He looks serious and I know he wants to check out if I'm a safe driver. Another car accident, this time with Lucy, is the last thing he needs.
"If you like you can show me around, though I've driven a lot so I should be fine. Stick shift?"
"Eh?"
I make a universal gear change gesture.
"Oh, you mean manual gears as opposed to automatic. It's automatic, I think. But opposite side of the car and the road and all that. You'll soon get used to it."
Lucy tips over her cereal bowl. The mess! But as I get busy cleaning up the baby and mopping the floor, Andrew says. "It's going to be good having you around, Melissa."
Does he mean because I'm here to clean up and share the burden or something else? For a brief moment, I allow myself the fantasy that he means something other than my floor cleaning and babysitting skills. But I make myself stop that pronto. I know I'm just the temporary help. There's no way he means anything other than that.
CHAPTER 10
Andrew
It takes forever before we can leave the house, even after we are all washed and dressed. Apparently, we need a whole raft of things-spare outfits, nappies, formula, snacks, baby wipes, Kleenex, toys. I realize I've only ever been out when I've left Lucy with Beatrice and she has a key in case she needs anything from the house. This stuff is complicated.
After a few nervous moves, Melissa takes to driving on the left no trouble at all. It's a relief that I don't have to worry about her being in control of the car. We drive through Brampton Head and Greendale where I point out the local landmarks and the bakery and supermarket and then we take the turn down to the beach. Melissa doesn't chat much when she drives. I look over at her a couple of times to see her frowning in concentration. But I think she'll be fine.
It's cold down here at the coast. The wind is bracing and coming off the sea onto the shore, the waves throwing up white foam. The sea reflects the gray of the sky. "It's not quite LA," I offer. "Welcome to the British beach in winter."
"I like it," she says. "It's refreshing."
We get Lucy bundled up and into her buggy and walk along the promenade between the dunes and the beach, gulls hovering overhead, calling out. Melissa looks beautiful in her pale blue coat and the gray scarf I lent her.
"Somewhere like this would be mobbed in LA," Melissa says.
"But probably not in weather like this."
"No, they banned weather like this back in 1957." She laughs. "It's not all sun. It rains sometimes. We have smog."
"Sometimes we have sunshine here too. You might even spot some in the next six weeks." I point at a cafe in the distance on the other side of the wide bay. "See that place there? Ice cream awaits you if we make it that far."
"You're on."
She starts up at a brisk pace.
"Are you planning on entering a marathon?"
"No, but someone offered me ice cream."
"It will still be there in an hour. We don't have to get there in the next ten minutes. There's not much demand for ice cream in this weather. I doubt there'll be a run on it."
She laughs. "You can push the buggy for a bit. I'm taking it easy and enjoying the view."
A woman with a corgi approaches from the other direction.
"Aren't you just the cutest family?" the woman says. Melissa starts to correct her as the woman bends over and takes a look at Lucy, babbling in her buggy. But I catch hold of Melissa's arm and put a finger to my lips. It doesn't matter what the truth is. We'll never see the woman again. Instead of looking like an uncle who has been landed with sudden parenthood, an orphaned child, and a temporary babysitter, we can be a normal family for five minutes.
The woman smiles and goes on her way and I'm left wondering how it would be if we were a family for real, Melissa by my side and in my bed. I'd really like to find out how that feels. It's a pity she's not mine and I'll never know.
CHAPTER 11
Melissa
"Sorry," Andrew says, once the woman is out of earshot. "Everyone wants the details if you start telling them the story, and there's ice cream to be had."
Lucy has fallen asleep. "Wide awake to nodding off in ten seconds," I say. "Amazing."
"And she doesn't even have jet lag."
"She's a lot lighter to carry to bed, though." Eek! Why did I say that? I bend over to rearrange Lucy's covers again to spare my blushes and save myself having to check out Andrew's expression.
"It was my pleasure," he says as if he carries women to bed every night the week. "I could have slung you over my shoulder and given you the whole fireman experience." But I hear him laughing now and look up.
"Why do I suspect there's more to the fireman experience than being saved from fire or jet lag?"
He doesn't answer me. For a moment, we just look at each other. I've no idea what he's thinking but I'm imagining him carrying me out of a tall building and saving my life, how it would feel in his arms and what I'd like to do with him right after that.
I think he's going to flirt right back, but he doesn't and now I really am embarrassed. I shouldn't have said that about there being more. I'm reading too much into it because I want there to be more.
But we're back to normal or as normal as we've ever been. "If we get there and she wakes, we can give her a bottle. It's like planning a rescue, this baby care thing, teamwork and timing," he says.
"Without having to carry people out of burning buildings." Apparently, my mind can't let go.
"I hope it won't come to that. With a bit of luck, the cafe won't go up in flames before we get there," he says.
"No, the ice cream will melt." And I can't help thinking of a big dollop of cold ice cream on Andrew's hot body-the one I saw this morning-but there's no mess as it melts because I'm licking it off before any drops reach the sheets. I look at him and I feel my face redden though there's no way he can know what I'm thinking.
"Where are you planning to go after you leave England?" he asks, taking me back to reality again.
"I thought I'd go to Paris, Amsterdam and Rome, maybe Berlin, though I don't know if I'll have time for that before I head back to LA."
"And then? You're going to work for your dad, right?"
"Yes, he wants me to join the company. I tried working for a property company but that didn't go so well."
"What happened?"
"I just didn't fit in."
"I can't imagine you not fitting any anywhere. Did they all have blue hair? Or talk Swahili?"
"Neither." I smile at the idea of my bitchy co-workers sporting blue hair and speaking in words I don't understand when I got exactly what they were hinting at all too clearly when I worked there-I wasn't one of them. "The boss was a douchebag, though. Maybe I shouldn't have mentioned what I thought of him to a girl who turned out to be his niece. Big mistake."
"Oh well, you're better off out of that. You'll be fine working for your dad. No one can say Duncan is a douchebag, not the Duncan I know anyway."
"No, Dad's great. But the job is more about him offering me a career, a future, than what I want to do. I worked there every summer break so I can do the work. I don't know what's not to like, really."
I never told this to anyone, not even my friends. A lot of them don't have the kind of jobs they wanted after working their asses off at college to get a good degree and it seems ungrateful to mention I'm not happy with the idea.
I like the way Andrew listens without jumping in. But crap, he's my father's friend. I shouldn't be saying all this. He's too easy to talk to now that we broke the ice. But then, I guess it doesn't matter to him what I do or don't do so he's got no axe to grind here.
"Your dad was telling me how you hated it at your intern job and deserved a break before you went to work for him. He wants you to be happy. Why not tell him you want to do something else?"
Andrew has a point but it's not that easy. "He'll be upset and I don't have anything I want to do instead."
"Maybe you just need time away to think about it without the pressure of college and everything. What if you end up working for your Dad until you're sixty when you could have been … oh, I don't know … a tightrope walker or a zookeeper?"
Lucy gives a little cry. We stop and I settle her down.
"You should talk to him anyway," Andrew says. "I'm sure Duncan would understand. Secrets like that are not healthy. Do you hate the idea of working for me too? Even though it's only for six weeks and not forty years?"
I grin at him. "So far so good. I think I'll be able to go the distance. You haven't turned out to be too horrendous yet."
"I'm pleased to hear it, but don't keep it a secret if you start to hate it. Better out in the open then we can sort it out."
I nod at him and he smiles. "Hey, Melissa, any other secrets you want to tell me? I'm all ears."
"Nope, not a one."
"You disappoint me. I was looking for some juicy gossip. Juicy gossip is thin on the ground in Beech Hill."
"Maybe I'll have to misbehave when I'm here to give the gossips something to talk about." I blush because I know exactly what kind of misbehaving I have in mind. Misbehaving with him. With Andrew.
CHAPTER 12
Andrew
Melissa is easy to talk to and flirty. I like that though I think the flirt in me went AWOL with everything that's happened lately. Thinking about it, that's not even strictly true. Angela was so serious, I think she put a stranglehold on any kind of flirting.