Millie's Game Plan (30 page)

At ten o’clock on Monday morning, I sat at my desk, took a deep breath and phoned Josh. After three rings, his husky tones were in my ear.

My heart-rate tripled. ‘Hi Josh. It’s Millie Carmichael.’

‘Millie. Hi, it’s good to hear from you.’

I clenched my fist around the phone and swallowed.

Who
dares, wins.

Shit or bust.

Tits and teeth.

‘Millie?’

‘The thing is…I have to come to London, to see a client, it’s just a couple of tube stops from the Welkom Shelter. I wondered if I could pop in and say hello. Have a chat. No worries if it isn’t convenient.’

‘Sure, when are you coming up?’

‘When are you free? I mean, I haven’t fixed the meeting yet.’ That’s the non-existent, fantasy meeting with my imaginary client. A bit like my earlier, non-existent photography exhibition. ‘I was going to work it around you.’

‘Okay. Well, I’m free this afternoon, say, five o’clock.’

‘Great, I’ll see you then.’

Mission
on.

I would go in, do a subtle fact-find, lay out my stall, so to speak, and gauge whether or not he was giving out any buying signals. If he flashed me the slightest glimmer of a green light, I’d give him my best offer and shut-up.

Simple. I’d been doing that kind of thing in business for years, hadn’t I?

The entrance to the Welkom Shelter was clean but in need of a facelift, and a far cry from the corporate venues I normally visited. My feet felt rooted to the Victorian tiled floor. What if I’d got this wrong? What if I was confusing the dream couple I’d imagined Josh and myself to be with who we really were? It was months since the jazz concert. Plenty of time for him to have reconsidered his rash behaviour. Even Rupert said Josh needed time to regain a sense of normality.

As I looked for the main office, suddenly, Josh was standing in front of me. He was wearing cream chinos and a blue shirt and looking surprisingly fit and healthy. That delicious smile spread across his face and my heart bumped a little harder.

‘Hi, Millie. Good to see you,’ he said walking towards me.

It was only natural we should hug – after all, we’d had some practice – but I couldn’t help myself from trying to read something into the duration and pressure of the squeeze. He smelled good, too – that warm, clean linen fragrance I knew so well, with an essential, underlying maleness you couldn’t bottle. The hug was bliss but he pulled back maybe a little earlier than I did. He looked down at me, a hand still hovering around my arm.

I gazed up at him. ‘You look really well.’

‘So do you.’ He said, with a smile that had my insides doing a loop-de-loop.

After all those months, I could finally feel the warmth of him, the energy of him, the pull of him. I wanted to keep looking at him in case he disappeared again.

‘Serena tells me you went on retreat. Do you feel rested?’ I asked, quietly.

His head tilted a little and he looked at me in a way that made me wonder if I was being too nosy, too in-his-face. Then I began to sense the serenity about him. Serenity was something that hadn’t been present in my life for some time – and probably even less in his. I looked at the creases round his eyes and knew how tired he must have been, how strained, and I wanted to put my hand up and stroke his face and kiss him all better.

‘Yes, thanks. That’s exactly how I feel.’

‘Good. I’m glad.’

‘How’s Dolores?’ he asked, stepping back.

The thrill of seeing him was slowly being replaced by a belief that the Josh who had emerged from his ordeal had changed.

‘She’s good. And really pleased everything turned out okay for you. We all are.’

‘Excellent.’

I looked up into his face, that gorgeous, kind, lovable face – the face I wanted to look at for the rest of my life. And…I just knew. He wasn’t going to kiss me and I didn’t have the bottle to kiss him. The timing was wrong. In fact, I guessed we’d probably missed our time. Of course, things had changed.

‘Come into the office, I’ve got a fresh pot of Chilean coffee on the brew. Unless you’d rather have tea?’

‘Coffee’s fine, thanks.’

His office was cramped with two desks, a single kitchen unit which supported the coffee machine and mugs, an old filing cabinet, and a basketball net screwed to the chimney-breast of a long-unused fireplace. There was a framed print of Van Gogh’s Church at Auvers beside the window, which looked straight out onto a brick wall.

Josh dragged one of the office chairs from behind a desk for me to sit on.

‘Dash of milk and a pinch of sugar, right?’

‘Please.’ A thrill zipped through me. He’d only ever made me two coffees, and that was months ago; actually, three months, two weeks and one day. I fished in my bag. ‘I bought these cookies from a kiosk at the station. They’re huge – double choc with chocolate chips and nuts. Could you eat one?’

He looked over his shoulder at me. ‘You bet.’

I peeled open the bag and placed them on the corner of the desk, glancing at the strong structure of his body and the way it moved as he fixed the coffee. He turned to place a blue and cream stoneware mug in front of me before going to sit behind the desk.

‘Sorry the surroundings aren’t more salubrious,’ he said. ‘I’m here till six and then, if you don’t have to rush off, we could go and grab a bite to eat? There’s a good Mexican round the corner.’

I pulled a tight smile and nodded. Six. That was nearly an hour away. Should I make small talk for sixty minutes and hit him with my true agenda when we were about to tuck into refried beans and tacos?

‘Not a fan of Mexican? There’s a…’

‘No. Mexican’s good. I like Mexican.’

‘Good.’ He blew on his coffee and took a sip. Then a slight frown settled over his eyes and he placed the mug back on the desk. ‘So, how’s the job going?’

Oh, bugger. We were down to small talk.

‘I’m looking for a change.’

He nodded slowly. ‘Looking for something more philanthropic – more worthwhile?’

He’d remembered. ‘Yes.’

He picked a piece of paper from his desk and handed it to me. ‘I realise it’s probably a bit of a backward step for a marketing guru of your status, but you might like to consider it – if only for a year.’

‘Oh.
Right.’ It was a job description for a publicity and fund-raising role in Welkom.

He wanted me to work with him? Was that a good sign?

I read through it once, and then again. On the upside, it was stuff I was confident I could take on; it was thoroughly worthwhile and would definitely mean being around Josh – probably lots of the time. On the flipside, it meant being around Josh – probably lots of the time.

The salary was what I’d started on at the agency three years ago – and no hope of bonuses.

‘We’re putting the advert out next week.’

‘Of course.
Can I take this…give it some thought?’

‘Sure, and if there’s anything you want to know, call me and ask.’

If he only knew what I wanted to know.

Unfortunately, the prospect of a job at Welkom did rather fling a spanner in the works. Tempting? Yes.
Masochistic? Possibly. Wise? Maybe not.

‘We’ve just completed the purchase of a new shelter in Southwark,’ he added, as if to sell the position. ‘At least, we have an empty building, but we’ve got the plans drawn up to refit it.’ He pointed to some plans on the wall. I stood to look at them, and he followed me so he could point to areas of the plan. He began outlining their proposals for improvement and summarising their schedule, brimming with enthusiasm for its potential.

The plans fogged.

‘Josh!’ I said, more loudly than intended. He stepped back and looked at me. As his eyes searched mine for some explanation, every speech I’d prepared jumped out of the window and hit the brick wall. ‘Sorry. There’s something I have to say.’

‘Sure. Go ahead.’

My heart was beating so hard, he could probably hear it. Why hadn’t I chosen some other time and place for this meeting – like after a large gin and tonic, wearing a devil-may-care scarlet sheath dress and with a ticket to some hot nightclub in my hand? That way, if he was shocked by what I had to say, and backed off, I could say. ‘Okay, cool. Lovely meeting you,’ and sashay confidently into my future.

I took a deep breath. ‘A while ago, you said if I ever needed to talk, you’d be happy to listen…’ He nodded. I took a couple of paces to the other side of the room. ‘Well, here’s the thing…I’ve had a truly lousy summer – although I confess it couldn’t possibly have been as bad yours – but lousy all the same. Apart from a couple of high points, it was down there, in the pit of the bowels of the worst experiences of my life. And now…’ I looked up at Van Gogh’s painting. It summed up my situation. The path to the church split in two and this conversation could go either way. Josh stayed silent. I fixed my eyes on the crooked lines of the roof. ‘Now I’m stuck in a holding position and you’re the only person who can help me out of it.’

‘Okay. So, what were the high points?’

‘Huh?’ I looked at him. He was perched on the edge of the desk.

‘If you focus on the high points, they might give you the key to getting out. What were they?’

I swallowed. I studied the top button of his shirt. I bit my lip. It was now or never. ‘They involved you.’

After what seemed like an age, he said, ‘I do hope my arrest wasn’t one of them.’

I shook my head. ‘That was a really low point.’

He nodded, taking it in. ‘I’m sorry you missed the Summer Ball.’

‘Oh, no. That’s not what made it a low point at all…well…not entirely.’ There was a crack as one of my knuckle joints popped under the pressure of my other hand.

‘And…how do you feel about the jazz festival?’

I almost gasped. How did I feel? Well, right now, as the image of our kiss replayed in my memory, there was a glow starting in my cheeks; my tummy was fluttering and my spine tingling. Maybe I was on the home straight, after all.

Finally, we made eye contact and there was a real glitter in his, which gave me courage. I smiled.
‘The jazz festival? Well, there was one seriously dodgy band on at the end.’

He chuckled and shook his head, like he knew exactly how I felt about it. All the same, he waited, eyebrows raised for my response.

It was time to be serious. ‘Truth is, the jazz festival was one of the high points.’

‘Even in that ridiculous hat you were wearing?’

‘Absolutely. You know me, any opportunity for fancy dress.’

There was the most amazing magnetic pull tugging at me. Yet still he sat on the desk while I stayed rooted to the carpet.

‘So what was the other one?’

‘Other one?’

‘You said there were a couple of high spots.’

‘Oh, right.’ I looked down at the shabby carpet and a memory of leaning against the theatre wall, listening to his husky voice giving me the good news, flooded my senses – the elation, the relief, the possibility of a future with him. It was suddenly all there in glorious 3D, without the silly glasses. I blinked back the tears and looked up. But I didn’t need to explain. He came straight over and held my face in his hands.

‘Hey,’ he said softly, studying my face with all the care and tenderness I could ever have hoped for, until finally, his lips came down on mine and his arms wrapped around my shoulders. For the second time in my life, I experienced a true taste of heaven on earth. My fingers tentatively slipped over the firm muscles of his waist, hardly believing they had a right to be there and then, something extraordinary occurred. Instead of my customary surge of hormones and a pulsing heat in my tutti-frutti, I felt an ache in my throat and a swelling in my chest, as more tears seeped from the corners of my eyes and trickled down my nose.

This was real. This was unforgettable.

And it was messy. I sniffed and pulled back. ‘Sorry,’ I said, wiping my face with my hands. ‘This isn’t very romantic.’

‘I don’t mind,’ he said, kissing my cheeks before softly touching my lips again. Then he paused and looked at me. ‘Millie,’ he said, and then he was kissing me like a true pro.

Eventually, the shrill ring of the phone shattered the moment, and he steered me across to his desk so he could answer it. I was still tucked under his arm as he took the call. On his desk, I noticed a task list, which read:

*  Architects
– Jordan Crane

*  Housekeeping
– Peaches Harris

*  Publicity
& Fund Raising – Millie Carmichael

*  Local
Authority – Grants office

I stretched out and picked it up just as Josh ended his call.
‘What’s this?’ I asked, prickling with suspicion. ‘Did you expect me to take the job?’

‘No.
No, not at all.’ He looked down at me, his eyes pinched. ‘I just prayed you would because I wanted you here with me. I had a lot of time to reflect over the last few months, and particularly when I was on retreat. And all I seemed to think about was you and your faith in me. Despite all the accusations and all the doubts you must have felt, you still trusted me to be innocent. But I had no right and no reason to believe you’d want your future to include me, especially when Serena told me you were busy job-hunting.’