Red Hot Rebel - Olivia Hayle Page 0,21

snorts, reaching for one of the breadsticks. “You’re not going to monopolize the breadsticks for much longer.”

“That’s not a compliment.”

“I guess I ran out.”

My response is cut off by the arrival of two giant, delicious-smelling pizzas. Cheese oozes across the surface. “Bon appetito!” the waiter announces, disappearing back through the throng of tables.

“I’m going to slaughter this pizza,” I announce. “Absolutely demolish it. Blast it into space.”

“Do you have a violence fetish?” Rhys asks calmly, starting to cut his into triangles.

“With pizza? Sure.” I fish up my phone and snap a quick picture of our food.

Rhys groans. “Of course you’re the kind of person to photograph your food.”

“Of course you’re the kind of person to be annoyed by that,” I deadpan. “The way I see it, I can only eat it once, but I can look at it forever.”

“Brilliant logic.” Rhys lifts up a slice to his mouth, taking a bite. For a second, he just closes his eyes and chews. “Yes, this is what it’s supposed to taste like.”

I follow suit and an explosion of marinara sauce, mozzarella and flavorful meat takes place in my mouth. It’s like I’ve died and gone to food heaven. I’d been absolutely right to ignore the little voice in my heads that warns we’re shooting tomorrow too in order to indulge in this. So what if I have to drink a gallon of water to combat the sodium.

You only live once.

“Besides,” I tell Rhys when I’ve regained the ability to speak, “I’m photographing this to send to my little sister.”

“She appreciates unsolicited food pics?”

I shake my head at him. “I can’t believe you went there.”

He shrugs, not looking the least bit contrite. “It was ripe for the taking.”

“And to answer your question, yes, she does want unsolicited food pics. I’m under strict orders to photograph anything of interest to send it back to her. She wants to live vicariously.” Perhaps I’ve revealed a bit more than I meant to, there. It’s clear from my comments that we’re not a family who travels a lot, and he’s, well… a Marchand. A simple Google search the other day had revealed that his older brother is building New York’s new opera house, and that his little sister runs a renowned art gallery.

And that’s not even accounting for his father.

But Rhys doesn’t comment. He just nods. “Cute.”

My mouth babbles on. The filter must have become disconnected somewhere around the second slice of pizza, tiredness starting to set in. “She’ll have my head, though, when I tell her I didn’t see the town with a genuine Italian.”

“Paolo,” Rhys says. “Did he have to have such a generic name? I wonder if it’s a nom de plume.”

It takes me a second to sort through hazy memories from English Lit class. “Like a stage name? Why on earth would he have that?”

He shrugs. “To sound more authentically Italian. Imagine if he was actually called Mark.”

“You mean Marco.”

“Why did you turn him down? He was devastated,” Rhys says, cutting up another slice of his pizza.

“He was not.”

He raises an eyebrow. “Sure he was. I think he was offering more than just a simple tour of Rome, too.”

“You’re being ridiculous.”

“If you can’t see that, then you’re the one who’s ridiculous,” Rhys says. “Surely you must be used to men asking you out all the time.”

Ah, the age-old assumption, the stereotype, the truth-verging-on-untruth. I take another bite of my pizza and think as I’m chewing. I’m finding that with Rhys, I don’t want to give flippant answers, either.

“I am,” I say truthfully. But it’s only part of the truth. It’s often like Paolo had just done it, offhand, confidently, expectantly. By men who know they’re good-looking.

By men who have expectations of how I’ll act and behave.

And their expectations always kill mine.

Rhys nods, like I’ve confirmed something he knew all along. “Can’t be astonishing when that pattern carries over to Europe too.”

I shake my head. This is not what I want to talk about, not what I want to get into. My lack of romantic experience—and the reasons for that... I can’t go there. I can’t even tell my own baby sister that I’m still a virgin.

“As if you’re not ogled everywhere,” I tell him. Turning the tables—a surefire tactic.

Rhys scoffs, but he doesn’t protest. I don’t know if that’s conceited or insightful, or perhaps both, a combo only he could carry off. He reaches for his wine and drinks, holding the glass between his fingers afterwards with the ease of someone who knows