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To his surprise she looked slightly irritated. ‘I was there too, Alejandro, if you remember, and nobody needs to take care of me. I can take care of myself.’
She turned away and trotted on those clumpy heels towards the doors of the bookshop and out into the busy street, not looking back to see if he followed.
He caught up with her.
‘Can’t we agree on equal responsibility for the “situation”?’ she asked less heatedly as he steered her into a nearby café, where the music was hot and the food was good.
He ordered a lemonade for Lulu and a coffee for himself.
‘Agreed.’
He didn’t agree. They hadn’t been on an equal playing field. Lulu was a rookie—he should have looked after her better.
But he watched her defensiveness fall away at his agreement and acknowledged that her independence was a point of conflict for her. He wasn’t sure why. Although after seeing her mother in action with her he could make a stab in the dark at it.
He didn’t know much about mother/daughter relationships. His own mother had been about as interested in the girls as a cat. He had only counted because he’d been the heir his grandfather had depended upon and the future source of his mother’s income.
He watched Lulu’s face as she talked earnestly about her course. It trickled through his mind that his mother might once have been like this, at the start of her modelling career, with the world before her—only to find herself a handful of years later trapped in a marriage she saw as inescapable and taking her misery out on her kids.
But Lulu talked on and on with such determination. He suspected that in the same situation as his mother she would make her own way out, bringing her children along with her.
It made him want to drag her back to the hotel and make her his again. But they weren’t doing that. They were having a drink and she was sharing her hopes and dreams, and the fact that they were so simple and yet clearly so profoundly important to her stirred a protectiveness in him he hadn’t felt about anyone except his sisters in many years.
He didn’t see why she couldn’t achieve all she wanted to. There was no reason why she shouldn’t. Except there was that slight wistfulness that crept into her voice as she talked about the various career options her course would open up. As if she might not make it.
‘So what will we be doing tonight?’
She brought him back to the here and now with that question. He cleared his throat. ‘I’ll be working, Lulu, out on the ranch, but I’ll drop by when I can.’
Her eyes flew to his and then dropped away.
‘I’ll organise people to take you out,’ he found himself explaining. ‘You won’t be bored.’
Her face had frozen into a little mask of pleasant indifference. ‘I’m sure I won’t,’ she said tightly, not looking at him.
She put down her glass and started stirring the lemonade with her candy-cane-striped straw.
Alejandro told himself it was for the best. He should be at a meeting right now. She should be back at the hotel.
It was time to wind this up.
‘You don’t have any luggage,’ he said instead.
‘No, not even a toothbrush.’
She looked tense, deliberately avoiding his gaze by pretending to watch the crowds go by on the footpath beyond the plate-glass windows. All of a sudden she noisily scraped back her chair.
‘I have to go to the ladies’.’
*
As Lulu dried her hands at the sink she wondered what on earth she thought she was doing.
Alejandro hadn’t mentioned this morning that he wasn’t going to be around for the next three weeks.
Which was fine, really.
At least he wouldn’t witness any of her weird behaviour. She could just sit in her hotel room…
