Page 74 of Just Come Over

Finn was shaking his head, then stacking weights on the Universal machine, lying down on his back, and beginning to do chest presses, like a bloke who was saying, “She isn’t going to let you buy her a new roof after one night.” Which was what hehadsaid, two days ago.

Zora made a noise, sort of a muffled scream, like it was coming from behind clenched teeth. “Earrings,” she said. “Pearl studs. There you are. Romantic. Extravagant. Probably still well and truly over the top.Definitelywell and truly over the top.”

“Insulting,” he said. He was beginning to enjoy this.

“Pardon bloody me? Insulting how? I just demandedjewelry.”She was either still narky, or she was laughing. Possibly both.

He climbed onto a leg press, adjusted the weights, and started in. “Pearl studs? That’s what you call ‘jewelry?’ I can do better. You shouldwantbetter.”

She said, “What are you doing? Why are you breathing hard?”

“Because I’m pleasuring myself. Arguing with you does that to me. Or because I’m doing a bit of strength training. Take your pick.”

“Right,” she said. “Revisiting the roof idea. You don’t think that’s a bit excessive? A metal roof is four thousanddollars,even on my tiny place.I got an estimate.”

“Really? They told me five thousand.” He added another twenty Kg’s of weight to the stack and started his second set. “Could be I went for higher quality, of course.”

“Rhys,” she said helplessly. “No.”

“On the other hand,” he said, “the thing Iwantedto buy you was nine thousand five hundred. You could say that you were on a forty-percent discount. Iwon’tsay it, though. Crass, probably.”

“There are letters all over the place to relationship gurus,” she said. “With answers saying that early gift-giving is inappropriate. Red flag, they say.”

“Mm. Are we nearly done here? Because this is a bit dull, and the chest press is calling my name. I could say that’s for reasons of fitness, but the truth is that I’d like to come home looking jacked. I have a feeling I might get lucky if I do. How about if we agree that this would be a rubbish romantic gift, so I must be doing it for some other reason? We could say that you don’t owe me anything, and that all I’m doing is making sure my daughter and nephew aren’t sitting around all winter in a leaky, moldy house. Casey could get asthma. What kind of shape must those Pink Batts be in now?”

She said, “How do you know that? I was justthinkingthat.”

“Because I’m brilliant.” His voice softened. Finn might be listening, and he might not. He didn’t care. “Or because I’ve thought about it, and Finn told me that you told Jenna that your roof was leaking. Come on, baby. Let me do this for you. Make me happy. It’s one tiny little thing.”

“It’s five thousanddollars.”

“The bunny hutch was nearly a thousand.”

He didn’t hear anything for a long minute. “You spent a thousand... dollars... on a bunny hutch.”

“Very easy to clean. Molded plastic. And there was the walk-in run, since Casey wasn’t going to have the rabbits in the house. My plans have had a way of not quite working out lately. The rabbits haven’t chewed through the electric cords yet and started any fires, I guess, because you would’ve told me.” He switched to leg curls and started working, which might muffle his voice a bit, as he was lying face-down, but too bad. A man couldn’t neglect his workout, not if he wanted a woman to touch him all over. And kiss him there, too, possibly. She’d seemed, that first time, like she’d wanted to undress him. He wanted to know if it were true.

Eight more days.

“You are insane,” she said.

“I could be. Better take advantage of it.”

“I have to... deliver these flowers. I... You’re... I’ll talk to you later.”

She hung up on him again. On purpose this time.

He should be upset about that.

Nah.

Hayden turned up on Wednesday evening.

“I’m here, and I brought kebabs,” he called into the strange, echoing space that was a house being re-roofed. “Although I could ask,” he said when Zora came around the corner from the lounge, “whyyou’rehere. When am I going to get to see this flash house of Rhys’s?”

“I wanted to make sure everything was buttoned up tight,” she said, “and covered, of course, in case it does rain overnight.” She took the food bag from him and set it on the plastic covering the kitchen benchtops, started opening boxes, and said, “Mm.”

Isaiah skidded into the room, with Casey behind him. “Hey, mate,” Hayden said, ruffling Isaiah’s hair, then offering Casey a high-five, which she returned with relish.