Just Not Mine by Rosalind James Page A

sizzle.
    “ Just buy the dukkah ready-made,” she said, pointing with her spatula to a plastic container filled with the mixture of pulverized nuts, herbs, and spices. “Pour some into a plate, press your fillets into it, fry them up in a bit of olive oil, and you’re all good. Charlie said you sometimes found cooking a bit challenging.”
    He smiled. “You could put it that way. Or you could just come right out and say that I’m rubbish at it.”
    “Well, this is a quick option,” she said. “Even faster than hamburgers.”
    He made a face. “Charlie told you about the hamburgers, eh. And the pizza.”
    “He did.” She flipped the fish. “I’m guessing you’re a bit new to the full-responsibility mode?”
    “Yeh,” he s aid, watching her slide the fillets out onto a platter, then taking it from her and carrying it out to the patio. “You’re guessing right.”

    “I have to say,” he said while they were eating, “not only can’t I cook like this, I wouldn’t have known how to build a patio, not without asking around a fair bit, at least. I’m guessing the trailer in your drive is yours, too, not borrowed off a mate. Genuine Kiwi, that is. Handmade all the way, a few spare boards and two tires somebody took off an old car.”
    “ It is,” she said. “I was so excited to find it on Trade Me and have a way to haul all my DIY stuff. Because I’ve got projects. ”
    “Guessing you can back a boat down a ramp, too,” he said with a grin.
    “Of course I can. I drove a tractor before I did a car. A truck as well, come to that.”
    “A country girl, eh. Where’s your family?”
    “Katikati. You know it?”
    “ Murals,” he said. “Close to Mt. Maunganui.”
    “Close geographically, nowhere near otherwise. Not nearly so flash. But it sounds like you’ve been there, if you’ve seen the murals, so you know that.”
    “What are murals?” Charlie asked.
    “Paintings on buildings, or walls,” Josie explained. “Almost all the sides of shops, the fronts, all that, in Katikati? Anywhere there’s space, really, has got a painting on it, mostly things from the past. They’re pretty cool. You could look online if you wanted to see them.”
    “I’ll show you,” Hugh told him. “When we go home.”
    “So you’ve been there,” Josie prompted.
    “Well, driven through. On the way to Mt. Maunganui,” he said with another smile. “The only other thing I know about it is kiwifruit.”
    “Josie used to pick kiwifruit,” Charlie informed his brother. “That’s why she’s so strong.”
    “Does your family have an orchard?” Hugh asked her.
    “Only a few blocks. My dad’s a contractor. Organizes the teams, sends them around.”
    “And you picked,” he said. “Hard work, isn’t it?”
    She shrugged. “Everything on a farm’s hard work. During school breaks, is all. I blame my lack of a ballet career on that, though. Very convenient excuse, when the truth is that the problem wasn’t my broad shoulders, it was my tendency to galumph around the stage like I was on the netball court, and my general lack of talent.”
    “Did you want a ballet career?”
    “Sure. That’s how I met Chloe. We were at grammar school together. Boarding school, because I came to St. Theresa’s for that, here in Auckland.”
    He raised his eyebrows, and she added with a laugh, “On a scholarship, of course, as you’ve guessed. My parents thought I’d be a lawyer.”
    “I thought that too,” he said. “At first, when I met you. That you were a lawyer. Something about the way you stared me down.”
    “Disappointed you too , then,” she said, keeping it cool.
    “I wouldn’t say disappointed.” He was looking at her in the gathering dusk, and she got up, found the matches she’d set ready, and lit the candles on the table, then went around the corners of the patio, crouched and lit the others she’d set ready, careful not to set her floaty white dress alight.
    “There,” she said with a satisfied