Читать книгу The Morning After the Night Before - Nikki Logan - Страница 11

IZZY STARED AT the broad, tan back just an inch from her nose and totally got why people would do the legendary walk of shame after a one-night stand. It was all well and good in the heat and hormones of the moment with a virtual stranger, but in the cold hard light of morning it was just plain …

Awkward.

Some time in the night she’d slipped from her exhausted slump across Harry’s chest down between him and the wall. That made it impossible to get out of her small bed without clambering over him, naked and undignified, and tumbling off the other side. And the ornate foot of the tiny bed made sliding out feet-first just as problematic.

Entombed between plaster and hot male body.

Radiating male body. The longer she lay here, the more like a sauna her bed was feeling. Who needed central heating with Harry around?

She could wake him, but she wasn’t at all comfortable about him seeing her body—especially her least favourite bits—in the full light of morning. Not that the tiny boxroom window let in much light at all but it was certainly brighter than the steamy dark they’d shared last night.

So then … what? Lie here, clenching her bladder until Prince Harry, there, deigned to wake?

Screw that.

Izzy arched off the bed and reached one hand beneath herself, grasping the edge of her pretty duvet—king-sized on account of her old bed—then she begged her abdominal muscles to cooperate and pushed up into a sitting position, dragging the covers up with her.

Cool morning air rushed in behind her.

Clambering over Harry’s legs wasn’t quite as confronting as his hips and she twisted left—taking great care to keep the duvet between them—and half crawled, half rolled over his calves, her eyes firmly closed as she robbed him of covers.

She only opened them when the timber floor was beneath her feet and escape was in front of her.

‘Elegant,’ a sleep-thick voice rumbled from behind.

Busted.

‘You sleep like the dead,’ she muttered back over her shoulder, tugging on the pyjama bottoms that had tumbled to the floor from under her pillow with all the on-bed activity.

‘I wasn’t asleep. And you didn’t even try to wake me.’

‘I’ve been lying there, legs crossed, for eternity. You could have let on you were awake.’

It was clumsy but she managed to get her PJ top on, too, beneath the downy protection of her covers.

‘And miss the Cirque du Soleil dismount?’

She had landed with quite a flourish. She threw back her duvet and only turned back when she felt certain it would have fluttered down onto Harry sufficient for everyone’s modesty.

He tugged it back up around him for warmth. But the move looked too easy, as if he was settling in for a long stay. The rest of her squeezed up as tight as her bladder.

‘Do you want first run at the bathroom?’

God, how polite was she?

‘I went earlier,’ he drawled, his accent more pronounced in the morning.

That would explain when and how she’d slid off him into the cool embrace of the wall.

‘Bumped into duffel dude heading out before dawn. A friend of Poppy’s brother. I gather she wasn’t thrilled about him being here.’

So … this morning wasn’t surreal enough. Now her boss was filling her in on her own flat’s gossip. Her pulse started to panic.

‘Hold that thought,’ she said, holding up a hand.

The plethora of hanging things clattered against her door as she opened it and hurried into the bathroom.

Relief only took moments but Izzy hung out in there, standing on the toilet mat to stop her feet from chilling on the stone tile floor, gnawing on the inside of her cheek and desperately trying to pluck reality from this weird fantasy she’d found herself in.

What was the protocol here?

Should she ask him to leave? Should she ask him to stay? Should she invite him with her flatmates to breakfast later? All equally terrifying concepts. They’d had a fantastic night of what Tori would call ‘monkey sex’ and overall she was very pleased with her first crack at a one-night stand.

Possibly her last if this excruciating indecision was always waiting in the morning.

Why couldn’t he have just tiptoed out like the coward he probably was ?

Finger-combing her short hair and briefly checking her face for panda eyes, Izzy turned back for her bedroom and entered with the words already forming on her lips.

‘So—’

But she needn’t have bothered. Harry had re-donned his suit in the time she’d been hovering like a coward in the bathroom. He was just tucking his tie into his jacket pocket. As he did he pulled her ID card back out of it. And held it out.

‘So, see you Monday?’

She just blinked.

‘At the office?’

It hit her then. What he thought their single night had meant. How deluded he was. And how exceptionally arrogant.

She left his extended hand hanging. ‘I’m not coming back, Harry.’

‘Sure you are. We’ll get on fine now.’

Was he joking? ‘Now that we’ve broken the ice with the exchange of bodily fluids?’

Metaphorically. If not for the convenient condoms he’d produced.

He shrugged. ‘We know each other a bit more now. Have each other’s measure.’

Extremely intimate measure.

‘Are you suggesting that our bout of horizontal yoga has somehow increased your level of professional respect for me?’

The outstanding quality of last night’s activity really didn’t deserve her dismissive words. But Harry Mitchell sure did. He frowned. ‘Izzy—’

‘Miss Dean, to you, actually.’

Both his eyebrows shot up. ‘We have four orgasms between us. I think we’re a bit past Miss and Mister, don’t you?’

‘My friends call me Izzy.’

‘And what do your lovers call you?’

No. She wasn’t about to confess how little time she’d given to nurturing relationships with anyone. Let him think she did this all the time. Better than giving him any kind of hint that he might be special.

‘They don’t.’

‘I’m not surprised if this is how you handle the morning after.’

Yeah. She wasn’t dealing with this well at all. But the man was a boor when his mouth wasn’t occupied with kissing and related pleasures.

‘You know what? I think we should probably just call it a night.’

Or morning.

The dark brows sank back down again and then formed a deep frown. ‘I don’t understand what’s happened here. I thought you were cool with something casual.’

‘I’m not hoping for more!’ she shouted far louder than the early hour would recommend. ‘The fact that you think—in a million years—that sleeping with me was all that was required to fix the abysmal mess that is our workplace …’

Because that was exactly it. He believed she was the problem. He had no concept of his own flaws.

‘We talked,’ he said. ‘We got along.’

‘Hell freezes over infrequently. The chances of us getting along again are statistically smaller than before.’

Ah, numbers. The warm sanctuary of maths.

Harry slid the ID card back into his pocket. ‘You’re a strange one, Isadora Dean.’

She straightened until her spine almost cracked and curled her arms across her chest. ‘At least now I’m free to be as normal or as strange as I care. And you won’t need to trouble yourself with how I feel. Thanks for last night and all the best with your career.’

But he couldn’t let it go so easily. He moved towards the door and stopped, a bare inch from her, and breathed his parting words down onto her.

‘Just one correction, Izzy. I will always be troubled—intimately—by how you feel.’

‘He did not!’ Poppy’s forkful of scrambled eggs suspended just before it reached her gaping mouth.

‘I kid you not,’ Izzy said. ‘Those exact words.’

‘Oh, my God. What a fantastic line.’

‘Tori!’

‘Sorry, sorry,’ Tori placated. ‘I mean, bastard!’

‘Thank you.’

Around them, Ignite’s busiest time burbled on, people nicking in for takeaway coffee before their Saturday jobs, others settling in for a breakfast as leisurely as Izzy and her friends. It made a confidential conversation more challenging but the buzzing noise of customers, clanking crockery and the music pumping out of the café speakers afforded some level of privacy.

Izzy hastily brought them up to speed with the events of the previous night.

‘I have to say, Iz, given how thunderous your face was when I left the kitchen, this is not how I expected the rest of your evening to pan out.’

‘You and me both, Poppy.’

‘I can totally see it,’ Tori announced. ‘He was too cute. And that accent … sigh.’

‘If I didn’t know how clever you were, Toz, I’d be shaking my head now.’

‘What?’ She shrugged. ‘I just appreciate pretty things. So, was he purely ornamental or was he any good?’

Insane heat flooded up from under Izzy’s T-shirt.

‘We’ll take that as a yes.’ Poppy grinned.

‘I’m not comfortable talking about this.’

‘You started it,’ Poppy pointed out reasonably.

‘I mean I’m not comfortable talking about the … details.’

‘I’m sure Prince Harry isn’t similarly constrained this morning.’

No. He wouldn’t be. Something told her one-night stands came much more naturally to him.

‘Look at it this way, Iz,’ Tori started. ‘Do you have feelings for him?’

‘Not good ones,’ she muttered.

‘Did he treat you well when you were his employee?’

He’d treated her with the same under-informed judgement she’d battled all her youth. ‘Not overly.’

‘Did he ever donate a kidney to you?’

An eyebrow lift was better than an answer. Not that Tori was waiting for one.

‘And do you ever plan on seeing him again?’

‘Absolutely not.’

‘Then you owe him nothing, least of all your confidence.’

And that was why Izzy had been Tori’s friend since sixth form, when she’d first arrived at Trenton as a scholarship entry. Unassailable logic, no matter how disguised beneath the crazy hair.

‘I guess not.’

‘So spill!’

She glanced between her two best friends, opened her mouth for a mute heartbeat and then just let the words tumble. All about how good Harry had been. All about how feminine she’d felt when she was in his arms and how forbidden it all was. How she should have done the whole one-night-stand thing long before now, and how she would categorically not be doing it again. About how she was still secretly thrumming from his touch and more than a little sore in more than a few places.

About what a jerk he was.

The girls listened intently, exclaimed or squeezed her arm in the right places and generally fulfilled their obligations under the universal BFF contract.

‘So Mitchell sucks in the office but rocks it in bed,’ Tori summarised.

‘Pretty much.’

‘Well, context is everything,’ Poppy rationalised. ‘And clearly he comes into his own one-on-one.’

My wordy lordy, yes.

Until he spoke.

Ignite’s maître d’, Marco, swung by their table to check on their breakfasts and chatted for a few moments. But the impatience stamped clearly on their three faces soon sent him drifting professionally off to be charming to someone else.

‘So … I saw a few half-hearted circles in the positions vacant section of yesterday’s paper,’ Poppy nudged. ‘Anything interesting?’

‘Plenty of jobs if I want to do the same thing I’ve been doing for years.’

‘And you don’t?’

Nope. Not even a little bit. ‘Time for something new.’

‘Out of finance?’

‘I still love numbers but … not in