CHAPTER NINETEEN
In the Galleria dell’Accademia, Ryan takes my hand in his and lifts it, kissing my knuckles when no one is looking. At lunch, we sit next to each other and pretend to listen to the conversation while our knees press against each other under the table, sending tingles down my spine. After buying gelato from Mercato Centrale, we hang back while the group meanders through the crowd and he waits until they’ve turned a corner before wrapping his arm around my waist, pulling me close to him and kissing me, his lips cold and sweet from the ice cream. We have a staring competition during the wine tasting at the vineyard, and I offer him a seductive smile as I swirl the wine around my glass, and later, when we find ourselves alone strolling through the olive trees, split from the group, we kiss with my back against the tree as he whispers into my ear that I’m driving him crazy.
We drift around Florence like we’re in a movie montage, grinning from ear to ear, stealing kisses when no one’s looking, giggling like teenagers. I don’t want to go back to England, where Ryan and I work together and it gets complicated. I want to stay here in Italy and live at a luxury hotel and eat delicious food and drink incredible wine and have mind-blowing sex with Ryan before falling asleep in his arms.
It’s perfect here.
And I guess that’s part of the problem, the worry niggling at the back of my head when I wake up next to him the morning we’re due to fly home. What happens now? Are we going to start … dating? Is that even allowed when we work together?
It seems ridiculous that Ryan could make me this happy. This is the guy who pushes my buttons like no one else; who humiliated me when I was young and naïve; who lied to me then and could very well be lying to me now.
But this is also the guy who knows I like honey in my tea; who reads all my articles despite often having no idea who the celebrity in question even is; who opens up to me in a way he doesn’t around other people; who delivered a baby in the back of a taxi with the jacket of his tux; who looks at me like I have the answers to all of his questions; and who has the kind of eyes that make me forget about saying or doing anything sensible whatsoever.
“Your eyes are so gorgeous,” I blurted out to him last night in bed, after sneaking off from the group early again as they celebrated the final night with espresso martinis by the pool.
“You think so?” he said, moving his pillow closer to mine as we faced each other so our noses were almost touching.
“Oh please, don’t act as though you haven’t been complimented on them your whole life. They haunted me, you know. After I left The Daily Bulletin, I couldn’t stop thinking about your damn eyes.”
“Do you think if I’d mustered the courage to knock on your parents’ door after that whole debacle, we might have been able to work it out?” he asked, reaching over to brush my hair away from my face. “If I’d explained that I’d kept the job news to myself because I liked you so much, and I didn’t want to lose you—do you think you would have understood?”
“I don’t know,” I sighed. “I was pretty pissed at you. And very focused on my career. I probably wouldn’t have wanted to listen to you.”
“But if I’d fought for you a bit harder, things might have turned out so differently.”
“I think they’ve turned out all right,” I reasoned. “Maybe it was better that we were brought back together at this time in our lives. We were so young then.”
“That’s true. Although,” he said, a knowing smile spreading across his face, “you haven’t exactly made our reunion smooth sailing.”
“Me? What about you? Disagreeing with everything I say at work.”
“You disagree with me. Even when I know you think I’m right.”
“I would never be so petty.”
He gave me a look. “You would absolutely be so petty.”
“Says the guy who raced me to the tube after a book event.”
“You raced me.” He chuckled. “You hate it when I win anything.”
“Only because you do that smile.”
“What smile?”
“That mocking smile,” I explained. “It’s like this very small smirk whenever I argue my point with you or end up making a fool of myself or say something about celebrities. You get this little teasing smile on your face and I want to wipe it right off with cunning words.”
He laughed. “You are very cunning. But wait, you think I’m mocking you?” His face turned more serious. “Harper, I have no idea what smile it is exactly that you’re talking about, but I can assure you, I’m not teasing you. You just … I don’t know … sometimes you say things and—”
I rolled my eyes. “I amuse you.”
“Yes! No, wait. Not in a bad way,” he fumbled. “As in, I find you fascinating. In a good way! What I’m trying to say is, you make me smile. That’s it. And if it looks secretive or that I only do it around you, that proves my point—you’re the only person who makes me smile like that.” He hesitated. “Am I doing well here or digging myself into a hole?”
“Actually, you’re doing pretty good,” I said, edging along the pillow to kiss him. “I like the idea of a secretive smile just for me. Better than you snickering at me, which is what I thought you were doing.”
“I only snicker at you when you make absurd claims, like that you know things about land mines and that you won that rounders game.”
I jolted my head back indignantly. “I did win that rounders game!”
“Uh-huh,” he said, looping his arm around my waist and pulling me back over, “you keep telling yourself that, but we both know the truth. And anyway, I’m very happy to let you come first in other activities,” he added in a low growl, kissing my neck.
It was very hard to argue with him about that.
It’s important that whatever this is with Ryan, I don’t rush it. Because that’s the problem with being abroad; you lose all sense of normalcy and jump headfirst into relationships that crumble the minute the wheels of the plane hit that runway on home soil. Because it’s not real life.
Real life is much more complicated, like working side by side and being pitted against each other by Cosmo over features. Moreover, Ryan has clearly built up the idea of me in his head for a long time, and in Florence he experienced the “holiday me,” not the “actual me.” He’s enjoyed sexy black thongs and matching bras and sleeping naked and highlighter across my collarbones. He hasn’t had to put up with me dashing out on dinner dates because I’ve got a VIP call. He hasn’t seen the underwear I actually wear on a day-to-day basis, which is usually flesh-colored and never matching.
Is he still going to be filled with torturous desire sitting next to me when he knows that, under my work clothes, I’m wearing Spanx?
Unlikely.
My mind is racing and I’m tempted to get up and start packing early, just so I have something else to think about, but Ryan stirs next to me and his eyelashes flutter as he slowly wakes up.
I stare wide-eyed back at him.
“Hey,” he murmurs, his voice croaky with sleep.
“I don’t usually wear matching underwear,” I blurt out.
He frowns, squinting at me. “Huh?”
“I think it’s important you know that.”
“Uh … okay, cool.” He lifts his head off the pillow, leaning on his elbow. “Are you all right?”
I take a deep breath. I want to stay in the moment, but I also don’t want to keep things from him. “Yeah. I’ve been thinking about what happens when we get back home. Between us, I mean.”
“What would you like to happen?” he asks.
“What would you like to happen?”
He looks me in the eyes. “I would like to continue this.”
“Sleeping together?” I say, knowing that I’m testing him.
“Among other things,” he says, positioning his pillow to rest against the headboard and then sitting up, leaning back against it. “I want to take you out on dates. I want to spend real time together, outside of work. As far as I’m concerned, I’m all in. If you would like that?”
I nod slowly. “And what about work?”
“What about it?”
“We’ll have to keep it secret, won’t we? Everyone would gossip, and it would be horrible. We need to remain strictly professional in the office. That’s important, Ryan. No special treatment, nothing like that. At work, we’re colleagues, nothing else.”
Can you imagine if Cosmo found out that that Ryan and I were sleeping together? He already has little to no respect for me as it is, but throw in a romantic entanglement with a colleague and he’ll consider me a total laughingstock. It’s not that I value Cosmo’s opinion, but like it or not, he is my boss, and I don’t want to push him too far. It’s depressing to think that, if word got out, there would be fewer consequences for Ryan than there would be for me. I wish it wasn’t that way, but with someone like Cosmo at the helm, there’s no doubt in my mind that it would be so. Better not to risk it.
“Okay. Whatever you want.” Ryan smiles at me.
“What? You’re doing that smile thing again.”
“I’m wondering how long you’ve been stressing over this.”
“I’m not stressed. If anyone’s the stressed one between us, that’s you. I’m the easygoing one.”
“Usually,” he admits, before shrugging. “And yet here we are, roles reversed. Maybe things have changed now.”
“How so?” I ask as he swings his legs out of bed and heads to the bathroom.
“Maybe I’m getting to you, Miss Jenkins,” he calls over his shoulder, grinning widely at me before shutting the door behind him.
I sit there in a daze as I hear the sound of the shower turning on. The thing is, he’s right.
Despite all my best efforts since he waltzed back into my life, I’ve fallen head over heels for Ryan Jansson.
And all I can think as I start to pack my suitcase is: Please don’t hurt me again.
I don’t know why I was so worried about coming home.
Everything is going surprisingly well. As far as I can tell, Ryan is still into me, despite my normal daily underwear, and no one at the office has caught on to our secret. Well, except for Mimi, who I obviously told straightaway and is already our biggest fan.
I do need to tell her the truth about my history with Ryan, though. At first, I simply didn’t want to talk about it, but now it feels like I’m lying to her.
Dating hasn’t been easy for me in the past because I’ve always felt like I had to choose between romance and my career. But one of the best things about Ryan is that if anyone understands my work ethic, it’s him.
We both appreciate the demands of the job—if one of us has to get to an important interview or work through dinner to hit a deadline, it’s not an issue. I’m not filled with guilt all the time, nor do I feel the need to justify typing late into the night.
When we tell Cosmo about the Isabella Blossom scoop, including the details of the birth in the back of the taxi, he is so ecstatic that he yells, “CLEAR THE FRONT COVER!” from his office, throwing everyone into utter confusion.
“Ryan, you genius!” Cosmo exclaims, standing up from his desk to give him a congratulatory handshake. “They’ll be talking about this story for years to come. Ha! One of my journalists delivering a Hollywood actress’s baby. You can’t make up this shit.”
“Harper played the lead role,” Ryan presses. “She was the one who—”
“Yes, well done, now off you go and let me know the moment you’ve got the interview booked in,” Cosmo says, ushering us out. “I need to tell the publishers that our sales numbers are going to skyrocket when this hits the stands. We needed a win.”
“Why?” I ask, concerned by his tone. “Is everything okay?”
He shoots me a patronizing look. “Funnily enough, things aren’t hunky-dory in the media industry, Harper. We can’t all live in a fairytale land of fluffy celebrities. Behind the scenes we’re dealing with a shit storm thanks to that little-known threat called digital. Magazines are a dying breed. Sales numbers matter.”
“She was only asking if—” Ryan begins, but he is cut off by Cosmo.
“Go on, and get the social media team prepared, I want this to be picked up by every publication in the country, got it? I have to make some phone calls,” he concludes, shooing us out.
Ryan seems annoyed at my role being so brazenly overlooked by Cosmo, but I tell him I’m used to it and not to worry. But nonetheless, he insists on cooking me dinner to cheer me up, an offer I eagerly accept. I’ve really tried hard to keep my flat in good shape since we got back, because I knew the first time Ryan came over, he would enter with a discerning eye. I admit, I’m quite enjoying being a tidier person, because I do find things much faster. It is a lot more effort, though, and I can’t be perfect—and as soon as Ryan arrives with a bag full of groceries, I notice him clock the ripped cardboard strewn across the sofa. I can tell by his eyes that it’s killing him, even though he’s pretending not to notice it.
“I had a few book deliveries earlier,” I admit as he starts unloading the shopping on the kitchen counter. “I’ll put that all in the recycling.”
“Glass of wine?” he offers, and I wonder if the cardboard is driving him to drink.
“Yes, please. I need it,” I say, leaning against the kitchen counter and watching him look for two glasses in the cupboard before giving up and opening the clean, loaded dishwasher. “My boss was an asshole today.”
“Is that right?” he says. “That’s terrible. Thank goodness you have a ravishingly handsome colleague to make your day seem that bit better.”
“You’re right. Mimi is ravishingly handsome.”
He chuckles, and as he pours the wine, I move to come behind him and wrap my arms around his waist. He lets out a contented sigh, turning round to face me.
“Second time in a week you’ve come here to cook me dinner. I could get used to this.” I grin up at him, resting my chin against his chest.
“Yeah? Me too,” he says, placing a soft kiss on my lips. He hesitates and smiles against my mouth. “Although, I’d enjoy cooking here a little better if all the crockery was in the right place…”
“Are you insulting my kitchen arrangement?”
“It makes no sense to have the plates in a drawer that they don’t fit into. Why wouldn’t you have plates and bowls all in one place, like a cupboard for example?”
“I like the plates being at reaching distance from the stove.”
He frowns. “But only half of them can fit in that drawer.”
“I’m only one little person.” I shrug. “I don’t need six plates available to me on a whim. All I need is one plate waiting for me in that drawer and I’m sorted.”
Lifting his eyes to the ceiling in despair, he sighs. “If I open this drawer now, how many plates are going to be in there? Would I be right in guessing there are none because they’re all in the dishwasher?”
“You know what you need to do, Ryan?” I say innocently.
“Live a little?” he guesses.
I laugh, releasing him from my embrace and going to open the dishwasher, bending down and passing him two clean plates, before shutting it again. He looks pained.
“Bloody hell,” I say, putting my hands on my hips, “you won’t start cooking until the dishwasher is unloaded, will you?”
“I’m not proud to admit this, but it puts me startlingly on edge,” he grimaces, coming over to help me as I pull the door down again. “And don’t get me started on your dishwasher technique. How anything gets cleaned in here when you pile it up in this haphazard way is a miracle.”
I let him lecture me on the best way of arranging the cutlery in the dishwasher because it’s very nice of him to cook and he looks very sexy when he talks passionately about something, his forehead creased in stern concentration. Florence was great, but I’m discovering that I like the version of us here, too, bickering over plates and bowls, comforting each other after a bad day at work. Small moments with Ryan seem as meaningful as the big ones.
Later, my phone rings, and when I see it’s my dad calling, I groan, pushing it away a little too enthusiastically. It flies off the table, clattering onto the floor.
“Whoops,” I say, checking that the screen isn’t more cracked than it already was.
“Who was that?” Ryan asks curiously.
“My dad. I’ll message him later.”
“You can call him back now if you want to.”
I shoot him a look.
“Or not,” he chuckles, recoiling under my glare. “You want to talk about it?”
“What?”
“Your parents,” he says gently.
I pause, reaching for my wine and taking a sip for courage. “We haven’t seen each other in a while,” I say finally. “I think the last time was Easter. It didn’t go well. We had a huge row. I don’t know why they insist on meeting for dinner. No one has a good time. We should give up. I honestly don’t know why we bother.”
Ryan listens intently, waiting for me to say more. When I stay silent, he says simply, “Because they’re your parents.”
“Yeah, well, they wish they weren’t,” I mutter glumly, picking up my wine again and this time taking a large glug.
He watches me carefully. “You’re seeing them for dinner soon, then?”
“Next week.”
“Do you want me to come with you?”
I snap my head up to check he’s being serious. “What?”
“If you want some moral support, I could come with you,” he suggests calmly, looking completely unfazed by the idea.
“Ryan, you don’t know what they’re like. You do not want to put yourself in this situation, trust me. Avoid at all costs.”
“I know that you find it tough to spend time with them, and I want to support you. It doesn’t matter to me how the evening goes, as long as you’re okay.”
I stare at him. Holding my eye contact, he puts his fork down and leans forward, resting his chin in his palm.
“Unless what I’ve just said has completely freaked you out, in which case, please forget it,” he says slowly, scrutinizing my expression. “I get that this is all very new, so if you think it would be inappropriate, then that’s absolutely fine. I just don’t like the idea of you facing that kind of evening alone, so if you need a friendly face, then I’ll be there. That’s all.” He pauses. “Harper? Are you going to say something? You want me to talk about cutlery arranging in the dishwasher again to make this less awkward?”
“No, no,” I say, breaking into a smile. “It’s really nice of you to offer. I would like that very much.”
His eyes light up and he sits back in relief. “Phew! For a minute there, I thought I was a goner.”
“No, I was just processing how lovely you are,” I assure him, elated at the idea of not having to face them alone for once. “But if you change your mind, please don’t worry.”
“I won’t,” he says confidently.
“Are you sure? Big deal, meeting the parents.”
He shrugs. “Not really. You met mine.”
“In a professional capacity. To them, I was your colleague.”
“My parents aren’t idiots, Harper,” he says, picking up his fork again and digging into his meal. “They knew exactly who you were to me.”