Chapter 10
JULES
“I have a question for you. And please feel free to tell me to get lost.”
I was pretty sure I never had, or would, tell Delaney to get lost. She was like a glass of Prosecco, with red hair. If Prosecco had hair. Bubbly and bringing endless joy, never sadness, my long-time friend would have to do something pretty extreme for me to ever wish her ill.
After spending more than an hour filing the necessary reports to make an appointment at the embassy for new passports, we were headed back to the hotel when Delaney pulled me aside.
“The thing is… when the guys checked in… well, you know it’s a boutique hotel… and they only had one available room, and it’s a queen bed.”
It only took me a second to figure the rest out. The guys didn’t want to sleep together in a queen bed. And the almost newlyweds did.
“Funny,” I said as we headed back through the tunnel from Old Town toward the beach. “I was just thinking how you couldn’t ever possibly do anything that would make me want to tell you to ‘get lost.’ Especially after I went ahead and lost my phone and wallet.”
“And passports.” I couldn’t see her face since we were single-file on the narrow sidewalk, but I could hear the laughter in her voice.
Not censure, but laughter. After I’d put us in the stickiest of predicaments and necessitated an ocean crossing for her fiancé just before their wedding. There was only one thing to say.
But I’d go on record about how much I didn’t like it.
“You know we’ll probably kill each other. Come to think of it, did he agree?”
I was fairly certain Cole Ford would have something to say about us sleeping in the same room.
“Unsure. They’re probably talking about that now.”
Sure enough, as if on cue, Parker turned around and gave Delaney the most conspicuous thumbs-up.
“Oh my God. At least I don’t have to worry about him ever cheating. Could he be more obvious?”
Cheating. A sore subject with me, but I agreed. I’d call most people naive if they said “my partner would never cheat”, but Parker? Pretty sure he’d be last on my list of suspected cheaters. The guy was as nice as they came.
In response, I gave Parker a big ol’ thumbs up too, to which he laughed.
And then Cole turned around.
The look he gave me could only be described as dangerously amused.
Careful, monella, unless you want to me to start thinking you like playing rough.
I could have focused on the part when he called me a pest, but it was the second half of that whispered speech that hadn’t left my mind since he said it. It wasn’t even the words themselves but the way he’d said them.
Before long, we’d walked by the sea-view restaurant and made our way up the narrow alleyway to the back entrance of the hotel. It had been a bitch with luggage but the rooftop views made it worth it.
“Hey, roomie,” I said brightly, knowing it would annoy him.
“You better not snore.”
“You better not strut around the room naked.”
“Don’t you wish,” he muttered, again so quietly only I heard him.
“Ouch, that’s quite a face,” Parker said, holding the door open for me.
It was like two siblings with the second one always getting caught.
“He’s taunting me,” I defended myself.
“Cole’s like a teenage boy,” he said. “He only does that with people he likes.”
“Bet that’s a short list,” I quipped as we climbed the stairs to our rooms.
“Getting shorter every day,” the man in question shot back from above us.
By the time everyone had shuffled their things, Delaney packing up and moving to the new bedroom which was just down the hall and deciding to head to dinner in an hour, I’d taken a change of clothes into the small bathroom.
Turning on the shower, I undressed and pretended Cole wasn’t in my bedroom.
It really was a shame he was such a stick in the mud.
The guy was hotter than hell, obviously smart with a great job—though one he only pretended to like, according to Delaney—but…
he was the exact kind of guy I’d never date.
Ones who knew they were the bat’s meow. The bee’s knees. All that and a bag of chips.
I spent most of the rest of the time getting ready trying to think of other idioms and wondering which one I’d use if I ever turned this fiasco into a book.
If I ever had time to write for pleasure, that was.
Most of my spare time writing was to string paying writing gigs together to supplement my writing instructor income.
I would, however, very much enjoy creating Cole in a book and then promptly killing him off.
“Dare I ask about that smile?”
He sat on the corner of my bed, shoes off, watching me.
“You wouldn’t want to know.”
“Try me.”
“Not this time,” I said. “That’s my bed. See.” I pointed to the phone cord already plugged in by the bed he’d claimed.
“I did see that. But seeing as you have no phone…”
“Uh, you are maddening. Shower’s yours.”
“I may skip dinner.”
Why did my shoulders sag at that? I should be happy. Cole was annoying as fuck.
“Whatever you do,” I said, trying not to let him notice I cared, “don’t go to sleep until at least ten. It will make the jet lag worse.”
“Or would, if I were staying.”
Oh. “You’re not staying?”
This time, I was pretty sure my voice wasn’t completely neutral.
He sighed. “This is your trip. I want you to enjoy it.”
Surprising. “You do?”
He gave me a look. “I’m not a complete monster. Of course I do. This”—he waved his arm—“is not an ideal setup. I’d get a room at another hotel but don’t want to make Parker and Delaney feel bad.”
So that’s what he’d been doing while I was in the shower. Looking for flights. Because the thought of staying in a bedroom with me was that appalling.
“Okay,” I said, heading to the travel jewelry case on the dresser. I fumbled through it, looking for my earrings.
“What’s wrong?”
I was totally unprepared for the question. “Nothing,” I lied. “I mean… I get it. You and I aren’t exactly close so I understand why you might feel strange about sharing a bedroom.”
He was by my side before I’d ever realized Cole got up from the bed.
“You think I’m leaving because I don’t want to stay in here with you?”
I had to, somehow, save face. Giving him my brightest “whatever” smile, I said, “Well, duh. Why else? But it’s fine. You probably have a million things you could be doing instead.”
My smile was rewarded with one of his own. “Like helping Mason pretend he can fix the inn’s back deck without Parker?”
Mason was a lot of things, but handy wasn’t one of them. “That doesn’t sound fun.”
“No. It doesn’t. For what it’s worth, I’m fine staying here. Parker stressed how much you’d been looking forward to this trip. I don’t want to ruin it.”
“You’re not,” I blurted. Realizing… it was true. He was annoying, but fun too. If you had a very eclectic definition of fun.
“Do you want me to stay, Juliette?”
If I reached my arm out, I could touch him, we were that close. What would he look like, I wondered, without those glasses?
“Tell me what monella means, and I’ll say yes.”
That ever-so-slow smile might be the death of me. “Little troublemaker.”