Dream a Little Dream (19 page)

His gaze never wavered. But he was looking wary and tense. And, as if to fulfil his every apprehension, Liza felt her heart deflate into a pancake of disappointment. ‘My disastrous relationship with Nicolas proves that I’m not good at being answerable to anyone.’ She paused. ‘I can’t give you an answer just now. I need to consider my position.’

Silence. His gaze bored into her. Eyes flat, excitement gone. ‘I get it,’ he said, finally, slowly. He looked suddenly fatigued. Disappointed. Grim. Unhurriedly, he reached inside his jacket, took out a blister pack of white pills and washed two down with a swill of coffee. ‘Last night’s getting in the way.’

She flushed. ‘I want to believe it’s a good thing that you’re offering me. But, yes, it would mean us spending a lot of time together, which could get messy if we’re—’

Slowly, he pushed back his chair. Waited a beat and then climbed to his feet. ‘If we’re having sex.’

Swallowing an unexpected ache in her throat at the non-compatibility of business and that particularly sweet pleasure, she nodded. ‘It would be a screaming nightmare if things go wrong.’

He drained his coffee mug and slapped it down, the noise loud in the quiet of the kitchen. ‘Just got that from findafeebleexcuse.com? How convenient for someone who thinks they’re rubbish at relationships.’

‘It’s not convenient. It’s a valid consideration. Because I am rubbish at relationships.’

He zipped up his jacket and rammed his hands into his pockets. ‘If forgetting one night of sex will put everything on a business footing, then consider it forgotten.’

Taken aback at this slamming of his cards on the table, she breathed, ‘Oh!’

He strode past her, face constructed of flinty hard lines in the harsh kitchen light. ‘Don’t look so affronted. I’m trained in problem solving. You told me the problem, I’ve solved it. To be honest, Liza, if you don’t take this opportunity, I’m going to have to offer it to Fenella or Imogen or find someone else. I need the centre.’

He swiped up his skateboard from where he’d left it, tossing back over his shoulder, ‘It’s you that’s optional.’

He skated hard up the pavement of Main Road, past the garage where Jos worked, its doors shut for the night, fuelled by anger adrenaline – not just anger at Liza, for trashing his fine bloody dream. He was cursing himself.

He was supposed to be able to deal with changing scenarios. Observe. Assess. Plan. Formulate strategies and have contingencies in place. And wasn’t he supposed to be the fucking bloody perceptive one? He’d known that Liza was wary and edgy and stubborn and suspicious and focused on her own goal.

But he’d disregarded all of that knowledge.

He hopped the board off the kerb to allow two middle-aged women by, before bunny hopping back onto the path again.

In the euphoria of his meeting with Isabel Jones, he’d seen only what he wanted to see – attaining his personal goal in such a way as not to rob Liza of The Stables. He’d wilfully ignored the fact that his solution would involve a big compromise for her.

Where had he left his brain?

He slowed as the lights from The Three Fishes came into view, curved around the pillar box on the corner of Great End in a rush of wheels, then stepped off the deck and kicked the board up into his hand. Legs suddenly heavy. Adrenaline ebbing.

His position was stronger than hers, his proposal more attractive to the hotel. But he shouldn’t have been so pleased with himself. For fuck’s sake, he was meant to be a people person. He trudged across the road towards Miranda and Jos’s warm, safe little house. All he’d had to do was make sure Liza had some control. No wonder, in her disappointment, that she’d seized on their history as an excuse to refuse. He edited and reran his opening in his mind:
I have an idea, but I don’t know if you want to hear it, when the bank’s just knocked you back.

And if she hadn’t wanted to hear it right then, her natural curiosity and cussedness would have made her want to hear it tomorrow or the next day, when the rawness of defeat had begun to heal. That’s how you dealt with awkward situations. You managed and finessed them.

You didn’t ignore someone’s setback and try and palm them off with a consolation prize. Especially one that so admirably suited your own purpose, your own grand plan, that happened to be going exceedingly well.

And then you really, really,
really
didn’t lose your temper and stalk out when that someone failed to fall to their knees in gratitude. That was just throwing petrol on the fire.

He let himself into the light of Miranda’s hallway, dragging off his jacket in the sudden warmth. Crosswind frisked out of the sitting room, all propeller tail and welcoming woofs. ‘Hiya, Crosswind.’ Tiredly, Dominic opened his arms and, in an instant, they were full of warm, fluffy, wriggling dog, his face under assault from a cold nose and a hot tongue. He listened, and heard Jos on the phone in the kitchen and the splashing and singing from the bathroom that signified Miranda supervising Ethan’s bath time.

Good. He didn’t have to talk to anybody just yet. He yawned, turning his head away so that Crosswind wouldn’t use it as an invitation for some tongue action. ‘Five minutes,’ he muttered. ‘Or ten.’ He headed for the sofa, set the alert on his phone, and crashed out, the comforting weight of Crosswind still in his arms.

From the sitting-room window, she watched him launch his skateboard into the middle of The Cross with three mighty pushes of his right foot and no apparent regard for the likelihood of approaching traffic, settle both feet on the deck, hop the board onto the pavement, lean left, and vanish around the corner of Crowther’s shop.

Douchebag. Smug, smartarse, up himself douchebag.

She wished she hadn’t let him share her chocolate.

In fact, she was tempted to run over to the shop to invest in one of those huge slabs of Dairy Milk and then send Dominic bloody Christy the empty wrapper. She had only a hazy idea of how that would express her displeasure, or even exactly what form her displeasure took or whether she had any right to feel it. But. Anyway. Something was bubbling in her anger cauldron.

But before she could decide on a better bitter revenge, she received a text from Cleo’s Justin.
Can u talk to Cleo about the wedding for me? She’s being difficult.

Welcoming the distraction, she responded,
OK, after dinner
, decided it was too cold to go to the shop just for Dairy Milk, and flung some chicken and a rainbow of chopped veg into her wok. Dominic Douchebag wasn’t worth the bad karma that came with revenge and she refused to sully her brain with the notion that she’d all-but-dismissed his offer with stupendous imprudence – not mature caution.

She arrived at Cleo’s house two minutes after eight and Shona promptly thundered downstairs to launch herself at Liza from the fourth step. ‘Aun-tee Lie-zah!’

Liza fielded the pyjama-clad missile in mid air. ‘Sho-nah!’ But then Cleo, hair sticking out as if she’d been tearing at it, sent her a silent scream of frustration, and Liza turned a stern look on her niece. ‘Were you in bed?’

Shona flicked her mother a glance from under long lashes. ‘I wasn’t asleep.’

Liza smothered a grin as Cleo mimed banging her head against the wall. ‘You’re not supposed to get up, though, are you? I’ll tuck you back in and read you a story.’ Shona was a great sleeper, once she gave into it, but the older she got, the less giving in seemed to appeal. Between her bed-evasion tactics, Gus’s colic, Gus waking Shona and Shona waking Gus, Cleo sometimes seemed close to gibbering with sleep deprivation.

Liza had better have Shona and Gus after the wedding, she decided, guiltily, as she trod upstairs, Shona hanging around her neck like an orang-utan baby. Cleo was Liza’s go-to person during trials and tribulations, but rarely asked for anything in return.

‘Right.’ Tumbling her niece, angelic in lemon-yellow pyjamas, back into her white wooden bed, Liza composed her face into decisive lines. ‘One story. If you get up again tonight, I won’t ask Mummy if I can look after you at the weekend.’

‘I don’t want you to look after me,’ retorted Shona, grinning like the Joker as she wrapped her little arms around Liza and dragged her down to snuggle.

‘Oh. Right.’ Liza sighed, obligingly snuggling. The four-year-old was getting too clever for mere grown-ups to manipulate. ‘Well, don’t get up again, anyway.’ She settled Shona, who smelled of shampoo and baby talc, against the hollow of her shoulder, and picked up a book of dog stories from the bedside table, choosing the one she knew to be the longest in the hopes that Cleo might grab a few minutes of feet-up time. ‘Fluffy was a fox terrier,’ she began.

Shona stabbed the picture of a fox terrier with a dimpled finger. ‘I saw that dog that skate boarded, today.’

Liza paused. ‘Crosswind? Did you?’

‘Me and Mummy and Gus went, and I played with Ethan, and we had bread and carrots for lunch, even though I don’t like carrots, but the man called Dominic put Crosswind in the garden.’

‘Went where? Ethan’s mummy’s house?’ Liza tried not to let indignation enter her voice.

Shona nodded, pretending to stroke the pictured fox terrier with one finger. ‘But he got the dog out of the garden before he went out and he rolled over on the carpet and he walked on his back legs.’

‘Dominic rolled on the carpet?’

Shona erupted like a giggle fountain. ‘Crosswind, the dog!’ And demonstrated, by kicking off the duvet and waggling her legs and arms whilst making breathy, ‘Rrrrh, rrrrh’ noises.

‘OK, let’s stop being a dog, now.’ Liza flipped the duvet back into place and flattened Shona into human form.

‘Rrrrh,’ persisted Shona. But by the time that Liza had read the story she did finally look soft and drowsy, accepting a last cuddle preparatory to the turning out of the light. She halted Liza just as the door shut. ‘I do want you to look after me, really.’

Liza grinned as she crept away. ‘OK. I’ll ask Mummy.’

Downstairs, Cleo and Justin half-lay at opposite ends of the sofa, managing, by dextrous entwining of limbs, to massage each other’s feet as they watched TV. Liza shifted a yellow changing mat, a pot of baby wipes and a fluffy orange goggle-eyed duck from a chair, so that she could sit down.

Justin withdrew his attention from the sci-fi film exploding all over the TV. ‘Liza, tell your sister that she has to have a wedding dress.’

Liza raised aghast eyebrows at Cleo. ‘You have to have a wedding dress!’

Cleo smiled serenely. ‘No, I don’t. At least, nothing new. I have that ivory-coloured suit I only wore once.’

‘Wow.’ Liza was impressed. ‘Can you get back in that so soon after having Gus?’

Justin glared at Cleo. ‘It’s our wedding day and I want you to have a new dress.’

‘We can use the money better in other ways. And I can’t bear the idea of trudging around shops with Gus and Shona in tow.’ Cleo heaved a huge, downtrodden, martyred sigh. ‘You haven’t bought a new dress, have you, Liza?’

Liza had fully intended to suffer wearing a past-season dress in the interests of her personal economy drive, but when Justin’s glare turned meaningfully in her direction, she executed a hasty rewriting of plans. ‘Tomorrow’s Wednesday and I’m not working till three, so I’m going to hit the shops in the morning.’ As she wasn’t going to be paying Nicolas his greedy-bastard premium, now, she could kind of afford it, if she steered clear of designer labels. ‘Let’s go together and I’ll look after the kids while you try things on.’

Cleo groaned. Justin lifted her right foot and kissed the instep. ‘I’ve got the money from the extra work I took on. Go with Liza and get a dress that I’ll love.’ His voice softened. ‘Maybe a red one …’

Cleo opened her eyes to slits and smiled, slowly.

Wistfully, Liza envied their ability to communicate without words. And Justin had kissed Cleo’s foot when she wasn’t fresh out of the shower. It made her feel, just a tiny bit, the way she used to when Cleo got something that Liza didn’t get on a long-ago Christmas. She fought down the feeling that Cleo’s relationship was a good example whereas Liza’s had proved to be more of a horrible warning. ‘So, where are you guys going for your wedding night?’

‘Here,’ said Cleo. ‘It’s not worth the effort to do anything else, with the kids.’ Justin grimaced, but didn’t disagree.

But Liza had had time to get her plan together. ‘I’ll have the kids. You can put Gus on the bottle for the night. In fact, I’m working afternoon and evening on Monday, so you can stay away two nights, so long as you’re back to take the kids by late Monday morning.’

‘I don’t know—’ Cleo hesitated.

Justin turned on her a face of yearning. ‘Two. Nights’. Sleep. We could book a hotel somewhere. Anywhere.’

‘Mm-mmm.’ Cleo gave a blissful shiver and gave Justin another of those special telepathic smiles. ‘Sis, I love you. There’s almost no one else in the world I could put on to have Gus while he’s being such a monster.’

‘So long …’ Liza stipulated, meanly, ‘as you tell me what you were doing at Miranda’s house, today?’

Dark eyes widened – Cleo’s customary expression of innocence. ‘Miranda invited us for lunch, so the children could play.’ Then the eyes began to sparkle. ‘I like your new guy, by the way.’

‘He’s not my new guy.’

‘I like the guy you spent the night with.’

Liza glared. ‘Don’t tell me that he told you!’

Yawning, Cleo wriggled herself more deeply into the sofa. ‘Not as such. Miranda seemed to think that’s what had gone down. Then Dominic looked so incredibly uncomfortable to meet me that I thought she must be right. And then the other guy, Kenny, arrived and started accusing Dominic of cutting him out …’

From upstairs, Gus, as if sensing that Cleo was getting too relaxed, set up a rising wail.

Groaning, Justin rolled to his feet. ‘I’ll get him.’

It was obviously time for Liza to leave the family to do family stuff. ‘I don’t know why everyone should be so bloody interested in my love life,’ she grumbled, climbing to her feet.

Cleo hauled herself from the depths of the cushions to grab Liza for a warm, soft hug. ‘Because everyone wants you to have one. It’ll be good for you. I was thrilled to hear two men arguing over you! And Dominic is single. And hot. And nice. And Miranda says you’d be good for Dominic—’

Liza pulled away. ‘I wasn’t good for Adam, was I? And I don’t need to be set up by the Mummies of Middledip. That’s just sad. I’m the one who decides what’s good for me. And if I’m not happy single, why should I be happy in a relationship?’

Cleo dragged her back into the hug with big-sisterly determination. ‘Nobody set you up, Liza. You jumped the guy all by yourself, and it’s nothing to be ashamed of. In fact, I’d love it if you jumped him again. And got drunk at my wedding on Saturday, too.’

‘But then I wouldn’t be able to have the kids.’

‘Ah.’ Cleo released her as Gus’s crying drew nearer. ‘Then a couple of glasses of cava will have to be enough.’ And, as Justin returned with a small mass of angry arms and legs that turned out to be Gus, ‘I’ve invited Dominic on Saturday, by the way. He’s going to bring his dog to entertain the kids.’

Liza halted in the act of grabbing her coat. ‘You haven’t!’

Cleo lifted her eyebrows. ‘Why shouldn’t I? I like him. And you seem to like him enough to drag him into your bed. He’s going to bring his dog to entertain the kids for a few minutes in the afternoon, before the bonfire and fireworks.’ She took Gus from Justin and Gus’s screams raised a few decibels, in case Cleo had somehow missed the point he was trying to make.

Liza had to complain over him. ‘But we’ve just had a row!’

Cleo exploded with laughter, making Gus throw his arms wide in panic. ‘Excellent. The real Liza has stepped forward.’

In between bursts of uncomfortably dreamy sleep, Liza’s thoughts whirled. Dominic had caught her off-guard with his business offer.

Should she have snatched off his arm rather than snapping off his head? Or was it asking for pain to get into a business relationship with a man who’d just comprehensively blown her out of the strange half-life she’d occupied since Adam?

Staring into the darkness, she wondered whether Dominic slept well when he was angry – which he had so obviously been. Narcolepsy didn’t guarantee sleep; he could be as restless as she, flipping his pillow, fighting his duvet, beyond irritated that she hadn’t fallen in with his plans. Or, in the grip of REM sleep, perhaps enjoying vivid dreams of throttling her.

She grinned. Most likely, having made the decision to replace her in his business plan, he’d exhaled gustily and sunk into instant heavy sleep … just as he had in her bed. Before he’d surprised her by emerging from his dreams to make love again.

Could sex filter into his dreams? That might be wild.

Annoyed to be kept awake thinking about sex with Dominic, about The Stables, and what to do about Dominic’s offer – if it still existed – she dragged her laptop off her bedside table. A little mindless surfing would, eventually, make her brain calm and her eyelids grow heavy.

In the morning, light-headed with lack of sleep, Liza rocked Gus’s buggy and tried to keep Shona entertained as Cleo, from not wanting a wedding dress, became Bride on a Mission, flying through shops and fitting rooms until Liza would have cheerfully minced her up and stuffed her into the only-worn-once ivory suit if it had brought wedding dress hell to an end.

Happily, it took mere hours to locate the perfect dress of brocade and satin in a little boho shop in one of Peterborough’s vaulted arcades, extravagant enough to please Justin but with no designer label price tag to make Cleo come over all cheap. In the same shop, they found a dress for Liza that complemented Cleo’s choice but said ‘entourage’ rather than ‘bride’, and failed to resist a lace number for Shona and velvet waistcoat and bow tie for Gus. Courtesy of McDonalds and Mothercare’s mother-and-baby room, they scrambled to feed both kids and themselves, then rushed to get Liza to work.

In the car, Gus sleeping and Shona drowsily watching the whizzing scenery, Liza managed to do what she’d failed to, last night – tell Cleo about Dominic’s offer regarding The Stables. And her doubts about it.

Cleo listened as she drove. ‘What would you like Dominic to do? Absolutely ideally? What would success look like?’

Mentally, Liza sighed at Cleo’s training and coaching phraseology. It was so difficult to fudge replies. ‘“Absolutely ideally”, which means I don’t consider his feelings at all, I suppose I’d like him to start his business somewhere else, so that, with no competition, I can force Nicolas to drop his price for the premium.’

‘Is that the only possible outcome of Dominic withdrawing?’

‘No,’ Liza admitted, sighing. ‘Nicolas could stay, though he’d probably have to modify his ideas to avoid bankruptcy. Or he could sell the lease to someone else. Both of which could leave me back at square one: forced to relocate. Which,’ she brightened, ‘is why I’d
have
to convince him to drop his figure and sell it to me.’ Drop his figure a canyon deep. But she didn’t say that.

Cleo indicated to leave the dual carriageway and approached a roundabout where traffic swarmed like killer bees. ‘Which do you think would be the bigger success?’

Watching the buildings give way to hedges and fields as they left the parkway behind, Liza thought hard. ‘I don’t know,’ she admitted, slowly. ‘Financially, there’s a lot to be said for working with Dominic. There would be the stags and hens angle contributing to a higher turnover. But, emotionally … is it a good idea to be involved with him business-wise, when we’ve—’