But as he swung around the newel post at the head of the narrow staircase Miranda emerged from her room in a dark blue dressing gown and, from the room beside her, Ethan erupted into the day in yellow Buzz Lightyear pyjamas, beaming a joyous, early morning, creased and crumpled smile. ‘Hello, Dommynic! You still look like red Batman!’
Dominic ruffled Ethan’s bedhead hair and tried to keep moving. ‘Hiya, Ethan! Yes, suppose I do.’ On the other side of his bedroom door, Crosswind’s barking and scrabbling rose a pitch past frantic. Miranda reached for the door handle and let loose the hound.
Trapped, Dominic had to brace against the banisters while Crosswind leaped a frantic welcome at his legs.
‘Long party?’ Miranda’s eyes brimmed with laughter.
‘Um.’ He grimaced as Ethan joined Crosswind in bouncing and yapping. ‘Quiet, Crosswind! Down, good boy.’ Crosswind, at least, he could tell to shut up.
Ethan went from shrill to deafening. ‘Dommynic, can I play with your cloak, please? And your fork? Where have your horns gone? Has Kenny still got his horns on? Is he still wearing his cloak?’
As the least said to Ethan about Kenny’s current whereabouts, the better, Dominic swooped Ethan up so that they were nose-to-nose. ‘Tell you what, let’s have a getting dressed race. You go in your room and get dressed and I’ll go in mine, and whoever is the winner can let Crosswind out in the garden and,’ he paused impressively, ‘wear the cloak.’
‘Yeah!’ screamed Ethan, wriggling down and grabbing Miranda’s hand. ‘C’mon, Mummy, help me beat Dommynic in a gedding dressed race!’
‘OK, Ethan.’ Miranda allowed herself to be dragged into his room, still raising her eyebrows at Dominic over her shoulder. ‘Then Dominic can tell us all about his party last night.’
‘Yeah!’ yelled Ethan, as he disappeared.
Dominic dressed – jeans felt comfortably secure after Lycra – but kept his sweater in his hand for when Ethan came banging at his door.
His reward was a scream of joy. ‘I won, Dommynic’s not ready, Mummy!’
Heaving a theatrical good loser’s sigh, Dominic shucked into the sweater before securing the cloak loosely around Ethan’s soft little neck. ‘Let’s let Crosswind out, then.’ He held the ends of the cloak and Ethan’s hand to navigate the stairs.
But Ethan’s interest in letting Crosswind out shrank to turning the key and throwing open the door once he realised he wouldn’t be allowed to run around the garden in the cloak, as the hire shop would take a sour view of it having been dragged around a damp garden. Dominic, keeping him in view, wandered out into the freshness of the morning while Crosswind peed on the statue of the green man.
Ethan ran circuits around the kitchen table, cloak flying. ‘Red Batma-an! Can I wear the tail?’ he shouted.
Dominic raised his voice. ‘’Fraid not, mate. It’s attached to the trousers and they’re too big for you.’
‘’Kay!’ Ethan resumed racing around the table. Miranda appeared, dressed and available to look after Ethan, so Dominic eased the back door shut to avoid more of the cousinly knowing looks. And reflect on the night before.
It had been incredible. He’d told Liza that, in the car, and she’d laughed, blue eyes wide and hair yet to be dried. ‘I bet you say that to all the girls.’
Which had given him pause. But, no, usually he said ‘great’, which was nowhere near ‘incredible’. He wasn’t sure that he’d ever reached ‘incredible’ before. What he hadn’t said was that being inside her had made his world make sense for the first time in a year. The feeling of being alien to himself had glugged away. Peace. A sense of rightness in armfuls and handfuls of Liza Reece.
But then her smile had changed, become something just for him, and she’d agreed, softly, ‘Yes, it was incredible.’ She’d shuddered, turning him on like an acetylene torch. Then checked her watch apologetically. ‘But I really need to do my hair and get ready for work.’ And, dismissed with a light kiss, he’d found himself out of the car and watching her do a three-point turn in the steeliness of what passes for dawn on a dank first of November, watching her drive away. Liza driving. Driving him nuts. Him driving into her—
He shook his mind out of her bed. The shower, dress and car journey period had been so brisk that he hadn’t felt it provided adequate opportunity for exploring what the deal was regarding their … whatever it was. Seeing each other. Non-relationship. Night of amazing sex. One-all-too-short-night stand. Mr Truthful, he’d fibbed about not being up for a relationship. He was pretty much up for whatever it was that had happened, though.
But neither had they returned to the delicate subject of their conflicting interests in the treatment centre, and that could be tricky.
He yawned and jammed his hands into his pockets against the chill. The rain had stopped but the moist air made the garden smell of cabbages. By no stretch of the imagination had he practised sleep hygiene last night, and he sighed in anticipation of how much of today would be lost to catch-up sleep and general zombieism, flopping from untired to mega exhausted at no notice. He yawned again, then smiled. Worth it, though. He thought of her beautiful hands on him. Beautiful mouth. He shivered. Beautiful everything. Nights like that were worth zombieism.
He forced his thoughts into business mode. What should he do regarding the lease? He had every intention of asking to see the valuation, or getting his own, but valuations could be meaningless. His business courses had taught him that an asset was worth what somebody would pay for it. And, despite the steepness of the premium, his first action after getting the call from Nicolas had been to ring Isabel Jones and set up the meeting to talk about renting the land beside the centre. Today, at three. But that had been before he’d spent the night making love to the competition. Should he and Liza talk first? Or should he have his meeting, and talk later?
The price Nicolas was asking … Should he and Liza be looking for a way to work in cahoots? Together, they might be able to control Nicolas, make him revise his price, by acting as if they weren’t both in the hunt.
But they were both in the hunt.
If they negotiated Nicolas down by manipulation, which of them would take up the lease?
It might be gentlemanly for him to bale out, but not pragmatic. Even if Liza could get the money together, the Pattinson family were likely to favour his offer because it would mean an income stream from land that had previously not produced one. He wasn’t gentleman enough to throw away his dreams in a futile gesture.
An early nap helped negate some of the follow-on effects of a short and broken night, but he anticipated mainlining coffee in an effort to keep the sleep monster at bay. He took a second shower and put on a good shirt, ready for his meeting with Isabel Jones, then ran down to the kitchen, Crosswind weaving around his feet.
‘Dommynic!’ shouted Ethan, from his vantage point on his booster seat, facing the door. ‘Shona and Gus are here for lunch. Look!’ He gestured with a wedge of Miranda’s homemade seedy brown bread.
‘Wow,’ said Dominic, his usual adult-pretending-to-listen-and-be-impressed response. Then an alert shrilled inside his head. Shona and Gus were the names of Liza’s niece and nephew. And they were unlikely to have arrived at Miranda’s house alone.
But, by the time his brain had processed the thought, he’d reached the doorway. From next to Ethan the attentive little face of Shona stared. And beside her sat a dark-haired, dark-eyed woman, cradling a sleepy baby Gus in one arm. She was staring, too.
Miranda grinned across a table full of chopped vegetables, dips and salad, her oval glasses catching the light. ‘Sit down, Dom, this is my friend, Cleo. Liza’s sister. Ethan and Shona were due a playdate, so I suggested lunch.’
Dominic said his hellos to the children and, suppressing a sudden desire to claim a lunch appointment elsewhere, shook Cleo’s hand, the one that wasn’t hooked around the baby. Cleo smiled, but her dark eyes were assessing. Surreally, although Liza was blonde and blue-eyed where Cleo was dark, rounder, talle
r, their wide-open, unafraid expressions were identical. It made him smile. ‘Liza didn’t mention you’d be visiting Miranda today.’
‘She wouldn’t know. I haven’t seen her for a week.’
‘Dommynic, can Crosswind—?’ Ethan began to clamber from his booster seat.
‘Make the dog skateboard!’ Shona threw her legs off her seat, too.
‘Sit down, please!’ chorused Cleo and Miranda, in an identical Mother Voice.
‘Awwww …’
‘Anyway, Crosswind has to run around the garden because I can’t take him out till later and he’ll have to stay in my room whilst I’m out.’ Dominic chivvied Crosswind outside and shut the door on his injured look before the children got into trouble for not eating their lunch.
‘Awwww …’ But the children settled back into their seats and, with much the same feeling of accepting the inevitable, Dominic took the remaining place at the table, glad that he’d slept so there would be no risk of falling into stupor before Liza’s sister’s eyes. He helped himself to salad and cheese.
Ethan and Shona fell into some game involving ordering the contents of their plates according to colour preferences, leaving their mothers free to focus on Dominic.
‘So, Miranda says you’re moving into the area?’ Cleo joggled Gus gently as she ate a cherry tomato.
‘Hopefully.’ He helped himself to homemade chutney. He’d have to gargle before he met Isabel Jones but Miranda’s caramelised onion chutney was beyond his powers to resist. ‘Liza’s probably told you that there’s an issue.’
Cleo nodded. ‘She told me about you wanting her Stables.’
Dominic smiled neutrally, and didn’t point out that The Stables was no more Liza’s than it was his. Cleo was being protective. The light in her eyes made him suspect that she might be capable of casual decapitation if a threat to Liza made it necessary.
But, as he didn’t plan on hurting Liza – although them both wanting the same business premises was unfortunate – he felt no need to be defensive. Instead, when Cleo asked him about what he was doing in Middledip, he provided a precis of how he’d left Stansted and a relationship at around the same time, directly or indirectly because of his narcolepsy. She’d probably had all that from Miranda, anyway. And it got it out of the way.
The baby stretched and mewed and Cleo patted his nappied bottom. ‘So all you need to do is find somewhere to site your new business, and you’re on the way to reinventing yourself?’
He nodded as he buttered more bread, not reacting to her implication that he hadn’t already found a site for his business. It was great bread, though he preferred the white kind. Without bits in.
Cleo didn’t press her question. Instead, she blindsided him. ‘I’m getting married, soon.’
His brows flicked up. ‘Congratulations.’ Had Liza mentioned a wedding? No, he would have remembered.
‘It’s the budget wedding of the year. Registry office and village hall. Justin took it into his head that we have to be married, so we’re throwing it together as we go along. The only night the village hall was free was the fifth of November, probably because the bonfire party will be on the playing fields and nobody but us is mad enough to want to have a function at the same time. But Justin said we’ll treat it as part of the celebrations and he’s had the invites done at work.’ She picked up an already-opened envelope from beside Miranda’s plate, extricating a pearly white card deftly with the non-baby hand. ‘Here’s the invitation, for the reception.’
Dominic saw Miranda, Jos, Ethan, Dominic and Crosswind in fat, sloped handwriting. ‘Oh no, I don’t expect—’ he began, quickly.
‘I included you because I’m hoping you’ll do me a favour and bring your performing dog. Shona went on and on about Crosswind skateboarding. We’re really on a shoestring, we can’t afford a conjuror or clown, and the place will be swarming with kids. They’d love him.’
‘But if there are fireworks—’
‘They’ll be in the evening. I’m talking about something for the kids in the afternoon.’
‘Crosswind isn’t really an act—’
‘No, Miranda tells me that he’s just a natural superstar who loves an audience. I’m hoping that, you know, you could let the kids have something to watch for twenty minutes or so.’ Having cut across his every sentence with smooth precision, her eyes had softened, now, cajoling, hopeful.
Incredibly difficult to resist.
Especially when Miranda chimed in, ‘And you know how Crosswind loves to show off, Dom.’
Damn. He sighed. ‘I’ll bring Crosswind for a quick visit. But you don’t have to invite me to your wedding.’
‘It’s more of a party. The actual wedding ceremony is at noon, just us, the kids, and close family. And I wouldn’t be so rude as to exclude you. Miranda tells me that you’re probably going to rent a flat in Little Dallas, so you’re already a villager. I know it’s short notice, but that’s Justin for you. No sooner does he decide to do something then he acts.’ Cleo shifted Gus up onto her shoulder, where he lay as still as a doll, whilst she rubbed circles on his back. Her eyes smiled coaxingly. ‘We’d love you to be there.’
He was in no doubt that Cleo meant, I want to see how Liza is with you, and decided to leave it to Liza to head her sister off, if she wanted to. He could always make a later excuse. An urgent nap, or something. ‘OK. Thanks.’
‘Miranda says you have a friend staying. You can bring him along.’
‘Mummy, can I get down?’ bellowed Ethan.
‘Mummy, can I get down?’ yelled Shona.
‘I’m not sure if he’ll still be here. But thanks.’ Dominic helped himself to more cheese and chutney and grinned at the idea of dragging Kenny along to a stranger’s wedding swarming with kids. It would be so not his thing.
‘Mummy—’ Ethan and Shona shouted together.
In the racket of the children being allowed to abandon the table for the sitting room and the delights of Ethan’s toy chest, Dominic excused himself. He’d barely made the hall when the doorbell ding-donged and Kenny let himself in wearing new-looking jeans and shirt. Probably Undead Barbie had been despatched to shop for him. A swathe of shiny red Lycra hung over his shoulder and his trident was tucked under his arm.
Ethan and Shona tumbled over each other to greet the newcomer in the hall. ‘Kenny!’ yelled Ethan, bouncing on the spot. ‘You’re not dressed like red Batman any more. I saw Dommynic dressed like red Batman, this morning, and I beat him in a gedding dressed race, and he had to let me wear the cloak!’
Kenny looked at Dominic over Ethan’s head. ‘Still dressed like red batman this morning, was he?’ And, as the children yelled their way back to the toy chest, ‘Stay at Rochelle’s place, Doc?’
From the kitchen, Miranda giggled. ‘Guess again, Kenny.’
Dominic tried to frown down first Miranda and then Kenny. Everyone was showing way too much interest in where he’d chosen to spend last night. And with Liza’s sister listening … ‘I’ve got this meeting with Isabel Jones in an hour. Any chance you could take my car and drop our costumes back in Peterborough? They have to be handed back by five or we forfeit the deposit.’
‘OK,’ Kenny said, slowly. ‘I’m not needed in this meeting?’
Dominic felt suddenly awkward. He’d asked Kenny up to give his opinion on the site for his project, but today’s meeting was about money, not where to build the kayak shed. ‘Not this one, Ken.’ He glanced at his watch and started for the stairs.
But Kenny didn’t step aside to give Dominic room. Instead, he dropped his voice. ‘Liza, presumably?’
Dominic stared at his friend, surprised to detect ice in the words. ‘No reason why not, is there?’
‘Because you know I’m taking her out to dinner? With you and Rochelle?’ Anger was tightening the skin around Kenny’s eyes.
‘Rochelle kind of put me on the spot about dinner,’ Dominic pointed out, reasonably, wishing he’d pulled the kitchen door shut behind him so that their con
versation was no more public than it had to be. ‘I didn’t exactly say yes – just that it sounded OK. No arrangement was made.’
‘An arrangement was made – between me and Liza.’
Dominic sighed. ‘Kenny, I don’t have time for this. I have a meeting. Anyway, Liza said “Could be fun.” That’s not an arrangement.’ Then, as Kenny’s eyes blazed, he felt his own anger kindling. ‘Sorry if I stepped on your toes, mate, but you didn’t bother to check out the position with me and Liza before you barged in, so no complaints, eh?’ He tried to diffuse the situation with a grin. ‘And you went home with Undead Barbie, didn’t you?’
‘Only,’ said Kenny, stiffly, ‘after I saw you coming out of a bedroom with Liza. What was your chat up line? “I have a rare sleep disorder, please will you take me to bed?”’
Fury burst like fire deep in Dominic’s guts, clenching his fists. But he smothered it, shoving his hands in his pockets. Mindful of the kids – and, for that matter, Cleo – listening, he contented himself with deadly emphasis. ‘Yeah, right, Kenny, I always wanted a disability, just to give me a cheesy chat up line.’ He clapped Kenny on the shoulder harder than was necessary. ‘I see you’ll use any weapon. All’s fair in love and war, eh?’
After a moment, Kenny gave a crooked smile. ‘Yeah, Doc. All’s fair in love and war.’
As Dominic brushed past and up the stairs, he heard Cleo remarking drily, ‘Men snapping at each other over my sister. Quite like old times.’
Well, why settle for awkward when you could have total cringing embarrassment? In the safety of his room, he dialled the number Rochelle had lodged in his phone last night as he grabbed his jacket, wallet and keys. And ProPlus, in case nobody offered him coffee and he needed a caffeine hit.
‘Hi,’ said Rochelle, in his ear.
Dominic thanked her for the party, then decided that there was no way of saying what he had to say other than directly. ‘Rochelle, I feel a bit awkward about this, but I’m not sure that the dinner we talked about is going to come off.’
Rochelle laughed. ‘Did it help?’
Dream a Little Dream Page 18