Hello Adventure

Chapter 15

"These are good, right?" I asked Cairo the morning after the re-shoot, waving my forefinger over the photos on his laptop screen. He nodded vigorously, and I grinned like an idiot.

Thank God the reshoot went off without a hitch! Cai was walking me through the final selection before he would start retouching and color-correcting, and then he'd send a few to Stasia for her approval. There was one location we'd need to reshoot, and some close-ups and flat-lays of the desserts still needed to be done, but it was a great start: Brooke looked gorgeous, the desserts looked flawless, and best of all, if I wasn't already sitting in a suite in The Grand Hotel Tremezzo I'd be just dying to be—the property came off just as breath-taking as it was in real life.

During the shoot, we covered its verdant surrounding gardens; the to-die-for views of Bellagio from the pool deck; the lobby with the candy-colored velvet couches; and the refined bar with the bow-tied mixologists.

Cai's assurance made me feel better too. He was part of the in-house Swish team, so he knew what it took to make the cut. If he said this was good, then it was.

"So, you kind of know what you're talking about?" I told him as I updated our Como to-do list and emailed it to the rest of the team.

He shrugged. "Absolutely. So you should always be sure to listen to me."

"Yeah, yeah," I grinned at him. He was really sweet, once he decided I worth speaking to.

My favorite shot was one of Brooke holding a blood orange tart in an upturned palm under an ancient chestnut tree. You could almost smell the milky sweetness of the flowers around her and feel the snow-licked breeze off the mountains in the background. In the air, the pollen floated fairylike and dreamily. (Oh, and the tart didn't look at all wobbly.) I texted the photo to Dale with a caption: "Divine."

As Cai and I finished up selecting the final photos, Brooke laid outside on her balcony. She was sunbathing and single-handedly killing a frosty bottle of Whispering Angel rosé, which I knew from her blog post "French Rosés To Tickle You Pink (And to Get You White Girl Wasted)" was her "absolute fav."

This arrangement was also divine: I did not need her involvement, despite the fact that since the meltdown, she'd been nothing but professional.

"I'm going to send these proofs to Stasia. Happy?" Cai asked.

"Happy," I told him. "Oh, and I never said thank you to you—for giving up your free time for the re-shoot. So: Thank you."

"That's nice of you to say," he told me then. "Especially because I know exactly what happened," he winked at me.

The doorbell to the suite rang just as Cai was leaving to finish up. At the sound, Brooke emerged from the balcony looking dewy (if it were anyone else, they'd look sweaty, but not Brooke). She stepped into a floral romper and blew Cai a kiss as he left, but then quickly scowled at the bellhop at the door.

He couldn't see her reaction because an unwieldy bouquet of flowers obscured his whole face.

"Just put them over there with the others," Brooke told him with a long-suffering exhalation, and the man sightlessly navigated the colossal bouquet over to a mirrored table, which I suddenly noticed was covered with similar sprays of blossoms and over-spilling fruit baskets.

"Wow," I said, but Brooke didn't react to the flowers and instead tipped the man generously, then collapsed belly-down on the sofa.

I looked back at the flowers that she gave nary a glance. "Aren't you going to open the card?" I asked.

"Why? I already know they're from Miles. Like all that other crap."

"But—"

She sighed and got up and made a big show of opening the card. "Blah blah blah. 'I miss your face in the mornings, when it's sun-shy and sleep-dreamed.'" She grimaced. "I mean, what the hell does that even mean?! Enough with the flowers, fruit baskets and hideous poetry! This is all so eye-rolly!" She flung the card over her shoulder and resumed her Marie Antoinette-like lounging.