Freya sat next to Rome as the plane taxied down the runway ready for take-off. They were sitting at the back of the plane, he was looking out of his window and she was looking out of hers, almost as if they’d had a row. He was holding her hand again, just as he’d done on the way over to Penzance, but he was quiet, retreating back into himself again. The plane powered up and hurtled down the runway and up into the sky. As the passengers in front of them got excited about the flight, Freya tried to concentrate on the excitement of flying and the incredible views but every second that passed was a step closer to beautiful Hope Island, a step closer to returning to their old lives where they would just be friends again.

They had made love three times the night before, each time sharing this incredible emotional connection, and she’d known that Rome had feelings for her too, feelings that went way beyond friendship or even just desire. But she got the sense that once they were home he would want to draw a line under what happened. What happened in Penzance, would stay in Penzance.

Although she didn’t want that to happen, she wanted to make it easy for him. He hadn’t wanted a proper relationship, despite being attracted to her, he hadn’t wanted things to change, so she would give him the out he so obviously wanted.

‘Things don’t have to change between us.’ Freya leaned over to talk to him so he could hear her over the sound of the engine.

He turned to stare at her. ‘Everything has changed.’

‘Only if we let it. You’re my best friend, I don’t want to lose that.’

‘I think we lost that the moment I kissed you underneath the fireworks,’ Rome said.

‘It was just a kiss.’

He smirked at her. ‘It was a lot more than a kiss, honey.’

She smiled. ‘So what are we now then if we’re not friends?’

He shifted the hand that was holding hers slightly, stroking her palm gently with his thumb. It was such an innocent gesture but the touch sent need spiralling through her stomach. ‘I’m not sure how to categorise what we have now. Friends who have incredible sex, friends with benefits…’ He arched an eyebrow. ‘Lovers.’

She looked at him in surprise. ‘You make it sound like you want to carry on where we left things last night.’

He frowned in confusion. ‘Why would I want to stop? Freya, last night was incredible. I’m not sure what I was expecting but it wasn’t that. I knew we would have great chemistry, but last night was so much more than that. Yesterday when I left the glass studio, all I was thinking about was coming home as early as we could today so I could carry on with that mural, and now all I want to do is take you home, strip you naked and make love to you until the sun sets. And then tomorrow I want to do exactly the same, and the day after that and the day after that.’

Her heart soared. He wanted this as much as she did.

‘We’re not going to finish that school mural if you want to spend every day making love.’

‘No, I know. So I’m going to have to limit myself to early morning and evening sex and maybe a quickie at lunch times.’

She burst out laughing. ‘I’d be happy with that.’

He leaned over and stroked her face. ‘Not today though. When we get back, I’m going to take you up to your flat and make love to you there and then tonight you can come round to my house for dinner and then I’m going to make love to you in my bed. One more day won’t hurt. We can get back to work tomorrow.’

She smiled with relief. ‘Sounds like a great plan, apart from one tiny detail.’

‘What’s that?’

‘We have dinner tonight with Eden and Bella.’

Rome groaned. ‘As much as I love them, I really wanted to keep you to myself for just one more day.’

‘Well you’ll have to learn to share. They already moved it from last night to tonight just for us. You can have me all to yourself after dinner.’

‘OK, but we’re not stopping for dessert.’

She laughed and he bent his head and kissed her. For the rest of the journey, and even as the plane touched down on the runway in St Mary’s, she didn’t take her lips from his even for a second.

* * *

Rome rolled onto his back and pulled Freya on top of him so she was lying on his chest. She was breathing heavily and he knew he needed a few minutes to catch his breath before he could speak.

Sex with Freya was incredible. It was not like anything he’d ever experienced before and he had no idea why it was so different. Sex was pretty basic and he’d been with a lot of different women. Sometimes it had been great and sometimes not so much and while he was quite happy to accept responsibility for the times when it had been below average, he knew largely it was about the person he was with and just not being compatible with them. Freya was in a different league. He felt like he was tasting some new amazing food for the first time. For the first time in his life, he felt like he finally realised what sex should be like. He didn’t know why it was so amazing, and he didn’t want to think about what that showed about his relationship with Paige, but he knew he never wanted to go back to plain ordinary sex ever again.

Freya shifted slightly on top of him, her silky soft skin sliding against his as she leaned over and placed a gentle kiss over his heart. She leaned up to look at him and he cupped her face in his hands.

He knew this face, every freckle, the tiny scar above her eyebrow, the length of her eyelashes, the gorgeous whisky-caramel colour of her eyes. He knew her so well and that, he realised, was the reason why sex was so fantastic. The intimacy of making love to his best friend, of being with someone he knew inside and out. That’s what it was. There was no other reason. He ignored the voice in his head that said there was obviously one other reason.

‘We need to get ready soon to go to dinner,’ Freya said.

‘I need to go home and get changed,’ Rome said. After getting off the boat, they had come straight back to Freya’s flat and not left her bed since. The sun had been shining through the open windows, bringing with it the salty tang of the sea air, and it had been a glorious day. He certainly didn’t want it to end now.

‘Will we tell the others about us?’ Freya asked, quietly.

‘Hell no.’

Freya looked surprised by his conviction but he also saw the hurt there too as she laid her head back down on his chest.

Women were such tricky creatures. Did she really want everyone to know about them? She had been there at Eden’s café the other day when Barbara and her friends had been meddling in their affairs, encouraging him to kiss her. It had been embarrassing. Surely she didn’t want that again? It wouldn’t be long until the islanders found out anyway but he didn’t want to come right out and tell everyone.

‘Hey, it’s not that I’m embarrassed by us or anything like that,’ Rome tried. ‘Eden will be arranging our wedding before we’ve even finished telling her, Bella will want to know all the details, Dougie will have something inappropriate to say, and as for the rest of the island, you know what the jungle drums are like. This is something special and something private and I just want to keep it that way for a little longer.’

She looked up at him and smiled. ‘It’s OK, I understand.’

He rolled her over and pinned her to the bed and she let out a little squeal. ‘Don’t ever doubt that I don’t want this.’

She grinned at him, looping her arms round his neck. ‘OK.’

He bent his head and kissed her briefly. ‘I better go. Save me a seat at the table.’

‘I will.’

He rolled out of bed reluctantly and threw on some clothes. ‘And tonight you can stay at mine.’

She nodded and he ran down the stairs and out of the flat. Tonight couldn’t come soon enough.

* * *

Freya arrived at Rosa’s to find that Bella, Isaac, Eden and Dougie were already there. No sign of Rome yet though she knew he would be there soon.

Bella and Eden leapt up to hug her when they saw her, then she sat down in the booth.

‘How was the parade? I heard we won,’ Eden said.

‘News travels fast,’ Freya said.

‘Hell yes it does,’ Dougie said, grinning and nudging her. Eden took a swipe at him but that didn’t stop the eyebrow waggling.

‘We heard that the winner won a night in the Under the Sea suite at the Bay View Hotel,’ Eden said. ‘And Dougie’s imagination is now running wild.’

‘The parade was fantastic, all the towns had worked so hard, but our float was definitely the best,’ Freya said, deliberately avoiding the question about the room. ‘Here, I took some photos.’ She dug out her phone and found the photos and showed them to the rest of the table.

Dougie took the phone from her and started scrolling through. ‘These floats look great, though I agree the Hope Island float is by far the best. You and Rome outdid yourselves.’

‘Cal was responsible for putting it all together, we can’t take all the credit,’ Freya insisted.

‘Whoa, what’s all these naked photos of Rome?’ Dougie said and Freya flushed scarlet and snatched the phone back, despite knowing there were no photos of Rome naked in her phone. But she could see that Dougie had found the topless ones she had taken of Rome for the social media promotions.

‘These are just the Instagram photos, he’s not naked,’ Freya said, wishing her cheeks hadn’t gone quite so pink.

‘So what did happen about that room? I looked it up on the website, it had a hot tub, a four-poster bed… Are you telling me that you two didn’t utilise the room’s facilities?’ Dougie nudged her again.

‘Leave her alone,’ Isaac said.

‘Yes, leave her alone,’ Bella said, scowling at Dougie before turning her attention back to Freya. ‘Well, did you?’

‘No. Of course not. Cal insisted we take the room but nothing happened. As we were supposed to be sharing the twin room we had booked, we took a room each. Rome had the suite and I took the twin room.’

They all looked disappointed with that answer and she hated lying to Bella and Eden but she knew, despite Rome’s wishes, that she would probably tell them the truth later. They would be discreet, she knew that, and as she had trusted them with her inappropriate crush on their brother, she knew she needed to tell them the next development in their relationship.

Thankfully she was saved from any further interrogations by Rome’s arrival.

He stood at the edge of the table as Eden and Bella hugged him, nodded his hello at Dougie and Isaac and then turned his attention to Freya.

‘You’re looking beautiful tonight Freya,’ he said, softly, and her heart did a little jig in her chest.

She cleared her throat. ‘Thank you.’

‘I’m just going to wash my hands,’ Rome said and disappeared off towards the toilets.

Isaac and Dougie were talking about some computer game they were designing and Freya fiddled with her napkin for a moment or two before looking up at Bella and Eden, knowing they were staring at her.

Eden leaned across the table and Bella joined her. ‘Something did happen, didn’t it?’ Eden whispered.

Freya glanced at Dougie and Isaac but they were still too busy talking to notice what was going on down their end of the table. She looked back at Bella and Eden. They were her best friends and there was no way she could lie to them any more. She nodded subtly and they both grinned. They both knew now was not the time to ask questions but she knew she would get a proper grilling later.

Rome returned to the table then and squeezed into the booth next to her, much to Dougie’s annoyance at having to move round to make room for him.

‘Why aren’t you sitting next to Eden, there’s plenty of room?’ Dougie protested as he shifted round the corner.

Rome flashed him a glare and he returned to his conversation with Isaac, clearly unperturbed. Dougie had known Rome so long that any scowls, glares and comments just washed straight off his back.

Rome shuffled further into the booth, filling it with his enormous frame, and as Freya moved up to make room for him, for a brief second, so fleeting it could have been accidental, Rome squeezed her hand.

‘Freya was just telling us about the parade,’ Bella said.

‘It was fantastic, we had a great day, the floats were all wonderful and winning is a great coup for the island, Cal and the glass studio.’

‘The floats all looked so good,’ Eden said. ‘I’ve only been to the parade once, many years ago, and the floats were nowhere near as good as the ones I saw from yesterday. The towns have really upped their game this year.’

Freya smiled with love for her friend. Eden was not even mentioning the room or hinting that something had happened between them. Hopefully soon they would stop talking about the parade altogether.

Dougie and Isaac stopped talking and Dougie turned his attention to Rome.

‘So how was the suite? We heard you won a night in the sea-themed suite at the Bay View. Did you enjoy the hot tub?’

‘Oh, no, erm, Freya slept in the suite, I slept in the twin room.’

Freya glanced at Rome and tried to indicate that she had given the exact opposite answer, but she was obviously having trouble conveying that message with just her eyes as Rome was looking at her in confusion. She only hoped that Dougie hadn’t noticed.

‘Hang on, Freya said you had the suite and she had the twin,’ Dougie said.

Freya shook her head. ‘No, I had the suite.’

‘That’s not what you said before.’

‘That’s exactly what she said,’ Bella lied. ‘You need to wash your ears out, cuz.’

‘I still can’t believe you two are actually cousins,’ Eden said, deftly changing the subject.

Bella had recently found out that her biological father was Dougie’s uncle. She and Dougie had grown up together and had always been close; now they had an extra reason to be friends.

Freya leapt onto the change of subject. ‘Is that weird for the two of you?’

Dougie shrugged. ‘I always knew she was my cousin, I just wasn’t allowed to talk about it as Bella was the product of my uncle having an affair. I still love her, always have.’

Eden practically swooned across the table at that wonderfully honest and sweet statement from Dougie.

Bella smiled with love for him. ‘It hasn’t changed things between me and Dougie, I still find him annoying.’

Dougie laughed.

‘But I do think about my half-brothers sometimes,’ Bella went on. ‘The ones I never even knew I had until a few months ago. It’d be nice to meet them at some point. Although I have no idea how to initiate that meeting as doing so would mean telling them that their dad had an affair. I don’t want to sully his name after his death, especially when he’s not around to defend himself.’

Freya understood that need for family, to feel like she belonged. Her own parents had died when she was young and she’d been raised by her gran. When her gran had died when Freya was eighteen, she had ended up moving in with the boyfriend who she was dating at the time and later became engaged to him. She’d worked with him, socialised with his friends, been adopted by his family. When it all came to an end, she had no one. That was until Rome had taken her under his wing. And she knew that she was stupid to let the same thing happen again with him, but she knew she belonged here, this was her home.

‘You can always come over to meet them next time I go over there to see my cousins,’ Dougie offered. ‘You could just be my friend. We don’t need to tell them who you are. Though you do look a lot like your dad, they might figure it out.’

Bella smiled. ‘Maybe that would be enough, to at least meet them.’

Isaac squeezed her hand. ‘I could come with you. I still have friends on St Mary’s, so we have a reason to be there.’

Bella nodded. ‘I’d like that.’

The waitress came over then to take their order and the conversation moved on. Thankfully there was no more mention of Rome and Freya’s relationship or who had the suite. They could just pretend everything was normal between them. Well, she would try to pretend everything was normal between them, though it was a bit tricky to concentrate on being just friends when Rome’s hard thigh was pressed against hers.