Page 14 of Pallas & Kawehi

She had to remind herself that this beginning was just a friendship.

A friendship with the best guy she’d ever met. She knew that for sure.

Nick had bowled her over and kept after her until he’d excused all of the red flags that she’d seen early on. But she should have paid more attention to those red flags. That was on her. She could fault herself.

He love bombed her from the get go and she had been so worried about other things in her life that she hadn’t seen the downside to his overwhelming actions.

She hadn’t seen it, but she hadn’t wanted to see it.

She wanted to love and be loved. And Nick made her feel like she wasn’t alone.

She’d leaned into that and ignored the rest because ‘no one understands my pain.’

That might be true, but it didn’t help that she turned a blind ear to the comments from her family and walked into the driving winds of stupidity of her choices.

“So you work here every night?”

“Well, not Mondays and Tuesdays. That’s when we have a couple of college students who come in. My uncle works those nights and on Wednesdays and Thursdays, I have one of my uncle’s friends working the grill. He’s just too bored at home after retirement, so he gives himself and his wife a break on those two days and comes in to cook for us.”

“So I’m guessing that you wouldn’t like to come in on your night off and go bowling.”

Laughing, she shook her head. “I do want a day or two out of the building.”

“Okay.” He leaned in on the table, folding his arms on the surface. “What would you like to do?”

“Wait. Are you asking me-”

“To go out and do something fun with a friend.”

“A friend?” She couldn’t help smiling at him. “Okay. I would like to have some fun with a friend.”

“Then since I asked, you get to pick where we go and what we do.”

She couldn’t remember the last time she’d gone out just to have fun.

“How are you at mini-golf?”

“How am I? He grinned back at her. “Are you trying to see if you have a hope of beating me?”

“Oh, I know I can. I’m just trying to see if you’re going to cry about it or stomp off and leave me there.”

He narrowed his eyes at her as he stroked his chin like a beard. “You do have the home course advantage, but I have to warn you that I’m a little competitive.”

“Just a little?” She leaned in toward him as well. “That’s disappointing.” When she felt she’d made her point, she gave him a big grin. “Maybe we should go axe throwing. Or swim in the Ala Wai. Or-”

“Swim in the Ala Wai?” He gave her a sideways look. “Are you trying to kill me? You are competitive.”

Laughing outright, she waved her hands in surrender. “No. No. I wasn’t going to make you do that. I wouldn’t do that to a friend.”

He laughed and she wanted to keep him laughing because while he was darkly handsome, when he was laughing, he was devastatingly so.

“So, why don’t we start with mini-golf,” she suggested. “Once I beat you at that, you can beg for something easier.”

He shook his head and gave her a sly smile. “When I beat you at that, you can do the same.”

“You’re on, Dom. You are on.”

THREE

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