The Wake-Up Call(63)

“We don’t need to wait.”

He raises his eyebrows ever so slightly. “One, or two?”

Oh my God. Why is he so, so annoying?

“Lucas . . .”

“One or two?”

For fuck’s sake.

“Do you not want this?” I say, pulling back, drawing my knees up again. “Because—”

“Izzy,” he says, “I am trying to be a gentleman. Today is my day, remember? I don’t want you to feel any . . . pressure.”

“Well, I don’t!” I say. “I’ve made it pretty clear what I want.”

“Mm.” He tilts his head. “Then it will be clear tomorrow, too. We can wait one night.”

I swallow, running my hands through my hair, trying to pull myself together. My body feels boneless. All I want to do is melt into him.

“Izzy,” Lucas says, and his voice is gentle now. “I want you to think about this. I want you to be sure.”

“I am,” I begin again, but I trail off in the face of his determined expression. I know that face. Lucas has made up his mind.

“All right,” I say, standing up. “Tomorrow. After work.”

I feel the traces of the last half hour everywhere: the warmth of his hand on my ankle, the roughness of his stubble on my cheek, the frustrated ache at my core. Looking down at him on the sofa, I’m struck afresh by how different he is here. At work he’s so buttoned-up and serious, but now he’s in a crumpled T-shirt, loose and hazy-eyed. There’s something so sexy about seeing him like this. I want to climb into his lap and kiss that insolent slope of his bottom lip.

“Just so you know,” I say, “if you’re really making me wait until tomorrow night, I’m going to make your day as difficult as possible.”

The corners of his mouth turn up just a touch. “It is an opportunity to torture me,” he says. “I would expect nothing less.”





Lucas


Izzy assumed the cooling-off period was just for her, and I didn’t correct her. But I need this.

“The whole thing is a great idea,” says Pedro in Portuguese, over the noise of the coffee machine. “Didn’t I say you should have slept with her from the start?”

“That’s probably why I’ve come to see you this morning instead of ringing my sister,” I say wryly, glancing at the customers waiting to be served in Smooth Pedro’s. I’ve pulled a bar stool up by the till. I did consider offering to help with the breakfast rush, but last time I helped, Pedro kept whipping me with his dish cloth, so I decided against it. “I’m hoping you are going to tell me I’m not out of my mind.”

“Absolutely not out of your mind! Oat milk mocha single shot?” he says, switching to English and flashing his most flirtatious smile at the woman at the front of the queue.

She smiles back, flicking her blonde curls over her shoulder. “Thanks, Pedro,” she says. “You’re actually the best.”

“Damn right,” he says to her, and then he winks.

I sigh.

“What?” he says.

“You are making it harder for me to think you’re sensible. Sensible men don’t wink,” I say, thinking gloomily of Louis, who winks at least once a day, and is definitely an idiot.

“Why the hell would you want to be sensible? You want this girl, don’t you?”

I nod into my Yowza smoothie (ginger, rocket, orange, carrot).

“So take her!”

“Pedro . . .”

“I just mean—she is offering you something. Not everything you want, sure, you want the marriage and babies . . .”

I glare at him. He grins.

“But it’s a start.”

“It’s a start.”

This is what I told myself last night. Izzy seems programmed to think the worst of me—the reason everything I did yesterday backfired was because she assumed at every point that I was trying to make her as miserable as possible. By the time we got to my flat, I was so defeated, and then she was walking out on me, and I knew she’d kiss me back if I kissed her. Resisting any longer just seemed impossible.

“Her rules are a good idea—they’ll stop you catching feelings,” Pedro says. He wipes down the coffee machine and throws the cloth over his shoulder.

Those rules. They infuriated me. But I know Pedro is right: I’m developing dangerous feelings already, and if there aren’t any boundaries when I spend the night with her, I am at real risk of harm.

“You’re a big boy, Lucas,” Pedro says. “What is it you’re afraid of?”

I close my eyes. “I think I was holding back the only card I had, and now I’m playing it,” I say eventually. “I have one thing she is interested in and I’m about to give it to her.”

The next woman in the queue is ordering. Pedro ducks his head to listen to her, then spins on his heels to start conjuring up a white chocolate latte.

“You’re talking like an American girl about to give up her virginity, cara,” Pedro says, and then realises he’s speaking English and laughs as the entire queue turns to stare at me.

“Thank you for that.”

“Sorry. I’m just saying, you’re not giving anything up. Sex with her means closeness. It means pillow-talk and all those hormones that women get when they have sex with you.”