Chapter Three #2
And while the charming, easy-going playboy persona he had adopted had been one kind of armour, the unfortunate side effect was that people thought they could get away with taking advantage of him and his good nature.
The fact that he even had a good nature was miracle enough after the mind games of his parents throughout his childhood.
No. He needed to put a line through it all now, once and for all. And Erin was how he would do it. Because that kind of hubris, that kind of cold calculation to seduce and take advantage of certain strong emotions, was untenable.
So yes, Enzo would play along with the pretence of a quickly escalating romantic relationship, even an engagement, even to the extent of planning and holding a wedding.
He would follow through, all the way to the very moment where he could leave her standing at the top of the aisle and reveal her perfidy to the world.
And no one would ever dare take advantage of him again. No one.
After a not inconsiderable time in the air, when Rin had seemed to, if not relax, then at least relinquish the death grip she’d had on her handbag, he took them back down to the helipad and powered down.
The heliport staff appeared and took over, allowing Enzo and Rin to get back to the gorgeous convertible he’d borrowed while he was in Capri.
He escorted her to the passenger seat and checked his phone before taking his place behind the wheel. He deleted the four messages from his father, who had apparently ignored Enzo’s angry message from earlier telling him not to contact him again, and opened the one from Marcus.
How did it go?
Smirking, he typed back his answer.
Perfectly. She has no idea that I know.
He slipped his phone into his pocket, looked over at Rin and smiled at her, even as he plotted her downfall.
‘Oh god, Sam, it was awful . My heart is still pounding,’ Erin hissed into the phone, pressing her hand to her chest and trying to keep her voice down as Enzo ordered them drinks at the bar of the swanky hotel he’d brought them to.
‘Why didn’t you just tell him?’ Samara asked.
‘I didn’t think his ego would handle the rejection.’
A bark of laughter shot down the speaker and into Erin’s ear.
‘From what I hear his ego isn’t the only big thing about him.’
‘Sam!’
‘Sorry, just teasing!’
‘The thing is that I’m sure I told him that I was scared of heights.’
‘You don’t think he knows, do you?’
‘No,’ Erin insisted. ‘I don’t see how. And besides, surely if he did know, he’d have left me in the dust, right?’
‘Yes? Maybe?’ Only Sam didn’t sound that convinced.
‘I have to go, he’s coming back.’
‘Be safe!’
Sam’s warning rang in her ears as Enzo returned to their table on the edge of a balcony that reached out from the cliff face and over the sea far below.
At least one good thing had come out of her flight with Enzo in the helicopter... this was nothing compared to the heights she’d just been to.
She took her glass from him, gently clinking it against his in a toast ‘ to them ,’ and took a long mouthful, allowing the alcohol to soothe the frayed edges of her nerves.
He watched and her and smiled and she couldn’t help herself.
‘Are you always such a daredevil?’ she asked, genuinely curious. There had been nothing about his penchant for helicopters in any of the articles on him that she’d read.
‘There’s nothing wrong with a healthy dose of adrenaline,’ he said with a shrug. ‘I didn’t realise you liked to play it so safe,’ he chided teasingly.
‘I...’ She was about to refute his claim, but she did . She did play things safe. She didn’t go out, she didn’t attend wild parties. She did watch her pennies, and pay her bills on time.
Probably because she’d had to. After she had moved down to Falmouth with her mother and her father had stayed behind in London, desperate to pursue yet another crazy scheme to recover all the money he’d lost, it quickly became clear how much her mother had adapted her life to her husband’s.
How much she’d relied on him for everything. Everything.
Arla Carter had been in such a state of shock, starting over again, that she’d been frozen and overwhelmed. And at fifteen Erin had learned pretty quickly how to set up online accounts for bills, or food orders, for the TV licence and the council tax.
And that had been when it started. Their little game. Something they would say when things got a little too hard. It had started as a story that Erin would tell her mother.
When we get Charterhouse back, everything will be fine.
When we get Charterhouse back, we can return to London.
When we get Charterhouse back, we can eat out in fancy restaurants.
When we get Charterhouse back, Erin could return to St Paul’s Girls and Arla Carter could return to the friends that had disowned her.
When we get Charterhouse back, everything will be fine.
And then she remembered that she had to answer as Rin, not Erin, and cursed herself for forgetting.
‘I don’t always play it safe,’ she teased instead.
He smiled, and just then his phone vibrated with an incoming call. She just about managed to see his father’s name on the screen before he rejected the call and put his phone back into his pocket.
‘It’s okay, you can—’
‘No. That’s okay, cara . You have my undivided attention.’
It rang again, background music to a now awkward silence.
‘I’m afraid my father isn’t the kind of man to take no for an answer,’ Enzo admitted. ‘And I will probably have to take this after all.’
Enzo raised his hand and clicked his fingers in the air again, missing the narrowing of Erin’s eyes at the gesture. She watched him say something to the waiter and hand over another very thick wad of notes.
‘You have my sincerest apologies, but I’ve arranged for a car to come and pick you up and return you to your hotel.’
‘You’re leaving?’ Erin asked in surprise. Was it because of his father, or because of her?
‘Yes, but don’t look so devastated, Rin.
I’ll be seeing you tomorrow,’ he said with that charming smile, picking up her hand again, and hovering an air kiss just above her skin.
After the briefest of pauses, he closed the distance.
His lips gently pressed against the back of her hand, the touch little more than that of the wings of a butterfly, but the impact was instantaneous.
Goose bumps shoot across her skin, her pulse fluttered and her cheeks pinked.
She pushed the startling sensation aside and tried to focus on what he was saying about seeing her tomorrow.
‘I will?’
‘Yes. We have plans, cara .’
Plans indeed. Over the next four days, they toured the Amalfi Coast’s greatest hits.
Enzo had taken her to Spiaggia di Tordigliano, a stunning little beach where they’d swam and eaten the gorgeous picnic prepared by the chef on his yacht.
He’d driven them to Sorrento where they’d eaten a spectacular spaghetti carbonara, they’d visited San Lazzaro, overnighting at a hotel that clung defiantly to the edge of the coast, and gone swimming at the Grotta dello Smeraldo , which Enzo had presumably paid an exorbitant and hugely wasteful amount of money so that they could have it to themselves.
In aquamarine waters, enclosed with ancient rocks but beautifully lit, she’d never admit to a living soul how much she’d had to resist the intimacy and charm of the moment.
For the little girl to whom a shocking change from London to the dark, damp cold shorelines of Falmouth that had dominated her winters, this contrast of this beautiful sun-drenched, near perfect moment, was almost seductive.
Filled with exquisite food, and more maddeningly polite charm from Enzo, they had visited the Valle delle Ferriere near Ravello.
The walk cut through rich green forestry and magical waterfalls, the earthy scents refreshing after the salt of the sea, as dappled light ticked her skin through the leafy canopy along the path.
During that time, she had learned that Enzo liked chocolate so dark it was bitter, that he probably had more coffee than blood in his veins, and that he drove like every Italian stereotype she’d ever seen—heavy on the horn and loose on the wheel.
He was like Peter Pan, utterly careless about anything remotely serious and she was half fearful of what would happen to him when his money ran out, the charm fell flat and the good looks faded.
Was that why Gio wanted her to marry him? To ground him somehow? Play Wendy to his Peter?
If that was the case then Gio Gallo had clearly never read to the end of the book.
And if she didn’t get herself under control, the book of her and Enzo’s romance would end up as a murder mystery—without the mystery.
He was driving her out of her mind with his affectations.
Affectations that she had to pretend to be utterly enthralled with.
But that wasn’t enough, was it?
She was, she recognised, being dated. But she needed more . She needed him ravenous. Desperate. Madly in love.
You need to give him a ticking bomb.
She read Sam’s message and typed out a reply.
I think the police take that kind of thing quite seriously these days.
Sam had sent back a string of laughing emojis and her last bit of advice.
You need to threaten to take away his toy.
And, to clarify, YOU are the toy.
Enzo was beginning to get frustrated. He hadn’t minded wining and dining Erin all over the Amalfi Coast, but he was wondering when she was going to try and take things further.
Not that he wanted to sleep with her. That would be taking things too far considering the plans he had to leave her in such a humiliating way.
No, no matter how beautiful Erin Carter was, he would not knowingly or willingly allow a woman to prostitute herself in such a way. There would be a way round it, he was sure. Because he doubted that Erin would want that for herself either.