The Dating Game. Sandra Field

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      Her thoughts marched on. In her kitchen she had labeled him as the most attractive man she had ever met. Attractive now seemed a flimsy word to describe him, and civilized a totally meretricious word. Sexy would have been more accurate, she thought shakily. Close up, the man projected raw magnetism simply by breathing; he was dynamite. As clearly as if he were still standing in front of her she could see the narrow, strongly boned features, the unfathomable gray eyes and cleanly carved lips. He had a cleft in his chin. His lashes were as black as soot. Not to mention his body...

      Julie wriggled her shoulders under her tunic, trying to relax, and began searching the room for the music teacher. Dynamite has a tendency to blow up in your face, she chided herself. Dynamite is deadly. Besides, you were married to a man with charisma and you know darn well where that got you.

      Learn from your mistakes, Julie Ferris. Which means, as Mr Teal Carruthers so succinctly phrased it, that you should keep meetings between you and him to a minimum.

      An absolute minimum. Like none.

      She caught the music teacher’s eye and, smiling, walked across to meet her. Half an hour later, having assiduously avoided the gym teacher, she left the school with Danny and went home. She went to bed early, and woke up the next morning to the delightful knowledge that she had the next two days off. The sun was shining and the birds were singing...wonderful.

      After Danny had gone to school, Julie took her coffee on to the porch and sat in the sun with her feet up. She felt very content. She had done the right thing by moving to the city, she knew that now. It had seemed an immensely difficult decision at the time, to leave the old country house where she had lived throughout her marriage; yet increasingly she had wanted more opportunities for Danny than the tiny local school could offer, and her own job at the county hospital had been in jeopardy because of cut-backs.

      But there had been more to it than that. Inwardly she had longed to leave the house where she had been so unhappy, a house that had come to represent Robert’s abandonment and betrayal; and she had craved more life, more people, more excitement than weekly bingo games and church socials.

      She loved living in the city. On all counts except for the men she was meeting she had more than succeeded in her aims. Although she supposed there were those who would call her date with Wayne exciting.

      She finished her coffee and went to two nurseries, loading her little car with flats of pansies and petunias and snapdragons. Home again, she changed into her oldest clothes and got the tools out of the little shed at the back of the garden. The spades and trowels were so clean she almost felt guilty about getting dirt on them. Almost, she thought happily, loosening the soil in one of the geometric beds and randomly starting to dig holes for the transplants. She disliked formal gardens. Too much control.

      An hour later the hose was sprawled on the grass in untidy coils, the snapdragons were haphazardly planted among the box-wood, and a fair bit of mud had transferred itself from the beds to Julie’s person. Singing to herself, she began scattering nasturtium seeds along the edges of the bed.

      A man’s voice said over the fence, ‘Good morning, Mrs Ferris.’

      The only person other than Teal Carruthers to call her Mrs Ferris was her next-door neighbor, a retired brigadier general called Basil Mellanby who lived alone and would not, she was sure, ever make the slightest attempt to date her. ‘Good morning,’ Julie called cheerily. ‘Isn’t it a beautiful day?’

      ‘Indeed it is.’ He cleared his throat, rather dubiously surveying the results of her labors. ‘I have a measuring stick if you should want to borrow it—just the thing to keep the rows straight.’

      His garden was a replica of her landlady’s. ‘I like things messy,’ Julie said apologetically. ‘You don’t think Mrs LeMarchant will mind, do you?’ Mrs LeMarchant was her landlady.

      ‘I’m sure she won’t,’ the general replied, with more gallantry, Julie suspected, than truth. ‘I had a letter from her today; she’s doing very well in Vermont with her sister.’

      And you miss her, thought Julie. ‘How’s her sister getting along since her heart attack?’

      The general chatted away for half an hour, then Julie did her best to relieve the rigid straightness of the concrete path to the front door with masses of petunias, watched by Einstein, who also liked digging haphazardly in the garden. Danny came home from school. She made supper and cleaned up the dishes, and when Scott joined them got the two boys to help her wind the hose and hang it on the shed wall. Then she went back in the house to get a drink of juice.

      Einstein was crouched on the kitchen floor with a rat under his paws. The rat, she saw with a gasp of pure horror, was not dead.

      She backed up slowly, fumbled for the screen door and edged through it. Her hands were shaking so badly she could hardly close the door.

      Danny clattered up the steps. ‘We’re going to play cowboys,’ he said and reached for the door.

      ‘Don’t go in there,’ Julie faltered. ‘Einstein’s caught a rat.’

      ‘A rat—wow!’

      ‘It’s not dead,’ she added, wringing her hands. ‘What will I do?’

      If she called the general, he’d probably want to blow the rat’s head off with a shotgun; the general had an immoderate fondness for guns. Or else, she thought numbly, remembering the network of tiny veins in his ruddy cheeks, he might have a heart attack like Mrs LeMarchant’s sister. No, she couldn’t ask the general.

      ‘Aren’t you going to get your holsters, Danny?’ Scott cried, bouncing up the steps.

      ‘There’s a rat in the house,’ Danny said with evident relish. ‘Mum says it’s not dead. Einstein caught it.’

      ‘Jeepers...a real rat?’

      ‘I can’t go in there,’ Julie muttered. ‘I’m being a lousy role model but I’m terrified of rats.’

      Scott let out a war-whoop. ‘I’ll get my dad,’ he said; ‘he’ll fix it.’

      ‘No, you mustn’t—’

      ‘Let’s go!’ Danny cried, and the two boys took off down the street. The rest of Julie’s protest died on her lips because there was no one there to hear it. The general would have been better than Teal Carruthers, she thought grimly, and looked down at herself. Her sneakers had holes in them, her knees were coated with mud, and her T-shirt had ‘Handel With Care’ emblazoned across her chest under a portrait of the composer. As for her shorts, they should have been thrown out when she moved.

      Inside the house Einstein meowed, a long, piercing howl that almost made her feel sorry for the rat. She shuddered. A half-dead rat on the white kitchen tiles could not by any stretch of the imagination be called apple-pie order.

      A black car turned into her driveway, pulling up behind her small green Chevette. The boys erupted from it, and in a more leisurely fashion Teal Carruthers climbed out. He too was wearing shorts, designer shorts with brand-new deck shoes and a T-shirt so close-fitting that her stomach, already unsettled, did an uneasy swoop.

      ‘What seems to be the problem?’ he drawled.

      ‘There’s a rat in the kitchen,’ СКАЧАТЬ