“Perfect.” I turn my attention to the glowering Lucas. “What?” I ask.
The two of us have been avoiding each other more than ever since our interaction in the car park. Every time I see him, that conversation leaps into my mind—his intensity, the way he looked at me when I called him offensively handsome.
“You volunteered me to wait on the hen party for lunch?”
I press my lips together, trying very hard not to smile. I forgot I did that.
“Can you not do it?” I ask.
“I can,” he says with deliberation. “But I don’t want to. You know I hate waiting on the big groups. Especially drunk ones. Especially hens.”
“But you always go down so well with the hens!”
“If anyone attempts to undress me, it will be you I’m suing,” Lucas says darkly.
“Well, I’m going to be spending the time sorting coins from the lost-property room and taking them to the post office. You could swap, if you like.”
I gesture to the jars of loose change lining the edge of the front desk. Lucas stares at them.
“Does that actually need to be done?”
“It’s money,” I point out. “Are you suggesting I throw it in the bin?”
He growls under his breath and stalks off towards the restaurant. Then he pauses, turning with his hand on the door.
“How is your hunt for your wedding ring’s owner going?”
“Brilliantly!” I say. “I’m down to my final five contenders.”
Five, seventeen—what’s the difference, really?
“Good for you,” Lucas says.
I narrow my eyes. His tone is far too . . . nice.
“How’s yours going?” I ask.
“A woman is dropping in to collect her lost ring at three o’clock,” he says, pushing through the restaurant door and letting it swing shut behind him.
Shit.
* * *
? ? ? ? ?
I glance at the clock. Two minutes to three. Lucas’s ring owner is due any second. Would it be wrong of me to run some intervention? Lock the hotel doors, just for ten minutes or so? Send Lucas off to do something urgent and then tell his visitor that the ring has already been claimed by somebody else?
It would be wrong, definitely. However . . .
“Don’t even try,” Lucas says, not looking up from where he’s cleaning silver candlesticks at the other end of the front desk.
“I didn’t do anything!”
“You are . . . tramando.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“Scheming. Plotting.”
“Would I ever?” I say as he turns to look at me. I arrange my expression into the picture of innocence.
“That face doesn’t work on me,” Lucas says.
His eyes hold mine, dark and knowing. Something flutters in my stomach. Then his gaze snaps to the door as a woman steps into the lobby, bringing in a blast of freezing air.
“Hello!” Lucas calls with more enthusiasm than I’ve seen from him since someone suggested updating the restaurant table booking system. “Are you Ruth?”
“Yes, hi, that’s me!” the woman says, pasting on a large smile.
I am immediately suspicious. Obviously I have skin in the game here, but I meet a lot of members of the public in this job, and I’ve developed a bit of an eye for the ones who are going to cause trouble. The people who won’t pay their bar tab, who will take things from the hotel that aren’t strictly toiletries, who will print out the same Groupon voucher twice. And this Ruth has troublemaker written all over her, from her pristine ponytail to the toes of her trying-to-look-expensive boots.
I do not believe that Lucas’s ring belongs to this woman. That ring is stunning, but it’s not showy: the diamonds are tiny and the design is really subtle. I’d say a woman with a counterfeit designer handbag probably wants a wedding ring that shouts about how pricey it was, not something small and pretty.
“Thanks so much for coming in,” I say, standing up with my best smile. “As I’m sure you’ll understand, we’ll have to check a few things to make sure we’re giving the ring to the right person.”
To her credit, her expression doesn’t change. “Sure,” she says, pulling her handbag closer against her side. “What do you need? Some ID?”
“Do you have a receipt for the ring?” I ask.
“Perhaps you could just describe it,” Lucas says, glancing sideways at me.
I look back at him, raising my eyebrows. Really? my face says. You’re so concerned about winning our bet that you’re prepared to give a valuable piece of jewellery to a potential fraud? What if it causes problems for the hotel?
I watch his face darken as he comes to the same conclusion.
“I bought it in a jeweller’s,” the woman says, patting at her hair. “So there’s no digital receipt. It was years ago! But I can tell you it’s a thin gold ring studded with diamonds.”
I shoot another look at Lucas. His grim expression tells me that he said that much in his initial email.
“You’ll see what a conundrum we’re in,” I say, smile still in place. “Is there any way you can prove it’s your ring?”
“Can you prove it’s not?” she asks. There’s a sharpness in her tone now.
“Perhaps you could tell us when you stayed here?” Lucas asks.
Her gaze shifts from me to Lucas and back again. She swallows.
“Twenty twenty,” she says.
“Oh dear. Not quite,” I say.
“Twenty eighteen?” she tries, confidence visibly evaporating.
“I know!” I turn to Lucas. “We could ask if she knows about the chipped diamond. Oh, crap,” I say, covering my mouth.
“Yes!” she says, relieved. “One of the diamonds was chipped! How could I forget that? There you go. There can’t be many rings that fit that description, can there? And . . .” She waggles her bare hand at us. “I’ve definitely lost my wedding ring.”
Well, this is awkward. I turn to Lucas, who is blinking rapidly, his expression fixed.
“Over to you?” I say sweetly, sitting down again. Mentioning the chip was an absolute masterstroke, if I do say so myself. There was—of course—no chip.
This has been super helpful. I’ve realised what an advantage I have over Lucas in this particular race, because my ring has an engraving on the inside. So even if I have a long list to work through, once I find my owner, I’ll know they’re the one—and just like that, I’ll be the winner, glory shall be mine, and Lucas will have to abide by my every wish.
And oh, I’m going to make him suffer.
Lucas
I started late today, so I am staying late, too. That is only reasonable. And the seating areas dotted around the pool badly need tidying. There are magazines here from a time when all the UK had to worry about was whether a man named Jeremy Clarkson had or had not punched someone.
That is why I’m here: tidying. It’s nothing to do with the fact that Louis Keele is currently powering up and down the swimming pool, waiting for Izzy to arrive for their . . . plans. Their arrangement. Their date?
“Fetch me a beer, would you, Lucas?” Louis calls from the pool, twisting to float on his back.
Fetch me a beer. Like I’m a dog. I turn around, ready to snarl, but then Izzy appears in the doorway of the women’s changing room and I lose my train of thought entirely.
“Lucas,” she says, surprised. She’s wearing a dressing gown hanging open over her bikini. “What are you doing here?”
I recognise that bikini: it lives in the box she keeps under the desk. I noticed it when I tidied her box, an act I knew would irritate her enormously, and which ended up feeling slightly sordid, partly because of that bikini. You can’t see a bikini without imagining the person in it.
And it is very small. Turquoise green with thin straps. Right now, I can only see a few inches of it between the two sides of her dressing gown, along with a shocking flash of smooth, pale skin, but the sight makes my breath catch in my throat. My imagination did not do her justice.
She looks so different. She’s barefoot, with her hair unstriped and pulled up in a bun. There’s something vulnerable about her like this, and I feel a stab of an emotion that in another context I might call fear. But it’s not that, it can’t be—there’s nothing to be afraid of.