20. Mila

TWENTY

"I will be watching you and if I find that you are trying to corrupt my first born child,

I will bring you down, baby.

I will bring you down to Chinatown."

~ Jack, Meet the Parents

Phyllis is flitting around her dining room, adjusting plates on the table. Yesterday, after Noah insisted on calling each of my aunts and telling them about the surfboard Kai gave him, Phyllis announced that they were having Kai and me over for dinner tonight.

If you don't know Phyllis, let me tell you, when she tells you that you're coming to dinner, you're coming to dinner. She came to my house earlier today to help prepare a meal for my midweek guests. Chloe's there now, with Davis, who is a saint, serving my guests and babysitting Noah so I can get away.

I only have two guests staying with me right now. Spring is approaching and that means my weekends are starting to fill. We have three weeks until Spring Break on the mainland. That always kicks off my busy season. I'm already booked out that whole week. All ten rooms upstairs and the one room on the opposite wing of the downstairs from where Noah and I live are reserved. It won't officially let up until after Labor Day.

"Where should I put this?" I hold the charcuterie board with both hands. "And are you sure Kai and I are the only two guests? There's enough food to feed a crowd in there."

"Never under prepare. You can't ever be sure how much your guests will eat. There's nothing worse than sending someone home hungry."

"I'm relatively sure Kai and I won't eat a pound of lunch meat a piece."

"Set it there." Phyllis points to a side table along the side wall of the dining room. "No. No. On second thought, the coffee table. That way we can nosh before dinner. While we chat."

Chat. Why are images of bare bulbs over metal chairs flashing through my head? This is an interrogation plain and simple.

There's a knock at the door. Phyllis shouts, "Joan? Can you get that?"

Joan answers the door and announces, "It's Alana!"

"Alana?" I look at my aunt. "Alana Graves?"

"Yes. She's my friend."

"I know she's your friend. We're friends too. I guess I just thought it was only going to be the six of us."

My aunt Connie is married and lives a block from here. My other two aunts are single. Phyllis was married, years ago. Joan never married. She's my soul sister. She's the most reserved and quiet of my three guardians. Warm and loving—and eternally single. The main difference between Joan and me is that she has a sister to grow old with.

"Well, I invited Alana. The life of a movie star is incredibly lonely at times. I get worried about her up there in that big house all alone."

Well, when she puts it that way.

"Is she the only guest?"

"You and Kai."

"And? …"

"Maybe a few other people for dessert."

My aunt's home is large for an island home in this section of town. It's nearly twice the size of the houses on either side of her, but it wouldn't even fill half the square footage of the inn. Yet, she somehow manages to squeeze in a Hollywood-sized crowd at her famous dinner parties.

"I didn't realize this was an official party."

"It's not official."

"But it is a party?"

Phyllis simply smiles at me. My earlier estimation was right. This is a circus and Kai and I are the sideshow. My aunt may as well have sold tickets to the bearded lady and the world's smallest human. At least she plans to wait until dessert to open the flaps to our striped tent. Dinner should be mild in comparison.

Alana walks into the dining room. "With this one, it's always a party." She tips her chin toward my aunt.

"Truer words have never been spoken." I nearly groan.

But I smile at my aunt. She's beyond description with her Meryl Streep looks and her flowing kaftan over her white silk tank and white dress slacks. Her silvering hair flows down her back. She's got gold bangles going up one arm that jingle every time she moves. And she's barefoot, with toes painted a brilliant hot pink. Her lack of footwear is a product of the environment, a secret peek into the contrast between her stint in Hollywood and her upbringing on an island where flip-flops pass as formalwear.

"Thank you, girls. I'll take that as a compliment to my flamboyant personality and charm, along with my intriguing personal history and the fact that I hung with A-listers back in the day."

"All of that," Alana says with a soft laugh. "And more. Honestly, if you ran the local bakery, you'd still be you. You're the draw."

"Flattery will get you everywhere, my dear!"

Phyllis sweeps Alana into a hug and pulls back with her hands on either side of Alana's biceps. She gives her an appraising look.

"Are you eating? Don't let those producers or your agent tell you to starve yourself. Ridiculous, abusive standards, those are."

"It's the job." Alana's face is resigned.

"And your life is worth more than that job. You're not merely a product on a shelf. You're a human being. Don't let them keep you in a corner."

Alana laughs at my aunt's Dirty Dancing reference.

"Get some charcuterie in this girl this instant," Phyllis orders me.

I nod, eager to have Kai here for some reason. I shouldn't be. Once he's here, the scrutiny will commence. Alana's an actress. Phyllis was on the big screen in her heyday. Will they be able to tell we're putting on a show? I'm not a trained actress. At least the inconvenient and inappropriate feelings I've been having for Kai will fuel my performance.

As if I conjured him up, there's a knock at the door just as Alana and I step into the living room. Joan opens it, and my breath catches. Kai's eyes find mine and a soft smile pulls at his full lips. We were on the phone for hours last night. We haven't ever really had long conversations by phone before. In person, sure, after he finished a job we'd sometimes sit with lemonade on the porch or in the main room of the inn catching up on life. But this was different. At least, for me it was.

I had called Kai after everyone was in bed and the kitchen was shut down for the night—just to thank him again for the surfboard. We got to talking about Noah, his birthday party, and my plans to let Brad see Noah in a casual way this week. Then we talked about Kalaine and Bodhi returning. I teased him about Shaka … and the conversation just kept going, neither of us willing to end it.

We're two single adults. Friends. I enjoy Kai's company. He's easy to be with. And recently, there's this hum I can only describe as: more. It's a dangerous hum. One I should muffle or mute. But I can't seem to resist the tug, and it's only growing louder the more we indulge in this charade.

"Hello, everyone." Kai steps over the threshold.

He's wearing a white linen shirt, buttoned up, but he left the top two undone so a triangle of his tanned skin and his clavicle are exposed. Why is a clavicle so sexy right now? And why am I thinking about what's sexy? Am I drooling? I casually lift the tip of my finger to the edge of my mouth to check. Yeah. That's totally normal.

Kai paired his shirt with khaki shorts that look pressed and a pair of upscale leather flip flops. An image of Kai with this same shirt fully unbuttoned, ironing his shorts to put that crease in the front flashes through my brain … and I am pretty sure I'm losing my mind. I never imagined a man ironing before. Why is that so sexy? Why is everything about him so sexy all of a sudden? It's the faking. I'm losing my resolve. And I can't afford to let that slip.

I look at Joan, my spinster aunt, trying to draw some semblance of strength from her years of celibacy and contented singleness. But when I glance at her, she's staring at Kai with stars in her eyes.

"I'm so glad you could make it, Kai. It's so rare that we have handsome young men over to the house."

"Oh my goodness," Alana whispers to me. "Is your aunt hitting on your boyfriend?"

She giggles quietly. And I laugh too. "Looks like it."

I stand, walking over to Kai. He looks down at me and then, as if we're actually a couple, he leans in and places his lips on mine. Yes, he aims to the left. It's a perfect stage kiss. I always wonder about those when I watch actors who are married to someone other than their co-star. But tell my lips this is a stage kiss. They are doing the macarena and a complex cheer maneuver while shouting something like, "Kai kissed us! Kai kissed us!" And then they're like, "More! More! More!"

His jaw rubs against my cheek when he pulls away. And if I didn't know better, I'd say he was blushing. I feel a mirroring heat creep up my neck when he leans in, placing his mouth right next to my ear and whispering, "Sorry. I had to give them no room for doubt."

His warm breath fans across my neck with each word.

I grip his head and whisper into his ear, "It's okay."

It's so not okay. Not okay at all. I might pass out. I definitely feel my heart rate spike into dangerous levels. And my lips are still pulling together like a cheer squad, chanting and wiggling about the joys of Kai's lips on mine. All from a peck—a peck that barely grazed the corner of my mouth. He barely touched me, and I'm lost. Gone. Swooning to the point of nearly fainting.

Kai must sense all this—or maybe he's just pulling off our act at levels that are worthy of a feature film, because he places his hand on my back in such a naturally doting and protective way. When I turn toward the three women gathered in the front room, all eyes are on us with identical looks of adoration and bliss. They're happy for us.

I'm horrible for leading them on. All this for Brad. Though, right now, I can't even be sure why we're doing this, and whether the price tag just soared way above my range. I can't afford to feel anything for Kai or any other man. Noah is about to go through a life quake with his dad reentering the picture. He needs me to be constant. The last thing Noah needs is a surprise from me by way of a new dating life. Besides, Kai is in this because he's trying to protect me. Nothing says he feels what I do. I'd be assuming a lot to think otherwise.

The evening rolls on. We're riddled with questions, including one about how Kai first asked me out. We never prepped the details of our story—which we should have. I've read enough in the fake dating trope to know that's Fake Dating 101: get your story straight.

"I asked her out the day Brad showed up," Kai says smoothly.

We're seated on the sofa, Alana to the left of me and Kai on my right. Connie and her husband, Ethan, arrived shortly after Kai. They're on a loveseat across from us and my other two aunts are in wingback chairs. All of us are centered around the coffee table with a massive charcuterie board taking up nearly a third of the surface.

I'm as eager as everyone else in the room to hear Kai's description of how he asked me out.

"Seeing Brad there on the porch did something to me. It was like a switch flipped."

Kai looks down at me—lovingly. It's the only word I can think of. I smile softly up at him. I'm only half-acting at this point. The part of me that's not all in is the part that wants to slip down between the sofa cushions to avoid this whole production. But the other part of me seems to have joined team Mila's Lips because my knee is screaming, His hand is on me! He's cupping me! Your knee! His hand! Feel that? My body is worse than Noah as his birthday approaches.

Kai's eyes are locked on mine as he continues to morph the reality of what happened that day into something so palpable and convincing, even I almost believe him.

"It was like this flash of awareness. I have strong feelings for Mila. Sure, we're friends. And I never want to jeopardize our friendship. But seeing her with Brad made me instantly possessive. And I took my opportunity that day to ask her for more. I wanted her to take a chance on me. I didn't want to let another day go by without asking her."

Two of my aunts audibly sigh. Alana bumps my shoulder. "I love this. It's so perfect."

Oh, yeah. Perfect. Perfectly deceitful. Gah.

"And, Mila?" Connie asks. "What changed your mind? I thought you were committed to singleness."

I nearly blurt, I am! But I gather my wits quickly and say, "I was. But I never realized what it could be like when a man who makes me feel genuinely safe came around. I guess I never considered Kai because I was dead set against all men. But when he asked, it just made sense. I'd never consider anyone else."

My answer isn't nearly as romantic as Kai's. But it's eerily accurate. Not that I'm about to actually date my handsome, sexy, kind, generous, protective friend. Nope. I'm not. But I'm more tempted than I ever imagined I'd be. And that's a problem.

As the night progresses, I relax a little more. Kai asks my aunts about my childhood. It's pretty common knowledge on the island that my parents died on a trip to Ireland when I was four. They were celebrating their fifth wedding anniversary and they were in a fatal car accident. My aunts always said it was a mercy that neither of them had to outlive the other, their love was just that exceptional.

My three fairy godmothers immediately took me in. At that time they were all living in the inn, a building my grandparents had owned and passed down to them. When Phyllis married, she moved out to this house. When Connie married, she moved to the home she shares with Ethan. And when Phyllis' husband left her, Joan moved in with Phyllis here. They maintained the property, but no one lived there until I turned twenty-one and they surprised me by passing it on to me. I didn't take up residence there right away because I was in college. Brad and I started planning, though. And when we came back to Marbella, we rented an apartment in Descanso, on the south side of the island near the resort, knowing we'd live in the inn as soon as we were ready to turn it into a bed and breakfast.

We had big dreams.

And they all smashed the week I found out I was pregnant.

But my life is better than I could have ever planned it—because I have Noah.

"Mila's dad was our baby brother," Joan's eyes are wistful as if she's traveling back in time to days when they were all young. "He loved Mila's mom with an uncommon devotion. We put that girl through the wringer trying to see if she was good enough for our Bo."

I've heard the story of how my aunts grilled my mother when she and Daddy were dating so many times, but it never gets old.

They carry on, telling how I came to them, and then what it was like raising me. No embarrassing detail is spared. By the time we're pulling trays of dessert out of the spare refrigerator in the pass-through room that leads to the garage, we're surrounded by over twenty guests who have converged on my aunts' front room. Kai still has his arm around me. He's been touching me all night, and I'd be lying if I weren't leaning into him for support and strength—and, more.

More. It's a dangerous, dangerous word. Especially for me and Kai.

Connie jokingly asks, "So you two, when are you going to tie the knot?"

"Connie!" Joan chides.

"What? They're not in their twenties. Mila has Noah. She swore off men. If they're dating, they're serious. I'm just planning ahead so I make sure Ethan and I are on the island for the wedding."

Bless Kai's heart, he sputter-coughs on his drink. But he regains composure. "We're taking things as they come for now."

I nod, unable to even think of a reasonable response that wouldn't reveal my panic. Kai's answer couldn't be more accurate. Though, for us, taking things as they come feels like we casually stepped into a blow-up rubber boat and found ourselves on a class five whitewater rafting trip. Maybe a little preparation would have been advisable.

After dinner, Kai walks me outside. We simultaneously blow out long gusts of breath as if we've only been partially breathing all night. Then he looks down at me and starts to chuckle. I catch the bug and giggle along with him until we're standing in front of my aunts' house in a fit of uncontrollable laughter.

Alana steps out behind us. "One day …" she muses.

"What?" I ask, wiping a tear from my eye from all the laughter that just overcame me.

"Nothing. Just … one day. Maybe after I've had my fill of being on the big screen, I'd love to find this—what you two obviously have. It's lovely."

There's a sadness in her voice. But I can tell she's genuinely happy for us. And, I agree. Kai and I do have something special. Sure, we're faking a romance. But the friendship that caused him to step up in the first place is one of my favorite things on earth.

"Thank you," I say. "It will come. I believe it. You're an amazing woman, and like you told my aunt earlier, it's not your accomplishments that define you. It's just you."

"Thanks." Alana's smile is sweet and sincere. She reaches out and brushes her hand down my arm.

Kai jumps into fix-it mode, as he's prone to do. "I could hook you up … I know some guys."

"No, thank you." Alana smiles. "I believe in fate or … something like that. Besides, I don't think the guy I will fall for is here on Marbella. I know nearly everyone, even though I live like a hermit. He's not here."

We all say goodnight, and Kai offers to walk me home. His hand lands on the small of my back almost instinctively, and I wish he had some reason to leave it there, but he realizes at the same time as I do that he doesn't. So, it falls away and we stroll side by side, two magnets, resisting the urge to snap together at every charged point between us.

"Hey," Kai says when we approach my front gate. "I had a question to ask you. A favor, really."

"What is it?"

"It's a lot to ask."

"As if faking a romance so we can throw off my ex isn't a lot? I'm pretty sure I owe you."

"I don't want you to say yes because you owe me, Mila. You don't owe me anything."

"Okay," I say, looking up into his golden-honey eyes and wondering what he'd do if this were an actual date and we were standing right here in this same spot.

Would he kiss me? Of course he would. He'd kiss me fully on the mouth. He'd pour all that quiet intensity into a kiss I'd been waiting for probably longer than I've allowed myself to admit it. Knowing Kai, he'd be respectful at first, as he always is. Careful. Gentle. Attentive. But then, he'd take charge with that possessive side, the part of him that is all man. He'd hold me up, as he always does, and lean in. And once he got a solid sign that I wanted him, he'd pour all the physicality he uses on the water, all the tenderness he shows when he's looking out for me, and possibly the desire I imagine I see flickering in his eyes on occasion into our kiss. It would be a kiss I'd never forget. One I'd almost risk crossing my carefully drawn lines to experience.

Only I can't.

So I don't.

I blink up at Kai. "What do you want to ask me?"