Page 10 of Kiss Me Like You Mean It

I pick up the phone again with renewed determination.

‘Hi, I’d like to add a couple of things to our room service order.’

Chapter Four

Lee

Wiping some of the steam off the bathroom mirror, I eye my reflection sternly.

‘You can do this. Just be cool.’

I have literally never been cool in my life, but maybe now, when I have woken up in bed with the man I’ve been in love with for as long as I can remember, when I have no clue how I got there, and when I’m nursing the hangover to end all hangovers, is the moment I’ll pull it off.

Seems unlikely.

I close my eyes and, unbidden, the image of a shirtless Nico appears. I’ll probably be haunted by his perfect, sculpted torso for the rest of my days. That picture of him might be tattooed permanently inside my eyelids and I just have to live with that now – with the knowledge of the hard planes of muscle, of the black ink that decorates his upper arms, of the deep v-lines where his obliques meet his transversus abdominis and the dusting of hair heading down towards…

Nope.

My eyes spring open. My cheeks are flushed, a vibrant wash of pink against the deathly pallor of my skin. I think again about the fact that he slept in his jeans. That information, coupled with the pineapple-patterned strait-jacket he had clearly bundled me into, makes it mortifyingly plausible that I could have thrown myself at him last night. There’s every possibility that he had to fight off my advances.

Oh, god.

Live a little, I said. What could be the harm? I said.

This. This is the harm. What if I told him? What if I confessed all of my pathetic lovelorn feelings? What if I unleashed twenty-six years of pining all over him last night? I know I said I wanted to shake things up, to step out of my comfort zone, but I don’t think there’s any way to recover from this. I grip the side of the beautiful marble sink and force myself to take several deep breaths.

When I finally summon up the courage to leave the bathroom, the bedroom is empty. The sheets have been pulled back into some sort of order, my clothes – which had been strewn across the floor – are neatly folded.

Has Nico gone? Has he actually run away? Before I can start to spiral about that too much, I catch the sound of someone moving around in the next room. He hasn’t run away, he’s giving me some privacy after being forced to listen to me throw my guts up in the fancy Japanese toilet.

‘Are you okay in there?’ Nico calls from somewhere near the door.

‘Fine!’ I reply brightly. ‘Totally fine, just… fine!’

It’s possible that the three ‘fines’ in a row have made me sound, in fact, very not fine.

Making short work of ditching my giant, fluffy white bathrobe, I tug on a pair of trousers and a soft, grey shirt. My clothes feel like a layer of armour, and in the mirror, I look like the unruffled professional I’ve tricked everyone into thinking I am. Everything is neatly pressed, there’s not a single hair out of place. I even slip my feet into a pair of heels.

It was my mother who had been intent on teaching me to walk in four-inch heels as a young teenager. (‘It’s no use clomping around like an elephant or whingeing about blisters,’ she’d said, her tone very drill-sergeant-at-a-military-academy. ‘Beauty is pain, Ophelia, but it’s also power. You need to know how to wield it.’)

I guess deportment classes are a weird mother–daughter bonding tradition, but it’s as close as we ever got. Thanks to Caroline Turner, I probably have nerve damage in my feet, but I could also do the hundred metre sprint in these Louboutins if I had to. These days I wear them so often for the boost of courage they give me, that I think at some point I’ll take them off and find I stay up on my tiptoes like a Barbie doll.

I look down at the shiny shoes, gleaming black as midnight, sharp as a knife. These are not the shoes of a woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown, I tell myself. These are the shoes of a powerful badass.

Drawing my shoulders back, I make my way to the doors that open into the enormous living area.

Nico is sprawled on the L-shaped sofa, looking out through another wall of glass that frames incredible views of the city. He appears a little shell-shocked by his surroundings and I can’t blame him. When Frankie insisted on putting me up in the hotel’s most ludicrous suite for the week, I told him it was unnecessary, but I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t enjoyed living in such luxury.

Speaking of too much… the six-seater dining table is practically groaning under the weight of the food Nico has ordered. There are plates of gently steaming bacon, scrambled eggs, sausages, a pile of pastries, a basket full of toast. There are platters of fruit, mile-high stacks of pancakes and an actual pyramid of glazed donuts.

My stomach gives an uncertain lurch, but I’m not sure it’s totally down to the breakfast buffet.

Nico looks over and smiles.

‘Hey,’ he says, jumping up and grabbing a glass off the coffee table in front of him. ‘The hotel’s surefire hangover cure. I didn’t enquire about the ingredients. They said something about vitamins, but it tastes like rocket fuel. Did the trick, though. I only feel ninety per cent like giving up on life now.’

He’s so relaxed, so absolutely un-self-conscious. I wonder if he’s already realised that this giant suite has another bedroom, that despite that fact we still woke up in bed together.