Her Name Is Trouble: A small-town contemporary romance (The Daimsbury Chronicles Book 2) (10 page)

The tears came and she gave in to them.

Chapter Ten

“Uncle Luke, you could, like, put on the breeches and white linen shirt then go take a dip in the village pond? You’d look exactly like a sinful Mr. Darcy coming out of the water, I swear!”

Luke forced out a smile at his niece Andie’s cheerful chatter.

“And if I filmed it, the clip would go viral on the Net and—”

“Okay, that’s enough,” Liam cut in and shooed his teenage daughter away.

Andie stomped her foot. “Just not fair!” she whined. “Mum will agree with me; you just watch.”

She dashed out of the front room and up the stairs to Honor’s home office on the first floor.

Liam shook his head as she left. “That one will give me grey hair before I’m thirty-five.”

His brother might say anything he wanted; Luke could see he adored Andie and Ryan, his children.

“Dad!” Andie shrieked from upstairs.

“Oh, crap,” Liam mumbled. “Here, take him while I go see what she’s got herself into again.”

He thrust a squirming Ryan into Luke’s arms and took off up the stairs.

Luke wasn’t too worried about Andie—in his years with her at this house, he’d come to decipher which shriek meant what, and today’s amounted to a small problem like a lost scrunchie or something.

But Ryan here? Not his cup of tea. He loved kids, but when they were kids, not babies. Ryan must’ve sensed his handler’s discomfort, because his face started growing red. Before long, a hearty wail would pour out from that deceptively tiny body. Panic gripped Luke. What to do? What did babies like?

He stood and started rocking the infant like he’d seen Liam do. But that seemed to have no effect. The dams would burst in another few seconds.

A lullaby. Except he knew none. A song should work the same, though. So he started singing...and the Goofy Goober tune from
SpongeBob
came out. Ryan seemed to calm down at the sound of his voice, tuneless as it might be, and he watched Luke with big, eager violet eyes.

When the baby graced him with a smile, he wanted to whoop in victory and pump his fist in the air.

“Ah, mate. You’re corrupting my son.” Liam came in and extricated the baby from Luke’s arms. “With Andie already making him listen to One Direction, I don’t need you to further damage him.”

Luke sat back down. “It’s just
SpongeBob
.”

“Exactly what has me worried.” Liam rubbed the tip of his nose against the baby’s. “My lad’s gonna be a real Red Devil like his daddy, eh?”

Luke rolled his eyes. “Has it ever occurred to you he might not like Manchester United? Or even football?”

“Sacrilege, brother!”

His sibling was really starting to get on his nerves. Ever since yesterday’s afternoon, he’d been functioning with a very short temper. “Guess what? He smiled at me when I was singing the
SpongeBob
song.”

“You’ve gotta be kidding.” Liam stared at him with wide, disbelieving eyes. “Must’ve been gas.”

“Suit yourself.” He reached for one of Ryan’s tiny feet and rubbed his finger along the toes. “Seriously, though. What if he’s not into the same thing as you are?”

Liam’s face grew sombre. “Whatever he, or Andie, decides to do, I’m hundred percent behind them, man. That’s your role as a parent, to be there for them. Not to dictate their life.”

Ryan’s small face scrunched into a frown, and seconds later, a loud fart resounded in the room, followed by the smell of an obvious dirty nappy. Liam got up to go change the baby, leaving Luke alone in the front room.

He shook his head and chuckled when he thought back to singing the Goofy Goober song to Ryan. What would people not do to make others feel good?

Another thought crashed through in the wake of that question.

How far did some people go to even feel anything at all?

Missy’s confession of self-mutilation to get over the numbness of her life crowded his mind, and though he tried to shake the memory out of his head, he just couldn’t.

Other things she had said rolled in.

My life wasn’t my own.

Like a pretty Christmas bauble, discarded when not needed.

What Liam had said just before leaving the room rang inside his mind. Parents were there to shape their children into the kids’ own potential.

Not into their own image.

Snippets of remembrances he’d thought long forgotten materialized in his consciousness again. The night he’d met Iris Ann. They’d been talking on the terrace, and her mother had glided over to them and with a gesture that had looked like a gentle caress to him at the time, had in fact made her daughter correct the alignment of her head with her spine, because Iris Ann had tilted her head to the side while talking to him.

Exactly like Missy did...

And then he remembered finding her sitting with her knees pulled up to her chin in a dark corner on the pier.

“What are you doing here?” he’d asked.

“Escaping,” she’d said with a smile. “I bowed out of that stifling thing with a pretend migraine.” She’d shrugged. “Not supposed to be here, this close to the water. My mother will kill me for the frizz the humidity will cause to my hair.”

They’d spent the next few hours there, talking of everything and nothing. She would be leaving for boarding school the next day, and he’d felt such sadness emanate from her, he’d wanted to pull her into his arms and hold her tight.

But he also hadn’t wanted to give her any wrong ideas. She’d been fifteen, underage, and his boss’s daughter.

He jolted in his seat when the realization slid in that he’d sensed the same despondency in Missy here. That’s why she had snuck under his skin, because she’d reminded him, subconsciously, of Iris Ann Taylor.

No wonder, because they were one and the same.

This revelation floored him. Missy was Iris Ann, and vice versa. Not even two sides of the same coin, but simply one whole person.

She’d known who he was, hence the freezing in the restaurant and the subsequent havoc she’d created. Must’ve been surprise, and also fear to be discovered, maybe?

And if he thought of this harder... She had never led him on. He’d pursued her, and all her half-truths had never been lies.

That night in the Hamptons, he’d spent it with Missy. With the real her she kept hidden inside.

The one who couldn’t feel anything because her life had been snatched from her by her parents and who then cut herself to ward off the numbness.

How could he have been so blind?

And so much of an arse, to boot?

Luke jumped up from the sofa. His left foot hurt when he put weight on it, but he paid the throbbing no heed after a second. He had more important things to take care of.

At the door, he reached for his arm brace and clipped it on. After yelling that he was going out, he exited the house and started towards the village. His step grew heavy, but he powered on. He had to get to his destination, once and for all.

Sunday, noon—she’d surely be at the restaurant for the roast lunch. So he clambered ahead and barged into
Ben&Jari
drenched in sweat and with a foot that felt like it had doubled in size in his trainers.

Who cared, though?

Megha Saran looked up from where she stood behind the maître d’ pulpit. “You better not be here for the food.”

The warning in her cold voice rang evident, and around them, all talk died in the room. Even the clatter in the kitchen seemed to lessen.

He inclined his head in greeting. “Is Iris Ann here?”

“Her name is Missy,” Megha said.

“Missy, yeah.”

“What do you want with her, Luke?”

“I—”

The words died on his tongue when she stepped out of the kitchen with a plate in her hand. She’d worn the same jeans and khaki sweater as on their night together on Thursday, and aside from the hair that now looked red instead of black, nothing about her had changed. She was the same. His Missy.

She scrambled to a stop when she saw him, and with a slow, careful gesture, she placed the plate on the sideboard next to the door. Long steps took her to the pulpit. She wore platform wedges today; must be why she didn’t trip. Seemed to him she rocked heels better than flats.

No longer a calamity... He’d miss that.

“Can we...go out?” He motioned towards the door with a nod.

Megha put a hand on Missy’s shoulder. “Sweetie, you don’t have to go with him.”

Her dark eyes threw daggers his way.

But Missy shook her head and she hugged the other girl. “I’ll be fine. Don’t worry.”

Her voice sounded hoarse...like she’d cried a lot.

Must be his fault. His heart sank like stone.

She preceded him out of the restaurant and they stood on the pavement, neither saying anything. Out of the corner of his eye, he could glimpse how every patron and employee of
Ben&Jari
had drawn up to the wide windowpanes to watch what happened between them.

He better break the ice; he’d been the bastard in the story.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

Her eyes grew wide and she bit that lower lip so hard he wanted to pull the bruised flesh into a kiss to soothe it.

“I’m sorry, too,” she added.

“What for?”

“For lying to you...”

He took a deep breath. “You didn’t lie, Missy. You never did. I should’ve seen that yesterday itself but I was an arsehole and clung to unjustified anger.” He paused. “Can you ever forgive me?”

In her reply hung his future. His life as he now conceived of it consisted of nothing more than making Iris Ann ‘Missy’ Taylor feel everything good the world had to offer.

“There’s nothing to forgive, Luke.”

He blinked. “How can you say that?”

She gave him a tremulous smile. “I’ve dreamed of this moment for so long, you cannot imagine. One where I’d get a second chance at life. A second chance with you...”

Could she really have said that? Hope burst in his chest and powered through his every cell. He took a step closer and reached up to touch her cheek.

“It’s yours,” he said. “
I’m
yours.”

“Really? You...you mean that?”

She’d tilted her head when she asked that question. So adorable.
His
Missy.

“Every word of it. How can I prove it to you?”

“There’s no need to.”

On that smile and gasped exhale, she wrapped her arms around his neck and threw herself at him.

Thank goodness for the brace, otherwise he would’ve found himself once more on his back with her sprawled all over him.

She kissed him, and he kissed her back. Cheers and hollers from the restaurant greeted their reunion, and he pulled her close to him, vowing to never let her go from his life.

Missy broke away from the kiss and stared up into his face with wide, jade-grey eyes. “Actually, there is something you could do...”

His heart hammered away. “Name it.”

“Could you...” She bit her lip and glanced at the village green. “Could you put on those breeches and the white shirt then come out of the pond like Mr. Darcy?”

Luke chuckled. What was it with women’s fascination with that fictional bloke? Still, if that’s what it took for her to become his...

“Anything for you,” he said, and kissed her again.

The End

Author’s Note

Dear Reader,

Like it always happens with me, I didn’t plan to have Daimsbury spin out on me into a full series. It happened by itself. Luck by chance, I like to call it.

For, you see, this all started with Megha Saran, whom you meet in this story. As a cancer survivor myself (2x breast cancer), I wanted to write about a young woman who’d been through the same trial as me. I gave her pretty much my own background—a hybrid of Indian culture with British modernity minus the island girl angle.

Around this same time, Kate Middleton was bursting onto the scene back in the day and there was a lot of hype and exposure relating to the small village she grew up in.

I knew I wanted that kind of setting for Megha’s story, and from this spin came ‘the’ family of the area, the Trammells, and Magnus along with it.

But a small village needs to be peopled, so I started imagining who existed in this world. The Morellis, Magnus’ siblings and his best friends—Lars Rutherford and Stellan Elricksen—Megha’s father, Jari, and her surrogate father, Ben. Finn and Patrick at the hair salon. Before I knew it, Daimsbury had exploded on me. My drawing board had so many colours and links on it that it looked like a too-happy clown had barfed confetti all over the place!

Then came a call for short stories from an established publisher. Since I already had Daimsbury set up, I used the world. That is how
Bad Luck With Besties
, the story of Liam Morelli and Honor Whelan, came into existence. I was all set to have
The Daimsbury Chronicles
pubbed out…but things didn’t go as I planned and everything came to a standstill around this exact period last year.

My bestie and the sister of my soul, Natalie G. Owens, pushed me to look at my options, and one of these was self-publishing. I think by then, push had come to shove for me and I took the plunge. It hasn’t been an easy journey—rather rocky, in fact—but I seem to now be finding my footing so here’s this series coming back to you in, I hope, a steadier manner for your regular enjoyment.

I hope you will take a chance on my Surrey people and please do let me know what you think of them. Drop me an email, post on my FB wall, or better still, write me a review on Amazon (even 2-3 words will do nicely!).

Thank you so much for being on this ride with me. I hope this story has brought you thrills and left you with a happy smile and a contented sigh.

From Mauritius with love,

Zee