Czytaj książkę: «Your Room or Mine?:»

CHAPTER 1

Izzy Shaw glanced around the hotel lobby full of loved-up couples revelling in the sumptuous luxury and wondered in what universe she’d thought a night here by herself could succeed where ice-cream, wine and support sessions with the girls had failed.

To pass the time as she queued for check-in, and to strengthen her resolve, she mentally ran through the list she’d made of Joe’s faults, which according to her friend Shauna should be referred to at moments of weakness.

1) Leaves boxer shorts on the floor.

2) Watches more than one show at once on TV resulting in infuriating flicking of remote control.

3) Obsessive preoccupation with major football events plus outrageous cash outlay on season ticket.

4) Leaves toilet door open.

5) Has one night stands while supposedly working away.

Of course, that last one was the only one that really counted. She’d put up with all the others for three years, none of them had been deal breakers.

She reached down for the handle of her overnight bag and moved up two spaces in the line. The couple in front of her were so closely entwined together that she could hardly tell where one person stopped and the other began. As she watched the girl nuzzled into her partner’s neck and Izzy averted her eyes and stared at the glossy marble floor.

Urgh! Get a room!

She supposed that’s exactly what they were doing. Just as she would have been, in that parallel universe where Joe hadn’t let her down.

A few nights in the company of her friends in the wake of her discovery of Joe’s betrayal had certainly filled her with temporary bravado. Opting to take this night away herself as a pamper break instead of just cutting her losses and cancelling had seemed like a great idea when she was buoyed up by wine and chocolate and pep talks.

‘It’ll just be a waste of a good room if you don’t go,’ Shauna had insisted. ‘You won’t get the money back now. It’s luxurious, it’s expensive and best of all it’s got the perfect access for Selfridges and Harvey Nicks. An evening in the spa, a gourmet dinner and then you shop until you drop. You’ll be over him within 24 hours.’

The moment six months ago when she’d booked this place flashed into her mind. Just great. Because what she really needed right now was a flashback to a time when Joe had been everything to her. She gritted her teeth hard. This was her Reinvention Mini-Break, her Get-Strong Mini-Break. It was NOT the planned Izzy-and-Joe’s Surprise Romantic Mini-Break. Plans could change.

People could change too.

She reached the front of the line. She carried her bag to the Receptionist and forced a smile across the high marble counter.

‘I have a booking in the name of ‘Shaw’,’ she said.

The receptionist pressed buttons, nodded efficiently.

‘I have a table booked in the restaurant for tonight,’ the receptionist said. ‘And a His and Hers Spa Treatment.’

She’d forgotten about that. The lobby seemed suddenly too warm.

‘Can I change the Spa treatment?’ she said, trying to keep her voice as muted as possible. There was zero privacy at the crowded check-in desk. ‘Something a bit more…’ she groped for the right description and failed. ‘For one?’ she said.

The receptionist glanced up, clearly taking in the fact that she was alone. The warmth of a blush crept upwards from her neck. She might as well have stood on the counter and announced to the room that she was unexpectedly single.

‘I’m afraid the His-and-Hers Treatment is part of the Romantic Getaway Package,’ the receptionist said, not bothering to lower her voice. ‘I can cancel it of course, but I can’t swap it for anything else.’

Izzy stared at her.

‘Of course, you’re welcome to book additional treatments as you like, they will be charged individually. If you’d care to ring down to the Spa when you’ve checked in, they can give you a list.’

‘Fine,’ Izzy said. ‘Please can I just get checked in?’

‘And would you like me to cancel the His-and-Hers…’ she glanced at the screen ‘…Massage?’

‘Cancel it!’ Izzy snapped. ‘Just cancel it. Not a problem.’

She felt eyes upon her and glanced sideways. A few feet away a man was being checked in by the other receptionist. Standing out, like her, singleton among cosy couples. Thick dark hair, lightly tousled. Strong jaw. Dark suit so sharply cut it had to be crushingly expensive. Broad shoulders and a chiselled handsome face that had the receptionist fawning over him. Izzy registered the ghost of a smile on his lips as he looked at her, clearly listening in on every word.

Her heart, broken of course and so not working as it should, upped its pace in her chest because he really was gorgeous. In fact if her head, still channelling anger, hadn’t reminded her that Joe had used his nights away with work to bed random women, then her jaw might have hit the polished counter top as it dropped. Was this how he used to behave – eyeing up women at hotel receptions, picking the perfect candidate? She snapped her eyes away.

Think about the shopping, Izzy. Think about complimentary chocolates in the room with no need to worry anymore that they might go straight to your hips…

‘Would you like help with your luggage?’

‘No, thank you.’

She didn’t want help with her luggage or complimentary newspapers or to be stared at by other guests, especially drop-dead gorgeous ones with possibly dubious motives. She wanted to get to her room and pull herself together.

****

At last taking the keycard from the receptionist, she swung around, handbag hooked into one hand, holdall in the other, and crossed the lobby towards the stairs. A misjudged glance back, just a general glance of course, definitely NOT to see if Mr Dark-Tousled-Hair was still looking at her, and she somehow managed to catch her overstuffed holdall in the enormous plant stupidly located at the corner of the sweeping staircase. It promptly toppled off its ornate circular table and emptied itself onto the deep pile rug at her feet.

The buzz of noise in the lobby dropped a notch as people turned to look. Izzy’s face burned hotter than ever. What kind of moron had placed a plant there of all places?

Exasperated, she shoved her bags to one side and knelt down on the carpet to set about picking it up, feeling the eyes of everyone in the lobby burning into her back. Soil dusted her hands and collected beneath her fingernails.

A pair of hands appeared next to hers and helped her right the pot and ease the plant back into it. Big strong hands, a dark-stoned signet ring on the left little finger. Surely too expensive to belong to the scrawny concierge, who had looked about twelve. She glanced up, straight into the hazel eyes of the man from the check-in desk. His eyes crinkled softly at the corners as he smiled at her and her stomach gave a slow and traitorous backflip. She snapped her eyes back down to the black soil littering the carpet and rearranged her face into what she hoped was a neutral expression.

Scooping soil up between her hands, she thrust it back in the pot, pressing gently to reseat the plant. The schoolboy concierge joined them.

‘I’m really sorry,’ she told him. ‘I just caught it with my case and tipped it over.’

‘No problem, madam.’

‘It should be fine but still you might want to consider repotting it,’ she added automatically, the part of her that spent her entire working life around plants taking over. ‘It looks to me like it might be potbound – did you see there were mostly roots there rather than soil? And some of the leaves are turning yellow?’

The concierge stared at her as if she were an alien. Her shoulders sagged. Why was she bothering?

‘Sorry,’ she mumbled and grabbed her bags, leaving the remains of the mess behind her as she took the stairs.

She was a few steps up when she realised the man from check-in was keeping pace next to her.

‘Thanks,’ she said, because he was wearing a suit and still he hadn’t hesitated to get soil under his nails on her behalf.

‘You’re welcome,’ he said. ‘You obviously know your way around pot plants.’ His voice was deep and smooth. A voice that could draw you in.

‘Not literally, unfortunately,’ she said.

He smiled and she offered a polite smile back.

‘I’m a gardener,’ she said, turning at the first landing. He stayed alongside her.

‘Really? You don’t look like a gardener.’

‘What does a gardener look like?’

He shrugged.

‘Sweaty, old jeans, grimy hands, crack of butt on show.’

She laughed.

‘Yeah well, it is my day off,’ she said.

He smiled a delicious lop-sided smile that lifted the left corner of his mouth and crinkled the warm hazel eyes at the corners. A smile that had meaning beyond politeness.

Izzy looked away as her heart gave a skip of triumph, such a long-forgotten sensation that it nearly brought her to a standstill.

He was flirting with her.

When had she last flirted with anyone? Three years of pouring herself into work, building her business up from scratch. Joe doing the same, working all hours, both of them with their shared future in mind. A deposit on a house perhaps, a bit further down the line. The first cautious steps towards proper visible commitment. More than just that denoted by length of time.

Correction: what she’d thought was their shared future in mind.

Turned out putting in the hard work for Joe had been too much like…well, like hard work. Her heart froze again towards him, a cold hardening in her chest that made her throat contract and her eyes tingle.

She flashed a smile at the man walking next to her along the ornate galleried landing. Why not respond? What was there to stop her? It was so nice just to be found attractive – something that had been called into question deep inside her since she’d discovered Joe’s betrayal.

It hadn’t helped that she’d discovered the full horror of Joe’s infidelity after a particularly long hard day working on the McNulty garden. There had been soil in her unkempt hair, dirt under her fingernails and across one cheek, and Joe hadn’t missed the chance to build his defence on exactly that. Then again, did she think she might somehow have felt better about him playing away if she’d been dressed up to the nines with her hair and make-up done? Idiot. She was too work-obsessed, he’d said, she never made any effort to look good for him anymore, she’d stopped being fun. All comments designed to make him feel better about his behaviour by making her feel worse.

Human nature. That didn’t stop it from hurting.

And so a bit of harmless attention from a man who looked like an off-duty aftershave model with his open-necked white shirt, perfect suit, tousled hair and lop-sided smile was just the thing to kick off the Make-Izzy-Strong Reinvention Mini-Break.

‘I’m this way,’ she smiled at him, coming to a stop and tilting her chin at the sign on the wall listing room numbers. He inclined his head almost imperceptibly, the hazel eyes holding her own for just a beat too long. Her stomach, now awakened, wasn’t about to quit and gave a slow and delicious flip.

‘Oliver Forbes,’ he said, holding out his right hand. Easy for him, he had minimal luggage.

She looked from his hand to his face. The smile was still there. She shifted her case from one hand to the other and shook hands briefly with him.

‘Izzy,’ she said. ‘Thanks again for before.’

Oliver Forbes watched from the corner of his eye as she held her head high and lugged her own bags down the passage, key card poised in her hand.

Her unease in the lobby had been almost palpable, drawing in his attention until the rest of the bustle around him seemed to pale into the background. Her finger-drumming impatience at the bureaucracies of check-in, the blush of embarrassment as she cleared up after knocking the plant flying that managed to highlight her porcelain skin so prettily. She was clearly desperate to escape to her room.

He wasn’t usually given to noticing such detail.

Then again, he’d been knocked off-centre by the tedium of taking a hotel stay when what he’d wanted, what he’d expected was the work to have been finished on his new house in Highgate by the moment he chose to move into it. Turned out his travel and business commitments had lulled his supposedly impeccable team of contractors into a false sense of security over the urgency of the work. Not good enough. Heads would roll.

In the meantime, since he faced a few more days without his private refuge, a face like hers with its blush touching the smooth cheekbones and its tiny spray of golden freckles on her nose, was a welcome distraction.

Gardener? Really?

He took in her appearance as she walked away. Softly curving figure, long legs, healthy-looking rather than skinny. Honey coloured hair gathered loosely at the nape of her neck, touched gold at the ends by the sun. Lightly sun-kissed cheeks and nose beneath minimal make-up. No jewellery, no nail varnish, no accessories. Suddenly her stated profession seemed more plausible.

He wondered what she was doing, checking in alone to her booking for two. He’d barely registered anything his own receptionist had said, it had been far more interesting to listen to Izzy’s discomfort at check-in. Damsels in Distress – his particular weakness.

Because where there was fluster, there was always a way in.

****

Izzy slid the door key card into the slot and pushed the panelled door open, still enjoying the afterglow of his attention. The smile on her face faded on her lips as she leaned back against the closing door and drew in a long breath.

‘Oh hell,’ she muttered out loud.

So the Spa Treatment wasn’t an end to it. In the course of the joint brainwave with her friends to turn the intended surprise night away with Joe into a Get-Over-Him Mini-Break for herself, she had failed to remember that she’d booked the hotel’s Romantic Getaway Package for two.

It wasn’t called that for nothing.

Was there anything in this room that wasn’t his-and-hers? Her eyes took in matching white fluffy bathrobes and waffle slippers, two crystal flutes stood next to the complimentary champagne. And as she walked into the adjoining bathroom she was greeted by Jack-n-Jill sinks.

She stared at her own dismayed face in the ornate scrolled mirror above them. How the hell was she meant to stop thinking about Joe when this whole place was a made-for-two luxury nightmare that mocked her from every angle?