Page 35 of One Day Like This (Excess All Areas 1)

She grinned as she swallowed. “I’ll accept it as an apology. What is this, like your third?”

“It’s my second. And I don’t intend to drink more.”

“Why not? It’s a free bar today thanks to Gemma’s dad. We should drink all the champagne dry.”

“You don’t like champagne.”

“Yeah, but that’s not the point. Who knows when I’ll get to spend all day drinking champagne again?”

“They sell prosecco at Aldi for like a fiver. I’ll buy four bottles for your next birthday and you can day drink all day.”

“But this is the good stuff, because for all Gemma is lovely, her dad is a stuck-up knob from Alderley Edge who thinks as soon as you cross the border from Cheshire into Manchester, your net worth and IQ drops by half. He had the hotel buy this super expensive vintage Dom Pérignon or something. It’s like two hundred quid a bottle.”

“Fine, you get pissed on champagne and I’ll be your guard dog.”

Izabel grinned. “Yay. But why aren’t you having a drink?”

“Because we have one day like this. I’ve thought about what you said last night, and about what we said after the service, and the lyrics of that song. It’s about waking up, slightly hungover, and really looking at someone for the first time. And the chorus, when he sings about how one day like this a year’d be enough? See, that’s today. This is our one day.”

With her heels, and his seat on the stool, with his legs stretched out on either side of her, they were about the same height. His slid his hands down to her arse and tugged her closer.

Intimately closer.

He kissed the side of her neck then whispered in her ear. “If I only get a single day of this, I want to be sober and lucid enough to remember every fucking tragically glorious moment of it.”

Izabel shivered in his hands. The tiny hairs on the side of her neck stood on end.

“Maybe just one glass of champagne then,” Izabel said, breathlessly. “I want to remember it too.”

“We need rules, Iz. It can only be tonight. You can’t ever mention what we do to Luke. I hate the idea that I’m breaking my promise.”

“And that’s what makes you a good man.”

She tilted her neck to one side, and Matt took the hint, dropping a line of kisses along her skin. He scanned the lawn, from their position on the far table, nobody was paying them any attention. People were more interested in photographs and the view over Lake Windermere. They weren’t doing anything too inappropriate. Not like Gemma and Ollie who were so into each other that Gemma’s dad had stopped trying to get her attention.

“This day. Will it beeverythingwe’d be like together?” Izabel asked. Pink tinted her cheeks, and he knew what she was asking. Would he sleep with her? He knew she’d ask, he knew he’d wrestle with whether he could after knowing his brother had slept with her. But the truth was, he loved her. He loved the way she listened to him and never expected him to be anything other than himself. And, if it had just been his relationship with his brother at risk, he’d have proudly gone back home and told his brother to fuck off. So yeah, he wanted it to be everything.

“That’s your call, sweetheart.”

Izabel stepped back an inch and he missed her heat immediately. She threaded her fingers through his hair and pulled his lips briefly to hers.

“Show me whateverythingfeels like with you.”

* * *

She was going to have sex with Matt.

Izabel watched him from the top table as she enjoyed crab and mango, salmon with rice and kimchi, and a dark chocolate mousse so rich it was to die for.

Matt was seated at a table with five much older ladies, all of them with white or grey hair, and the same style of dress. A collared V-neck with short sleeves. Izabel wondered curiously if they shopped from the same place and had called dibs on their favourite print. She’d seen him leaning forward, enunciating exceptionally clearly, to one of the ladies who was obviously hard of hearing.

If Harry had asked Ollie to put Matt on an uncomfortable table, he couldn’t have failed more. Matt had been raised by his nan. He had the ladies eating out of the palm of his hand in no time.

As soon as dinner was done, she hurried from the top table to him. Like he used to do, he pushed his chair out and pulled her onto his lap.

“Ladies, this is my girlfriend, Izabel. Izabel, these pretty ladies are all members of Gemma’s grandma’s church. Margaret and Glenn taught Gemma in Sunday school. Sheila and Ann taught Gemma in primary school. And Doreen taught Gemma piano.”

Izabel grinned at the way the women all turned to putty at Matt’s introduction. “It’s a pleasure to meet you all. I met Gemma at Uni and we’ve been friends ever since.”

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