“What the hell are you doing?” she’d spat. “You’re supposed to be at the post office photographing Jim and Patty.” And Harper had thought;This woman is an absolute bitch.That evening over a beer, Harper had told Elise that, and Elise had laughed so hard she’d farted. Loudly. In front of everyone. And then, with the straightest expression ever, she had said, ‘Mind your faces.’ And Harper might have fallen in love with her then. She just didn’t know it yet.
Elise caught Harper’s gaze.
But before Harper could smile, or even wink, because yes, despite not seeing her today, she felt oddly brave after yesterday’s picnic, Elise whipped her head toward a man in tight black jeans that barely covered his bright blue socks holding a sterling silver tray. “I need that over there, Jeremy.” She pointed to a small wooden table at the exit that the contestants were going to use on their way to the confessionals. Harper assumed it was where the roses were to be discarded. “Seriously, is it so hard for anyone to just read my mind?”
Jeremy nodded, muttered something Harper shouldn’t repeat out loud, and did what he was told. Elise walked towardan interleading door that led to a living room. Harper wanted to follow. She was going to follow, but then Elise barked, “Everyone into position. Let’s get started!” and the next minute the contestants were ushered into the foyer.
It was fine. Harper wasn’t deterred. In fact, she had a plan so clever that she was even willing to preemptively pat herself on the back. All she needed was access to a few roses and for the introductions to end. Which, frankly, felt like it was never going to.
“Welcome, ladies,” Monica began. “Tonight marks the first rose ceremony. I know you’re all nervous, and that’s understandable. The Banksia rose symbolizes connection. Whoever receives one will take it as an invitation to keep exploring that connection.” She turned to Megan and said, “Are you ready?”
“As ready as can be.” Megan then called up each contestant in turn, and Harper snapped photo after photo. Kira was called first. Then Tori, who looked close to tears. After Tori was Elena, who kept flicking her hair over her shoulder. Then came Jamie and so on until the only one left was Mara.
“I’m so sorry I can’t give you a rose this evening, Mara,” Megan said, all apologetically.
Harper didn’t have time to feel bad for Mara because she was already on her way out of the villa. Harper’s plan was simple: woo Elise.
Which was why she carried an armful of roses she’d pilfered from the extra bouquets she found in the kitchen, why she’d plucked each petal and scattered the whole lot across the front door of Elise’s house, why she broke into Elise’s house using only a credit card and a pair of tweezers, and proceeded to scatter the rest of the petals all across the tiled floor, and why she found every pillow, duvet and spare blanket she could scavenge and piled them all into a soft, lumpy nest out on the smallbalcony. She did all this in the dark, all with a heart thumping like she was being ushered off a bus in Bosnia for a passport check.
The thump in her chest grew into proper heart palpitations when the front door suddenly flew open and the light flickered on, flooding the living space.
“What the fuck are you doing? Are you insane?” Elise snapped, her eyes wild, almost feral.
Shit!
Harper, who was still plumping up a navy-blue cushion with white tassels, spun around so quickly she felt like she was flying. And maybe she was. Maybe she was flying close enough to the sun to burn.
“Really?” Elise asked, looking around at the petals all over the floor. “Do you really think this is going to work? You’re literally breaking and entering. I can have you arrested for this. Ishouldhave you arrested for this.”
“You could,” Harper said, walking in from the balcony. “But you could also sit with me. Just for a minute. Watch the moon go down over the sea.”
Elise blinked at her like Harper had gone mad. Which, technically, in hindsight, was a possibility. This was probably the craziest thing she’d ever done. And not just breaking into Elise’s house but applying for the job and then flying to Italy to see the one person in the world she couldn’t forget.
“Did it ever occur to you that maybe I don’t want to see you? Maybe I want to forget you, forget what happened ten years ago. Has it ever occurred to you that I never wanted to think about you again?” Elise said tightly.
The words hit harder than a slap in the face. In fact, they knocked the air out of Harper’s lungs. “No,” she said. It was the truth. The thought had never occurred to her. “I didn’t ever think that.”
“Well, now you know,” Elise said, softer this time. “Ten years ago, you kissed me. You started something. And then you left. There were two weeks left in production, and I had to walk into every location pretending I didn’t feel like I’d been sucker-punched. I kept thinking you’d reach out. Or show up. Or explain. And when you didn’t, I replayed every second of that night, wondering if it was me. If I had done something wrong.”
“Elise…” Harper stepped closer. “I didn’t leave because of you.” Actually, that wasn’t true at all. Shehadleft because of Elise, because a feeling had formed in her chest, a feeling she knew shouldn’t be there, and it had scared her. In fact, it had absolutely terrified her.
Harper opened her mouth, then closed it again. There was a decade’s worth of words crowding up in her throat. But if she said anything, she’d say it all. She’d lay it all bare.
“Anyway, it doesn’t matter now. I moved on,” Elise said when Harper didn’t reply. “We both did. We got what we wanted, didn’t we? Close enough at least.” She headed to the kitchen and grabbed a bottle of wine out of the fridge. “So,” she said, sighing before she turned back to Harper. “Are we going to watch the moon or what?”
Chapter Ten
Elise lifted the glass of Ravello Bianco to her mouth and gulped back the entire thing. The smug, citrusy, apple-laced wine barely had time to introduce itself before being hurled down her esophagus and, frankly, she didn’t care. She topped up her glass once more and pretended not to notice Harper watching her like someone observing a slow-moving car crash, and knocked it back as well.
Better to be tipsy than as sober as a saint. Which she wasn’t far away from, considering she’d barely eaten a morsel of food today. Just a quick half of a ham-and-cheese sandwich, one of the PAs had practically shoved down her throat when Elise had been caught swaying dizzily over the monitor.
“Did you know the Mediterranean monk seal was spotted here again recently?” Harper asked. “There are fewer than seven hundred of them left.”
“No,” Elise said grumpily, adjusting a cushion behind her back. She didn’t want to say it, wasn’t going to, but this pillow fort Harper had conjured up on the balcony wasn’t uncomfortable. In fact, it was so cozy that Elise felt her bones unclench one vertebra at a time.
“Two years ago, I joined a conservation team in West Kalimantan. We were tracking Sunda pangolins in the lowland rainforest. They’re so endangered they’re basically ghosts. Not to mention they’re extremely elusive. We spent four nights hiking through air so humid it felt like I was inhaling someone else’s breath. And then, at like two in the morning, we finally spotted one waddling between the roots of a strangler fig. Nothing canbeat witnessing something on the brink of disappearing forever and realizing it’s still fighting for a chance.”
“Fascinating,” Elise said, putting on a bored voice when, in fact, that wasn’t boring at all. Elise loved pangolins. They were painfully cute with their little cone-shaped heads and long tails, and the way they curled into tight balls in the face of danger was admirable. They didn’t attack. They defended themselves by curling up and being cute. A worthy strategy.