“This isn’t funny, Lucy. You have obligations. The use of the school is meant to benefit the community, not just to be a convenience for one person.”
“It’s not actually all that convenient. The wood stove is going to be a hassle, and I can’t decide which room to put the stripper pole in. A bit of a problem, really. I mean, should it be in the gym, or the library? So many decisions.”
“Lucy… are you all right?”
She stopped walking, the phone tight to her ear. Tears burned at the backs of her eyeballs. No. Nope, definitely not all right. Mostly wrong, actually.
“Lucy? Dear, we’re going to have a meeting. We’ll make sure you get some help to pull the school together and fulfill the terms…”
“Great. Yes. I’m all about fulfilling terms. Thanks. Bye.”
She ended the call, staring at the phone like it was a rope falling slowly away from her outstretched hand.
She had to make a yoga space. And a café.
And a life.
How do you make a life, when you don’t want the one you have?
Four
Lucy realized that hiding in the grade three classroom would not make the nice police officer go away, but she had decided to try it anyway. She could peek at him if she wrapped herself in the dusty curtain and peered, like a desert nomad clad in billowing shawls, out the big windows overlooking the parking lot of the school.
The cruiser had pulled in like it owned the place, parking under the basketball net and disgorging a very tall, very well-proportioned police officer. Shoulders. Lucy had always been partial to broad shoulders. She wasn’t particularly partial to small children and she blinked several times as a tiny little girl hopped out of the cruiser. She seemed to be wearing a tutu and a fireman’s hat and she ran in circles around the cop waving what looked like an axe with distressing vigor.
Lucy wanted nothing to do with vigor. She leaned heavily against the window, continuing with the peering and the sleuthing.
He couldn’t see her, such was her skill at sleuthing. She congratulated herself on her ninja-like ability to vanish into the background, seconded only by her uncanny ability to not answer knocks on the door.
Evasion techniques, 101.
The cop waved.
At her.
And smiled.
She backed slowly away from the window.
He was wearing sunglasses, which gave him a mysteriously alluring manliness, what with his broad shoulders and strong jaw… but she knew it was old Lazy Eye himself. She wouldn’t be fooled by a uniform and a pair of ray bans. Police officers should not be allowed to have a lazy eye.
She told him as much when she opened the door.
“I find it makes me even more handsome,” he smiled. He didn’t, she noticed, take off the sunglasses.
“I wouldn’t know.” She pulled her lips back from her teeth. Monkeys do that when they imitate humans. Lucy was feeling decidedly simian in the face of the strong jaw and broad shoulders. “I don’t find law enforcers handsome.”
“I’m not actually here to do any enforcing at the moment.”
He stepped aside as Goat took the opportunity to flee through the open door. The little girl screamed with glee and wrapped herself around his leg. Terror and excitement in one pink tutu-ed little package.
“Now you’ve done it,” Lucy said, not moving. “Here, Goat. Here.”
“This is Ida,” he said, lifting his leg with the child firmly attached.
“It’s a goat!” she giggled. She released his leg and scampered down the stairs, chasing the goat onto the playground. It was only a matter of time before Dog got in on the action and then Lucy would be forced to embark on yet another muster of her wayward menagerie.
Lucy and the tall cop stared at each other. She could see herself in his sunglasses, stretched and disjointed like a child in a house of mirrors.
“My name’s Dorian.” He extended a hand. “We met the other day, but I wanted to come over and see if you’re doing okay here.”
She looked at the hand, floating between them on uncharted seas. Where boats sink. And sailors die.
“I’m perfect. Bye.”
She started to close the door. He kept talking.
“I can build things.”
His words bobbed on the incoming tide like life preservers.
“What kinds of things?”
She brushed her hair back from her face, sensing a trap. Is this how alcoholic murderers get arrested these days?
“I doubt very much that you’re a murderer,” he laughed.
She was doing that a lot now. Saying things out loud that she heard in her head when she had no intention of actually saying them.
“Semantics,” she shrugged. “I am definitely an alcoholic, though, by any definition.”
That seemed to shut him down.
Momentarily.
“As I said, I can build things. And it seems to me that you need some things to be built.”
“Things.”
She felt that single-word responses were best. Sentences were for better people, with bigger plans. She wondered if she could become monosyllabic.
Worth a try.
“Lucy.” He removed his sunglasses. His eye drifted lazily over her face and she blushed. His eyes were so blue the ocean would be jealous. She wished she’d brushed her teeth sometime this week. “The ladies of the HAWC are getting worked up.”
“Worked up.”
“Yup.”
“Tough.”
“You signed a lease agreement on the school and…”
This was old news. She was bored with this conversation, with the sunlight, with his manly chin and mossy scented aftershave.
“You smell too good to be a cop,” she said, pressing her nose toward him and hovering her face just below his adam’s apple. It bobbed as he swallowed. He placed a warm hand on her shoulder and a wave of longing passed through her from her shoulder to her toes and back up again until her hair stood on end. She took a step back, sucking in air and loneliness in an attempt to remain upright.
She had learned her lesson. She would leave the door unanswered henceforth.
She tried again to close the door and failed. Cops wear impossibly big cop shoes.
“I can help you build a shed for the goat.”
He spoke softly, his giant foot propping open the door, his sunglasses dangling handsomely from his hand which, now that she looked, did indeed seem work-worn and bearing significant carpentry potential.
“I’ll probably just tear it down, or burn it, or move into it so the goat won’t be alone,” she whispered. She didn’t know why she was whispering but it seemed to be called for. They were making a pact; she could tell. He had no idea what he was getting into.
Dorian would build it, and the goat would come.
Except that it was already here.
Pooing in the music room.
“It will be okay, Lucy,” he whispered back at her. Like he was trying to calm an unruly donkey. “Let me help.”
“Am I a community service project?”
“You definitely are,” he chuckled. Lucy was growing wearing of people chuckling at her. She had never been chuckle-worthy before. Lose your job, kill your fiancé, destroy all that is good in your life and you suddenly become your own stand-up.
“OK.”
“OK?”
“I said, okay, okay? Come and build the thing, and feel good about the thing, and whatever.” She rubbed her face, wishing she had sandpaper in her hands. “Just not so damn early, you got that? Nothing before noon.”
He drove away then, or a few minutes after then. After he chased the goat back into the school and scooped up the child and wiped some goaty footprints off his trousers and dropped words like “measurements” and “foundation” and “building permit” like bouquets at her feet.
“What’s with the kid?” she asked, glancing at his hand but not seeing a ring. The child laid her tousled little head on his shoulder as h
e carried her to the car.
“She’s my cousin’s daughter,” he said. “I just borrow her sometimes.”
“I’m a Warrior Princess,” the child chirped, waving her axe at Lucy like a benediction before he tucked her into the cruiser.
Then he drove away.
Her shoulder still felt warm where he had touched her.
Lucy sat on the floor in the hall of the school and wept.
Five
“She walks in beauty, like the night,” he said, his fingers stilled over the keyboard.
“That’s plagiarism,” he said, looking at Wilma as she sat glowering at him from atop a pile of paperbacks that threatened to topple under her hefty bulk. “We have to do better than this, Wilma.”
His current novel was supposed to be about a firefighter and a wedding planner, so why, oh why, was he returning to an intoxicated schoolteacher with a goat and a dog named Dog?
Get a grip, Sergeant.
“She opened the door, releasing the pungent aroma of manure…”
This was not going to be a bestseller.
He tipped his chair back and cracked his knuckles.
Lucy.
Lucy drank too much.
He knew she was trouble, but he couldn’t tear himself away from Lucy’s more appealing features, like her smile and the way she sharpened all her comments to a dull edge before driving them home. He felt like he could love her mind, if he could help her to untie it from whatever was dragging her down the slippery slope of self-destruction. He shook his head. The last thing Lucy needed was a soppy crush mooning over her. Dorian wrote romantic heroes, he wasn’t one himself. Women were baffling, unpredictable and emotional. He spent more time being tongue-tied around a pretty girl than he did wooing her, and Lucy didn’t exactly seem to be looking for romance.
And anyway, the last thing Dorian was looking for was another drunken woman in his life. Connie was more than enough, so why did he feel so attracted to Lucy?
He wasn’t, he decided. She was pretty, that’s all. Lots of pretty girls in the world who didn’t come with a bottle of scotch tied to their ankle.
He was going to help her because he had made a bet with Rory, and it was time his asshole partner had a lesson in philanthropy. He would show up, help her fulfill her obligations with the school, collect a hundred bucks and the chance to say, “I told you so”.
And if that meant he had to be near her and her deep chestnut eyes…
He sighed and tried to focus on his writing. He had to think of how to get his characters to meet each other in a funny but romantic kind of way, but it was hard to think of romance when he saw so much misfortune every day. One of the reasons he wrote romance novels under the pen name of Vanessa Ryder was to offer hope to his readers. He knew that love didn’t obey rules or follow a tightly plotted outline, but he had to believe that it was the answer. His books were a literature of hope. He believed in the stories he wrote, and he believed in happily ever after. Even against all evidence to the contrary.
He’d gone to see Connie and Ida earlier that morning and the visit replayed itself in his head. He hated the sense of tension he felt in Connie’s kitchen, in the old house they’d grown up in together. It hadn’t been a happy home then and it wasn’t now. Connie had suffered from her childhood and she dragged that hurt into her adult life, but Dorian was determined to stop the cycle with Ida, in whatever way he could.
Connie had occasional moments of stability, but her good moods were tinged with a manic intensity that made him uncomfortable. Her pattern was usually to ride an up current when she was sober that might hold her for a day or a week, but then she would crash back down, usually after she waitressed for a few days and decided to reward herself with booze.
He knew Ida sensed her mother’s turmoil. Even at six years old, Ida recognized the phases of addiction. She watched her mother warily as Connie moved from table to counter to rocking chair, never settling for more than a moment.
“You okay, Connie?” he asked.
“Yeah. ‘Course I am.” She lifted a coffee cup to her lips with trembling hands. Connie was still pretty, underneath the pasty skin and dark circles, but Dorian noticed deeper wrinkles around her tired eyes, her hair cropped short in what should be stylish pixie cut but which gave her a feral look, like she was constantly hungry.
Ida wore a tattered t-shirt and shorts that looked to be about two sizes too big for her. Her knees were dirty and he could see goosebumps on her arms. He went into her room and returned with a wrinkled sweatshirt that he tugged over her head. She smiled at him, her little face lighting up for a fleeting moment before she looked back at her mother and her smile fell away.
Connie grabbed Ida’s arm and dragged the little girl into her embrace. She kissed her on the head and Dorian could see Ida melt into her mother’s arms. This was the only thing the child wanted in the whole world, to be loved by her mother, but Dorian could tell she knew it wouldn’t last.
“I know you’re here to check on me,” Connie said, trying to smile, her skin stretched tightly over the sharp bones of her face. “You don’t need to. I’m good. We’re good, ain’t we Ida? Ain’t we good?”
She squeezed the little girl until Ida nodded, raising her eyes to Dorian without a smile.
“You work this week?” he asked her. He had to tread carefully. He had made a mistake by showing up in his uniform. He knew it made Connie nervous, and he wished he’d gone home to change first.
“Yup. Three days in that hell hole restaurant,” Connie released Ida and slurped her coffee, then got to her feet and paced the kitchen. Dorian glanced outside to the sagging chicken coop in the backyard. Several moulting hens pecked lazily in the dirt. The yard needed work and the house had a stale smell, like empty beer cans and used ashtrays. He made a mental note to get some cleaning supplies the next time he was in town.
“You staying sober?”
“Don’t I look sober?” she snapped at him, emptying her coffee into the sink. “I’m not my father Officer Dorian, no matter what you think.’
“I know you’re not, Connie,” he said gently. It was an open wound that was all too easy to pick. “I’m just worried about you.”
“Don’t be,” she glared at him. “I take care of myself.”
Ida leaned against his leg and he dropped his hand to her tiny shoulder. She dug her hand into the pocket of his uniform, smiling when she pulled out a peppermint and popped it in her mouth. He winked at her.
“And Ida,” he said. “Ida comes first, right?”
Connie turned and looked at him. Her gaze slid to her daughter before she turned and grabbed her purse. “She’s fine, Dorian. Kid’s already got more’n what you ‘n I had when we was little. And don’t worry. The Social Services come and check in on me too, like I’m some kinda health risk or something. I’m going to town.”
And she left.
Dorian knew that Social Services kept a pretty close eye on her, especially after the last time she abandoned Ida, but he also knew Connie put on a good show when her support cheques were on the line.
Ida walked to the door, pressing her face against the window as her mother roared out of the driveway without saying goodbye. She didn’t cry; she just stood very still until Dorian scooped her up in his arms and swung her onto his shoulders, making her giggle.
It was the most beautiful sound in the world.
Dorian had taken Ida to the library for the afternoon where they read stories and played in the castle where Ida insisted on wrapping him in a length of pink silk and calling him her long-lost sister. Connie was sober when he dropped Ida off at supper time with several bags of groceries and a promise to take her again on Saturday.
Dorian rubbed his face with both hands, forcing his attention back to the laptop and the novel that awaited his attention. He tried to focus on his characters. He had the power to make them happy, to create the world they needed in order to be together. If only he could do the same for Connie, and for Lucy. The unea
se he felt in his guts wouldn’t go away.
Happily ever after wasn’t going to magically appear any time soon.
Six
“They’re gonna evict me, Ruby. They want yoga, and vegetables, and apparently I signed my soul away when I bought this place and now I have to yoga it up.”
Ruby smiled at her over her coffee cup. Ruby always smiled, always smelled like fruity flowers and always paid for the coffee because Ruby owned the coffee shop in the back of Grim’s Feed and Seed, the hardware store her father had built from the ground up. Ruby was a Woman in Control. Ruby was an Entrepreneur.
“You got the place for a dollar, Lu. You knew that was the deal.”
“Yeah, but that was like, in another life or something. Once I moved in, I just decided, like, no. No to everything.”
“You don’t really have the right to do that. The no. The doing of no is not in your contract.”
“I know. But I’m so good at it. I can do no like a fucking champion.”
Ruby smiled again. “I’ll discount you seeds and tools. And I have an order of chicks coming in next week.”
“Chicks. That will go along nicely with my brothel idea.”
“Not those kinds of chicks.” Ruby raised an eyebrow. “You really need to stop doing that, you know? Saying random weird things to people. You may want to teach here someday, and it’s a small community with a long memory.”
“I’ll never teach again. I’m a drunk, remember?”
“I do. And you’re not.”
“I steal my mother’s scotch. I hide a bottle in the girl’s bathroom. I’m having a hard time restraining myself from pouring some into this coffee at this very minute.” Lucy knocked her heel against her purse, resting on the floor beside her. There was the satisfying clunk of the bottle against her foot. She could say no, as long as the possibility of saying yes was an option.
Love on the Rocks: A Heartswell Harbour Romance Page 3
