He. Kissed. Me. Holy crap!!
I laughed to myself before swinging around the bottom staircase and quickstepping up the stairs, giddy and happy at the unexpectedness of the day’s events. I didn’t know, however, just how unexpected they would become as I stopped still at the sound of my name.
“Hold it right there, Amy Henderson!”
Chapter Forty-Four
Any feeling of stomach-tingling excitement over what had gone on only a mere moment before was ripped out from under me with such gut-wrenching force, I thought I must have misheard, or maybe I had dreamed it? But as I slowly turned to gaze down at the bottom of the stairs, the reality hit me like a ton of bricks.
“Mum?”
There she stood, her arms crossed and shooting icicles with her cool, blue eyes.
I hesitantly descended the stairs. “What are you doing here?”
Her hard gaze trailed over my attire. Of all the people in the world to catch me like this, my mother had to be the worst. I would have sooner run into Chris or the entire Onslow Tigers footy team.
“You’re early.” I smiled weakly. “By a whole week.”
“We thought we would surprise you,” Mum said coolly, her perfectly manicured brow arching.
Well, it had worked – surprise! As in nearly giving me cardiac arrest surprise. Normally by now my mum would be flinging her arms around me, her gold bangles jingling with every movement as I was suffocated by the hovering cloud of her expensive French perfume. But she hadn’t budged, she just stared me down.
My heart pounded; surely she hadn’t seen me in the car with Sean? I discreetly flicked my eyes out towards the entrance and breathed a small sigh of relief. You couldn’t see beyond the thick canopy of ivy, even from my vantage point on the stairs. I inwardly thanked Dad’s mates for not being too heavy-handed with the trimming at the working bee.
“Where’s Dad?” I lifted my voice, aiming for light and breezy, hoping that if I didn’t play into my mum’s mood, or acknowledge my state of dress, it would cease to be an issue. No such luck.
“He’s inside, talking to Chris and the apparent new staff member that was put on without our knowledge.”
Crap!
He was already in there, talking – there was no chance to corroborate any story with Chris or Adam or anyone.
The jig was up.
“Um, look, I better get ready, there’s a booking for lunch that I’m a part of.”
“As in your friends? Chris mentioned it.”
“Um, yeah, it’s a kind of a get-together.” I wanted to say as a private celebratory drink for all the hard work we’d put in, but I didn’t want to say anything until I had spoken to Dad.
“Well, I wouldn’t bother, I told Chris to cancel it. Your father and I want to settle in. You can catch up with your friends another time.”
“They wouldn’t be in anyone’s way,” I said. “You had no right to—”
“For God’s sake, Amy, this is not a holiday camp, and although it seems that you have been treating it as such, it is still a place of business.”
My mouth gaped open. She had cancelled my lunch plans so she could preciously kick back in their apartment? An apartment that would be uninhabitable if I hadn’t have scrubbed and cleaned and washed and repaired it. The very fact that she had accused me and my friends of leeching off the Onslow made my eyes burn with such anger that I clenched my fists and met her stare dead on.
“Are you kidding me? You don’t know anything,” I bit out.
Mum’s brows rose in surprise before creasing back into a hard line.
“What I do know is you better make yourself decent and change out of Sean Murphy’s top before your father sees you.”
For a moment I thought she was telepathic and then I inwardly cringed at the memory that ‘Murphy’ was plastered across my back with the number nine, Sean’s old footy number. I might as well have had a bright fluoro arrow pointing to me, flashing ‘SEAN’.
My mum shook her head. “Honestly, Amy, I am so disappointed in you.” And with that. she unfolded her arms and walked away, leaving me on the stairs feeling like I was that sixteen-year-old girl getting banished all over again.
***
There was no way I could perform damage control on my own. Adam was out with everyone at MacLean’s still, poor Chris was probably getting drilled by Mum and Dad downstairs, and they were no doubt humiliating me in front of him. I could just imagine it now.
“I should have known better; she has done nothing but lounge around since she deferred uni.”
“Sleep all day, party all night; it’s time she got her life together.”
I squeezed my eyes closed, breathing deeply. There was nothing for it: I had to face the music and if it meant telling them a few home truths, then so be it. I had done all I had to protect Dad. I had fought to save the Onslow – it looked a billion times better than it had when I’d arrived, and business was slowly picking up again.