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“Okay.” She started forward, then stopped and handed him the sketchbook. “Can you look after this, please?”
He took it from her, and she frowned warningly at him.
“And don’t look at it this time.”
He raised a brow and cast a pointed look at the hovering clerk.
Fine.
She steeled her shoulders and followed the other man without looking back.
The whole thing turned out to be almost unbelievably dull.
She had faintly expected a scene from Law and Order and instead she got a re-enactment of her last appointment to apply for a student loan. Forms, forms, and more forms, all to be filled out under the supervision of three grim officials who appeared to have lost their joy in life somewhere about 1982. The most traumatic part was recording her witness statement, the footage to be used if Maria Harper was committed for trial, since making any kind of television appearance was literally her second-worst nightmare after accidentally leaving the house without clothing. She was so relieved that she shouldn’t have to appear in court (“At this stage,” intoned the Weird Sisters of the Auckland legal system in pessimistic accents), she almost kissed the clerk’s dour cheek on the way out.
She kissed Mick’s instead, grabbing her belongings and hustling him out into the sunshine as quickly as possible. He was still speechless by the time they reached the car park.
“It’s almost lunchtime,” she said, turning his wrist to check his watch. “Do you want to get something to eat somewhere?”
He seemed to shake off his distraction, although he gave her an intent look before he nodded and pulled out his car keys.
“There used to be a decent restaurant in Royal Oak near the Observatory.” He was the picture of masculine resignation. “If you’re still set on going there this afternoon.”
“Why would you not want to look at stars?” she asked as he unlocked the doors of a black power car, the bumper of which claimed to be a BMW. She thought it looked exactly the same as the Lexus, but kept those sentiments to herself. She’d once replied, “What new car?” when her dad had replaced a red station wagon with another red station wagon, and he’d acted like she was several crayons short of a pack.
“Fake stars.”
“Excuse me,” said Sophy. “I saw professional wrestling results on your phone.” She gave him an exaggerated look of pity. “Oh, did you think that was real?”
Mick was grinning again.
“Do you want to walk to the restaurant?” he asked pleasantly, and added as they pulled out into the traffic, “And those were Sean’s wrestling results.”
“Of course they were.”
The restaurant he remembered had undergone a lifestyle change and become an office supplies store, but they found a cheerful café further down the block with multiple gluten-free options. Sophy deliberately kept the conversation over lunch light and breezy and Mick remained responsive, although the occasional shadow darkened his countenance. He accompanied her willingly enough to the Observatory for the one-thirty show and then annoyed her by falling asleep in the middle of it. Jesus. Men. And they could stay awake through entire sports tournaments.
When they emerged back into the mid-afternoon sunshine, she blinking, he yawning, Sophy stood and shifted from one foot to the other, a little at a loss. They hadn’t planned to spend the whole day together and she wasn’t sure what time he was expected to meet up with his family. And God knows, she wasn’t inviting him shopping. Nothing killed a promising retail buzz like a reluctant male audience.
“Well…” she started lamely, and he flipped his watch around to check the time.
“Do you have plans for the rest of the afternoon?” he asked, and she watched, astonished, as a tinge of colour flared along his cheeks. It took quite a lot to visibly discompose Mick.
“No,” she said slowly. “Nothing in particular. Why?”
“I have – I think there’s something you might be interested in.”
Oh God, please tell me it’s not meeting his mother.
“It has nothing to do with meeting my family,” he said, reading her faint blanch with eerie accuracy.
“I wasn’t thinking that,” she lied. Her cheeks felt hot and uncomfortable. “Um, okay. Sure.”
It wasn’t exactly the most gracious response, but she wasn’t at her best with spontaneity.
Her uneasiness grew as they drove out of the suburbs and headed into the CBD. When Mick eventually pulled into the parking garage of a glass-tipped high-rise, she looked from him to the large gold sign emblazoned with a popular banking logo. She couldn’t imagine what he thought she would want to see in a financial conglomerate. Unless they had underground bank vaults like in Harry Potter’s Gringotts and Mick was going to do a Scrooge McDuck dive into his savings account, in which case she was completely on board.
“Er…”
