Chapter 13
Ivy
‘So I said yes,’ I conclude with a lame shrug.
‘It would have been madness not to.’ I’ve got my bum resting on the table close to the counter and the handle of the sweeping brush lolling against my thigh.
It’s gone four o’clock, I’ve locked the door, and I’m filling Bill and Jan in on the crazy shit that went down during my break.
They look at each other from behind the counter, where they’re clearing up.
‘Good for you, love, that’s what I say.’ Jan spritzes the countertop with disinfectant. ‘Some people have more money than sense, don’t they? It’s a damn sight better for you than waiting tables all week long for the peanuts we can pay you.’
Bill purses his lips. I know he’s twitching to get back to his current read, bless him—An Accidental History of Tudor England, if you must know. He keeps reading bits out loud to us. It’s pretty slapstick. Unlike me and Jan, he never speaks until he’s had a chance to think his words through first.
‘It’s a lot of money, Ivy, but that don’t mean you’re not worth it.
Clearly, he’s seen something in you. Just because hanging out with his sister and teaching her how to heat up baked beans in the microwave sounds like easy money to you and me, it don’t mean there isn’t real value in it for him. Or her.’
I think back to what Xavier said to me by the canal. Something about transferring skills feeling easy if you’re the one who already has the skills.
‘Maybe you’re both right. Hopefully I can be of service, but it does seem like a fuck-load of money to fork out for something pretty basic.’
I don’t voice my secret concern, which is that he’s paying over the odds because he feels sorry for me.
Poor little Cinders, waiting tables by day and screwing for money by night.
Not that I know this guy or what makes him tick, but it strikes me as the kind of thing he’d do, swanning in and trying to get me off the streets, as it were.
Jan finishes spraying and goes for it with the cloth. ‘Better make it worth their while then, hadn’t you?’
‘As long as I’m not leaving you in the lurch.’ I agreed to two shifts a week with Xavier, meaning I’d be dropping those shifts here.
They share a fleeting glance. ‘We’ll manage,’ Jan says crisply. ‘I’d clip you around the ear if you didn’t take this opportunity, missy.’
My heart grows a little gooey. I don’t miss the real meaning of her words, which is that they can’t really justify having me here five days a week in the first place.
Business is far too quiet for that. I’m well aware that they’ve given me the hours out of the goodness of their overflowing hearts.
It seems the Cooper family is everyone’s charity project, these days.
In the end, that’s what decides it for me. If it’s an aristocrat putting his hands in his pockets to put food on our table and not my beloved, selfless friends, I’ll take that option any day of the week.
We arrange for me to turn up the following Monday at ten (yes, we exchange numbers, purely for logistical purposes).
As I stroll down the wide, tree-lined avenues of Little Venice, past the big, vanilla-ice-cream-coloured villas with their immaculate black ironwork and perfect gardens, I can’t help but wonder what his family’s house will look like.
After all, Belvedere was the most exquisite home I’ve ever seen in my life, but surely this place is more of a bolt-hole?
Holy fuck.
The enormous cream mansion standing back from the road in a not remotely London-sized garden is categorically not a ‘bolt-hole’.
It’s fucking huge. It honestly looks like it should be the embassy of a large nation.
My first thought is that having a London pad that big is just plain rude; my second is that no wonder Xavier’s poor sister is lonely, knocking around in what’s basically a hotel all alone.
I ring the bell on the huge iron gates, because of course they’re locked, and the pedestrian gate at the side opens with a buzzing sound.
The gravel driveway is huge and circular, with a tasteful and old-looking stone water feature in the middle, and selection of highly polished cars parked off to one side.
I’ve made an effort today, and I low-key hate myself for it.
I tell myself it’s all for Flora, my new boss, and not for him.
After all, I had no issues with him seeing the real me last week.
I wasn’t about to glam up for a shift at the caff.
But today is different. If I’m being paid through the nose to be a ‘consultant’, then I should look presentable.
So I borrowed the twins’ hair straighteners once they’d gone off to school and straightened my very clean hair into a nice, shiny curtain.
And, because it’s so mild this week, I’ve put on a cotton dress in pale pink and white with a white cardigan over it.
I want to look wholesome. I don’t want Flora to worry that her brother is hooking her up with some common thug, and I don’t want Xavier being reminded that, up until very recently, I had sex with men for money.
(Okay, so maybe I’m dressing for him a little bit.)
The door opens before I get to it, and I’m expecting one of the members of staff that Xavier mentioned, but it’s him, and I immediately get full-body goosebumps.
So far, I’ve got up close and dirty with him in a posh bedroom, served him at the caff, and endured the mother of all excruciating cash handovers by a canal.
But here he is, throwing open the shiny black door of his beautiful mansion to me like a gentleman, and smiling at me with a strange mixture of awkwardness and wonder, and swallowing me up with those gorgeous green eyes, and, just for a moment, I allow myself to feel special.
Like I belong here. Like I have every right to swan up his beautiful stone steps and cross his threshold.
‘Thanks for coming,’ he says, as if he can’t believe I actually showed up.
I shrug, feeling awkward myself. ‘Of course.’
He leans in and kisses me, smelling masculine and fresh and expensive, and I manage to remember that he kissed me goodbye on both cheeks last week, so I don’t make the plebeian mistake of accidentally pulling away after one. I’m proud of myself.
The hallway is huge and square and filled with splendour, basically, but I can’t focus on any of it because Xavier is so hot.
He’s in beige chinos and a crisp white polo shirt today, and he looks so preppy it’s frankly ridiculous, but perfect, too.
He oozes excellent breeding and good health and money.
He’s a Ralph Lauren ad come to life, and I’m so here for it all that it’s a little embarrassing.
I think he mistakes my look of open appreciation for one of confusion, because he points to his chest. ‘I’m golfing with my brother, hence the getup.’
‘Oh.’ My stomach sinks. ‘Are you heading back home today?’
‘Right after this, yes. My sister doesn’t need her older brother hanging around, being a bore. She’ll have much more fun alone with you.’
I nod as I follow him through to the kitchen.
Of course he’s not staying here. Why would he, when he can go back to the most perfect place on earth?
I don’t know why I feel so deflated. It’s not like I have any dibs on him.
He may seem to enjoy looking at me almost as much as I enjoy looking at him, but it’s not as though he’s ever going to make a move on common little Ivy Cooper of the Harrow Road, is he?
Besides, he’s getting married, you delusional idiot! my brain screams at me.
Yeah, yeah. He’s gorgeous, and titled, and loaded, and engaged.
He literally couldn’t be less of an appropriate target to fixate on.
I blame Alchemy. I’ve fucked so many amazing, wealthy, gorgeous guys these last few years that I’ve forgotten my place.
I’ve forgotten that I’ll probably end up with a guy who’s a brickie or a kitchen hand or something.
I even got cocky. I turned down three actual proposals of marriage from Alchemy members—they were all postcoital and issued in an endorphin haze—and fuck knows how many offers to make me a fully paid mistress.
I’ve been living in a fantasy bubble, and it’s high time I burst it.
Xavier leads me through the house and I try not to stare too hard at his very nice bum.
The chinos are working well for him in that department.
I only have a moment to absorb that we have landed in the kitchen, which is white and sun-drenched and massive, before a girl comes towards me with a bright grin on her face.
At this point I should admit that, while we common folk like to make fun of the upper classes for being weirdly inbred, I am yet to spot a genetic flaw among the de Vere family.
Flora is beautiful in a stop-and-stare-in-the-street kind of way, a combination of those elite genes and the kind of serious grooming that whispers serious money.
The twins would love her.
At first glance, she looks more like Benedict than Xavier, her light brown hair expertly highlighted with caramel and perfectly blow-dried in a way that makes my GHD-led efforts feel pretty skanky.
Her quiet, antisocial uni experience is clearly working for her, because her skin is dewy and glowing and subtly made up.
Hangover skin it is not. And the twins could take serious notes from her makeup, given their preference for porn-star-level false eyelashes and streaky tan that would make a Love Islander proud.
‘I’m so happy to meet you, Ivy!’ she coos, sounding genuinely warm and way happier than I would have expected her to be at the prospect of having me foisted on her. She envelops me in a hug before pulling back to beam at me again. Bloody hell does she have good dentistry.