But it was more than that. After a life entirely devoted to pleasure and fun, with as few difficult or intrusive things to do as he could bear, having to actually stick to things, to get up early, to work on dull, repetitive tasks until he got good at them—this was all very new to him. There was a physical satisfaction in it that he had simply never known before, and he was genuinely astonished.

He was therefore in a happy frame of mind when Isla slipped through the side gate and got quite the fright when Bjårk bounded up to her, barking in a way that suggested, Get me out of this freezing nonsense immediately. She smiled tentatively at first—there was a bit of her, once she’d had the dressing-down from her mother, that had wondered if she’d possibly dreamed the entire thing, or at the very least built it up in her head.

But now, seeing his blond head tilting toward her, she couldn’t help but smile. “What are you doing out here? You’re nuts!”

He shrugged. “Oh, this is nothing to Norwegians.”

“I don’t believe you!”

She bounced up to him, smiling, her eyes streaming with the cold. He reached out his gloved hand and took hers, then glanced around in case anyone could see them, something she couldn’t help noticing. For once she put her insecure thoughts about other people—in this case, very much Candace—to rest and tried to let herself enjoy it. He was here now. Wasn’t that enough?

“Venez venez!” a voice hollered at them from the kitchen door. “Pas de flirting in my kitchen, please, ” and they giggled at each other and slipped into the luxuriant warmth.

It occurred suddenly to Isla that Konstantin, of course, actually lived in the hotel and had his bed upstairs. They were . . . well, more or less in his house. She blushed at the thought of it. Of course not. It was impossible. They were at work.

Konstantin glanced at her, wondering what she was thinking. He needed to get away from the hotel; it was ludicrous, given that his bed was upstairs. That was definitely a problem in somewhere so small; he could hardly take her to the Seaside Kitchen on a date.

Which left the Harbour’s Rest, he supposed. Well, maybe if they found a dark corner the sticky glasses wouldn’t be quite so noticeable. Yes. They could do that later. It was a great shame, he reflected, that they couldn’t go to one of the official rooms in the hotel, because he couldn’t think of a more romantic place to take a girl, with the big picture windows framing the snow swirling around the little dock, with the toasty central heating and the immense blazing fire . . . A little of Gaspard’s hidden stash of Bordeaux and everything would just be so nice.

Well. Alas. That absolutely wasn’t going to happen. So he was pretty short of options. A picnic wasn’t really on the agenda either.