I shouldn’t have looked. That has not made this easier.
“Have you changed your mind, then?” she asks, twisting away to reach the paint but keeping her thigh between my knees. “About tonight?”
The brush whispers against my cheekbone. Izzy licks her bottom lip. I could have her in my lap in half a second. I want to. She knows I want to.
“No. I’ve not changed my mind. Have you?”
“I told you my decision was made.”
I incline my head in acknowledgement as she moves away to top up her brush. This time, as she turns back to me, she presses a thumb under my chin and forces my head up, then to the side, baring my throat. She takes the brush to the sensitive skin beneath my ear and I inhale, closing my eyes. She’s not even touching me and this is turning my blood to fire.
“You could have had me in your bed last night,” she says. “One message.”
I knew that. I felt it for every slow minute of the evening.
“You really do have ironclad self-control, don’t you?”
She has no idea.
“I want to know what happens when you let go,” she whispers, leaning in. “I want to make you lose your fucking mind.”
Pelo amor de Deus. My heart is pounding.
“All done,” she says brightly, pulling back, her thigh slipping from between my knees. “Want to see?”
I open my eyes. She’s looking down on me with an infuriatingly familiar expression: the self-satisfied smile she wears when she’s beaten me at something.
She holds a small make-up mirror out for me to see myself. I have no idea what I’m going to find—it could be reindeer, or snowmen, or possibly Lucas is a dick written on my jawline. But it’s amazing. A tumble of white and blue snowflakes running from my right temple to the left side of my neck.
“It’s good,” I say. “Now can I do it for you?”
“You? Paint my face?”
“Mm-hmm.”
The reception bell dings. As one, we look towards the door.
“Saved by the bell,” she says, already bouncing away towards the lobby. “You might want to . . . wait a minute.”
“Yes,” I say, shifting in my seat. “Perhaps you had better get that one.”
* * *
? ? ? ? ?
We both end up having to wait tables over lunch. Izzy changes into her waitressing uniform in the lost-property room, leaving the door ajar, taunting me, tempting me to follow her inside. When she steps out to see me frozen in my seat, determinedly not looking, she gives me a smug look, as if to say, Couldn’t take the heat, then?
I imagine I’ll be safe waiting tables, but we pass so often, always close enough to brush arms, always locking eyes. I never lose her in that room—I know exactly where she is. At one point, as she moves past me into the kitchen, she whispers, “Slow day, Lucas? I’ve never seen you check the time so often.”
I am openly staring at her across the dining area when Mr. Townsend walks in. By the time I manage to redivert my attention to the specials board, he is regarding me with amused interest. I swallow.
“Can I help you, Mr. Townsend?” I ask. “Has there been a phone call?”
We’ve come to rely on Mr. Townsend this winter: he is the only person ever guaranteed to be in the lobby.
“It’s Budgens time,” he says.
Merda. I glance at the Bartholomew clock through the dining-room door, which is propped open so that Izzy and I can see the front desk. After some quick maths, I realise Mr. Townsend is right.
“Lunch service ends in half an hour,” I say. “I am all yours after that.”
“Lovely.” Mr. Townsend pauses. “Why don’t you bring Izzy?”
“We can’t spare her, I’m afraid.”
“I’d like her to come.”
I eye him with suspicion. He looks back at me with an expression of innocence that brings Izzy herself to mind.
“I might insist upon it, actually,” Mr. Townsend says. “I think stepping out of the hotel together would do us all some good.”
“Excuse me,” says a woman whose toddler is currently drawing shapes on the tablecloth with pea soup. “Please can I get the bill? Like, as soon as you can? Ideally right now?”
“Half an hour,” I say to Mr. Townsend. “In the lobby.”
“With Izzy.”
The man has more backbone than I’d expected.
“It’s up to her,” I say. “And Mrs. SB. And,” I add, as an afterthought, “Barty.”