“For example, my canvas chair,” I continued casually. “I already loaded it in my ute for you, along with an umbrella. Make sure you wear a good jacket—grab one of mine if you don’t have one—and take one of dad’s insulated coffee tumblers with you from the café.”
“Mm-hmm.”
“You okay there, Lyssa?”
“Yes,” she said primly. “Thank you.”
I grinned harder. “Okay, see you in in a few hours. I’ll be one of the ones in the little shorts. Try not to lose your head when you see my gams. I’ve been voted best thighs three years in a row by the Mapleford Rugby Club, so brace yourself.”
She scowled at my teasing, but I had no intention of stopping. This was the most fun I’d had in years.
“And if you’re a very good girl, I’ll let you cop a little feel after.”
“Shut up, Mike.”
Ah, it was good to hear her say my full name like that. Meant we were back on solid ground.
I mock saluted and left the paddock, whistling.
It felt good to reassert myself. This gal didn’t have the guns to flirt with a player like me—it was like sending a bunny to arm wrestle with an octopus.
All right, yes, she’d had me on the hop yesterday, but that was just the element of surprise. As long as I was the one in control, there was no danger of anything more between us than a bit of spicy chat, and I flirted like that with everyone, so it didn’t mean anything.
Now that I’d successfully turned the tables on her, she’d understand how outgunned she was and go back to treating me like a giant pain in the ass—like she should treat her best friend’s brother. Lyssa was a nun compared to me, and now she knew it. She wouldn’t make another pass at me.
And thank fuck, because I wasn’t sure I could endure another attempt.
I’d cockblocked this girl twice. A third time might kill me.
My self-congratulatory feeling lasted through the drive to Mapleford, through my warm-up and stretches, and even through the first part of my rugby game.
At halftime, everything turned to custard.
CHAPTER 9
LYSSA
Mapleford’s sports field was in the middle of a nature reserve. Birdsong surrounded us and the air was so sharp and crisp I felt lightheaded. Everything was extremely green, like someone had edited the saturation way up.
There were white lines sprayed onto the grass to delineate the fields for the different sports. Kev said people played rugby, football, and field hockey here. New Zealanders didn’t play American football or baseball. Kev said this with a wince, like he expected me to be offended, but the last time I’d seen either of those sports was by accident at a dive bar. Not many of my fashion friends liked sweaty pastimes.
I’d assumed that Mike would be playing rugby the same as the All Blacks, Aotearoa New Zealand’s national rugby team. I’d seen some of a game on a screen at the airport—players ran up and down the field and smashed each other into the ground. Kev explained that touch rugby was different. Instead of tackling each other, all the players had to do was touch (lol) the player who had the ball. If you got touched (lol, lol), you had to pass the ball to another player. If your team got touched six times without scoring—scores were called tries, which was adorable—then you had to give the ball to the other side.
It sounded simple enough, and I was pleased there was less risk of head injury.
A muddy field wasn’t very accessible for a man on a crutch, so Kev was going to watch his son’s game from the parking lot which bordered the field. He had a set of binoculars with him and seemed quite happy to sit in his car with his oversized thermos and the heat on.
I was going to stay in the car and watch with him—it would hinder my plan to seduce his son with my cheer performance, but I loved spending time with Kev—but he insisted I watch from the sidelines to get the full fan experience.
Along the white sprayed lines that marked the field where Mike was warming up, his team’s supporters were lined up in camping chairs. One empty but familiar chair sat in the middle of the row of people. It’d been the one Mike loaded in the back of his truck.
He’d set it up for me.
Feeling uncharacteristically self-conscious, I made my way over to the chair waiting for me. Tanz, the Maori woman with glorious hair who I’d met at Levitate, was in the chair beside it and she seemed to have been waiting for me.
“Kia ora, Lyssa. Coffee?” She held out a thermos.
“Kia ora!” I replied. I’d practiced saying this over and over last night, listening to a tutorial as I sewed. Tanz didn’t look offended, so either I said it correctly or she didn’t want to have to correct me. I hoped it was the former.
