Twice Shy

by Sally Malcolm

  Twice Shy

  Sally Malcolm

  Copyright

  COPYRIGHT © 2019 SALLY MALCOLM

  Published by Sally Malcolm

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without express permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. All characters, places and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or business establishments or organizations is completely coincidental.

  PLEASE DO NOT HARM the author’s livelihood by using file-sharing sites.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  Fall in love with the New Milton boys!

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  Welcome Cookout, Friday August 30th

  Phone wedged beneath one ear, baby shrieking in the other, Ollie struggled to pull the envelope out of the back pocket of his skinny jeans. “A hundred and six dollars?”

  The grocery store cashier fixed him with an unsmiling look. “And thirty cents.” Her beady eyes landed on Luis, wailing as he struggled manfully against the shopping cart restraints. Well, as manfully as a barely two-year-old could manage.

  “And thirty cents. Right.” Ollie put a hand to Luis’s flushed, angry face. “Hold on big guy, we’re almost done.”

  Tipping the content of the envelope onto the counter, he started sorting through the cash, very aware of the impatient tuts from the line behind him. “It’s for the Parent-Teacher association,” he explained, with an apologetic smile. “We’re holding a Welcome Cookout, and—”

  “Good afternoon, New Milton Elementary School. How can I help you?” The tinny voice of Mrs. Jackson, the school receptionist, spoke into his right ear, making him jump.

  “Oh, hey!” He grabbed the phone, abandoning the cash, and shoved a finger in his other ear to block out Luis’s wailing. “It’s Ollie Snow. I’m sorry, but I’m running late to collect Rory. I’ll be there in, like, twenty minutes tops? I’m so sorry.”

  “That’s okay, we’ll keep hold of him. Again. Thanks for letting us know, Mr. Snow.”

  Mr. Snow. And didn’t that make him feel both ancient and a fraud? An ancient fraud, like ersatz Victorian gothic. As Ollie shoved his phone back into his pocket, Luis let out another shriek, turning an alarming shade of purple. “Hey, hey, shh!” Irritated stares bored into his back, hot little lasers of disapproval. Starting to sweat, he rummaged in his pocket and found a battered packet of raisins. “Here.” He held them out to Luis. “There you go.”

  Distracted, Luis dialed it down as he began poking his little fingers into the raisin box. Ollie figured he had three minutes, max, before the volume started rising again.

  “Never reward tantrums,” pronounced a middle-aged woman from the line behind him. She wore pink sweatpants and a matching top. “Makes a rod for your own back. Just tell them no and mean it.”

  Ollie flushed but didn’t respond. She was probably right. Jules wouldn’t have resorted to bribery, but Jules wasn’t here anymore. There was only Ollie, inadequate as he was, and he didn’t know what else to do.

  He handed over a fistful of cash and watched as the cashier started counting. “I think that’s right.” He threw Luis a worried glance, but he was still digging about in his raisin box. “In fact, keep the change. I gotta run.”

  “I can’t keep the change, sir.” The cashier spared him a glance over the rims of her glasses and pinged open the cash register. Maybe her go-slow was payback for him paying in sticky dollar bills, or maybe his overtly gay t-shirt offended her, but she seemed to take an age to finally hand him his seventy cents change. “You’re all done.”

  Thank God. He piled the last bag of burger buns into his cart, stuffed the cash envelope back into his pocket, and made his escape.

  “See?” tutted the pink woman behind him. “That’s what happens when they have children so young. No idea how to raise them. It’s a vicious cycle.”

  Ollie wanted to tell her to go fuck herself, but he was a responsible adult now. In loco parentis. And, besides, she wasn’t wrong; he really didn’t know what he was doing. But then he’d had this gig dropped on him less than two years ago and had been making it up as he went along ever since. Fake it till you make it, right?

  Once they got out into the late summer air, Luis calmed down. The little guy hated being strapped into anything—shopping carts, strollers, car seats—but at least outside he was distracted, looking around at the other cars. He liked the red ones best, always pointed them out with a chubby little finger and a ‘Wed one!’ As the cart rattled over the pavement toward Ollie’s old Honda, Luis started giggling as the vibrations shook him around. The sound of his laughter lifted Ollie’s spirits, transforming him from stressed-out to delighted in ten seconds flat. This, he’d learned, was a parent’s life—the ups and downs came so thick and fast you never knew which way you were headed. Leaning forward, he kissed Luis’s soft hair. “Rattly-rattle,” he said, smiling. “Rattly-rattle to the car.”

  “Watterly-wattle,” Luis agreed, laughing. “Watterly-wattle.”

  Someone had parked an SUV the size of a tank next to them, the kind of vehicle driven by smug young couples who could afford to protect themselves and their kids from a dangerous world. Once, Ollie had despised them and the people who drove them. He’d considered SUVs to be the gated communities of the highway, a perfect metaphor for the me-before-you culture. Then Rory and Luis had landed in his life, and suddenly he got it. He’d drive the boys around in a tank, too, if he could afford one; there was nothing like having two small children entirely dependent on you for their safety to make you scared shitless of the world.

  He popped the trunk on the Honda and started hauling groceries from his shopping cart and loading them into the car. This evening was the first Parent-Teacher Association event of the year: The Welcome Cookout. Ollie had offered to help in a bid to make friends in his new town, but he was already regretting his enthusiasm. Jackie Olsen, the PTA Committee chairman, was pretty full-on. He’d only chatted with her on Facebook so far, but she wielded her power with dictatorial finesse, and his tentative offer of help had quickly morphed into him agreeing to buy all the food needed for the event.

  He’d planned to do it after his shift in the call-center finished, and before he collected Luis from daycare. But he’d gotten stuck on the phone with an awkward customer, which meant he’d been too late to do the shopping before he picked up Luis. Having a disgruntled toddler in tow had doubled the time it took to get around the grocery store, and now he was late collecting Rory. For the third time since school started. Not a great impression to make in the first month of kindergarten. He sighed. Being late was the story of his life these days; there was just never enough time.

  Just like there wasn’t enough room in his tiny trunk. It was surprising how much space was taken up by two hundred burgers, buns and relevant condiments. Especially when the trunk was alrea
dy stuffed full of stroller. He shoved a grocery bag between the stroller’s wheels, hoping he wasn’t squashing anything too important, then balanced another on top, and—

  “Oops, watch out!” called a breezy female voice from behind him, and he turned around to see a perfectly groomed young woman catching hold of Ollie’s cart as it began to roll away—with Luis still inside.

  “Shit!” He grabbed hold of the end of the cart, yanking it back in panic. He should have been watching. If a car had been coming…

  “Need eyes in the back of your head, huh?” The woman smiled, hoisting a child about Luis’s age onto her hip while her perfect-looking husband loaded groceries into the back of the giant SUV next door. “You need a hand?”

  “Nope.” Aware he’d sounded curt, he tried to soften it with a smile. “Thanks, but I’ve got it.” He lifted Luis from the cart and took him around to buckle him into his car seat. “I’m fine.”

  Ollie was always fine. He had to be.

  ∞∞∞

  “Mr. Morgan?”

  Joel looked up from grading books to see Liz Benton poking her head around his classroom door. She had one of her kindergarteners in tow, a shy looking boy in red shorts and a rainbow tie-dye t-shirt. “Hey,” he said, smiling at the kid. “Who’s this?”

  “This is Rory Palmer,” Liz said. “His carer’s running late and I have a parent consultation in five. Would you mind keeping an eye on him until he’s picked up?”

  “Sure. I’m sticking around for the Welcome Cookout anyway.”

  Liz raised her eyebrows. “Who volunteered you for that?”

  “Me, actually.” He rolled his eyes at her expression. “What? I have the time.” And plenty of it. Time had been one of the key stipulations of his new low-stress life. Time and space: life on the evenest of keels. It’s what he’d needed after his old life imploded, exactly what the doctor had ordered in fact. And if it was a little lonely at times, then so be it. Better than the alternative.

  He stood up from his desk. “Hey, Rory, come on in. It’s lucky you’re here, because I need some help tidying my classroom. You any good at tidying?”

  “He’s great at it!” Liz said, smiling encouragingly. “Off you go, Rory. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  Joel got the kid scrambling around gathering pencils and erasers and putting them into the right pots, but he didn’t miss how often the boy’s anxious gaze flicked out the window to the parking lot. With his dark hair and wide eyes, he was a cute kid. But unusually serious as he carefully sorted the pencils into the correct colors.

  When a car finally pulled into the lot, a beat-up old blue Honda, Rory jumped to his feet and the first smile Joel had seen broke out on his face. A young man climbed out of the car and—

  Okay. It was him.

  Joel had noticed the guy around school since the beginning of the semester. He was hard to miss among all the moms. For one thing, he was at least ten years younger than most of them. For another, he was out, proud, and leaving it in no doubt. In skinny jeans that showed off lean hips and legs, and a tight t-shirt that, today, read ‘Normal’ in rainbow letters, he looked like any one of the beautiful young men Joel had admired from a distance throughout his six-year marriage to Helen. Except that this guy’s brown hair, instead of being carefully styled, was a curly, unruly mess that suggested he’d missed a hairdresser’s appointment six months ago and never rebooked. Somehow it contradicted the rest of him—as if he was dressing up in somebody else’s clothes.

  “That’s your daddy, huh?” Joel said, smiling as Rory pressed his nose to the window and started waving.

  “No.” The kid didn’t turn around. “My daddy and mommy are in heaven. That’s Ollie.”

  Shit. Joel grimaced. Thanks for the heads up, Liz. “I’m sad to hear about your daddy and mommy, Rory.”

  “I’m sad too, sometimes,” Rory said. “But I’m not sad now.”

  “Well, that’s good.” Joel smiled, his heart pinging. In the three years he’d been teaching, kids had never stopped surprising him. “You wanna grab your backpack and we’ll go find Ollie?”

  By the time they reached the parking lot, Ollie had wrangled another kid out of the car—a sturdy looking toddler—and had the trunk open.

  “Ollie!” Rory yelled as soon as they were outside, racing across the empty parking lot towards him.

  Ollie grinned, crouching to catch the kid in his arms. “Hey buddy, sorry I’m late.”

  It was a touching moment and Joel was moved by the sight of this young man and the boy he was apparently parenting. He felt a dangerous, unsettling pang of envy and swiftly set it aside. No point in going there; that boat had sailed. Or, rather, foundered on the rocks and sunk without trace.

  But the uncomfortable emotion distracted him enough that he almost missed the moment the toddler bolted toward the street. Racing to intercept him, Joel scooped the kid up before he could get too far. “Where do you think you’re off to, young man?”

  Ollie straightened from hugging Rory, eyes wide. “Luis!”

  He was a wriggler, this kid, but no match for Joel and he carried him over to Ollie with a smile. “You’ve got a runner,” he said as he handed him over.

  “I don’t normally let him—” Ollie hoisted the kid onto his hip. “I wouldn’t normally let him out of his car seat like that, it’s just that he’s been stuck in a shopping cart all afternoon and he gets cranky when he can’t run about, and I had my eye on him until—”

  “Hey!” Joel cut him off with a wave of his hand. “No harm done.”

  Ollie blew out a breath. “No. Sorry. Thanks.” He ran a hand through his curly hair and gave a nervous laugh. “Not a great first impression, me being late for pick-up and then almost losing Luis.”

  “You don’t have to impress me,” Joel said, and for some reason his words made him flush. To cover it, he added, “I’m Joel Morgan. I teach sixth grade. Miss Benton asked me to keep an eye on Rory until you got here.” He smiled down at Rory. “He did a great job helping me tidy up the classroom.”

  “Yeah?” Ollie ruffled Rory’s dark hair. “Good boy. And you’re gonna help me carry the groceries into the school too, right, Rory?”

  “Did you get ketchup?”

  Ollie made a point of thinking about it, tapping his chin with one finger. “Gee, I can’t remember. You’d better go check for me.”

  When Rory dashed off to investigate the contents of the trunk, Ollie said, “I’m helping with the Welcome Cookout tonight. The PTA thing?”

  Joel felt inexplicably pleased to hear that. “Well,” he said. “So am I.”

  “Yeah?” Ollie smiled and it made his eyes dance. Warm brown eyes, Joel noticed. “Then maybe you can tell me where to put all this stuff? I’ve got, like, a million burgers in the trunk.”

  “I found the ketchup!” Rory yelled from behind him. “Blech! Why did you get mayo? Mayo’s gross.”

  Ollie rolled his eyes. “It’s not gross, Rory. Lots of people like mayo.”

  Rory answered with retching noises and Joel laughed. “You need a hand getting all this into the school?”

  “No, I’m fine.” Ollie shifted Luis onto his other hip. He’d started squirming to get down again. “Ugh, you’re getting heavy, Champ.”

  “Why don’t I grab some bags for you?”

  “No, really, I’ve got it. I can manage.”

  Which was when Joel spotted Rory squirting mayonnaise out of a giant bottle onto the pavement. “Uh, Rory…?”

  Ollie turned around. “Oh my God! Rory, stop it. What are you doing?”

  “Nothing!” The bottle was clearly visible when he hid it behind his skinny back, his eyes wide and innocent. “Mayo’s gross.”

  “For the love of—You come right here,” Ollie scolded, his cheeks pinking as he threw a worried glance at Joel. Hell, did he think he was getting graded on his parenting skills? “That’s naughty, Rory. Look at the mess you made. And it’s a waste of food and money. Now what do you say?”

  Ror
y’s bottom lip turned down into a pout. “Sorry, Ollie.”

  “I should think so. Now put that bottle back in the bag and—”

  “Hellooo! Mr. Morgan, hello!” The strident voice rang out over the parking lot and Joel froze for a moment before turning around to greet Jackie Olsen, chair of the PTA since the beginning of forever.

  She trotted across the parking lot in bright white training shoes, her aggressively blond hair up in a ponytail just like her daughter’s, poking over the sun visor shading her eyes. Her second youngest was in Joel’s class, a perky girl of eleven going on seventeen—a definite chip off the old blockette. Joel fixed a smile on his lips. “Jackie, hello.”

  She moved in for an air kiss, which he tolerated because it was just her way. “Mwah!” she said, with a smack of her lips. “How was your summer? You look scrumptious, as always. So tan!”

  Her flattery and flirtation were old news—she did it to all the male teachers—but with Ollie watching, Joel felt unexpectedly self-conscious. “It was good, thanks. I laid a new floor in my living room and got the roof fixed.”

  Pressing a hand to her chest, she feigned a swoon. “Be still my beating heart, there’s nothing more attractive than a man who makes a home.” She turned her aggressively white smile on Ollie, who was staring with unabashed bemusement. “Hi,” Jackie said, offering her hand. “I’m Jackie Olsen. Chair of the PTA.”

  “Oh!” Understanding dawned and he smiled. “I’m Ollie Snow—we chatted on the PTA Facebook group? I’ve brought the cookout food.”

  “Marvelous,” she said, clearly sizing him up. “Delighted to meet you, Ollie. It’s wonderful to have another dad involved. We don’t get enough men, and— Oh.” Her eyebrows rose as she took in the puddle of mayo next to the car. “Did something leak?”

  “What?” Ollie grabbed Rory’s hand. “Oh, er…”

  “No problem, we’ve got it,” Joel said, offering a winning smile. “Where are we putting all this stuff, Jackie? In the dining hall or…?”

  “Out back next to the sports field. My other half is putting the grill together. Are you going to help cook again, Mr. Morgan?” She didn’t quite flutter her eyelashes, but it was a close thing. “You did such a marvelous job at the Summer Carnival.”