She laughed. “Too big for your boots means you think your shit doesn’t stink.”
He shook his head. “That one I can follow. While we’re talking about the local lingo, do you say boinking? As in last night we enjoyed a good boinking. Or do you say shag like the Brits?”
“We’re more likely to say root.”
“As in rooting for the Yankees?”
“As in you’re hot enough to root. How about a root? He was a good root.”
He looked her right in the eyes. “Root?” The word managed to sound deliciously abrupt and rude as it came out of his mouth.
“Never let it be said I didn’t help you understand Australia.”
“Wait, so I’d say, ‘Hey baby, would you like to root?’”
“You could even say, ‘That chick looks like a good root’. The expected quality of the root is an important qualifier. For instance, right now you look like a terrible root.”
Rick and Hassan were approaching. There was no one else around. He took his cap off and smoothed his wet hair back and leaned across the table towards her. “Hey baby, you’re a spectacular root and I’m rooting for the moment I can root you again.”
She put her hand over his face and pushed him away. “Buckley’s chance, you bogan.”
Turns out Buckley’s was an old department store, called Buckley and Nunn and the saying meant no chance at all, and a bogan was an unsophisticated, ill-informed person who didn’t know how to dress well. He’d had to rely on Hassan for that information.
“Lucky she didn’t call you a yobbo,” Hassan had said, much to Teela’s amusement.
He did not feel like a bogan or a yobbo when he was showered, shaved and dressed as himself again, sitting beside Teela in a tiny two-seater seaplane as they flew to a restaurant only accessible by boat or plane hidden in a national park at Berowra Waters. To get there they had to fly over the city with stunning views of the Opera House, the Harbour Bridge and all the astoundingly beautiful white sand beaches that fringed the coast.
“I’ve never been on a seaplane before,” Teela said, giving him a more than adequate hand-holding excuse that he took full advantage of. “This is a real treat.” She preened like one of those swans in the park. “I’m so glad you took me up on my suggestions.”
She’d put their whole itinerary together. Conference managed a weekend for two and briefed Rick in on what they’d require. Haydn’s only request had been a swim in the ocean.
“Any chance it will win me a root?”
She turned from the window. “You’re incredibly rootable right now.”
He’d have kissed her then but she whipped her face to the window, not wanting to miss the sensational view. He had to make do with a mouthful of ponytail.
Every mouthful of the degustation menu they shared, tucked in a private room of the riverside restaurant was superb. The chef and her staff were absolute professionals, and the other guests, lingering through the late session, after some nodded hellos and a few enthusiastic handshakes, were too cool to do anything but pretend to ignore them.
Haydn was grateful this was a controlled environment, unlike the park where you couldn’t monitor a large area and there was the potential to get mobbed, because that meant he could sit across from Teela as himself.
“Tell me more about your business?” he asked over snapper, nashi pear and coriander.
He wanted her to talk, to watch her, to take in the way her body spoke as much as what she said.
“You’re not interested in my business.”
And there was another reminder, he didn’t always get what he wanted. “Just then, that was me asking about it.”
“That’s you being polite, using the good manners your mother taught you.”
Mom, ah she would’ve liked Teela. Dad would be a fan. He’d fill her head with all kinds of embarrassing Haydn growing-up stories. That was thought given too much rope. Teela’s answer was an acknowledgement of their deal. They weren’t destined to become entwined in each other’s lives. She was telling him to keep it light, talk about the view, the weather. Fuck that.
“Could be, Secret Weapon. Could be having sat in the offices of Carpenter Conference Management for some time yesterday, I am genuinely interested.”
Teela weighted that choice while the waiter put the second dish: trout, crab and daikon in front of them. She shook her head. “I don’t know how you do it.”
He raised a brow and a fork simultaneously. Daikon was some kind of root vegetable, like a white carrot. How appropriate.