Page 28 of Too Hard to Resist

‘Eh?’ I frowned.

‘You saidbuongiorno. Now we have another word to add to your extensive list of Italian vocabulary.’ The corner of his mouth twitched.

‘Ha!’ I grinned. ‘By tomorrow, I’ll practically be bilingual!’ I laughed.

‘Anything is possible.’ He cocked an eyebrow. ‘Come stai?’

‘Bene,’ I replied.

Romeo gave me a nod of approval and my stomach flipped again. I really needed to get some food ASAP.

‘Let me take you to your table.’

‘Grazie,’ I said, feeling proud that I’d said three whole words of proper Italian. ‘Is Edward still here?’ I followed Romeo through the restaurant.

‘I have not seen him this morning.’

‘Oh.’ My face crumpled. ‘I thought he was an early bird?’

‘Perhaps he will come later.’

Romeo stopped at a table and pulled out the chair for me. This time my heart fluttered which meant it couldn’t be because of my hunger pangs.

When I realised that it was fluttering because it liked Romeo’s romantic gesture, I sent it a strong warning to calm the fuck down.

Yes, pulling out a chair was chivalrous and sweet, but Romeo was just doing his job. This wasn’t the time to start getting stupid ideas about my Love Alchemist. Especially as today was the day that me and Edward were going to hit it off.

‘Grazie.’

The Cuisine Champion (yay, I remembered the crazy job title!), took my order and Romeo left.

Maybe Edward was still at the gym or doing a hundred pre-breakfast laps in the pool. I thought about waiting to go through the photos, but I was too excited so decided it wouldn’t hurt to have a quick peek whilst I waited.

I fished the envelope out of my bag, then opened it faster than a kid unwrapping a birthday gift. But when I did, I noticed there were only two pictures. Given how much I’d seen Romeo snapping away whilst we were playing volleyball, I’d expected a lot more.

Anyway, it wasqualitynotquantitythat counted. I’d prefer to have two awesome photos than a hundred rubbish ones.

I slid them out of the envelope and as I glanced at the first one, my face fell.

It was a photo of Edward holding the ball over his head, like it was a trophy.

I was smiling, but he wasn’t even looking at me. I think that was taken when we won a point. There wasn’t much else to the photo. Yeah, he was shirtless, but as I studied him, I felt nothing and when my eyes landed on those speedos, I cringed.

Okay, so the first photo was disappointing, but there was still one more.

I flicked to the next shot and it was of me. I was standing at the net and was smiling and punching the air.

See. That was good.

But then I remembered, that was when I’d hit a winning shot in the first round. Edward was in the background, but for some reason his face seemed a little blurry.

So that was it? Those were the only pictures we had for our memory book? I wasn’t seeing that ‘hidden bond’ that Stella had spoken about, but I wouldn’t let it affect me.

I checked my phone to see if there had been any messages from Edward. We’d exchanged numbers during a break at the volleyball match. At that point we were in the lead so he was in a good mood.

There was nothing from him so far. I hadn’t received a link to download his playlist yet either.

In the end I’d chosen generic holiday songs, like ‘Summertime’ by DJ Jazzy Jeff and The Fresh Prince, ‘Holiday’ by Madonna and ‘Cruel Summer’ by Taylor Swift.

---