The Meant to Be Collection Read online

  The bar was packed as Lucy headed up for another drink. She had a buzz on and was enjoying the music and laughter with her friends. She squeezed into a space at the bar and shouted a sorry when she realised she had bumped against a girl and spilt her drink.

  “Hey!” Green eyes shone with a sparkle of humour as their owner turned fully to face Lucy. “I would say you owe me a refill, wouldn’t you?” she grinned.

  Leaning in, Lucy said, “I suppose that’s the least I can do.” She returned the grin.

  “Nicola.” She held out a delicate hand, “I prefer Nicky, but if you’re going to take me out then you should know my proper name, right?”

  “Nicole?” She said the word almost reverently as she glanced up. “Nope, all good thanks.” Lucy shook herself, not looking at her. From her profile, Nicole could just make out the scar that Storm had told her about. It was a shame, she thought; Lucy was a beautiful woman. Nicole had always taken care of her looks, not that she was vain, but she liked the way she looked and had spent time on cultivating her style. Of course, none of that mattered now, but still, she couldn’t imagine how she would have coped if she had had to live with such a marking on her face. Then she remembered how close she had come to that.

  Feeling eyes on her, Lucy continued staring at the tins on the shelf in front of her. She could feel the rush of blood flood her cheeks. She followed the old familiar breathing technique she had learned a long time ago and settled herself.

  “I was in an accident,” Lucy muttered. She breathed out, surprising herself that she had said it out loud once more; that was twice in the same week and to two different people, albeit from the same family.

  “Oh…I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to stare, I was just—” She flinched, suddenly aware that she had spoken out of turn. She had gotten better with it, but sometimes she still felt the fear. “Sorry.” Looking downward and avoiding eye contact, she turned quickly to leave Lucy in peace.

  Lucy continued walking around the store picking up the items that she needed while Nicole went back to the till to serve a customer who just wanted some cigarettes. She was used to people being scared or intimidated around her, but not in the same way Nicole was reacting. She didn’t like it.

  Nicole watched Lucy as she pulled on the peak of her cap and adjusted her shirt before she strolled up the aisle towards the till. She was intrigued as to what kind of accident she had had, and she wondered if maybe they had anything in common, but the thought of asking churned her stomach. Because she had learned her lesson many times about questions that she had no right to ask.

  “Will you be home late for dinner?” That was all she had asked, a simple question so she could plan their evening meal around him. The punch to the back of the head had given her a headache, and she wasn’t sure that he hadn’t broken a rib as he screamed at her to never question him again.

  “I-I-I wanted to thank you,” Nicole stuttered when Lucy came closer to pay for her goods, still avoiding eye contact with each other.

  “What for?” she asked, perplexed by the statement as she glanced around, fidgety and unsure where this conversation was going.

  “Letting my daughter, Storm, hang around your place. I-if she bothers you just let me know and—”

  “She’s no bother,” Lucy broke in while fishing in her pocket for a wallet. “Smart kid.”

  Nicole took a moment to assess her up close once again. She really was quite stunning. She had beautiful green eyes, wide and bright. She was tall too and slim, maybe too slim, in her ripped denim jeans and leather jacket that was open and allowed a glimpse of the tank top she wore underneath. And more scars. But, she was beautiful in a haunted kind of way. Nicole blushed as she realised that she was openly gawping.

  It hadn’t gone unnoticed by Lucy either, and a flush crept up her neck and hit her cheeks just as quickly. What was it with this woman constantly making her blush? She quickly put her head down and handed over the required amount. Grabbing her bags, she moved to the door as quickly as she could; she needed some air.

  “Bye,” called Nicole after her. She found herself smiling. She could do this.

  Chapter Eight

  The next time that Lucy went to her spot, she noticed Storm had brought her sisters with her. For a moment, she froze. Young kids were always the worst with questions. She watched as the twins ran around, screaming with excitement. Storm was trying desperately to quieten them down, but not having much luck.

  “Sorry!” Storm called out, noticing that Lucy was hesitant to come any closer. “I’ll take them home.”

  Lucy continued to watch them for a moment; they were having fun, not hurting anyone. They were kind of cute, so much life inside them just bursting to come out. She couldn’t help but smile a little as she watched them run around and around with no particular destination. Such innocence yet to be marked by life’s pain and sorrow. They were wearing matching clothes again, only one of them had a hat on covering her blonde curls.

  “It’s okay,” she called back. Moving slowly, she limped across to her rock.

  “Are you sure? It’s not a problem to take them home, it’s just Mom had to work on the house and they were getting under her feet,” Storm continued to explain. She had a pained look on her face.

  “It’s okay,” Lucy repeated as she thought about their mom, Nicole. She seemed like a nice woman. Too chatty, but nice enough. Beautiful too. It was a strange thought for her; she had seen plenty of women over the years, but none of them had ever left any kind of impression on her like Nicole had. She supposed there must have been other beautiful women that she passed every day, and yet she never noticed them.

  Just as if by thinking about her she had conjured her to appear, there she was, walking along the shore heading towards the girls. Her raven hair hung loosely around her face, and she was smiling as she caught sight of her girls. She had a great smile, thought Lucy as she watched her surreptitiously from beneath her cap. Nicole looked cool and fashionable as she strolled the path in loose linen white trousers paired with a long, flowing red top that seemed to float around her. When one of the twins noticed her, she ran and hugged her mother around the legs, and Lucy found herself unable to look away. The scene was heart-warming.

  Nicole raised her left hand and waved to Lucy. Without thinking, Lucy waved back. She watched in slow motion as her hand retreated back down and into her pocket. Perplexed, she looked away and focused on a pebble at her foot.

  As Nicole reached the other girls, Lucy could hear her telling them that she had to go to work. Apparently, Rita wasn’t feeling very well, and the girls would have to come with her to the store for the evening, as she couldn’t afford not to work the extra shift.

  Storm protested. She didn’t want to go, and Lucy could understand why. Sitting here by the lake, it brought more than peace to someone. It was somewhere you could just be. It seeped into your soul. Storm already felt it, that much Lucy was sure of.

  “But Mom, it’s so boring there,” Storm pleaded. “I can stay here, I promise I won’t do anything stupid.”

  “Baby, you’re not old enough to be left by yourself yet, it’s just out of the question, okay? Come on, get your things, we need to go,” her mother urged, checking her watch again.

  “But Mom,” Storm continued to whine. Her sisters were still running around like mini-whirlwinds, and Nicole was finding herself becoming more stressed and frustrated with the arguing. She didn’t want to go to work and drag them away from the fun they were having, but she had no choice. If she was going to be able to make this house a home, then she would need all the dollars she could get, especially when she needed to make sure they always had an escape fund, just in case.

  “They can stay with me,” Lucy piped up without looking up. Her own unexpected vocal outburst shocked her a little.

  “Sorry?” Nicole said, unsure if she heard her properly.

  “I said…they can…they can stay here, with me. I – if you want? If it helps?” stuttered Lucy, not qu
ite understanding why she was offering to do this. It was so far out of her comfort zone. She had never looked after kids before.

  Storm’s eyes lit up in an instant as she looked hopefully at her mother. “Please, can we stay here with Lucy?”

  “I…are you sure? They can be a handful,” Nicole fretted, caught off guard by this unexpected offer and the decision she had to now make. Could she leave her kids with this virtual stranger that barely spoke to her? Would they be safe? What if Paul turned up?

  “I’m sure I can cope, but if you think otherwise, I won’t be offended,” Lucy said solemnly, understanding completely the dilemma she could see Nicole going over in her mind.

  “No, I’m sure you will do just fine.” She smiled and tried to look confident about it. “If you’re sure? It would be a huge help, thank you,” Nicole said sincerely, deciding that maybe Lucy could be trusted. Rita had never had a bad word to say about her, and if Rita trusted her, then she figured she could too. She wouldn’t be long anyway, just a couple of hours at most until she could close up and get back to them.

  “What time will you be back?” Lucy asked as if she could read her mind. She had stood up and was looking at her now, trying to show the woman that she could be trusted with her most prized possessions.

  “Around 8 I think, you can always bring them to the store if it’s too long or if they get out of hand.” They studied each other for a second or two, each of them sizing the other up to make sure this was definitely going to be okay.

  Lucy concluded that it would and said, “It will be fine, what time do they have dinner?”

  “Oh, I hadn’t even thought about that, normally around 6, but they can wait until I get home.”

  “I can cook,” Lucy said, walking toward her.

  “Okay, so, okay.” Nicole laughed a little nervously. “Then if you’re sure?” she smiled again, giving Lucy a last chance to back out. “I’ll get going then?”

  “We will be fine,” Lucy asserted, turning away towards her cabin, leaving Nicole to say goodbye to the girls.

  “Be good for Lucy,” she heard her tell them as she entered her home and closed the door.

  When she came back out, the girls were sitting together on the shore drawing in the sand with sticks they’d found, and Nicole was nowhere to be seen. Lucy brought them each a drink and sat down with them. She took some calming breaths, a quick pep talk to convince herself she could do this.

  Three little faces looked up at Lucy expectantly, waiting for her to entertain them. “So, what do you normally do to entertain yourselves?” she said to Storm, still a little unsure of herself around the twins.

  “Well, I read, as you know, and these two make a lot of noise and mess, generally.” She shrugged. The two smaller ones continued to just stare at her. She was surprised that they hadn’t commented yet about her face.

  “I see. Okay.” Lucy thought for a moment and then, when an idea had popped into her head, she got up and went back inside again. The girls looked at one another, wondering where she was going to. Were they supposed to follow? but she returned minutes later with a box of empty plastic takeout containers under her arm.

  “Right, I want you to go and find as many pebbles as you can, and fill this box up,” Lucy said, placing the larger box on the floor between them. The twins immediately started to pick up tiny rocks and pebbles, bringing them back to Lucy for inspection. The ones she deemed to be good enough went in the box and the others were tossed in the lake. Storm wasn’t quite so excited about the idea, but she helped her sisters anyway.

  It took almost 20 minutes just to collect them, and when they were done they sat down next to the box, looking up at her wondering what she was going to do next.

  “So, next you have to take one container each and flip the lid off,” she said, picking up one of the containers herself to show them what she meant. “Now we have to put some pebbles inside, not too many though, we don’t want to fill it up.”

  The twins grabbed a fistful and placed them in their containers just like they were shown, and when they had placed as many as they thought they needed into the boxes, they held them out for Lucy to inspect. Happy with them, they all put the lids back on. Lucy grabbed some tape from the box and taped the lids on tight. Storm was now very intrigued at what they were doing.

  “Right, now we have some shakers,” Lucy grinned as she turned the original box over, “and a drum.”

  “Yay!” The twins shouted and screamed in unison as they stood and shook their shakers making a god-awful noise. Storm laughed and sat down quickly in front of the drum, bashing at it with her hands in tandem with the girls. All three of them grinned from ear to ear as they made one hell of a noise.

  “What about you, Luce?” Storm asked, smiling. Lucy noted the shortening and familiarity with which she now used her name. “What are you going to play?”

  “I’m the audience!” she declared as she sat back with her book and listened to the racket. It had been a long time since she had heard such a lot of noise this close up. The twins were singing a made-up song; it was out of tune and made no sense, but it was endearing. They were happy, smiling and laughing. When she thought about it, she knew she was too.

  Within an hour there were three tired out and hungry kids quietly sitting with their instruments laying idle in their laps. Job done, thought Lucy to herself. “Okay, inside then and get cleaned up so we can have tea.”

  “I’m not thirsty,” Summer announced as they all walked back to Lucy’s cabin together.

  “Not drinking tea, tea is what we call dinner in England,” Lucy explained, resting her hand gently on the child’s shoulder. The contrast between the scarred tissue of her own skin beside the flawless cheek was night and day and yet, for once she didn’t feel uncomfortable.

  “Where’s England?” Rain chipped in, looking up at Lucy with big expressive eyes.

  Lucy turned towards her and answered, “It is where I am from, where I was born.”

  “Is it near Texas?” Summer asked as Storm sniggered, and even Lucy couldn’t help but chuckle.

  “Yeah, it’s not too far from Texas,” she said, smiling in Summer’s direction once more.

  ~E&F~

  They each took turns washing hands and faces at the sink in the bathroom and then sat quietly around the table as Lucy served them up some chicken and salad. It probably wasn’t exciting to them, but it was the best she had, outside of crackers and cheese, which she didn’t think was a very nutritious diet to feed someone else’s kids. None of them complained, so she figured it must be okay.

  When they were done, they all moved to the living room because it was darker outside now and a little cooler. Playtime was definitely over for today.

  “You don’t have a TV?” asked Rain, incredulous as she stared around the room with wide eyes.

  “Nope,” Lucy said, shaking her head for emphasis.

  “Then how do you watch stuff?” Rain continued, her hands outstretched, palms up, a look of utter confusion on her face. Summer and even Storm waited for the answer.

  “I don’t.”

  “No SpongeBob?” Rain asked, her face scrunched up in more confusion. She was now seriously concerned for Lucy. Lucy had no clue who SpongeBob was.

  “No, no SpongeBob.”

  “What do you do then?” asked Summer, completely perplexed as to what anyone did without a TV.

  “Read, mostly.”

  The twins were silent and looking at one another as though this woman were completely bonkers. It was a silent conversation that only twins can have, and one that ended with both of them deciding sleeping was the only option left.

  “I’m tired,” announced Summer, followed by a nodding Rain.

  “Hop up on the sofa then and I’ll get you a blanket, you can take a nap.” They both did just that, one at each end, legs and feet tangled together.

  Lucy looked to Storm to see if she was tired and was greeted with a raised book in the air.

  “I’m r
eading,” Storm whispered so as not to wake the twins.

  “Ok, me too,” she said raising her own book and taking a seat on the floor opposite Storm. It was surreal for Lucy; her normal evening would be spent by herself reading as she was now, but she could hear the presence of her guests. She could hear the soft breathing of Summer and Rain as they slept peacefully, the gentle flutter of pages being turned as Storm read her book, grasping every detail as her eyes eagerly scanned each page. Lucy watched her for a while and smiled to herself; she liked having these kids around.

  Just over an hour later, there was a gentle tapping on the door. She realised she had dozed off and woke to find Storm sleeping too as the gentle knocking became more insistent. Lucy got up as quickly as she could and stretched before limping across the room to the door.

  “Hey, so sorry I’m late. We had a last-minute rush, some new tourists needing to stock up...” Nicole whispered, following Lucy’s finger-to-lips instruction. Once again, she bowed her head as she spoke and didn’t make eye contact. It was just for a moment, but Lucy noticed it. She didn’t like it.

  “Only by a few minutes,” she noted, checking her watch. It wasn’t a big deal. “Come in. Please.” Lucy moved out of the doorway to make room for Nicole to pass her and enter the room before closing it gently and following her inside. She caught a trace of her perfume as she passed and breathed it in, enjoying the aroma of it. It was sweet and intoxicating without being overpowering. Lucy liked it.

  Confident Nicole was back again, head held high as she looked around the room and tried to get a fix on this quiet woman and the way she lived. It unnerved Lucy to think about the possible reasons why this woman, this beautiful and kind woman, would be so afraid of her one minute and then relaxed the next. It also concerned her that she wanted to find out.

  Nicole surveyed the room. Everything was beautifully restored and decorated with ornate carvings on the wooden posts and lots of beautiful rugs adorning the floors and walls. Lucy’s cabin was nothing like her own. It too was sparsely decorated, but in a lived-in kind of way. It was homely.