Anybody But Him (10 page)

Several hours later, Nicola was sitting at the kitchen table feeling sore and sorry for herself when she saw Blair pass the kitchen window.

‘It's open,' she called, because she didn't fancy getting up, and because there was no point in standing on ceremony with him after last night. A man would normally have to take her on a few dates, at least, before he got to see as much of her as Blair had seen. How did she get herself into these situations?

Dammit was the first through the door, and he race dover as if he'd missed her and was thoroughly pleased to see her again. It would be quite touching, she thought, if she didn't know better. The last time the dog had been here, he'd been fed. It didn't matter to him which human happened to live here. Still, it was cute the way he stood on his hind legs with his front paws on her chair while he sniffed her as if checking that she was okay. She rubbed the top of his head with her right hand.

Blair's entrance was more restrained. ‘How are you now that you've had some sleep?'

‘Grouchy.'

‘Back to normal, then.' He pulled out a chair and sat down. Nodding at the dog, he said, ‘He likes you.'

She wrinkled her nose. ‘How can you tell?'

‘Because he doesn't let anybody but me rub his ears.'

‘Oh. Really?' She looked down at the dog. What had she done to deserve his affection? She didn't even like dogs.

‘I thought you might need help with some things this morning, like dressing, but I see you've managed on your own.'

‘It wasn't too difficult.' The baggy tracksuit top had been relatively easy with its zip front, but she'd given up on the bra. She'd packed it in the bag she planned to take to her parents' house. ‘I'm waiting for my dad to fetch me when he's finished his errands. My mum's going to wash my hair for me. I couldn't do it in the shower last night with only one hand.'

‘How long before your dad gets here?'

‘I've no idea. He was very vague about what he had to do.'

‘Well, there's no need to wait for him. I'll drive you there.'

She bit her lip. He'd helped her so much already and she didn't want to suck up all his free time. ‘Shouldn't you be working in the garden? Or painting pictures?'

He shrugged. ‘I have to go into town, anyway.'

‘Oh, okay then. I'll phone Dad and tell him not to bother calling by.' She'd rather be a passenger in Blair's car anyway. Far less stressful.

She made sure she had her painkillers, and Blair carried her bag to the car. He made a stop to drop Dammit off at home, and when they set off again she said, ‘Thank you for last night, by the way. I should have said it at the time.'

He glanced at her. ‘No problem. You had other things on your mind.'

‘No, I mean it. I didn't know who else to call. I was lucky you were prepared to help me.'

‘I meant what I said too; it was no problem. I have to wonder, though, why you didn't call your boyfriend– the poser.'

‘Ah. Well, you see, he's not my boyfriend anymore.'

He gave her a knowing look. ‘I told you he wasn't your type, didn't I?'

‘I don't know about that,' she said, her voice flat, ‘I seem to be quite partial to con men. If I have a type at all, I'd say that's it.'

‘What? What did he do to you?'

She frowned. ‘I can't go into detail. There's a police investigation going on.'

His eyebrows shot up. ‘You were dating a criminal?'

Indignant, she said, ‘Not by choice. I didn't know he was a criminal at the time. I was the one who discovered what he'd been up to and reported him.'

‘You had him arrested?'

Damn him, he was trying not to laugh. She pressed her lips together and ignored his question.

‘So,' he said, clearing his throat, ‘when you say “con men”, you're talking about real criminal activity? I thought you meant that he told you he was single when he wasn't.'

‘That's just as bad!'

‘Well—'

‘It might not get a man arrested, but believe me, it's just as bad to find out your man's been duping you into believing that he's going to marry you when he already has a fiancée in London.' Her voice was getting higher, and she suspected tears weren't far away. She hadn't meant to tell him about Greg, the words had just spilled out.

After a hesitation, he said, ‘Has that happened to you?'

She sighed. ‘My point is, my last two boyfriends have been con artists in one form or another. I seem to be flypaper for frauds.'

Nicola's mother was watering her garden with a hose. She watched as Blair walked around to the passenger door and helped Nicola out of the car before grabbing her bag from the back seat.

She smiled and said, ‘Morning, love. Who's this you've brought to meet us?'

‘Mum, this is Blair. He's just helping me.'

Her mum wound up the hose. ‘Well, that's good,' she said as she straightened. ‘I've made a fresh batch of shortbread this morning. Or there's a loaf of Irish barm brack if you'd rather have that with some butter.'

Nicola realised that her mum was talking to Blair. ‘He's not staying.'

‘Oh, go on with you. I'm sure he can spare the time to come inside and have a little chat. We never get to meet your boyfriends with you living in the city.'

‘No, but—'

‘I'd love to,' Blair said, cutting her off. ‘Shortbread's my favourite.'

Nicola closed her eyes. She could only hope that today's topic of conversation would be less embarrassing than normal.

‘Here's your father now.'

Nicola opened her eyes again as her dad's car pulled into the driveway. Great. Might as well have both of them there to embarrass her. Why not?

Her dad followed them into the house, grumbling to himself.

‘Have you had any more of those letters about your driving, Dad? I haven't had time to go and see Dr Whitworth yet.'

‘What letters? I haven't had any letters from Dr Whitworth.'

Her mum slapped his arm with the tongs she was using to take shortbread out of the old biscuit tin – which kind of defeated the purpose of using the tongs, but Nicola knew from experience that she wouldn't be able to convince her mum of that.

‘Yes, you did, you silly old duffer,' her mum said. ‘He wrote to tell you that your six-monthly check-up is due.'

‘What six-monthly check-up?'

‘The one you have every year,' her mum said with an accompanying eye roll. ‘You have it every year in November.'

Her dad took a piece of shortbread and got a slapped hand for not letting their guest have first go at it. He winced. ‘Isn't that
twelve
-monthly?'

‘Who says twelve-monthly? It's
yearly,
not twelve-monthly. Honestly, Nicola's boyfriend will think you don't have a clue.'

Nicola glanced at Blair. His shoulders were shaking slightly, but apart from that, he appeared to be innocently munching his shortbread. She sighed and took a piece for herself. Once she'd fortified herself with its crumbly, buttery goodness, she was ready to try again.

‘I didn't want to know whether you'd had a letter from Dr Whitworth, I wanted to know whether you'd had any more letters about your driving.'

‘What has my driving got to do with the dentist?'

‘No, Dr Whitworth isn't the dentist—'

‘Nicola's right,' her mum said, bringing the teapot to the table. ‘He's the doctor. He's been our doctor for forty years. How could you forget that?'

‘Well, you were the one who said he wrote to me about my teeth.'

‘I was not.'

‘Yes, you were—'

‘
Please
, just listen for a minute,' Nicola said. She glanced at Blair again. He met her eyes, and his own were creased up and twinkling. ‘You had a letter from the government, saying that you had to have a driving test, remember?'

He looked at her aghast. ‘I don't have to have a driving test.'

‘The letter said that a man would have to sit with you while you drove your car.'

‘Yes, I remember that. I'm not daft.'

‘Well, what did you think it meant if not a driving test?'

Nicola finally found out what she wanted to know from her father, after trying in vain to convince her mother that the government hadn't passed a law making it illegal for her to use pounds and ounces instead of kilos and grams when baking in her own kitchen, and before Blair excused himself to go and do whatever it was that he had to do in town.

 

Blair came back an hour later to pick her up. With her mum's help, she'd washed and dried her hair and finished getting dressed, and she felt a lot better physically. Mentally, she was wrung out, and when she saw Blair arrive, she hastily said goodbye to her parents and walked out to his car.

‘You should have waited inside for me,' he said as he jumped out and took the bag from her.

‘Don't worry, you haven't missed out on the shortbread. Mum sent you some in there.' She nodded at the bag he'd put in the back of the car.

‘Great, thanks. I love it.'

‘Yes, I noticed.' She'd also – annoyingly –noticed the way his eyes had twinkled while he'd munched on the shortbread, and even the sexy way his throat muscles worked as he swallowed.

He closed her door after helping her in, and went around to the driver's side. He'd been so helpful again today, and without waiting to be asked. Maybe she should stop thinking of him as someone she could barely tolerate and consider him … what? A friend? That might be going too far.

‘Are all your visits like that one?' he asked as he fastened her seatbelt for her.

‘That's pretty much standard,' she said with a small smile.

‘How long have your parents been married?'

‘Well, forty years on paper, but if we deduct all the time that they haven't been talking to each other, it's more like ten. Fifteen tops. This is why Una had to get away, you know. They were sending her mad. She couldn't write because they were taking up all her headspace.'

‘She never said anything about them to me.'

‘Well, she wouldn't, would she?'

He gave her a puzzled glance. ‘Why not?'

‘Because they're family. People don't usually talk about family problems with outsiders, do they?'

‘No, you do have a point.'

She nodded.

‘But, honestly, that was the best entertainment I've had in ages.'

‘
Entertainment
?' Her chest tightened. She'd been gullible again – sucked into believing that Blair Morrissey had grown into a thoughtful human being when he was really no different from the hurtful boy he'd been at school.

‘Yes,' he said with a chuckle. ‘It was hilarious.'

‘Oh, yeah, I'm sure it's great fun for people like you to mock them, and to ridicule Una and me for being related to them.'

‘What? I'm not ridiculing anybody.'

‘You used to.' Her voice was rising and she couldn't stop it. ‘You got your kicks out of mocking us for years. You were horrible to me. Horrible. I
hated
you.'

She'd practically yelled the last few words at him, and now to her horror, her throat had clogged up with tears. If she wasn't careful, they'd dribble out of her eyes and make her look
like an even bigger idiot than she already did.

The silence stretched for several seconds.

Blair said, ‘Past tense? Hated, not hate?'

She could hardly say she hated him now, could she? Not when she'd been happy enough to accept his help. But there was a difference between
not hating
and
liking
. ‘Maybe.'

‘I'm sorry for being mean to you at school.'

Her mouth dropped open.

‘I am. Really.'

It was a shock, but it didn't make any difference. She still had a lump of hurt the size of Tasmania that she'd carried around with her for years, and a simple sorry wouldn't make it go away. Nothing would. He could apologise over and over, be as nice as he liked, rescue her as many times as he wanted, but it would never make her like him. He'd destroyed her ability to like him when he'd laughed in her face because she'd been stupid enough to develop an almighty crush on him.

How and why it had evolved, she couldn't recall, but she did remember believing that the skinny boy with the striking blue eyes was the most beautiful person on earth, and she also remembered her compulsion to put her feelings down on paper. In poetry, God help her. What had made her think she was a poet? With her dyslexia, it had taken ages to write as well. She should have stuck to numbers.

The poetry had been worse than abysmal, but the feelings behind it had been real, and Blair had crushed her heart. It had taken her years to repair it – although it had never gone back together again in quite the same way – and the one person she would never let near it again was him.

‘Aren't you going to say anything?'

‘What do you want me to say?'

‘That you accept my apology would be nice.'

She started to shrug, but winced at the pain. She'd been so deeply immersed in memories that she'd forgotten about her injury. ‘Fine. I accept it.'

‘Good.' He turned into East Road. ‘I've bought lunch, by the way.'

‘Oh. Have you?'

‘I thought we'd eat it at my place, because there's something I'd like to show you. Is that all right?'

Curiosity perked her up. She made an effort to put the memories behind her and return to the easy way they'd been relating before her outburst. When she'd been inside his house the first time she hadn't been paying attention. This time she would.

She took a deep breath and said, ‘Okay.'

Carrying a couple of bags, he led her through to the huge open-plan area at the back of the house. Dammit raced to meet her.