What a mixture she was: wary, sad, angry, funny, quirky, bright. Grief stricken. Radiating ‘don’t touch’ signals that he was sure were self-defence, not froideur. But she was like an air traffic controller who’d been in radio contact with an aircraft when it fell from the sky. She hadn’t made the decision that led to disaster, but she hadn’t reacted in a way that would avert it. She was tormented by guilt.
He must be crazy for being so attracted to her.
Potentially, she stood between himself and his goal.
And he was a goal-oriented man. Had been. Would be again. Was. But when she’d demanded that he leave The Stables to her, fight written all over her tearstained face, he’d been within a breath of saying, ‘OK.’ Which was stupid. Unless, on some level, he’d hoped that capitulation would prompt her to haul him off to bed. Not that he would have taken much hauling … In his imagination, he let his arms slide around that waist that looked as if he could wrap himself around it twice, and waft her smoothly up her stairs.
Will her bid drive the premium up? How can you prevent that?
He could prevent the premium being driven up – for her – if he dropped out. He stared at his plan. Getting the lease represented a giant stride towards his dream. But it had never occurred to him that realising his dream might mean trampling on someone else’s.
His phone rang, vibrating against the table top like a giant bee. Kenny said the screen. He answered with a lift to his heart. ‘Ken!’
Kenny’s voice hadn’t changed since the days of school detention, loud and brash. ‘Hey, Doc, there’s a big black Jag been left in my garage. I’m thinking of putting it on eBay.’
Dominic laughed. ‘You leave my Jag alone. So you’re back in England?’
‘Got in yesterday. All ready to join you on your great adventure.’
‘I’m still in the working-towards-adventure phase.’
‘Have you asked your wonderful cousin if I can surf her sofa? Remind her how much she loves me.’
Dominic laughed and glanced at Miranda. ‘Kenny wants to know if you love him enough to let him sleep on your sofa.’
Miranda grinned over her specs, cutting surplus pastry from the edge of a pie with efficient little chops. ‘Always,’ she declared. And, with the wisdom of long acquaintance, ‘But he has to behave.’
Dominic relayed the information. ‘How about you drive up in the Jag? Then we’ll have transport up here.’ After Kenny had hooted with glee at the idea and the call ended, Dominic realised that he’d been phone doodling, making the L of Liza heavier and more ornate, going over and over that one letter.
Ignoring it, he worked at his plan for a bit longer, making to do lists and contingency lists and every other kind of list that seemed useful.
His eyes began to get heavy.
His mind began to slow. Ethan’s shrill commentary on how to paint a pie with egg became pleasantly soporific. He sighed. Looked at his watch. Nearly midday. ‘Time for some zeds.’
‘OK, lunch will be ready not long after you wake up.’ Miranda had flour on her chin and her smile was fond and understanding enough to make him slightly uncomfortable with it. Pity Natalie hadn’t been half so accommodating. About half would be a reasonable level.
Upstairs, he set a phone alert for thirty minutes, then, grudging the time and resenting the necessity, dropped onto the single bed and let the darkness have him.
Then there were stars in the darkness, dancing with shadows, flickering, glimmering as he rushed towards them or they rushed towards him, fast and flying and exciting—
He woke with the alarm and pushed himself up to sit on the side of the bed, feeling giddy but strangely at peace. There were definitely times when the weirdness of narcolepsy was fantastical enough to be enjoyed. The vision of stars had been amazing.
Not as good as the vision of Liza Reece making love to him, of course. He wished for that one to return every time he shut his eyes.
Liza enjoyed the quiet that normally came before her first client. She looked over her Monday appointments, checked supplies and generally centred herself.
So she was irritated when Nicolas strolled into her room.
He smiled.
She raised her left eyebrow. Being able to move her eyebrows independently was surprisingly useful – the left made her look quizzical, and the right confused.
‘Good weekend? Nice rest? Calmed down a bit?’
She took a deep breath and squelched the desire to spit fire at him. ‘Sorry?’
‘From your tantrum. On Friday.’
She changed eyebrows. ‘What I remember about Friday is you being a shit.’ Turning to her filing cabinet, she picked up her appointment list.
Behind her, Nicolas’s laugh sounded forced. ‘Come on, Liza! You provoked me.’
She would not erupt. That’s what he wanted, to make her look like a hysterical babe. ‘How?’
A pained pause. ‘You know how you’ve been.’
‘No? Tell me.’ Her fingers walked over the alphabetical tabs, pausing to pick out Yvette Elmoor and Enid Round.
‘Just, you know. Difficult. Unreasonable.’
‘I wasn’t remotely. I asked you a civil question and you threw a giant strop.’ Wow, serenity was satisfying.
Nicolas fell silent.
Extracting the notes for the last two on her list, Marcie Yeo and Abby Andrew, she closed the drawer and carried her neat pile of notes to her desk. Silence grew thick and prickly. Nicolas stared at the ceiling, as if the secret to conversing with women might be written there. Or maybe he was praying. Finally, he sighed, and sat down. Liza neatened the notes, took her seat and looked him in the eye, controlling the conversation by speaking before he could. ‘If you’d been my employer, I would be taking you to a tribunal about your unacceptable behaviour. If you don’t want to sell your lease then say so, and I’ll look elsewhere. Don’t yell insults and try to intimidate me.’
‘I think you’re exaggerating.’ But Nicolas looked down at his hands. Even this early in the day, his shirt collar was curling.
Liza checked the time. ‘Pippa will be bringing my first client in.’
He climbed to his feet. At the door, he hesitated. ‘So, when I get a valuation on the lease, we’ll talk again?’
Absently, she nodded. ‘Let me know the figure and I’ll decide whether I want to go any further.’
The door clicked shut behind him. She counted to ten, to give him time to get into his own office.
Then she leaped out of her chair, punching the air and swinging her hips to a whispered, ‘Yes! Yes! Yes!’ She was one step closer to her goal. Only a teeny step. But a step.
As she was scheduled to work until eight, Rochelle and Angie had agreed to meet her in The Three Fishes.
Her optimistic mood had carried her through the day and she fairly danced up to the table and plumped down beside her friends. ‘I’m going to try and buy Nicolas’s lease off him and run The Stables myself,’ she announced, breathlessly.
But almost before Rochelle and Angie could arrange their expressions into surprise or pleasure or wonder, Dominic turned from the bar and said, ‘That’s funny. So am I.’
Angie and Rochelle’s attention flipped from Liza to Dominic.
Liza glared at his grin, his hair flopping back from his eyes, aggravated that she hadn’t noticed him standing nearby, gilded by the lights over the bar, before she went into broadcast mode.
He picked up his beer and sauntered to their table. ‘Hello, Liza.’ He dropped another of those annoying kisses on her temple – not even a proper kissy-cheek thing. ‘Hi, I’m Dominic Christy.’ He extended his hand first to Rochelle and then to Angie. ‘As this seems to be the blonde table, do you mind if I join you?’
Rochelle and Angie predictably – if traitorously – chorused, ‘That would be lovely!’ and Liza cursed under her breath. All day she’d looked forward to springing her plans to revolutionise the treatment centre on her friends, enlisting their help to brainstorm funky treat
ments until clients burst The Stables at its seams. But not in front of Dominic, as his own plans would work out if hers didn’t. And hers would work out if his didn’t. Dominic reached a stool from another table and settled in to chat Rochelle and Angie up quite blatantly while Liza went to buy herself a drink, as she was the only one without.
Janice, the barmaid, was alone behind the bar and Liza had to wait, breathing in the beery smell, while Janice pulled foaming pints in her smiling, unhurried way. In fact, it took so long that Rochelle called over, ‘Get me and Angie another spritzer, Lize!’
And Liza was forced, by good manners, to ask, ‘Dominic?’
Amusement flickered in his eyes as he glanced at his emptying glass and smiled lazily. ‘A pint of Guinness would be great. Thanks.’ Evidently, he wasn’t above accepting offers made through gritted teeth
By the time she’d got her order, Dominic, Rochelle and Angie were chatting like old friends. Liza slid the tray onto the table, bumping Dominic’s elbow and not saying sorry. ‘So,’ he said, passing the spritzers to Angie and Rochelle with a smile, which meant they both said thank you to him, instead of to Liza. ‘You and Nicolas sorted out your differences?’
‘Some,’ she said, briefly. ‘Great shoes, Ange.’
Angie lifted a foot to display tan leather flatties with extravagant tooling and thick yellow overstitching. ‘I got a bonus last week. So, what’s going on, Liza? How come you and Dominic both think you’re going to run The Stables?’
Dominic got his answer in first. ‘Unfortunately, I’d already expressed interest in the lease before Liza mentioned that she had her own plans.’
‘But, unfortunately, Dominic didn’t realise that if Nicolas couldn’t make the treatment centre pay, I was willing and able to step up.’
Rochelle’s eyes shone with mischief. ‘So, you two are going into partnership?’
‘No!’ they said, together. And Liza wondered whether Dominic’s reaction was mirrored in her face – aghast eyebrows flying up over unflatteringly horrified eyes.
Dominic made a smooth recovery. ‘It wouldn’t work. My idea of teamwork is for everyone in my team to do as I say.’
Liza snorted. ‘That doesn’t surprise me. And I’m not a do-as-you-say woman.’
‘And that doesn’t surprise me.’
‘I’ll take that as a compliment.’
Dominic pulled a face of extravagant amazement. ‘Seriously?’
Rochelle laughed. ‘Dominic, why don’t you come to our Halloween party at my flat in Peterborough? The thirty-first is on a Monday, unfortunately, but a party’s a party and I always give one at Halloween. Liza can give you a lift because she’s boring about drink so she’s bound to be driving both ways. Aren’t you, Liza?’
Liza’s jaundiced response was lost in Angie’s enthusiastic, ‘Good idea! The guest list’s a bit light on men.’
Dominic gave Rochelle the benefit of his slow smile. ‘In that case, do you have room for another? My mate Kenny will be here for a few days.’
Liza jumped in smugly. ‘Then I can’t give you a lift because I’m not going to get two of you in my little Smart car, am I?’
But he just grinned. ‘Kenny’s bringing my car up, as it’s been stored in his garage. He’s happy to do a bit of chauffeuring, because, if my plans come off, he’s going to work for me as an instructor.’
‘So, he can drive you to the party.’
He gave her a pitying look. ‘Kenny won’t go to a party and not drink. No, I’ll get the insurance sorted and you can drive mine. Thank you.’
Chapter Sixteen
PWNsleep message board:
GuiltyGeorge: Awww no, my GP’s treating me like a kid and sending me to bed at the same time every night!
Tenzeds: Sleep hygiene? To be positive, it does provide you with a form of taking charge of your life. Taking charge makes me feel better. Sometimes.
In preparation for joining the ranks of business owners, Dominic looked for ways to feel positive and productive.
Building on his fitness, he took Crosswind on longer walks and ran or took his board and skated in the late afternoons.
He had long exciting phone-planning sessions with Kenny and shorter calls to finance and insurance providers over the boring bits. He had a preliminary meeting with an accountant in Bettsbrough.
As a smooth changeover was essential, prescription-wise, if he was to avoid becoming inoperative, he got his GP in Hertford to put him in touch with a suitable one in Peterborough, ready for if he moved into the area.
And, to make such a move possible, asked local estate agents for rental property listings, discovering there were several available actually in Middledip, all in an area called Bankside. ‘The new village,’ Miranda explained, with an expression that suggested only the old village was cool. ‘Jos calls it Little Dallas. It’s all porticoes and pillars.’
Office hours had never applied to him, but now that he needed to be functional at the same time as the ordinary working world, he began concentrating on his sleep hygiene, setting his morning alarms for seven and keeping busy until his noon sleep. In the evenings, he entertained Ethan, building Duplo castles and squidging Play-Doh, then played poker with Jos, which prevented evening-television-induced torpor. At ten, he retired to his room to read, sitting with his back against the cool of the wall. When he got into bed at eleven he was ready for sleep, rather than sleep being ready for him. He stuck to the regime religiously all week.
By Saturday, he was sick to death of it.
Even though he hadn’t experienced any of the groggy days when the sleep monster wouldn’t let him out from under him, he decided that nobody could live so unnaturally cleanly forever.
He texted Kenny: What’s your ETA? Kenny returned: 2pm put beer in frij. Dominic walked Crosswind early and took his second white pill late, anticipating that the evening would be stimulating, with Kenny around, but bedtime would be delayed. When Kenny drew up, Dominic was so glad to see his childhood buddy that he went outside to greet him, though it wrenched his guts to see Kenny climbing out of the smooth black lines of Dominic’s S Type.
‘Hey, Doc!’ Kenny did the cool-but-manly clasp-hands-bump-shoulders thing. Tanned and lean, his brown eyes were bright and his hair fell as if he’d had it styled that morning. Kenny might have trodden the wilderness trails but his look was anything but Grizzly Adams. ‘So what’s it like giving up the control tower for village life?’
‘I’m getting into it.’ Dominic ran a hand over the hot shiny bonnet of his Jag in a silent but loving greeting. ‘Say hi to Miranda and co, then we need to go into Peterborough and hire Halloween costumes for a party on Monday.’
‘Awesome.’ Kenny hopped the hedge and jogged indoors for just long enough to dump his gear, get Miranda and Jos laughing, Ethan shouting and Crosswind barking. Then they were strapping themselves into the car’s black leather interior, Dominic, in the passenger seat, pricked with a thousand needles of jealousy as Kenny shifted from park to reverse, turned the car and hummed forward in the smooth glide that Dominic ached to have back under his control.
He forced himself to switch focus. ‘Turn right and you’ll pick up the signs to Peterborough as soon as you leave the village.’
Kenny drove one-handed into Main Road, past The Three Fishes and the turning for Great Hill Road. ‘Impressed that you’ve lined up a party on a weeknight.’ He accelerated as they left the village, between leafless hedges and ploughed fields. ‘And tonight, how about we take Miranda and her clan out to dinner, as they’re letting us crash at their place? They’ll have to disappear early because of little Ethan, then you can show me the clubbing in Peterborough.’
‘I’ve been so taken up with getting my life back on track, I haven’t done any clubbing.’
Kenny glanced over sharply, making the car jink towards the verge and Dominic clutch the sides of his seat in an effort not to protest. ‘You’re kidding me.’
Dominic shrugged. ‘It would mean a taxi in and out of Peterb
orough and I wouldn’t know anyone once I got there.’
Kenny shook his head despairingly. ‘That’s why you go to clubs, Doc, to “get to know” women. Never mind, we’ll get Jos to drop us off in the city and see what we find. You’re not hiding away in the sticks because you’re still hung up on Natalie, are you?’
‘No.’ Dominic didn’t elaborate. Somewhere in the corners of his mind he was aware of the reason that he hadn’t looked outside Middledip for entertainment. Liza Reece. Pulling him like a magnet.
Kenny let the car slow as he approached a junction, checking both ways. ‘You in touch with Natalie? I know she didn’t deal with it when you … got ill.’
Kenny’s tone was artificially casual and Dominic suppressed a sigh. Natalie hadn’t been the only one not to deal with his narcolepsy. Kenny had been just as all-too-obviously uncomfortable with it. His heart dipped in disappointment. ‘Once the house and finances were settled there wasn’t much need for us to communicate but she sent me an e-card on my birthday and she e-mails now and then. She went to New York for a while, with her company, but it wasn’t permanent.’
Another few minutes and they had reached the ring road around Peterborough, Kenny glancing from mirror to mirror as he slotted into the circulating traffic and straight into the fast lane until he reached the slip road marked City centre. ‘She could spring some surprises, couldn’t she? Natalie.’
Rocking in his seat as the car whizzed around the roundabout, Dominic sighed. ‘And she got no more predictable as our relationship stalled. You know what she did with … with the baby.’
Kenny sucked in a big breath. ‘Yeah. Totally shocked.’ Left at the next roundabout, then right, following the flowing traffic over an old-fashioned bridge of blue-painted iron to the rising hulk of the shopping centre and the satellite multi-storey blocks, a contrast to the graceful spires of the cathedral to their right. Kenny aimed the car towards the entrance of a car park as if flying a spaceship on a video game.
Chapter Seventeen
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Dream a Little Dream Page 13
