The Auction a Romance by Anna Erishkigal Page 25

  "Not happening," I said. "It's a Sunday Christmas pageant, not a night out at Club 77."

  "Try on the dress?" Adam's voice sounded a little deeper than usual. "And then we'll see if there's anything you can do to dress it down."

  I picked it up and held it before me like a shield. Adam stood there, unmoving, his eyes pinned to the dress in my hands.

  "I'm not going to change in front of you," I said softly.

  Adam had the dignity to appear surprised.

  "Oh, sorry, I was just…"

  Without finishing that sentence, he stepped out of my bedroom like a skittish colt, shutting the door behind him.

  I slipped off my shorts and shirt and pulled the dress over my head. Most women bought clothing for how it made them look, but I'd bought this dress because the fabric was a deliciously soft cotton knit that felt like butter against my skin. I opened the door, my expression scrunched into a sheepish look as Adam and Pippa both tumbled in at once.

  Adam whistled.

  "You look beautiful!" Pippa said. "We'll be like two princesses at the ball! And Daddy can be the prince."

  "Turn around." Adam's voice sounded husky.

  I turned slowly, painfully aware my bra straps lay exposed beneath the slender black spaghetti straps. I finished turning and gazed up at Adam. He wore a hungry look like a dog that had gone too long without a meal.

  "Maybe if I let Rosie use my shrug?" Pippa said. "Then we'll match because we'll all be wearing purple."

  "It's too small," I said.

  "It's super stretchy," Pippa said. "Wanna try it on?"

  She took off the chenille knit shrug and handed it to me. It was size 00, but thanks to the knit construction it stretched enough that I could get away with wearing it over my dress. I peeked in the mirror. It covered my spaghetti straps and added just enough color to make the black dress look festive.

  "Okay," I said. "It will have to do."

  I realized Adam still stood in my bedroom.

  "Go away, Daddy!" Pippa pushed him out the door. "Don't you know the prince is not supposed to see the princesses while they're getting ready for the ball?"

  We giggled like two sisters as I passed the brush through her white-blonde hair and marveled at how, from tips to roots, her hair had not changed color like Adam's had from his boyhood photos. I chastised her to sit still as I plaited her hair with the practiced hand of someone who had braided countless manes and tails.

  "All set," I told Pippa. "Now try not to get dog hair all over your dress until after we get back from the pageant."

  I slipped on my black kitten heels and checked my appearance in the mirror. The girl who stared back at me was almost unrecognizable, not because of the dress, but because of the pink flush of anticipation. The shrug reminded me of my Gitano grandmother's gypsy shawl, and the way the skirt flared out at the very bottom, I thought I'd cut a fine figure as a flamenco dancer. I touched up my makeup, and then walked bashfully into the living room.

  "What do you think?"

  Pippa clapped. Adam held my gaze far longer than was appropriate for an employer and employee.

  "I shall be the envy of every man there," Adam said softly, "with the two most beautiful women in Queensland on my arms."

  Pippa chattered happily as we drove to the State School, filling us in on which friend was supposed to play which part of the pageant. Adam shepherded us into the auditorium, already familiar with the building and the layout. I thought I might jump out of my skin when he placed his hand upon my back and gently guided me into my seat. An usher came by and handed us our programs.

  "Here's Emily's group," Pippa said. "And Justin. He's the boy I read to at the library story hour with Emily on Thursday."

  Adam pored down the list, pointing to some of the names and asking Pippa if they were related to this person or that. His face light up at the recognition of familiar names.

  The lights went low. A woman came out and announced the annual Christmas pageant would begin. Like most school pageants, it started with the littlest actors and moved up in age to the more sophisticated (read - less terrible) acts. I leaned back and took in the ways the different teachers organized their kids, making mental notes of what worked and didn't.

  I though Adam would become bored as one badly-acted skit after another came on, but from the way he held Pippa's hand as she bee-bopped to the catchier tunes, it appeared he enjoyed himself almost as much as his daughter. At last Emily's group came on. Pippa leaped up, squealing with excitement.

  "Emily!"

  "Shhh…" Adam and I both shushed her together.

  Adam and I glanced at each other and smiled as Pippa switched from fangirl squeals to frantic waving, trying to get Emily's attention. The skit from The Christmas Story was beautifully acted, except when one of the three kings tripped on the baby Jesus's manger. For a moment Saint Joseph fumbled with the soft, vinyl infant until Emily, aka the Virgin Mary, caught the falling infant more skillfully than a pro-league cricket player. And then, it was off to the next play, until the students had gone through all the acts.

  The lights came on. Pippa bounded out of her seat, dragging Adam down the aisle to try to catch up to Emily like a recalcitrant hackney horse that refused to listen when its jockey shouted 'whoah!' I trailed behind them, enjoying the way the soft, thin wool accentuated Adam's all-too-shapely haunches. Pippa dragged him right into the hallway to come nose-to-nose with Julie Peterson.

  "Well … if it isn't Adam Bristow!" Julie's freckles lit up with a beautiful smile. "Why, look at you? All grown up and looking mighty handsome!" She gave me a wink. "Where have you been all these years?"

  "Uhm, er, Brisbane?" Adam stammered like an awkward schoolboy. It didn't help that Julie looked positively radiant in an emerald green blouse and coordinating short skirt that accentuated her hair and shapely legs. She looked like a slightly racy elfin pinup model in a ladies home magazine.

  "Whatcha doin, not stopping into the pub to say 'hi' to all your old mates when you come back to town?" Julie hit him in the arm. "Why, it's positively antisocial."

  "I, uhm, erm … I'm here now?" Adam's voice lilted like a pubescent boy. Before my eyes, I saw my quiet, competent boss who hobnobbed with billionaires and oil sheiks transform back into a high school nerd. So … Julie hadn't been kidding when she'd said Adam had been a bit of an odd platypus?

  Julie gave him a big … warm … welcoming hug.

  "Well welcome back," Julie said. "Don't be a stranger. Everybody's been asking 'bout how you been coping since your mama passed away. And your daddy." Her lip trembled. "And Jeffrey. I still can't believe he's gone." She sniffed and rubbed her eyes. "If you need anything, you just come and ask."

  There was a moment of awkward silence, and then Emily and her friends descended upon us like voracious little bees.

  "Duty calls!" Julie laughed. She excused herself and herded the girls into the cafeteria, where a pasta buffet had been laid out along with a bake sale. Pippa dragged us towards a jovial looking man with a white beard and an enormous furry purple hat who sat in front of the cafeteria door, looking remarkably like Santa Claus incognito.

  ~~Spaghetti Supper: $5 Donation. All Proceeds to Benefit the Parents & Citizens Association~~

  "Hey! We match!" The man pointed to Adam's purple tie and my own borrowed purple shrug. "Will you be joining us for dinner? It's all you can eat … just a $5 donation."

  Pippa looked up at her father. "Please Daddy? I want to eat with Emily."

  Adam pulled out a $50 bill and shoved it into the till, waving it off when the man tried to give him change. Pippa pushed past the hungry people and headed over to rendezvous with Emily and the other pony club kids. Adam and I looked to each other.

  "We've just officially been ditched," I said. "Next thing you know, she'll make you drop her off up the street so her friends don't see her dad drove her."

  Adam watched his daughter interact with the other kids. I noted his hyper-attentiveness, as though he feared he
might have to swoop in at any moment and rescue her.

  "She'll be okay," I reassured him.

  "The kids where she used to go to school weren't very nice," Adam lowered his voice. "She had … issues."

  "What kinds of issues."

  "Sometimes … Pippa acts too young for her age."

  I watched the way Emily introduced Pippa to her same-age peers. My mother once talked my father into sending me to an all-girl's prep school. I hated it there. The girls were wicked mean. When my mother refused to listen that I wanted out, I stopped studying until I got kicked out.

  "Did she go to a public school?" I asked. "Or a private prep school?"

  "Prep school." Adam grimaced. "The heir to the Jackson Oil fortune can't attend anything but the most expensive private schools. Only the kids there ate her alive."

  "Bullying?"

  Adam watched carefully the way that Pippa interacted with her new friends. At first she hung out at the periphery, but pretty soon she stood front and center, animatedly discussing, no doubt, her efforts to buy a horse with her own money.

  "Pippa has always been a fanciful child. Between me being gone so much of the time, and her mother's drama? Some kids act out. Pippa? She retreats into her own little world. "

  "Her imaginary friends?" I lowered my voice so that nobody but Adam would overhear.

  Adam swallowed.

  "How do you tell your kid their daydreams are wrong when, all your life, you were raised by a mother who used to tell you stories?"

  The hair prickled at the back of my neck, but it was not an ominous feeling, but rather that sense of knowing. Was Adam aware his mother still watched over him?

  "Eva trotted her off to the shrinks, but the more they told her she was imagining things, the deeper Pippa regressed into herself. My mother … my mother told her it was okay to walk with one foot in this world, the other foot in the land of dreams. She told her a dream walker just has to remember to keep their dreams private."

  "The fairy queen?"

  Adam's eyebrows raised in surprise.

  "She's told you about them?"

  "No," I said. "I've overheard her talking to the dog."

  Adam watched carefully as his daughter interacted with her new friends. There grew a longing on his face that had nothing to with me.

  "She seems happy tonight," he sighed. "What I'd give to have it last."

  "Why don't you enroll her in school here?"

  "Eva would never agree to it."

  "Pippa doesn't live with Eva."

  "Roberta Dingle has recommended I move back towards Brisbane," Adam said. "If I refuse, the court will order that Pippa should live with Eva."

  "You can fight her," I said. "Roberta is biased. You said she's one of Eva's oldest friends."

  "Roberta loves Pippa," Adam said.

  "And she loves her friend much more." My voice grew sharp with anger. "Otherwise, she wouldn't order you to move."

  That tormented expression which Adam seemed to wear more and more lately clouded his eyes and turned them green.

  "You don't understand." Adam's voice sounded strangled. "Roberta wants me to do whatever it takes to keep Pippa with me."

  I watched Pippa interact happily with her new friends.

  "There's nothing temporary about a temporary custody order," I said. "Just act 'as if,' and then if Eva tries anything, you can honestly tell the court it would be harmful to uproot Pippa now that she's set down roots."

  "I didn't realize you were a solicitor." Adam said bitterly. He crossed his arms. "I refuse to play games with my daughter's fate."

  "It's not a game," I said. "Adam, I'm a teacher. Pippa needs to be enrolled in a school, with teachers and friends and a routine she can rely upon. You can't just keep her in limbo while you and Eva duke it out!"

  "You don't understand," Adam's voice rose with anger. "Those bastards ate her alive! If I hadn't sensed something was wrong and cut my trip short…"

  We were interrupted by a familiar, ferret-faced man with eager brown eyes and a moustache that looked like whiskers. He pushed his way through a throng of parents who stopped to yabber on their way back from the buffet line, their paper plates bowing under the weight of the usual mish-mash of potluck fare and decadent desserts.

  "Miss Xalbadora," the Saint Joseph's headmaster said. "So very good to see you again."

  I stiffened, not sure whether to be glad the man had appeared at the exact moment I was pressuring Adam to enroll Pippa in school, or mortified he'd appeared before boss I'd lied to and claimed the interview had gone well?

  "Principal McMillan," I shook his hand. I turned to Adam, who scrutinized me with hawk-like awareness. "Adam … this is Principal McMillan. He's the headmaster at Saint Joseph's."

  Please don't say it. Please don't say it. Please, please, please don't say it!

  "I understand Rosie interviewed with you last week?" Adam said. "I heard it went well?"

  Oh, God! He said it. My face burned scarlet as I searched for a convenient sinkhole to fall into and get eaten alive by the earth. I stepped backwards, right into Adam's arm. He splayed his hand possessively across my back as if to convey -my- employee.

  "Why yes, it did go well." Principal McMillan turned his attention to me. "Miss Xalbadora, I was going to call you tomorrow. The board has asked me to invite you to come back for a second interview. We've just broken for the Christmas holidays, but the board reconvenes right after the New Year."

  A sense of excitement, mixed with a peculiar off-note of trepidation flooded throughout my body. They were calling me back? A second interview was good news, wasn't it?

  Adam's hand slid up to possessively grip my waist.

  "I'm not sure I'll be willing to give Rosamond up in five weeks' time," Adam's voice rumbled low in his chest. "You're aware she's been tutoring my daughter, Pippa, privately?"

  "Why yes," Principal McMillan said. "She listed you as a reference, but she only listed your name, not your daughter. We had no idea she was tutoring the heir to the Jackson Oil fortune. Will you be enrolling her at Saint Joseph's for the fall semester?"

  A sick feeling opened up in the pit of my stomach. I glanced at Adam, whose eyes hardened at the implication that the nosey headmaster had followed up on my references and no doubt discovered a lot more information than I'd told him.

  "I haven't decided yet." Adam's voice sounded harsh. "Pippa is a very special child. She will go to the school which can best meet her needs."

  "Well if you ever want to tour Saint Joseph's," Principal McMillan shook Adam's hand vigorously, oblivious to the dangerous undercurrent, "you just call my secretary and set it up. Our curriculum is competitive with the best prep schools in Brisbane."

  "Thank you," Adam said coldly. "I will consider your offer."

  Principal McMillan hurried off to do some other recruiting. Adam's eyes turned an icy shade of green as he whirled and grabbed me by the arm.

  "I told you I want my private life to remain private!"

  "I didn't tell him anything!" I threw up my hands. "You heard what he said. I gave him your name, not your ex-wife's. It's not my fault if your infamy precedes you!"

  The twitching muscle underlying Adam's cheek warned I'd pushed him too hard. His hand clenched my bicep, so tight it almost hurt, and just for a moment I felt as though I stared up at the man on the painted stallion.

  "I've gone through a lot of trouble to shield Pippa from the media," Adam growled. "I don't appreciate you telling the world where I've spirited her away!"

  "All anybody has to do is look up your birth certificate to figure out where you've grown up, Adam!" I jerked away from him, breaking his death grip. "Trust me. You're not that hard to find. So if you and your kid were all that interesting, the media would already be climbing over the fence!"

  "Don’t you follow the news?"

  "No," I snapped. "I could care less! But if they're after anybody, it's Eva they're interested in. Not you! You're just too plain bloody boring!"

&
nbsp; The eyes of the parents closest to us all turned to see what we were arguing about. I took a step backwards. This was not the right place to hash this conversation out. Adam retreated behind that unreadable expression he often wore, the one where I couldn't tell what he was thinking.

  "Listen," I hissed low enough so the others could not hear. "In less than five weeks, I'll be out of a job."

  All the aggravation of the past few weeks, compounded by Gregory's betrayal and my sudden diminution in the world, poured though my body so fervently it made me shake.

  "Perhaps it's fine and dandy for you to jerk Pippa all over hell's creation on whatever whim you and Eva and her rich grandpa and your job demand," I said, "but -I- need to earn a paycheck so I can eat! A regular, weekly paycheck, with benefits, so I can buy food and clothing and shelter and not live out in the street and starve. I don't have a station to run home to when this job is finished, so forgive me for going on a job interview to line up a job for after you are done using me and listing your name as my current employer!"

  Adam stiffened. He took my hand and ran his fingers over the soft flesh of my inner wrist. His eyes took on that same vulnerability they'd had the night he'd told me Eva was trying to take away his home.

  "Is that all we are to you?" he asked softly. "A paycheck."

  "Yes!" I hissed, still furious at his behavior. "I was hired to do a job!"

  I regretted the words the moment they tumbled out of my mouth. Adam looked as though I'd just slapped him. He broke eye contact. His eyes wandered over to where Pippa chattered happily with Emily and a whole bunch of kids. He stood straighter. Tall, muscular, a titan of industry, a man in control of his world.

  "Well it looks like you've done a better job of figuring out what my daughter needs than me."

  He stalked away, leaving me standing against the wall alone. He asked Pippa to introduce him to her new friends. The kid's parents flocked around him, eager to reacquaint themselves with the man who'd slunk back to his parent's station to lick his wounds after his oil heiress wife had chewed him up and shat him out. People buzzed around them, the purple oil princess and her most loyal retainer-slash-father. Adam did not look back at me. It was as though I had ceased to exist.