Christmas at the Island Hotel - Jenny Colgan Page 0,81

possible that the old Konstantin had been . . . a bit irritating and full of himself?

Isla couldn’t keep her voice calm. “Yeah?”

Please, she thought. Please let you not be about to suggest that we go upstairs. Please don’t have plans for something absolutely sordid and not . . . She was building it up, she knew. She had feelings for the pot boy. But at the end of the day he was still just a boy, a normal boy who . . . well. She held her breath.

“Uhm, would you like to go for a drink at that strange place on the harbor later?”

Isla could have burst with joy and relief. She knew she was supposed to play it cool and act like she wasn’t bothered . . . but she was so happy, she couldn’t keep a thing from her face.

“Uhm, yeah, all right,” she said finally, trying to tamp down her smile, which was immediately matched next to her.

Chapter 55

Gala had gone through it with her and, to Flora’s amazement, there were more and more bookings. Flora liked to think, possibly entirely optimistically, they could see past the silly headlines into the lovely rooms, the delicious dinners, the fabulous peace of the place. She wondered if people couldn’t remember necessarily the story, just the hotel itself; the name had stuck in their head rather than whether it was good or bad. She hoped so. Christmas Day and Boxing Day were full, then they would close for a few days, then they had an absolutely full house for Hogmanae too, as well as a band and a full ceilidh. If people couldn’t enjoy that, she thought, well, there was not much she could do about that.

Tonight was their last dry run: they were feeding all the people who went to the community day care—the very oldest residents of Mure and their carers. It was just a good chance to give the kitchen a last dress rehearsal with the waiters in place and make sure they were good to go for the big day. She couldn’t deny: she was excited.

“This is getting ridiculous,” Joel had said as she had collapsed into bed the previous evening as exhausted as only someone doing someone else’s job with a six-month-old could be. Joel never had any trouble sleeping, and it made Flora jealous. Flora never knew how before he’d met her he had rarely slept more than four hours a night, jittery, anxious. Coming to Mure was the first time he’d slept all night in his adult life. The sweetness of the fresh cold air and the sheer ability to relax had transformed his life so entirely he got embarrassed even thinking about it. Waking up once or twice to pick up Dougie still hardly felt like a hardship of any kind.

“I know,” groaned Flora, staring at some spreadsheets that were swimming in front of her eyes. “Innes says this should be easy to read, but I don’t think Fintan even opened the message.”

There was a silence.

“I mean, I can’t sack him,” said Flora. “It’s his hotel.”

“But you’re doing everything! It’s not right! You should be enjoying your baby!”

A bolt of fear went through Flora’s heart. Did he know?

“I am!” protested Flora, even as Douglas was tugging on Joel’s fingers. “I do! I love the baby.”

“Uh, yeah, I know,” said Joel, baffled.

Flora’s eyes strayed back to her email. “I’ll get him in tomorrow. If he can pull the old Fintan charm on the old ladies, that will be good for business.”

The old Fintan charm hadn’t shown itself for quite some time, but you could live in hope.

“Have I told you,” said Joel, “how absolutely amazing and fabulous you’ve been and how proud of you I am?”

“For opening ‘the worst hotel in the world’?” grumbled Flora.

“Oh, that’s all over and done with now,” said Joel, putting Douglas to bed and pulling her close to him.

He was completely and absolutely wrong.

Chapter 56

Candace couldn’t believe it. Sometimes life depended on luck, she knew, and in this case, she liked to think that she’d made the luck on her own.

She stared at it again. Amazing. She’d talked to her friend on the picture desk, who was just as obsessive a reader of Hello! magazine as she was, and they’d tracked back through the pictures, knowing he was Norwegian, and—ta-da! With a bit of help from Google Translate they’d been able to easily put together “Tragedy of Young Norwegian of Noble Descent” with lots of pictures of