MacAllister's Baby (7 page)

The expression on Jo’s face made Elisabeth feel even worse. She was a good friend, and she’d do anything to help her. But honestly, truly, Elisabeth didn’t need any help herself. She had everything totally under control.

See? She could even stop herself crying.

‘I’m fine,’ she said. ‘I don’t need to talk about anything. I was only trying to tell you why I don’t want to go out with Angus MacAllister.’ She glanced at the clock. ‘And speaking of the devil, I was supposed to be with him ten minutes ago. I’ve got to run.’

She hugged Jo and kissed her swiftly on the cheek. ‘Thank you for being concerned about me and wanting to know my problems. You’re a good friend to me. And you’re right, I don’t appreciate you as much as I should.’

Jo picked up her chocolate bar again. ‘Well, start.’

‘I will.’ She paused at the door, and looked over her shoulder at Joanna. She was still looking upset, despite her chocolate.

‘How about you give the Welsh tango-dancer my number,’ Elisabeth said.

Her friend perked up. ‘Cool.’

Elisabeth smiled, glad she could make up in a small way for her shortcomings as a friend, for all the things she kept to herself.

Growing up, the atmosphere had always been so carey-sharey, everyone relating, her parents and all of the long-haired, sandalled strangers who had trooped in and out of her house, and that had all been well and good and made everybody feel better, but the problems had never got solved.

Somebody would turn up at the house with a problem, and for days they’d sleep on the couch, eat with Elisabeth and her family, hug their trees or whatever, drink her mother’s homemade wine, and talk. Incessantly. About this girl who had left them, or the job they had lost, or the square landlord who had kicked them out for not paying the rent, and wasn’t this a free country, man, and her parents would talk right back. The arms race. The ozone layer. Maybe they weren’t being good parents. Maybe they should never have had a kid.

And they’d talk so much and so deep into the night that Elisabeth would try to read herself to sleep and couldn’t. She’d hear their voices through the thin walls. Sometimes she listened because what they said was interesting, about politics or books or how to save the world. Sometimes she tried hard not to listen because what they said was something she didn’t want to hear, something about her parents’ own doubts and fears, about their relationship, about Elisabeth. Something that her parents should have kept out of her hearing, something they should have built boundaries around to keep her from knowing and being afraid.

Some things shouldn’t be shared. Some things hurt more for being out in the open.

And the next morning her parents would tell her to pack her stuff, they were going to Manitoba to start a hemp farm, or Vancouver to join a peace rally, or somewhere else far away from the friends Elisabeth had started to make and the teachers she had started to love. Away from everything that was hers, except for her books.

She’d had her own special suitcase for her books.

At the door of the food technology room, Elisabeth shook her head. The past was over and there was no point in talking or thinking about it. Right now, she had two problem children and one problem chef to deal with.

She wondered what Angus would ask her to do with him today. And as soon as she thought it, realised she was actually looking forward to finding out.

She opened the door to a snowstorm.

White flecks sifted through the air. A fine white dust covered the work surfaces. There were drifts up to two inches deep on the floor. And Danny and Angus were both white-haired, ghost-faced, their open, laughing mouths red against their powdered skin.

As she watched Angus scooped up a handful of white stuff and flung it at Danny. It dissolved into a shower over Danny’s head and shoulders.

‘You’re having a flour fight?’ she gasped.

The two males froze. Covered in flour, they looked like ragged snowmen. Their faces were both pictures of powdered guilt.

‘Danny, you know better than this,’ she said. ‘Miss Graham was just telling me you haven’t been in trouble for over three weeks, and I was coming in here to congratulate you, and this is what I find?’

Danny shuffled his feet, kicking up small clouds. ‘Angus started it.’

Elisabeth turned to Angus. ‘And you. Is this the sort of thing you do in a professional kitchen? What are you teaching these kids?’

As she talked Angus’s head sank lower and lower, she assumed in shame. Then she noticed that his shoulders were shaking.

‘Are you laughing at me?’ she asked.

He let out a great peal of laughter, doubling over and holding onto the counter for support. Danny giggled.

‘It’s not funny. It’s going to take ages to clean this up.’

Angus collapsed backwards onto the floor, laughing, and lay there among the flour drifts.

She heard Jennifer, the traitor, stifle a giggle.

Elisabeth struggled to keep her lips from curling into a smile. Angus looked like a kid himself, a cheeky boy who’d been caught doing something wrong and knew he could charm himself out of trouble.

‘You—should see—your face,’ he gasped.

She put her hand in front of her mouth to hide the smile. ‘At least I don’t look like Casper the Friendly Ghost,’ she said, and rushed out of the room.

She closed the door behind her and leaned against the wall of the corridor and laughed until tears streamed out of her eyes, trying to keep quiet so Angus and the kids wouldn’t hear her through the frosted-glass door.

When she’d wiped her eyes and caught her breath and felt in control of herself again, she went back inside. Danny and Angus were on their knees on the floor sweeping up the flour into dustpans.

‘See, we’re being good, miss,’ Angus called, smiling his beautiful wide smile. He’d cleaned the flour off his face, but it still clung to his dark hair.

‘Well done,’ she said, and went to stand next to Jennifer, who was lightly forking some pastry together. ‘Those boys are ridiculous, aren’t they?’ she commented quietly to the girl, who nodded.

Elisabeth wasn’t sure why Angus had started a flour fight, but she could guess. Jennifer had a small smile on her face, and Angus and Danny were chatting comfortably on the floor behind her.

Not the method she would’ve chosen to bond with students, but it was working.

‘I can’t wait till I’m a proper chef with a kitchen of my own,’ Danny said. ‘I’m going to have as many food fights as I want.’

‘Too right, mate. Miss Read has a point, though. Once it’s your kitchen you’ll probably be too proud of it to want to chuck flour bombs around it. And I guess school has rules against it, too.’

‘I hate school,’ Danny declared.

‘Don’t blame you. I hated it too.’

Elisabeth, measuring out flour to Jennifer’s quiet instructions, pricked up her ears. Another bonding strategy, or the truth?

‘Yeah? Did you go to this school?’ Danny’s voice was sympathetic.

‘Nah. Worse. My parents sent me to boarding-school when I was six. I went to three different prep schools and then to Emington until I was sixteen.’

‘You had to live at school for ten years? That bites.’

Elisabeth glanced over at Angus. He was scrubbing flour off a worktop with a rag. He’d gone to one of the most prestigious schools in the country; no wonder he had such self-assurance, born into privilege like that. That explained the posh accent he could use when it suited him, too.

She’d visited Emington as a tourist a few years ago. It was hundreds of years old, with graceful Gothic buildings and students in formal clothing hurrying across verdant quadrangles. She remembered thinking she’d have given her eye-teeth as a child to live at school, in somewhere beautiful like that, steeped in culture and tradition and love of learning.

‘It was pretty terrible,’ Angus was saying. ‘You couldn’t ever escape it. As soon as it was legal for me to leave I went to London and got a job in a kitchen. Never looked back.’

‘Yeah. I’m not going to, either.’ Danny put away his dustpan and brush with a clatter and started wiping down the counter, too. Elisabeth noticed with amusement that he was imitating the economy of Angus’s movements as he cleaned.

Angus glanced up and saw Elisabeth watching them. ‘What about you, Miss Read? I’ll bet you loved school. I’ll bet you were born with chalk and an apple in your hand.’

‘I liked it,’ she admitted, caught as always by his grey eyes. ‘I always felt safe.’

‘How do you mean, safe?’

With his attention fully on her, she hardly knew how to reply. She found herself wanting to tell him, and, because of that, she resisted. ‘It just was. It was—’

‘You know what people expect of you at school,’ Jennifer said, just above a whisper, beside her.

She turned to stare at Jennifer. ‘That’s it. Exactly. So it’s easy to know what to do. It’s safe.’

Jennifer flushed slightly and nodded and began rolling out her pastry with fierce concentration. Elisabeth wondered what her home life was like, when school, where she was so terrified, was her safest place. She suddenly wanted to give the girl a hug.

She’d never been as scared as Jennifer. But all the same, she’d been afraid everything she loved would blow away and scatter at any moment, as fragile as autumn leaves under trees.

For the first time she noticed a small cardboard box next to Jennifer’s work space. ‘What have you got there?’ she asked.

Jennifer dusted off her hands and opened the box with reverence. Inside rested two triangles of baklava, the golden filo pastry glistening with honey.

‘Angus brought it for me,’ she murmured.

‘Jennifer has a sweet tooth, like me.’ Angus’s raspy voice was as tempting as the dessert. He appeared beside them and surveyed the pastry Jennifer was making. ‘Perfect.’

Jennifer blushed furiously and smiled down at her rolling-pin.

So Angus had her in the palm of his hand, too.

‘I’ll be interested to see how you get on with pastry, Miss Read.’ Angus reached into Elisabeth’s bowl and rubbed the butter and flour between his magician’s fingers. ‘It’s all done by touch. I think you’ll be talented.’

He held her eye just a little too long, his smile just a little too wicked. And then he winked.

‘Danny, mate,’ he called, ‘I found some perfect pears but I left them on the front seat of my car. You want to go get them for me?’ He dug a set of keys out of his pocket and tossed them to Danny, who caught them mid-air and stared at them in astonishment and delight.

‘It’s the red Jag,’ Angus added, and Danny’s eyes nearly bugged out of his head. In a shot, he was out the door.

‘Jennifer, would you go and help him?’ Angus asked. ‘Just make sure he doesn’t take the car for a ride before bringing back the pears?’ Jennifer nodded and trotted after Danny.

It wasn’t until the door had shut behind the girl that Elisabeth realised she was alone with Angus MacAllister for the first time in three weeks. She wiped the butter and flour off her hands, and put them on her hips.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said.

Angus raised his eyebrows. ‘Really? About what?’

‘You’re doing a great job with the kids. I’m sorry I doubted you.’

He half bowed in acknowledgement. ‘High praise indeed from Miss Read who teaches English. Thank you, but I’ll wait to accept it until I know my car is still in one piece.’

‘Trust is what he needs. And feeling special is what Jennifer needs. The difference in them in three weeks is amazing.’

‘And what does Elisabeth need?’ He leaned against the counter next to her, his smile sexy as ever, even with his face still smudged with flour.

‘Nothing.’ She turned back to her bowl of dough. ‘And I’m going to say no to whatever you suggest, so you might as well give up.’

‘Ah, but the challenge is half the fun. Until you say yes, of course. Then we’ll both start having fun.’

‘Did you learn how to flirt at boarding-school? Because grown-up women don’t usually fall for lines like that.’

‘There weren’t any women at school besides the masters’ wives. Another reason I hated it there.’

She gathered the dough together into a loose ball and put it on the floured counter. ‘I’m surprised you chose to volunteer your time in a school if you hated your own school days so much.’

‘I didn’t choose. My publicist suggested it. I’m glad she did. I never thought teaching could be so enjoyable.’

The man could make anything sound suggestive. He lit a flame under a pan of water, put a bowl into it, and started breaking squares of dark chocolate into the bowl.

It was just as she’d suspected, then: this whole thing was a bid for publicity. Angus MacAllister hadn’t suddenly discovered an urge to help others.

But as she’d said, whatever his motivation, he was helping Jennifer and Danny.

‘You must be having a great time teaching them how to trash a kitchen in under five minutes,’ she said.

‘Why did you leave the room to laugh?’

Damn. He’d figured her out.

‘Because you set me up to be the bad cop,’ she explained. ‘If you’re the jokey, rebellious one, I have to be the strict one. The kids expect it. If we let all the rules disappear, they wouldn’t know how to act.’

‘Ah. We work well together, don’t we?’

‘Yes, we do.’ She said it because it was the truth. But it felt like admitting something.

‘Here, do me a favour and taste this for me?’

Angus plucked a strawberry from a plate, dipped it into the bowl of chocolate and held it out to her. The deep red fruit was covered in dark melted chocolate. It was at the level of her mouth.

She looked at his face. His words had been casual, but his expression was serious except for a tiny glint of mischief in his grey eyes. He was sexy, he was dangerous, and he was fun.

And he didn’t want her to taste the chocolate. He wanted her to taste him.

Her mouth was watering.

We’re at school,
she thought.
Nothing can happen. The kids will be back in a minute and it will be like this never happened. And I so, so want to.

She leaned forward, opened her mouth, and touched the tip of her tongue to the tip of the strawberry. She heard Angus draw in a breath.