London Falling (9 page)

Lucy’s mouth dropped open. “One of my charities?”

Uh-oh. He was in for it. His sister had a chip on her shoulder the size of the Swiss Alps, and he knew better than to bring up her position at the bank.

“What has that got to do with it?” she asked. “If you remember, you were the one who asked me to start up the charitable giving department at the bank. I spend time helping people, and I can’t help it if most of my time needs to be spent at charity luncheons and balls. It’s not like it’s fun for me. Besides, it’s better than crunching numbers all day.”

He couldn’t win with her. He’d teased her one too many times that her job was to eat four-course luncheons and attend fancy dress parties, so even when he praised her work, she still assumed he was making fun of her. She always accused him of looking down on her contributions to the bank, which was completely not true. Lucy was the most giving person he’d ever known.

The worst part was that she didn’t seem to like her job as head of charitable giving. He’d even offered her a financial job at the bank, as a personal banker, but he’d learned his lesson when she reacted as though he was offering her a job as a stripper.

Lucy glared at him. “Well?”

Aimee set a plate of toasted cheese in front of him, and his stomach growled.

“I just read somewhere that when you are upset with someone,” Aimee said, “or some trait of theirs annoys you, it’s usually because it’s a trait that you possess yourself and are unhappy about.”

Lucy stared at Aimee as if she were holding up a dead mouse and asking her to eat it. He must have had a strange look on his face too, because Aimee leaned her elbows on the other side of the island and asked, “What?” And then she shrugged. “I’m a psych minor.”

“Finance and psychology?” he asked.

“I’m well-rounded.”

“You mean to tell me that I fight with Simon because I wish I worked on the finance side of the business?”

“Or you’re accusing him of looking down on your job because you secretly do yourself,” she said.

Lucy stared at her with her mouth open. He could almost feel the gears in her brain shifting. Aimee stood at the counter, as if she hadn’t just pointed out the one thing that everyone except Lucy could see. Who was this woman?

In live minutes, she’d analyzed his sister’s personality spot on.

He took a bite of his sandwich. Pure ambrosia. The cheese was gooey and the bread was the perfect crispness, with just the slightest bit of black on the edges. It was almost worth losing the royals’ business to keep her around for an eternity of toasted cheese sandwiches.

“So by your theory, you dislike me because I’m too much like you?” he asked Aimee.

Aimee smiled. “No, I just dislike you because you’re mean and heartless.”

“There might be something to your theory,” his sister replied.

“Excuse me?” he said, dropping his sandwich to the plate.

“Not that you’re mean and heartless. But that you wish you were more charitable.”

He decided not to point out that he’d never accused her of being too charitable and that it was all in her head.

Lucy continued. “Like with you for instance,” she said, turning to Aimee.

“I am not going to hire her,” he said.

“I’m not a charity,” Aimee said.

His sister turned to him. “Then why have you kept her around? Why haven’t you called the cops? I’m sure that deep down you really want to help her, perhaps by just giving her the money for a ticket home.”

Aimee slammed her palm on the countertop. “I won’t accept charity.

From you or from anyone.”

What had happened in her life to make her not accept help when she so desperately needed it? She’d even refused the twenty pound note he’d tried to give her the first time they’d met.

“I’m not offering charity,” he said, before turning to Lucy. “I can’t give her money after she’s cleaned the house. It would be construed as payment for cleaning.”

“Hello, I’m right here.” Aimee waved her hands in front of them. “I don’t need charity, I need a job.”

“But surely you understand that Simon can’t hire you?” his sister asked.

“That would ruin his chances with the royal family.”

Thank God his sister had finally come to her senses.

“Not if no one knew about it,” Aimee replied.

“And I should trust you? A woman I barely know.” he asked.

“Simon would be crazy to break the law when he’s so close,” his sister said. She paused. “Why can’t you just accept the money for a ticket home?

Simon can afford it.”

“Because your brother won’t give me the money.”

“What?” Lucy asked. “Why?”

Simon rolled his eyes. Why was he looking like the bad guy here?

“Because this wonderful person who you are so determined to help, has threatened to go to the tabloids and tell them I hired her illegally. I’m not about to give her the proof she needs for to make that claim.”

“How could you do that to him?” Lucy asked.

He loved Lucy. Granted, sometimes she annoyed him more than any other person on earth, except perhaps his brother, but right now he loved her “Because Aimee doesn’t like me.”

“But everyone likes Simon!”

Aimee snorted. “You mean the person who threatened to put me in jail after I spent days cleaning his whole entire house and taking care of his sick butt?”

His sister visibly deflated. “This is a right mess, isn’t it?” she said. She sat up straight. “What if I give you the money instead?”

They both flinched when Simon said, “No!” He shook his head. “Even if you give her the money, they could still connect it to me because we’re related and you work at the bank.”

“You could hire me,” Aimee said. “You’ve seen my work. I’m very dedicated.”

“Absolutely not,” Simon said.

Lucy shook her head. “I wish I could just give you the money for the ticket. How much is it?”

“Almost twelve hundred pounds.”

Ah, so that explained her request to earn more. The price of a ticket home. “You can’t give it to her, Lucy. I can’t take the chance that it could be connected to me.”

“But if I never told anyone–”

He interrupted Lucy. “Aimee could tell.” He shoved away his empty plate. “And I don’t trust her not to tell.” Aimee grimaced at him. “She could earn far more by selling this to the tabloids, and it would keep her off the street. We don’t even know that she wasn’t hired by RBB to frame me.” He turned to Lucy. “Do you trust her?”

Lucy tilted her head while she contemplated Aimee, but Aimee glared at him. “Yes,” Lucy said. “I think I do.”

Aimee smiled at Lucy.

“Well I don’t,” he said. “And I can’t take any chances. There will be no money, no plane tickets, no anything exchanging hands.”

Aimee wanted to wail like a banshee, but she kept her expression cool, calm, and collected. Why did they keep revisiting the same information? There was never a new solution, never a way out, never a chance that Mr. Stick-in-the-mud would ever change his mind about the money. She clenched her fists.

“There will be no cleaning, no cooking, no general helpfulness around the house until you pay me for work done.”

“As I see it, you’ve already done most of the work. What’s remaining?”

Simon asked.

“The dishes, for one.”

Simon shrugged his shoulders.

Damn, there wasn’t anything left. She searched deeper for anything that might matter. “And you seemed to enjoy the grilled cheese I just made you.

Say goodbye to my cooking.”

Finally, he looked disappointed, but he bounced back. “I eat out for every meal. My life won’t change.”

Errrgh! She remembered the cupcakes she’d made earlier that day, when she’d been hoping to impress him with her stellar cooking skills. Marching to the back counter, she removed the towel from the tray and returned with her masterpiece. She’d botched three batches before she got one right. Stupid metric system.

“Ohhh … fairy cakes,” Lucy said. Even Simon looked interested.

“They’re cupcakes. I’m not sure a man should be eating anything that’s called a fairy cake,” Aimee said.

“Right. And cupcake indicates hardcore masculinity?” Simon asked. He looked smug and proud of himself for his quick comeback.

His expression fell as she dropped the cupcakes, one by one, into the trash.

“What are you doing?” he asked. He half-stood from his seated position on the stool.

She dropped another cupcake. “Not earning my paycheck,” she said.

Each cupcake made a plopping sound in the trashcan. When she got to the last one, she held it up. “Still hungry?” She didn’t wait for an answer, but set it in front of Lucy, who looked ready to dive into the trash after the smashed cupcakes. Maybe if she made him want her cooking enough, he’d change his mind. Or Lucy would change it for him.

“I love fairy cakes,” Lucy said, before taking a giant bite. “Mmmm,” she moaned. “These are fantastic. This is the best chocolate icing I’ve ever tasted.”

She licked the top of the cupcake like an ice cream cone. “You don’t know what you’re missing Simon.” She turned to Aimee. “Did you make these?”

Aimee nodded. The puppy was licking the ground all around Lucy, as if there were crumbs everywhere, but Lucy was too neat for that.

“From scratch?” Lucy asked.

“My grandmother taught me the recipe.” Or rather, her grandmother told her where the recipe was and critiqued the way she made it until she made the best darn cupcakes on earth. Never let it be said that Gram didn’t bring the best tasting food to the church bake sale–even if she didn’t make it herself.

“Are you sure there’s no one who can give you the money for a plane ticket home?” Simon asked.

She just stared at him. The man was an annoying broken record.

“You said that no one in your family can afford to give you the funds–”

“No, I didn’t say that,” she interrupted him.

He sat forward on the stool. “Then there is someone?”

“No. What I said was that I had no family.”

“But you mentioned your grandmother?” Lucy asked.

It was amazing how often Gram’s name kept coming up, since Aimee never mentioned her in her real life. She was trying to stay positive and focused on the future, not wallow in the past. “She died five years ago.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” Lucy said.

Aimee shrugged. Why should anyone be sorry? Sorry was the word you used when you lost a loved one, and it was pretty clear that Gram hadn’t cared one iota about Aimee except as a workhorse and nursemaid around the house. She’d been shoved down Gram’s throat. Although Gram did her Christian duty, she never let her forget that she was a burden. Aimee had wasted years asking what-ifs. What if I spent more time reading to her? What if I spent more time cleaning and less time studying? What if, what if, what if.

She’d finally come to terms that what ifs wouldn’t change the fact that Gram had used her, just like everyone else. At the end of the day, people were only out for themselves. That was life.

“And you don’t know anyone who could loan you the money?” Simon asked. Again.

“Look, I’m certain. I’m in college and all of my acquaintances are students who barely earn minimum wage, if they even have jobs. No one I know could afford to loan me the money. I only have one friend with that kind of money–”

“Why didn’t you mention this before?” he asked.

“Do you ever let anyone finish?” Aimee asked.

Lucy shook her head. “He’s always been like that. Always in a rush to fix things. His way.”

“That’s not true,” he said.

Lucy quirked her eyebrow, just like Simon had done earlier. The same eye, too. They were definitely related.

He ignored Lucy. “So why don’t you ask this person for a loan?”

“Because Paige and I aren’t close anymore.” Which was Aimee’s fault.

She held up her hand before Simon could interrupt her again. “And because her Christmas card said she was going to be at an ashram in India until mid-January. That makes it pretty difficult to get in touch with her, when she doesn’t have a cell phone. Do you think I haven’t exhausted every single alternative I could think of? Believe me, I’m not holding out on you.”

“You mean I might be stuck with you for three more weeks?”

“It’s no picnic for me either.” She turned to the sink to attack the dirty frying pan, until she remembered that she wasn’t cleaning anymore. “I need to get home, or else everything I’ve worked for the past ten years goes down the tube.”

“What does that mean?” he asked.

“If I don’t get back in time for the first week of school, I’ll have to drop one of my classes.”

“So you have to drop a class? Is it really worth all the drama that you’re putting both of us through?” he asked.

She turned to face him. “It’s not just a class. It’s the class. The capstone course that I need to complete my degree. If I don’t pass Management Strategy this quarter, I don’t graduate, and if I don’t graduate, I lose my standing job offer. If I’m unable to take that job, I won’t have a way to pay back all of the loans that I’ve taken out to pay for classes all these years.” Her throat was suddenly dry. She poured a glass of water and sat down at the counter.

“Why not just take another job? Hold off on graduating for a few terms,”

he said.

“Because,” her throat caught, and she gulped some water. “U Dub has a moratorium on class credits.”

“U Dub?” Lucy asked.

“University of Washington.” Her voice cracked on the words. Why was her throat suddenly so dry she couldn’t speak? “I’ve been taking classes for ten years now. The class credits from my first,” she cleared her throat, “quarter are going to stop counting next quarter, so I’ll be required to re-take them.”

“So you’ll have to take one class next quarter. If you went full time you’d take more credits than that,” he said.

“Not one class. Three classes are expiring. And I can’t afford to do that.”

Her carefully constructed plan hadn’t counted on her getting stranded in London without any money. “I’ll have to start working another job just to cover my loans, which means no time for classes. And the next quarter after that, I’ll lose even more class credits. And I’ll never graduate.”