“I want to say that I’m sorry for being jealous when you went to the Christmas market with Louis.” My heart quickens. I’ve wanted to tell her this for days. If I want Izzy to see me as a human being, to take me seriously, then she needs to know my story. “He makes me . . . You make me . . . I am,” I say, correcting myself in frustration, “I am on edge when you’re with him. My last relationship . . .”
She stiffens in my arms. I keep talking, faster now.
“Camila cheated on me.” It is painful saying this out loud. “Then she acted like—like it was my fault, because I didn’t give her enough. So she said she went looking for that love elsewhere. I know it’s no excuse for my possessiveness. But I wanted to tell you that there’s something behind the jealousy other than just, you know, that I am a man with so many red flags, as you called me. I want you to understand that I’m working on this. I want to be better.”
“Lucas, I . . .” Izzy pulls away from me, reaching for the overnight bag she brought with her last night. “That’s . . . Thank you. For telling me that. But . . .”
This is not going how I hoped it would. She’s tense, avoiding my gaze entirely.
“Izzy?” I say.
She looks upset. I reach for her, but she steps away from the bed.
“I’m just conscious of the time,” she says, and I watch as she pulls herself together, pasting on the Izzy that I see at work: bright, smiling, ready for anything. It’s amazing. It takes her less than five seconds.
“We have half an hour. You can stay for a coffee if you want,” I say, feeling a little desperate.
She frowns at me as she ducks down to pull on her socks. “You don’t have to do that.”
“I want to. I’d like to.”
I have to choke it out, and the moment I do, I regret it: her eyes flare wide with alarm again. It’s the closest I’ve come to saying I like you out loud. Between Izzy and me, that phrase probably feels as significant as I love you would to any other couple.
“You want to have coffee with me?”
“Is that so strange?”
“Yes?” Izzy says, frown deepening. “A, you hate how I make coffee, you always say I get the milk-to-granule ratio wrong—”
“I would make the coffee. This is my apartment, clearly I will make the coffee. And we will use a cafetière.”
“Oh, of course we will,” she says, and I can’t tell if she’s amused or irritated. “B, you go to great lengths never to spend more time than necessary with me every single day, so why would you want to keep me in your flat when you could get me out of it?”
“Because—it’s not like that now. I don’t do that anymore. Haven’t you noticed?”
“C,” she says, shoulders creeping higher, voice getting louder. “We have rules about this stuff.”
“Yes,” I say tightly. “We have rules. Of course.”
“Lucas, I can’t do this if you start—if you start being all nice to me and making me coffee and . . .” She swallows. “There’s a reason we have the rules.”
I cannot think of a single good reason for her fucking rules and I wish I could tell her that, but I can see in her panicked eyes that I’ll lose the tiny amount of Izzy I get as soon as I say those words out loud.
“You enjoy your coffee,” she says, yanking her jumper on. “I’m sure it will be very strong and manly with nary a drop of milk.”
I just stare at her. I have no idea what to say to that. She flushes.
“Maybe we should . . . stop this,” she says. “It’s so—we shouldn’t . . . I don’t think I can do this.”
“What? No. No, Izzy, wait,” I say, scrabbling out of bed, but she’s already slipping away towards the door, doing the awkward wave she does when she’s feeling flustered.
“I have to go,” she calls. “I’ll see you at work, OK?”
I stare at my bedroom wall as I hear the front door slam. Fuck. I knew this thing between us was fragile, but I didn’t realise I could break it with a single cup of coffee.
* * *
? ? ? ? ?
By the afternoon, I have moved through panic, irritation, frustration, and despair. Now I have landed on resolution.
I have a plan.
We had been getting somewhere—she’d messaged me in the middle of the night when she couldn’t sleep, and I’d held her as she dozed. Those are small acts of trust. But then I opened up about Camila, and it was too much too soon, and she fled.
If I’m going to change Izzy’s mind about the sort of man I am, I suspect I need to take a step backwards before I can move forward again. I need her to feel comfortable, and there is one dynamic that always works between us.
I finally track her down as I’m leaving the spa. She shoots past me in the corridor, avoiding my gaze, and panic rises through me again. I want to do what I did outside Opal Cottage: test her, move closer, seek out those signs that she still wants me. Instead, I let her go, and then, as she reaches the doors to the spa, I call over my shoulder, “Just so you know, I’ve almost found the last ring owner.”
This is an exaggeration. But I have spent two hours on the phone to lots of publicists about whether their clients lost a wedding ring, and various people said they would call me back.
Izzy stops short and swivels to stare at me. “You mean . . .”
“Goldilocks.”
I can understand her surprise: I have given this contest very little of my attention over the last week. But this morning, I got to work. I found the name I suspect Izzy found days ago—or rather, the fake name.
“You can’t have almost found her,” Izzy says. “I’ve spoken to everyone and nobody can tell me who she is.”
“Well, then. I hope you are practising your elf voice,” I say. I fold my arms, leaning against the wall of the corridor, watching her. “Poor Mandy always does such a good one.”
Izzy’s eyes spark. “Please,” she says, scathing. “You’re bluffing.”
I shrug. “OK,” I say, pushing off the wall and heading back towards the lobby.
“Wait,” she says. “Wait.” She glances around as I turn to face her again. “This morning,” she says tentatively. “When I . . .”
“Ran off?” I say, keeping my eyebrows raised.
Her eyes narrow. “I did not run off.”
“Why were you so scared to have a cup of coffee with me?”
“I was not scared.”
“Were you afraid you might enjoy it?”
“Oh, come on.” She straightens up. “I’m definitely not afraid of enjoying a morning coffee with you. God. Do I need to remind you that we have coffee behind the desk most mornings, and it usually ends in an argument about whether or not you are a snobby arsehole about my choice of Starbucks syrups? Spoiler: you absolutely are.”
My lip twitches. Her eyes are sparkling again. Izzy can fake a smile, but she can’t fake the way her eyes light up when she’s really having fun.
“So you called things off this morning because . . .”
She hesitates for just a moment before saying, “You weren’t sticking to the rules.”
“Ah,” I say. “Not because you were scared to have coffee with me.”
“I am not—ugh,” she says, throwing her hands in the air. “You are so infuriating.” She points a finger at me. “And you are not going to see me in that elf costume.”
I give her a slow smile. “We’ll see,” I say, and walk away.
My smile stays in place as I wind my way through the guests beginning to arrive for the early dinner sitting. I dodge a couple gazing up at our Christmas tree, and two of the Hedgers children, who are fencing with Mr. Townsend’s walking stick and my umbrella, which I am sure I put behind the front desk.
It’s handover time. Poor Mandy greets me with a confused frown as I approach her.
“Izzy says I need to get you a bottle of the 2017 Sauvignon?” Mandy says, immediately getting distracted by several loud dings from her phone.
“What? Why?” I ask, moving around the desk. Already my mind is racing. What does it mean? Is it an apology for this morning? Would she like us to drink it together? Is it a gift? What for? “Oh,” I say as I look over Mandy’s shoulder at Izzy’s handover notes. “That says Louis, not Lucas.”