How to Date a Millionaire (4 page)

‘Okay, okay, you’ve convinced me. What we all need is a little romance, Hawaiian style.’ Nat has worn me down on the twenty-step trip back to the apartment from Duke’s.

‘Good. The guys upstairs’ll do just fine.’

Beside me, Alexa snorts. ‘Nice to know you’re not picky.’

Nat shrugs and smiles. Honestly, that girl just doesn’t give up. Still, I can’t help but think that maybe there’s more than a little something in her suggestion. Being in Hawaii is kind of infectious. You smile just walking down the street. The heat and the sweet breeze make you feel lazy and like you want to shed your old dusty skin from home – shake all your cares away. Maybe even
I
could be up for a bit of romance Hawaiian style, despite the recent
Ben/Ned/Justin trials. And there’s no denying that Upstairs Jason was kind of cute. Not my type, like I said – I meant that. He really isn’t. But maybe for Alexa? So who knows what’ll happen. Plus, we’re only here for ten days. You can’t get hurt in that amount of time, can you?

Up at our front door again, I swipe my card through the lock before taking a quick glance at Dad and Holly’s door.

‘You guys go in. I might just check in with the olds.’

‘Okay. Say hi to them both.’ Alexa clicks open the door and lets Nat in before her while I step sideways and give a quick knock.

Dad opens the door within seconds, looking more than a little flustered.

‘What’s the matter?’ my words blurt out. ‘Is Holly okay?’

‘Of course. Of course. We’re just waiting for the doctor to get here.’

I step inside and quickly shut the door behind me. ‘Doctor? What for? What’s going on? Where’s Holly?’

‘Over here!’ A hand pokes up from one of the living-room sofas and waves itself around. Her head follows. ‘And I’m fine. Really.’

But Dad doesn’t look convinced. ‘I knew we shouldn’t have come. Dr Meyers told us it wasn’t the best idea.’

Now Holly really sits up. ‘He did not! He said I was in perfect health. He only said it wasn’t the best time to travel.’

‘He also said it would be best to stick close to the hospital. Just in case.’

‘But there are hospitals here. And he gave us the name of a good doctor, who I’m sure will be able to check my blood pressure just fine. I’m sure he passed blood-pressure checking in medical school, so let’s all just calm down before my blood pressure really
does
go up.’

I walk over towards Holly. ‘Your blood pressure’s up?’

Dad walks with me. ‘We were out taking a walk on the beach and she suddenly felt a bit woozy.’

Holly sighs. ‘It’s probably nothing. I mean, I’m the size of a whale. My knees can’t stand to hold me up any more, that’s all. They want a holiday as well. And so they dumped me on the sand.’

This doesn’t sound good. ‘Maybe Dad’s right. Maybe we should go home.’

Holly rests herself back down again. ‘Maybe we should all take a deep breath and wait for the doctor and see
what he says. Humour me. Are we ready to breathe? Now, one, two, three …’ Just as we all go to take that breath, there’s another knock on the front door.

‘Hold that thought,’ Holly continues. ‘That’ll be him now.’

I race over and open the front door to be greeted by someone who should, honestly, have taken over from George Clooney on
ER
. Right. That’s decided then. We’re
definitely
moving to Hawaii. Dr Meyers is old and short and bald. This Hawaiian-type doctor isn’t.

‘Hi, I’m Scott Reid. I think your dad’s been speaking to his wife’s obstetrician, Tom Meyers. He asked me to stop by.’

I indicate towards the sofa where the hand is waving again. ‘I’m Nessa, Holly’s stepdaughter. Holly’s over there. My dad said she got a bit dizzy walking along the beach.’

Carefully, Holly pushes herself up off the sofa. ‘I keep telling everyone it’s just because of my whale-like proportions. I’m actually surprised Greenpeace didn’t arrive on the scene, cover me with wet towels and try to roll me back into the ocean.’

Starting across the room, Dr Reid pauses when he catches sight of Holly, who’s now turned to face him. Uh
oh, here we go, I think to myself, assuming he hasn’t realised who he’s going to be seeing and now we’re going to have to go through the whole ‘you’re famous!’ routine.

‘But Dr Meyers told me you were almost thirty-six weeks?’ he says, staring at her belly.

‘I know, I know …’

‘What are you talking about? You’re tiny for thirty-five weeks! Why, I’ve got a patient at the moment who’s carrying twins. She’s much larger than you and she’s only thirty weeks.’

Across the room, Holly’s face lights up. ‘Really?’

Dr Reid looks up at her and smiles. ‘Really,’ he says, his eyes twinkling.

I think it’s the twinkle that gives him away, because Holly laughs now and batts her eyelashes. ‘Oh, Dr Reid. I bet you say that to all your whale-sized twin-carrying patients.’

Fifteen minutes later, Dr Reid sits the three of us down on the sofa together.

‘Well, everything looks good. Like I told you, your
blood pressure is up a little from where Dr Meyers said it was sitting at last week, but nothing to be concerned about as of yet. Both the babies’ heartbeats are lovely and strong and you seem in perfect health otherwise. What I’d like to do is to see you again tomorrow, just to make sure everything’s continuing on this track and we’ll take it from there.’

‘So there’s no need to go home?’ my dad asks.

Dr Reid pauses for a second. ‘I don’t think so. Unless it would give you some peace of mind.’

‘I don’t think tearing three teenage girls away from Waikiki Beach would give me any kind of peace of mind at all,’ Holly laughs. ‘In fact, I’d probably never hear the end of it.’

‘Don’t be silly,’ I tell her. ‘If you want to go home, of course we won’t mind. We can come back to Hawaii anytime. Like … five minutes after B and G are born. You know, so you can recuperate.’

Holly shrugs. ‘It was a nice try. It sounded like a better excuse than me wanting to stick around and drink mocktails by the water’s edge.’

Dr Reid smiles. ‘Sounds like the perfect prescription to me. Just stick to the fruit-based ones, rather than the
cream-based ones, or you really will end up the size of a large ocean-dwelling mammal.’

‘Will do.’

‘Now, here’s my card,’ Dr Reid says, getting up from his armchair. ‘Any time tomorrow’s fine to stop by the office. Just give my secretary a quick call first to make sure I’m not busy with a delivery. Don’t worry about getting up. I’ll let myself out.’

‘Thank you,’ the three of us call out as Dr Reid disappears.

‘I still think we should go home,’ my dad grumbles, before the door even clicks shut.

But Holly just gives him a quick kiss and shakes her head. ‘The nice doctor said I needed my fruit. And where else can I get such great mocktails?’

‘He did not say that and …’

Right. Time for me to leave, exit stage left (through the inner door to our apartment). ‘Going now. Getting pizza tonight. And maybe a DVD. See ya.’

I make my escape. Fast. I know a smoochie poochie coochie scene coming when I see one and while I think that, at sixteen, I should be starting to get over this,
something’s telling me it’s the kind of thing you never get over. Kind of a universal, ageless gross out.

‘How’re things next door?’ Nat calls out from the sofa as I quickly shut the door behind me.

‘Slightly too steamy.’ I roll my eyes.

‘Huh?’

Alexa looks up knowingly. She turns to Nat. ‘They only just got married. Remember?’

‘Oh.’

‘Yes. Oh. My feelings exactly.’ I go over and plonk down on the sofa myself. Nat continues to study me. ‘What?’ I ask her.

‘Is it … is it weird that she isn’t your mum?’

‘What?’ I turn my head to give her a strange look. I have no idea what she’s talking about.

‘NAT!’ Alexa butts in.

But I can see that Nat’s not poking fun. ‘What do you mean?’ I ask her, leaning forward.

‘Well, you know, that your dad’s into someone else. That he got married again. And that he’s happy and stuff.’

‘Um …’ I really don’t know how to answer this. ‘Okay. I’m glad that he’s happy. For a long time, he wasn’t happy,
you see. Which made me unhappy. And he couldn’t exactly be happy with my mum …’

‘Because she’s dead?’

‘NAT!!!’ Alexa’s eyes almost pop out of her head.

‘Well, yeah.’ I shrug, almost laughing. In a way it’s kind of nice to have someone put it to me so bluntly. Usually people dance around the whole topic.

‘Okay. That’s all I wanted to know.’ Nat, who seems quite satisfied with my answer, settles back into the sofa comfortably.

But, next to her, Alexa keeps giving her stern looks. ‘What are you talking about, Nat? What’s weird about it? People’s parents get divorced all the time, they get remarried. You know that.’

Nat shrugs. ‘Not my parents. Not your parents. And Nessa’s parents didn’t get divorced either. Her mum died.’

‘As you keep reminding her.’

‘Oh. Um, sorry, Ness. I didn’t think.’

I’m the one who shrugs now. ‘It’s okay. She is dead.’ And just when I think I’m okay with all of this, something weird happens. My eyes dart towards the door that I’ve just come through and I realise that, somewhere deep
down inside, there’s a fragment of me that does kind of wish it was my mum next door with my dad. And it’s not that I don’t love Holly – who wouldn’t? It’s just that, sometimes, very rarely, I’ll remember what might have been and I’ll miss my mum just that little bit more than usual.

‘Ness?’ I hear Alexa’s voice and turn my head towards her.

‘Mmm?’

‘Pool?’ she asks. But her eyes are asking something different. More like, ‘Are you okay?’

I nod in answer to both questions. ‘I thought I’d need a nap, but I’m doing okay. The pool sounds good. But the pool and Pringles sound even better. I can hardly believe it, but I think I walked my pancakes off on the twenty steps home.’

Hurriedly, the three of us get changed, slap on some sunscreen and our hats, stock up my beach bag with the essentials (mags, Pringles, bottles of water, sunglasses) and, towel-shouldered, head upstairs to the rooftop where there’s a pool, spa and a small fitness centre.

With a ‘ding’ the lift belches us out onto the rooftop.

‘Hey, girls. Look at the view!’ Nat says before we’re even out on the tiles, and she’s not talking about Waikiki, spread out below us. No. She’s talking about the three guys hanging out by the pool. The three guys who are Jason and, I’m guessing, Seth and Connor.

Nat turns around so her back is to the boys for a second. ‘Bags me the one in the pool.’

‘Bags me locking you in the apartment for the rest of the week,’ Alexa counters, all of our eyes flicking to the guy who’s obviously the best looking of the three.

‘Party pooper.’ Nat sticks her tongue out.

But Alexa’s close to right. These guys are
way
too old for Nat. They must be a bit older than us – about the same age as Marc, Holly’s nephew. Speaking of Marc, I called him just this morning to see how things were going in LA. Like I said before, he used to live with us, but he’s at film school there now, though on Spring Break at the moment, of course. Holly had tried to convince him that we’d pick him up in the pj on the way to Hawaii, but he’d said he was too busy working on a project and that we’d see him the minute the twins were born.

‘Hey, it’s Nessa, right?’ Jason, sitting on the edge of the pool with his legs dangling in the water, calls out, holding up one hand to shade his eyes.

Nat winks at me before she turns back around again.

‘Choker chain,’ I hear Alexa mumble under her breath. ‘Choker chain. Preferably attached to the bottom of the pool.’

‘Hi.’ I wave slightly and the three of us start on over to the edge of the pool.

‘And, um …’ Jason continues.

‘Nat and Alexa,’ I tell him.

‘That’s right,’ he says and, standing there at that moment, I start to get the feeling I don’t think I’m going to like Jason much. It’s not even what he’s said so far. I mean, it can’t be. He must have said, what, less than fifty words to me? No, it’s how he’s said it. He’s just a bit … cocky, as my dad would say. Just that little bit too sure of himself. A little bit too … (as Marc would say, to quote all the men in my life in quick succession) LA. Hmmm. I tune back in as he continues, ‘This is Connor and … Seth. Hey, where’re you going, man?’ he calls out, as Seth starts to make his way out of the pool.