Second Shot

Back down in the dining room, Lucas rose as we approached the table he’d selected near the fireplace at the far end, reminding me of the old-fashioned manners of Harrington, the banker. Lucas had shed his coat and was wearing a polo-necked sweater in some fine-knit wool that could well have been cashmere. He was quite slim apart from a barrel chest that enabled him to carry off a little excess weight around the center of an upright frame, and he looked confident and successful.

Simone hesitated when she reached him, as though not sure whether to kiss his cheek or shake hands. Lucas took over, putting both hands on her upper arms and leaning back slightly, head on one side as though he was surveying a work of art.

“So, it’s really my little princess, all grown up,” he murmured with a smile. His accent was a strange mixture of American inflection laid over something British and regional. Possibly Liverpudlian, but with all the rough corners knocked off it like a rounded pebble on a beach.

Simone’s answering smile was a little tremulous, her eyes bright with unshed tears. For a moment her throat was too constricted to speak, and Lucas just gave her arms a reassuring squeeze before turning to me.

“And who’s this?” he asked, friendly, casual.

“I’m Charlie Fox,” I said, holding out my hand to avoid the arm squeezing. “I’m here to look after-”

“Ella,” Simone supplied quickly. “Charlie’s here to look after Ella, my daughter.”

His check was so slight as to be almost imagined, but there was a certain reserve when he nodded to me that disappeared as he crouched to Ella’s eye level.

“Hello, Ella,” he said softly. “You know, you’re the spitting image of your mother when she was a little girl. She was beautiful, too.”

Watching his face as he regarded Ella, I was more inclined to trust him then than at any point previously Either that or he should have been working in Hollywood, because the way his expression softened was utterly convincing. Ella suddenly went all bashful, ducking her face under her curls and sidling behind my leg. He grinned at her, a flash of a younger, almost roguish smile, and straightened.

The waiter ushered us into seats and took our drink order before departing. There was a short awkward silence before both Simone and Lucas launched in at once.

“So, how long have you-?”

“How did you-?”

They both stopped, smiled, and both tried to say, “You first,” at the same time, ending up laughing together a little too hard. Simone shot me a hard little look that clearly said, How can you have any doubts about this man when we’re so clearly in tune?

“Ladies first-I insist,” Lucas said, linking his hands together, fingers relaxed, on the tablecloth.

“I was just going to ask how you found me.”

He looked surprised. “But surely you found me” he said, frowning. “That guy you hired-Barry O’Halloran. He came to visit me about a week or so ago, telling me my daughter wanted to make contact.” He said the word “daughter” with a certain wonder, as if he thought he’d lost the knack and had suddenly discovered it again. “Well, that came as quite a shock after all this time, let me tell you, but I told him, sure, why not?”

It was my turn for surprise. “You agreed?”

“Sure,” he said again, with a shrug. “I got no reason not to. She was a terrific kid.” He smiled at Simone again, rueful. “It wasn’t her fault that things didn’t work out between her mother and me. And, well, I’ve changed a lot since those days.”

At the soft sincerity in his voice Simone went a little pink, suddenly fussing with the collar of Ella’s dress. It was left to me to ask, “So, how did you find us here?”

“Well, Barry said he was going to call Simone as soon as he got back to the office and she’d probably fly right over. Then he left and I waited to hear.”

“When was this?”

He raised his eyes, remembering. “Oh, a week or ten days ago, I guess.”

‘A week or ten days,” I repeated blandly.

“That’s not long, Charlie,” Simone said, defensive, even though she’d been the one in the all-fired hurry.

Lucas nodded and smiled at her. “Well, I’ve been kind of busy lately, I admit, but yesterday I started to wonder what had happened and I tried to call Barry, and that’s when I found out about his accident.” He broke off and shook his head. “Poor guy, ending up in a river like that, huh? The winters can be brutal out here. Not like England. You gotta be prepared for the weather.”

“How?” I said.

“Excuse me?”

Simone stabbed me with a meaningful look and I moderated my tone with a smile. “Sorry. I meant how did you find out about the accident?”

“Oh, one of the local cops happened to stop by and I guess he must have mentioned something-or I brought it up-and that’s when I thought I’d better do some checking, just in case you’d flown right over, like Barry said, and were sitting here waiting for me to call.”