To her credit, her expression doesn’t change. “Sure,” she says, pulling her handbag closer against her side. “What do you need? Some ID?”
“Do you have a receipt for the ring?” I ask.
“Perhaps you could just describe it,” Lucas says, glancing sideways at me.
I look back at him, raising my eyebrows. Really? my face says. You’re so concerned about winning our bet that you’re prepared to give a valuable piece of jewellery to a potential fraud? What if it causes problems for the hotel?
I watch his face darken as he comes to the same conclusion.
“I bought it in a jeweller’s,” the woman says, patting at her hair. “So there’s no digital receipt. It was years ago! But I can tell you it’s a thin gold ring studded with diamonds.”
I shoot another look at Lucas. His grim expression tells me that he said that much in his initial email.
“You’ll see what a conundrum we’re in,” I say, smile still in place. “Is there any way you can prove it’s your ring?”
“Can you prove it’s not?” she asks. There’s a sharpness in her tone now.
“Perhaps you could tell us when you stayed here?” Lucas asks.
Her gaze shifts from me to Lucas and back again. She swallows.
“Twenty twenty,” she says.
“Oh dear. Not quite,” I say.
“Twenty eighteen?” she tries, confidence visibly evaporating.
“I know!” I turn to Lucas. “We could ask if she knows about the chipped diamond. Oh, crap,” I say, covering my mouth.
“Yes!” she says, relieved. “One of the diamonds was chipped! How could I forget that? There you go. There can’t be many rings that fit that description, can there? And . . .” She waggles her bare hand at us. “I’ve definitely lost my wedding ring.”
Well, this is awkward. I turn to Lucas, who is blinking rapidly, his expression fixed.
“Over to you?” I say sweetly, sitting down again. Mentioning the chip was an absolute masterstroke, if I do say so myself. There was—of course—no chip.
This has been super helpful. I’ve realised what an advantage I have over Lucas in this particular race, because my ring has an engraving on the inside. So even if I have a long list to work through, once I find my owner, I’ll know they’re the one—and just like that, I’ll be the winner, glory shall be mine, and Lucas will have to abide by my every wish.
And oh, I’m going to make him suffer.
Lucas
I started late today, so I am staying late, too. That is only reasonable. And the seating areas dotted around the pool badly need tidying. There are magazines here from a time when all the UK had to worry about was whether a man named Jeremy Clarkson had or had not punched someone.
That is why I’m here: tidying. It’s nothing to do with the fact that Louis Keele is currently powering up and down the swimming pool, waiting for Izzy to arrive for their . . . plans. Their arrangement. Their date?
“Fetch me a beer, would you, Lucas?” Louis calls from the pool, twisting to float on his back.
Fetch me a beer. Like I’m a dog. I turn around, ready to snarl, but then Izzy appears in the doorway of the women’s changing room and I lose my train of thought entirely.
“Lucas,” she says, surprised. She’s wearing a dressing gown hanging open over her bikini. “What are you doing here?”
I recognise that bikini: it lives in the box she keeps under the desk. I noticed it when I tidied her box, an act I knew would irritate her enormously, and which ended up feeling slightly sordid, partly because of that bikini. You can’t see a bikini without imagining the person in it.
And it is very small. Turquoise green with thin straps. Right now, I can only see a few inches of it between the two sides of her dressing gown, along with a shocking flash of smooth, pale skin, but the sight makes my breath catch in my throat. My imagination did not do her justice.
She looks so different. She’s barefoot, with her hair unstriped and pulled up in a bun. There’s something vulnerable about her like this, and I feel a stab of an emotion that in another context I might call fear. But it’s not that, it can’t be—there’s nothing to be afraid of.
“Hello,” I say, hating how stiff I sound. “I started late. So I’m staying late.”
Her eyes narrow slightly. We’re in a glass building that links the main house to the spa, which was formerly the stables—the space is lit only by a series of low-energy bulbs above the water, so it’s shadowy in here. Behind me I hear the slick splash of Louis moving methodically through the pool.