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“The vineyard is in Gibbston Valley?” Mick asked slowly. At her nod, he hesitated for a moment and then said rather diffidently, “I can give you a lift if you like. I have to meet my boss at Ryland’s estate near the Kawarau Gorge this afternoon. It wouldn’t be far out of my way.”
“Oh.” Sophy stared at him, feeling awkward. “I can’t ask you to do that.”
“I offered,” he said calmly.
“Well…” She hesitated. “I have to stop by my house first to pick up Jeeves and my bag.”
“Not a problem.” Mick paused. “As in Wodehouse?”
“As in a very exuberant dog,” Sophy said, grinning.
When Mick’s gleaming black Lexus pulled to a stop outside her house, Sophy could already see the swish of Jeeves’s tail through the frosted glass window in the hall. She dug out her key and went to let him out, receiving only a cursory wag for her trouble before he shot off to the gate to bark at Mick. Confident that her cowardly pet would never go further than a vocal strop at a creature ten times his size, Sophy left them to it and went inside to grab her things and leave a note for Melissa. When she came back out with her bag, Mick was down on his haunches with Jeeves, doing that weird man-canine bonding ritual guys did, where they rubbed the dog down in hard circular strokes like they were polishing their car. Instead of taking justifiable offense at the rough treatment, Jeeves had been reduced to quivers of ecstasy.
Mick stood up and dusted off his hands against his back pockets, smiling at her. He reached for her bags and carried them out to the boot.
“Got your inhaler?” he asked bossily as he opened the door for her to get back in.
“Yes, Mother,” she said meekly, and he gave her braid a sharp tug.
By the time the car reached the end of the street, Jeeves was leaning over the driver’s seat with his chin on Mick’s shoulder, the fickle little blighter.
Mick reached his hand up and over his shoulder, rubbing the dog’s ears.
“I’ve got to get one of these.”
“A dog? Why don’t you? I don’t think I could live without one.” Sophy grunted as Jeeves took that as an invitation to join her on the front seat. His back paws jabbed her squarely in the kidney as he tried to work out where to put his stomach. “On second thoughts…”
Mick grimaced.
“Too much travelling at the moment. I have a sixteenth-floor flat in London and I’m hardly ever there. Not exactly conducive to keeping a pet.”
“Oh.” Sophy frowned. “Well, there’s always those robotic fish. I’m sure they’re more fun than they look. You’d have to remember to change the batteries, though. And there’s that dog app on iTunes that repeats everything you say. You wouldn’t even have to feed – ”
“Has anyone ever told you that you’re an immense pain in the butt?” Mick didn’t pull his eyes from the road, but the dimple in his left cheek was a deep smiling groove.
“No,” said Sophy virtuously, resting her chin on top of Jeeves’s head. “Nobody ever has.”
Mick turned through the bustling outer suburb of Frankton, which Sophy remembered as the serene and sleepy setting of many a childhood ramble. Now there was barely room to move without bumping into a fast food restaurant or homeware store.
“I only have the vaguest memories of Queenstown from when I was a kid,” Mick said, echoing the direction of her thoughts, “but I can’t get over how much it’s changed. Your house must be one of the last old kiwi baches in central Queenstown.”
Sophy nodded.
“There’s hardly any residential housing at all in the centre of town now. The hotel and retail boom has pushed the suburbs further and further back into the hills. My aunt and uncle have been offered a lot of money for the land, but Uncle Peter doesn’t want to sell. Thank God. With the rental market being what it is, I’d probably end up trading a ten minute walk to school for a forty-five minute carpool from Cromwell,” she said, naming the smaller neighbouring town, and then darted a warning look at him. “And please don’t feel the need to chip in with tales of big-city traffic woe from London and Auckland. You’re talking to a South Islander who can wield a mean chisel.”
“Point taken,” said Mick, amused. He glanced out the side window at the looming Remarkables mountain range, ruggedly beautiful against a clear blue sky. “The development can’t alter the scenery.”
No, it could not. Sophy stared up at the mountains as well. It sounded silly even to her vivid imagination, but she felt as if she’d grown up in the shelter of the Remarkables, metaphorically as well as literally. She would always look at them and see home. Today, with the sunshine on her face and the breeze rushing through the open window to tousle her hair, she felt that surge of happiness that sometimes overtook her on a hot Central Otago day. Even when she was buried to the eyeballs in assignments and bar shifts, it could feel like she was on summer holiday.
The present company wasn’t too shabby, either.
They drove over the Kawarau Bridge, high above the river, and Mick pulled the car over so they could watch the bungy jumping. The bridge was packed today, the line of waiting participants and giggling spectators stretching back into the parking lot.
“Whenever we drove over the bridge when I was little, I’d keep my fingers crossed that the timing would be right to see someone jump,” Sophy said, smiling as she watched a harnessed woman peer nervously over the edge, obviously debating whether she’d lost her mind or not. She grinned at Mick. “Want a go?”
Mick winced as he watched the woman plunge headfirst over the edge. Her outstretched hands touched the water before she was flung back up, bouncing around on the end of the rope like a cork on elastic. They could hear the laughter clear to their car.
“I have a healthy respect for the relationship between my size and gravity,” he said, “and rubber pulleys do not enter the equation.”
