Page 74 of Resorting to Romance

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 heatcreep 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 auntsare 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 eerilyaccurate. Not that I’m about toactuallydate 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.

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