Page 20 of The Wedding Pact

I’m not here to impress. I’m just helping out a friend.

Who I definitely shouldn’t bang.

I nearly jump out of my skin when there’s a loud knock on my door and have to remind myself to be cool.

I give my face a quick, pointless, fan, then call, ‘Come in.’

Raffa’s head appears around the door. ‘Just checking you’re happy with your room. You’ve got everything you need?’ he asks, scanning the room as if making sure it meets his standards.

Which I guess he is, since he’s probably used to staying in places like this with the kind of wealth he’s rocking now.

‘I’m very okay, thanks. How’s your room? Satisfactory?’ I say the last word with deep irony in my tone.

‘Yeah, it’s great,’ he says, but in a distracted way that makes me think he’s not ridiculously impressed by being around this kind of luxury, like I am. ‘Okay. See you in the morning,’ he says, then disappears again.

Another strike against him.

If he’s not impressed by all this, he’s going to be a very difficult person to please and that definitely waves a red flag at me.

Which is a shame. In many other ways he’s exactly the kind of guy I could see myself with eventually.

But not right now.

I have too much going on in my life. I can’t hobble myself with a relationship when my career is taking off. I need to be selfish about how I spend my time.

But that doesn’t mean I can’t have fun while I’m here.

And it could be entertaining to wind Raffa up a bit. Just for jinks.

Not that I’m needy for attention or anything.

4

RAFFA

I don’t sleep well.

Despite only napping for short periods during the flight, in favour of getting as much work done as possible, my brain won’t stop doing loops and let me rest.

And I’m not just thinking about work.

Ida keeps popping into my head too.

It’s funny, but whenever we chatted over DMs I always pictured her with light-brown hair for some reason, with a wide-eyed, soft prettiness to her. But that’s not the reality I’m faced with here. Her face is all angles and sharp cheekbones and the expression in her amazing dark eyes is shrewd, but playful. She’s clearly very intelligent and she wears it on her face like a badge of honour. There’s no pretending to be anything other than she is and I dig that.

I get the impression you get exactly what you see with her, which is refreshing.

I like a person who’s straight with me. Who plays no games.

But I have to keep reminding myself that she’s here as a friend, as a favour – and for a cool free holiday, of course – but I absolutely can’t take advantage of the situation. Even if I do find her extremely attractive in real life.

I’d hate to lose the budding friendship we have right now.

I’ve really enjoyed having her to chat with online recently.

If I’m honest, those easy, fun exchanges have been a saving grace recently. They’ve kept me grounded during a particularly stressful time at work.

And I just know it would make things way too complicated if we ended up sleeping with each other. I don’t want to have to navigate the ‘where are we with this relationship’ question that’s bound to come up if we have sex.