Just Not Mine Read Online Free PDF

fallen, eh, Koti,” Will told his host. “Your entertaining style’s a bit of a change from the old days.” They’d been teammates when Koti had been with the Chiefs, Hugh remembered, and yeh, he could recall a few parties back in the day, after the Hurricanes had played the Chiefs. Both Will and Koti probably had an incident or two they were just as glad had never hit the press.
    “Shh,” Koti said with a laugh. “We don’t talk about that anymore.” He pointed with his tongs to the chilly bin filled with ice, then returned to the huge barbecue, turned over hefty chunks of chicken, added thick rounds of tender eye fillet.
    “ Does everybody here have kids?” Will asked, helping himself to a beer. “Because I’m getting a bad feeling about this party.”
    Hugh could relate. He’d been to the odd barbecue or picnic before with the vague knowledge that his teammates’ kids were somewhere about the place, but he’d never paid any more attention than that. He felt like he was sitting at the parents’ table, and he wasn’t at all sure he liked it.
    “ Pretty much,” Koti said. “I asked some of the single boys along tonight, but they realized how family-friendly it’d be, decided on a piss-up instead, I wouldn’t be surprised.”
    “Don’t say that,” Nic said. “First you invite the conditioning coach, then you tell him about everyone’s plans to get out of condition, not to mention having him eyeing us the whole time, counting the beers?”
    “If I’m drinking along with you, you’re safe,” Finn said, popping the top on a Monteith’s Black. “And I’m not concerned about the others, not tonight. What I don’t know, I can’t patrol. I don’t have to worry about Hemi anymore, either. He can get pissed, get fat too for all I care.”
    “ Yeh, but I answer to a higher power,” Hemi said.
    “Didn’t realize you were that religious,” Will said.
    Hemi smiled. “Not the higher power I had in mind.”
    “Ah.” Will looked a bit mystified still, but the other men laughed.
    “Anyway,” Finn said, “we’re all on holiday. Except maybe Hemi. Cheers.” He drained what looked like a good third of the bottle, to Hugh’s practiced eye. Well, they said there wasn’t enough beer in the world to make a loose forward tight, especially not one the size of Finn.
    “Where did you say th is other party was?” Will asked, a comical expression on his handsome face. “The one without supervision, and with single people?”
    “I’m a single person,” Hugh pointed out.
    “Yeh, well, you’re not the exact type of single person I had in mind.”
    “ You just need to get married, Will,” Koti said. “Then you’d have the right kind of somebody to bring along, and fewer decisions to make as well.”
    “I heard that.” His wife Kate, a pretty brunette with a personality as large as her frame was tiny, came out onto the deck.
    “ Close to done here,” Koti said. “Everything moving along in there?”
    “ Are you kidding? What little Reka allowed me to do, I turned over to Jenna the moment she arrived. Couple minutes. We’ll give you a shout when we’re ready.”
    She headed back inside, and Will watched her go. “ Don’t think being married would suit me,” he said. “Maybe in ten years or so. When I’m elderly, like certain formerly loose forwards I could name.” He gave his prospective conditioning coach a cheeky grin that made Hugh suspect Finn would be setting him right in the gym before very long at all. “Having too good a time right now, and one woman for the rest of my life? Nah. Can’t see it. And kids—I’m really not ready for that.”
    Finn leaned against the deck rail, lifted his beer bottle to Hugh. “Speaking of kids, how ya going with yours, Hugh? Jenna was asking.”
    “Didn’t know you had kids,” Will said. “Plural kids?”
    “My brother and sister,” Hugh said. “Back there.” He gestured with his own bottle.
    “Oh. I thought you meant they were