“Nice house.” She tips her head back, glancing up at the neoclassical portico, typical of this area of Kensington.
“Thank you.”
“You’re really not very good at this, are you?” An amused note curls through her words.
“At what, exactly?”
“Polite conversation. Manners. That sort of thing.”
“I feel like we might’ve had this conversation before.” I fold my arms across my chest and lean my shoulder against the doorframe, unable to bite back my own wry amusement. “I’ve little use for pretty manners and general niceties.”
“Hmm. I think you’re just a slow learner.” Her amused gaze darts away as she taps her bottom lip with a lilac-painted fingernail.
“I believe I followed all your cues last time we met. Wouldn’t you say so, Lady Isla?”
She almost rolls her eyes at my address. “It’s not like I kept it from you.”
“It’s not like you mentioned it either.”
“Yes. I do find I make the best kind of friends when I go around introducing myself as landed gentry. How was I supposed to know you and Sandy are friends? I’d never even seen you before.”
I straighten, coming back to myself. There are very few people I respect in this world, but Alexander happens to be one of them. Because of that respect, I’ve kept my distance since the weekend. Not that it’s kept her out of my head. All that hair spread across the sheet, nipples as ripe as cherries, and eyes as dark as sin. How can I not think about her, drink from the well of that memory? Imagine what might’ve happened if I hadn’t stopped when I did.
“Are you really going to make me stand here at the door?”
“I haven’t decided.”
“Honestly,” she mutters, yanking the handle of her bag to her shoulder purposely. “Move over,” she adds, sliding between me and the doorframe.
“I don’t think this is a very good idea, Lady Isla.” Yet I’m already closing the door behind her.
“Only the people at the bank call me Lady Isla. Everyone else calls me Izzy. Except you.” She allows the corner of her pink lips to curl. “Do you know elephants don’t even like peanuts?”
I throw my head back, my laughter filling the hallway. It wasn’t so much the question she’d asked or the peanut reference. It was the way her eyes dropped to a certain part of my anatomy. “Very subtle.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Her smile lingers like an encouragement. She angles her head flirtatiously, a ray of sunlight shining through the stained-glass panel above the front door burnishing her hair in an autumnal blaze. “This isn’t—” She glances behind her uncertainly. The colonnades, the high ceilings, the space big enough to host a ball in. “Not the whole house?”
“Is the whole building mine? All five floors?”
“Silly question.” She shakes her head as though the thought is ridiculous, painting on a bright smile. “Unless you have a couple of wives and half a dozen children, it would be like living in a mausoleum.”
“Three wives and still lots of room to let the kids skateboard in.” Her eyes stray to the door on the right. Maybe she roller-skated through her parents’ stately home with Alexander and a pet hound following her. And maybe if she opened that door, she’d run screaming from this place, which would be the best thing for her, all things considered.
I avoid telling her I do, in fact, own the whole house after living in the penthouse apartment for the past three years. I’d taken a shine to the area and the building, the guts of which had been carved into flats many years ago. It had taken a year to get everyone out of the building by gentle persuasion and other means, and renovations are now underway to return the building to its former splendor. Meanwhile, the place smells like paint and sawdust, neither of which Isla remarks on.
“Coming?” I turn in the direction of the elevator, moving her away from the reason I’d sent the construction crew home after Alexander’s fateful birthday gathering. What’s behind door number one? A secret. A problem. Something I’m dealing with.
“I thought you’d never ask,” she says, falling into place beside me, all avid gaze and zest for life. It’s hard to believe she and Alexander are twins. He’s always so staid and buttoned up, while Isla reminds me of a bird, quick and light and all pretty plumage. I shake away the fanciful thoughts, the wrought-iron cage of the ancient elevator screeching as I pull it open.
“It looks ancient,” she says as I gesture her ahead. “I didn’t think lifts as a concept were as old as this.”
“I think this was installed in the 1890s.”
“Antique,” she says uncertainly, “if not ancient.”
“You’re safe with me.”
“I know,” she says quietly, something I don’t deserve shining in her eyes. I close the cage door and the car lurches upward as it begins its slow, rumbling ascent. “I’m surprised you haven’t mentioned my parking,” she adds in a brighter tone. “Or at least the car.”