“I did mention she’s the daughter of an earl? Meaning she’s nobility.”
“Actually, we’re distant relatives of the queen, so yes. We’re technically part of the royal family.” Susanna’s gaze meets mine in the rearview mirror, her eyes looking huge behind her glasses. “Sorry, didn’t mean to eavesdrop.”
“I should apologize. We’re the ones blatantly talking about you in the back of your car,” I say.
“Saying only good things, I hope.” Susanna appears truly worried.
“Just giving Jordan the rundown.” When Susanna frowns, I continue. “He didn’t know who you were, so I was letting him know.”
“She’s my future girlfriend,” Cannon says proudly.
Susanna pushes his shoulder, not that he’s going anywhere. He’s such a giant hulk of a man. “Please. You’re leaving in a few days.”
“I’ll miss you.” He sounds sincere. “You’ll spend the next few days with me, right?”
“Um…” A horn honks and Susanna jerks the steering wheel, causing the car to veer sharply. Another horn honks and she hits the brakes, glaring at Cannon once she has the situation under control. “You’re distracting me.”
“Stop distracting her,” Jordan tells Cannon, his voice firm. “I want to make it to the restaurant in one piece.”
Jordan’s scowling so hard, I almost start laughing, but don’t.
This is going to be an interesting night.
We end up at an Italian restaurant not too far from our hotel, and the food is amazing. The place is packed when we arrived, but the maître d’ is an old family friend of Susanna’s—and the son of the owners of the restaurant. We’re whisked to a table almost immediately, and given extra appetizers and wine.
“I’m so full,” I say, pushing my plate away from me. I ate almost every bit of my carbonara, especially the bacon. I love bacon.
“Aw, you can’t be full.” Susanna mock pouts. She’s sitting directly across from me, her half-eaten plate already pushed aside. “You must save room for dessert. Their cannoli are to die for. Or the tiramisu.”
“You should’ve warned me. I wouldn’t have eaten all this.” I wave my hand at my plate. “Tiramisu is my favorite.”
“We’ll share a dessert,” Jordan suggests, resting his hand over mine and giving it a squeeze.
I smile at him, enjoying how relaxed, how happy he looks tonight. The game is over and they won. Now we’re just two people with friends, on vacation in one of the most exciting cities in the world.
r /> “Let’s order the entire dessert menu,” Cannon says as he looks it over. “They all sound amazing.”
“That’s because they are amazing,” Susanna says, plucking the menu from Cannon’s fingers. Her eyes bug out when she takes in the entire list. “But we can’t eat them all, Cannon. There’s so many!”
“We can try,” Cannon says with a shrug, taking back the menu. Our server happens to choose this moment to stop by our table and check on us. “We want every dessert on the menu.”
The server frowns. “Excuse me?”
“The dessert menu? We want all of them. One of each,” Cannon explains.
Susanna starts giggling, then takes a sip from her wine. I think she’s drunk. I barely touched my glass, not that anyone noticed.
Thank goodness.
“Are you serious?” the server asks incredulously.
“He’s serious,” Jordan says, his voice firm. He’s scowling at the server, and I almost feel sorry for the guy. “One of each, like he said.”
“Right away, sir.” The server nods once and then buzzes away.
A shiver moves down my spine as I gawk at Jordan. I love it when he takes command of a situation, which is often. He’s a natural born leader, and it’s so damn sexy I sort of want to throw myself at him.
Fine, I totally want to throw myself at him.