The Dating Game

The Dating Game

Sandra Field

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ONE

HE WAS in a foul mood.

Teal Carruthers rolled down his car window. Several vehicles ahead of him, at the traffic lights, a delivery truck and a taxi had collided at the intersection; a tow truck and a police car were adding to the confusion without, as far as he could see, in any way ameliorating it. Behind him the cars were lined up as far as he could see. He looked at his watch. Five to five. He was going to be late home.

Today was Monday. On Mondays Mrs Inkpen came to clean the house and stayed with his son Scott until he, Teal, got home at five. Scott liked Mrs Inkpen, whose language was colorful and whose cooking bore no relation to the rules of good nutrition. Teal had gotten in the habit of taking Scott out for supper on Mondays, in theory to save Mrs Inkpen the trouble of preparing a meal, in actuality to protect himself from hot dogs adorned with anything from cream cheese to crunchy peanut butter. Even Scott, as he recalled, had not been too crazy about the peanut butter.

Mrs Inkpen didn’t like him to be late.

The driver of the tow truck was sweeping up the broken glass on the road and the policeman was taking a statement from the truck driver. Teal ran his fingers through his hair and rested his elbow on the window-ledge. It was the first really hot day of the summer, the kind of day that made Scott, aged eight, complain loudly about having to go to school. Heat was shimmering off the tarred surface of the road and the smell of exhaust fumes was almost enough to make Teal close his window.

The policeman shoved his notebook in his back pocket and began directing the traffic. Teal eased the BMW in gear and inched forward. Bad enough that he was late. Worse that he had had an interminable day in court. Worst of all was the fact that he had enough work in his briefcase to keep him up past midnight.

The traffic light turned red. He should never have trusted Mike with the brief today; that had been a bad mistake. A really bad mistake. Particularly with old Mersey presiding. Mr Chief Justice Mersey had been trying to trip Teal up for the last three years, and today he had more than succeeded. And all because Teal had left Mike, his brilliant but erratic assistant, to cross-examine one of the prosecution’s main witnesses.

Mike, Teal now suspected, had been suffering from a hangover. In consequence he had been erratic rather than brilliant, and had committed not one but two errors of procedure. Mersey had had a field day chewing him out and Teal had been left holding the bag. Which meant he now had to rebuild their case from scratch. The only good thing about the day was that court had recessed until Wednesday. Tonight once Scott was in bed he’d have to get a sitter and chase down his two main witnesses, and tomorrow he’d catch up with the rest of them. Both nights he’d be burning the midnight oil to come up with Wednesday’s strategy.

Who was he kidding? The three a.m. oil was more like it.

But Willie McNeill was innocent. Teal would stake his life on it. And it was up to him to produce enough doubt in the minds of the jurors so that they couldn’t possibly bring in a guilty verdict.

It wouldn’t be easy. But he could do it.

The light turned green. The traffic began to move and the bus that was two cars ahead belched out a cloud of black smoke. The policeman was sweating under his helmet, while the cabbie and the truck driver were laughing uproariously at some private joke. Very funny, Teal thought morosely. It was now ten past five.

By the time he turned into his driveway it was twenty-five past and Mrs Inkpen was waiting for him on the back porch. She was clad in a full-length pink raincoat with a hat jammed on her brassy curls, her pose as militant as an Amazon. Before Teal had married Elizabeth, Mrs Inkpen had cleaned for Elizabeth’s parents, and he sometimes thought she should have been included on the marriage license. Although she was now well over retiring age, his tactful suggestions that she might prefer to be home with her ageing husband were met with loud disclaimers; she was fanatically loyal.

Bracing himself, he climbed out of the car. Mrs Inkpen tapped her watch ostentatiously. ‘This’ll cost you overtime, Mr C,’ she said. ‘If I’d known you was goin’ to be this late, I could’ve cooked you a nice supper.’

At least he had been spared that. ‘There was an accident on the corner of Robie and Coburg.’

Her eyes brightened. ‘Anyone hurt?’

He shook his head, almost hating to disappoint her. ‘A lot of broken glass and a traffic tie-up, that’s all.’

‘Drugs,’ she said, nodding her head sagely. ‘That’s what it is, all them drugs. I said to my Albert just the other day, what with crack and hash and pot you can’t trust no one these days. Never know when someone’s goin’ to creep up behind you and bash you on the head.’ She rolled her eyes theatrically. ‘Course you know all about that, Mr C, you bein’ a lawyer and all.’

Mrs Inkpen’s vision of what he did all day was drawn from television, and bore little resemblance to reality. He said hurriedly, before she could ask him about his day, ‘Can I give you a drive home to apologize for being late?’

‘No need for that, I got to keep the old bones movin’,’ she said, her good humor restored. ‘Smell the lilac, Mr C; ain’t it a treat?’

Elizabeth had planted the lilac the year Scott had been born. Its plumes of tiny blossoms were a deep purple, the scent as pungent as spice. She had planned to plant a white lilac for the daughter that was to have followed Scott...

Wincing away from all the old memories, for there had been no daughter and now Elizabeth was dead, Teal said evenly, ‘Lovely, yes...we’ll see you next week, then, Mrs Inkpen.’

She gave him a conspiratorial grin. ‘That nice Mrs Thurston phoned, and so did Patsy Smythe. It must be great to be so popular, Mr C—you don’t never have to worry about a date on a Saturday night, do you?’ The yellow daisies on her hat bobbed up and down. ‘It’s because you’re so handsome,’ she pronounced. ‘Like the men in the soaps, is what I tell Albert—the ones the girls are always falling for. If I was twenty years younger, my Albert might be in trouble.’ Cackling with laughter, she set off down the driveway between the tangle of forsythias and rose bushes.

The bushes all needed pruning. Scowling, because when was he supposed to find the time to get out in the garden and besides, Mrs Inkpen couldn’t be more wrong—it was a damned nuisance to be so popular—Teal grabbed his briefcase from the back seat and went into the house. ‘Scott?’ he called. ‘I’m home.’

The kitchen, starkly decorated in white and grey, was abnormally tidy. Mrs Inkpen achieved this effect, so Teal had realized soon after Elizabeth died, by opening the nearest drawer or cupboard and shoving everything inside. Any normal man would have fired her months ago. But he was fond of her, and loyalty worked both ways.

The telephone sat on a built-in pine desk by the window; the green light on his answering machine was flashing twice. His scowl deepened. One of those flashes, he would be willing to bet, was Janine, wanting him to confirm their date this weekend. Janine was nothing if not persistent. He didn’t want to know who the other one was. He sometimes felt as though every woman in Halifax under the age of fifty was after him, each one certain that all he needed was a wife, a mother for his son, or a lover. Or a combination of all three, he thought with a twist to his mouth.

They were all wrong. He was doing a fine job bringing up Scott on his own, so why would he need to remarry? As for the needs of his body, they were buried so deeply he sometimes thought he should apply to the nearest monastery.

The telephone rang, breaking into his thoughts. Warily he picked it up and said hello.

‘Teal? This is Sheila McNab, do you remember me? We met at the board meeting last week. How are you?’

He did remember her. A well-packaged brunette whose laugh had grated on his nerves. They chatted a few minutes, then she said, ‘I’m wondering if you’d be free on Saturday evening to go to a barbecue in Chester with me? A friend of mine is celebrating her birthday.’

‘I’m afraid that’s impossible, Sheila; I already have plans that night,’ he said truthfully.

‘Oh...well, perhaps another time.’

‘Actually I’m very busy these days. My job’s extremely demanding and I’m a single parent as well...but it was nice of you to think of me, and perhaps we’ll meet again some time.’

He put down the phone, feeling trapped in his own kitchen. Maybe he should shave his head and put on thirty pounds. Would that make the women leave him alone?

He heard Scott’s footsteps thump down the stairs, followed by a swish that meant his son had taken to the banisters. The boy landed with a thud on the hall floor and came rushing into the room, waving a sheet of paper in one hand. ‘Guess what, Dad?’ he cried. ‘There’s a home and school meeting on Thursday, and you’ll get to meet Danny’s mum because she’s going, too.’

Teal’s smile faded. The last thing he needed was one more woman to add to the list. Especially such a paragon as Danny’s mother. ‘I thought home and school was finished for the year,’ he said temperately, rumpling his son’s dark hair.

Scott ducked, sending out a quick punch at his father’s midriff. Teal flicked one back, and a moment later the pair of them were rolling around the kitchen floor in a time-honored ritual. ‘Is that your soccer shirt?’ Teal grunted. ‘It needs washing in the worst way.’

‘It’ll only get dirty again,’ Scott said with unanswerable logic, bouncing up and down on his father’s chest. ‘The meeting’s so you can see our art stuff and our scribblers before school gets out; you’ll come, won’t you, Dad? Maybe we could take Danny and his mum with us,’ he added hopefully. ‘She’s real nice; you’d like her. She made chocolate-fudge cookies today, I brought a couple home for you; she said I could.’

Janine, who had marriage in mind, had sent Teal flowers last weekend, and Cindy Thurston, who wanted something more immediate and less permanent than marriage, had tried to present him with a bottle of the finest brandy. He didn’t want Danny’s mother’s chocolate-fudge cookies. ‘I’d rather we went on our own,’ he said. ‘And you must change your shirt before we go out for supper.’

Scott stuck out his jaw. ‘She’s beautiful—like a movie star.’

Teal blinked. What eight-year-old noticed that his best friend’s mother was beautiful? Feeling his antipathy toward the unknown woman increase in leaps and bounds, he said, ‘There are clean shirts in your drawer. Move it.’

‘She’s prettier than Janine,’ Scott said stubbornly.

Janine was a ravishing redhead. Teal sighed. ‘I’m sure we’ll meet her at the school,’ he said.

And I’ll be polite if it kills me. But just because her son and mine are fast turning into best friends it doesn’t mean she has to become part of my life. I’ve got problems enough as it is, he added silently.

‘Her name’s Julie.’ Scott tugged on his father’s silk tie. ‘Can we go to Burger King to eat, Dad?’

‘Sure,’ said Teal. ‘Providing you have milk and not pop.’

With a loud whoop Scott took off across the room. Teal followed at a more moderate pace, loosening the knot on his tie. A sweatshirt and jeans were going to feel good after the day he’d had. He’d better phone for a sitter and drink lots of coffee with his hamburger so he’d stay awake tonight.

He was going to ignore both his phone messages until tomorrow.

* * *

Julie Ferris turned her new CD player up another notch and raised the pitch of her own voice correspondingly. She was no match for John Denver or Placido Domingo, but that didn’t bother her. At the top of her lungs she sang about the memories of love, deciding that if even one of the men currently pursuing her could sing like that she might be inclined to keep on dating him.

Not a chance. On the occasions when her dates came to pick her up at the house, she sometimes contrived to have this song playing, fortissimo. Most of them ignored it; a few said they liked it; the odd one complained of the noise. But none burst into ravishing song.

It was just as well, she thought. She really didn’t want to get involved with anyone yet; it was too soon after the divorce. Anyway, if the men she’d met so far were anything to go by, the options weren’t that great. She was better off single.

‘...dreams come true...’ she carolled, putting the finishing touches to the chicken casserole she was making for supper. The sun was streaming in the kitchen window and the birds were chirping in the back garden. The garden was so painfully and geometrically orderly that she was almost surprised any self-respecting bird would visit it. On Friday she was going to find a nursery and do her best to create some colour and confusion among the right-angled beds with their trimmed shrubs and military rows of late red tulips.

Technically, her landlady had not forbidden her to do so. She had merely made it clear that she expected the house and the garden to be maintained in apple-pie order. An odd phrase, apple-pie order, Julie mused. A phrase she intended to interpret liberally.

The phone rang. Wiping her hands on the dishcloth, she crossed the kitchen to answer it, chuckling as Einstein the cat swiped at the cord with one large paw. She and Danny had only lived here for six weeks and already she had acquired a stray cat, an unkempt gray male who for the first week had eaten voraciously and virtually ignored them. Now, however, he was intent on running the household. She had called him Einstein because, despite his mass, he could move with the speed of light. ‘Hello?’ she said.

‘Julie? Wayne here.’

She had had a date with Wayne last Saturday night; he was an intern at the hospital where she worked. They had seen an entertaining film she had enjoyed, had had an entirely civilized conversation about it over drinks at a bar, and then Wayne had driven her home, parking his sports car in her driveway. Before she had realized his intention he had suddenly been all over her, as if she were a wrestler he was trying to subdue. His hands had touched her in places she considered strictly off-limits, and his mouth had attacked hers with a technical expertise she had found truly insulting. She had pulled free from a kiss whose intimacy he in no way had earned and had scrambled out of the car, her lipstick smeared and her clothes disheveled. She had not expected to hear from him again.

‘Julie—you there? Want to take in a film Friday night?’

Julie had, unfortunately, she sometimes thought, been well brought up. ‘No, thank you,’ she said.

‘That film we talked about last Saturday is playing in Dartmouth; you said you hadn’t seen it.’

She could lie and say she had plans for Friday night. She said, ‘Wayne, I don’t like having to fight my dates off. I’d rather not go out with you again.’

There was an appreciable pause. Then he said, sounding aggrieved, ‘Fight me off? What are you talking about?’

‘I have some say in who kisses me, that’s what I’m talking about.’

‘Hey, don’t be so uptight—it was no big deal.’

‘You felt like a tidal wave,’ she said shortly. Large and wet and overwhelming.

‘Don’t tell me you’re one of those feminists who charges a guy with assault if he as much as looks at them.’

Refusing to pursue this undoubted red herring, she said, ‘I can hear my son getting home from school; I’ve got to go, Wayne.’

‘What about the movie?’

‘No, thanks,’ she said crisply, and replaced the receiver.

Wayne was not the first of her dates to exercise what she considered liberties with her person and what they plainly considered normal—even expected—behavior. Robert had always told her she was unsophisticated, she thought grimly. Maybe he was right.

There was a loud squeal of brakes and then twin rattles as two bikes were leaned against the fence. Julie smiled to herself. Danny was home, and by the sound of it Scott was with him. A nice boy, Scott Carruthers, she decided thoughtfully. How glad she was that Danny and he had become such fast friends; it had eased the move from the country to the city immeasurably.

‘Hi, Mum,’ Danny cried, almost tumbling in the door in his haste. ‘Scott fell off his bike and he’s bleeding; can you fix him up?’

As Scott limped into the kitchen, any lingering thoughts about the peculiarities of male dating behavior dropped from Julie’s mind. She quickly washed her hands at the sink, assessing the ugly grazes on Scott’s bare knees. ‘Danny, would you get the first-aid kit from the bathroom cupboard?’ she said. ‘That must be hurting, Scott.’

‘Kind of,’ said Scott, sitting down heavily on the nearest chair and scowling at his knees.

No two boys could be more different than Danny and Scott. Even discounting a mother’s natural love for her son, Julie knew Danny was an exceptionally handsome little boy, with his thick blond hair, so like her own, and his big blue eyes, the image of Robert’s. He was shy, tending to be a loner, and she had worried a great deal about uprooting him from the country village that had been his home since he was born. Scott, on the other hand, was a wiry, dark-haired extrovert, passionately fond of soccer and baseball, who had drawn Danny very naturally into a whole circle of new friends and activities.

She knelt down beside Scott, using a sterile gauze pad to pick the dirt from his scraped knees. Although he was being very stoical, she could see the glint of tears in his eyes. She said matter-of-factly, ‘How did you fall off?’

‘He was teaching me how to do wheelies,’ Danny announced. ‘But the bike hit a bump.’

Wheelies involved driving the bicycle on the back wheel only. Julie said, ‘Not on the street, I hope.’

‘Nope,’ Scott said. ‘Ouch, that hurts...my Dad said he’d confiscate my bike if he ever caught me doing wheelies on the street. Confiscate means take away,’ he added, bunching his fists against the pain. ‘My dad’s a lawyer, so he knows lots of big words.’

The lawyer she had consulted to safeguard her interests in the divorce had charged her a great deal of money to do very little; Julie made a non-committal sound and wished Scott had practised his wheelies on grass rather than gravel. ‘We’re nearly done,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry I’m hurting you.’

‘Do nurses always hurt people?’ Scott asked pugnaciously.

Julie looked up, startled. There was more behind that question than simple curiosity. But she had no idea what. She said cautiously, ‘They try very hard not to hurt anyone. But sometimes they have to, I guess.’

His scowl was back in full force. ‘You work in a hospital; Danny told me you do.’

‘That’s right.’

‘My mum died in hospital.’

Julie sat back on her heels. Danny had talked a lot about Scott but very little about his parents, she now realized. While there had been mention of a housekeeper—a Mrs Inkpen—Julie had assumed that the mother worked as well as the father, necessitating someone to stay with Scott. ‘I didn’t know that, Scott,’ she said softly. ‘How long ago did it happen?’

Scott looked as though he was regretting his outburst. ‘Two years ago,’ he mumbled.

‘I’m sorry she’s dead; you must miss her.’

‘Sometimes I do, yeah...but my dad always took me to the soccer games, so that’s still okay.’

The scrape on Scott’s other knee was not nearly as dirty. As gently as she could Julie cleaned it up, then applied antibiotic ointment and two new pads. ‘Use this tape, Mum,’ Danny suggested.

The roll of tape had Walt Disney characters printed on it in bright colors. Julie used lots of it and asked, ‘How does that feel?’

As Scott stood up gingerly, Danny interposed, ‘I bet a popsicle’d make him feel better.’

Julie laughed. ‘I bet you’re right. I still have a few chocolate-fudge cookies, too.’

‘We could go over to your place and play in the tree house,’ Danny added.

‘The cookies could be emergency rations,’ Scott said, brightening.

‘As long as you’re home by five-thirty, Danny,’ Julie said, packing two brown paper bags with cookies and juice, then watching as the boys wobbled down the driveway on their bikes.

So Scott had no mother, and Danny no father; maybe that was another reason why the boys had become friends. Even if Scott’s father was a lawyer, he was doing a good job with his son, she thought generously, and went inside to slice the carrots.

The first Saturday night she was free, she might just take herself to see that film Wayne had offered to take her to. Alone.

One thing was sure: she wouldn’t go with Wayne.

* * *

Because Scott had a dentist appointment at four-thirty on Wednesday, Teal left work immediately after court recessed. He hadn’t let Mike say a word all day, and he’d been able to cast more than a reasonable doubt on several of the prosecution’s main points. Which, for a man who had had less than five hours’ sleep, wasn’t bad.

He glanced at his watch. He didn’t have a whole lot of time; the most difficult thing about being a single parent was the inevitable conflict between his work and his son’s needs.

He navigated the traffic with absent-minded skill, and, when he drew up next to the house, honked the horn. The last thing he’d told Scott this morning was to be ready and waiting.

Scott did not appear. Teal leaned on the horn. He and Danny might be in the tree house, in which case they would have to scan the neighborhood, lower the rope ladder that kept enemies at bay, and then slither to the ground, clutching to their chests forked twigs that doubled as guns and slingshots.

But there were no bicycles leaning against the back porch. Impatiently Teal got out of the car, a tall, commanding figure in a pin-striped suit, and scanned the garden himself. ‘Scott?’ he called. ‘Hurry up, we’re going to be late.’

When neither boy appeared, he took the back steps two at a time and let himself in the door, which was firmly locked. There was a note propped on the kitchen table. ‘School got out erly, a pipe berst,’ it said. ‘Gone to Danny’s.’

His son might be a hotshot soccer player. But he was a lousy speller, Teal thought, and rummaged for the scrap of paper bearing Danny’s phone number. He finally located it at the very bottom of the pile and dialed it quickly. A busy signal burred in his ear. Grimacing, he glanced at his watch and dialed it again. Still busy.

It was probably Danny’s mother talking. In which case the phone could be tied up for hours, he thought with total unfairness. He’d better go over there right now. And he’d better hurry.

Danny lived six houses down the street in a stucco bungalow with a painfully tidy garden, which Teal disliked on sight. He parked on the street and marched up the narrow concrete path to the front door. The brass knocker was tarnished; Danny’s mother wasn’t quite the perfectionist that the garden would suggest. He pressed the doorbell and waited.

No one came. Through the open living-room window he could hear music, very loud music that was undoubtedly drowning out the sound of the bell. Feeling his temper rise, he pressed it again.

This time when no one came he pulled the screen door open and was about to pound on the door when the breeze wafted it open. Didn’t she know this was the city, and that she should keep her doors locked? Stupid woman, he fumed. He went inside, wincing at the sheer volume of sound coming from the stereo equipment. Diana Ross, unless he was mistaken, singing something sultry and bluesy accompanied by a muted trumpet. It was not music calculated to improve his mood; he didn’t want to hear a sensual, husky voice or the evocative slide of a trumpet over melancholy notes in a minor key. He had closed off that part of himself a long time ago.