Page 52 of Tempted Hearts
“And you’re the friend?” I guessed.
“Maybe.”
I rolled my eyes.
“That we’re…” I struggled to find the words. Or at least, tried to until I caught a glimpse of Cole’s expression. A week ago, I’d have thought it aloof. Maybe even condescending. But I’d gotten to know his dry humor, and there was amusement buried deep behind those dark glasses. “Jerk. You know what I mean.”
He didn’t smile, exactly. But Cole’s lips did lift ever so slightly upward.
It was things like that I almost wished I hadn’t noticed. We ate breakfast at our usual spot, a café not far from the hotel in the piazza where Monterosso came to life, easy conversation weaving between us, too natural for two people who were supposed to be nothing.
Formulating a plan for the day, our last in Cinque Terre before we’d head out to meet up with Parker and Delaney, I reminded myself over and over—anytime my stomach did a little flip if I caught Cole looking at me or as he sat back, legs extended, looking more effortless European than confused tourist, or when I remembered the night he pressed me against the wall—what he’d told me on the boat.
Cole didn’t do relationships. He was a one-night-stand kind of guy. The very opposite of what I wanted, or needed, in my life.
Deciding to head to Manarola, our second favorite town of the five, we caught the ferry over. The wind kept blowing my hair across my face until Cole reached out—reflexively—and smoothed it behind my ear before catching himself. Neither of us mentioned it.
In Manarola, we strolled through the streets. Ate lunch. Drank wine. Shopped. Cole didn’t buy anything, but he stayed close, carrying my bag, handing me things to try, watching me with that unreadable-professor expression I was starting to understand wasn’t cold at all.
In the late afternoon, Cole suggested we walk the Via dell’Amore to Riomaggiore and catch the train back from there.
“It’s short,” he said. “Barely a mile.”
“It’s literally called Lover’s Lane,” I pointed out.
“And?” he said, deadpan. “We’re clearly immune.”
Immune. Right.
“I’m in. We’d planned to do more hiking but…”
As we made our way to the ticket stand, Cole addressed the “elephant in the room.”
“Juliette. Accidents happen.”
“Yeah. But they’re much more likely to happen when you’re a space cadet.”
He stopped, dead in the street.
“You have, or had, a therapist.”
“And?”
“And what would she say about you calling yourself a space cadet?”
I opened my mouth to respond, but he stopped me.
“Even if you’re prone to misplace things.”
That’s exactly what I’d planned to argue. I thought about it for a second. What would she say, if Carolina were standing in front of me.
“She’d say my mind was a powerful thing, and if I got accustomed to disparaging myself, my mind would start to believe it. That I shouldn’t do that.”
He waited. Raised his thick gorgeous brows under those glasses. God damn, Cole really was a specimen. Imagining him kissing me had become my new part-time job.
“Point taken,” I said. As we, or he, bought the ticket to hike and we made our way to the trail, I thought back to when he’d first come to Italy. Without him saying a word, I assumed he thought one way about me losing my backpack, and here he was defending me… from me.
“Thank you for coming,” I said as we started on Via dell’Amore which hugged the cliffs, the sea stretching out below us in endless blue. To our right, vines and wildflowers clung to the hillsides. “For interrupting your life, finding my old license… all of it.”
