Just Not Mine (7 page)

She looked surprised, and he hurried to explain. “Different mums. Mine’s in Wellington. Where I grew up.”

“Except when you came to be with us, in the summer,” Amelia said.

He smiled at her. “Yeh. Except when I came to be with you.” He could see the questions hovering on Josie’s lips, could see the moment when she decided not to ask them, because it wasn’t the time.

“Well,” she told them, rising and gathering up plates, it’s back to work for me. Sorry I don’t have any biscuits.”

“No worries,” Hugh said. “Charlie, run over and get some, why don’t you? Keep us going. I thought I was in condition, but
if I’m going to work for Josie, more fuel is definitely required.”

She didn’t eat any
biscuits herself, he noticed, just kept working steadily until the brick was laid, then said briskly, “Right. Time for the mortar.”

“Where is it?” Hugh asked. “Tell me, and I’ll get it.”

“The shed,” she said. He went back to her pre-fab shed, which was as neatly organized as any Kiwi bloke’s, and pretty well-equipped for somebody who’d only just got her own house, too. He found the heavy bags of mortar and carried them out to her in his good arm.

“Hugh,” Amelia tol
d him, “I need to go to ballet. Did you forget?”

“Oh. Right.”
He
had
forgotten.

“And it’s your turn to d
rive us,” she reminded him, not for the first time. “All three of us. So we need to leave in time.”

Her and her two friends, and in case he needed to feel any more middle-aged, driving
the carpool would do it.

“Right,” he said again.
“You could take a break too,” he suggested to Josie as Amelia shifted from foot to foot beside him. “I could help you finish up when I’m back. At least a couple hours, though.”

“Nah,” she said. “Only a few more steps to go.
Another hour or so, and I’m done. Can’t stop now.”

He wanted to tell her again to wait for him, because she’d been working as hard as any man would’ve, all day long, and she had to be tired. But it was her project, not his, and Amelia was making impatient noises now, so he just said, “Come on, then, Charlie.”

“I could stay and help Josie,” Charlie said.

“That’d be awesome,” she said. “Get us through even faster. We could be the first to have a cup of tea on my new patio, Charlie, you and me.” And
his brother looked blissful at the prospect, so that was that plan sorted.

“Tell you what,” Josie
said just before Hugh and Amelia took themselves off. “Why don’t we all have dinner out here tonight? We built it, we should christen it, don’t you think?”

Hugh could think of a better way, but he went with what was on offer.
“You don’t want to cook dinner after all this,” he objected. “We could go out.” Not quite the double date of his dreams, the two of them and the kids, not to mention the absent partner, but he’d take it.

“
The idea is dinner on the new patio, remember?”

“Well, then, we could
get pizza. Amelia and I could even get it on the way back from ballet. Easy as.”

“I don’t eat pizza,” she said. “Alas.”

“Not even after laying brick all day?”

“Not even then. The sacrifices we make, eh,” she said with another laugh. “But just come on
over when Amelia’s done with her dancing, and we can have a feed. The least I can do to pay you back, isn’t it. If Charlie and I aren’t here, we’ll have gone to the supermarket. Maybe even for a swim first, hey?” she asked Charlie. “Sounds good about now.”

Did she have unlimited energy? He guessed so. And he wanted to come for the swim.
Seeing her in her togs would be a fair reward for his work, better than any dinner, especially if it were a bikini.

But his job right now was to drive three twelve-
year-old girls to ballet, so that was what he did.

“Hugh’s nice, isn’t he,” Charlie offered when Hugh and Amelia had left.

“Yeh, he is.”
Josie smiled at him, looked at the bags of mortar and allowed herself a moment of fatigue at the thought of this final stage of her project. For a cowardly minute, she thought about accepting Hugh’s offer, taking Charlie off for a swim and a shop and finishing the job with Hugh’s help when he returned. How easy it was, after all, to look to a man for help, even when that help wasn’t one bit his job, or his concern.

Finish it now,
she told herself.
Sooner you start, sooner it’s done.
Besides, even though she’d been honest with him, this was cutting the grass, and she knew it. And she’d never been one of those women who put off breaking up with a man until after he’d helped her shift house. She’d told Clive the truth. She didn’t like manipulative women, and she wasn’t going to be one, so she grabbed her scissors and cut open the first bag of mortar, hefted it and began sprinkling its contents over the bricks.

“Cut open the next one for me, will you
, love?” she asked Charlie. “And then we just sweep the mortar with this metal broom so it falls between the bricks, see?”

“Hugh’s strong, too,” Charlie said, reaching for the broom and sweeping with a willing if inexpert hand. “If he was here, he could lift up those bags by himself. He could do it with one hand.”

“Mmm. Does he always live with you?” she asked, onto the second bag by now. She was just making conversation, keeping Charlie from noticing how tired he was. Or she was shamelessly pumping an eight-year-old child for information. She’d go with Option A. Sounded much better.

“Just since my mum and dad died,” Charlie said. “And only when he’s at home. Not when he’s away.” He laughed a little. “I mean, he couldn’t live with us when he’s away, could he? But he can’t go away now, because he broke his thumb.”

“Does he go away for work?” she asked.

“Yeh. But he got an injury, this last time, so he can’t go.” He opened his mouth, shut it again.

A ship, she thought suddenly. That would explain it. He wasn’t a dole bludger after all, she could see that after today. He was a worker, just like her.

“What does he do for work?” she asked, and all right, it was true, she was shamelessly pumping a child. She might as well get her money’s worth.

Charlie looked a bit scared. “I’m not meant to talk about his work. If people ask me about him.”

“Oh. OK.”
What?
She finished emptying her bags, took over on the sweeping from Charlie.

So, all right. Something secret. Either he was an undercover cop, or a drug dealer.
Or an assassin,
her overactive imagination suggested, and she had to laugh a little inside at the thought. He didn’t seem much like a drug dealer, or an assassin either. Though drug dealers probably had families. Assassins, she wasn’t so sure about.

He did look
familiar. Maybe she’d seen him on some TV show about persons of interest? Hard to tell, under all that beard and hair. His disguise, maybe. But no, that was ridiculous. Cora Middleton had seemed thoroughly respectable, not somebody who’d leave these kids in the care of anybody that dodgy. In any case, Hugh seemed much too straightforward to be anything that complicated, and anyway, it wasn’t her business, not as long as he weren’t actually a criminal, and she sincerely doubted it. She gave a mental shrug and concentrated on finishing the job with Charlie’s help.

“Here we are,” she said when he’d finished spraying the entire surface of the new patio with the hose, concentrating so fiercely on getting every squa
re meter wetted down, his clever little face so intent that her heart went out to him. “Look at you. You helped build a whole patio today. You spread the sand, laid the brick, brushed the mortar. Bet you didn’t know you could do that.”

He brightened, his chest swelling a bit, and
she smiled at him. “Let’s put my table and chairs on,” she suggested. “And have a look.”

He helped her carry them, and they stood together and admired their handiwork.

“Calls for a cup of tea, don’t you think?” she asked him. “Lord and lady of the manor, surveying our domain?”

“Yeh,” he said. “Except could I have cocoa instead? If you have it,” he added politely.

She laughed, light with accomplishment and the satisfaction of a job done. “You could. You can have as much cocoa as you can drink. You earned it.”

* * *

She and Charlie had their swim, a quick one down the road at Torpedo Bay, because the water was still springtime-cold, but that and a shower renewed her energy for a visit to New World.

“You’
re a good shopper,” she told Charlie when he’d returned to the trolley with a bag of green beans.

“That’s because I have to help Hugh,” he said.

“Oh. Because of his hand.”

“Not just his hand,” Charlie said
. “It’s that he doesn’t know how to do things. The sorts of things grown-ups usually know. He forgets to buy stuff, like washing powder. He forgets to
do
the washing. He can’t cook too well either. We had pizza two times already this week, and hamburgers one time. Grownups usually cook more grown-up things, but he says he can’t. He can do hamburgers, though. And he can do eggs. I have to help him with that, too.”

“Well, helping’s good,” she said
cheerfully, selecting tomatoes, throwing in a couple avocados, some spinach and rocket. Salad, that was nice and easy. “I helped my mum and dad growing up, and that’s why I
do
know how to cook, and to do the washing, and all sorts of quite handy things. And I should get your brother some beer,” she realized as they left the veg aisle. “Bet he likes that.”

“I think so,” Charlie said. “Not if he’s driving, but he hasn’t got to drive, because you live next door
and we can walk. It isn’t good to drink beer if you’re driving.”

“No, it isn’t, but he doesn’t have to drive tonight, so I think we’ll risk it. What kind’s his favorite?” she asked,
stopping in front of the extensive selection.

He considered. “Dunno. Maybe that green one. I think he’s had that.”

“Monteith’s Original? Sounds reasonable. Not a big drinker, eh.” She pulled a six-pack down and set it in the trolley.

“Nah. Because of work.
He can’t.”

Which made the drug dealer idea less likely, but then, it had never been likely. Still left assassin open, though. Assassins probably had to keep their wits about them.

“Run get me two liters of trim milk, please,” she told Charlie, abandoning the question.

He was back with it in a flash.
“I think I used to help my mum, too,” he told her as he handed it to her. “I don’t remember too well, though.”

Josie glanced down at him, steered the
trolley into the housewares aisle, selected a packet of ivory candles, then wondered why she was doing it. It wasn’t a romantic dinner. Well, no. But it was a party on her new patio, with new friends. So, candles.

“Bet you remember some things,”
she said.

He was quiet for a
full minute as they rounded the corner towards the meat department, and she wondered what was going on in that dark head.

“I remember her doing chicken,” he said suddenly. “She’d stand at the sink and reach her hand in the hole and pull the guts out of the inside.
And then she’d cut it all up and smash it and cook it a special way that tasted good. It didn’t taste like chicken normally does, like Aunt Cora makes it. I remember that.”

“Sounds like she was a good cook
.”

“
Yeh. Because she was French. She said if you were French, you had to know how, because you couldn’t eat English food. She laughed when she said that.”

“See?” Josie smiled
down at him. “You do remember.”

The doorbell rang while she was hacking away at a pumpkin. “Get that for me, will you, love?” she asked Charlie. “That’ll be your brother. And your sister,” she added hastily.

She’d resisted the urge to glam up too much, at least,
even though she’d found herself putting on a dress, which the apron was covering up just now. Well, it was a
party.
Of sorts. And if her hair was down, and she was wearing a bit of makeup, that wasn’t for Hugh’s benefit, because she had a partner. But she’d been out and about, and even in casual New Zealand, her image required more polish than she’d been featuring today. Anyway, Hugh had looked at her all day in her work clothes, and her pride demanded a better showing.

But
he was standing just the other side of the kitchen bench now, and she was looking at the depth of his chest, being reminded about the size of his arms, and he was smiling at her, and her hands had stilled on her knife.

“Do the ballet run, then?” she asked him, forcing herself to start cutting through the dense orange flesh again.

“Yeh. I take it you finished the job? Get your swim?”

“Yeh.” She smiled
herself. “Bet I had a better time.”

He laughed. “Bet you did.
I was going to say I’d take the kids home, because we all need showers, but d’you need a hand here first?”

She needed
to stop smiling at him. “Again, a hand’s what it’d be. Don’t think you could do too much with one.”

“I can do
quite a lot with one,” he said, the look in his eyes letting her know exactly what he could do, and suddenly, her oven wasn’t the only thing warming up. All he was doing was standing there, and he was still sending tingles to places they had no business being, evoking every shivery, delicious sensation that the most heated on-screen kiss failed to arouse, and it took all the training she had not to show it.

She looked down again hastily, resumed her hacking progress. “Nah, got this. Go take your shower.
Then come back and help me christen my new deck.”

He glanced sharply at her, opened his mouth to say something, then shut it, and she realized what she’d said and very nearly blushed. She never got flustered with men, and she’
d worked with, dated, been chatted up by men infinitely more handsome, polished, and urbane than Hugh could dream of being, but she was flustered now.

All he said, though
, was, “Right. See you in a bit. Hour or so OK? Enough time?”

“Perfect,” she said. “See you then.” And
kept chopping her vegies, moving around her dark little kitchen in her bare feet, and did her best to pretend that this was about a thank-you and nothing more.

“A feast,” he said when she let them back in again, led them back through the kitchen, and he saw the vegies and salad laid out, the fish ready to cook.

“Could you drink a beer?” she asked him, opening the fridge.

“You going to drink with me?”

“I don’t drink beer.”

“Don’t drink beer, don’t eat pizza? What do you do?”

“Only low-kilojoule pursuits,” she said, pulling out one of the bottles of Monteith’s she’d chilled for him, holding it
up with a questioning lift of her brows.

“Even after all that work today, not to mention the swim, and as slim as you are?”
he asked, taking the bottle from her. “Because my mum would say, get that girl a sandwich. I’d think you could have a beer without fear.”