The Wake-Up Call

He squeezes my hand for a moment and then lets go, letting me explore him, my fingers tracing up to his elbow, his bicep.

“I promise to think the best of you from this moment on. To ask you, if I think you’ve done something hurtful. I promise never to be unkind.” I smile slightly. “Though I kind of like that you’ve seen that side of me. The worst of me. People tend to think I’m super nice, and I do try to be, obviously, but . . . Sometimes everyone’s a bit of a bitch, aren’t they? I get a bit exhausted trying to keep it up nonstop without ever slipping up and swearing at bad drivers or complaining about guests, you know?”

“Ah, yes,” Lucas says, and his bicep flexes under my palm. “Angelic Izzy. I never thought you were that, by the way. Not even when you were nice to me.”

I laugh. “No?”

“No. You have . . .” He reaches for my other hand, the one that isn’t working its way over the muscles of his arm, and pulls me closer, until one of his knees crosses over mine. “You have too much bite to be an angel. Too much sting.”

I take the invitation and lean forward to press my teeth to his neck, then suck—not hard enough to leave a mark, but hard enough to make him chuckle and pull me against him until I climb up into his lap. He wraps his arms around me, and I feel something new. He’s held me like this before—my legs framing his, his face buried in my neck—but this time having his arms around me settles something that I didn’t know needed settling. I feel safe.

“Meu amor,” he whispers, his lips against my ear. “My love.”

I close my eyes and move against him. It still feels frightening to tell him I love him, even with his arms locked around me, holding me tight, urging me forward, back. But I’ve made my mind up. No more easy options—I want this, the bright, explosive joy of it. I want to say those words every day.

“I love you,” I whisper.

“Eu te amo,” he whispers back, and then he lifts his mouth to mine, and I have to still my hips for a moment, because the kiss is almost too much with the taste of those words on his tongue.

He’s right. It is more intense. He takes me to his bedroom and we whisper it all night: Eu te amo. I love you. By the morning I feel changed. Lucas has always shaken me up, leaving me furious, frenzied, weak with wanting, whatever it might be. But now it’s different. Now he holds me steady, too.

As much as I wish that card hadn’t gone astray, I can’t regret the last year. We know each other so well now. This isn’t the culmination of a few stolen glances at work, it’s a relationship that’s been twisting and turning for over a year, and I know it’ll be stronger for it.

He makes me coffee and brings it to me in bed, naked, slow, letting me look. I pull him to me, and he settles his head against my chest, watching the rain come down through the window.

“We have so much to do,” he says without particular intent. His fingers find mine, lacing over my stomach. “Christmas party tomorrow.”

“And just over a week until it’s all over. New Year’s.”

He sighs. “I don’t know what I’ll do. I’ve applied for some receptionist roles nearby, but . . .”

I sit up, looking down at him. “You and I pretty much run Forest Manor. You can’t go back to receptionist work now—you deserve something in management.”

“Then I would have to look further away.” His hand tightens on mine. “And I don’t want to. I like it here.”

I squeeze his hand back.

“And you’re right: you and I do pretty much run Forest Manor,” he says, looking serious. “And you hate waitressing.” He raises his eyebrows.

“Yeah, I’ve thought about that a lot.” I bite my lip. “Honestly, I don’t want to take a waitressing job. But I don’t want to move, either. I just wish we could find a way to keep the hotel going. Maybe if we find Goldilocks . . .”

His stubble rasps against my bare skin as he lifts his head to look at me. “We will keep trying,” he says. “Maybe we can do it together.”

“Excuse me?” I say, pulling back in outrage. “You may be my boyfriend now, but that bet is still on.”

He winces. “Really?”

“You want to concede and wear the elf outfit?”

“. . . No.”

“Well then.” I kiss him on the nose. “In that case, I’m still planning to kick your arse at this.”





Lucas


It’s Christmas Eve: party day, and my second day as Izzy Jenkins’s boyfriend.

I am the sort of happy I would have previously considered unobtainable—and I am very close to making today absolutely perfect.

“If you could just try to remember . . .” I say, glancing up towards the hotel’s main entrance.

“Are you actually calling me at eight in the morning on Christmas Eve to ask me if I remember a celebrity staying on my floor at your hotel in 2019?” says the woman on the other end of the line.

It is a refreshing and necessary reminder that I might be trying a bit too hard.

“My apologies,” I say. “If anything comes to mind, please do get in touch by email.”

“Right,” the woman says, and I wince at the click as she hangs up.

“No luck?” Poor Mandy says sympathetically, popping up from the front of the desk, where she is doing what Izzy refers to as “festooning.” Everyone is either festooning for Izzy or chopping vegetables for Arjun right now.

“No luck,” I say.

Poor Mandy pats my arm. She has been patting me a lot since the Christmas-card debacle was cleared up. I think she feels responsible for Izzy and me torturing one another for a year. Which she is, a bit.

“Do you know what, dear?” Mandy says, beginning the arduous process of checking her phone: glasses coming down from her head, hand going into her pocket, a lot of wriggling and bouncing up and down in her chair as she eases the phone out from her jeans, the case flipping open, her glasses dropping down her nose and up again . . . “I may be able to help you.”

I appreciate Poor Mandy—she is always reliable, she’s very popular with the guests, and she works all the worst shifts. But I am almost certain that her idea will involve tweeting to our 112 followers, and I simply cannot see that helping.

“Thank you,” I say. “Feel free to try.”

“Any luck?” Ollie calls as he dashes past with a tray of jellies.

“Not yet,” I call after him. “Do you know if Izzy is having—”

“I’m Switzerland!” Ollie yells over his shoulder. “You’re getting nothing out of me!”

“Anything on the ring?” Barty calls down the newly functioning stairs as he dashes along the landing. Everyone is dashing today. It is giving the hotel a faint buzz, as though someone has dialled all the appliances up at once.

“Not yet,” I call. Everyone’s support is appreciated, but also, when I have no updates, slightly irritating.

“Lucas! Anything on the—”

“Not yet!” I snap, and then look up to find the cool gaze of my girlfriend.

“—Christmas party menu that’s vegan?”

“Oh.”

I soften instantly. Izzy looks amused.

“Yes. Here.”

I show her Arjun’s latest scribbled version of the menu. She scans over it and I watch, hungry for the sight of her. All that time I spent thinking I could do without Izzy Jenkins in my day, and now I truly cannot have too much of her.

“Have we—”

“Yes. They’re set up in the orangery.”

She taps her bottom lip, still scanning the menu.

“Does Arjun know about the—”

“Yes. He swore a lot, but we got through it.”

Izzy nods. She looks up at me.

“And—”

“Yes.”

“I didn’t actually—”

“I am confident that it is already done.”

“It’s not, because—”

“Have a cup of tea. Stop thinking so hard.”

“I was going to say, have I told you that I love you today?”

“Oh. No. You haven’t.”

“See?” She looks smug as she turns away. “Told you it wasn’t all done yet. Mr. Townsend! How can I help you?”

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