“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.”