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“No hard feelings.”
Mia felt as if her head were going to explode if he interrupted her one more time. “Will you please stop talking?” She balled her hands into fists at her side. “Please! Let me get a word in edgewise?”
“Miss?” said an unfamiliar voice from behind her. She turned to see an elderly couple, no doubt retirees from Detroit or Pittsburgh. The man continued. “Or—senorita? Is everything alright?”
She forced a smile, and admonished herself for screaming in the middle of the complex’s parking lot. She didn’t exactly need to add police intervention to the list of crap she was dealing with today. “Oh, yes. Thank you.”
The man raised his eyebrows and took his wife by the arm. Mia heard him muttering as he got into the car. “Latinos…”
Normally his racial profiling would have caused Mia to read him the riot act, but instead she read it to Blaine. “If you’d listen to me for five seconds I could explain what happened. You’re convinced I’ve done something horrible without even getting the facts.”
Blaine took a deep breath and crossed his arms over his chest. He didn’t look convinced, but she took his nod as a hint to continue. “Jeff has been bugging me to talk about our breakup. I’ll be honest, as confused as I was when I left your place earlier, I thought I should hear him out.”
“Exactly,” said Blaine. The smug look on his face irked Mia.
“So… as I was saying… he came over to talk. As soon as he arrived I knew it was a mistake. He wanted to try to work things out. All I could think about was how I might have ruined everything with you by storming out.”
Blaine hung his arms at his sides and looked up at the clear blue sky above them.
“I told him he had to leave. He tried to kiss me—” She decided to be brutally honest. “Well—he succeeded. It was like—like a stealth kiss.”
He cracked the tiniest hint of a smile. “Like MI5.”
“What?” she asked.
“CIA. Brit version.”
“Oh—right. Like MI5. I pushed him away, but he didn’t go at first, I guess. Hence the clown makeup.” She pointed at his mouth, which was probably still covered in smeary lipstick. No wonder the old couple thought she was trouble.
“I told him to leave,” she said. “He was going when you arrived. He was in my apartment for a total of like twenty minutes. So I stormed out on you earlier, and now you’re storming out on me. Should we call it even, or just keep this up?”
Blaine leaned against the truck. He ran his hands through his hair. “Look Mia,” he said, “I’m crazy about you. I think you’re amazing. But all this back and forth… yes…no… it’s driving me crazy. I’m not a masochist.”
“You’ve had your own back and forth,” she said. She’d always let Jeff blame all their relationship problems on her, and she wasn’t going to make that mistake again.
“I know, I’m just as at fault. It just seems like we’re both bringing so much baggage to this situation. I’ve only been divorced for six months, and that took the mickey out of me.”
“The mickey?”
Blaine smiled, and to Mia’s relief it seemed genuine.
“Sometimes I forget my English can be just as confusing to you as your Spanish would be to me,” he said. “It’s just a phrase we use in the UK. It means, like, to take the fight out of someone. My last divorce exhausted me. I just want peace.”
Mia closed the space between them. “I understand. But I still think it’s worth trying.”
He opened his arms and she fell into them. Heat radiated off his body, and even off the truck’s black paintjob. In a weird paradox, the warmth made her shiver. “What about St. John?” he asked. “I don’t want to spend five weeks away from you. Not when we’re just getting started.”
Mia closed her eyes and breathed in his smell. Aftershave and something he’d been cooking… maybe grilled steak. “Yes,” she said. “Yes to St. John.”
He tilted her chin toward his face and kissed her. “It will be worth it. We’re going to have an amazing time.”
She spoke between kisses. “I hope so. As long as you don’t expect me to go offshore. I don’t think there’s enough Dramamine in the world to keep my tummy from rebelling out in the middle of the ocean.”
“That’s a deal,” he said. “We’ll keep you on land as much as possible.”
So the decision is made, Mia thought. One problem down. Blaine promised he’d humor her need to be a landlubber. Another problem down. The biggest problem awaited, however. Mia sent her mother a text.
Hey mom, I need to talk to you about something.
