Chapter 35
ON THE DECISIVE SIDE
Zane had just sat down to his tea, happy to be home to do it. No Geoffrey today. Maybe he’d actually decided to spend some time with his own whanau.
He was thinking that, and then the doorbell rang.
“Bother,” Nan said, so she wasn’t expecting Geoffrey.
“I’ll get it!” Georgia sang out, and jumped up. For some reason, Georgia loved answering the door. “It’s like a good surprise,” she’d explained. “Like opening a present. Because you never know who’ll be there!”
Zane said, “No. I’ll go.” He’d soon send the salesperson or religious nutter or whoever it was on their way. He wasn’t opening any presents.
It was Skylar. Skylar, with a coat wrapped around herself against the rain, her curls already plastered to her head just from the dash from the car.
“For Christ’s sake,” he said. “Get inside out of the wet.” He pulled her in, then helped her off with her coat. It was soaked, too. “I’ll get you a towel.”
Feet in the passage. Georgia. She ran to Skylar and got a cuddle in return. “Hi!” Georgia said. “I’m very glad you came. We were just about to have our tea. D’you want to have it with us?”
Zane expected Skylar to apologize. She didn’t. Her nose was red, but the rest of her face was white. She said, her tone extremely controlled, “You’d better go eat, then. I’ll only keep your dad a few minutes.”
“You could come have tea with us,” Georgia said. “Like before.”
“I can’t tonight,” Skylar said. “Is there a private place we can talk?” she asked Zane. Pointedly. Not like Skylar at all.
“Uh … of course,” he said. “Down here. Wait, though.” A detour for that towel. “For your hair. D’you need a dressing gown? Cardigan?”
“No,” she said, blotting her curls with the towel and making them look wilder than ever. “I need to talk to you.”
“OK, then. Come on.” Was this about the sex? She seemed narky as hell. Why? He’d told her it wasn’t good enough, but she’d seemed to think it was, so … what?
He took her into the family room, same place they’d had their other conversation—when she’d also been narky, hadn’t she? At her granddad that time. For a woman who apparently didn’t get annoyed often, recent events had certainly brought it out in her.
She turned on him without even sitting down and said, “You went to my principal. Without telling me!”
What the hell? “I did,” he said. “Of course I did. You said we couldn’t get involved because Georgia was in your class, and there are rules. Stupid rules, if you ask me, but there’s no arguing with the ref, so I asked for her to be moved. Following the rules, eh. Principal said yes. Job done.”
“And you didn’t think to tell me?” She was laughing now, but in an angry way. Laughing, shaking her head, clutching her hair. A trifecta of disbelief. “Zane. I got called into her office today! After George and Georgia told all of Year One that you and I were getting married!”
“What?” He could only blink.
“Yes. They did. I should have foreseen that. What with the earthquake and all, I’m sure it was an exciting story.
I could’ve laughed it off—I did laugh it off—well, not quite, because Stacey Thompkins told the principal, and Stacey Thompkins hates me.
George’s teacher,” she added, as if that explained anything.
“Somebody hates you? How is that even possible?” He couldn’t stand watching her look so cold, so—bugger it. He’d be an arrogant bastard. He pulled her down with him onto the couch, reached for a throw, and put it around her shoulders.
“Would you stop being nice?” she said. “It’s confusing me. I’m so angry with you, I— I—” She was waving an arm now. And she’d seen that as nice rather than arrogant? That was good. If unusual.
“You could tell me,” he suggested. “That might help.”
She glared at him. “I’m trying.”
“Well, maybe try harder.”
“Stacey Thompkins,” she said with some precision, “has a thing for David Sacklett, who teaches Year Five. And apparently, at least according to my friend Jess, David has a thing for me. It’s hard to know, because he’s the quiet sort.”
“Not your type,” Zane decided to put in.
“He should be exactly my type. Easygoing. Kind. Low-key. Unglamorous. All exactly like me.”
“Sounds a dead bore,” he said.
“Well, there’s that. Born to be mild. I just can’t—” Her hand was in her hair again.
“You can’t help wishing for more excitement in a man,” he said. “More of a thrill.”
Some more glare. “Would you stop? This isn’t foreplay! I’m telling you why I’m so annoyed with you!”
“Oh.” He raised both hands. “Go ahead, then. Stacey somebody has a thing for David somebody, and is probably jealous of you, is that it? Not sure how I come into it, though.”
“You come into it,” she said, “because George is in Stacey’s class, and he and Georgia told the other kids at recess all about Wellington and the earthquake, and that you and I were probably getting married. Where they came up with that, I have no idea. But they did.”
“Oh.” He scratched his nose. “And this Stacey heard about it and caused trouble. Again …”
“I’m trying to tell you, all right? So I got called in at lunchtime. To Monica’s office. Monica Rumsfeld. With whom you’re also acquainted, aren’t you?”
“I met her today for the first time. Which you obviously know.”
“I do. Because I had to respond to the we’re-getting-married thing, which I did admirably—well, not admirably, as I fudged a wee bit there—”
“Which is OK,” he said, “as we’re getting that sorted now, with moving Georgia.”
“Which I wouldn’t have done,” she said, “if you’d told me you were going to go in there and tell her we wanted to date each other! After I’d just said we were only acquainted, and it was our grandparents having the romance! I looked like a liar. Which, of course, I was.”
“Oh.” He thought about that. “Well, yeh. Awkward.”
“You think?” She was glaring now. Fired up like … well, like a ginger. Exciting, to tell the truth.
“Sorry,” he said. “I won’t have another day off for a week and it was on my mind, so I went ahead and did it. That was clearly the big obstacle, so why not remove it?”
“Did it occur to you that you should have asked me?”
“You were teaching,” he pointed out. “What’s the protocol there, by the way?”
“The what?” She was blinking at him now.
“If I need to talk to you. Do I stand outside the room and make faces, or what? I didn’t know. That’s why I didn’t do it.”
“No. The kids are five and six. They’re not exactly reliable when left alone, and anyway, it’s a bad look.
If Granddad needs to tell me something, he texts me, and I ring him back at lunchtime.
If he needed me in person, he’d come to school then, when I’m free.
I suppose so, anyway, because he’s never done it. Why?”
“How long is your break?” he asked.
“Thirty minutes. Why?”
“Oh. Not much time for it, then. Although a spot of quick sex in the supply cupboard …” He sighed. “Standing up. I’ve always liked that. Dunno why. Spontaneous, I reckon. Exciting. Also forbidden, which is always good.”
She was staring at him. “Pardon?”
“Just sussing out the possibilities. Now that we’re moving Georgia, that is.”
“Did I say that we’re dating? Did you miss that I’m narky as hell with you right now?”
“No,” he said. “That’s why I thought of it.
You’re exciting when you’re fired up. Also, I said I was sorry.
I’ll say it again if you like. I should’ve talked to you about it first. Left that text, like you said, come and talked to you, then talked to the principal about Georgia.
Or talked to the principal with you, maybe.
I see that now. I just wanted to get it done.
I can tend to be more on the decisive side. ”
“Oh, is that what you call it.” She was having some trouble holding onto the anger, though.
“Generally,” he said. “Sounds better than ‘arrogant bastard.’”
She laughed. She probably didn’t want to, but she did. In a frustrated sort of way, but still. “I appreciated that at the weekend,” she said. “After the earthquake, and … and later. But in this situation—”
“Besides,” he went on, “you don’t want that mild type, whatever you tell yourself.”
“How do you know? Maybe I long for a man like that, and I’m just using you until I snag him.”
“Hmm.” He was smiling now, and she was trying not to. He also had a hand in her curls and an arm around her waist. “How long have you worked with this David fella?”
“Two … years.” It was a gasp, because he’d pulled her damp curls back and was kissing her neck.
Skylar’s neck was wondrous territory: slim, white, and smooth.
The exact opposite of his own, and that silky skin was sensitive as hell, too.
He knew, because he was doing it better now, and she was gasping and hanging on to him.
“We should—” she managed to say. “We should ...”
“We should lock the door,” he said, “and let me get my hands all over you.”
“It’s dinnertime,” she said.
He laughed, and after a moment, so did she. “You’re so bad for me,” she moaned. That was probably because he was laying her down on the couch so he could—well, get his hands all over her. And take off her clothes.
“Zane.” She pushed at him, and he pulled back. Reluctantly.
“What?” he said. “We discussed the problem. I apologized. Twice. We agreed on a better way. Job done.” She looked so pretty and mussed down there, so he gave her soft mouth a kiss. How could a man help it?
“We need a … plan,” she said, when they came up for air. She gasped it, actually. That could’ve been because his hand was under her shirt, stroking up her ribs. Nearly there.
He stopped his hand. It was a sacrifice, but a man sometimes had to make sacrifices. “OK. Let’s make a plan, then.”
She blinked those green eyes at him. Slowly. “Just like that?”
“What the lady wants,” he said, and pulled her up by the hand. “Right. Outline. Go.”
“Geez,” she said. “I see why you just charged in there and laid it out to Monica. Do you ever not just charge forward?”
“No. I told you, it’s how I’m made. Plan?”