“Perfect,” Mrs. SB says, closing her eyes.
No, not perfect. Not perfect at all.
As we leave Opal Cottage, Izzy walks ahead of me, and I catch her up in a few strides, putting a hand on her arm. She jumps, turning. The rain has eased a little, and neither of us has put up our umbrellas for the short walk back to the hotel. Izzy folds her arms to pull her coat close around her.
“Yes?” she says. “What is it?”
“Hello.” I try to hold her gaze, but it slides away from me again. “So we are not going to talk about it? At all?”
“That’s what we decided, wasn’t it?”
“We decided to remain professional at work.” I dig the point of my umbrella into the grass, my knuckles tight on the handle. “I only see you at work. Does that mean we never speak of it again?”
“We can speak about it, if you think we need to.” She glances up at me. “Do we need to?”
I don’t know. I want to apologise to her for not making it more romantic, but she never wanted romance from me. She’ll get that from Louis tonight, presumably. I swallow, glancing back towards Opal Cottage. Its chimney is smoking, the Christmas tree visible in the left-hand window. We’re standing just outside the front garden, beneath the old oak tree.
“So I’m out of your system now?” I ask, looking back at her. I shift the handle of my umbrella to and fro between my palms, and she watches my hands.
“Mm-hmm,” she says. “Yeah, all sorted. Same for you?”
Something in her voice gives me pause. Carefully, deliberately, I try stepping closer. She stays where she is, eyes flicking to mine. Wary, but also excited, I think. I recall how pink-cheeked and fidgety she was when we first arrived at the cottage, and I let myself wonder if Izzy has been thinking about me as much as I’ve been thinking about her today.
“No, Izzy. You’re not out of my system.”
It’s raining more heavily again, pattering at the branches above us. I reach out to brush a raindrop from her cheek with one slow swipe of my thumb.
She inhales at the contact, gaze fixed to mine, but she doesn’t move away, so I keep my hand there, framing her face. My heart starts to beat in the low, stubborn, insistent tempo it always hits when I’m close enough to kiss her. I watch for those small shifts that tell me what Izzy’s body wants. How she straightens a little, as though pulled towards me, and how her pupils dilate. After just one frantic evening in a car, I can already read Izzy’s body better than I’ve ever read her mind.
“But you’re done with me, are you?” I ask.
“What did you think would happen? We’d have sex and I’d suddenly find you irresistible?” she says, but her voice catches in her throat, and my confidence grows. She didn’t answer my question.
“You’ve found me irresistible for some time,” I say, then I smile as her eyes flare with irritation. With me and Izzy, there’s always been a fine line between pissed off and turned on. “That was the problem, wasn’t it?”
“I wouldn’t say . . .” she begins, and then she trails off.
I’ve stepped closer, and she’s backed up against the bark of the oak tree, her hair sparkling with rainwater, her chest rising and falling fast.
“Lucas,” she whispers.
My heart is thundering now. I lift my hand from her cheek and brace my forearm against the tree above her head to hold a few inches of distance between our bodies. She looks up at me, lips parted. I can see the shift in her eyes, the moment she relaxes. She’s letting go. Forgetting about real life, remembering about me. I’d expect it to make me feel triumphant, but instead I feel an unexpected clench of emotion—I love that her body trusts mine.
“Tell me to Fuck right off, Lucas, and I’m gone,” I whisper, dipping my mouth to hover above the soft, secret place on her neck that I learned about last night. “Tell me you’re done with me.”
“I’m . . .”
She doesn’t finish. I reward the admission with a hot kiss to her cold skin, and she moans.
“What did you think would happen?” I repeat her question back to her, my mouth against her skin. “That we’d have sex and suddenly we’d be able to resist each other?”
The door to Opal Cottage slams and we move as one: she twists away from me as I push back from the tree, lunging for my umbrella when it slips from my hand.
“You tell Barclays they can shove it up their arses!” Barty shouts as he makes his way up the path. “Oh, hello, you two,” he says, rounding the corner and finding us hovering guiltily beneath the tree. “Off back to the hotel?”