Here you go guys, the much awaited Mall scene! I know most of you want to see this, so here it is! Enjoy reading and don't forget to leave a review!
MaRoNcOoL – hey, how's it going? Haven't heard from you in a while. Anyways, there will be an unexpected turn of events during the mall scene. Kaye – the unexpected turn of events is a good thing, so don't worry. Riven & Janay – you guys rock! Dark's Assassin & just4reviews – here's the update. I hope you guys like it! See ya around.
Chapter Ten
It was a couple of minutes before ten when they reached the photography studio, just off the center courtyard of the mall. The shop was already open, its metal gates pushed back to leave the entire storefront open to the walkway. The waiting room was lined with wall-sized portraits of children.
"Baby!" Ella announced, pointing to a picture of a child at least twice as old as she was. Nikko seemed fascinated by the rainbow of colors in a gum ball machine which stood just outside the studio. For a moment, miraculously, neither of them was trying to escape the stroller.
In a kiosk in one corner, two women sat. One must be the receptionist she talked to earlier, Mimi thought. The other was a customer who was trying to decide which picture package to order, but who was constantly being distracted by a three year old boy who was carrying toys over to show her. On a chair nearby sat a woman with three small girls who were wearing identical red velvet dresses in different sizes.
Mimi strolled over to the reception desk & stood tapping her fingers gently on the counter. "By the time she finishes with the customer, I suppose she'll tell us we're too late for our appointment," she said under her breath.
There was no answer from Matt. puzzled, she turned around & gasped. Matt, stroller, babies & all, had disappeared without a noise, even a whimper.
It's hardly likely they've been kidnapped, Mimi told herself. Maybe they're just around the other side of the gum ball machine, learning colors.
Before she could quite convince herself, she saw Matt pushing the stroller toward her from the food court just down the hallway. Of course, she thought. He didn't have time to eat breakfast either. It was silly to feel relieved. Then she realized that he wasn't holding anything, but the twins were. Each of them was using both small hands to hold what looked like…
"Ice cream cones?" Mimi said. "Have you lost your mind?"
Matt looked mildly surprised. "I warned you that they didn't finish breakfast."
"Strawberry ice cream is not an appropriate breakfast food."
"There's protein in milk, isn't there? And strawberries are fruit."
"They can't chew up a cone!"
"I'll watch them." His voice dropped. "Besides, the studio will be anxious to get rid of them before they smear up all the other clients that they'll give you whatever you want."
Mimi stared at him. Then she glanced over her shoulder at the mother of three girls, who had drawn her velvet-dressed daughters close. There was a look of horror on the woman's face & Mimi didn't blame her. From the corner of her eye she could see Ella's come slowly tipping to the side.
"That's either the smartest idea I've heard, or the craziest," Mimi said.
The customer in the kiosk pointed toward them & said something to the receptionist, who looked across at the twins & jumped to her feet.
"Go get 'em, honey," Matt said. "I'll just stand back here & watch the fireworks."
But the woman didn't approach Mimi. Instead, she vanished through a door into the back of the studio. Her voice drifted back to the waiting room. Though Mimi couldn't make out the words, the woman's tone made her irritation clear. Mimi took a deep breath.
Half a minute later a man emerged, looking exasperated. "What is going on out here?" he demanded, waving the camera he was holding. "I'm in the middle of a shooting & my receptionist tells me…oh, my goodness."
Mimi followed his gaze. Ella had shifted her soggy cone into her right hand, holding it in a Statue-of-Liberty pose, & she was using her left hand to brace herself so she could lean across the stroller & take a lick from Nikko's cone. Pink droplets formed a chain over her chin & down her forearm from her own cone. Nikko looked as if he was thinking about shoving the rest of his ice cream up his sister's nose. His own face was so covered with ice cream that the red marker barely showed.
"Matt," Mimi said. "Take them out to the hallway, please. Quickly, before they drip all over the carpet."
"No!" the photographer said. "No, don't move anything!" He raised the camera & began to snap…moving, crouching, and twisting. Apparently fascinated by his movements, the twins sat with eyes wide & only their tongues moving, both still taking an occasional swipe at Nikko's cone. Ella's forgotten one tipped further in her hand & a blob of ice cream plopped onto the floor.
The photographer sighed with what sounded like satisfaction. "That's going to be a prize-winning photo," he said softly, & his gaze snapped to Mimi. "You can look at proofs next week. There will be no charge for shooting the pictures." He sounded as if he thought he was doing her a major favor.
Mimi's jaw dropped. He would even consider charging a fee for this?
He added slyly, "That is, if you'll sign a release so I can use the photos in contests, maybe in ads as well. It could even get them to become models."
Mimi took a second to recover her poise. "I'm afraid I can't sign anything," she said sweetly, "because they're not my children"
He looked quickly at Matt, who shook his head. "Not mine, either."
The photographer's face dropped.
"But I'll tell you what," Mimi said. "If you make an exception to your policy about rescheduling appointments & let my friend bring her babies to get a real picture taken at her convenience, I can probably persuade her to sign the paperwork you need."
"Any time," the photographer said quickly. "It would make an even better photograph than this if I had them dressed up & under the lights before we give them the ice cream."
Mimi opened her mouth, gulped, & closed it again. It took a bit of persuasion to convince the babies to relinquish the sodden cones, & some time to mop up the mss. On the way to the car, Mimi shot a look at Matt, who was obviously having trouble keeping a straight face.
"All right, go ahead & say it," she challenged. "You were right; I should have left it alone. I'll just pay for another sitting…somewhere else…and pretend this never happened."
"And forget about this set of proofs?" he said mildly. "They'll be developed next week."
"You think I'm going to tell Sora about this so-called sitting? She'd kill me."
"Then I'll come & choose the best ones. I'm going to want one for my desk, one on my bedside table, one in my car & a couple for my wallet, and maybe one on the bathroom mirror. Oh, & the refrigerator door. Hell, I'll just take one of each."
Mimi couldn't help smiling. Whatever he might say, he was obviously attached to the babies…in fact, the perfect godfather. "That's so sweet! They are going to be cute pictures, aren't they?...even if Sora would hate them."
"Cute has nothing to do with it," Matt said. "I'm only interested in self-preservation."
"What are you talking about?"
"If I have a reminder what happened this week staring at me anywhere I look," he said grimly, "I'll never get myself into this situation again.
His words seemed to ring in Mimi's head. I'll never get myself into this situation again. Well, Mimi thought, that certainly let her know where she stood…Hold it a minute, she told herself. And exactly which part of that didn't you already know?
Matt made it quite clear from the beginning that it was only his sense of responsibility toward his best friend's twins which was keeping him involved here. And as for the idea that Matt was helping out had anything to do with being interested in Mimi…well, only a fool would think there anything to that.
And only a fool would want to, she told herself briskly.
This whole experience was obviously softening her brain. The sooner Sora got home, the sooner Mimi got back to her regular routine, & the sooner Matt got back to his models, the better it would be for all of them.
"Do you have a favorite supermarket, or will any one of them do?" Matt asked.
Mimi had to pull herself back to the present. "Oh…right, the groceries. Never mind…I'll take care of that later. You must be anxious to get to work."
"Not really," he said dryly. "Everybody's going to be upset with me today."
So that was why he really came along. Not to give her a hand; not even because he expected to be amused by the confrontation in the photo studio, but simply because he didn't want to go to work.
Don't take it personally, she told herself. Given the choice between going to the mall with Matt & the twins or showing Willis Harrison half a dozen more houses, she'd take the mall over going to work, too.
She kept her voice light. "Why? Is it the client Nikko hung up on that you're avoiding or the one whose building permit he scribbled all over?"
"Oh, damn, I forgot about the building permit."
"Well, if it's still readable, maybe it won't matter."
"Let's hope so, or when he's thirty he'll still be doing odd jobs to work off the extra fees."
Mimi tried to smother a grin. That was pretty obviously an idle threat, coming from the same guy who figured out a way to give Sora a new dishwasher without making her feel patronized. "That might actually please his mother."
"Because he'll have a guaranteed job?"
"And she won't have to worry about building a college fund for him, if hell be too busy picking up nails & emptying trash to go to school."
"I'll keep that in mind. Do you want me to move the car seats or leave you the SUV?"
Mimi raised her eyebrows. "You'd actually trust me with your car again?"
"Only because it's pretty difficult to get myself far enough into your to tighten things down."
He could just dump the seats in the driveway & tell her to take care of it herself. But he didn't. Of course, he wants the twins to be safe.
"You really are a nice guy, you know," Mimi said. "Do you suppose when all this is over, we can actually be friends?"
She thought for a few seconds if he heard her. "Sure," he said finally. "I suppose we could even double-date."
"I don't think…" Mimi swallowed the rest of the sentence. It probably wasn't smart to invite a guy to be a friend & then in the next breath insult his taste in women. Not that he didn't know what she thought of his girlfriends anyway, so there was really no point in saying it again, but if he thought there was the slightest chance that she'd get chummy with Amber or Elsa or whatever the name of his current girlfriend is…
"Not precisely what you had in mind?" Matt shot a look at her. "So what are you thinking about, Mimi?"
She never felt so awkward in her life. It was true that she hadn't been picturing them as part of a foursome…but if she said anything of the kind, he was likely to leap to the conclusion that she was suggesting a date…
Well? She asked herself. Exactly what are you suggesting, Mimi Tachikawa? "Just…you know…friends," she said. "Oh, forget it. I wasn't thinking, exactly."
"Exactly," he repeated, not quite under his breath.
Mimi was a bit irritated. Did he have to take everything so personally? So much for the nice guy.
He backed the SUV into the driveway & got the stroller out while Mimi retrieved the twins. Next door, a gray-haired woman in a housecoat opened her front door & reached for the newspaper which was lying on the welcome mat. "Good morning," she called. "You're out early, Mrs. Kamiya."
Mimi shot a look at Matt, but in his struggle to unfold the stroller h apparently wasn't listening. So do I just say 'hi' & let it go at that? Mimi wondered. Or correct her?
The woman squinted & frowned. "No, wait a minute. You're not Mrs. Kamiya. Her hair isn't as nearly as long. And her hair is red, not brown. Did you buy the Kamiya's house? But those are her babies…aren't they?"
Matt pushed the stroller up beside the SUV & took Nikko from Mimi's arms. "Yes, their parents threw them in with the house," he said under his breath. "The deal includes washer, dryer, furniture, twins…"
Mimi was so relieved that he apparently wasn't going to have an attack over the mistaken identification that she started to giggle. "We're just taking care of them for a few days," she called.
"So much for asking her to baby-sit," Matt muttered. "And here I was thinking we might have stumbled into a solution."
To say that no one was going to be particularly happy with him today had been an understatement, Matt realized within a few minutes of reaching Jun Motomiya's house. Two of his workmen were getting ready to drill holes in the existing concrete wall around the soon-to-be-ex-window, so the gap could be filled & properly supported with reinforcing rod. Two more were setting up the concrete saw they would need to cut a hole in the wall around the corner, where the new window would face out over Jun Motomiya's own back lawn instead of her neighbor's.
In short, the entire crew was tied up with Jun Motmomiya's change order, & it appeared to Matt as if they hadn't accomplished much all morning.
The foreman snapped a case of drill bits closed & glowered at him. "Want to explain to me again why we're doing this, boss?"
Matt didn't bother. "I thought you'd be used to the job by now.'
"We've been stalling till you showed up; hoping that you just lost your mind yesterday & you'd get it back by this morning & tell us not to go ahead."
Matt waved a hand at the guys running the cement saw. They pulled protective earmuffs & goggles into place & started up the motor and with a shriek like thousand banshees the saw blade bit slowly into the wall.
Matt winced. As often as he had listened to concrete saw, he would never get used to the screech of the blade, high-pitched & eerie. He stepped outside, where the sound wasn't quite as obnoxiously loud. "It's probably a good thing you didn't start this a few hours ago," he observed to the foreman. "The neighbors would have been throwing golf clubs & rotten tomatoes at you."
"You think we're nuts?" the foreman said with a growl & moved off to help construct the forms.
From the corner of his eye, Matt caught a glimpse of something pink & fluffy, and he turned to see Jun Motomiya coming around the side of the house, wearing a ruffled chiffon house coat. She looked as if she just got out of bed; though…despite her clothes…she even managed to put on makeup before going outside.
This morning, she was carrying her poodle. One hand supported the tiny dog's stomach; the other was cupped over the poodle's topknot in an effort to cover both ears. Jun Motomiya was obviously yelling something; Matt could see her lips moving, but he couldn't make out the words.
He waved down to the foreman, who strolled over to the men running the saw. They cut the motor & the sound faded.
"What is that noise?" Jun Motomiya asked angrily.
"We're moving your window, as you requested."
"Well, can't you do it quietly? You woke me up, you've upset my dog, & you've got the neighborhood in an uproar…"
"I did warn you," Matt reminded, "that moving the window would be expensive & messy."
"You didn't warn me it would be noisier than an atomic blast," she said irritably.
There was no doubt in Matt's mind that he told her about the noise. She really did look frazzled. "We can hold off for a while if you like."
"What difference will that make? It's still going to be as loud."
"I thought you might like to go out for the day & avoid the noise."
Her eyes narrowed. "How long is this going to take?"
Depends on how long you need to get dressed. "We may be done today, but that wall's pretty solid. If you recall, that's why you wanted to build it out of concrete in the first place. You might want to stay in a hotel overnight, just to be on the safe side."
"What about the neighbors? Two of them have called to complain. I can't take them all to a hotel!"
"You could leave the window where you originally wanted it."
She was obviously thinking about it.
"We could still add a couple of skylights, if we decide before the roof tile goes up," Matt offered. "That way, even with blinds closed over the window, you'd get plenty of sunshine into the room."
He almost held his breath, but the compromise seemed to be just face-saving enough that she could accept it. "Oh, all right," she said ungraciously. "But this isn't turning out the way I expected. And it's taking much longer than I thought it would."
Changing the plans twice a day isn't helping that, Matt wanted to say.
"My housewarming party is coming up soon & all you're accomplishing is to make more mess. I hope you're not planning to charge me for repairing the damage your men have done this morning, because it's certainly not my fault you were too busy with that baby yesterday to tell me exactly what moving the window would be like."
Whether her complaints were real or not, she obviously needed someone to blame right now, & Matt knew better than to try to correct her.
"Well," she went on, "as long as you don't have that brat along to distract you today, there's something else I'd like to point out."
Brat. Nikko wouldn't know the word, of course, but the baby was no fool…he'd have recognized the tone of Jun Motomiya's voice. Just as he had yesterday, when he clung to Matt like a newborn monkey.
Jun Motomiya went on, "There's a wall I'm just not sure about."
Here we go again, Matt thought. But there was one big difference from yesterday. He actually missed Nikko.
AN: Chapter 11 will be up soon. Don't forget to review! I'd like to know what you guys think so far.
