Daydreamer

Lucy

“Emily, I can’t speak for long,” I said into the phone with difficulty as my teeth were still chattering.

“You sound freezing,” Emily snapped. “Does that shit, Felix, know about your cold intolerance? If the tight git has got his office at Baltic temperatures, I’m telling your brother. It sounds like a hellhole there anyway.”

I rolled my eyes at her drama. I had not described Felix’s company as a “hellhole”. I might have mentioned the lack of natural light and comfy furniture, along with the fact that everyone seemed to be a corporate robot apart from me. Emily didn’t understand why I didn’t tell them where to stuff their job.

“It’s not worth it just to ogle your childhood crush all day long, Luce,” she said, and I hastily put down the mug I was holding to take her off speaker.

“Ems,” I hissed. “I am actually in the office now, you know. Can we not talk about my pathetic crush on the completely unobtainable, out-of-my-league human ever, ever again? I’m not working here because of that.”

“Right,” Emily drew out the word, and I gritted my still-chattering teeth.

“I wish that twelve-year-old me had known better not to tell twelve-year-old you my deepest, darkest secrets.”

Emily snorted. “Twenty-seven-year-old you still tells me everything, so there was never much chance of that.”

“I don’t tell you everything,” I snapped, immediately wishing I could take back the lie.

“You dirty bitch,” Emily cried, sounding way too excited and way, way too loud. I glanced around the empty kitchen space nervously. “Are you getting yourself some and not telling me?”

I sighed and then heard a commotion on the other end of the line. It sounded like furniture falling followed by some kids shouting.

“Marcus put the baby down!” Emily screamed so loud I had to take the phone away from my ear or risk permanent hearing damage. “Oh bloody hell, Luce. I’ll have to call you back. But I’m so fucking excited that I could – no, I did not say the f-word Marcus, I’m talking to your Auntie Lucy about ducks… yeah, there’s loads of ducks in London. Oh shit! Don’t you dare⁠—”

The line went dead, and I breathed a sigh of relief. Saved by Emily’s feral child. I shivered again, and a wave of homesickness swept over me. Emily’s kids were a lot, but I loved them to pieces. I could just imagine the chaos at Emily’s house right now. If I was at home, I’d go over there to help out, then if we were lucky Emily’s mum would babysit and we’d all go the pub as it was Friday night. Maybe play some darts. Definitely drink some warmish cider – The Badger’s Sett had never quite figured out how to chill drinks appropriately.

“Miss Mayweather?” I startled, dropping the mug again at Frank’s voice. Frank was Felix’s driver, a nice chap in his sixties who’d driven me a couple of time before.

“Oh, hi, Frank,” I said, clearing my throat as I flicked on the kettle to start to make shitty coffee for Will and his minions.

“Mr Moretti wants you to go home now, miss,” Frank said. “He said you need to get changed and warm up.”

I gritted my teeth to stop them chattering and gave Frank a smile. “That’s okay, Frank. I’m fine.”

Frank sighed. “He was quite specific, love,” he said. “I’m to take you straight home.”

I was still shivering, so making coffee was proving trickier than normal, and I was no expert at the best of times – yet another thing I regularly fucked up as the worst assistant ever.

“Well, I’ve just got to⁠—”

“I’ve been sent to do that,” Tabitha snapped, grabbing the kettle away from me. “Apparently you’re too fragile after being out in the rain. Kind of like a really pathetic heroine in a romance novel.” Tabitha looked me up and down, and her lip curled. “I’ll be assisting Mr Brent for the rest of the day. You can go and swoon elsewhere.”

Great, yet another black mark against me with Tabitha. Clearly, Felix had once again pulled her out of something important to have to come and sort me out. My eyes started stinging. I really wasn’t that great at the whole people being mean to me thing. It had never been my jam, even as a child. But back in Little Buckingham, I’d been allowed to live in my dream world. If anyone even looked at me wrong, Mike or Emily would be on them like a ton of bricks. If this was the real world, then the real world sucked. Big time.

“Tabby,” Frank said in a warning tone, and I was surprised that he was so familiar with her. She rolled her eyes.

“Whatever,” she snapped. “Just bugger off, yeah?”

“Right, okay,” I managed to croak out, on the verge of tears but managing to swallow them down just about. I let Frank lead me out of the office and down to Felix’s town car, which was absolutely boiling inside with the heating blasting.

“Jesus, Frank,” I said as I slipped into the passenger seat, loving the warm air around me. “Do you always leave your heating running?”

Frank turned to me and raised his eyebrows. “Mr Moretti was very specific about what temperature the car should be at in order for me to drive you home,” he explained. “Above twenty-five degrees, closer to thirty if possible.”

I blinked and looked out of the window as Frank negotiated his way out of the car park. Molly-coddled was the word that came to mind. Well, I didn’t want Felix to molly-coddle me. I wanted him to do X-rated, dirty things to me – not view me as a careless child that he had to look after. “Bloody bossy,” I muttered under my breath.

“He cares about you,” Frank returned, and I snorted. Felix cared about what my mother thought, not me. “You don’t believe me? I’ve never driven any other employee home ever before. I’ve certainly never been instructed about the car environment before. Even with his—” Frank broke off and shifted uncomfortably in his seat.

“With his what?”

Frank cleared his throat. “Nothing,” he said in a strangled voice.

“With his what, Frank? Tell me, or I’m getting out at the next set of traffic lights.”

“With his lady friends,” he muttered, looking acutely embarrassed. “Even when I’ve driven them home, he’s never given me a ten-minute lecture on how to do it.”

The mention of Felix’s lady friends made my chest feel tight. Of course, I’d seen him in magazines. I knew he’d dated all sorts of women, some of them famous in their own right, all of them glamorous in the extreme. I sank down into my chair, feeling very small and more than a little stupid.

As if Felix would be interested in me. The reactions I thought I’d seen were probably just acute embarrassment that the kid with a crush on him was now haunting his working life as an adult.