‘Sorry, boys, not sexy enough. Girls’ point!’ Darcy laughed delightedly.
‘That’s bollocks!’ Jack shouted.
‘We’ll win the next one,’ Annabelle said.
‘The girl with the shortest name must plant twenty kisses on a boy of her choice.’
Faye turned to Oliver with a sly smile. ‘Do you mind?’
‘Not at all,’ Oliver said, visibly gulping.
Faye sat in Oliver’s lap, kissing his cheeks, his forehead, his lips, his throat. Declan watched them together, Faye’s mouth on Oliver’s neck, hating that he’d pushed Oliver to pursue her. He clenched his teeth, possessiveness tightening his chest.
‘Oh, boys,’ Darcy tsked, and Faye reluctantly slipped off Oliver. ‘You’ll need quicker lips to win next time.’
‘This game is rigged,’ Jack said, laughing. ‘No way Zoë did that faster than Faye.’
Declan finally ripped his gaze away from Oliver when Darcy gave the next challenge. ‘The boy with the first name alphabetically, snog the girl you fancy most.’
He glanced back up, eyes dragging over Oliver to Eavie beside him. Declan didn’t think about it. He kissed her, harder than he meant to, the frustration of the day pouring out of him. When they broke apart, he forced himself not to look at Oliver.
‘That’s how you do it! Boys win that point.’
Declan hesitantly turned to Oliver. He looked stunned, blinking at Declan as though seeing him for the first time. Declan felt split open, his bitterness dissipating instantly.
There was a beat where no one said anything, and the contestants waited with bated breath.
‘Was that i—’ Faye started.
‘Everyone jump in the pool!’ Darcy cried.
The contestants scrambled out of their seats, tripping over each other as they ran to the pool’s edge and jumped in, ignoring the shouts from Paige about their mics.
As they clambered back out of the pool, laughing and shoving each other playfully, Darcy’s voice came over the loudspeaker: ‘Tough luck! You weren’t quite fast enough to catch the speedy lovebirds in the rival villa. Nice guys really do finish last!’
Declan had given up on the game as soon as the shame of the kiss had sunk in, so he wasn’t put out by the loss. The others didn’t seem to care either, and the boys spent the night getting to know the new girls better, any tension cut by the challenge of the afternoon. It turned out Annabelle and Amelia were actresses, doing mainly local commercials and modelling gigs, which led to Faye regaling them with the movie-star encounters she’d had living in LA.
‘What made you move here?’ Jack asked. ‘You could’ve had George Clooney eating out of the palm of your hand with a smile like that.’
Faye flashed her teeth at him insincerely. ‘I followed a man out here, if you can believe it. We were engaged and everything.’ She looked away. ‘He called it off two weeks before the wedding.’
‘God,’ Niall said, ‘I can’t imagine.’
She recovered quickly. ‘Luckily, I’m hot as shit, drinking wine and surrounded by four gorgeous men now.’
The contestants laughed and Paige called for lights out in thirty minutes.
‘Ready for a cuddle?’ Jack asked, slapping Declan’s knee.
Declan shook his head. ‘Nah,’ he said. ‘If it’s between your snores or the mosquitos, I’ll take the mosquitos. I’m sleeping out here tonight.’ He hoped that a night away from the other contestants, from Oliver, would help to clear his head.
Jack raised a hand to his chest in mock affront before shrugging. ‘Whatever, more room for me.’
Declan avoided the others as he got ready for bed. He didn’t want anyone to see the emotions he worried had been written across his face all night, the confusion and guilt over what had happened with Eavie.
He stripped down to his boxers before heading back outside, where he was startled to find Oliver sitting on one of the daybeds, Paige and a cameraman close by. Declan paused. Talking to Oliver would certainly make Declan lose his final measure of control, but he couldn’t think of a way out of it in front of the cameras.
‘Fancy a spoon?’ Declan asked, donning his easy-going facade as he sat on the opposite side of the daybed, hoping in vain that Oliver couldn’t see right through him.
