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Isabelle gave me a subtle wink, relieving me of my panic and increasing my liking of her. Not quite as innocent as she looks. That sideways smile made my pulse quicken.
“If you want to rent it, we can,” Janet said, and Hunter choked on his piece of pizza.
“I don’t think it’s really your kind of thing, Aunt Janet,” he said.
“Definitely not,” Georgia added. “Let’s just stick to The Lion King.”
The rest of lunch passed without incident, and even though I was aware there were conversations going on around me, Isabelle had deafened me somehow. I tried hard to keep my focus on everything else because I didn’t want them to think I was rude and ungrateful, but she was so freaking gorgeous.
Girls were so not the reason I’d wanted a vacation. Since meeting Isabelle, I’d changed my mind.
Chapter Two – Georgia’s Sister
Isabelle
Tuning out the sound of Mr. Swift talking about the way writers use and adapt language, I closed my eyes and a picture of him filled my mind.
When my parents had told Georgia and me that our cousin, Hunter, and his friend were coming to stay for a few weeks, I wasn’t exactly thrilled with the idea. Don’t get me wrong, I love Hunter and I wished he lived much nearer than he does, but having someone new in my house made me nervous. Generally speaking, I don’t like new people. It takes me a long time to warm up to them, and most of the time, they don’t wait around long enough for me to do so. Four weeks is usually the minimum amount of time it takes me to get used to people, so having a boy staying for that exact duration sounded awful.
I met Jesse for the first time when I was twelve, and I thought he was a bit of a dork. He had long, skinny legs and twiggy arms. His hair was a blond mess, and he spent all his time playing football with Hunter, and mostly ignoring me and Georgia.
When I saw him on Saturday morning, in my living room, hair ruffled from him falling asleep on the sofa, my mouth felt like it was filled with sawdust, and I could barely choke out a ‘hello.’
He’d got kind of … gorgeous over the years. He’d grown into his gangly arms and legs, and developed muscles, and the kind of chiselled jaw you think only exists in romance novels, not in the real world.
Right away, his looks put him way out of my league, but when you threw in the fact he was on his way to being a football legend in America, he was obviously a guy who wouldn’t look twice at plain old Isabelle Mills. He tried really hard to make conversation with me, I guess because he felt sorry for me. I appreciated his efforts, and I think I may have even flirted with him a little over lunch before reminding myself I definitely wasn’t going to get his attention. Boys were Georgia’s area of expertise. She already had a boyfriend, Elliott, but that didn’t stop the other guys at college from checking her out. She was just so confident, whereas I preferred to sit in the background. The last thing I needed was some prat like Leon Baxter following me around. Lucky for me, he definitely preferred Georgia, though honestly, I wouldn’t have wished him on anyone. I hated the way he stared at her, making disgusting innuendos. He was the kind of guy who gave all the rest a bad name.
“Isabelle?”
I jumped at the sound of Mr. Swift saying my name, and the rest of the class started laughing. I could feel their eyes on me. I tried to subtly wipe my chin, just in case I’d accidentally been drooling on the desk while in my trance, and Georgia giggled beside me.
“Sorry, sir,” I said, wishing I could crawl under the desk and hide.
“Welcome back,” he said, smiling. “Are you ready to join in the discussion now?”
I nodded. “Yes, sir.”
When class ended, Georgia linked her arm through mine, and as we all bundled out the door, she said, “Are you okay? It’s not like you to doze off during English Lit!”
“I wasn’t asleep,” I told her, as we walked along the corridor, headed for the cafeteria, “I was thinking.”
“I bet I can guess what about!” she teased.
“Urgh. Sometimes being a twin is rubbish.”
Ever since we were kids, Georgia and I could read each other’s minds. It might not have been a twin power necessarily because we’d always been really close. But sometimes we could read each other so well, it scared me.
“Oh, this has nothing to do with our mind-reading skills!” she laughed. “It has everything to do with the fact that you look like a human traffic light every time you see Jesse!”
“I always blush around new people,” I pointed out.
“Yes, but you don’t normally lose your appetite and walk around like a zombie.”
Whenever Jesse was nearby, I had trouble finishing my meals because my stomach sloshed around so much. I needed to tackle that, firstly because I didn’t want him to think I had some kind of eating disorder, and secondly because I was starving.
“Come on, Izzy, admit it. You’ve got a thing for Jesse!”
“Drop it,” I told her. “It’s not even worth thinking about.”
