Dante’s Girl (The Paradise Diaries #1)(20)
Author: Courtney Cole

“And you’ve seen a goat?” he raises an eyebrow.  “Just because we don’t let our cows run in the streets like they do in India doesn’t mean that we don’t have them.  We have dairies like everyone else.”

“Okay.  Don’t get all offended,” I grin.  “It was a valid question.”

He shrugs good-naturedly.  “I’ll give you that. And I’m not offended.”

Dante smiles and my heart races.

It’s just that simple.  When he does anything, smiles, laughs, looks at me, breathes… my heart reacts.  He’s definitely replaced Quinn in my daydreams.

I take a bite of the chocolate cake and all of a sudden, I feel like I’m a president’s kid sneaking to the kitchens of the White House in the middle of the night for cake.  The only difference is, I’m across the world from the White House and I’m not the President’s Kid.

Dante is.

More or less.

“What?” he asks, studying my face.  “What are you thinking about?”

His hand is splayed on the granite counter and I look at his fingers.  They’re long, like he is.  I wish I had the guts to pick his hand up and hold it.  I know that we had a moment back on the beach earlier.  I know it.  But we hadn’t said anything the whole way back and now here we are talking about goat’s milk.

Romantic.

“Nothing,” I answer.  “I just can’t believe I’m here.  That’s all.  It seems too surreal.  I’m a normal girl from small-town America. This kind of thing doesn’t happen to me.”

“Yet it did,” Dante points out.  He has a cleft in his chin.  I’m in love with the cleft in his chin.  It’s masculine and perfect and I find that I want to place my thumb in it to see if it fits.  But I don’t.

“True,” I acknowledge. “But only because of a crazy accident at the airport.”

“Some might say it was a lucky accident,” Dante points out.

“Well, that probably depends on your perspective,” I answer.  “The families of the people on that crashed plane wouldn’t agree. But for me, yes.  It was lucky. I’m in a beautiful country instead of having uncomfortable silences with my father right now. So, thank you for that.”

“Oh, that reminds me,” Dante says.  Is that a slight flush in his cheeks?  “I spoke with my father.  He will be back here in the morning and would like for you to join us for dinner tomorrow evening.  Would you like to?”

I stare at him.  Dinner with a Prime Minister?

“It depends,” I answer slowly. “Will we be having crab legs?”

Dante laughs and shakes his head.

“You have no idea what’s good,” he chuckles. “We can have whatever you’d like to have.  Do you like steak?  Steak from a cow, not steak from a goat?”

I crack up and we laugh together and start talking about fathers and goats and life and before I know it, we’ve been talking for over an hour.

“Holy cow,” I breathe, looking at the clock on the wall.  “It’s 2:00 a.m.”

“You should definitely go to bed, little Sunflower,” Dante says.  “You’ve got an 11:00 a.m. shopping date.  That is, if Mia remembers.”

I stare at him again.  “How did you even hear that?  You must have ears like a bat.”

He rolls his eyes.  “Either way, you should get some sleep.”

We put our dishes in the sink and creep through the dark, quiet mausoleum-like house.  At night, it seems even less like a real home.

“Do you think the airports will open up soon?” I ask as we climb the stairs.

“I have no idea,” Dante answers.  “But they can’t stay closed forever.”

That’s sort of what I’m afraid of.

He walks me to my bedroom door and pauses.  And I almost think that he might kiss me.  Because we did have a moment back on the beach, dang it.  But he doesn’t. Instead, he pushes my hair behind one ear and then leans forward ever so slightly as he tells me to have sweet dreams.

Of course I will, I think. They’ll be about you.

“Thank you, “I actually say.  “You too.”

He smiles a tired smile and starts to walk away and as I stare at his bare back, I remember his shirt.

“Wait!” I cry. “What about your shirt?”

He smiles again.

“You can just send it to the laundry,” he answers.  “They know where I live. They’ll get it back to me.”

I shake my head and close my bedroom door.

And then I sit on my bed and inhale his shirt. As in, I literally bury my face into it and breathe.  It smells just like him.  And I love it.  I wonder if he would notice if I don’t send it to the laundry?  Being the rule-follower that I am, though, I know that I will.  I’m not going to steal his shirt.  But I go ahead and do the next best thing.

I sleep in it.

Scratch that.

I over-sleep in it.

When I open my eyes, the clock says 10:30 a.m. And the clock has no reason to lie.

With a yelp, I scramble out of bed and find that my shirt has been laundered and is wrapped in tissue-paper on the end of my bed.  A member of housekeeping had crept in as I slept, which is a little unnerving, but I put it out of my mind as I rush to brush my teeth and get dressed.

And then as I fumble around for my shoes, I notice my cell phone.

12 missed calls, 8 voicemails.  What the eff?

Grabbing it, I see that I have it set to silent, which would explain why I didn’t hear it ring.  Did something happen?  Did grandma or grandpa have a heart attack?  It’s the only thing I can think of until I see that all of the calls are from Becca’s number.

Weird.

I hold it to my ear and listen.

And then I want to die as I hear the messages.

Becca had been rummaging through my clothes to borrow my favorite yellow halter-top and came across my journal.  And of course, she read it.

And I had written all about how I’m secretly in love with Quinn.

Because my journal is supposed to be secret.

But now she knows.

And she wants to kill me.

OhMyGosh.

Not only does Becca know, but she thinks that I’m secretly plotting to break them up.  Because awhile back, she and Quinn had had a fight and I’d advised her that I didn’t know if I’d believe him when he said that he hadn’t been flirting with a strange girl at our track meet.  And I’d meant it.  I didn’t have any ulterior motives.  I’d simply seen Quinn’s face as he was talking with the girl. He was flirting.