Page 43 of Resorting to Romance

“Being with your son is never something you have to keepthanking me for. Teaching Noah is my honor. Best hour of my week so far.”

Mila’s smile widens. A gust of wind catches her hair and whips it around her face. She moves to swipe it away. I watch her like a man watching a woman. What is wrong with me? I’m an idiot. I spent nearly four years in her presence, all but numb to her beauty and her tender, compassionate heart. I know why. She made it clear to me early on where she stood with men in her life. We could be friends or nothing. Knowing her stance on dating flipped a switch inside me, keeping me safely unaware of her—unaffected and relatively oblivious. Nothing about her stance has changed.

“Here, give me that beach bag so you have both hands free,” I tell Mila when she shifts the weight on her shoulder.

“You don’t have to …” her voice trails off when I give her my serious look. It’s the same one I use with Ben when he’s goofing off at work and I’ve had my fill.

“The dad face!” She laughs, her finger pointing at me. “You have that down pat.”

“It’s my boss face,” I correct her.

“Well, here’s my bag, boss.” Mila bumps her hip into me playfully and hands the bag into my hands.

“That’s more like it,” I tease.

“Man, I thought surfers were supposed to be chill.” She smiles up at me through her lashes.

“I’m so chill. I just spent two hours in the ocean. There’s nothing more chill than that.”

“Teaching. You spent two hours teaching. I’d bet you were on high alert that whole time, watching for the safety of your other student and my son.”

“Yeah. I was. But it was a super-chill kind of high-alert.”

I make the shaka sign with the hand that’s not carrying her bag to emphasize my totally relaxed personality.Hang loose. All’s well. It should be my motto, considering my heritage, but I’vealways carried a burden for the people around me. It’s just part of my makeup.

Mila’s laughter fills my chest like helium. She is sun through clouds—her misty rays piercing the sky with light. She’s simultaneously sharp and ethereal. Captivating and elusive. I’m aware of the muscles in my throat as I swallow the lump forming there.

Mila.

Talk about a complication.

Noah’s voice carries out from inside the watersports shack. I can’t contain my smile. He’s like any surfer, boasting about his waves, reveling in the thrill of the ride. One morning sesh and he’s already hooked on my favorite sport—the passion I devoted my life to for years.

He’s a storyteller too. His animated voice has both my employees’ rapt attention. “And then I stood up! But that time I got so excited I flopped right off.”

Noah laughs hard at himself, with his typical childlike resilience. Ben and Jamison laugh along with him.

Noah sees me and Mila enter through the front door. “Mom! I was just telling the guys here how I surfed!”

“You were, were you?”

“Yeah. Show them. You got a video, right?”

“I got more than one, but they aren’t super clear.”

“That’s okay. They still wanna see it. Don’t ya, guys?”

If you could plug Noah in right now, he’d power the shack and most of the boats in the harbor.

“We definitely want to see it,” Ben says. “I don’t think I can move on with my day without seeing this video.”

“I left the boards on the sand,” I tell Jamison.

“Let him see the video first, man,” Ben says.

“Fine. Watch the video. Then get the boards.”

No one will bother the boards. This is Marbella. Our crime rate is basically non-existent. We leave doors unlocked, bikes out in racks, golf carts parked with keys still in the ignition. It’s one of the perks of living on this kind of island.

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