Page 59 of Regards, Mia

Mia leans back and crosses one leg over the other, which hikes her short dress up her thighs and makes my blood pressure rise. I look away and shift in my seat, trying to ease the tightness of my jeans. This is going to be the longest two hour flight I’ve ever experienced.

I’ve never crossed the line with a client before. But technically, Mia isn’t a client this weekend. Thanks to the mysterious celebrity, there is no danger on Serenity Island.

The flight attendant returns with our drinks and two bowls of premium nuts, one for each of us.

“To traveling in style,” Mia says, lifting one of her Champagne flutes to me.

“I’ll drink to that.” I raise my glass, then take a sip of the tequila, savoring the burn as I swallow.

Mia downs her Champagne in one gulp, and I eye her skeptically. “You’re not playing around.”

She sets her empty glass down and raises a brow at me. “Don’t tell me you’re one of those boyfriends who counts his girlfriend’s drinks, and gives her a hard time for having fun.”

I scowl at the description. “No, definitely not.”

She sips from the second glass, then reaches under the seat for her carry on. “Before you get too far into that tequila, you need to memorize this printout.”

My brows raise as I take the folder and flip through the report. It’s multiple pages long, listing all Mia’s relatives in order of importance.

Her father, Owen, age sixty-five, a professor of economics who lives in Raleigh, is head of a philanthropic group that donates millions of dollars every year. Her mother, Janet, is a pre-school teacher, also sixty-five, and of Raleigh NorthCarolina. Her brother Malcom, known to the family as Max, is thirty-two, a sports agent, and lives in Atlanta, Georgia.

“Are you close with them?” I ask.

“I have thirty-eight cousins, and I’m close with around three of them.”

“That’s not a very high percentage.”

“There are a lot of cousins.” She selects a cashew and pops it in her mouth. “But don’t worry, most of them aren’t coming.” She leans over to point out the names highlighted in yellow. “Those are the important ones.”

“Thanks.” I close the file and turn toward her. “Tell me about your brother.”

“It’s just the two of us, so we are super close,” she says. “We grew up in a neighborhood where we were the only two people under the age of thirty, so we had no one to play with except each other. We sort of had to be close.”

Considering most of the kids in the trailer park where I grew up went barefoot because their parents couldn’t afford shoes, or chose to spend their paychecks at the local dive bar instead of Payless Shoes, a neighborhood devoid of playmates didn’t seem that bad.

“Are you close now?”

“As close as we can be living four hours apart. Max is impossible not to like. It’s actually very annoying. He’s handsome, charming, and successful. He’s also extremely humble for someone who is handsome, charming, and successful.”

“Annoying,” I agree.

She shrugs. “Every single person in my family is an overachiever.”

Between the cousin who's a professional soccer player, a former Miss America aunt, and the uncle who's head chef at a restaurant in New York that’s so popular even I’ve heard of it, saying her family is full of over-achievers is definitely an understatement.

Mia also has a cousin who is an Olympic gold medalist inswimming, not to mention the mystery celebrity responsible for shutting down the island for the weekend.

“I’m kind of the loser of the lot of them.” She sips her Champagne with a pensive expression, not meeting my gaze.

“You’re joking, right?”

Picking through the nuts in her bowl, she finds a peanut and holds it up. “This is me,” she says. “A lowly peanut. The rest of my family? They’re macadamia nuts and cashews.”

I pluck the peanut from her fingers and pop it into my mouth. “I prefer peanuts.”

She laughs, and I feel that familiar pull in my belly every time I hear the sexy sound.

“My little brother is getting married before me, which makes me a loser.”

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