Daydreamer

Lucy

“Lucy?”

I blinked as I felt a warm hand on the back of my neck, swimming up from my daydream and turning towards the sound of my husband’s voice. There he was, towering over where I’d been sitting in the window seat, hugging my knees and staring out over London.

Felix had added this arrangement into his office shortly after I moved back in with him. He knew daydreaming was essential for me and he said if I could do it anywhere I might as well do it in his office so he could see me anytime he wanted. I wasn’t about to object. I had a steady stream of caramel lattes, Marmite toast and anything else I might want here after all. One of the other reasons was that when I was into a story, I sometimes forgot to eat. Felix was not so keen on that scenario. So the window seat it was. There were comfortable cushions, and a desk that suspended over me should I want to write. I had an office laptop and Kindle given the amount of times I’d forget my own. Sometimes Felix would be out at meetings. Sometimes he worked alongside me. Sometimes he’d kiss the side of my head or snuggle in behind me as I worked. Sometimes he’d lower all the blinds to the rest of the office…

Yes, it worked for me in a big way.

“Oh sorry, were you there long?” I smiled up at him as I reached for his waist, pulling him into me. He chuckled as he lowered himself next to me on the seat, wrapped his arms around me and leaned back so I could snuggle into him.

“Only the standard amount of time. Don’t worry, you ignoring me on the reg is good for my ego.”

“I don’t mean to ignore you,” I objected, twisting around to look at him. “I just go a bit…”

“Doolally.”

“Yes, doolally.”

“It’s okay, Shakspeare. I know your brain is thinking up the next universe for you to write in. Just so long as you continue to visit us mortals in this universe, I’m happy.”

He kissed my temple and gave me a squeeze. “You warm enough?”

Felix had ditched his suit jacket and tie. His sleeves were rolled up giving me plenty of muscular arm porn to admire. It may have been winter, but you wouldn’t have known it sitting in here. Felix had put in a separate heater for his office after people started standing in the fridge to try to cool down when he’d overheated the whole floor. Everyone was happier that way, and I’d assured Felix that I wasn’t going to die of hypothermia if I had to do the occasional walk to the bog or to see Vicky, Lottie and TBea at a reasonable twenty degrees.

“They’re here,” he said in a cautious voice, and I stiffened.

“W–what? Oh crikey, I completely lost track of time. We’d better⁠—”

I went to stand up, but Felix’s arms tightened around me to keep me in place.

“Felix,” I said, panicked now. “We shouldn’t keep them waiting.”

“They’re here for you, Shakespeare,” he said in a soft voice. “You’re going to see if you want to work with them. Not the other way around.”

“B–b–but it’s Netflix,” I squeaked. “Maddie’ll kill me if I don’t⁠—”

“Maddie works for you. Just like I work for you.”

I huffed out a laugh. “You don’t work for me, you daft article.”

“I’ll have you know that I’m the… what was it now? ‘The worst, most unrelentingly crap assistant in the history of publishing’.”

Ooh, Maddie had been really angry with Felix after the last signing. To be fair to her, he had been a bit growly and overprotective and he may have told a producer to bugger off when he tried to corner me about a deal after the signing had finished. But by that stage I’d been on my feet for eight hours, my wrist was hurting and I had a headache from all the peopling. Stephen Spielberg himself could have approached me and Felix would still have told him to jog on.

“I thought you were excellent,” I said. “And you’ve got a cute butt which counts for a lot in an assistant.”

“Is that right?” he muttered, his hand coming up to tilt my face towards his so his lips could brush mine. “I think that might constitute sexual harassment, Mrs Moretti,” he muttered against my mouth, and I smiled.

“Maybe my assistant could do with a little harassment. Maybe then my caramel lattes wouldn’t be so few and far between.”

“You had a latte half an hour ago, you little minx. I’ll show you harassment.”

With that he slid his hand up my jawline and covered my mouth with his. Just as I was getting lost in the kiss, I heard a sharp tap on the glass.

“Shit, Felix we forgot the blinds,” I squeaked, and he huffed out a frustrated sigh. I jumped when the sharp tapping started again and turned to see a furious Maddie standing outside the glass window to the office flanked by an amused Lottie and a curious Vicky.

“I guess we better get up,” he said reluctantly as Maddie wrenched the door open.

“Honestly, Felix,” Maddie snapped, steam practically coming out of her ears. “You guys canoodle 24-7. Do you have to when the entire production team from Netflix is boiling their arses off in the next room?

With no rush at all Felix lifted me up and moved us both to standing, taking my hand and then strolling to where Maddie was standing in the doorway. I groaned.

“Felix, please tell me that you’re not boiling those telly executives alive in there, you maniac?”

He shrugged, completely unrepentant. “I’ve no idea how long this meeting could go on for. I wanted you comfortable.”

“You’re impossible,” I said as we started towards the conference room.

“They’re on our turf, so I… Luce? You okay?”

I’d come to a sudden stop in the corridor. I could see the Netflix people through the glass. There were five of them. Five. Why did it require five of them to speak to little old me?

“Lucy?”

“I don’t think…” I whispered, shaking my head and taking a step back. “I mean, I just write silly stories about fairies and stuff. I can’t understand why anyone would…”

Felix moved to stand in front of me so that his large body was blocking my view of the conference room. He put both his hands on my shoulders to anchor me in place.

“Lucy, look at me,” he said, his voice firm.

I blinked and looked up at his handsome, determined face.

“Now you listen to me, Shakespeare,” he said. “Your stories take people to other worlds. They give people joy. They’re about good and evil, love and sacrifice. They are not silly. Understand me?”

I bit my lip. “Er… I guess⁠—”

“They need you. Not the other way around. Now we’re going in there to kick some streaming service arse and get you the deal you deserve with the control over it you want.”

“I just⁠—”

“Think how proud your dad would have been, Shakespeare,” he said softly. I closed my eyes and Dad’s voice echoed in my brain.

“Storytellers change the world, love,” he’d said. “There’s nothing as powerful as a good story told well.”

“Okay,” I told Felix, new determination in my tone as I squared my shoulders. “I’m ready.” Felix smiled at me and then gave me a brief, hard kiss before we both headed into the meeting. When I looked up it was to see all the eyes in the conference room fixed on us through the glass. Maddie rolled hers. But I didn’t care. I was the keeper of stories and if I wanted to kiss my husband before a meeting then I would.

“Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen,” Felix said as we walked into the room. “This is Lucy Moretti, pen name LP Mayweather, and I will be assisting her today.”

Four years later…

Felix

“Get. Off. Legolas. Now!” Bea stamped her foot as she glared at her twin brother. One of her bunches was higher than the other, she had her hands on her hips with her short, chubby legs braced wide as her dark brown eyes flashed with fury.

Legolas had found his calling as an entertainer for our three-year-olds. He would happily trot around the village and the estate with either one of the twins on his back. But both Henry and Bea very much considered Legolas theirs, and there was a little too much of me in both of them for either one to concede defeat.

“Imma ride to Gramma’s!” shouted Henry, giggling hysterically as Legolas trotted off in the direction of my mother’s house.

Lucy and I had built what my mother and Hetty both agreed was a “modern monstrosity” in between Moonreach and my mum’s estate. For the last five years we’d lived between here and London but, given how good the village school was and how much the kids loved it here, we were likely to be based much more in Little Buckingham going forward.

“Henry Moretti!” I shouted as Legolas started picking up speed. “You come back here!” Legolas, ever willing to piss me off, broke into a canter just at the point I decided to pick up Bea and give chase. The old bastard barely managed a trot usually, but he had it in for me after years of preventing him from eating Lucy’s maps. “Jesus Christ,” I said as I saw the gate was open.

“Cheese and rice,” Henry shouted gleefully – now thoroughly enjoying being a passenger on the all-out run across the countryside we were having to do. I was going to kill that pony. We followed them over the field and through the gate. I knew where the furry menace was headed now as The Badger’s Sett pub garden came into view. Henry squealed as Legolas jumped the small fence separating our land from the pub’s. Unfortunately it took a little longer for me to negotiate the fence with Bea in my arms, so by the time we made it into the garden, Legolas had already knocked over a couple of tables and snatched an apple right out of Emily’s youngest daughter’s hands.

Emily snorted. “Good luck, Moretti.”

“What the bloody hell kind of show are you running there?” shouted Jimbo as we ran into the back door after Legolas. There was a trail of destruction in here too.

“Free Sunday lunches for everyone,” I cried over my shoulder and a cheer went up amongst the patrons despite the carnage we’d left behind.

“And drinks, you tight git,” Mikey called after me, and I gave him a one-finger salute as we emerged onto the street.

“Daddy!” Bea admonished. “You mustn’t finger swear.”

“I was waving at your uncle.”

“That was not a nice wave. I knows all about finger swears. Theo Harding does them all the time.”

Well, Theo Harding was a little shit just like his dad, who I would be having a word with once I’d found that bloody pony. I was really panicking now. Little Buckingham didn’t get a lot of traffic, but it only took one car to⁠—

“Missing something?” My head snapped around and I breathed a sigh of relief. Standing there in front of the village shop was my very beautiful and very pregnant wife holding onto the reins of a not-looking-in-any-way-sorry Legolas with one hand, and the hand of our overexcited son in the other.

Bea wriggled in my arms to get down and then ran over to them. “Daddy said ‘cheese and rice’ and he finger swore at Uncle Mikey.”

I scowled at the little snitch, but she stuck her tongue out at me and hid behind her mother’s legs. Lucy sighed.

“I was gone for twenty minutes, Felix,” she said.

I threw up my hands. “They’re totally unmanageable.”

“We are not unmanny-at-all,” Bea said, her hands going to her hips in indignation. “Mummy’s never lost one of us.”

“That’s because your mother is perfect,” I said as I stalked over to them, plucked Henry off the ground to tuck him under one arm then reached down to tuck Bea under the other before tickling them both. Then, with the kids still under my arms I leaned forward and kissed Lucy.

“Ew, gross,” complained Henry as they both wriggled out of my grip.

“Daddy, you do some things good,” put in Bea, clearly concerned that she might have hurt my feelings.

“Oh really? What’s that then?”

“You give really good cuddles. You can throw us in the air super high. You let us climb trees way higher than Mummy. And you… can cook really good pancakes.”

“Well, thank you for that performance review.”

Lucy smiled up at me as she burrowed under my arm and kissed my neck. “Your dad does have his strong points.”

Lucy had been worried that the daydreaming side of her would make parenting difficult. It took a lot of reassurance when she first fell pregnant for her to believe that she wouldn’t just one day forget the twins existed as she dreamt up another story. I worked mostly from home for the first three months after they were born, and then she’d often come into the office with the twins. But it turned out that, when it came to the kids, inattention was not a problem. Lucy was in fact way more of a helicopter parent than me, hence my allowing Henry off the lead rope and the ensuing chase across Little Buckingham.

“Mama, I’m tired,” Henry said in a small voice, and we looked down at him to see him swaying on the spot. Henry was a full-power kid, but when his battery ran out, he just sort of deflated. I scooped him up, and he nuzzled into my neck.

“Sorry, Daddy,” he said around a yawn.

“I’m riding Legolas home,” Bea declared, using the opening of her brother’s exhaustion to her full advantage. So that’s how we walked through the village – Bea riding Legolas, one of my arms around Lucy and the other holding up a muddy, nearly asleep Henry.

When we arrived back at the house, Bea was just as exhausted. I listened to Lucy tuck them into their beds for a nap and waited outside the door for what I knew they’d ask. Almost in unison the question came:

“Mummy, can you tell us a story?”