The Turnaround Treasure Shop (10 page)

Janie-Louise put the ereader into the front basket on her bike, back-kicked the pedal and rested her right foot on it, ready to take off. ‘When you haven't got a dad around your mum has to be tougher than other mums. Apparently,' she added, sounding sardonic about the notion. ‘I can't imagine how difficult it is though. I do heaps of babysitting and it's easy. We just play.'

Nick understood where Janie-Louise's judgement came from, given her 12-year old place in the world, but he felt compelled to stand up for Lily. ‘Your mum works, remember. She doesn't have a lot of time for play.' As he said it he saw Lily in his mind's eye, rocking around the house to her favourite songs, making her kids laugh.

He focussed more purposefully on Janie-Louise and willed the family scene in his mind to fade and logic to return. Janie-Louise was a child on the cusp on young adulthood, so close to being a young woman branching out on her own it wasn't funny — not to a guy who was old enough to be her father. Nick hadn't had cause to worry about this stuff before now, but Lily was dealing with her growing kids on her own, and was probably juggling worries about Andy and his needs too. While forgetting about her own.

‘I'm going to have four kids when I grow up,' Janie-Louise said in an offhand manner, ‘and I don't care if they have a dad or not. Do you have any kids?'

‘No.' Would he have accepted the divorce if he and his ex-wife had had kids? Unlikely. Duty and honour and all that. He looked away from Janie-Louise and nodded at a tarnished, half-metre-long metal candlestick balanced in the basket of her bike. ‘What's that for?' he asked as a way of changing the subject and getting his mind off the notion that did, occasionally, haunt him. That he'd never have children. Would never know the depths of parental duty some lucky bastards found, filling their pockets with reasons to protect and care. Neither would he know what it felt like to be faced with any dilemma one of his kids found themselves in and wonder how the hell to make it better for them or help them through it, or if necessary, turn them around from a bad deal to a better deal. Didn't mean he couldn't do it for others' children. So long as it didn't look like interference.

‘It's for Mum,' Janie-Louise said with a smile that said she'd already moved on from being ticked off to being…a 12-year-old carefree kid again. ‘Sammy found it. Mum'll transform it for her and make it shine.'

‘How?' It looked years unused.

‘That's what she does. She's going to open the shop on the corner of Main Street as a shabby-chic, antique type place. We're going to be business people. You should see how much stuff she's got stacked in the living room at home. She already sells some of it.'

Lily's impossible dream. How much had buying the ereader put her back?

Nick stepped from Janie-Louise as a sudden urge to hug the kid close gripped him.
Stay safe, for God's sake
, he wanted to say. ‘I'm just on my way to pick up your mum actually. We're sorting out the new books at the library.'

‘Mum's probably already there. She walked into town earlier.'

***

Nick ambled around the small room of the library at the Town Hall while waiting for Lily, inhaling the musty storeroom atmosphere. It had sparsely-filled shelving units, a desk and a lone filing cabinet. Perhaps Lily was getting a bit tired of taking lifts from him. He ought to give her the car back this afternoon and stop messing with her, and with his own feelings.

‘So sorry I'm late!'

Nick turned as Lily bounced into the room, his entire being relaxing at the sight of her. She wore a sleeveless dress the colour of tall grass in summer, belted at her slender waist, her bare limbs tanned and shapely.

‘Have you been waiting long?' she asked.

She carried a happy, carefree manner with her too and the total effect wasn't lost on him.
Lily, Lily, you beautiful woman
. If he gave her the car back, he'd miss chances like this one. Opportunities to look at her in her moments of just being Lily.

‘I'm early,' Nick said, forcing a regular smile to choke down the wondering one. Her hair had partly fallen from its pencil-hold and strands hung around her flushed cheeks. ‘Have you been running?' he asked.

She laughed and put her hands to her head, demeanour still easy and perhaps a little elated. She'd never been like this with him before and he hadn't expected it now, with them being alone.

His awareness of her feminine litheness and the sparkling aura she brought into the room heightened further when she pulled the pencil from her hair, shook her head and thick chestnut stands flew around her. He blinked rapidly, finding focus again before he lost sight of the halo of her hair. If he put his hands on her waist now, he'd be catching the tips of her hair between his fingers, that's how long it was.

‘What an exciting morning!' she told him, re-pinning her hair with the pencil. How the hell did one pencil hold up a glorious mane like that? ‘My mum and Ray want the children to visit them. They're going to take them to Sydney for a few days. I haven't told the kids yet — wanted to make a few arrangements first.'

‘That's great.'

‘I've got them booked on the bus to Canberra tomorrow morning. Mum and Ray will be waiting for them with the Winnebago for the ride to Sydney. They're going to do the zoo, the Harbour Bridge — and maybe a jet boat ride.' She paused. ‘You didn't go to the house to pick me up, did you? I didn't think. I should have called you — although I don't have your number.'

‘Well, we'll have to fix that.' He pulled his wallet out of the back pocket of his trousers and handed Lily a business card. ‘By the way — what's
your
number?'

‘We only have the landline.' She told him the number. ‘Aren't you going to write it down?'

‘I'll remember it.' He stuffed the wallet back into his pocket. ‘I presume the kids'll be going on the early bus tomorrow? I'll come collect you all and drive you into town.' Which meant he wasn't going to give her the car back today or tomorrow. Maybe Friday.

‘Would you?' she asked, eyes still bright. ‘They won't have much luggage, but it's supposed to rain tomorrow, and I don't want them sitting on a bus, soaked.'

‘No problem.'

‘Is there any news on my car? Not that I'm desperate for it — and I'm not pushing you to hurry up and fix it.'

Nick smiled. ‘Nearly done. Probably Monday.'

‘Oh, that's great. Thank you!'

‘Hey, look — if you've got time after we've waved the children off tomorrow, we could finish up here in the library. Or perhaps we can take a look at the back rooms in the hardware store. See what kind of heavy lifting I'll be doing over there.' And perhaps she'd have lunch with him, if he asked.

‘Good idea. Today and tomorrow are my days off.'

Nick knew that. He practically knew her every move, especially now that he'd been in her company so much during the week. ‘Perfect timing then. It'll keep you occupied too. In case you start missing the kids.'

She laughed and Nick found himself saturated with the sound. Happy laughter.

‘That's very astute, Nick. I will miss them. Although I think I've got enough going on to keep myself busy — if not distracted.' She turned and started sorting herself and the gear she was obviously going to use for the inventory. A notebook, a pen and stickers for indexing.

Nick unwillingly took his eyes off her and lifted two boxes off a stack of five and put them onto the near-empty desk. ‘Shall we start with these?'

‘We'll have to get someone in to run the library soon,' she said, ‘if we keep taking delivery of books like this.'

‘Is there anyone who could do that?' Lily wasn't going to put herself forward, was she? She had enough on her hands.

‘Well, it'd be too much to expect Mrs Tam to run it. The petrol station alone is taking up most of her daytime, let alone the library and the museum. The shopkeepers in town are all saying how much better their business is these days.' She paused. ‘And then they complain about not having enough time to chill out.' She pulled a wry expression. ‘I think they kind of got used to having slow trade.'

‘What are you going to call
your
shop?' he asked, pulling a pocket knife from his belt and slicing through the packing tape on one box, then the other.

She pulled an open box towards her. ‘The Turnaround Treasure Shop. Second-Chance Love,' she added, as though talking to herself. ‘Oh, these are good!' She picked up two books, drawing her brow in concentration. ‘
Self-help for Anyone
and
Positive Thinking Works Wonders
. We can start a new shelf if the box is full of books like this one.'

Second-chance love
. Was there such a thing for the likes of him? Undying attraction to Lily seemed to be giving him licence to think there might be.

‘It's a bit of an impossible dream,' she said, a little self-mockery in her tone as she rifled through the box.

‘Why?' Nick asked.

She shrugged. ‘Because it's hard work chasing after all the dreams in life. But I'm chasing this one.'

‘Good for you,' Nick said, proud of her. He bowed his head to the stack of boxes on the floor. He didn't really have the right to hold such a bucket load of pride for the Johnson family unit but he appeared to be becoming a little dismayed that they had so much love he wasn't part of.

‘But I'm a realist. I know that if I do get it it'll be mostly determination with a little bit of luck.' She glanced down at her notebook on the desk, then wrote something in it. ‘Nobody gets anywhere without a little bit of luck.'

Nick couldn't agree more. ‘Then I wish you luck, Lily.' If he could give her his share of luck he'd hand it to her on a silver platter.

‘Wait,' she said suddenly. ‘How did you know about my shop?'

‘Andy told me about it when he was out at my place then Janie-Louise told me a bit more about it this morning. She's got something for you. Something old you're apparently going to make shine.'

Still bent over the desk, she raised her brow, looking for all the world like the most beautiful librarian he'd ever seen. ‘You and my daughter have any more secrets I'm not yet privy to?'

Damn. Nick grimaced.

‘You
do
?' She straightened.

‘Sort of,' he admitted. ‘Nothing too major.' An outright lie, although no harm had been done and Nick had hopefully pressed a responsible attitude into Janie-Louise's head.

‘Like what?' Lily asked, eyes wide.

Okay, so this was what parenting was about, Nick decided. Telling each other things they'd learned about the kids. But surely Janie-Louise had a right to a little privacy of her own too? If there was a real parenting thing going on in a kid's life, Mum would know some girly secrets — and Dad might have a few of his own that he kept from Mum. But in this case — he wasn't Janie-Louise's dad.

He picked up another box from the stack. ‘Um… I found her on All Seasons Road, cycling while reading.'

‘Oh my God!'

‘It's okay, honestly. Well…' He faltered for a second, getting the mob of thoughts in his head in alignment. They weren't his kids. He wasn't part of their parenting unit. ‘Look, I think I impressed on her the importance of what she'd done wrong. I threatened to take the ereader off her if I found out she'd been reading and cycling at the same time ever again.'

Lily sighed, her shoulders sagging as she swiped a hand over her brow. ‘Thank you, Nick.'

‘It's not that I wasn't going to tell you — exactly.'

‘It's all right. I understand. Thank you for watching out for her. I really appreciate it when anyone in town does that for my children.' She looked up at him, eyes crinkled with a penitent smile. ‘I get worried about them. Too much so, mostly. I need to let go and let them find their own feet from their own mistakes but it's so hard to do that when…'

‘When danger lurks at every corner,' Nick said, putting the box down on the edge of the desk. ‘They're fabulous kids, Lily. You're doing a great job.'

‘Thank you.' Her smile lifted.

God, she had a stunning face and right this moment she was giving him her unguarded smile. His favourite. He wanted more of them, and he wanted them aimed directly at him.

‘So you already had an ereader tucked away for Janie-Louise?' he asked, and watched as she blushed and looked down at her inventory.

‘Yes. Sorry I didn't tell you, I wasn't sure when I'd be getting it for her but it turns out there was plenty of money to buy her one. I'll return yours.'

‘Why don't you take it for yourself?'

She shook her head. ‘I couldn't.'

‘Well, you're going to have to, Lily.'

She raised an eyebrow at his sudden, stern-sounding remark, making Nick's fake-serious expression crack. He gave her a quick grin. ‘I'm gifting it to you. If you don't take it, I'll be hurt and disappointed.'

A smile formed on her face as she listened to him, obviously knowing his now sheepish expression and tone was his way of joking with her. ‘You're just being generous again,' she told him. ‘You ought to stop that.'

Nick shrugged. ‘I don't need it, Lily. If you don't take it I'll probably throw it in the bin.'

She laughed, shaking her head. He looked away and changed the subject, but had no intention of letting her off the hook. He
would
gift her the ereader. Hell, he'd give her a star if he could reach into the night and hook one for her.

‘How far off before you open the shop?' he asked.

She relaxed into the change of subject. ‘Quite a while,' she said with a sardonic yet resigned tilt of her mouth.

Exactly.
So why didn't you take my offer
? Because she was an independent soul. Beautiful; spirit still there somewhere inside her but kind of trapped.