I reconsider the photo on the screen. It really is perfect, and it’s going to make the resort look like the kind of destination where you can find a man like Roman Bliss at the helm and at the pool. That’s not false advertising. He really does run this show, and he really does get in the pool from time to time.

This is not the kind of thing Connor has hired me to post.

With a curdling feeling at the pit of my gut, I delete the photo and find a runner-up. It’s a long shot of the pool—better than what Roman has been posting, but nothing exciting.

That’s the one I schedule instead, along with a completely professional and completely boring caption.

Then I return Connor’s text.

Jenny: Things are going just fine.

And that sets the tone for the next five days. Wake up. Dress myself to be seen by one Roman Bliss. Leave all my natural instincts in the past, where they belong. There’s no time on the Bliss Resort to be a fumbling, snorting, wreck of a girl. There’s only the coolly professional woman who should be delighting in the fact that I finally have Roman’s attention.

At least, I thought I did.

For all the electricity of his hands on my skin at yoga, he stays in his lane. Meticulously in his lane. On Saturday, he takes me to see a wedding in progress, with the ceremony at the gazebo. We stand far, far back on the walkway to the resort so we don’t end up in even the longest shots by the photographer. And not once does he touch me. He doesn’t even stand too close.

Five days in a row.

Five long, excruciating days, during which I post more run-of-the-mill images and taglines that sound like they were written by one of the temps at Global—which is to say that they’re perfectly serviceable and totally forgettable. I can practically hear them landing with hardly a sound, much less a splash. The scheduler does its job, sending the posts out into the Internet, and I do mine.

Sunday night, it hits me.

This is like tennis. 

My knowledge of tennis is limited to the concept of the volley.

I sit straight up on the sofa in my employee bungalow and toss the novelty Empire Strikes Back blanket off my legs.

What the hell have I been thinking?

I started all this, parading into the office with a bathing suit and insisting that Roman work with me despite his obvious desire. That’s what it was—desire. Any other woman would be able to admit it, and here I am, trying to convince myself that in Roman’s eyes I’m the same person I was back in high school.