Page 158 of Modern Romance October 2025 5-8

‘Well? Are you going to join me,cara?’ he teased. It was an easy flirtation, without the heady intensity of last night and she welcomed it.

She peeled off her sundress and swung her legs over the side of the boat, dangling her feet into the cool—not but frigid—water. She closed her eyes. Maybe they could have this moment. Just this one. Where she wasn’t trying to marry him to get Charterhouse, and he wasn’t the careless playboy that pushed all her buttons. She didn’t deserve it, she knew that much, but she wanted it anyway.

Enzo watched Erin slip into the water from the side of the boat and waited for her to surface.

‘You looked like you’re making a wish,amore mio,’ Enzo said, treading water.

‘Maybe I was,’ she replied with a cryptic smile.

‘What did you wish for?’ he asked, curious in spite of himself, wanting to know her every thought.

‘I can’t tell you that,’ Erin chided.

‘Why not?’

‘Because then it wouldn’t come true,’ she reasoned, before sliding from the boat into the aquamarine waters of the inlet.

‘I’d tell you mine,’ he stropped teasingly, when she rose from the waters.

‘Go on then.’

‘Ididn’t make one,’ he said in the same childish tone that seemed to bring ease to her gaze. It felt playful and fun—different and so much more chaste than what he was used to, but more importantly it chased whatever shadows had filled her gaze that morning. Was she beginning to have second thoughts, like he was?

She swept an arc of water towards him, the small wave hitting his chest and making him laugh, reminding him that they had promised to take the day off.

‘Don’t start something you can’t finish,’ he warned, shaking his finger at her, delighted when his words ignited the small spark of naughtiness glinting in her eye into a meteor shower.

She pushed towards him with two hands, letting out a gasp of frustration as he dipped beneath the water. Plunging to a depth that would make it hard for her to spot him, he closed the distance between them in long, powerful strokes, until he saw the glow of her skin in the deep blue depths.

Her legs twisted back and forth, as if she were searching for him. Hidden from her, he let the smile loose, as he grabbed her legs and instead of tugging her down, launched them both upwards, until he broke the surface of the water, to hear a high-pitched cry peppered with laughter.

She clung to his shoulders and despite his plans to carefully throw her back into the water, he kept her in his arms, her hair, thick, ruby-red ropes, coming around them like a curtain, closing out the rest of the world.

It’d be nice, he realised. To stay like that. And the part of him that knew that this was all just part of the game grew quieter and quieter.

He changed his hold, letting her slip down his chest until his arms banded around her torso and he found the ticklish spots at her ribs that sent more screams and more laughter into the air around them.

Making her laugh was becoming something addictive. Something that he wanted to indulge in. Just today. Just this. Perhaps for just this moment, he could pretend that it was all real. That she wasn’t only here because she wanted something from him. That she wasn’t just like his parents.

They stayed in the water for another half an hour, splashing around, swimming, Erin doing handstands and circles under water, and him just enjoying her playfulness.

After that, they slowly unpacked the lunch the chef had prepared for them. Erin’s shocked gasps of delight were fulfilling enough as she unpacked delicacy after delicacy. Champagne, caviar, smoked salmon, charcoal crackers.

‘Brie?’ she asked, peeling back the parchment it had been wrapped in. ‘Vacherin Mont d’Or? Is that not a little heavy?’ she wondered out loud.

Enzo huffed out a breath. ‘The chef is taunting me. We have an ongoing disagreement as to the better cheese, Italian or French.’

‘I—’

‘I don’t want to hear it,cara!’ he exclaimed, raising his hand to ward her off. ‘I won’t let you break my heart,’ he warned, his unintended use of words landing awkwardly between them. Erin seemed to take the same moment, a blink shielding the intense blue of her gaze, before she laughed and picked up the fennel salami.

‘This is some picnic,’ she said, stealing a thin sliver of the delicate meat, as she looked out at the slashes of blue that defined the horizon. ‘Do you always do this?’ she asked, her curious gaze returning to his.

‘Do what?’

‘Come out here with your...’

A smile pulled at his mouth, as she seemed too uncomfortable to finish the rest of her sentence.