I throw a pillow at him and he swerves to avoid it.
“Well, I don’t snore much,” I say, staring out the porthole window. “Somewhere between a revving chain saw and a car alarm.”
Leo laughs as he glances up at me. “I haven’t shared a bed in a while, but I could be sleeping next to a rocket launcher tonight and I’d still manage a few cycles of REM.”
My heart picks up. He’s single. Iknewit. Leo looks up again at me and our eyes catch—there is an undeniable message passed between us. His eyes darken for a split second and my stomach starts to fizzle, heat drawing up through the insides of my thighs.Give me strength, I say to myself quietly.You can’t do this.
“I also haven’t shared a bed in some time,” I say slowly.
Leo’s eyes drop to the book in my hand, and then he turns to the light switches by the bed. “Are you reading? Or do you mind if I turn off the big light?”
“Please do,” I say, dropping my book on the small table next to the window. Leo flicks the switches, and we’re plunged into darkness for a moment, with only the red of the sunset casting its glow across the room. Finally, he finds the small reading lights and then the room is dim, cozy.
“What wereyoureading?” I ask. With the wooziness of the wine, and the gentle rocking of the boat against the swell, the whole atmosphere is charged.
“Oh, some spy novel,” he says.
He glances at my heavily thumbed copy ofRiders, the Jilly Cooper novel I’ve read a hundred times, which I swiped from Antonia’s hotel give-and-take library before we left.
“I promise there was a Charles Bukowski in my suitcase,” I say, grinning.
“Sure there was, Olive,” he says, laying his book on the bedside table and turning to me, arms folded. “And back on my bedside table it’s strictly Nietzsche and a first edition ofNaked Lunch.”
“Did you go to uni, then?” I ask, chuckling. “Nietzsche?Naked Lunch? I’m guessing you didn’t finish your first year.”
“Nah. I was singularly focused on becoming Gordon Ramsay,” he says with a little smirk.
“Please find a different culinary hero,” I say, rolling my eyes.
Leo puts his own book away, his gaze catching on my thighs as he looks up at me from across the cabin.
“I’m not some tecYo-chef; I don’t get off on seven-course fine dining or Gordon fucking Ramsay,” he says, laughing in exasperation. My mind has unfortunately frozen on the titillating imaginings of what exactly would get Leo off.
“I went to a Ramsay restaurant one time with my mother,who’d saved for a year. Before that pretty much all I’d eat was tuna sandwiches and lasagna.”
“I get it, I get it,” I say, forcing myself out of the fantasy and back into the moment. “It’s just that first night, you had that notebook with the super-fancy sketches...”
“I write down ideas of all sorts all the time,” he says. “You didn’t give me a chance to speak. You wanted to dislike me, I think.”
Gah. He’s right. I shake my head and look at the floor, not able to word the apology just yet. “This has been hard for me.”
“I know,” he says, leaning forward, his eyes serious. “I do know that. I came with my own prejudices. I said some dumb things at the bar on the first night.”
“Well. Iwasbeing overly pretentious about food,” I concede, laughing again. “Even if our tastes are different.”
“Are they, though?” Leo says, as he tries to hide a yawn, and I wonder how he can be so tired when every single cell of my body is wide awake and jittery. I feel like I’ve had seven coffees.
“Do you want to sleep?”
“No, not yet,” he says, nodding to his glass on the side table. “What I really like is more modern classic food. Do you know Osteria Mozza? That famous mozzarella bar in Los Angeles.”
“Of course,” I reply.The chef is Nancy Silverton. One Michelin star. Italian. Simple.
“I like that,” he says, gesticulating with his hands. “It’s all done in the very best possible way, and it’s far from pretentious. From the flour she uses, the yeast, the milk for mozzarella. All in the little details of preparation. You know—”
He stops talking, shakes his head at me, laughing to himself. “You know what? Forget it. I’m getting a little tired of trying to win you over.”
“You’ve been trying to win me over?” I say. “You gotta work on your banter, Leo.”
