“Was there a picnic set up at the lookout spot?” Lyra asked, curling into the window seat.
Bianca shook her head. “Not a picnic, but a little bistro table draped in linen, and there were these small mason jars with fairy lights inside them. Very cute and romantic.”
“What did you eat?” Claire asked, leaning forward until her elbows pressed into her thighs. “And don’t skimp on the details.”
“Dessert,” Bianca replied, smiling.
“Dessert?” Claire repeated, frowning as if she’d misheard. She sat up, yanked a cushion from the sofa opposite, and hugged it tight against her chest. “Really?”
“Yes,” Bianca said. “There were tiny lavender madeleines, little fruit tarts with figs and apricots, honey-drizzled calissons, and little pots of chocolate mousse topped with candied orange peel. It was delicious. Sweet. Like I don’t think I can stare plain chocolate in the face again level of deliciousness.”
Birdie couldn’t give a crap about the food. She didn’t want the menu rundown. She wanted the real details. She wanted the things Bianca wasn’t saying. Did they connect? Did they kiss? Was there any touching, and if yes, how much exactly? But she wasn’t about to ask her outright, not with everyone watching.
“What did you talk about?” Isabelle asked, folding her knees under herself like a yogi.
“Everything,” Bianca said, drawing the word out until it sounded like a sigh.
“Be specific,” Isabelle pressed. “We want details.”
Bianca pretended to think about it. Birdie knew she was just stalling to ramp up the tension, as if there wasn’t already enough tension in the room. Birdie could almost taste it, like the steam in a steam room.
“Everyday things,” Bianca said. “Work, hobbies, where we traveled to in the last year. And some deeper things too, like if she ever wanted to get married, or get a dog, or have children.You know, things you want to know about your prospective partner.”
Birdie nearly scoffed. Bianca was acting like she’d already won the whole damn competition, and for some inexplicable reason Birdie felt jealous. Or maybe her feelings of jealousy weren’t all that surprising. Of all the emotions she could be experiencing, that was the most absurd. Not to mention unseemly and completely unbecoming. She was almost embarrassed about it. Who got jealous on a reality dating show? Surely not her.
But she couldn’t linger on it, because Louise leaned forward and asked the questions Birdie had been dying to ask herself. “Did she hold your hand? Touch your knee? Did you kiss?”
Bianca only smiled, tilting her head ever so slightly, and Birdie knew she wasn’t going to give them an answer. At least not the one she wanted.
“Some things are better left unsaid,” Bianca said, and then giggled.
The groans and complaints that rocketed through the living room were enough to make Birdie’s ears ache. But no matter how much they pleaded, Bianca remained unshakeable. Birdie needed to go straight to the source. She needed to find Alexis and ask her herself.
Chapter Seventeen
Alexis yanked the shower curtain aside and stepped out. Water dripped from the ends of her hair and puddled at her feet. She grabbed a towel, slung it around her shoulders, and wondered if she should dry her hair or leave it wet before she climbed into bed.
Was hair mold a thing? Or could she get away with going to bed with wet hair?
Frankly, she was just too tired to care.
She shuffled toward the bed, one leg already up, ready to collapse under the covers. But just as she shifted her weight forward, eager to dive headfirst into the assortment of plushy pillows, her eye caught a movement at the doorframe. A slip of paper slid slowly across the floor.
Alexis groaned. She really didn’t want to think about a date now. She’d just had one, and yes, it had been nice. Really nice. Bianca was gorgeous. But Alexis was done with all the perfunctory compliments for the cameras, the carefully staged getting-to-know-you chatter that seemed to stretch on for hours and left her exhausted in the corners of her brain. She needed a break, a refresh.
She needed sleep.
But she also had an obligation to read that letter.
When she walked to the door and snatched the letter up from the floor, she expected it to be an envelope with tomorrow’s date itinerary on it. But instead, the paper was small and creased at the corners with scribbled handwriting on one side. It wasn’t a formal note at all. It was barely even a letter.
Meet me at garden number three in fifteen minutes—Birdie
Alexis stared at it for a minute. And then she tossed the note on the bed and said out loud, “Where the hell is garden number three?”
Twenty minutes later, Alexis walked silently along a pathway heading toward the right garden. She spent much of those twenty minutes talking herself into the entire thing. Birdie wanted to see her. She could’ve knocked on Alexis’s bedroom door, snuck inside, and they could’ve been having hot post-shower sex. Surely Alexis would’ve allowed such a bold action. Instead, Birdie had decided on a more cryptic way of seeing Alexis, and Alexis had no idea how to feel about that.
“I thought you weren’t coming.” Birdie stepped out of the shadows of a tall cypress. She was wearing an aquamarine slip dress and had her hair up in a claw clip. Alexis, on the other hand, wore loose jeans and an oversized shirt with a picture of a lemon quarter on the front. If she’d known Birdie was wearing that, she would’ve dressed up.
