“Are you studying?” I ask, surprised. He’s never mentioned it.
He nods, chewing. I wait for him to say more, but he doesn’t, and he won’t meet my eyes, either. I lean forward for the pack of cards that sits on the table and start flicking through. Modelling consumer decision-making . . . market segmentation . . . perishability vs. stock . . . hotel service delivery . . .
“Hotel management?” I say. “You’re studying hotel management?”
He nods again, flicking to the next card. Like this is no big deal at all.
“Is that your plan, then?” I say, heat rising up my chest. I stab at my stir fry with my fork. “Take over Forest Manor one day?”
“No. Not at all.”
“Then you’d be able to boss me around and I wouldn’t be able to do anything about it.”
“Actually,” he says, “my degree is not about trying to beat you at something, Izzy. It is something I’m doing for me.”
“Right,” I say. I’m flustered and miserable and I’m not sure why. I wish I hadn’t mentioned the interior design course I failed to complete. “Well, good for you.”
I’ve always known that Lucas thinks he’s better at the job than I am, but I’ve also always thought he’s wrong. Only now he’s going to go and make it official, getting a degree and everything. Not that any of this matters—he and I will likely part ways in the new year anyway. He can manage some swanky hotel somewhere and I’ll take that waitressing job they’re always advertising in the window of Tilly’s café in Brockenhurst—which is fine. I’d be perfectly content with that.
Lucas stands suddenly, pacing to the French doors opposite us and throwing them open. He’s in just a T-shirt and jeans—he took his jumper off while we were cooking—and it’s freezing outside. I raise my eyebrows as the cold wind hits me a few seconds later and he says, “It’s too hot in here.”
I can’t help it: I think about him in the gym, a bead of sweat running down between his shoulder blades. Christ. How can I find this man so obnoxious and so sexy? Even now, as he steps out onto his little balcony and leans his forearms on the glass barrier, I’m noticing the muscles rolling in his shoulders, the bare, pale brown stretch of his neck.
You’d think all the rejection would make me want him less, but it doesn’t. I don’t know what that says about me. At least I’m consistent. Not easily swayed by, you know, reality.
He just stays there, saying nothing, so I pull the blanket off the back of the sofa and tug it over my knees—a literal comfort blanket. I need it: I feel so unsteady, like there’s a tremor going through the flat, sending everything trembling.
“Izzy,” he says.
That’s it. Just Izzy. He doesn’t even turn around. It’s raining now, that faint, drifting rain that sparkles when it catches the light.
“You don’t like me, do you?”
The question takes me aback. It’s kind of a given, isn’t it? Lucas and I hate each other—everyone knows that. He’s pig-headed and surly and has a temper; he’s deliberately difficult with me at work; and he’s rejected me enough times that even if I had no pride, it would be hard not to bear a bit of ill feeling towards him. And ultimately, fundamentally, he will always be the man who kissed my flatmate on the day I handed him my heart.
“No,” I say slowly. “I don’t like you.”
“You used to like me,” Lucas says, glancing over his shoulder for half a second before returning his gaze to the rain. “And then I kissed your flatmate.”
I tuck the blanket tighter. We don’t talk about that. The one instance when we did talk about that, we ended up screaming at each other across the hotel lawns, and he flew back to Brazil the next morning.
I think of that card all the time. Now that I know Lucas better, I can imagine him cringing at the soppy bits. My cosy warm heart. Ugh. Writing that in his Christmas card felt brave and bold, the sort of thing a woman in a rom-com would do. Jem had been so sure it would end in romance, and I’d got caught up imagining our kiss under the mistletoe, the way he would scoop me up against him and tell me he felt the exact same way.
Damn Jem and all her romance novels.
“And that’s . . . gone?” Lucas looks down at the beer bottle in his hands.
“Well, you kind of wrecked it, yeah,” I say, feeling it all again: the shock, the embarrassment, that awful conversation with Drew when we got home. She’d known how I felt about Lucas, and still kissed him. And maybe mid argument wasn’t the time for me to ask her for the overdue rent, but when she walked out she literally threw a Christmas bauble at my head, so I think I win in the game of who-behaved-better.
“I wrecked it?” He turns at last. “What was I supposed to do?”
I stare at him. “Oh, I don’t know, not kiss my flatmate under the mistletoe?”
“Izzy, come on. I have never understood why that was such a crime.”
I look away. “Obviously you are and were entitled to kiss whoever you choose.”
“Thank you.”
That thank you sets my teeth on edge. I put my beer down on the table a little too hard.
“Am I still required to be here?” I snap.
He recoils. “Oh. No. Of course not.”
“Right. Well, I’ll leave you to your evening, then. ’Night, Lucas.”
“Izzy.”
Just Izzy again. I move to step away and then breathe in sharply. He’s right behind me, his hand on my arm. He moved so fast; the contact is unexpected, and I’m not steeled to it. I’m hot with anger, remembering the way it all felt last year, and the sensation of his skin on mine sends me burning even hotter. He spins me around with a tug of my arm and I look up at him. My breath is cold on my parted lips.
His expression is thunderous. I’ve seen frustration in Lucas’s eyes a hundred times, but there’s a new depth to it tonight, and I know—I know he wants me.
“You drive me crazy,” he says. His voice is hoarse and his gaze is on my mouth.
I say nothing. We’re both breathing heavily, our bodies close, but I’m not letting him lead me into another proposition that he’ll knock back. If he wants something tonight, he’s going to have to make the first move.
“I’ve tried,” he says. “I’ve really, really tried. And still . . .”
He moves even closer, forcing my chin higher if I want to meet his gaze square-on. He’s so huge, all muscle, tightly coiled.
I can’t resist. It’s something about the way he holds himself back—it tugs at the part of me that can’t turn down a challenge. I can feel that he’s a breath away from giving in.
I brush my chest against his. He breathes in roughly and that’s it, that’s it. Whatever it was that kept Lucas hemmed in, it snaps. He kisses me.
And it’s pure fire. He tilts me back and kisses me so deeply I lose my breath and my footing all at once; he’s half lifted me, half thrown me to the sofa cushions, one hand on my thigh as I wrap my legs around him. It’s messy and fierce, the way you’d kiss if kissing was fighting. His tongue stokes mine and I dig my nails into his back. I’ve never felt a tide of desire like this—never gone under so quickly. If he wanted me now, I’d be his.
But he slows the kiss—not breaking away, just easing. Slow, languid kisses instead of hungry ones. I whimper in my throat and then turn my head aside, embarrassed by the need he’ll hear in my voice. He turns my head back with one finger and looks me right in the eye.
“If we do this,” he says, voice rough, accent strong. “Then you don’t look away from me.”
I swallow. I’m lying here, breathless, raw, and it’s Lucas looking down on me. I don’t know if it’s habit or pride, but I feel a sudden, powerful need to take the upper hand again.
“If we do this,” I counter, “then we need some rules.”
* * *
? ? ? ? ?
We’re sitting at either end of the sofa, eyeing each other warily. He has a cushion in his lap, like a teenage boy, and I’ve got my arms looped around my knees so he can’t tell they’re trembling.
“Why didn’t you kiss me before? In the hotel room?” I ask, clearing my throat. “Why now?”