Chapter Three
Violet
Stop thinking about him.
Such good advice. But I can’t get Lucas’s sexy smile or gorgeous blue eyes out of my head, even after he leaves with Yolanda.
It’s gone two before I leave, and I still have the rest of his penthouse to clean. Looks like I will be going back there tomorrow morning. I just hope he’s right and the rest of the place only needs a quick dust. I could’ve done it today and got it out of the way, except I need to pick up my little brother, Sam, from school.
The school doors open, and I catch sight of my eight-year-old brother yakking his head off with his mates, his cap askew and backpack hanging off one shoulder. When we get to the car, he pulls off his blazer, tosses it onto the back seat, and then proceeds to talk nonstop all the way home. He’s seriously exhausting, and by the time I park on the drive, my head’s killing me.
To be fair, the headache doesn’t have as much to do with Sam as it does with the whole Lucas thing, and at least my brother’s adorable while he’s being annoying.
Lucas is pretty adorable, actually.
I groan and grip the steering wheel, while Sam tears up to the front door without bothering to take his backpack or blazer with him. The problem is, Lucas is adorable, and even though it’s a well-documented fact that if flirting was a sport he’d win gold at the Olympics, I’m still basking from those smoky smiles he directed my way.
“Ugh.” I shudder before opening my door and yelling at my brother. “Sam! Mum’s in bed. Don’t bang on the door.”
I grab his stuff from the back seat and let him into the house. Mum, of course, isn’t in bed, but wrapped in a fluffy blanket on the sofa. While Sam tells her about his day, complete with amateur dramatics and loud enough so the whole street can hear, I put the kettle on and devour a banana, since I haven’t eaten a thing since breakfast. I really need to knuckle down and finish my assignment, but I’m not sure I could concentrate. Which is pathetic.
Lucas won’t even remember my name by the morning.
When Sam runs out of steam and charges upstairs, I take Mum a cup of tea and curl up on the other end of the sofa. I messaged her a few times during the day to see how she was, but she always said fine, which I didn’t exactly believe.
“Are you feeling any better?” She doesn’t look it. She’s suffered with Crohn’s for years, and although I should be used to her flare-ups, when on the worse days she can hardly move because of the severe abdominal pain, I’m not. I’ll never get used to them. Not when it always gives me flashbacks to the first attack she had, when I was nine and there was just me and her in the house and I thought she was dying.
Don’t think about it.
“It’s eased off a lot.” She takes a sip of tea. “I’ll be back on my feet by Monday, no problem.”
“Hmm.” I need to tell her about the extra work at Lucas’s, so she can bill him for the additional hours, but the stupid thing is I’m not sure where to start. I saw Lucas Carter in nearly all his naked glory today?
“Everything go okay at the penthouse?” She smiles at me over the rim of her mug. “I told you it was money for old rope, didn’t I? Though I expect that’ll change once he moves in.”
“Half his team turned up last night and left a lovely mess in the sitting room. I need to go back in the morning to finish off.”
“What? Oh no, I’m so sorry, sweetie. Were you there all this time? I thought you must’ve gone off and met Katie or something.”
Katie is my one and only friend, as all the other girls Monica and I used to hang around with decided to ditch me and stick with her after the Great Betrayal. Funny thing is, Katie and I used to be best friends, from the first day we met at primary school right up until we went to different high schools. We only reconnected a couple of years ago, and she and Monica never clicked.
Probably had something to do with the fact she can’t stand anything to do with football, whereas it’s always been an integral part of Monica’s life.
I shrug to let Mum know it’s no big deal. “It’s fine.”
“Let me know how many extra hours it all comes to, and I’ll sort it out with Bec.” She sighs. “I suppose this is a sign of things to come when he moves in.”
It probably is, but I have the insane urge to defend him. It wasn’t all down to him, and he did offer to help clear up. Several times.
Luckily, I manage to keep my mouth shut. Mum didn’t ask if Lucas was there, and I’m not going to volunteer the information because it’ll only make her stress and she can do without that.
I really need to break my hermit habit.
Not once has Mum or my stepdad told me I need to get over myself and get on with my life. They’ve always supported me, and I don’t know what I would’ve done without them. But today I not only met one of the biggest names in English football, I managed it without my world caving in.
Geoffrey Hawthorne-Douglas was my first boyfriend, and a rising star in his League Two football club. We dated for fourteen months, and truth is, I thought the sun shone out of his backside. When he humiliated me in front of all of our friends, I just wanted to hide in a hole and never crawl out again. But I haven’t seen any of them in a year, and in spite of Geoff’s delusions of grandeur, when it comes to the great scheme of things, he’s still the equivalent of a minor moon orbiting Jupiter.
Jupiter, naturally, being Lucas Carter’s elevated sphere.
And today I proved to myself I can talk to a hot guy—in the same profession as Geoff—without sounding like a total muppet.
Time to take the next step, Vi.
I pull out my phone and text Katie.
Katie works less than a ten minutes’ drive away, at Sycamore Lodge, a 1930s art deco building just off Wood Green High Street, that’s now a budget priced hotel for artists and creatives. She started off as a receptionist straight from school two years ago, and even though she’s only a couple of months older than me, she’s now the assistant manager and responsible for hiring and firing the staff under her.
I just hope I’m not too late, and the temp position she offered me a couple of days ago is still available. Although I work ten hours a week as a virtual assistant for a local agency, it’s not like I’m meeting real people. A few hours working reception in the real world is what I need.
Baby steps.
The lobby takes up most of the ground floor, with the reception desk near the double glass doors and the bar at the other end of the cavernous room. There are several seating areas, and the whole vibe is relaxed and laid back, which is perfect when most of the guests are on a shoestring budget.
And the likelihood of anyone waltzing in here who knew me when I was dating Geoff is zero to none.
Katie’s at the front desk talking to a young guy, and her sleek French plait trails over her shoulder. Self-consciously I fork my fingers through my messy hair. Maybe I should’ve tidied myself up a bit before coming here? Then again, Katie knows I scrub up okay. It’s not like this is an official interview or anything.
When she’s finished dealing with the guest, she takes a couple of phone calls before she joins me. “Sorry about that. We’re so busy it’s insane.”
We make our way to the high street and to our favorite pub, the White Hart, which is situated on the corner and does a happy hour for locals on Friday afternoons. It’s probably not a good thing that they recognize our faces as soon as we walk in the door, but on the flip side, Friday afternoons are practically the only times I drink alcohol.
Although the pub is packed, we manage to find a table on the front terrace. Well, I say terrace, but it’s just part of the pavement, really, which has been enclosed by a low brick wall with iron railings.
I might as well get straight to the point in case I change my mind again. “Is that receptionist job still available?”
Katie’s eyes widen over her cocktail glass, and she takes a long swallow of the bright orange liquid before replacing the glass on the table.
“Are you interested?”
I take a deep breath. “Yes.”
“You weren’t two days ago. What’s happened?”
“Nothing. I’ve decided it’s time I get my life back on track.”
“Okay. And this is me you’re talking to. I’ve been telling you that for the last six months, so something’s happened since the last time we saw each other. Come on, spill.”
I take a quick sip of my own cocktail. It’s not that I wasn’t going to tell Katie about my meeting Lucas Carter. I just don’t want her thinking that’s got anything to do with my decision to get a part-time job.
Even if it has.
I sigh. That plan was doomed before it even started. “I met Lucas Carter today while I was cleaning his penthouse.”
“Lucas Carter?” She frowns as though she’s trying to place the name. “Who’s that, then?”
Inwardly, I groan. “He’s a footballer.” It sounds almost sacrilege to describe him that way, without adding a few superlatives, but I don’t think it would’ve made any difference. She still looks clueless, so I give her another hint. “The guy with his shirt off in the cologne ads.”
She might have a dim view of all things football related, but she’s definitely on the ball when it comes to noticing hot guys. Her mouth forms a shocked O.
“That footballer?” She takes another sip of her cocktail before giving me a sympathetic frown. “How far up himself was he?”
Not very.
I shrug to convey my total disinterest in the combustible package that comprises Lucas Carter. “He was all right.”
“Does he know dick-face?”
Probably. Professional football is a small world, after all. “No idea. I didn’t ask.”
“Ugh.” She gives a delicate shudder. “You don’t have to go back there, do you? Can’t your mum give that job to someone else?”
“It was just a one-off to help her out. The thing is, it made me realize I’ve got to stop being a hermit just because I might bump into Geoff or her. I mean, what are the chances, right?”
Especially at Sycamore Lodge, but I don’t tell Katie that, since it kind of diminishes the awesomeness of my brave new start.
“And you had this epiphany after meeting Lucas Carter? What the hell did he say to you?”
“He was nice, that’s all. I’d forgotten guys could be like that.”
Katie stares at me as though I’ve lost my mind. Although my comment was dumb, it doesn’t make it any less true. My social life died the night of that disastrous party, and I’ve barely spoken to a strange guy since, never mind a ripped one.
“You fancy him, don’t you?”
My drink goes down the wrong way, and I cough. Trust Katie to jump to that conclusion. Luckily, she has no idea of my teen crush on him, since if she did, there’s no way she’d believe my denials.
“No, I don’t. And even if I did, it wouldn’t make any difference. There’s no way I’d fall for another player in a million years.”