The Damaged Hearts Bargain (Tetherington Hearts #2)

Chapter Seven

“S hould I be calling the council about a medal then?” George asked when Lucy came home. “Or maybe there’s an award going around? Duke of Edinburgh? Is that for shoplifters?”

“I think that’s for camping or something,” Lucy said, dropping her bag on the kitchen table. “I wouldn’t say no to an OBE though.”

“I’ll give the palace a call and see what they can do.” George raised his eyebrows at her. “So?”

“So what?”

He sighed. “One, you apprehend a shoplifter on the street. Two, you don’t text me all day. And three, you’re home early. Don’t you have a job to do?”

“Don’t you? Haven’t you got books to manage or something?”

Billy came in from the garden. “Ash is giving him time off in lieu, you know, to make up for when he’s going to have to work when she and Pen are away on their honeymoon.”

“Their secret honeymoon,” Lucy said, remembering her conversation with Pen and still trying to picture the two of them as parents.

“It’s not secret,” George scoffed. “They’re going to South America, there’s nothing secret about that.”

“Try asking them why,” Lucy said. “And for your information, Mr. Gupta let me off early on account of how I chased down that shoplifter.”

“Mr. Gupta must have been pleased,” Billy said. “Did Arjun come and arrest him?”

“Mr. Gupta?” George asked.

“No, the shoplifter.”

“Not exactly,” Lucy said, sitting down at the kitchen table. “Is there any tea going? I’m parched.”

“Pot’s just brewed,” Billy said, pouring a cup and placing it in front of her. “And why didn’t this shoplifting bloke get arrested then? Honestly, the world nowadays. I’m all for light sentencing for minor crimes, but letting shoplifters go scot-free is another thing altogether.”

“First, he’s a she, and second, she’s not exactly a shoplifter.” Lucy picked up her mug, took a big mouthful, sighed in pleasure, then filled Billy and George in on what had actually happened that morning.

“So, just to get this straight,” George said when she was done. “You performed a full flying tackle on an innocent woman who was just walking down the street minding her own business?”

Lucy pulled a face but nodded.

“The palace isn’t going to give you an OBE for that,” George observed.

“Oh, leave her alone,” said Billy. “It was brave anyway. And I’ve forgotten to turn the hose off again.” He went back out into the garden.

“But Mr. Gupta let you go home early anyway?” George asked.

“He was impressed with my initiative,” Lucy said. “And it was an accident. In fact, I’m going down the pub later to buy her a drink as an apology.”

George waggled his eyebrows suggestively. “An ‘apology’ drink, is it?”

“Don’t be an idiot. Of course it is.”

“Dunno. You go around knocking tourists off their feet and then buying them drinks and sooner or later you’re going to end up with a date.”

“She’s not a tourist,” Lucy said .

And this wasn’t a date. Absolutely not. Probably. It had been odd though, being on top of a woman like that. Such an intimate position and in such a public place. Lucy squirmed a little at the thought of it.

It had been alright when she’d thought Cal was a man, but once she’d turned out to be female, well, it had been different, hadn’t it? More… personal somehow. She had nice eyes, Lucy remembered that. Nice, kind eyes. Even when she’d been cross and bleeding her eyes had still been nice and kind.

“Hey,” George said, waving a hand in front of her face.

“What?”

“I asked you who she was if she’s not a tourist.”

“Oh, um, she said she grew up here, just around for a few days. Cal, her name is.”

“Cal…” George shrugged. “Might sound a bit familiar. You should ask Pen, Pen’ll know who she is. And if she’s gay, Pen probably dated her at some point.”

“I didn’t say she was gay,” Lucy said.

She’d assumed though. Which she was ashamed of now that she thought about it. Cal with her man’s shirt and her short hair and no make up, she’d just assumed that the woman was lesbian without finding out or asking or anything. Fuck. She should be more careful about things like that, it wasn’t right to make those kinds of assumptions.

“Oh, suppose it can’t be a date then,” said George.

“I didn’t say she wasn’t either,” said Lucy, somehow stung by the fact that George didn’t think she could get a date if she wanted one.

“Well then, you should ask Pen about her,” he said. Then he frowned. “What’s all this about a secret honeymoon? You know as well as I do where Pen and Ash are going.”

“Yeah, but we don’t know why, do we?” Lucy said.

George rolled his eyes. “They probably got a good deal off the internet is all. Don’t read too much into it.”

“Right,” Lucy said, picking up her cup again. “Except Pen said that the reason they were going to South America would be obvious when they came home.”

“She’s messing with you,” George said, standing up. “But I’ll grill her about it tomorrow anyway. Now I’m off out for a run. Fancy coming with me? Just down the beach and back.”

“No,” Lucy said. “Actually, I think I might wash my hair.”

“Good luck with that,” said George, stretching his legs against one of the kitchen chairs. “Billy took one of his baths this morning. There won’t be enough hot water to fill an egg cup.”

AFTER A LUKEWARM shower, Lucy went out into the garden to warm up in the sunshine, hair up in a towel.

“It’s not hairwash day,” Billy said as she sat on the kitchen step.

“I can wash my hair when I like.”

“Never said you couldn’t,” said Billy, pruning shears in his hand lopping off a section of a rose brush. “Bloody aphids are everywhere already.”

“Yeah?” asked Lucy, not entirely sure what an aphid was.

“They’re bugs,” Billy said. “Ladybirds eat them, and some kinds of ants farm them.”

“Farm them?” Lucy looked over at the rose bushes. “Like in some sort of Pixar film or something?”

“Really,” Billy said, putting his shears down and collapsing onto the grass with his legs outspread, soaking in the sun. “Aphids let off a sweet kind of liquid called honeydew, and ants love it. So they keep the aphids around to milk them, in a way. Sometimes the ants fight the ladybirds to defend their herd of aphids.”

“Jesus,” said Lucy. “I’m not sure how I feel about that. Nature’s weird.”

“No more weird than people are,” Billy said reasonably. “At least the ants are attacking the ladybirds for a good reason. You attacked a woman today for no reason at all.”

“I didn’t attack her,” Lucy said, groaning. “It was an accident.”

Billy ignored this. “And now here you are, going to all the effort of washing your hair on a day when you normally don’t, using water that I know as well as you do wasn’t nearly warm enough to stand in for that long.”

Lucy shifted so that the sun could catch and warm her other side. “You making a point there, Bill?”

“More of an observation.”

“Hmm.”

“So… off out later then?” Billy asked, his dark eyes wide and innocent.

Lucy sighed. “Just to the pub.”

“Mmmhmmm. Meeting anyone there?”

“Why are you asking?”

Billy raised an eyebrow at her. “Because you’ve been walking around like a lost puppy for the last few weeks. And Pen says you’ve joined all the dating apps. It’s not much of a stretch to figure out that you’re on the hunt for someone, Luce.”

“I’m not hunting.”

“So you’re not off on a date tonight then?”

Lucy glared at him. “If you must know, I’m meeting the woman who isn’t a shoplifter at the pub to buy her a drink as an apology for ‘attacking’ her, as you put it.”

“And that’s not a date then?”

“No!” The word had come fast to her lips.

Billy nodded and for a second she thought he was going to let it go. But he didn’t. “Why not?”

“Well…” Lucy thought for a second. “Well, for a start she doesn’t fulfill any of my requirements. My app profile clearly says I’m looking for tall blondes with long hair and she’s… not any of those things.”

Which was true, she wasn’t. She was warm though. And solid between Lucy’s legs when she’d been astride her on the pavement like that. Sort of… comfortable.

“So?” Billy asked

“Dunno. I suppose I know what I like, what I’m looking for.”

“And you’re willing to write someone off because they don’t fit those criteria?” Billy said. “Sounds a bit shallow. ”

“No, I never said that… Just, I don’t know.”

Billy grinned at her. “How many women do you invite for drinks?”

“It’s not like that.”

“Is it not? Because if there wasn’t something there, you wouldn’t have offered to buy her a drink. You’d have been horrifically embarrassed and wanted to apologize and get the hell out of Dodge and never see her again.”

Lucy opened her mouth to reply to this then closed it again because Billy might have a point. “Maybe.”

“I’m not forcing you to go on a date, Luce,” he said gently. “I’m just saying that you should be open minded to what’s around you. Look at me and George.”

“What about you and George?”

Billy grinned even wider. “We’ve known each other practically forever. But I never thought he could be my other half. I don’t even know why, he was just ‘George, the man that works at the bookshop.’ Until one day I saw him on the street and he suddenly became ‘George, the man whose hair gleams in the sunlight’.”

“It’s that simple, huh?”

“It can be, if you let it,” Billy said. “I mean, she might end up being a serial killer or a Tory or something equally horrible, in which case, you should end the date immediately.”

“It’s not a date,” Lucy said again.

But she was beginning to wonder.