Page 157 of Modern Romance October 2025 5-8
She dressed, feeling a strange combination of elated, pleasured, exposed, and a little heartsore, and went looking for Enzo. She found him on the balcony of the hotel suite where breakfast had already been laid out for them.
He poured her coffee, explained the different fillings of the cornetti. He’d offered her eggs, and she’d politely declined, all so very civilised when last night had been anything but. So much so that she half wanted to scream.
‘About last night...’ she began, but then couldn’t quite find the words.
‘Yes,cara?’
‘I...you... I feel like I used you,’ she confessed on a raw whisper.
His gaze was heavy on her, she felt it, even though her eyeline was filled solely with the plate in front of her.
His reaction was a stilted sigh. As if he’d part expected it.
‘I did nothing I did not want to do, Erin,’ he said, his tone gentle and sincere.
But you don’t know. I’m using you and you don’t know it.
‘Do you regret it?’ he asked, the concern in his voice raising her gaze to his.
She frowned and shook her head. She couldn’t possibly. It had been the most exquisite night of her life. But did that make her a bad person?
‘How about this. Why don’t we take the day off?’ Enzo offered.
Erin laughed a little. ‘You make it sound like we’re working.’
Though in a horrible way, she almost was, wasn’t she?
‘There. It’sthatlook I want to take the day off from,’ Enzo teased gently.
She swallowed her guilt. Maybe taking a day off would make things clearer for her. She hadn’t done anything that couldn’t be undone yet. Not really. And she thought she’d quite like to take a ‘day off’ with Enzo.
‘So, let’s, as the English say, ‘bunk off’?’ he asked and she laughed. ‘We’ll reschedule the wedding planner—’
Oh god, she’d forgotten about that.
‘And Marcus can wait—’
‘Marcus?’
‘Yes, I promised to meet up with him in Cannes, but he can wait,cara.’
Marcus from the party where she’d worn that horrible dress. He’d been nice, but Cynthia not so much. Yes, Erin thought she could do with delaying bumping into them again so soon. Even if just for a day.
‘What do you say?’
Feeling a hint of excitement at the delay, she smiled and nodded in agreement.
They still met the speedboat at the allotted time, but instead of returning them to the yacht, Enzo swapped with the pilot, and took them out of Livorno’s port across to the Isola di Gorgona.
Unable to help herself she had laughed as the boat bucked and rocked as they’d crested the waves from the larger tourist ferry where people had pointed and waved and taken pictures of Enzo’s sleek boat. Enzo steered towards a bay far too small to interest the other tourists, and dropped the anchor in the depths of the little inlet.
The rough tumble of craggy sun-bleached rocks clearly made it difficult to access the beach by any other means than boat. Nature had claimed large patches above and around that rock with thick bright green leafy foliage but nothing was as beautiful as the dark turquoise of pristine waters lapping gently at the boat.
Beside her, Enzo slipped off his shirt and kicked off his shoes and stepped up on to the side of the boat. His head fell back, face turned to the sun, soaking in its warmth for a breathtaking moment. He looked utterly uncaring. No one to please, to serve, his shoulders relaxed, before he took a deep breath and executed a perfect swan dive into the azure waters, leaving barely a ripple in his wake.
She’d always assumed that being on the yacht for him was about money and prestige, about rootlessness. But seeing him in the water, she was beginning to wonder whether it went deeper than that. Whether it was something to do with a connection to that worldly element.
He surfaced, flipping his hand—and his hair—one side to another, using his hands to push the water from his face and away.
