Chapter Four Lee
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.
And what, exactly, does that mean? I know I didn’t imagine the feeling of his arms around me this morning, the way his body was pressed against mine. I was mostly asleep, but I can still feel the ghost of all those muscles encircling me, can still feel the way his breath stirred against my neck.
‘Painkillers, too,’ Nico follows up, holding them out and breaking into my reverie. His face gives nothing away.
‘Thanks.’ I take the pills from him and knock them down with the bright yellow drink.
Instantly, my mouth is on fire, my eyes sting, and I come perilously close to throwing up on Nico’s feet.
Then, against all odds, my body does some sort of abrupt U-turn, the clouds in my head part, and I feel significantly better.
‘Huh,’ I murmur, looking down into the glass in my hand.
‘I know, right?’ Nico turns and pulls out a chair for me at the dining table. ‘Now sit down and eat some carbohydrates.’
I pick up a donut and nibble cautiously. It tastes great, and I take a bigger bite, suddenly starving. ‘I don’t think I’ve been this hungover…’ I cast around for a comparison, ‘ever.’
Nico frowns, but turns his attention to pouring me a cup of coffee. ‘I wish I could say the same.’ He keeps the words light. ‘But I’ll admit it’s been a long time. There was this one trip to Bali… I still can’t even stand a sniff of arak.’ He shudders.
I take a long, slow sip of coffee and the caffeine hits my bloodstream like a defibrillator. ‘You should have known better than to drink something called an Arak Attack.’
‘I forget that you know all my secrets,’ he muses, then he pulls out a seat across from me and stretches his legs out. ‘So, about last night…’
‘Right,’ I wince, but I’m determined to be as unfazed as he is. ‘Well, I remember the poker game.’
‘Yeah.’ Nico runs a hand across his stubbled jaw. ‘Frankie wasn’t kidding about you being a hustler.’
‘Being good at something doesn’t make me a hustler.’
He scoffs. ‘I still don’t know how you did it… You’re like a human lie detector.’
I only smile enigmatically into my coffee. There’s no need for him to know that I’ve spent over twenty years studying his face like a besotted weirdo.
‘I think things started to go downhill when Frankie pulled out the good whisky,’ I murmur, changing the subject.
It’s Nico’s turn to look a bit green around the edges. ‘Right, the whisky. And the cigars.’
‘Which were disgusting by the way,’ I put in.
‘No one made you try one.’
‘But everyone else was smoking them,’ I protest.
‘Oh, Daisy.’ Nico shakes his head sorrowfully. ‘Giving in to peer pressure. Didn’t you ever have a school assembly about this stuff? Honestly, just because the cool kids are doing it…’
‘Okay, cool kid. It wasn’t peer pressure. I didn’t like it that you all assumed I wouldn’t want one because I’m a delicate little woman.’
‘Hey, I don’t think you’re delicate or little,’ he says, then his mouth pulls up at one corner. ‘Well, you are actually very short but you have the energy of a much taller person.’
‘I have tall person energy?’
He nods sagely. ‘It’s why you had a room full of retired gangsters wrapped around your little finger.’
‘Alleged gangsters.’
Nico gives me a pitying look, making sure I know he’s humouring me when he says, ‘Alleged, sure. All those stories about the Rat Pack, though… the people they hung out with. Do you think Frankie had something going on with Marilyn Monroe at one point?’
‘Frankie’s too much of a gentleman to say either way.’
‘Obviously I was a bit dubious at first, but I have to admit I get it now. He’s a likeable guy. And I got some great shots last night. Before it all got a bit… cloudy.’
‘Oh, the photos!’ I exclaim, immediately regretting that burst of enthusiasm when my headache screams behind my eyes. ‘Maybe you’ve got some pictures of the rest of the night?’
He perks up. ‘Good idea, Nancy Drew.’ He gets to his feet, but after taking a couple of steps, he comes to a sudden halt. ‘Shit.’ He looks around the room. ‘I’ve got no idea where my camera is.’
You don’t need to be an expert in Nico’s micro-expressions to see that panic is close at hand.
‘You check in here and I’ll check the bedroom,’ I suggest.
Ten frantic minutes later, there’s no sign of his camera anywhere, and we turn the place upside down looking. My handbag is also missing.
‘Okay,’ I say soothingly. ‘I’m going to ring Frankie. Don’t worry, the chances are you left it with him.’