Eva Mallory’s Husband Hunt, page 14
‘Juni,’ she singsonged, plopping down on the empty seat next to the youngster, and though Juniper didn’t look at her, her head tilted in response. Eva held out a palm, and after a moment or two, Juniper touched it with her own.
‘High five,’ she said, quietly, pressing her small palm against Eva’s. ‘High five, Miss Mal.’
Eva made a mental note to tell Mrs Abbott about it when she got back to school. She had been the one to teach Juni to high five in the first place, something that had shocked the both of them. It remained to this day one of the only times Eva had known Mrs Abbott to soften.
‘Swimming,’ Juniper said, resting her little body against Eva’s as the coach lurched into action, and then she said nothing more for the entirety of the forty-five-minute ride to the leisure centre.
‘Swimming,’ Juni said again, an hour or so later, as Eva led her out of the changing rooms, and they headed down towards the small toddler pool at the back of the swimming area, tucked away from the hubbub of the main pools and, if Eva remembered correctly, a few degrees warmer.
She headed for the steps and then motioned for Juni to sit. The little girl lit up as warm water licked at her ankles, muttering a phrase Eva couldn’t quite pick out, over and over as she rocked gently, one hand flapping towards her face. She had always loved water.
Eva grabbed for the armbands which the leisure centre had lent them and handed one to Juniper to inspect.
‘Can we put these on you?’ Eva asked gently, stretching her legs down further into the pool.
Juni grabbed at the armband, touched it against her cheek once or twice and then looked back at Eva with undisguised suspicion.
‘To keep you safe,’ Eva said, with a nod, pointing to the armband. ‘If you put these on, you can get all the way in. They’ll help you float.’
‘Float,’ Juni repeated, touching the plastic to her cheek again before extending it back out to Eva. ‘Miss Mal. Help.’
Eva beamed. ‘I will help.’ And then she gently eased the armbands on to Juni’s little arms before lowering them both down into the water. It was a lovely temperature in the toddler pool, calm and relaxing, and Eva appreciated it every bit as much as Juniper seemed to. It had been almost midnight by the time Hanna and Owen had dropped her at her flat, and she couldn’t sleep for an hour or two after that, her brain replaying the encounter with Luke over and over. The way he’d looked performing on stage. The brush of his lips against her ear. The pressure of his fingers on her thighs. She couldn’t stop thinking about it.
She was glad of the space this trip had afforded her. She wasn’t sure how she would have reacted to seeing him over the corridor this morning, not knowing whether she would have seen any traces of the undone Luke, or whether he’d be back to buttoned-up Mr Mallory.
With a sigh, she turned her attention back to the little girl in her arms, manoeuvring her tiny body so that she was stretched out on her back, limbs flung wide. Eva slipped one hand underneath Juni’s head and one under her shoulders. And then she began to move, pulling Juni’s body in long, smooth movements in the water, small waves lapping over the little girl’s chest and against her face as she grinned broadly, her arms turning aimless circles in the water.
‘Water,’ Juni muttered to herself. ‘Splash.’
And Eva couldn’t help but smile in response. Juni hadn’t had any words at all that first day she’d walked into Eva’s classroom, and when she’d left the following summer she had more than twenty. Though that was three years ago now, Eva still felt that same giddy rush of joy with every new word she heard.
They stayed there in the toddler pool for almost an hour, floating and splashing and blowing bubbles and enjoying being, in a way Eva rarely got to when she had a full class. She could hear the shriek of children beyond the boundary of the toddler pool, but it was dulled, her focus completely on the little girl in front of her, who was now floating independently, just within grabbing distance.
Until, all of a sudden, Juniper started fussing.
‘Out,’ she said, almost a cry, and Eva’s heart rocketed to her throat.
‘What happened, Juni?’ she asked, with a bite of panic in her throat. Neeta had trusted her to look after Juniper; she couldn’t mess it up. She’d had a way with the youngster when she was in her class, but that had been a few years ago now. What if she was doing it all completely wrong now?
She swept Juni – now wailing and curled into a foetal position – out of the pool and onto the side in one smooth move, whereupon the little girl immediately quieted, merrily trotting the few steps away from the pool to the low glass wall which separated the smaller pool from the main waterpark.
‘Splash,’ Juni said, one small palm pressing against the glass. ‘There.’
Eva frowned. She’d planned to keep Juni away from the main pool area, thought it too busy, too loud, too overwhelming for her to deal with.
‘You want to go on a slide?’ she asked, already feeling a hum of dread building beneath her ribcage. She definitely didn’t want to be the person responsible for drowning Juni on one of the rides.
But Juni was clear. ‘Yes,’ she said, her voice clipped, defiant. ‘There.’ She pointed through the glass to one of the shorter slides.
‘Wow, OK.’ Eva scanned the area, mentally risk assessing the slide which Juni had picked out. It was maybe ten feet high, if that, and built up on both sides, definitely the safest of all the available waterpark options. She’d need help, though, to be totally cautious, either someone to help Juniper up the steps, or to catch her at the bottom.
She took a deep breath. ‘Come on then, lovely.’ She held out a hand, which Juni took without hesitation. ‘Let’s go splash.’
Eva spied Maxine, the year three teacher, standing ankle-deep in the wave pool, her dark coily hair piled high on her head, the T-shirt of a band Eva didn’t recognise clinging to her shoulders and her hips. She turned as she saw Eva and Juni, smiling brightly at the little girl before looking back up at Eva.
‘Thanks so much for stepping in at the last moment,’ she said, her eyes sweeping back out around her pupils in the pool, a habit. ‘You’re a star.’
Eva shook her head. ‘Don’t even worry about it.’ Her hand closed a little around Juni’s, feeling the smallest of squeezes in return. ‘Maybe you can help us out?’
Maxine’s brows quirked up a little in a question.
‘Juniper has asked to go on a slide,’ Eva continued, ‘so I thought the best idea was if we have one adult to help her up the steps, and then another at the bottom of the slide to catch her.’
Maxine beamed. ‘Great idea.’ She adjusted her damp T-shirt. ‘Do you want to take steps duty, and I’ll catch her at the bottom?’
‘Absolutely.’ Eva dropped to Juniper’s level, feeling the scratch of the pool tiles against her knees. ‘Come on, Juni. Let’s go splash.’
Eva did not need to ask her twice. She was off, almost before Eva could get back to her feet, trotting excitedly around the back of the slide as if she’d been on it a hundred times. Eva held a guiding hand to her back as she climbed the tiled steps and then helped her into position at the top of the slide.
‘You going down, Miss?’ a voice asked to her right, and she turned to see Aaron and Noah from year four smirking at her. They were both in the choir, though Eva suspected that was only so they could get away with missing the first ten minutes of their weekly RE lesson.
‘I’m helping Juniper,’ she said, keeping her voice as neutral as possible. She could handle the little ones all day long, but nine-year-olds knew exactly how to push her buttons.
They both laughed, and for a moment Eva felt as if she was their age rather than the fully grown woman that she was. She turned her attention back to Juniper, trying to will away the flush in her cheeks.
‘Ready, steady—’ Eva started.
But almost before the words were out of her mouth, Juni yelled go, propelling herself down the slide at such speed that she sent a wave of water towards Maxine, splashing her all the way up to chest level.
Juniper laughed first, lolling back into the water as Maxine reflexively grabbed her and jumped the little girl to her feet, the two of them giggling together.
Eva’s heart swelled a little at the sound of it, and it grew bigger with every circuit Juni did: down the slide, splash the onlookers, pad back round to the steps and begin again. By the time she’d done it twenty or so times, all three of them were laughing, Eva almost forgetting herself when Juni patted the other lane of the slide, to her right.
‘Miss Mal, slide,’ she said sternly, and Eva didn’t even hesitate.
‘Readysteadygo!’ Juniper bellowed as she launched herself down towards Maxine, and Eva was so panicked about the speed at which Juni was travelling that she launched herself too, her proportionally heavier form picking up speed at an almost alarming rate before she ploughed down into the shallow water at the bottom with a grunt.
A rush of anxiety gripped her, arms flailing wildly. It would have been just her luck to drown in water which must have been at least ten percent urine, given the current clientele. But then her feet found the texture of tiles beneath her and she stood to find herself calf-deep in water, her hair obscuring much of her view, but with the sound of laughter surrounding her. Except for the year four boys. They weren’t laughing. They were making the very specific sound which children make when someone embarrasses themselves in public.
That was somehow worse.
But not in any way as bad as what came next.
‘All right boys,’ a voice boomed from what sounded like the middle distance, ‘settle down.’ The strange acoustics of the pool distorted the sound to a point, but even so, Eva was in absolutely no doubt as to who the owner of that voice was. Her heart rocketed into her throat, and she peeled her hair from her face just in time to see Luke Mallory striding out of the waves like he was James Bond.
Her brain, and her body, went into complete meltdown.
She could do nothing but stare as he got closer, maroon swimming shorts sitting low on his hips as a wet V-neck T-shirt clung to every last curve of his torso, igniting flames within her that even a dunking in the verruca end of the wave pool couldn’t extinguish.
Good God, he was a beautiful man.
But…
That wasn’t the point.
Why the hell is he here?
‘I’m filling in for Mr Crowther,’ Luke said, which was right about the time that Eva realised that she’d said that last bit out loud. ‘He has cryptosporidium poisoning and isn’t allowed to go swimming for two weeks.’ His eyes narrowed, those beautiful lips pressed together tightly. ‘I might ask you the same question.’
It came flooding back, all at once. His hands on her body, his breath against her ear. Every emotion she’d felt the night before, growing and churning in her chest. But then she remembered his words, words which she could almost see now, reflected in the hard set of his stare.
You’re everywhere.
‘Similar story for me,’ she said, past the tug in her throat. ‘Miss Granger has impetigo and was banned from swimming in public pools until it clears up.’
His eyes narrowed even further, if that were possible, and she tried not to look at the angle of his cheekbones, nor the flop of his hair, gloriously undone and beginning to curl where it was drying at his temples.
‘There are a suspicious number of infectious diseases at Burton Lane,’ he said, cool and emotionless.
He did have a point, but that really wasn’t Eva’s doing, and she’d be damned if she was going to take any kind of blame for it, curse or otherwise. She narrowed her eyes right back at him.
‘I’m just here for Juniper.’
‘Miss Mal,’ Juni said as she heard her name, but when Eva looked, the little girl wasn’t looking at her, but gazing adoringly at Luke.
Traitor.
‘She doesn’t differentiate between titles at the moment,’ Maxine said, with a shrug, her lips quirked in a knowing smile, as though she was enjoying every second of the display in front of her. ‘Everyone is Miss to her.’
Eva could have died on the spot, particularly when she felt the full force of Luke’s glare for a split-second, before he crouched down in the shallow water.
‘Hey Juni,’ he said to the little girl, his tone completely different, soft and upbeat, and he held out his palm to her in exactly the way that she liked. Eva’s heart melted, despite herself.
Juniper met Luke’s palm with hers, hesitantly, and when they made contact she paused a moment, her whole body tensing slightly. Eva wondered if she were witnessing Luke’s first ever Juniper high five, and for a moment she thought he might have pushed a little too far, but then she saw Juni’s shoulders relax, just a moment before she spoke.
‘High five.’
And then she reached for Eva’s hand again and tugged, her gaze focused on a point just left of Eva’s eyes.
‘Miss Mal,’ she said, directing it to Eva this time. ‘Splash.’
Luke straightened to his full height, his face open and warm and all of the things it hadn’t been a moment ago. His voice, when he spoke, was completely different too, his lips curling almost into a smirk as he said, not for the first time, ‘I think you’d better go.’
Chapter Seventeen
‘You ready?’
Eva toed the floor, looking at the water flowing into the slide in front of her and disappearing into the darkness. She really wasn’t ready. But she’d made a bet and she wasn’t about to back out now, definitely not at that moment, with the year four boys standing right behind her.
So she looked back at the slide attendant and smiled, taking a step closer with her heartbeat thundering like a train in her ears. ‘Absolutely.’
She’d been happily jumping waves with Maxine and Juni when the boys had passed her the second time, and she’d been having such good fun in that moment that she’d made the mistake of asking what slide they were going on next.
‘That one,’ Aaron had said, gesturing to the space bowl slide, just as another child dropped out of it, freefalling into the pool below with a joyful shriek. ‘It’s the best one here.’
‘Looks pretty scary,’ Eva had mused, with a smile. The slide she’d raced Juniper on had been bad enough.
‘It’s not that bad Miss,’ Noah had said, then. ‘I bet even you could go on it.’
The two boys had shared a look.
‘Dare you to go on it,’ they’d said in unison, before laughing out loud, and Eva had laughed too.
‘Don’t be daft.’
Aaron had raised one eyebrow. ‘Double dare you.’
She’d laughed in response, despite the growing creep of dread swelling behind her breastbone. ‘Double dare doesn’t work on grown-ups.’
Aaron’s huff of breath had stopped short of a laugh, his small chin tipping up in defiance. ‘Mr Mallory did it.’
A rush of energy had coursed through her stomach at the mention of his name, like it always did. And, like always, she ignored it.
‘He didn’t.’
‘He did!’ Noah’s huge grin had bared teeth much too large and awkward for his mouth. ‘Should have seen the splash he made!’
She couldn’t deny that she would quite like to have seen it. But she hadn’t even had time to reply as much when Aaron had spoken again.
‘Miss, are you and Mr Mallory married?’
The sound that Maxine made had fallen somewhere between a cough and a laugh.
Eva had felt the sting of a blush creeping along her cheeks and she’d tried to sound as neutral as possible when she’d said, ‘We’re not.’
Noah’s brow had crinkled. ‘Are you his mum?’
She’d reared back. ‘What? No!’
‘All right, boys,’ Maxine had said then, obviously trying to suppress a laugh. ‘Why don’t you just go on the slide and leave Miss Mallory alone.’
And then the two boys had started to shuffle away, repentant heads bowed, and they would have shuffled all the way away if it hadn’t been for the idea which had sprung into Eva’s head right at that moment.
Even then, she would never have ended up standing at the top of the damn slide if she hadn’t voiced it. But she did, and now she was here, regretting every second and yet much, much too stubborn to back out now.
‘I’m ready,’ she said to the attendant, her voice a little shaky now, and she took the two steps to the mouth of the slide, lowering herself into the gush of water and gripping the metal handles for dear life.
‘OK, ready?’ the attendant started, and then without any kind of reasonable time to allow her to actually get ready, ‘Go!’
And with that Eva pushed off with all her might, before she got any crazy ideas about backing out. After all, there were stakes now. In honesty, she probably pushed a little too hard, but that hardly seemed to matter as she plunged down into the dimly lit slide like she was being sucked into a vortex.
It was dark and fast and scary in the slide, water splashing into her face and the joins in the plastic catching at the backs of her legs. And then all of a sudden she saw light, and then a second later shot out into the bowl, much faster than she’d been able to gauge in the darkness. She flew around the side in a full loop and then up high up on the opposite side.
Higher and higher she went, too high really, and then she hit the metal pipe spraying out water just a split-second after she’d realised she was going to.
‘Holy moly!’ she shrieked at the graze of metal on her spine as her ascent peaked, something like relief easing her chest as she began to fall. But then she stopped, almost immediately, caught like a fish on a line as the water rushed past her, her limbs flailing wildly as she struggled to free herself.
Flailing turned to twisting, and then finally to bracing her feet on the wall of the bowl and pushing hard, but all of it to no avail.
She reached a hand around her back, fumbling further and further up until she reached the metal pipe she’d grazed herself on. There was a gap in the pipe, she could feel it with her fingers, and then a bunch of fabric twisted tightly around the end of it; the back of her swimming costume, she assumed, from the way it was pulled tight around her and cutting into her skin under her arms.
