21. Steak and Kidney Pie
STEAK AND KIDNEY PIE
*sometimes comfort food is whatever gets you through the night.
I ’d never been an easy sleeper. Joni slept like an eggbeater, which meant that until I was eight, I got kicked at least twice a night and often woke up perpendicular to how I’d originally fallen asleep.
But even after we finally got separate beds, I would frequently stay up hours after my bedtime, worrying about all kinds of things.
What would happen when my mother got out of prison?
Would my brother be killed when he went to war?
What would happen in the event of a fire, a burglary, a blizzard, or any other emergencies my adolescent brain could conjure?
As an adult, it still took a lot of mental coaxing to succumb to fatigue, and my struggle was made even worse when I traveled, which meant that even though Lucas offered the guest room on the jet for the fifteen-hour flight to London, I didn’t sleep.
Not a wink.
Also not great, since I hadn’t slept even an hour after our interlude in the hot spring.
A consummate coward, I had spent the entire flight binging Chef’s Table episodes and completely ignoring the six feet, threeish inches of broodiness on the other side of the cabin door with the ability to bring me to orgasm in five minutes flat, who called me Sweet Marie like I belonged to him.
I also ignored the fact that his brother, whom a month ago I would have sworn was my soulmate, had sent me two more texts since our last exchange, consisting of the following:
Im thinking bagels for sure
Send me pic?
I was pretty sure the first one wasn’t even for me. And the second, well, let’s just say after I looked up exactly what those emojis meant, I felt somehow both better and worse about what had happened in the onsen.
I took a polite selfie just before we boarded but didn’t notice until after I sent it that Lucas was scowling in the background. There had been no reply, although another ill-advised Google search revealed a few more pictures of Daniel in the Hamptons with an actress and two models.
Maybe Lucas was right, and I didn’t need to feel bad after all.
Or maybe I did.
I honestly could not tell.
Lucas looked just as exhausted as I did when the plane touched down at a private airfield south of London.
His suit was wrinkled, his hair mussed from running his hands through it during phone calls, and there were dark circles under his eyes that bespoke poor sleep that had nothing to do with jet lag.
I still wanted to climb the man like a tree.
Bad Marie. Bad, bad Marie.
This was what they called a “sexual awakening,” right? I had never understood the way Joni used to miss curfew for her boyfriends or go home with a stranger because she “needed to get laid.” But now?
I owed my sister a lot of apologies.
Because I couldn’t stop thinking about the texture of my boss’s lips or the exact length of his?—
“Almost there,” Robbie called from the front of the Rolls we were taking to the hotel in London that would be our residence for the next ten days.
Lucas had been watching landmarks like Big Ben and the Eye of London come into view with a look approximating dread.
For what, I didn’t know.
“Do you think I could have a different night off while we’re here?” I asked.
I’d been getting every Sunday off since we’d started this trip, just like at home, but I hadn’t really done much with the time other than watch movies and sleep in.
Lucas turned like he’d just realized I was there. “Of course. Do you have plans?”
“I’d like to see my sister while we’re here, but I’m not sure what her schedule is.”
“Francesca, right? But her family calls her Frankie.”
I held back a smile. Lucas had apparently memorized all my family members’ names, though he’d never met any of them.
Sometimes I wasn’t sure if Daniel still remembered mine.
“That’s right. She had a baby, and I’d like to see my nephew.”
He didn’t answer, and for a second, I wondered if he was waiting for me to invite him along.
Even stranger, I sort of wanted to.
The car pulled to a stop, and Robbie hopped out to check us in. We were just stepping onto the curb when he returned, looking like he was going to his own execution.
“Mr. Lyons?”
Lucas turned, his brow furrowed. He told all his staff to call him Lucas, so if his last name was being used, it was probably bad. “Yes?”
“I’m so sorry, sir. So very, very sorry . But there’s been a mistake with the reservation. As in…they don’t have it anymore.”
The hotel clerk didn’t want to screw up Lucas’s reservation. And Robbie certainly didn’t want to be out of a job.
Nevertheless, they both looked legitimately worried that they were going to be out on the street in a matter of minutes if things weren’t cleared up fast.
“I double-checked this,” Robbie hissed as we stood at the reception desk of the nicest hotel in London while Lucas tried to talk the concierge into freeing up our space.
“I swear, I triple-checked it. Quadruple-checked it. It’s like half my job on this trip.
I come two days early to make freaking sure we have the right rooms, the right cars, the right everything!
” He was hyperventilating by the time he was finished.
“Lucas knows that,” I told him. “I’m sure it will be fine.”
Unfortunately, it wasn’t.
The problem wasn’t just that the hotel system had apparently eaten all the reservations for our group, including the penthouse suite for me and Lucas, plus adjoining suites for Robbie and the security members.
The problem was that on the same weekend we were in London, there were three major business summits (all of which Lucas was attending in varying capacities), two music festivals, and a major NATO meeting that meant every hotel, Airbnb, and hostel within a fifty-mile radius of the city were booked solid.
“What do you mean, it’s occupied ?” Lucas’s voice was dangerously quiet.
The Prideview staff had joked about this version of their boss a lot over the years, but it was the first time I’d really seen the Ice Man for real.
The receptionist’s poshly accented voice trembled as she stared at her computer screen like it had betrayed her.
“I’m terribly sorry, Mr. Lyons. A head of state has taken residence there for security reasons,” she explained, her hands fluttering over her keyboard.
“I’m afraid I can’t disclose who, but the Prime Minister’s security detail insisted on the entire floor.
We simply have no available rooms. No one does. ”
Robbie shoved his face into his hands. “I’m going to be fired. I’m going to lose my job and be homeless on the streets of London like a Dickens character. Or Paddington Bear.”
“You are not. I’ll talk to him.” I walked up to Lucas and smiled sweetly when he turned that scowl onto me. “Hey.”
The scowl lessened. A little. “Hey.”
“Why don’t I call my sister and see if she and Xavier have space for us? They have a huge apartment in Mayfair, plus Xavier’s family owns another house somewhere outside of London too. I bet we could all squeeze in for a few days.”
Lucas looked genuinely befuddled by the idea. “Would they do that?”
I nodded and pulled out my phone. “Sure. That’s what family does.”
Or would, if Frankie would pick up her phone.
“Hey!” I began leaving a message after my third try.
“Call me back ASAP, okay? The hotel screwed up the reservations for my boss and our group, and we need a place to crash for a night until we can sort out something else. There are five of us here. Was hoping you and Xavier could help us out. Love you, bye!”
I sent the same message via text and turned back to the concierge. Lucas was now pacing the lobby while Robbie was back on his own phone, hissing at some other hotel worker at another place.
The concierge looked like she wanted to melt into a puddle and drown.
“Listen, Rita, is it? Pretty name,” I tried to speak like we were friends.
And also like I was Joni flirting her way out of a ticket.
“There has to be something we can do here. A conference room. A broom closet. This—my boss—he’s not the kind of person you want to just leave on the street, you know? ”
She did seem to know as she typed something into the computer. “I’m sorry. I keep refreshing cancellations, and there’s just—oh! One room just popped up. A standard room with two double beds. And there are cots we can set up in the storage room for three others if we can’t find another room.”
She sounded incredibly relieved. I didn’t blame her.
I slapped my hand on the counter. “We’ll take it.” I turned to Robbie and waved him over.
He looked like he had just spotted a gold mine as I told him about the situation.
“I’ll take cots with Joe and Barney. You and Lucas can take the room,” I suggested to Robbie.
“Absolutely not.” Lucas’s voice cut through our discussion. “Marie will stay with me. Robbie, you and the guys can take the cots.”
His commands brooked no argument, but I could see guilt in his expression. Poor Robbie was going to spend the night in an actual broom closet because of a booking mix-up that wasn’t his fault.
“Lucas,” I tried, keeping my tone low. “Really, it’s okay. It makes more sense for you two to share a room since he has to travel with you, and?—”
“You are not. Spending the night. In a fucking storage room,” he gritted through his teeth. “Isn’t that right, Robbie?”
Robbie looked so relieved that we had anywhere to sleep that I had a feeling he would have curled up in a cardboard box if Lucas had asked him. “Absolutely. And it’s just for one night. I promise, by tomorrow, I’ll have something much better figured out.”
He turned to the concierge and immediately started arguing about comping us the room and getting whatever other perks were possible while Lucas and I grabbed our bags. I tried Frankie again, but the call still went to voicemail.