第12章

Luna packed a traveling bag with weekend essentials and hastened out of the residential building. The night closed around her, trickling rain and solar lights fusing in a heady blur as she rushed to the campus front gates. Luna knew when her father needed her. The past ten years had made him her mainstay, her closest friend and family. United by their shared memory of her mother, they'd developed an unspoken connection, found comfort in each other's silence. She wouldn't leave him alone knowing he'd been evicted. She wouldn't bring up the eviction. She would tell him about her new job instead. He would be proud and happy, and maybe then she could start to believe it herself; she had been thrown a much needed buoy…by the very waters that inspired her cautious fascination.

At the campus drive, a pair of amber headlights glared from a sleek black hull and highlighted the thin rush of raindrops tilting onto the to and fro of a windshield wiper.

A man in butler attire angled his umbrella toward her as she drew near the car. The passenger door yielded open under a precise tug of the handle. He stepped to the side, hand held up in a courteous invitation.

'After you, Miss.'

'Thank you.' Kind green eyes twinkled down at her as she climbed inside, unaware that the last person to have occupied the vehicle's passenger seat was Draco himself. Dobbs stashed the umbrella inside an inner compartment of the driver's door and settled behind the dark leather steering wheel, driving gloves on deck. 'A rainy little night, isn't it!' He said conversationally, maneuvering away from the drive. His eyes shifted to Luna, shortly observing her under the courtesy lights on either side of the ceiling. 'Yes, it is,' she replied softly, 'Thank you very much for driving me to the station. I am sorry to trouble you on a Friday evening.' Dobbs raised his chin debonairly. 'No trouble in the slightest. ' A sneaky smile tugged at his lips. Dobbs was no fool. It was the first time Young Master had sent him on a…female-involving errand. The Malfoy heir might have presented her as his newest appointee in his detached drawl, but one glance at the precious face lodged in the twirl of wool spoke to Dobbs' matchmaking inclinations, spry and alert as they were. A lovely little sprout, the girl was, no doubt about it. Dobbs enjoyed the word sprout. It had an inkling of plenty, fruitfulness, offspring, yes, healthy, sweet babes for him and Nina to love and coddle. That was where his mind was headed, and where was the shame, really? What was to be expected of him if Draco's new employee—who lived in the same campus as he—was this pretty a specimen? He could hardly contain his smiles, what scrumptious babies she would make Young Master! Bowing to propriety, he curbed his enthusiasm. He was getting ahead of himself. Draco had given him no real cause to feed such grandfatherly fantasies. But Dobbs knew, he simply knew, after seven decades of life lessons and a challenging courtship of the love of his life, that in certain circumstances, one should trust in the signs. Her barrette sported a cartoonish orange radish with a smiley face, and Dobbs distinctly remembered seeing Nina plant new radish seeds this morning.

A fine sign, that!

As they drove across the highway that lead to the city center, Luna tried to center herself; in her mind she conjured her first field trip outside her hometown; shimmering golden wheat, delicately parted by the sea breeze, wind mills like giant pinwheels whirling leisurely in the background…digging up clams under the sun…her short legs cavorting beneath her…her equally short-legged classmates ecstatic over crawling bugs and the blue sky and everything…It was a memory that usually calmed and pleased her. Her palms flattened restfully on her long suspended skirt. A sigh escaped her lips just as a tear escaped her sentinels. She chased it with a quick flick of her porcelain hand.

Dobbs noticed her distress. 'Is anything amiss, young lady?' His tone was paternal; the same he used with the children who remembered to pass him by for a morning sweet in the Malfoy Manor neighborhood, when he stepped out daily to collect the mail.

'Oh no, it's nothing to concern yourself with, sir.'

'William Dobbs. You may call me Dobbs. Though I must disclose that it is my deepest wish to be called Dobby, a name I have been demoted from all too fast. Young Master will not have it now, quite the unsung tragedy in my opinion. Why, Miss, must children grow so fast?'

'Why indeed?' Luna seconded, a little smile animating her face. 'I'm Luna.'

'Lovely to make your acquaintance, Miss Luna. Yes, lovely,' Dobbs grinned before sighing confidingly. 'It feels like it was only yesterday that Young Master was running around in the gardens, knee-high to a grasshopper, tumbling on his little feet and making a mess of my wife's botanical garden. When he eventually tired, he would climb up on my shoulders like a cat and fall asleep while I watered the rose garden. Right here,' he patted his shoulder longingly. 'I was a happy Dobby in those days.'

Luna laughed quietly behind a dainty hand, and Dobbs smiled with satisfaction at having improved her mood. It was done at the expense of the Malfoy heir, perhaps, but what he didn't know wouldn't hurt him. Besides, deciding to trust his sneaking suspicion, Dobbs had every intention to befriend the sweet girl.

'Of course, this remains between us, it wouldn't do to have Young Master find out that I am dispensing tales of his toddler misadventures so freely.' Dobbs cleared his throat. 'For my defense I do not have the occasion to impart them all too often. For a man my age anecdotes have an itch to them. And, Miss Luna seems, if I may speak my mind, to possess the easy company that invites telling them.'

Luna smiled, comforted by the bantering mood, 'I will not tell a soul.' Inevitably, her mind slipped into imagination work, picturing Draco as a child, calculating the changes his features must have undergone as they matured to a pair of arresting silver eyes, made sharper still by the commanding slant of his fair brow. They would have been softer then…impressionable, vulnerable to the world and its yet untapped discoveries. How numerous his discoveries must have been with the passing time...Luna imagined each entry carving new depths to his eyes, pooling into a fathomless world of ideas. But when their eyes met, the bottomless secrets receded behind a veil of mystery that reflected nothing but her own judgment, kept her guessing…Luna had a curious disposition; she loved to guess. But she couldn't begin to understand what interest he saw in marrying her. Of course, the responsive jolt in her chest, which was becoming as frequent as her thoughts of him, impaired her judgment. Her natural girlishness was asking her to feel excited and happy, but Luna's reason declined. The first thing that had come to mind upon hearing Draco's levelheaded proposal was her marriage contract manga comics. In those, the male protagonist had an interest to pursue in marrying the female protagonist, so he proposed a contractual, temporary marriage and she accepted for her own reasons. The premise was entirely selfish on both sides, but then they somehow became used to each other's company...then…then what? Luna wondered why the scenarios ended with the beginning. She wanted to know if the couple made it work after deciding they would be together. Perhaps it didn't always end well. Her romantic heart didn't like the idea of using someone else and then unwittingly falling in love. It was lazy at best. What was love, anyway? Past the early stages of easy attraction, it wasn't the careless thing people took it for. From their first encounter, Luna knew she was attracted to Draco...but so were many others. When did love truly enter the equation of attraction? Though she had no romantic experience to speak for her, Luna was a keen observer of the world. She saw love as a continuous, unbroken decision, something that required strength, sacrifice, and was all the more rewarding for it. Her purest example was her mother. She had been someone who woke up every day and went about her routine, deciding to love the world. Her love was such that she never hesitated to care for those around her, even if she paid for it with her life. Luna knew her mother had no regrets. She knew that if her mother could turn back time, if she was given a new chance to make her choice between saving that old lady and saving herself, she wouldn't change a thing. That was the kind of love Luna believed in. That was the kind of light that remained with her, long after her mother was gone, a beautiful light invisible to the eye tracing back her mother's every trail in the world, because the world did not forget.

Neither did Luna.

What if Draco, for any given reason, truly asked for her love? Perhaps it would be his. But it was all right. Not even then would she betray her mother. She loved her first.

'Do you start this Monday, Miss Luna?'

'Ah,' Luna nodded, snapping out of her bittersweet reverie. 'I do.'

'Shall I be your chauffeur, from now on?'

She blinked in surprise, giving Dobbs a sidelong look.

'Pardon?'

'I would like to drive you from campus to work.' An executive move, if I may say so myself, he gloated secretly.

'I can't accept,' Luna resisted.

'Of course you can! It will be a grand chance for me, one feels utterly dismissed now that Young Master is his own man. Let an old man be up and doing once more.' Of course, if Dobbs' matchmaking project was part of the bargain, he hardly needed to trumpet it to the girl in his passenger seat.

'I truly cannot,' Luna persisted.

'Miss Luna, the MM headquarters is a long drive away from your campus. Young Master himself is moving out because of this inconvenience. Taxis and buses are unreliable, and we wish your time at MM to be perfectly optimized.'

'It isn't appropriate,' Luna shook her head. 'I am nothing professional, I assure you. I can hardly believe I was chosen at all.'

'Oh, I wouldn't be so surprised.' Dobbs smiled. Luna considered him quizzically. 'Do you know why Young Master is abroad today?'

She shook her head and stilled, listening with close attention.

'He's meeting a college dropout that started her own green energy farm in Hungary and needs investors to see her project flourish. He's developed a plan for scouting good brains for MM, even in places traditional businessmen, including his own father before him, wouldn't deign to look. Last month, he recruited a couple of Malaysian young men for engineering jobs. They are barely past their teens, and they are now rivaling their supervisors.'

'I see,' Luna said. 'Draco seems to be on the cusp of building a new empire. I cannot but admire him.' She concluded truthfully.

Admiration? Dobbs could work with that.

'Your employer has big plans for MM,' he insisted, confirming her impression, 'though between you and I, I don't think he was happy with taking over so soon.' He looked briefly at Luna. 'But it's important for the employees to be in alignment with their boss's vision. Since he has chosen you for the job, I know you will be an important addition to the team.'

'I do hope so,' Luna smiled. 'I must be very lucky, it is an important and engaging job and I—I do need it.'

'The good draws the good, dear. No coincidences about it.' Dobbs said calculatingly. 'I daresay Young Master will be a good successor to his father because he employs this simple principle. Like a long line of Malfoy men before him, he knows what he wants, reaches out and...' he extended his hand dramatically toward the windshield, before clutching his fist, '…grabs it!'

Luna looked down suddenly, heat prickling up her face. Dobbs chanced a look at her and was satisfied by her reaction; his praises were doing something…he didn't suspect that her reaction was due to what Draco had personally told to her yesterday, his voice gaining on her, ringing directly in her ear.

I want you.

Her hand balled against her skirt, remembering the ease with which he had pronounced it, like a fact he could vouch for and defend any hour of the day, and at the same time, like he could change his mind whenever he felt like it. She closed her eyes, willing her feelings back into the grip of her control. When she failed, she decided to slip out her digital tablet and distract herself with the contract she needed to read and sign.

She began to read carefully through the clauses while Dobbs whistled quietly to himself, squinting at the GPS screen every now and then and muttering the street name to nobody in particular. A sudden gasp left her lips.

'Eh…!?' she exclaimed.

'What's the matter, Miss?' Dobbs jumped worriedly.

'This…what is this…number…?' Luna stared at the chain of zeros amounting to her salary. 'William, there has been a mistake, I—'

'William!' It was Dobbs' turn to cry out. 'Why, I haven't been called that in ages!' He peered at her tablet. 'What's the mistake, dear?'

'The payment in the contract. It can't be right.'

Dobbs laughed.

'It looks about right to me. That is what MM pays people in your position every year. Why should you receive less?'

'But…' Luna shook her head. 'It's far too much.'

'Miss Luna, do not be fooled by the payments' generosity, you will have a lot of work on your hands. You will most certainly earn your salary, Young Master might not care about pedigree, but he does not go easy on his workers either. He expects them to dedicate themselves fully to their task. If anything, I would advise you to be patient with him.'

Luna felt her bottom lip quiver. A medley of relief, hope, and determination rose in her like a symphony and tears trailed down on cue, tears she was powerless to stop but for the swipe of the handkerchief she quickly fished from her crescent shoulder bag. Relief because her father would be all right for a whole year! It was enough to live on until he found an extra job, hope because he might save the magazine, and determination because she would make sure to do her best on her new job.

Dobbs parked in front of the train station.

'There, Miss Luna, no crying for trifles.'

'I'm sorry…I didn't mean to, I've just had a lot of emotions for one night.'

Dobbs nodded consolingly, secretly hoping that one or two was favorably linked to the Malfoy heir.

'Ah, by the by, before you leave, Miss Luna, do you have a taxi to take you home once you get there?'

'Yes,' Luna smiled, dabbing away resolutely at the last tears, 'I have called my aunt, she will pick me up.'

'A good thing, that. All right, then, I shall come to pick you up Monday afternoon, 1 p.m. sharp.'

Luna was too happy, too grateful to argue with the elder man. She would figure out the transportation question later.

'Thank you very much. You have been most kind and helpful.'

Dobbs grinned, accepting the compliment. He was only getting started. 'Have a safe trip!'

He watched her enter the station before he drove away, a silly smile on his face and a great deal to tell Nina on his mind.

Those who watch Japanese shows know darn well why Luna exclaimed the very precise sound 'Eh...?!' and are clearly part of my gang. Hi, gang, I see you. (So does Blaise.)

Who wants to see some jealous Luna-chan? ehehehehe. Why are you letting me write this.

*Blaise's voice* Next Chap is gon be spiceh. FYI, Blaise is the gang leader.

ehehehehe~L.