemed to be groping for an answer. “Because I’m not a writer.”

“How do you know? Have you tried?”

She laughed, a surprised sound. “No.”

“Then
…” He shrugged. “You don’t know. What have you got to lose? Why not try it and see? If nothing else, seems like you’d get your ideas better fixed, be better able to tell somebody else about them. Whoever it is that you’d tell about something like that to make it happen. So why not?”

“Wow,” she said blankly. “
I never really thought about it. Not seriously.”

“Aren’t there actors who write as well?” he asked. “I know there are some who
are directors, right? So why not writers?”

“Yeh,” she said
. “A few, I guess. I guess I could try.”

“You can always try,” he agreed.

“Then I will,” she said. “I’ll have a go.” She blew out a breath. “Phew. Not what I expected to be talking about over dinner with you.”

“
That’s why we’ve got all night,” he said, and smiled at her again.

He
realized they’d finished eating long ago, and that his beer was gone, her wine nearly so. “Need another?” he asked her, gesturing to her glass.

“I usually don’t drink two, but
…” She laughed a little. “This is too good. All of it. You going to carry me home if I get too wild?”

“I am,” he promised.
“I’d carry you anywhere.”

He couldn’t believe he’d said it, but her expression had softened,
so it had clearly worked, and that was good enough for him. “And I’ll get you another glass of wine, too,” he told her.

He
crossed the room to the crowded bar, placed the order. The bartender nodded, his hands and feet moving fast on this Friday night, and Hugh resigned himself to a wait and thought about her. About her face, telling him her plan. About how much more she was than what she appeared. About all the surprises of her.

“It’s her. I’m sure of it.” The voice came from the closest of the three raucous blokes next to him. “Can’t mistake those tits, eh. Bet I’ve spent more time looking at hers than my girlfriend’s.”