an omelet if you like? We’ve got eggs.”
“Go on then. If you’re not tired?”
“No,” said Isla, sounding exhausted.
And the door closed shut, and Konstantin turned away, sad for all the little things.
Chapter 54
The next morning, despite the threat of Mure civil war over the statue, and Christmas being two days away, Konstantin felt better. He was up early, playing with Bjårk out frolicking in the snow.
He contrived to be out throwing a ball on the side lawn near the entrance Isla always came in, despite the fact that it was both pitch black and minus 1 degree, which, though Konstantin could handle, Bjårk was very much not a fan of. Still, he had a plan that involved hot chocolate and some Norwegian ginger boller he’d baked before he went outside. He was ridiculously proud of himself: the idea that he could just go in and look up a recipe and then make it would have been, just a couple of months ago, as alien to him as flying in the air would have been. It was amazing, he thought, as he had left them to rise, that of all the things he would like doing in his life, working in a kitchen would be one of them.
But it was more than that. After a life entirely devoted to pleasure and fun, with as few difficult or intrusive things to do as he could bear, having to actually stick to things, to get up early, to work on dull, repetitive tasks until he got good at them—this was all very new to him. There was a physical satisfaction in it that he had simply never known before, and he was genuinely astonished.
He was therefore in a happy frame of mind when Isla slipped through the side gate and got quite the fright when Bjårk bounded up to her, barking in a way that suggested, Get me out of this freezing nonsense immediately. She smiled tentatively at first—there was a bit of her, once she’d had the dressing-down from her mother, that had wondered if she’d possibly dreamed the entire thing, or at the very least built it up in her head.
But now, seeing his blond head tilting toward her, she couldn’t help but smile. “What are you doing out here? You’re nuts!”
He shrugged. “Oh, this is nothing to Norwegians.”
“I don’t believe you!”
She bounced up to him, smiling, her eyes streaming with the cold. He reached out his gloved hand and took hers, then glanced around in case anyone could see them, something she couldn’t help noticing. For once she put her insecure thoughts about other people—in this case, very much Candace—to rest and tried to let herself enjoy it. He was here now. Wasn’t that enough?
“Venez venez!” a voice hollered at them from the kitchen door. “Pas de flirting in my kitchen, please,” and they giggled at each other and slipped into the luxuriant warmth.
It occurred suddenly to Isla that Konstantin, of course, actually lived in the hotel and had his bed upstairs. They were . . . well, more or less in his house. She blushed at the thought of it. Of course not. It was impossible. They were at work.
Konstantin glanced at her, wondering what she was thinking. He needed to get away from the hotel; it was ludicrous, given that his bed was upstairs. That was definitely a problem in somewhere so small; he could hardly take her to the Seaside Kitchen on a date.
Which left the Harbour’s Rest, he supposed. Well, maybe if they found a dark corner the sticky glasses wouldn’t be quite so noticeable. Yes. They could do that later. It was a great shame, he reflected, that they couldn’t go to one of the official rooms in the hotel, because he couldn’t think of a more romantic place to take a girl, with the big picture windows framing the snow swirling around the little dock, with the toasty central heating and the immense blazing fire . . . A little of Gaspard’s hidden stash of Bordeaux and everything would just be so nice.
Well. Alas. That absolutely wasn’t going to happen. So he was pretty short of options. A picnic wasn’t really on the agenda either.
“Uhm,” he said as they were standing side by side again, both of them giggling at nothing and concentrating very hard on listening to the radio. “Uhm, so.”
This was ridiculous. The confident Konstantin of a couple of months ago had entirely disappeared. He wondered, for an instant, if it was