Free The Holiday by Erica James Page B

easiest thing in the world to fall in love with him,’ she said, ‘or at least to think that you loved him. It would probably only ever be infatuation.’
    ‘That’s a very cynical view to take. Is it based on the belief that you think he’s incapable of anything more?’
    ‘I guess so.’
    ‘Well, you’ve got to agree that makes him ideal material for a holiday romance.’
    ‘Absolutely. But if you’re thinking of him and me, forget it.’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘Because I’m not his type.’
    ‘Says who?’
    ‘Oh, come off it, Laura. You know perfectly well that the type of woman Theo would be attracted to would be a stunning beauty. She’d be tall, blonde, acquiescent, and mind-blowingly good in bed.’
    ‘And who’s been telling you that you’re not mind-blowingly good in bed?’
    Izzy lowered her eyes.
    Laura frowned. ‘Do I detect more of Alan’s handiwork? Don’t tell me, he took the trouble to tell you you were no good.’
    Picturing the scene in that pink room and the therapist asking them to comment on their sex life, Izzy felt her insides melt. It had been so cruel of him. So humiliating. She knew she should be over all this nonsense by now, but it was still there niggling away at her, taunting her at the slightest provocation.
    ‘It’s like being with a child,’ Alan had said, leaning forward in his chair, eager to share with someone the details of their most intimate moments. ‘She does everything I ask, but it doesn’t work.’
    ‘Doesn’t work?’ the woman had repeated. ‘In what way?’
    There was a silence while Alan just stared at Izzy. She found this more unnerving than any of the hurtful accusations he had thrown at her. It had been too reminiscent of those chilly, silent pauses that had punctuated her relationship with her mother. From an early age Izzy had learned that conversation, no matter how trivial or how stilted, defused a tricky situation. It meant, though, that she had a worrying tendency to blurt out the first thing that came into her head. She did it then, with Alan staring at her.
    ‘Can I help it that I’m not as experienced as he’d prefer?’ she had murmured, mortified that he could do this to her, horrified at the extent of his betrayal.
    She had played right into his hands and, giving her a pitying look, he had returned his attention to the therapist. ‘She doesn’t turn me on, that’s the nuts and bolts of it. And you can see why, can’t you? You can see why it would be such a lacklustre performance.’
    ‘Perhaps you should be telling Izzy this, and not me,’ the woman had said. Her gaze and neutral tone never faltered.
    ‘Yes, Alan,’ she had agreed, her own voice spiralling dangerously out of control. ‘If it was always so bad, why did you keep up the pretence? Why did you bother? And more importantly,’ her voice wobbled, ‘if I didn’t turn you on, how did you ever manage to get an ... well, to go through with it?’
    ‘You see what I mean?’ he had said to the other woman, a triumphant smile snaking across his face. ‘She can’t even bring herself to say the word erection. Is it so bad to want a woman in bed with me and not an embarrassed child? Look, she’s flinching.’
    The hour-long session had finished on that appalling note and they had driven home in silence. They went to bed that night each intent on proving the other wrong. It was a disaster. A ghastly humiliating disaster. She ended up in tears and Alan, victorious, declared her useless. ‘You need help, Izzy,’ he had said, coming out of the bathroom without a stitch on.
    She had turned away from the sight of his naked body and wondered if he was right. The truth was, she wasn’t very experienced. A brief encounter here, a regrettable dalliance there, had done nothing to alter her opinion that sex seemed guaranteed to undermine a girl’s confidence. In the complex world of everybody’s birthright to complete satisfaction, how did she rate? Was she doing it right? How did her