detached.
‘Not for long. Just until her train makes it through, then it’ll be on with the Christmas shopping weekend.’
‘I thought you didn’t do Christmas,’ he said.
He was referring to the fact that back in Devon she’d turned the festive season into nothing more than a work opportunity, waiting table or bartending all the hours she could muster, all geared towards glossing over the fact that there was actually anything to celebrate. She was surprised he remembered that kind of detail about her and had assumed his recollections would be all about the bedroom.
‘I don’t.’ She shrugged. ‘Liz won a competition. A weekend for two Christmas shopping in London. She asked me along.’ She glanced around the beautifully-finished opulence of the Spa. ‘It seemed a shame to turn her down for a principle. Shame she’s running late.’
He settled himself back on the wicker lounger next to hers, propped up on one elbow to face her, clearly intent on a proper conversation. And what the hell, maybe if she got it over with, did the whole small talk catch-up chat, he would leave her be.
‘So how’ve you been?’ he asked. She thought she saw genuine interest in his eyes now. ‘You had another waitressing job lined up didn’t you? Back in Devon. Did you finish college?’
A smile rose on her lips as she remembered her former self. Big dreams. Not on his scale of course with his medical training and his father’s footsteps, but big for her who’d dropped out of school and drifted from one temp job to the next.
‘I did,’ she said. ‘I did the jewellery course. I’m surprised you remember.’
A brief hesitation and then she held her small hand out towards him, a swirl of beaten silver on her forefinger. Without thinking he took it in his; the resulting flip in his chest at the touch of her soft skin took his breath away. When had he last been this on edge with a woman? His love life had been a bit of an afterthought these last months as his family piled on the work pressure. Without realising what he was doing he automatically checked beside the silver ring for a wedding band. There was none. She withdrew her hand and he let it go.
‘I sell some of it online now,’ she said. ‘I’ve been trying to build up a business but it takes time. I do craft fairs, that kind of thing. And in between I still give good waitress.’ She smiled. ‘What about you?’
He shrugged.
‘After you left Christmas went pretty much as planned. Then I went back and got on with my medical training.’
Again, pretty much as planned. As planned played a big part in his life.
She smiled. Her light brown hair was pinned up on her head and she wore a blue and white striped bikini which was far from skimpy but which still did nothing to hide her slender frame and long legs. Just looking at her like that made heat begin to course through him.
‘We’re from different worlds, you and me,’ she said. ‘You had your rugby playing, your future medical career, your public school background, your family, your life plans. I waited tables at a hotel in Ilfracombe that Christmas and I was sofa surfing my way around my friends. It’s amazing we ever hooked up at all really.’
He remembered that. How she’d had no real base, no family ties, and most of all how she made that seem liberating instead of lonely.
She looked away, and he followed her gaze back across the glassy surface of the swimming pool.
‘For a while I stayed with my Gran at this time of year but now I just go wherever the mood takes me,’ she said. ‘Last year I waitressed in a hotel in the Lakes – the Christmas lights were just the prettiest thing ever, but it was freezing cold. Even more than this. The year before that I did charity work in a soup kitchen and the year before THAT I was working my way round France.’
She counted off the Christmases on her fingers. He only needed one finger for his last four Christmases. Every single one had been the same.
‘And this year?’
‘I’m doing this weekend with my friend Liz. She entered some competition on the back of a breakfast cereal packet. It’s supposedly for Christmas shopping, all expenses paid and some spending money thrown in. But I’m going to try and drag her round the sights a bit. Shopping’s not really my thing.’
‘What about after this weekend?’
‘Well then I’m working again. I’ve got a waitressing gig back in Cornwall. In Looe. I lived there for a while with my Gran. Brilliant time for earning, Christmas, if you’ve got nowhere else you need to be. My speciality is unsociable hours. When this weekend is over I’m booked up right through Christmas and New Year, I’ll barely have a minute to think. Whereas you’ll probably be having cocktails at sundown and a leisurely break – right?’ She sat back in her lounger and looked at him with interest. ‘Come on then, give me a rundown of your last four Christmases.’
‘Well I don’t need to use my fingers to count them off, if that’s what you mean,’ he said. ‘Touch down in Barbados a few days before Christmas. Catch up with friends and family. Head back after New Year.’
His tone was throwaway, unenthusiastic. Then again, mustering up excitement when you’d done the same thing year on year since you were a kid couldn’t be easy.
‘Your life is one big déjà vu,’ she said, and seeing the fed-up expression on his face she couldn’t resist adding, ‘And where’s the fun in that?’
There was a spark in his eyes as he held her gaze a moment too long and smiled, and she realised, too late, that he’d considered that comment a flirt. She whipped her eyes back down to her magazine, feeling warmth rise in her cheeks. She really ought to get her mouth under control and get this encounter over with right now.
‘I’d better get back,’ she said. ‘Check my phone, see when Liz is getting here.’
She tossed the magazine onto a low wicker table and climbed off the lounger, being careful to swing her legs off onto the floor first to avoid giving an impression of beached whale. And since she really didn’t have the confidence or the heeled wedges to pull off flouncing out in a bikini, she settled for wrapping the towel around her hips sarong style. She could feel his eyes on her as she walked away from him and then, just as she thought she was home-free, in her fluster she managed to take the left turn toward the crystal steam room instead of the right turn into the ladies’ changing room.
The option was there, of course, to scuttle back the other way, thereby losing the unruffled poise she was doing her best to channel. But he’d shown no sign of following her so instead she opened the glass door and sat down on the tiled bench in the small square room, letting the hot mist wash over her skin. She could while away five minutes in here and then nip off to the showers with her poise intact.
She had the steam room to herself and she sat back with a sigh on the bench and leaned her head against the smooth tile of the wall. Closing her eyes, she breathed in the soothing scent of the aromatherapy oils clinging to the steam.
And then the glass door slid open and closed, letting the steam clear a little, and she was looking through the mist right at him.
Oh hell.
***
He ignored the empty bench
