He was probably trying to wash away the image.
And talking of washing, was he really going to manage in the tiny bathroom?
The shower was nestled under a sloping roof. Would he even fit?
She pictured him trying to wedge his wide shoulders under the jets of water and then imagined him naked. Naked. Will?The trajectory of her thoughts left her feeling hot and flustered and she was relieved there was a door between them. He’d been in there for a minute which meant she had approximately two minutes to calm herself down.
What was wrong with her? Since when had she started imagining Will naked?
It was that comment about his mother wanting romance for him, obviously. Why had he told her they had two rooms? Why hadn’t he just laughed and told her it was one room but hey, this was Becky so that wasn’t exactly a problem.
The two of them together was a ridiculous thought. She and Will had known each other forever. She loved him of course—absolutely, but in the same way she loved her brother. In many ways Will was her second brother, which made imagining him naked both weird and unsettling.
That was definitelynotsomething to dwell on.
Trying to delete that image from her brain, she rummaged through her suitcase looking for something suitable to wear. Not jeans presumably. And definitely not her hoodie. The place had looked romantic. Dressy. She wasn’t good at either of those things, but she didn’t want them to be refused a table, so she dug out the red dress she’d borrowed from Rosie and never returned and pulled it on together with thick black tights and boots. She so rarely wore dresses the whole experience felt weirdly unfamiliar, but at least no one would throw them out of the restaurant.
She dried her hair in less than a minute, glanced in the mirror to check she didn’t look as flustered as she felt and saw Will emerge from the bathroom.
His chest was bare and he had a towel looped around his waist. It came rather too close to the image she’d had only moments earlier and she opened her mouth to ask why he hadn’t used one of the robes when she realised there had only been one and she’d used it and then left it in a heap on the floor.
She hung up the robe and then repacked her suitcase. “I’ll wait for you downstairs.”
“Why would you do that? Wait for me here. It will only take me a moment to dress.”
He was true to his word, and moments later they were heading down to the restaurant.
The place was crowded, and the atmosphere lively. Candles flickered on tables and festive garlands studded with tiny lights were strung along the beams. Their table was nestled in one corner, close to the crackling fire and slightly apart from the other tables.
They ordered their food and Will smiled at her. “This is cosy.”
“It is.” It was also intimate. Normally she wouldn’t have noticed but now she was noticing.
She took a sip of the wine that had been delivered to the table and was relieved when the food arrived. At least it gave her something else to focus on.
Dinner was delicious, and the conversation should have been easy because this was Will, but for the first time in her life she felt self-conscious with him and it made her skin prickle. The dress didn’t help. She wasn’t used to sitting across from him wearing a dress. Also there were candles, and fairy lights, and the atmosphere was unashamedly romantic.
The couple closest to them were holding hands across the table, clearly on a festive date.
Becky ran her fingers round the neckline of the dress, wishing she’d worn something different. She was hot, and not just because she was sitting close to the fire.
It was Will. Or rather, it was that conversation she’d overheard him having with his mother.
She was struggling to act normally. “So is your mother in full-on matchmaking mode? Are you likely to find lots of singlewomen invited for Christmas?” She decided that the best thing was to make a joke of it. Get it out in the open.
“I hope not. I prefer to choose my own dates.”
“And how is that going?”
He helped himself to bread. “Evidently not well enough for my mother.”
“Which is why you didn’t tell her we were sharing a room. I get it. But she’d be scraping the barrel if the only woman she could think of to match you up with was me.”
“Why is that? I happened to notice that more than one person stared at us when we walked in.” He lifted his gaze to hers and she noticed that behind his glasses his eyes were a mesmerizing glacial blue.
Why hadn’t she noticed how blue his eyes were before? If someone had asked her what colour his eyes were, she wouldn’t have had a clue.
She swallowed. “They were probably thinkingthat woman is wearing her sister’s dress. Or elsewhat is a man like that doing with a girl like her?”
