Christmas at the Island Hotel - Jenny Colgan Page 0,42

not animals.”

“So, everyone can sew,” said Konstantin suspiciously. If he ever ripped anything, he tended to throw it away; he thought everyone did.

The kitchen staff looked back at him.

Isla would have put money on him saying something snotty and cutting, or just leaving them to get on with it on his behalf. Instead, he sat back in his chair.

“Okay,” he said. “Teach me to sew.”

THEY HAD A little time before the cleanup and dinner service. Gaspard went off for his daily sieste. Kerry and Tam went out to collect eggs, a job Isla was absolutely terrified of but they both seemed to quite like. It depended very much where you stood on chickens. Isla was scared of their beady little eyes, but she was a little scared of a lot of things. Konstantin hadn’t been drafted yet in case Bjårk ate all the eggs. Bjårk tried to go help, but they were having none of it.

Isla retuned the radio from the shocking French pop music Gaspard liked (Flora had commented dryly that his good taste in food obviously had to be evened out somewhere else by his frankly horrible taste in music) to BBC Radio nan Gàidheal and let its gentle music run through the big kitchen.

The low winter sun briefly showed its face, illuminating the clean white tiles on the walls, the shiny metal implements, the good wooden table. She bent her dark head to his blond one and, with some swearing and a couple of pricks to the fingers (his hands, he pointed out, had never been in such a state, and she was tempted to say his hands were so soft he should be ashamed), she showed him a simple running stitch, then a cross-stitch. She made him practice on the tea towels, though; she wouldn’t let him loose on his good coat.

“You’ll ruin it.”

He looked uncharacteristically thoughtful. “I ruin a lot of things,” he said suddenly.

She looked up at him then, and the sun caught her dark hair and made her huge dark eyes shine very brightly. “Well,” she said. “You didn’t ruin the Christmas trees.”

“True.”

“And you didn’t ruin the leek tatin.”

“Mine was by far the worst.”

“Well, everyone else is a chef and I’m a baker.”

“It did taste good, though,” he added almost to himself.

“And now you can do a running stitch!” she said, and he glanced down at his handiwork.

“Oh,” he said.

“What?” said Isla, even as she noticed him smiling.

He held up his hands. “I’ve sewn the tea towel to my shirt.”

Isla burst out laughing as he stood up, the towel flapping off him. He tugged at it.

“Don’t pull it! You’ll rip another hole in your clothes! Stay still!”

And she carefully approached him, the low sun streaming in through the windows, and was suddenly very conscious of him and his long, hard body through his expensive twill shirt. She realized the kitchen scissors were in the dishwasher. There was no help for it. Carefully and deftly, as he lifted his arms, she bent toward him and neatly bit through the loop of the thread, then pulled it out, leaving no trace.

She caught a faint scent of his aftershave too, something oddly like leather or tobacco or something . . . Where on earth did a kitchen boy get all these expensive tastes? It made no sense at all.

She was blushing harder than ever as she straightened up. He was looking a bit startled too; he hadn’t realized she was going to bite it. Her face was so close to his, as the sun shone down on her shiny dark hair, that he felt . . . well. It had been a while. He felt a jolt, then stopped himself for being ridiculous. It had taken him a little bit by surprise, that was all.

“I could have got Bjårk to do that,” he said, checking the shirt again, hiding his slightly pink face just in case she could read his thoughts from it.

“Next time,” said Isla, scuttling off. “We’d better get cleaned up.”

And in a second she had her unflattering kitchen cap on again and was elbow-deep in hot soapy water with the ramekins, and everything was back to normal.

Chapter 30

So Isla didn’t get to see Iona till later that night, and then she pointed out that Iona, despite being the supposedly great social media maven, had turned her Instagram to private after she’d flirted rather disastrously with a celebrity and forgotten to turn it back on again, and Iona reposted the entire video from the