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“This is really good,” I say, looking him over.
“Told you you’d like it.” He grabs his drink and sips on it but keeps his eyes on me.
“Don’t tell me you were a bartender in a former life.” I’m totally joking. I can’t imagine him in his pristine designer suits and clean-cut presence working behind a bar. There’s no way.
“For one week,” he replies, shocking me.
“Really? Where? For Tom Ford?”
Now he smiles and it’s nothing like the malicious ones I’m used to. Hunter Le Blanche gives me a real smile, one that reaches his eyes and takes the chill away from his expression.
“If only. In my sophomore year at Princeton, my brother, my cousin and I went to Ibiza for spring break.” There’s a look of reminiscence in his eyes that fascinates me. “We got so shitface wasted at this yacht party that we ended up getting robbed. The guys took everything. Our passports, credit cards, cash, phones. Every motherfucking thing.”
“Seriously? That must have been horrible.” My phone was stolen once and that was bad enough.
“It was fucked up. Then we were arrested for being drunk and disorderly. The cops let us go once we sobered up, but mainly because they recognized our family name.” He sets his drink back down and leans against the cupboard. “In the meantime my parents were on a ten-day camping trip in Australia where we couldn’t reach them. Left without a hope in hell, I came up with the idea of working behind a bar to raise the money we needed to get ourselves out of trouble. That’s where I learned to make every cocktail you can think of on this planet.”
I laugh and his gaze flicks down to my lips.
“I can’t believe that.”
“It’s true.”
“And your parents were camping in Australia?”
“Yup. And I actually believe they switched their phones off on purpose. They’re always so busy they don’t get to do much together. That hasn’t changed.”
“They sound adventurous.” I’ve seen his parents a few times. They seemed like nice people. Hunter looks exactly like his father but has his mother’s eyes.
“They are. You’ll get to meet them properly at the engagement party.”
“Yeah. I will.” It sounds so weird to think that party is just on the horizon.
“So, my stint at bartending, time in jail, and being nearly stranded in Ibiza are a whole bunch of new things you now know about me.”
“They are.” I bite back a smile.
“What else do you want to know about me, Bellissima? Ask.”
I breathe in slowly and thoughtfully then glance down at the journal next to me. The only thing that’s been on my mind since before I left my parents’ house is Alexis. I think he knows that.
I look back at him and see the anticipation in his eyes, so I decide to ask the question.
“I didn’t know you knew Alexis and her ex-husband so well.” By saying it like that he knows I’m referring to the picture.
“We grew up together. We met when we were three at pre-school.”
That surprises me even more. “Wow, that’s a really long time to know someone.” It’s even longer than I’ve known Ryan.
“Yeah. The picture you saw was of me winning my first boat race. They were there cheering for me. It was the first thing I’d ever won in my life. That picture is the only one I have left of that day and why I keep it in that journal.”
“What happened to the other pictures?”
“They were lost.” Something about the way he says that seems a little off. As if the pictures weren’t simply lost.
“Sorry about that. I have lost pictures, too. Of my mother.” By lost I mean I destroyed them in a fit of rage on the second anniversary of her death. Maybe Hunter lost his pictures that way as well.
I burned pictures of Mom and me when I was a baby as well as several others. Dad had just married Kimberly, Layla was acting like a jerk, and I missed Mom so much I thought I was going to die too.
