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?
IZZY SHAW’S GET-OVER-THE-BASTARD ACTION LIST
1) Enlist friends for supportive esteem-building summit meetings.
2) Stock up on wine and ice cream and eat/drink without regard for calorie counting.
3) Calculate budget for Joe’s intended birthday and Christmas gifts and spend said amount on treating self to new clothes.
4) eBay his collection of football programmes and add profit to own treat-budget.
5) Make list of all Joe’s faults for reference at weak moments.
6) Block him on Facebook and delete all texts and messages from him before responding.
7)
