Rainy Day Sisters (26 page)

Lucy

LYING IN BED ON
Sunday night after what had turned out to be a pretty fabulous day on the La'al Ratty with Juliet, Lucy turned her thoughts inexorably to Alex. She relived that delicious kiss the way you savored a gourmet chocolate, remembering just how deeply Alex had kissed her, with such raw, unbridled passion. She'd teased him that she hadn't known he'd had it in him, and she really hadn't.

Alex had kissed her like a man dying of thirst and she was water. It had felt fantastic to be kissed like that. To be so wanted and needed.

She stretched her toes towards the end of the bed. Moonlight spilled onto the floor; the wind started up, rattling the windowpanes and making the leaves rustle.

What was going to happen now, on Monday? She pictured Alex coming into school, giving her a secret smile, pulling her into his office for a quick—or not-so-quick—kiss. . . .

Although that last bit seemed unlikely. There had to be some policy about head teachers dating their staff. Temporary staff, in her case, but still . . . what if Alex regretted what in retrospect could very well be seen as a single moment of reckless passion?

Lucy turned on her side and tucked her knees up to her chest. That kiss
had
been reckless and a little bit wild . . . and perhaps totally unplanned. What if Alex came into school Monday morning and gave her the I'm-sorry-but-it-was-a-mistake talk?

And maybe it was a mistake. She'd been telling herself all along that she didn't want a relationship, wasn't ready. Maybe she'd been fooling herself on that score, but surely she'd learned to be a little cautious by now, to think about the consequences.

By Monday morning she'd thought so much about how Alex would or wouldn't react when he saw her that she was annoyed with her endless navel-gazing, and almost with Alex simply for being so much in her thoughts.

She got to work early, flipped on the kettle for a much-needed cup of coffee, and began to open the reception area, switching on the computer and the photocopier, answering the first calls of the day, which were invariably about children who were missing school because of illness.

She kept glancing towards the school yard, waiting for Alex, her heart leaping every time a figure came up the steep little lane. Teachers arrived in a steady trickle, talking about their weekends, their lessons, the hope of half term, which was just two weeks away.

Diana stopped by the desk to tell her about the weekend she'd spent in Manchester. “Andrew asked us to go down there instead of him coming up here, which seemed fair enough. At least he wants to see us.”

“And how did it go?” Lucy asked, trying not to look too often for Alex.

“Fine, I suppose. The children loved it. They miss the city, their old life. We've only been here a year, you know.”

“Do you think they want to move back?”

Diana grimaced. “That isn't really an option, with my mum.”

“No, but you could do a switch,” Lucy suggested, her elbows propped on the counter. “Why couldn't Andrew have the kids during the week, and you have the bachelorette pad in the country? You could go to Manchester for the weekends.”

Diana gave a surprised guffaw of laughter. “I can't see Andrew agreeing to that.”

“But your kids are in high school, right? So it's not as if they're toddlers. They can practically take care of themselves.”

“You've never lived with a teenager, have you?” Diana asked wryly.

“Well, no,” Lucy admitted, and Diana moved past her, down the hall towards the classrooms.

“Thanks for the laugh, anyway,” she called over her shoulder. “I might suggest it to Andrew, just to see the color drain from his face.”

The teachers had all arrived, and the pupils were starting to come up the lane, a bobbing sea of blue and gray. Still no Alex.

Lucy busied herself making coffee, and then putting up the new notices on the board. She told all the relevant teachers about the day's absences, and then as the last pupils came up the hill, she saw Alex among them, holding Poppy by the hand, looking none too happy.

Lucy ducked out of the way, mindlessly feeding more paper into the photocopier. Not a good sign, that look on his face.

She heard the door open behind her and then Poppy's sweet, piping voice.

“Hi, Lucy!”

Lucy turned with a bright smile that felt as if it could slide right off her face. “Hey, Poppy.”

Poppy skipped off towards her classroom, and Lucy's gaze moved to Alex. Her breath caught in her throat. He still looked grumpy and tired and harassed, but he also looked . . . wonderful.

“Hi,” she whispered, and his mouth tugged up in one of his tiny smiles.

“Hi.” He cleared his throat. “I . . . I've been . . .”

The door banged open and Liz Benson blew in with a gust of wind and rain. “What a day! Blue skies when I left ten minutes ago, but look at it now.” She shook both her head and her umbrella, spraying Alex with raindrops. He stepped aside, giving Lucy a wry smile that felt like a private message, a promise to continue their conversation—or so she hoped.

Then he disappeared into his office, and Lucy turned back to the photocopier.

All day long she kept waiting for that conversation to happen, even as she told herself not to.

And the truth was, she had a
life
here in Hartley-by-the Sea. She'd actually made one she enjoyed, with friends from the school and a sister who loved her. All right, Juliet might not have
said
she loved her, but yesterday Lucy had felt closer to her sister—no “half” needed—than she ever had before. And she was enjoying her art classes, and life in the village, and frankly she didn't need Alex Kincaid, amazing kisser or not.

Still she jumped when a door opened, when someone came into the reception area, when the phone rang. She gave in to temptation a couple of times and craned her neck so she could see Alex in his office, but he was always immersed in work or on the phone, which wasn't unusual but felt as if he was avoiding her.

An entire day passed without him talking to her at all. He'd e-mailed her about various work-related issues; he'd given her a distracted smile when he'd gone into the hall for lunch. That was it.

He
was
avoiding her. He regretted their kiss, regretted everything, and he didn't know how to tell her. And she, Lucy knew, was too much of a coward to push the issue. She'd rather live in ignorance and hope than with disillusionment and disappointment.

Still, when another three days had passed without Alex saying anything personal at all, Lucy knew she had to start a conversation. She deserved better than this.

She waited until Alex was alone in his office, the teachers and pupils all safely in their lessons, and then she took a deep breath and marched to his door, rapping on it rather loudly.

“Come in.”

He looked startled to see her at first, and then wary. Lucy's heart plummeted like a penny off the Empire State Building. Down, down, down, so hard and fast it would leave a little crater in the pavement.

Carefully she closed the door behind her. Alex waited, watching her with that same wary expression, and belatedly Lucy realized she hadn't actually considered what she intended to say to him.

She'd wanted
him
to say something. Although looking at his face now, she was pretty sure she didn't.

“Look, Alex, I came in here to tell you that you don't have to avoid me.” She heard the hurt in her voice, reminding her of the sound of feet crunching on broken glass. Cringeworthy. Pain-inducing.

“Avoid you?”

“Are you going to tell me you aren't?” She raised her eyebrows, hurt giving way to anger. Was he really going to pull that lame male trick of pretending he had no idea what she was talking about?

“No,” Alex said after a moment. He placed his hands flat on his desk as he gazed up at her. “I'm not going to tell you that.”

Her anger left her in a rush, and the hurt returned to fill in all the empty spaces. “So you are, then.”

“Well . . . a bit.”

“A bit?”

“To be fair, I've had a rough week. Poppy's been up every night and Bella's getting into trouble at school again.”

“Oh, no.” For a moment her worries paled in comparison with those of Alex's daughters. “What's happened? Is it PE again?”

“No, she's mouthing off to some teachers. Acting out. She's risking another suspension.” Wearily he rubbed a hand over his face. “I tried asking her what's troubling her, but she won't tell me anything. I even suggesting counseling again, and she just rolled her eyes.”

“I'm sorry.” And now Lucy felt like a heel.

Alex dropped his hand and glanced up at her with wry honesty. “But you're right, I have been avoiding you, Lucy, and that's because I don't know what to say to you. I had a wonderful time on Saturday and—and Saturday night.”

“So did I,” she whispered.

“But the truth is I don't know where this is going. Where anything between us can go. You're leaving in a couple of months and I don't even know if I'm ready for a relationship. Or if my daughters are ready for one. And that's without even asking you what you want. I know you recently broke up with a bloke who was saddled with kids, and I can't imagine your wanting to jump into that scenario all over again.”

He waited, and Lucy wondered what he wanted to hear. That she did? Or was he hoping she'd give him the easy out?

“I don't know,” she said slowly. “All of this is unexpected.”

“Yes, definitely,” Alex agreed. “I wasn't looking for . . . well, anything. Frankly at this point my life is more about survival mode.”

“Right.” So this was the letting-her-down talk, and the trouble was he did it so nicely. She felt sorry for him, but it still hurt that he wasn't sweeping her into his arms and kissing her senseless as he apologized for ignoring her for the last three days. Poor Lucy, ever the optimist.

“So . . .” Alex raked a hand through his hair, shrugging up at her, and Lucy decided to help him out. Help herself out, and end this misery.

“So maybe we should just leave it?” she finished with as practical a tone as she could muster. “It was fun, but . . . ?”

Now it was his turn to finish. And for a second she thought she saw disappointment flicker in his eyes. No, that was probably more of her deluded optimism.

“Fun, but,” he repeated after a moment. “Yes, I suppose that sums it up.”

Nodding slowly, the heart that had free-fallen like a penny now heavy as a stone, Lucy turned and walked back to reception.

A week dragged by, an awful week where Lucy exchanged cordial hellos with Alex and not much more. Once he'd come into the office and attempted some chitchat, but it had been so painfully awkward for both of them that they'd left it.

Lucy told herself she didn't mind, insisted she had enough going on in her life to be happy about. And she
did
. She was teaching art to the Year Fives as well as the Year Sixes now, and she, Rachel, and Juliet had started a new team for the pub quiz with Abby, the granddaughter of Mary Buxton from the beach café and a single mum to a three-year-old boy.

Abby had been living in Newcastle but was staying in Hartley-by-the-Sea for a little while. “Until Mary gets on her feet,” she'd said, although Juliet had told Lucy privately that Mary wasn't likely to do that anytime soon.

“So what do you think Abby will do?” Lucy had asked.

“Stay, I suppose. Mary's the only family's she got, as far as I know. Abby grew up here, but she left as soon as she'd finished school.”

“Do you think she's glad to be back?” Although they'd done a pub quiz together, she hadn't gotten to know Abby very well. She hadn't spoken except to offer a few tentative answers, and she hadn't even stayed to hear the results, needing to get back to Noah.

“I don't know,” Juliet answered slowly. “I never got the sense she hated it here, but more that she wanted to see the world. She's only twenty-four now.”

Lucy and Juliet had taken to spending their evenings together, chatting over dinner and sometimes watching brainless TV shows. Lucy was trying to convince Juliet of the merits of reality TV, and so far she thought she'd had some success.

“It's such rubbish,” Juliet would exclaim as contestants dumped buckets of mud over each other's heads on one particularly inane program, but she was smiling.

“You just love to criticize,” Lucy answered, and threw a pillow at her.

Some evenings they spent chatting with whatever guests were staying: retired couples or gap year kids or the occasional bus tour of pensioners or pupils. Lucy liked hearing all their different stories and accents, learning a little bit about their lives before they moved on. Juliet, she thought, seemed to like it too, although she never said as much.