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I glance back in the direction of the beach. “Eh… I think I’ll go to Wrightsville. Hopefully, the sharks there are a little less bitey.”
She smiles and suppresses a grimace as she climbs the two steps up to the porch. “See you tomorrow. Same time, same place.”
“See you then, shark bait.”
As I watch her disappear inside the house, I feel a strange need to stick around and make sure Yuri takes her to get medical attention. It’s not a large cut, but it’s probably a pretty deep puncture wound. There are a lot of organisms in the ocean that can infect that kind of injury.
I shake my head as I climb into the truck. Of course Yuri will take care of her. He’s taken care of Lena for the past twelve years. She doesn’t need me to make sure he does his job.
For a moment, I consider going home instead of practicing today. A shark attack is a perfectly good reason to take a day off. But I decide to continue on toward Wrightsville Beach. I can take a day off in December, after I become the next world champion.
Five
My eyelids flutter open, squinting through the morning sunlight that floods our bedroom. The first thing I hear is the sound of the shower running in the master bathroom. The first thing I see is Mila’s wispy dark-blonde hair just inches from my face. Man, I’m going to miss this little devil when I’m in California in less than two weeks, I think as I brush her hair off her glowing baby skin.
At two and a half years old, Mila’s hair is barely long enough for Lindsay to pull into two curly pigtails. Her hair has gotten progressively darker over the past two years. She’ll have my sandy-brown hair by the time she’s five. She’s lying on her back, the front of her Belle the Builder pajama shirt displayed proudly, mouth hanging open, eyeballs moving restlessly beneath her lids.
What are you dreaming about, little one?
I think I know the answer to that question. At least for Mila the answer would probably be puppies and pancakes. For Kaia it would be Jason Greene, the star of her favorite Disney TV show, Charmed Life. For Lindsay, it would probably be me, cooking dinner and doing the dishes. And for me, it would be a forty-foot wave with a barrel that never ends.
Well, the only one of us who’s having their dreams come true today is Kaia. I convinced Jason Greene to come to our house today for Kaia’s tenth birthday party so we could perform a skit together. I, of course, am going to play the part of Jason Greene’s onscreen love interest, Annie, and he will play his usual role of Grayson. I actually met the seventeen-year-old—and his bodyguard—last night in their hotel room so we could practice the skit. He seems like a good kid¸ and anyone who’s willing to go to such great lengths for my baby girl is okay in my book. Apparently, he’s a huge fan of mine, so it only took the offer of a brief cameo appearance on Charmed Life for him to agree to this.
I brush a wisp of sunlit hair out of Mila’s face and she scrunches up her eyebrows as she slowly opens her eyes. She squints at me through the hazy glow, then she shakes her head and turns away from me, hiding her face in the pillow.
“Wake up, sleepyhead. Today’s your sister’s birthday. You have to take a shower and get dolled up. Remember I told you there would be a special surprise today? Don’t you want to know what the surprise is?”
She mashes her face into the pillow as she shakes her head. I reach over and tickle her side to get her to turn over. She giggles as she squirms away, crawling toward Lindsay’s side of the bed. My reflexes kick in when I see her head rocketing toward the corner of the bedside table. Grabbing a fistful of the back of her pajama shirt, I stop her from the head-on collision as I sit up quickly and pull her into my lap. She’s still laughing and trying to scramble away from me, completely oblivious to the fact that she almost cracked her head open. I swear this kid is going to give me a brain aneurysm by the time I’m forty.
I manage to wrangle Mila in and she happily helps me wake up Kaia so they can both take a shower. Lindsay helps them get dressed while I shower, then I head out the door to pick up Jason and his bodyguard at their hotel in Wrightsville Beach.
“Where are you going?” Lindsay asks when she sees me grabbing my car key out of the shallow bowl on the table in the foyer.
She’s wearing a simple pair of skinny jeans with a fitted yellow tank top she bought in Oahu last year, which shows off the smooth tanned skin on her arms. She hasn’t put any makeup on yet, and her hair is still a little damp from the shower, but she looks absolutely stunning.
“We don’t have any disposable cups for the party,” I reply, my gaze naturally falling to her breasts, then her small baby bump. “I’m going to the store. You need anything?”
“Can you take Mila? Kaia and I will get ready faster if she’s with you.”
I think about how Kaia will feel knowing that Mila got to meet Jason Greene before she did. Her ten-year-old mind might not appreciate that. But Lindsay has a point. I don’t want to come back in an hour or so and find that Kaia isn’t ready for her big surprise. She’ll be very upset if she doesn’t have a chance to meet him when she’s looking her best.
I take Mila off her hands and she smiles when Mila immediately lays her head on my shoulder. “We’ll take our time so you ladies can put on your faces.”
“Day aweddy have faces, Daddy,” Mila replies.
“I know, baby, but they’re hideous. They have to put on their pretty faces today.”
Lindsay narrows her eyes at me. “Don’t teach her that.”
“She doesn’t know what hideous means,” I reply, leaning over to lay a kiss on Lindsay’s cheek. “I’ll be back in an hour or so with some cups and a little something else. Love you, baby.”
“Bring some more chips. I don’t think I got enough.”
I nod as I head out the front door. Once Mila is strapped into her car seat in Lindsay’s Mercedes SUV, I pull out of the driveway and head to the store. Mila and I take our time in the grocery store on my way to Jason’s hotel room around ten a.m. After an uneventful trip to the market, where I may have allowed Mila to get a bag of M&Ms, we arrive at the Homewood Suites in Wilmington.
“Daddy, this is not home. I don’t wanna go here. I wanna go to the party,” Mila says as I carry her into the hotel lobby.
She looks at me with her eyebrows raised, as if she’s questioning my sanity for forgetting where we live.
“Mila, this is where we live now. It’s just you and me on the lam.”
“No!” she shouts. “I wanna g
o home!”
I glance at the woman behind the front desk and she returns my awkward smile. “It’s getting harder and harder to kidnap kids these days,” I say with a shrug.
“Daddy, I wanna go home. This is not my home!” Mila whines.
“Sweetheart, I was only kidding. You know what a joke is. Don’t you remember? I told you how to tell a joke.”
“No jokes, Daddy.”
I shake my head as I hit the call button for the elevator and the doors open right away. “Okay, how about just one? How do you make an egg roll?” I say as I press the button for the third floor.
She scrunches up her face in disgust. “I don’t like eggs.”
“You know how to make an egg roll? You push it. Get it? You push the egg and it rolls. That’s how you make an egg roll.”
She doesn’t even crack a smile.
“You’re starting to remind me of your mom.”
“I’m not your mom!”
I try not to laugh at her response because she’s clearly in a bratty mood, and I don’t want to encourage this behavior, but it’s so difficult to keep a straight face. This is what I love the most about Mila. She’s still too young to understand most of my jokes, but instead of asking questions or looking confused, she gets angry because she automatically assumes I’m the one who doesn’t know what the hell I’m talking about. I know I should correct her, and sometimes I do, but most of the time I find her self-righteous toddler brat-titude too adorable to intervene.
When I knock on the door of Jason’s suite, I’m surprised that I don’t hear any movement or voices inside. I knock a few more times without an answer and Mila starts rubbing her face on my shoulder. She must not have slept well in our bed last night if she’s already jonesin’ for a nap.
