Chapter 329

• 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 a girl is with him is natural to him. There’s no arguing with it.