Blowing It (2 page)

“Go on,” he was saying, a smile on his face. “Say
hello.”

He was tall, that was the first thing I noticed.
Then again, for a man I’m pretty short, only five-seven, so to me most people
seem tall. But he definitely was, by generic standards not just my own.
Probably around six foot or thereabouts. If I was standing, my eyes would be at
collarbone height. And what a lovely collarbone it was: two straight lines
emerging from the V of his sweater to dip into a deep hollow at the base of his
strong throat.

“’lo,” the child said reluctantly.

“Hello,” I said, mirroring her tone.

He laughed. “I’m sorry, she’s shy. Her name’s
Abigail.”

“That’s a nice name,” I said, like an idiot.

Abigail blushed bright red and buried her face in
her—father’s?—hip.

“You’re not going to say hello?” he asked in a
teasing tone. “After we’ve waited all this time?”

“Sorry.” I’d hurried through meeting each child as fast
as I could, but clearly not quickly enough.

“Don’t apologise.” He turned that thousand-watt
grin on me, and my world lit up. “It’s good of you to do this.”

I half laughed. “It’s not exactly my choice.”

“Oh.” His smile dimmed and I immediately felt
guilty.

“Present company excepted, of course,” I said in a
rush.

A long look passed between us, like he was
assessing me.

“Magnus.” He held out a massive paw for me to
shake. “I’m pleased to meet you, even if she’s not.”

That earned him a petulant glare, but when I caught
the girl’s eye, she quickly looked away.

“Owen.” I took his hand—warm, smooth,
encompassing—and shook.

“I know.” He smirked.

I blushed. “Sorry. I’m an idiot.”

“Don’t be. I’m sorry for teasing. Can’t help it.”

“Bad habit?”

“The worst.”

“That’s not so bad, then.” I bit my lip to stop
myself before I said anything else stupid. “So… Abigail. Did you enjoy the reading?”

A nod of blonde hair was my answer.

“So did I,” Magnus added.

“Really?” I couldn’t keep the sceptical frown off
my face.

“Really! I’ve read the first one to madam here a
hundred times.”

“Well, that’s nice.”
Dammit
.

“Yep, whenever I’m babysitting it’s the only thing
guaranteed to settle her down.”

“Babysitting?” My ears pricked up.

“She’s my niece,” Magnus said. “My brother’s kid.”

“You haven’t got any of your own?”

He laughed, a rich, throaty baritone. “Not likely.”

“Uncle Magnus lives with Robbie,” a small voice
piped up in wavering soprano.

I raised an eyebrow as Magnus flushed.

“Not anymore, sweetheart,” he said with a nudge to
her shoulder. “You know that.”

“Where did he go?” she asked.

With an apologetic grimace to me, which I
immediately waved away, he turned to the girl. “He wanted to live with someone
else, remember? He got bored of your Uncle Magnus. It’s a grown-up thing.”

“Grown-ups are stupid.”

I couldn’t help agreeing with her assessment. Bored
of this man? Unlikely. “I’m sorry,” I said softly when he turned back to me.
“That must suck.”

“Not anymore.”

He winked, and my eyes bugged.
Was that a smutty
joke
?

“Sorry.” A small frown furrowed his brow. “That was
inappropriate.”

“Not at all,” I protested. “Honestly, my life is
way too PG these days.”

“Oh? You haven’t got a friend you can joke with?”

Something about the way he said “friend” gave me
pause. “No,” I answered carefully. “No friend.”

 “That’s a pity.”

“Depends. It means I can always make a new one.”

I held my breath, waiting for him to respond. His
eyebrows lifted as my meaning dawned.

“You’re looking for a friend?”

“It might be nice,” I said. “Then I could meet him
for coffee, say, in the cafe around the corner.”

Was I really doing this? Was I really asking this
guy out? What if we were talking at cross-purposes. What if I’d read this all
wrong?

And, oh hell, hadn’t Magnus just said he’d recently
broken up with someone? The last thing he probably wanted was some lecherous
author hitting on him.

“It might take you a while to get through this
lot.” Magnus glanced at the impatient queue and Katy, who had been flapping for
me to hurry up for the past five minutes. Her wildly waving arms stilled in
midair as Magnus turned, like she was playing a one-woman game of musical
statues. I don’t think he was fooled.

“Give me an hour,” I said quickly, dropping the
pretence. It could only be a matter of moments before Katy came over and asked
them to move on.

Magnus’s eyebrows rose.

“Please,” I added, making my eyes as big and
beseeching as I could. If only I was still allowed to wear eyeliner.

A nerve ticked in his jaw, his eyes raking me as he
weighed his decision. “Okay,” he said. “One hour.”

I couldn’t get out of there fast enough.

CHAPTER TWO

Despite my best efforts, it was an hour and a half
before I waved off the final kid, fiercely clutching his signed copy of my book
to his chest.

“I thought that would never end,” Katy admitted,
slumping into the chair I’d sprung out of.

“I need to go,” I said, not wanting to waste
another second making idle small talk.

She nodded wanly. “Your driver’s outside.”

“I don’t need him. I’ll make my own way back.”

“You’re sure?”

I nodded.

“What are you up to?” Her eyes narrowed.

“Nothing!” I protested, a little too defensively.

“Hmm.” She didn’t look convinced. “Is there
anything I should know?”

“I’m meeting a friend! Jesus….”

“This ‘friend’—”

“There’s no ‘air quotes’,” I said, making air
quotes of my own. “It’s a friend, that’s all. I’m meeting a friend for coffee
like normal people do.”

“You’re not a normal person anymore,” she reminded
me, completely unnecessarily.

“I don’t think the paparazzi are going to chase me
down the street,” I said dryly. “I’ll be fine.”

“Well, make sure you are.”

I rolled my eyes.

I practically ran to the cafe, which fortunately
wasn’t far from the venue. After taking a moment to compose myself, I pushed
the door, which opened with a cheerful tinkle as it set an old-fashioned bell
ringing, and scanned the room.

He wasn’t there.

My heart sank. I’d known I was pushing it, saying I
could be there in an hour.
I should have said two
, I berated myself,
then berated myself again for thinking a man like Magnus had nothing better to
do on a Tuesday afternoon than wait around for me.
Damn, damn, damn
.

I slumped at a vacant table, wiped a humidity smear
from the surface of the bright, beaten-copper surface, and idly thumbed the
small laminated menu. My driver would have left already, so I might as well
have that coffee after all. Remind myself how life used to be when I was an
anonymous nobody.

It was a nice little place, I reflected after I’d
ordered my drink and looked around. A little kitschy, decked out like some
Victorian parlour with flock wallpaper, brass horseshoes, and faded sepia
photographs on the walls, old pewter tankards and teapots hanging neatly from
hooks screwed into a faux-timber beam running across the ceiling. The staff—a
young girl and an older, matronly woman—were neat in black outfits covered by
ruffled white aprons. All that was missing were the starched caps to complete
the housemaid impression.

The cafe held about a dozen tables, most of which
were empty. An elderly couple sat in the window, nodding to each other over a
teapot and a single slice of cake with two forks. A middle-aged man in a suit
sat in a far corner, hunched over his smartphone, and beside me a circular table
held an empty cup and a half-finished glass of orange juice, waiting to be
cleared. Had Magnus sat there; was that his cup and Abigail’s juice, abandoned
when he’d given up on me or had to leave for a more pressing engagement?

Reluctantly, I accepted that it probably was.

My coffee arrived in a lovely silver pot. I filled
my cup, added cream, and stirred in a sugar lump from the bowl in the centre of
the table for the comfort of drinking something sweet.

I almost choked on the first sip when a door near
the counter opened and Abigail appeared, Magnus behind her. I slammed my cup
back on the table and rose, trying to school my smile into something less giddy
as they approached.

“Sorry,” Magnus said. “Bathroom break.”

“I’m just glad you’re still here. I thought you
must have gone by now.”

“I figured you’d be longer than an hour. Sit.” He
indicated his table—indeed the one with the empty cup and glass of juice—and I
gathered my things and moved over to the chair beside his, opposite Abigail.

“So….” I smiled as Magnus filled his cup from my
half-full pot. A dash of milk, no sugar.

 “So.” He took a sip and smiled at me. “Is your
life always like that?”

“Not at all.” I laughed. “I avoid those events as
often as I can.”

“You don’t like them?”

“They make me uncomfortable,” I admitted.
“Children…. I don’t cope well with children.”

“You seemed to be doing okay from where I was
sitting.” He glanced at Abigail. “She was thrilled.”

“She looked it.”

We both grinned as Abigail crept closer to Magnus,
realising she was the topic of conversation.

“It’s the quietest I’ve ever known her,” he
admitted.

“Maybe you should bring her to see me every time
she’s loud,” I said with a laugh, quickly stifled. “Kidding.”

“I know.” Magnus took a long swallow of coffee, his
Adam’s apple bobbing.

“So what do you do?” I asked to change the subject.

“Building surveyor.”

“Really?”

He nodded.

“What’s that like?”

“Do you care?”

“Hey, I’m a writer.” I shrugged expansively. “You
never know when something might come in handy.”

Magnus laughed at that, the sound curling around me
and settling with a shiver at the base of my spine. “Well, I started onsite as
a joiner. Moved up to foreman after a couple of years, but it didn’t work out.”

“Why not?”

“I stayed with the same company. Those guys, some
of them helped train me, and then I was telling them what to do. In hindsight
it wasn’t a good idea.”

“So you moved?”

He took another swallow of coffee as he nodded.
“Did a course, got a surveying qualification. That took a couple of years,
part-time. Most of it was easy—knowing when a timber was rotted, working out
which was a supporting wall or beam.… I’d done that stuff every day for years.
The technical side was a bit more difficult.”

“But you got there?”

“I did.” He smiled. “Soon as I had that piece of
paper, I started applying all over. Councils, insurance companies—there’s
enough work out there if you’ve got the right experience and paperwork.”

“You must have started pretty young,” I guessed.

“Straight out of school. I was sixteen and stupid,
didn’t see the point in qualifications. I could work with my hands, learn a
trade. Most people, they’re helpless. Can’t change a cabinet or plumb a sink,
they always get someone in to do that stuff.”

I couldn’t help but agree. I wouldn’t know where to
start plumbing a sink.

“These days I’m strictly a suit and tie man.”

“Doesn’t that bother you?” I asked.

“It does and it doesn’t. Working onsite kept me in
shape, at least.” He indicated his belly with a rueful twist of his lips.

“I think you look great,” I said before I could
stop myself.

Magnus paused and pierced me with a long look. “You’re
a children’s author who doesn’t like children. How did that happen?”

I gave an embarrassed laugh. “Honestly? And promise
not to tell anyone?”

“I swear.”

“It was a bet.”

“Pardon?”

I laughed. “Seriously. My best friend’s a primary
school teacher. I might have been sneering about kids’ books, and he said
writing for that age was harder than it seemed. He bet me I couldn’t do it.”

Magnus’s lip twitched for a second before he burst
out laughing. “You wrote your book to prove him wrong?”

I grinned sheepishly. “Yes.”

“Well, I think you won that one.” He chuckled,
still shaking his head.

“Why don’t you like us?” Abigail piped up from the
other side of the table, and I suddenly felt horribly guilty.

“He does, sweetheart,” Magnus soothed. “We were
just joking.”

“I like your book,” she declared staunchly.

“And I’m glad you like it,” I said as solemnly as I
could.

She gazed at me, blue eyes unblinking, for the
longest time, assessing my worth as a human being. “Okay.” She finally nodded,
accepting my words at face value.

“So.” Magnus leant forward, resuming our
conversation. “What did you do before making bets with your friend about
writing a book?”

“I wrote books.” I smiled. “Not very good ones.”

“I’m not sure I believe that.”

“What, that I wrote them?”

“That they weren’t very good.”

“Well, my agent didn’t think they were,” I said.
“Or any publishers either, for that matter.”

“That doesn’t mean they weren’t,” he persisted.
“It’s like architecture, or fashion. Some things come and go. It doesn’t mean
the other stuff isn’t any good. It just doesn’t fit the niche, that’s all.”

I’d never thought of it like that before. “You
might be right,” I admitted reluctantly.

“I’m always right,” he said with a grin.

I grinned back. “I get the feeling you are.”

“So what were they about? Those other books that
didn’t fit the niche?”

“Um….” I glanced nervously at Abigail, who was busy
blowing bubbles into her OJ through a straw. “They weren’t children’s books,
let’s put it that way.”

Magnus’s eyes widened. “Like,
50 Shades
not
children’s books?”

“God no!” I slapped the back of his hand. “More
like
The Line of Beauty
.”

“Hollinghurst?”

“You know it?”

“It won some prize, didn’t it? They did a TV adaptation.”

I smiled. “That’s right.” Somehow it comforted me
that Magnus knew the novel from the television series, not in its own right.

“I read all his books,” he continued. “Started with
The Swimming Pool Library
. I think I was about nineteen.”

Dammit.
Maybe he
did
know the books
in their own right.

“Can’t say I much cared for them,” he admitted.

“Sacrilege!” I gasped.

“I just know what I like. I found Hollinghurst too
wordy and depressing. I preferred Leavitt.”

Be still my beating heart
. “Marry me,” I
said in an instant.

We both laughed.

“So that’s what you were writing?” he asked
curiously. “Literary fiction?”

“Literary
gay
fiction,” I clarified.

“I wondered.”

“Mmhm.” I nodded glumly.

“Any surprises I should know about in the coming
books? Our hero going to find a hero of his own?”

“Not likely! My publisher would have a fit.”

“They don’t want you writing a gay character?”

“I don’t think so. Not in a children’s book.”

“But others have done it,” Magnus pointed out.

“Straight women have done it,” I said dryly.

“Oh.” His eyes widened. “It’s about
you
.”

“Yeah.” I swirled the dregs of my coffee and downed
them.

“They don’t want people knowing that you’re….” He
trailed off, letting the word go unsaid.

“Apparently it’s not good for business,” I said
stiffly, reciting the line Max had used on me.

“And you don’t mind?”

“I don’t really have a choice.” And I wanted away
from this conversation. “What about you?” I asked. “Working with builders…?”

“They’re fine,” he said. “Well, some of them aren’t,
but they know better than to say anything to my face. And these days I mainly
work out of an office, so it doesn’t matter so much.”

“They’re not all burly homophobes?”

“Hey, I was one, remember. They’re just regular
blokes. And they work in people’s houses—all kinds of people. They keep their
thoughts to themselves.”

“So how come you’re not working on a Tuesday?” I
asked.

“I manage my own diary. If I want a day off, I can
take it.”

“Nice.”

“It has its perks. Taking this one to see a reading
by a famous author, for example.” He jerked his head to indicate Abigail and
smiled at me.

“Don’t.” I cringed.

“You don’t like being a famous author?”

“I’m just me. Owen. I wrote books before I was
famous, and I write them now. To me, nothing’s changed.” Except my bank balance.
And my home. And….

“Sure it hasn’t,” Magnus said dryly.

“Well,
I’ve
not changed,” I clarified. “At
least, I don’t think I have.”

“Yeah, you don’t
seem
like a rich prick.”

I gasped with astonishment and then laughed.
“Thanks, I think.”

Magnus chuckled and sipped his coffee. He smiled over
the rim of the cup, the corners of his eyes crinkling. “You should probably get
used to it,” he said when he’d swallowed.

“What, people assuming I’m a rich prick?”

He shook his head, still smiling. “Being famous. I
Googled you before we came here. Weren’t you just shortlisted for the
Carnegie?”

“Oh, that.” I blushed. “Yes.”

“Congratulations.”

“Don’t, please.”

“You’re not happy about it?”

“Of course I am. I just can’t quite believe it
yet.”

“Don’t want to get your hopes up?” He nodded. “I
understand that. Although, for what it’s worth, I have no doubts you’ll win.”

“Seriously, stop!” I gave him a gentle shove.

The Carnegie Medal was the most prestigious award a
children’s author could win. The shortlist had only been announced the previous
week, and it still hadn’t sunk in that my name was on it. There were three
months left before the actual award ceremony, and that was more than enough
time for me to tie myself in knots if I wasn’t careful. I couldn’t afford to
think about the possibility of winning, because losing would be too bitter a
pill to swallow. The Medal represented all my ambitions, my hopes of being not
only successful but critically acclaimed. It wasn’t enough that children liked
my books. I still wanted the establishment’s approval. I wanted it with a
hunger bordering on desperation, but I was self-aware enough to know what
failing to win would do to me if I convinced myself there was the possibility
of any other outcome. Best not to think about it at all.

“Okay, changing the subject. What do you do when
you’re not writing?”

“Honestly, not a lot. It’s not exactly a
nine-to-five job.”