Chapter 71

After lunch, Jake takes Leila and me ashore on the speedboat, which is moored to the back of the yacht.

He doesn’t say anything again about my hair, whether I should cut it or not, and I don’t bring it up. He has a car and driver waiting on land to take us anywhere we desire and leaves us with a goodbye at the dock with orders to call him when we return.

He hands me a credit card, which I try to push back at him but meet his death glare. I know better than to argue with that look. I slide it into my bag, remembering he made it clear before we came that this trip was all on him, and if I even mentioned paying for a single thing, he would tie me up and dump me in the ocean. Jake’s funny about very few things, but women paying when they’re with him is a strong dislike. He likes to be the traditional, courteous gentleman. Some may think it’s chauvinist, and maybe it is, but it’s a Jake characteristic. Brought up in an old-fashioned Italian family, paying for everything when