Page 210 of Modern Romance January 2025 5-8

‘I didn’t think you’d ever get the message or call me back.’

‘Well, I have.’

‘Just as well it wasn’t a real emergency with your grandfather,’ Susie said. ‘It took you long enough.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘I’m just pointing out that had there been a problem, you wouldn’t have been around.’

‘You’re making no sense.’

Wasn’t she? Susie asked herself as she was almost mowed down by a cyclist.

It finally registered that she was walking on the wrong side of the path. Possibly that was why everyone had been a little testy with her this morning.

‘Susie...?’ he said.

‘I’m going to go,’ Susie said, her voice a little high. ‘I’m at work.’

Oh, she was fine.

Utterly fine.

If anything, she was angry. How dared Dante call her needy!

She stood there as Pedro allocated the team and told her the tables she was working.

‘No bruschetta,’ he said, and then told them everything else that was off the menu. ‘We are short in the kitchen.’

Then he clapped his hands and everyone set off to work.

Except Susie.

‘Problem, Susie?’ Pedro said in English, as if she might not have understood his instructions. ‘I said you’re to work the bar tables and—’

‘I understood what you said,’ Susie said, in such a determined voice that, along with Pedro, she blinked in surprise. ‘I’m so sorry, Pedro, I’ll finish my shift, but after that I’m going to look for something else...’

He frowned.

‘It’s very disheartening to be told no without any consideration...to not be given even a chance...’

She was possibly saying what she wished she could say to Dante, Susie conceded, but Pedro would have to do. ‘To be just written off.’ She reached for her apron. ‘Actually, I think I should just go home now.’

She marched to the little staff cloakroom, ready to go home, where she might take her scissors to that damn basket and tip the contents in the bin.

She halted and sat down on the small bench.

Oh, gosh, she wasn’t okay.

Not at all.

She had been a public liability walking on the walls, and now she’d thrown in her job.

Oh—and now she understood what Dante had meant about walking around thinking you were being normal.

Then, at the thought of him out on the hills, searching, she started to panic, wondering how on earth she could get home without breaking down.

Never—not for a second—had she thought you could fall this hard for a person in a single weekend.