Page 136 of Modern Romance October 2025 5-8

‘There’s nothing wrong with a healthy dose of adrenaline,’ he said with a shrug. ‘I didn’t realise you liked to play it so safe,’ he chided teasingly.

‘I...’ She was about to refute his claim, but shedid. She did play things safe. She didn’t go out, she didn’t attend wild parties. She did watch her pennies, and pay her bills on time.

Probably because she’d had to. After she had moved down to Falmouth with her mother and her father had stayed behind in London, desperate to pursue yet another crazy scheme to recover all the money he’d lost, it quickly became clear how much her mother had adapted her life to her husband’s. How much she’d relied on him for everything.Everything.

Arla Carter had been in such a state of shock, starting over again, that she’d been frozen and overwhelmed. And at fifteen Erin had learned pretty quickly how to set up online accounts for bills, or food orders, for the TV licence and the council tax.

And that had been when it started. Their little game. Something they would say when things got a little too hard. It had started as a story that Erin would tell her mother.

When we get Charterhouse back, everything will be fine.

When we get Charterhouse back, we can return to London.

When we get Charterhouse back, we can eat out in fancy restaurants.

When we get Charterhouse back, Erin could return to St Paul’s Girls and Arla Carter could return to the friends that had disowned her.

When we get Charterhouse back, everything will be fine.

And then she remembered that she had to answer as Rin, not Erin, and cursed herself for forgetting.

‘I don’t always play it safe,’ she teased instead.

He smiled, and just then his phone vibrated with an incoming call. She just about managed to see his father’s name on the screen before he rejected the call and put his phone back into his pocket.

‘It’s okay, you can—’

‘No. That’s okay,cara. You have my undivided attention.’

It rang again, background music to a now awkward silence.

‘I’m afraid my father isn’t the kind of man to take no for an answer,’ Enzo admitted. ‘And I will probably have to take this after all.’

Enzo raised his hand and clicked his fingers in the air again, missing the narrowing of Erin’s eyes at the gesture. She watched him say something to the waiter and hand over another very thick wad of notes.

‘You have my sincerest apologies, but I’ve arranged for a car to come and pick you up and return you to your hotel.’

‘You’re leaving?’ Erin asked in surprise. Was it because of his father, or because of her?

‘Yes, but don’t look so devastated, Rin. I’ll be seeing you tomorrow,’ he said with that charming smile, picking up her hand again, and hovering an air kiss just above her skin. After the briefest of pauses, he closed the distance. His lips gently pressed against the back of her hand, the touch little more than that of the wings of a butterfly, but the impact was instantaneous. Goose bumps shoot across her skin, her pulse fluttered and her cheeks pinked.

She pushed the startling sensation aside and tried to focus on what he was saying about seeing her tomorrow.

‘I will?’

‘Yes. We have plans,cara.’

Plans indeed. Over the next four days, they toured the Amalfi Coast’s greatest hits. Enzo had taken her to Spiaggia di Tordigliano, a stunning little beach where they’d swam and eaten the gorgeous picnic prepared by the chef on his yacht. He’d driven them to Sorrento where they’d eaten a spectacular spaghetti carbonara, they’d visited San Lazzaro, overnighting at a hotel that clung defiantly to the edge of the coast, and gone swimming at theGrotta dello Smeraldo, which Enzo had presumably paid an exorbitant and hugely wasteful amount of money so that they could have it to themselves. In aquamarine waters, enclosed with ancient rocks but beautifully lit, she’d never admit to a living soul how much she’d had to resist the intimacy and charm of the moment.

For the little girl to whom a shocking change from London to the dark, damp cold shorelines of Falmouth that had dominated her winters, this contrast of this beautiful sun-drenched, near perfect moment, was almost seductive.

Filled with exquisite food, and more maddeningly polite charm from Enzo, they had visited the Valle delle Ferriere near Ravello. The walk cut through rich green forestry and magical waterfalls, the earthy scents refreshing after the salt of the sea, as dappled light ticked her skin through the leafy canopy along the path.

During that time, she had learned that Enzo liked chocolate so dark it was bitter, that he probably had more coffee than blood in his veins, and that he drove like every Italian stereotype she’d ever seen—heavy on the horn and loose on the wheel. He was like Peter Pan, utterly careless about anything remotely serious and she was half fearful of what would happen to him when his money ran out, the charm fell flat and the good looks faded.

Was that why Gio wanted her to marry him?To ground him somehow? Play Wendy to his Peter?

If that was the case then Gio Gallo had clearly never read to the end of the book. And if she didn’t get herself under control, the book of her and Enzo’s romance would end up as a murder mystery—without the mystery. He was driving her out of her mind with his affectations. Affectations that she had to pretend to be utterly enthralled with.