It’s raining more heavily again, pattering at the branches above us. I reach out to brush a raindrop from her cheek with one slow swipe of my thumb.
She inhales at the contact, gaze fixed to mine, but she doesn’t move away, so I keep my hand there, framing her face. My heart starts to beat in the low, stubborn, insistent tempo it always hits when I’m close enough to kiss her. I watch for those small shifts that tell me what Izzy’s body wants. How she straightens a little, as though pulled towards me, and how her pupils dilate. After just one frantic evening in a car, I can already read Izzy’s body better than I’ve ever read her mind.
“But you’re done with me, are you?” I ask.
“What did you think would happen? We’d have sex and I’d suddenly find you irresistible?” she says, but her voice catches in her throat, and my confidence grows. She didn’t answer my question.
“You’ve found me irresistible for some time,” I say, then I smile as her eyes flare with irritation. With me and Izzy, there’s always been a fine line between pissed off and turned on. “That was the problem, wasn’t it?”
“I wouldn’t say . . .” she begins, and then she trails off.
I’ve stepped closer, and she’s backed up against the bark of the oak tree, her hair sparkling with rainwater, her chest rising and falling fast.
“Lucas,” she whispers.
My heart is thundering now. I lift my hand from her cheek and brace my forearm against the tree above her head to hold a few inches of distance between our bodies. She looks up at me, lips parted. I can see the shift in her eyes, the moment she relaxes. She’s letting go. Forgetting about real life, remembering about me. I’d expect it to make me feel triumphant, but instead I feel an unexpected clench of emotion—I love that her body trusts mine.
“Tell me to Fuck right off, Lucas, and I’m gone,” I whisper, dipping my mouth to hover above the soft, secret place on her neck that I learned about last night. “Tell me you’re done with me.”
“I’m . . .”
She doesn’t finish. I reward the admission with a hot kiss to her cold skin, and she moans.
“What did you think would happen?” I repeat her question back to her, my mouth against her skin. “That we’d have sex and suddenly we’d be able to resist each other?”
The door to Opal Cottage slams and we move as one: she twists away from me as I push back from the tree, lunging for my umbrella when it slips from my hand.
“You tell Barclays they can shove it up their arses!” Barty shouts as he makes his way up the path. “Oh, hello, you two,” he says, rounding the corner and finding us hovering guiltily beneath the tree. “Off back to the hotel?”
“No, I’d better . . . I’ll . . .” Izzy’s cheeks are as pink as I’ve ever seen them. “I’m going that way,” she says, and heads off into the woods.
“Is she all right?” Barty says as we begin making our way back to the hotel.
I clear my throat, the heat in my body simmering down again. I don’t know quite what that was, underneath the oak tree, but there’s excitement singing through me now. Because it definitely wasn’t nothing. And after a day thinking I’ll never kiss Izzy again, not-nothing feels pretty incredible.
“She’s fine,” I say. “We were just arguing again.”
“Oh, you two,” Barty says, shaking his head. “Always at each other, aren’t you?”
I cough again. “Something like that, yes.”
Izzy
What is wrong with me?
The whole point of last night with Lucas was to stop stuff like this happening. By the time I get back to the hotel—via a cold, unnecessary detour into the woods—I am soaking, and Lucas is at the desk. He looks up at me, heavy eyed, amused. Despite the sobering walk in the forest, I’m warm again the moment his gaze meets mine.
“Shall I fetch you a towel, Izzy?” he asks.
“No,” I say stubbornly, dripping on the lobby carpet. “I’m fine.”
His lip quirks. He returns his gaze to the computer screen. “As you wish,” he says, as though he didn’t just pin me up against a tree and kiss my neck and make me melt.
Infuriating, bewildering robot-man.
I get changed in the spa area and manage to dodge Lucas for the rest of the day, but it does require ingenuity. At one point I have to pretend to get a cramp, and when Ollie asks me to take some tablecloths to Lucas, I end up asking Ruby Hedgers to do it for me. She informs me that this is child labour and tries to extort me for a lot of money; I only avoid a trip to court by giving her a packet of my candy kittens.
At least I’m getting somewhere with my ring. There’s one name on the list of guests that jumped out at me this week: Goldilocks. When a celebrity visits the hotel, they usually choose a pseudonym to check in under—only a few key members of staff will be aware of their identity. Goldilocks has pseudonym written all over it. Grilling everyone around the hotel about this takes up most of my afternoon, and is the perfect distraction.
“If I remembered who stayed here in 2019 under the name Goldilocks, Izzy,” Arjun says in exasperation after I pop into the kitchen to ask for a third time, “I would tell you purely to shut you up. You are like Izzy-on-crack today. What’s got you so wired?”
“Nothing!” I yelp, sliding down off the countertop and wishing my colleagues didn’t know me quite so well.
Once I’m home and drying my wet uniform on the radiators, everything feels a lot simpler. I had a momentary relapse at Opal Cottage, that’s all. It was never going to be a clean-cut thing: find Lucas irresistible one moment, find him repulsive again the next. There was going to be a period of transition. I’m just in that. It’s no big deal.
Helloooo, comes a text from Sameera. We are wondering if you and Sexy Scowly Receptionist are going at it like rabbits now you’ve “broken the seal”? Hahaha! x
I chuck my phone across the room to the sofa and get back to drying clothes. Breaking the seal is not the thing here. It’s about getting it out of the system. Honestly. What’s Sameera on about?
* * *
? ? ? ? ?
As I walk through the Winchester Christmas Market with Louis later that night, I take a deep, calming breath and pull myself together. The market is so cute that my cosy heart is about to explode. Warm spiced cider, the smell of dried oranges and eggnog, the sound of children laughing as they race between the stalls . . . It is one hundred per cent, double-shot cosiness. My perfect second date.
So why am I wishing I was somewhere else?
“It’s not as simple as whether I have the money to invest,” Louis is saying.
He keeps putting his hand on my back as we move through the crowd. It’s not at all gropey or anything, but it’s annoying me.
“The money’s there, of course, but I have to think about the breadth of my portfolio,” Louis says. “Think with my head, not my heart.”
“Well, that’s not really my forte,” I say brightly. “But I can tell you that we have so much planned for Forest Manor.”
I try to pep myself up again and focus on the nice things about Louis. How he ticks every box. How I said I’d give this a proper chance. But ever since the Angel’s Wing, I’ve been going off him, and once that process starts, it’s so hard to backpedal. Suddenly his slicked-back hair looks greasy rather than stylish, and he winks way too often. I’m not even convinced that his gentlemanly listening face is all that genuine, actually.
“Oh, I’ve been meaning to ask—what’s Arjun’s deal?” Louis says. “How long has he been at Forest Manor?”
“Arjun? Oh, forever. He trained under some super-fancy Michelin-starred chef up north somewhere, though. Why?”
“Just curious. How’s his wine knowledge?”
“Amazing, actually. Our wine cellar is legendary. If you want to sample something in particular, you can always just ask me.”
“And why’s Arjun stayed at Forest Manor so long, do you think?”
I frown, thinking of what Lucas said about Louis’s plans for Forest Manor. I wrap my aching fingers around my gingerbread hot chocolate.