She takes a tiny sip. “Better not drink too fast in case I’m sick again.” And once more a frown knits her brows and she looks thoughtful, worried.
“How long did you plan to stay here?” I sit back down at the table. We should really move to the sitting room, but the kitchen is warmer. Besides, with only one sofa, we would be a bit too close, and I’m having to work hard to keep my mind off sex.
“I don’t know,” she answers slowly. “It looked like a great place to hide under a pseudonym. I was going to stay at the hotel for a while until I found a house to rent.”
The Disaronno in her glass was hardly touched, and she will need to be a lot drunker before I give her the bad news.
“What?”
Too late.
“The good news is that this is a very friendly island, very welcoming, very protective.”
“And the bad news?” her eyes are sharp with suspicion.
“Is that it’s a very friendly island. Very protective… I mean,becausethe community is very friendly…”
She gets there on her own. “Nothing stays secret.”
I nod. “And if you were hoping to register with the hotel, well, I did that, two months ago, and you wouldn’t believe the things hotels here needed to know about me before they let me sleep on their sheets. They don’t have a police force, you see, so they’re very careful. It would be impossible to register without your passport.”
Her shoulders slump.
“And I take it renting a house under a different name will be equally impossible.”
“When it came to transferring ownership of this cottage to my name, it took weeks of letters and paperwork, birth certificate, affidavits, proof of this and proof of that.”
Her eyes settled on the undrunk liqueur, she swirls it in her glass, deep in thought, probably thinking, calculating, making new plans.
So much for trying to cheer her up.
“I have an idea,” I say, thinking quickly. “When you find a place you like, don’t apply the normal way, to the Municipalité. Instead, you should speak directly to the island’s Seigneur.” George Du Montfort struck me as an intelligent, trustworthy man. “I think he would be able to…”
“Override the process and keep my identity confidential?”
“Exactly.” I nod. “I could phone him tomorrow and take you to see him. In the meantime, to solve the hotel issue, you are welcome to stay here.” I wave a hand at the ceiling to show I’m not talking about her sleeping in the kitchen. “You’re welcome for as long as you need until you find somewhere you want to rent.”
She thinks for moment. “With luck I won’t need to exploit your home for much longer.”
“It’s no trouble at all.”
A wistful half-smile stretches her lips. “You know there is an old proverb, I think Persian or Arabic, that goes something like, ‘if your friend offers you honey, don’t eat all of it.’”
I can’t help laughing. “Actually, next door is a honey shop, and the owner keeps leaving me jars of the stuff with little notes about its provenance and benefits. So, please eat as much as you want.”
“Good.” She grins back. “And now I think I’ll call it a night.” She gets up and rinses her glass in the sink before walking toward the door, but at the last moment, she turns around and comes back.
“I don’t know what I would have done without your kindness tonight.” She rises on her tiptoes and give me a quick, soft kiss on my cheek. She smells so, so nice. “Thank you for everything.”
And she’s gone leaving me standing with my arms half raised for a hug that never came.
My body is a stupid, stupid knuckle head because it reacted. I almost kissed her back. And not on the cheek.
I continue to stand still, hot with guilt.
Barely two weeks into the vow of celibacy and I’m ready to give up.
Jesus Christ!
