Somebody Wonderful (10 page)

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Authors: Kate Rothwell

BOOK: Somebody Wonderful
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She did not seem to operate with the same rules other people did. Perhaps all of her money and all of her fame let her get away with her nonsense.
Mick sighed and twirled his stick the other way. He knew he was thoroughly unfair. Timmy had been more than friendly to his neighbors; she had gone out of her way to help Jenny. Clearly the hoyden had some set of rules. Truth was, he was curious about them.
Doherty was taking his leave of Timmy. The old blister smiled, showing his teeth. He stopped to tip his helmet to Timmy. Well. Who would have guessed?
“
As ucht de
,” Mick murmured. For heaven’s sake.
Doherty actually took the helmet off. And he bowed.
And then, wonder of wonders, he smiled in Mick’s direction. Doherty whistled as he took off to find another copper to harass.
“How many hundreds of tickets did you buy?” Mick asked when he caught up with Timmy.
She frowned at him. “Nonsense. I only bought a few. I doubt I’ll use them, for I dislike balls enormously.”
“How’s that?” asked Mick.
“I do not know how to behave at very formal events, so I keep my mouth shut tight and smile and nod. Mr. Blenheim taught me to dance, and he has kindly offered to teach me deportment and the fine points of etiquette, but my aunt had already tried for a solid year. I fear I cannot get the knack of it.”
“I find that right hard to believe,” said Mick dryly.
“I suppose I do well enough to go on,” she admitted. “But I would rather face an enraged, spitting camel than such a crowd. Surprising, rather, since I have been dragged to the wretched events much of my life.”
“The policeman’s ball is no grand formal thing. And what about tonight at the Graves’s house then?”
“Oh, that’s just dinner.”
“A spitting camel?” Matt asked, suddenly interested.
“Just an expression,” Mick put in, before Timmy could talk about the thousands of camels she had likely met. Probably rode on as well. “Isn’t it, Miss Cooper?”
“Absolutely, Mr. McCann,” she said.
She managed to slip her hand through his arm and held on as if they were on a promenade.
At last he gave in and ordered a halt for lunch.
They ate their lunch sitting on empty crates in a quiet back alley. Their luncheon spot did not stink as horribly as most alleys in the district, though a nearby stable lent a horsey air to the meal.
Henry acted as host of the feast. He dramatically flung open the basket, and gave each of them a thick sandwich wrapped in paper. Matt gave a gasp of delight as Henry pulled out bottles of ginger beer and slices of cake.
Mick expertly flicked back the wires, yanked the corks, and handed round the bottles.
“Oh bother. The man forgot to pack such niceties as napkins,” grumbled Timmy.
Mick looked over at her. She was eating an enormous pickle, and using her sleeve to wipe at the juice running down her chin.
He choked on a mouthful of ginger beer.
She looked at him enquiringly. “Are you all right, Mr. McCann?”
He got back his breath, and nodded. Five more minutes, he thought. They shall leave in five more minutes. After that, he might be able to concentrate on his job. He’d welcome breaking up a good brawl. Anything to keep from thinking about this damn Timmy creature. Especially thoughts about her in his bed.
Chapter 9
 
Mick was moody when he came in that evening. The circles under his eyes made Timmy wonder if he had slept badly the night before. She would insist on taking the straw mattress tonight.
After a terse greeting, he tossed his helmet onto the chair and hung up his coat on a hook on the back of the door. She watched him empty his pockets. The occurrence book—no, he called it a memo book—came first, then an amazing pile of junk.
“Where’d the slingshot come from?” She picked it up.
“Took it off a boy what was killing birds and cats.”
“The corks? Aren’t they from lunch?”
“Eddy collects ’em.”
She picked something up and stared at it. “Is that a sock filled with sand?
“Ah, damn. Forgot to drop that at the station. A man was beating his best friend with it. Mighty effective thing, a cosh.”
“And the marbles?” Timona reached out and covered the five marbles lying on his palm with her hand. The glass was cold, his large palm, warm and hard.
He snatched his hand away and took a deep breath. Ha. The contact must have washed through him, too.
She wondered if he was about to do something decisive, like tell her to get the hell out. She had so hoped her one week challenge intrigued him. She bit the inside of her lower lip, waiting for him to announce that the week had ended early.
He didn’t say anything. Instead he dropped the marbles into his trousers pocket. He exhaled and shoved his fingers through his thick tawny hair.
“Ah. The marbles are Petey’s.” Without looking at her, he said, “I promised to give them to Petey yesterday. So. If you will excuse me. We have time yet, and I should like to catch Dr. O’Toole. He said he’d stop by at the end of my shift about now.”
He started up the stairs to the Tuckers, and Timona trailed up behind him, hoping he didn’t mind. She wanted to say hello to the Tuckers, too, and she carried Jenny’s freshly brushed purple dress over her arm.
The doctor was putting his tools back in the bag as they came in to the small cluttered Tucker apartment. The sharp stench of smoke from the fire still hung in the air.
Mick shook hands with Dr. O’Toole, and greeted him in Gaelic. The doctor pulled on his jacket and Mick walked him to the door.
“
Tá sé ag seargadh
,” Dr. O’Toole said quietly, just before he left. He turned to Jenny and said in a louder voice, “Good night Mrs. Tucker. I will call tomorrow.”
Tucker lay in the corner, asleep. Jenny asked Mick to look him over too. “I trust you as much as any doctor,” she said.
“No Jenny, I’m no doctor. And Dr. O’Toole’s bothered Tucker enough already. I’ll just say good night to you. After I deliver these.” He dropped the marbles into Petey’s hand and said, “Mind you keep them away from Meggie and Quinton.”
As Mick and Timona headed back down the stairs, Timona said, “I hope you don’t mind if I ask, what did the doctor just say?”
Mick frowned. “He told me Tucker is wasting away. Ah, poor old Tuck.”
 
 
They walked to Daisy’s again, side by side. Timmy waited in vain for Mick to offer his arm. She considered putting her arm uninvited through his again. She loved the solid feel of his arm and substantial warmth of the man. But he seemed to have erected an invisible wall around himself. Composed of tension, she thought.
Was he thinking of his sick friend, Tucker? Or was he fretting about her presence?
For the first time, Timona felt conscience-stricken about imposing on the poor man. Perhaps he needed time alone in his flat.
She wanted to ask him, but wasn’t sure she wanted to hear his answer.
“Are you well, Mick?” she asked timidly.
He looked over at her, and their eyes met for the first time that evening. “I am. But I do wonder if this dinner is a good plan. Perhaps I should have not come with you.”
Timona felt her shoulders relax with relief. She hadforgotten he might worry about the silly dinner. “Nonsense. Miss Graves, I mean Daisy, is your friend.”
“You won’t do anything to hurt that friendship, will you, Miss Calverson?” he asked dryly.
“Such as what?”
“Such as announce to all and sundry that you are sleeping in my one-room flat.”
Earlier that day she had considered saying something along these lines. She had at once felt ashamed of the idea. Publishing the fact that she, an unmarried woman, shared his flat did not disturb her in the least. It was the cheating half-lie of such an announcement that she could not like. And it would reflect badly on Mick, who seemed to care deeply about such matters.
Guilt made her voice sharp with indignation. “Mick McCann, what kind of a person do you think I am?”
He looked over at her again, and grinned for the first time in a while. “I have no idea, Timmy Calverson. None at all.”
 
 
Dinner was a triumph for everyone. Except Mick.
Daisy’s mother was happy because the food she had ordered for the big occasion was delicious and the family managed to find a large contingent of neighbors to show off their famous guest of honor. The neighbors were pleased because they were present at a private exposition of the famous Miss Calverson’s adventures and Timona showed herself willing to tell stories to the friendly audience.
“Did you really say that famous line? The one about ‘I do not turn from adventure, I embrace it’?” asked Daisy’s younger brother.
Timona wrinkled her nose. “I was a silly girl. My father had gotten lost in the desert and I was so relieved when they found him. I was positively giddy. I never thought anyone would take me seriously—I recall I said that line about embracing adventure and the next bit was ‘but I much prefer a cup of tea.’ No one wrote that part down. I actually am not that fond of adventure.”
Mick must have overheard. He made a muffled snort of a noise, loud enough to cause Daisy to turn and frown at him. It was one of the few times all evening she deigned to pay attention to him.
Daisy did not appear to notice Mick. She had her eye on Richard Shea, a slender man with bristling mutton-chop sideburns. She giggled or rolled her eyes at nearly everything Shea said.
“Mr. Shea,” she had told Timona as she introduced them, “has risen from sales clerk to general manager of Howitt’s Dry Goods. He will be responsible for opening the store’s next branch. Such a terrible lot of work, just getting ready to open, he tells us.”
Richard Shea had chiseled features, pomaded hair and soulful dark eyes. He sat next to Daisy and worked hard to hold Daisy’s attention. He succeeded. It was clear Mr. Shea had eaten at Daisy’s house before. And Mr. Shea was on a first name basis with Daisy’s father.
Throughout dinner, Timona saw the storm rising in Mick’s blue eyes. Timona noticed with some indignation that he seemed to be watching her even more than Daisy. Did he blame her for the unpleasant fact that his Daisy was flirtatious?
Timona picked at her meat and potatoes. She chatted with the people on either side of her, a fruit merchant and Daisy’s mother. Timona thought them delightful people, especially Daisy’s mother, who had an amazing store of information about the history of clothes’ fastenings—Timona said truthfully that she felt sure her father, SirKenneth, would be fascinated by Mrs. Graves’s knowledge. He loved minutiae.
Timona listened to Mrs. Graves, but still managed to watch Daisy and Mick.
Despite her intentions, she liked Mick’s Daisy. The girl was as pristine and fresh as the flower for which she’d been named. Daisy was an adorable girl. Sex was probably nothing that had crossed her mind. Neither the word nor the act.
Timona, on the other hand, felt she had always known about sex and its command over humans. Before he left his father’s retinue, Griffin made sure she knew about all of the weapons that might be used against her, including subjects usually never mentioned to females.
Timona had soon found she had to be careful when she spoke to girls—even married women she met sometimes knew almost nothing of sexuality.
When Timona looked at over at Daisy, the girl was wide-eyed and smiling as she listened to Richard Shea. Timona felt another frisson of envy for Daisy’s sweet air of naiveté.
She looked at Mick, and wished she hadn’t. Cold blue eyes glared back.
During this dinner, Daisy had revealed her flirtatious nature didn’t bloom solely for Mick.
Mick probably hadn’t even understood he had serious rivals for Daisy’s attention. Timona had assumed as much after she met Daisy and the girl made the casual remark about other admirers.
Silly of Mick, really, if he thought he was the only one to flock around the adorable girl with the rosebud lips and enchanting dimples and the thoroughly coquettish manner.
Timona watched, sad for Mick, but certain she no longer needed to think of Daisy as competition. He was too proud a man to pursue a woman who was foolish enough to pit her suitors against one another.
They made their farewells in the foyer, surrounded by the other guests. Timona graciously signed autograph books and shook hands. She promised Daisy’s brother to mention him the next time she talked to a reporter.
“I shall be meeting with one soon, I am sure,” she reassured him. “I shall tell Mr. Tothman all about you.”
Mick, impatient to be gone, walked down the stairs to wait at the bottom for Timona, and tried not to show a hint of his gloom. But as they walked down the street, he could feel Timona watching him, her eyes just about boring into the side of his head.
About two blocks from his apartment, she broke the silence. “Mr. Shea and Dai—”
“Don’t say a thing,” Mick interrupted. He expelled a deep breath. “I thought I cared for the girl. I do not want to hear that I am a blind fool.”
But Timmy apparently never learned the art of staying quiet. “No you aren’t. Daisy is a darling. She is charming and lively. She is, er, young.”
“She is twenty-two. Isn’t that about your age, Miss Calverson?”
“I’m almost twenty-four. Anyway, age has nothing to do with it.”
He shot her an exasperated glance.
She must not have understood how fed up he was with her and her chatter.
“She is a lovely, spoiled, happy girl. Her parents adore her. I imagine she must look like paradise to you,” Timona spoke thoughtfully.
“Stop it. Stop trying to make me feel better or feel worse or trying to understand me—or whatever you’re about. Just hush up.”
She nodded.
Before he could get the words out, she spoke again. “For what it’s worth, I am sorry, Mick.”
“Just leave it be, will you, please?”
“I understand. Please tell me if there is anything I can do.”
Damn the woman to the devil. She obviously had to have the last word. Oh, she seemed to him to continually mock him. Not to mention drive him over the edge day and night with useless, brain-numbing desire.
Mick suddenly wanted to make the too-complacent woman next to him as angry as he was. He wanted her to feel as empty and foolish as he did.
And he wanted to have the last damn word.
He wheeled and started to grab her shoulders, then remembered her wound. So he grabbed the tops of her arms instead, none too gently. “So you think you want to be with me?”
“Yes.” She tilted her head and watched him with a surprised, but unafraid, expression. “I do.”
“Well, then. You come right on in to my bed then. I badly want a woman just now. I want a fuck and don’t care to pay for it. So if you want to play whore, I’ll give it to you. Just don’t tell me or yourself it’s anything more than that.”
Mick had never in his life spoken to a woman in such a dreadful manner. He wondered if she would pull out the knife, or take off running.
She gasped. And looked him straight in the eye.
And began to laugh. “Mick, you silver-tongued devil.”
He blushed. The boiling anger had flown, probably with his terrible words. But he couldn’t afford to take back what he’d said, not with her. He dropped his hands and took a step backward. “I- I don’t want to fool you, Timmy. So. You understand? I won’t give you anything else.”
She was still laughing, a hand at her throat. “My word. With that elegant approach of yours,” she gasped, “I wonder why the women are not lining up for a chance to—um—to fook ye.”
He rubbed his chin, still thoroughly abashed by his own outburst. But really. What an outlandish woman. At the very least, she should be screaming in outrage, not laughter.
He caught her eye. He felt himself grinning, shamefaced, at her. Suddenly, he was laughing, too. They laughed so hard they had to collapse onto a stoop together, startling a woman on her way out the door. The woman picked her way down the stairs and rushed off, glancing over her shoulder back at them.

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