Irresistible (7 page)

“Oh, dear. What would the pot washer say?” His jaw is level with the top of my head. I slow my breathing down. I need water.

“Okay!” he shouts, almost giving me a heart attack. “Turn off this drivel.” And he’s gone from behind me. A moment later the music cuts out and there’s the scratch of a record starting. It’s something classical and dramatic.

As the conversation dies and people gradually start to look at Jamie, I use the pause to go to the sink and get water. Jamie looks over at me, and I feel good that I’m not immediately jumping to attention. I try to saunter back over like I don’t really care what he’s going to do, but I keep a hand on the kitchen counter to maintain my balance, because I think the sauntering will probably lose its effect if I fall on my face.

Jamie sits back in his chair. “You look like you’ve just learned to walk.”

I try to think of something funny and biting to say, but my brain is mostly full of swirling, so I just roll my eyes.
Cleo sits on the arm of Jamie’s chair, and the girl who was previously on the other arm scuttles away. I sink down to sit on what I realize too late is not a chair, but a footstool.

“Please, God, let’s do something interesting,” he says to the room in general. “What do you have for me? Who’s played the game?”

A girl with frizzy hair and unfortunately large teeth springs to her feet. “I’ve got something!”

“Ah, Christina. I asked you to do something for me, didn’t I? What did I ask you to do?”

“To … to mess with Lady Michaels.”

“Now, Joseph,” says Jamie, leaning over close enough for me to feel his breath, “we don’t like Lady Michaels. Lady Michaels was awfully rude to my mother.” I feel all the eyes in the room swivel in my direction.

“I, uh, got, um, chatting to Lord Michaels,” Christina says and snorts.

“Lord Michaels. Excellent choice. He’s a sucker for a young girl’s face. Even yours, Christina.”

“I know!” Christina nods her head, eyes wide, missing the insult. “He sent me pictures of his thingy!”

She hands her phone to Jamie, who looks at it and winces. “That’s a lot to put up with for a title. Connors?”

“Yup.” A small guy with a pale, pinched face stands up and then seems to shrink on realizing he has the attention of the room. My vision is less blurry now, but I’ve got a cloud of pain churning in my head.

“Could you see to it that these pictures are uploaded to the homepage of Platinum PR? A slideshow would be nice, with captions to explain that these are images sent by the CEO’s husband to a seventeen-year-old.”

Howls of appreciation go up from the room. Connors takes the phone and busies himself in a corner at an iMac.

“Another marriage wrecked. Well done, Jay,” says Cleo sweetly.

“A cold, vacuous one,” Jamie says. “It’s her career that matters to her.”

The words are flowing past me and I can’t process them.

“You guys are weird,” I eventually manage.

Jamie looks at me, and for a second I think he’s moving his head from side to side, which would be an odd thing for him to do. Then I realize it’s my drunk brain.

Meanwhile, a rowdy conversation has broken out. Apparently the redhead, Willem, has an attractive mother, and everyone is one-upping each other with what they’d do to her. The boy with the black spiky hair is acting it out, graphically. Willem’s cheeks turn pink and he snaps, “I bet that’s what you do to your own mom.”

The black-haired guy leans in close to him. “I’m not pussy enough to let people talk about my mom that way.”

Jamie stands up. “No, Guy, no one talks about your mom that way, because she’s fat and unattractive. Now, could you all go home? I want to go to bed.”

I steady myself on the footstool. Now to try to get myself to the servants’ quarters, ideally without waking up any guests and definitely without waking up Julia. As the crowd leaves, Guy is muttering something, and I catch the word “sister.” Jamie does too, and he watches him leave. I see a flicker of something in his eyes that is sharp and not like his usual bored expression.

“You can stay here,” he says to me.

I start to protest, but he interrupts by throwing me a blanket.

“Keep your pants on. I meant on the sofa.”

“What if I don’t want to?”

“Then, by all means, take your pants off.”

“Give her some pajamas, Jay,” says Cleo, emerging from the bedroom wearing a white negligee that comes down only to the top of her thighs.

Jamie tosses me a bundle of clothes, which I unravel into a T-shirt and some boxers. I go to the bathroom and get changed. Looking at myself in the mirror, I get a vision of me standing next to Cleo. Her light brown skin sets off the startling white of the silk resting on it. She almost shimmers. I have very attractive gray skin and a slightly cross-eyed look from the alcohol. At least, I hope it’s the alcohol and I don’t usually look like I recently died.

I lie down on the velvet sofa, and wrap myself in the blanket with my head on a ridiculously soft cushion. The room is still spinning slightly, and I know I’m going to feel awful tomorrow.

I force myself to get up again. If I don’t have another glass or two of water, there’s no way I will be able to work. The stone slab floor is freezing on my bare feet. When I get to the sink, my eye catches some movement to my left.

Jamie’s bedroom door is open, and I can see the top half of his bed. He’s lying back, wearing just his boxers, and reading a book. He has his knees bent and one hand behind his head. His chest rises and falls, and my eyes are pulled toward his toned stomach, following a line of hair that leads down to the top of his boxers.

He’s got a small frown of concentration. I want to call over and ask what he’s reading, but then I see Cleo. She comes crawling up between his legs and grips the wrist of the
hand holding the book. She pushes his arm back so that both his hands are above his head, and the book falls to the floor. She puts her face close to his, about to kiss him, but then moves down again, her lips brushing over his neck, chest, and stomach and stopping at the top of his boxers. Then she comes up again, doing the same thing, and Jamie’s back arches.

Flustered, I turn the tap with more force than I mean to, and a jet of water comes gushing out. I keep looking forward at the glass, so that if they do look over, it doesn’t seem like I was watching them.

I hear the door close.

I’m on the sofa, lying on my front. Wait, no … This is one of the lounge chairs by the pool. I’m wearing a bikini and I’m waiting there for him. Sure enough, I sense someone behind me, and then hands grip mine. But the hands are coffee colored, with perfectly manicured nails. I feel long hair brushing my shoulders. I struggle to get free and feel lips brushing up and down my back. I twist around and look up. Cleo grins at me.

“Come on. We’ve got to get to the devil’s lair.”

We run hand in hand along the side of the pool and onto a path I’ve never seen before. Suddenly it transforms into a dusty red path that starts going upward and around in circles. We’re running up a mountain. When we reach the top, I can see for miles around. The sky is shot through with pink; the sun is beginning to rise. She takes my other hand and I realize that it’s not Cleo—it’s Jamie. He leans forward
and kisses me gently on the forehead. He rests his head against mine and looks down at me. “I love you.”

As my eyes flicker open, there’s a blurry face above me. The same one that just said he loved me.

“’Morning.”

I draw the covers up to my chin. “Were you watching me sleep?” I say, mostly out of panic that I said something weird. But then, watching me sleep would be pretty creepy too.

“Don’t flatter yourself.” He plonks a plate on the coffee table next to the sofa. “You’ll need this.”

It’s a bacon-and-egg sandwich. I raise my head with a groan. There’s classical music playing again, and the violins feel like someone sawing at my skull. He turns it down.

“I was drowning out your snoring.”

He sits down next to me on the sofa, giving me no choice but to sit up. He’s got a black T-shirt and boxers on, and when he sits down, our bare legs are touching.

“Where’s Cleo?”

“On a walk? She likes to keep me in the dark.”

He puts his foot on his knee and rests his book on his leg. It means his leg is now digging into me. I hadn’t noticed he wears glasses for reading.

“It’s really off-putting, having you stare at me,” he says, without turning to look at me.

“What are you reading?”

He tilts the front cover toward me about an inch.

“I can’t read it.”

“That’s a little worrying, at your age.”

“I mean, I can’t see it.”

“
Ancient Greek Myths and Legends
.”

“Oh! Right.”

“What were you expecting?” He still doesn’t look up from the book, but I don’t think he’s reading it anymore, as his eyes aren’t moving. He’s waiting for my reply.

“Something intellectual and douche-y.” Apparently constantly repressing the urge to be sick means I don’t care what I say to him.

I see a smile at the corners of his mouth, but he turns the page pointedly and doesn’t say anything.

I pick up the sandwich and take a tiny, feeble bite. “Did you make this?”

“No, I got your kitchen friend to do it. Smudger.”

“What—Dan? He’s there already? Am I late for work? What time is it?”

He throws his head back on the sofa. “Don’t give yourself a seizure. Yes, ‘Dan.’ Yes, he’s there already. No, you’re not late. I have no idea why Mr. Pot Washer is here. It’s only a quarter to seven. In the morning.”

I stand up, and Jamie grabs the back of my T-shirt and I fall back against the sofa. He has his head to the side, looking at me.

“I’d like my clothes back.”

“Well, I wasn’t going to wear them to work.”

“You’d better take them off, then.”

“I will. In your bathroom.”

He’s doing his curious, amused look at me again. I feel the urge to move along the sofa toward him. I look at his lips. They’re just a few inches away. Our legs are still touching.

Jamie looks like he’s about to say something. I get that nervous feeling again. If Cleo came back in here now, this might look … odd.

“Okay, I’m going.” I stand up quickly. Too quickly. I get
a massive head rush and fall forward onto the coffee table and end up with my ass in the air.

Jamie laughs. “I didn’t know you were in heat.”

“Oh, shut up,” I grumble as I scramble to my feet and then stomp off to the bathroom.

“No, really. It’s an interesting seduction technique,” he calls after me.

“Don’t flatter yourself,” I say, hopefully with “attitude.” Then I ruin it by walking into the door frame. I try to tell myself he didn’t see, but he definitely did.

“Joseph?” Jamie says when I emerge a few minutes later after the quickest shower and clothes-change known to man. I’ve just gotten to the door, and I turn back.

“You have a lovely smile,” he says.

I smile at him involuntarily.

There’s a mist hanging over the castle as I walk back along the stony path away from the pool house. It makes the two back turrets look magical. I wonder if Jamie is watching me go.

Then I see Cleo coming through the arches, going the other way. She waves and flashes me a warm smile. I wave back and say, “Hey!” but there’s an uneasiness clinging to my voice. I don’t want her to think I’m just another girl hanging around the pool house trying to sleep with her boyfriend. Because I’m not.

Work today is every kind of hell. Any part of my body that can ache is doing exactly that. Jamie and Cleo loll lazily at one of the tables outside. I try to avoid them and let Andreas serve them as much as possible. But now Omar hands me a cheeseboard and says, “Table sixteen.” I ask if Andreas can do it, but Omar says, “You take. Lazy.” So I do.

There’s a breeze coming from across the grounds that blows my hair across my face. At least I can hide behind it. Cleo’s wearing massive sunglasses, so I think she’s suffering too. I plonk the plate down and Cleo says, “Feeling good this morning?”

“My blood hurts,” I say shortly and stomp back to the kitchen. Jamie’s laughter follows me in.

My suffering is turning into a running joke among the other waiters. They keep trying to get me to take out the garbage and other jobs that will definitely make me puke.
Dan hasn’t spoken to me yet. He’s hanging out by the bar, and I haven’t gone over. I wonder if he’ll be funny about me going to the party. I get the feeling it’s a bit “us” and “them” between the staff and Jamie and his friends. Not surprising, since we’re working and they’re lounging around doing nothing. I should be more loyal to “us.”

As I go back and forth around the tables, I glance over at Dan as he polishes glasses and chats to Suzy. I get a pang of jealousy when I hear them laughing together. It’s stupid, but I wish his silly jokes were just for me.

I still haven’t spoken to him by the time it’s three o’clock and our shifts end. I get a feeling of definite grimness when I remember I have to now change back into the dress I was wearing last night. It’s not how I was planning to impress him on our picnic that might be kind of a date.

I wait for him outside reception, but after ten minutes, there’s no sign of him. Maybe he’s gone home and the date’s off. He’s heard about my antics last night and thinks I’m not the sort of girl he’d take on a picnic. To be honest, as well as mortifying, the thought is a tiny bit relieving. I still feel so bad that I just want to go home and curl up in bed while my mom brings me a cup of tea.

Dan emerges from the reception door. He’s brought a picnic basket. He’s in his jeans and another rugby shirt and he’s shielding his eyes from the sun.

“Come on,” he says, smiling at me. “I’ve found this really great place.”

We walk through the grounds away from the castle, but instead of going alongside the river, Dan veers off the path and up into a forest. It’s a nature preserve, apparently. I never even knew it was here. The ground angles steeply upward,
and we push our way through long grass and ferns. The canopy of trees plunges us into shadow, with occasional sunlight glinting through the branches. I breathe in; it smells fresh, and it seems as though my head instantly clears. Now that the trees are enclosing us from all sides, I can imagine that we’re trekking somewhere—somewhere foreign, exciting, and not here.