This is not the kind of thing Connor has hired me to post.
With a curdling feeling at the pit of my gut, I delete the photo and find a runner-up. It’s a long shot of the pool—better than what Roman has been posting, but nothing exciting.
That’s the one I schedule instead, along with a completely professional and completely boring caption.
Then I return Connor’s text.
Jenny: Things are going just fine.
And that sets the tone for the next five days. Wake up. Dress myself to be seen by one Roman Bliss. Leave all my natural instincts in the past, where they belong. There’s no time on the Bliss Resort to be a fumbling, snorting, wreck of a girl. There’s only the coolly professional woman who should be delighting in the fact that I finally have Roman’s attention.
At least, I thought I did.
For all the electricity of his hands on my skin at yoga, he stays in his lane. Meticulously in his lane. On Saturday, he takes me to see a wedding in progress, with the ceremony at the gazebo. We stand far, far back on the walkway to the resort so we don’t end up in even the longest shots by the photographer. And not once does he touch me. He doesn’t even stand too close.
Five days in a row.
Five long, excruciating days, during which I post more run-of-the-mill images and taglines that sound like they were written by one of the temps at Global—which is to say that they’re perfectly serviceable and totally forgettable. I can practically hear them landing with hardly a sound, much less a splash. The scheduler does its job, sending the posts out into the Internet, and I do mine.
Sunday night, it hits me.
This is like tennis.
My knowledge of tennis is limited to the concept of the volley.
I sit straight up on the sofa in my employee bungalow and toss the novelty Empire Strikes Back blanket off my legs.
What the hell have I been thinking?
I started all this, parading into the office with a bathing suit and insisting that Roman work with me despite his obvious desire. That’s what it was—desire. Any other woman would be able to admit it, and here I am, trying to convince myself that in Roman’s eyes I’m the same person I was back in high school.
He didn’t know that person, and he doesn’t know this person, not fully. And that means I have an element of intrigue.
“I’m intriguing,” I whisper at my episode of The West Wing on Netflix. “I’m intriguing!” I say it a little louder, then catch sight of myself in the mirror that hangs above the television. It’s a slightly strange place for a mirror, but who cares? This is the Bliss Resort, and I’m here living the dream. I purse my lips and blow myself a kiss. “Very intriguing,” I say in my sultriest voice.
Then I whip my head around to make sure nobody has walked in and overheard me.
No one has.
If this was a tennis match—or any sort of match involving the back and forth trading of one or more balls—those balls would be in my court.
He’s been studiously avoiding crossing the line because he already took his turn. I laugh out loud. Of course Roman believes in turns. He believes in being in charge almost to the point of micromanagement. His sense of fairness is borne out of having it easy all of his life.
I flop back on the couch. It’s so fucking weird, this mix of triumph and creeping guilt.
The buzz of my phone intrudes on my thoughts.
Celestia: Hey...
That’s all I need to hear from my sister to know that she needs more money.
Jenny: Are you okay?
Celestia: Not feeling great about needing another bailout.
See, that’s the pisser. The fact that without Connor’s money, I can’t pay all my bills—all the student debt and personal loans and credit cards from trying to start a business on a shoestring—and send her any extra cash without setting up some kind of payment plan. That would be the responsible thing to do, I know. But she’s my sister.
Jenny: How much? And where to?
She names a number that would be one thousand percent impossible without what I’m beginning to think of as the Blood Money.
Jenny: It’ll be there tomorrow. I’ll pay for them to rush it. OK?
Celestia: OK.
Even so.
I stand up with a strange sense of anticipation.
The ball is in my court....
The excitement doesn’t make me feel any better about the sabotage, even though it’s the most mild form of sabotage I’ve ever seen, even in the movies.
On the one hand, Roman probably doesn’t know that I’m not doing my best. On the other, there’s no great reason why the photos are mediocre after I forced him into the pool. One hand, other hand, one hand, other hand. I’m stuck between hands when I settle behind my desk with a fresh coffee from the cafe in the lobby.
The coffee is gone too soon, but it’s too early to be without it, so I get another.
Roman bursts into the office halfway through cup number three, scaring the living shit out of me. The coffee in the mug sloshes up to the edges. “Oh my God—”
He doesn’t hear me. “We have to talk.” He’s at my desk in two steps, his hands on the surface, leaning over me. “About the social media accounts.”
My stomach drops into the hot core of the earth.
“The Instagram,” he says meaningfully.
This is it. This is when he fires me. He did notice that the photos were subpar, and I’m going to lose my fake job and probably my real one, too. Oh, Jesus. I’m going to have to go crawling back to Connor—
This is the worst.
“I’m working on the Instagram,” I tell him, trying to keep the jittery caffeine shake out of my voice. “The photos—”
“The photos don’t do this place justice.” His eyes blaze into mine.
“I can do better—”
“I didn’t give you good enough material.”
I’m…stunned. And he didn’t even swan dive into the pool in front of me. “What?”
“I didn’t give you the best of the Bliss Resort.” Roman stands up straight, a determined smile lighting up his face. The heat is back in his eyes, like it was in yoga class. “And tonight’s the perfect night to show you.”
“To show me what?” The laugh that escapes me sounds almost like a giggle. “Another yoga class?”
“Hell, no. I’m going to show you the best.” He turns to go, and I realize I’m on the edge of my seat.
“What’s the best?”
He stops just outside the office doorway and burns a trail down my skin with his eyes. “You’ll see.”
10
Roman
I gave it the old college try.
That’s what I keep saying to myself, though in college I would have pressed her up against the wall in the dive bar we used to go to on the main drag. They probably should have been shut down for health code violations, but nobody ever cared—we were more than buzzed when we walked down the rickety staircase from the street level, and more than a few guys had to be carried out.