Nick

“Morning, Mr Lynch.”

A sea of the same old Monday morning greetings. I smile my usual smile, ask after people’s weekends, and their kids, and their Saturday nights at the karaoke. I make my way through to my office with my usual take-out coffee and check my emails just like any other regular work morning. But it’s different this morning. I feel so different this morning.

Jane stares out at me from the same old picture from the corner of my desk, grinning in the arms of her mother as they stare up at the camera. Stare at me. I touch the frame, a regular ritual, only this time my heart doesn’t pang in quite the same way.

It’s the loneliness. Or more specifically the lack of it.

A beautiful sense of relief washes over me as I discard my regular work routine and call my secretary through.

Penny looks great this morning. A new blouse, I think. She smiles and scribbles down notes without even a hint of surprise as I instruct her to call in a cleaning team to Laine’s property. I tell her they need to be able to handle hazardous waste, complete a thorough job from top to bottom. Decorators, I tell her. We’ll need decorators when they’re done.

Neutral colours. Maybe some fresh curtains to match. Yes, curtains to match.

New flooring, too. The place will need new flooring.

And a locksmith, to be safe.

I know I’m still lying to myself. Still maintaining the illusion that I’ll ever want to see Laine move back into that place. It’s a pretence that irks me, even the thought, but the girl needs to know she’s in good hands, strong hands, hands that can save her from any of life’s unfortunate situations.

And there’s her mother to think about. If you can call the woman a mother in anything other than the biological context.

Anything else? Penny asks, and her smile catches my eye as her pen hovers so eagerly above her notepad. I notice the simple little pendant around her neck, sparking in the light. I notice the perfect pastel pink of her new blouse and the subtlety of her makeup.

“Yes,” I say. “I’d like you to choose me some jewellery. As a gift for someone. Something tasteful.” I pause. “Something you’d like, Penny. Something really special. I trust your judgement.”

The compliment lights up her eyes.

“Sure thing, Mr Lynch,” she says. “Do you have a budget in mind?”

I shake my head. “Something you’d choose for yourself, Penny. Budget is secondary.”

She nods, dithers on the spot a little. I can tell she’s plucking up the courage to pry, and I don’t give her any cues, just stare at her with a professional smile on my face.

“Is she, um…” she finally begins.

“Is she..?”

“A friend?” she asks. “A relative?”

“Both,” I tell her. “She’s someone special.”

She nods. “How old?” she asks, then checks herself. “So I know what style to go for, I mean.”

“Eighteen. Just.”

She looks at me as I say just, and I know she’s wondering.

She doesn’t ask any more questions, but I can say with certainty that my extra-curricular business will be the talk of the photocopier this morning.

That would usually bother me, but not today.

There isn’t one single thing that will bother me today.

I call up my office calendar and mark myself as unavailable from four p.m. from this afternoon.

Sweet little Laine needs to get home safely from college.

And after all, it’s a universal truth. A truth that everyone who is luckily enough to know it is blessed by.

A truth that I’m blessed with for the first time in years.

Family comes first.

In the meantime it’s business as usual.

I ask Penny to bring in my nine a.m. client.

* * *

Laine

Nick calls me at lunch. It feels so strange to hear him on the phone. His voice is warm and deep, but there’s a curtness to it. Work Nick.

I imagine him there, partner in some swanky accountancy firm. Solid handshakes and rich clients. I wonder if he has a secretary. I wonder if he has a big team of people hanging onto every word he says. He is the boss after all. Or one of them, at least.

Nick seems like a boss. He’d make a good boss.

Just like he’d make a good daddy.

And a good lover.

I get those crazy flutters again, butterflies in my tummy as I tell him I’m having a nice day, and my sandwiches were lovely. Ham and cheese. Posh ham, really thick cut. Not the watery stuff I buy for myself. I tell him my classes went well. That I’ve been working hard.

He sounds so pleased, and it makes me smile. When I hang up I’m grinning so hard I barely notice Kelly Anne gawping at me.

“New phone,” she says, like it isn’t obvious. “Quite a gift.”

“I’m just borrowing it,” I tell her, and that’s how I see it, too.

She doesn’t say anything, just gives me that look. That grossed-out look. But I don’t care.

I meet Nick in the carpark at half past four, just where he left me. I see people staring at his Mercedes and it makes me feel strange, to be cared for by someone who wears a tailored suit, drives an expensive car and buys thick-sliced ham.

I’ve never had money before. Mum never even had a car. Not that it mattered.

I doubt she’d have driven me anywhere if she had.

Nick tells me he’s had a good day at the office. Many meetings, he says, just an average Monday. I wish I knew what an average Monday was like for him. I wish I knew everything about him, but the questions in my head all sound stupid, and I really don’t want to sound stupid.

“What are you thinking?” he asks, and there’s that kind smile on his face again. He’s interested. I know he’s really interested, and that feels nice.

I shrug. “I was just wondering… about you…”

He laughs, and it’s a lovely sound. “What are you wondering?”

“I dunno, just stuff.” His smile makes me smile. “I just… don’t know anything…”

“About me?” He stops at traffic lights and his hand reaches over to squeeze mine. “You’ll get to know everything, Laine. Just give it time.”

Everything. I like that thought.

“Ask me a question,” he says. “Whatever you like.”

So I do. I just ask him.

“Won’t Jane mind me sleeping in her room?”

“No,” he says. “She won’t.”

I look at him, but he’s staring ahead. The lights turn green and he drives on.

“Will you tell her about me? That I’m staying, I mean.”

“No,” he says, and his smile is all gone.

I wish I’d never asked. I should’ve picked another question, something about the office or his house or his car. I stare out the window, and the route is already becoming familiar. The roads get quieter and there’s the big tree I know means we’re five minutes from home.

“I’ll tell you about Jane,” he says. “If that’s what you want.”

Kelly Anne’s stupid paranoid speculations make me nervous, and I’m not so sure I do want to hear about Jane.

I feel his eyes on me for a moment. “Maybe talking about Jane will help you understand the ground rules.”

“It will?”

He tips his head. “Maybe.”

I don’t say anything until he pulls through the gates and takes us up the driveway. I grab my college bag from the backseat, and he grabs his briefcase, and we’re home again. Home.

He puts the kettle on and pours me a glass of juice, and I wonder if I’ve ever told him I don’t like hot drinks all that much. He seems to know.

I sit at the table and watch him make his tea, just waiting. His eyes are so serious.

“Ground rules,” he says, and I get a strange tickle between my legs.

He sits opposite me and I watch his hands around his mug. They’re so big. So strong.

“What are they?” I ask. “The rules, I mean.”

“I want to know you’re safe, Laine, always. I’ll need you to check in often. I don’t want you taking rides in people’s cars, I don’t want you heading anywhere you don’t know. Accidents happen that way,” he says. “When people are careless.”

“Careless,” I repeat. “I don’t take rides in many cars, Nick.” I smile. “I don’t have that many people that offer.”

“A pretty young girl like you would have plenty of people offering to give you a ride, Laine. Maybe you just don’t see it.”

“I don’t.” I laugh. “I’ve never seen it. Kelly Anne is the popular one.”

“Kelly Anne is reckless,” he says. “Reckless and foolish, and selfish on top. You’re too good for her, Laine. I’d prefer it if you didn’t let her drag you into any more situations.”

I nod. “I’m not planning on it.”

“Good girl,” he says.

I meet his eyes, risk a smile. “Is that it? The ground rules? That I don’t take rides in strange people’s cars and don’t hang out in clubs with Kelly Anne?”

“No,” he tells me. “It’s much wider than that.”

That tickle again. It’s something in his tone. Something so… strong.

“I want to take care of you,” he says, and I can’t stop that feeling between my legs. It makes my thighs clench together. “I want to look after you. I don’t think anyone’s ever looked after you, Laine. I want to be the first.”

The first.

I want him to be my first. In every way.

“I can, um… take care of myself…” I offer. “You don’t need to…”

“I want to,” he says. “It gives me great pleasure.”

And I don’t know what this is. I don’t know what we are, and I don’t want to ask, and I do want to ask.

I do ask, but it comes out messy.

“You mean, like, a um. You mean like a… a guardian… or something like that?”

His eyes burn me and I can’t look away. “Say it, Laine. Say what you mean.”

My cheeks burn. “Like a, um. Like a dad?”

“Is that what you want?”

Yes.

I know that’s what I want.

But I’m all icky again. All screwed up inside at the thought of wanting him like that. Wanting him the way that makes me all tickly between my legs.

“What?” he asks. “Tell me what you want.”

I take a sip of juice and it’s hard to swallow.

“You can tell me, Laine. You can tell me anything. We talk, about everything. That’s another of the ground rules.”

I nod, force down another sip of juice.

“This is a strange situation,” he says. “For both of us. I was driving, just driving, and there you were, lost in the rain, needing someone. Just like I needed someone.” He drinks some tea but his eyes are still on me. “Sometimes I think life has this way of putting people together in the most unlikely of circumstances.”

“Like fate?”

He smiles. “I like to think of it as synchronicity.”

“I believe in fate,” I tell him. “I believe in horoscopes, too. I read mine every day.”

“Maybe you should read mine,” he says, and there’s humour in it. “I’d love to know what fate has in store for us, Laine. I think it’s good things.”

“Me too,” I say, and I mean it.

“So,” he prompts. “What is it that you want?”

I shrug, gesture around me, to the beautiful room in his beautiful house. “This,” I tell him. “This everything. It’s… it’s like a fairytale.”

“Beauty and the beast?” He laughs.

“No!” I laugh with him. “Cinderella! I’m the scrubby servant girl and you’re Prince Charming come to save me.”

His eyes glitter. “I’m not all that charming,” he says. “Not when you get to know me.”

But I don’t believe him. I tell him so and he laughs again.

“Maybe this could be a fairytale, Laine,” he says. “If we want it badly enough. Life is full of magic, I think, you just have to trust in it.”

“I believe in magic,” I say. “I haven’t seen much of it, not until now, but I know it’s out there.”

“Maybe it’s right here.”

My heart daren’t even hope. I feel it lurch, and it scares me how much I want this. It scares me how hard I’m falling, falling right into him, falling right into his life.

“I hope so.” My voice is a whisper.

He holds out a hand and I take it across the table, and his fingers grip mine so tightly.

“Let me care for you, Laine. Will you do that?”

I nod. “I’d like that. Very much.”

“And you’ll stick to the ground rules? Let me keep you safe?”

“I’ll stick to the ground rules,” I say.

“Good girl.” His smile gives me tingles on tingles, and my heart races.

I take a breath, stare at my hand in his. “And that’s what you want? You want to take care of me? Like I’m…”

“Like you’re my little girl?”

My cheeks must be like beetroot. I close my eyes as I nod.

“And what else do you want, Laine? What did you want on the landing last night? What did you want in bed last night as you wriggled and squirmed?”

I can’t open my eyes. I just can’t.

“You,” I whisper. “I wanted you.”

“Is that still what you want? Not out of gratitude, or because you think you should. None of that is necessary, Laine, I promise you.”

I shake my head. “No… not because of that…” My heart is in my throat. “Just because… because I want it… because I like you…”

I hold my breath as I wait for him to answer, but his response shocks me enough to open my eyes.

“I need to tell you about Jane,” he says.

“About Jane?”

“My rules can get… intense. I need you to understand why.”

I nod, and my eyes are wide and focused. I’m pleased that he doesn’t let go of my hand.

“Jane was my little girl,” he says.

Was.

“I was young when I met her mother. Louisa was lost, just like you were. I found her sheltering under an awning during an autumn thunderstorm, upset because she’d argued with her piece of shit boyfriend. Jane was just a baby, fast asleep in her pushchair, none the wiser for her mother’s predicament, thank God.”

“So she wasn’t…”

“Mine?” he says. “Not biologically, no. But she was mine in every way that matters. I was the man she called daddy. I was the man who read her bedtime stories and tucked her up in bed at night.”

My eyes urge him to continue.

“I was young myself, relatively. Still climbing up the corporate ladder, coping with my father’s death. This was our family home, I inherited it naturally, and it was lonely here before Louisa came, just as it was before you came.”

“Did you bring her home, too?”

He smiles. “I did, yes. I brought her and little Jane home with me, and made Louise cocoa while she dried off. I listened to her stories about her loser boyfriend and her sad life, and how she was so scared for tiny little Jane.”

“You rescued her. You rescued both of them.”

“Yes. Yes, I did. But she rescued me right back. Saved me from a life full of nothing but work and loneliness.”

I take a breath. “She didn’t grow up here, did she? Jane, I mean.”

“She didn’t grow up, Laine.” He takes a breath. “She died when she was five. A car accident. Her and her mother alongside that sorry sack of shit I took her from.” I see his eyes darken. “She left me a note before she went. He wanted to talk, she said, needed some help, she said. She didn’t want him, but for some crazy reason that day she took our little girl and climbed into his car. Maybe she didn’t realise he’d been drinking.”

I feel the blood leave my face. “I’m so sorry.”

“I should’ve been here,” he says. “I was working late. Stupid client meeting.”

“But you couldn’t have known…”

“I didn’t keep them safe,” he tells me, and I feel the pain from him. I see it in his eyes, in the hunch of his shoulders, in the tightness in his voice. In his everything.

I squeeze his hand right back, as hard as I can. “I’ll follow the ground rules,” I tell him. “I’ll stay safe, I promise.” I feel so sad. So sad for that little girl with the pretty pink room. So sad for Nick, too. The whole thing feels so sad I can hardly draw breath.

“I just need you to be safe, Laine. I really need you to follow the rules.”

I nod. “I will. Cross my heart.”

He smiles such a sad smile. “I’ll love you, Laine, if you’ll let me. Hell knows, everyone needs someone to love them.”

My heart hurts.

My heart knows that feeling.

I feel my eyes well up, and the tears spill, letting the sadness in my heart tip all the way over. “I’ll love you, too, Nick. I’m so sorry about your little girl.”

He runs his thumb over my knuckles and for that moment I’m sure I see his eyes are watery too.

And then he moves, takes a breath and gets to his feet, and he’s in-control Nick again.

“Chicken for dinner,” he tells me. “I hope you like chicken.”

I tell him chicken sounds really good.