Rainy Day Sisters by Kate Hewitt Page A

a computer when it came to design and graphic art, but spreadsheets were her nemesis and she always seemed to be leaping to the next box before she’d filled one in completely.
    Alex, thankfully, had not left his office, although Lucy had discovered that if she leaned forward in her seat and craned her neck, she could see him at his desk through the window of his office that overlooked the front hall. Not that she would do that.
    The still-hassled but more cheerful-looking mum had left and Maggie had bustled back to the photocopier, taking out a stack of parent letters before glancing over at Lucy.
    â€œAre you still on the morning register?”
    â€œSorry, I’m a bit slow with these spreadsheets.”
    â€œI don’t suppose it really matters. There’s not too much to do, is there?” As if to prove her wrong, the phone rang and Maggie snatched it up with a cheery, “Good morning, Hartley-by-the-Sea Village Primary.” She paused for a moment, her forehead wrinkling in a frown, and then launched into a lengthy description of the current issues with the school’s boiler. Lucy turned back to her computer screen.
    She’d just gotten to Year Three when she stilled, her gaze trained on the middle of the year’s register.
Kincaid, Poppy.
    Surely not. Kincaid had to be a fairly common last name. Or maybe Alex had nieces and nephews at the school. Juliet had told her, on that beach walk, that everyone here was related one way or another, and if you weren’t, then you were an offcomer, no matter how long you’d lived here.
    â€œAre you an offcomer?” Lucy had asked, and Juliet had smiled grimly.
    â€œI’ll always be an offcomer,” she’d said.
    Maggie hung up the phone with an exasperated sigh and turned back to the photocopier. “Maggie,” Lucy said, and she looked over her shoulder.
    â€œYes, love?”
    That was something that would take some getting used to: near strangers calling her love. Although, actually, Lucy kind of liked it. “Does Mr. Kincaid have relatives at the school?”
    â€œRelatives?” Maggie let out one of her booming laughs. “You could say that. His daughter Poppy is in Year Three. Sweet little thing, poor soul.”
    Lucy swiveled in her chair. “Poor soul?”
    Maggie’s expression tightened briefly and she flashed Alex’s closed door a wary glance. “No mum. Alex’s wife died nearly two years ago now, only a few months after they’d come up from Manchester.”
    He was a
widower
? Lucy stared at Maggie, unable to form a response. She’d assumed Alex Kincaid was one of those aggressively single men who was your common commitment-phobic workaholic. He hadn’t seemed married, and as for being a father . . .
    She supposed it shouldn’t change how she viewed him, but it did. She couldn’t keep sympathy from swelling inside her at the thought of him coping alone with a daughter. Although maybe he had a girlfriend, one of those glossy, coolly competent women who also managed to be kind and lovable with a little girl.
    She turned back to the register, her fingers hovering above the keyboard as she squinted at the screen and tried to figure out how to get to the next box on the table. The return button? Tab? She pushed both and watched as a box disappeared and another enlarged, just as Alex Kincaid came into the office.
    He frowned at her computer screen and she gave him her sunniest smile. “So, as you might have guessed, my word processing skills are a little underdeveloped.”
    â€œThat’s a spreadsheet application, not a word processing program,” he answered, and she wondered if his wife had minded his anal-retentive behavior.
Widower,
a little voice whispered inside her.
Widower and single dad.
    â€œI think I just proved my point. Now if you wanted me to design a brochure for the school, I could do that, no problem.”
    Alex’s frown