Royal Holiday - Jasmine Guillory Page 0,77
on a postcard about his conversations with Miles, she’d told him about her recent excursions to some local museums, and they both told each other funny or entertaining or frustrating stories from their daily lives. He loved her postcards; he could hear her voice in his head as he read them. It was like she was sitting there on the couch next to him, that amusement and enthusiasm and laughter all together in her voice.
But he was getting worried about her. She’d sounded blue about her new job, which seemed already to be sucking up more and more of her time and energy, when she hadn’t even started yet. She’d never seemed enthusiastic about it, and Vivian was enthusiastic about everything she cared about. When she talked about her current social work job, her love for it shone through in her words, her expressions, her very body language. None of that came through when they discussed the director position. He wished he’d said something to her about that when she was in London.
He’d felt like it wasn’t his place to say that, though. They’d never really discussed finances—he knew she wasn’t wealthy, and that she’d struggled to raise Maddie alone, but he had no idea if she was in a difficult spot now and really needed the money from the new job or not, and he would never ask. Maybe that’s what was driving her to take this job? Because it certainly didn’t seem like it could be anything else.
Was he reading her wrong? Maybe. He hadn’t known her very long, after all. But he didn’t think so.
He wished he could see her again. The postcards brought him joy every day, but he wanted to talk to her, hear her laughter, see her smile, evaluate the tone of her voice when she talked about this job, maybe even try to ask a few more pointed questions about it. Just to see if she’d be okay. He’d even gotten to the point of looking to see what the airfare was from London to San Francisco—very reasonable, this time of year—but had stopped himself before he’d gone any further down that road. She’d made it clear when they’d talked about this on New Year’s Eve that she didn’t want that.
He walked into his building and went straight for his mailbox, but he didn’t look through his stack of mail until he’d walked into his flat. He didn’t want to rush through her note, if it was there, or have to hold in his disappointment if it wasn’t.
He sat down on the couch and dropped the stack on his coffee table. There it was. A wide, empty beach on the front. What a way to lord the whole California thing over him.
Malcolm—I was in a meeting the other day for the new job—I become acting director soon—and someone had brought something they called scones to the meeting. I spent the whole boring meeting thinking about how horrified both you and Julia would be at those terrible, rocklike scones. At least it gave me something to do instead of telling all of those people to stop listening to themselves talk and just get on with it. I should have learned more from you about how to keep a straight face at times like this; there are going to be a lot of meetings in my future.
Vivian
He had to say something. If he were Vivian, she would say something to him about this, wouldn’t she? He smiled at the thought. She absolutely would.
He plucked a postcard off the top of his waiting stack and started scribbling.
V—Do you really want this job? Feel free to tell me to shut up and stop prying if you want to. I know this isn’t any of my business. But I hear the difference in you when you talk about this job, versus the way you talk about your current job. I heard it when you were in England, and I can hear it even in a few lines in a postcard. I’m sure there are many reasons you think you should take it, but will it make you happy?
M
He tore off a stamp from the book in his drawer and ran outside to drop the card into the postbox before he could change his mind. Then he sat on his couch and stared out the window for a very long time.
Vivian sat at her desk at work and looked down at Malcolm’s postcard in her hand. She’d been carrying