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Chapter 1
Mia smiled her most innocent smile. To empower the look, she sent reassuring thoughts toward her parents. Trust me. Catch your plane. I’ll behave, and Hope will look after me.
Her sister Hope was a forgetful artist, so Mom wasn’t buying it. Mom shoved her carry-on onto the overloaded baggage cart and listed her ‘Rules To Live By’ as if there wasn’t a list posted on the fridge. “No drinking, no musicians.”
Oh, there would be drinking. Senior year. There would be music. Whoo-hoo.
Travelers around them rushed inside the airport to escape Houston’s one-hundred degree August heat and the idling cars’ exhaust fumes. Mom took her time. Mom’s greatest strength was her thoroughness. She’d acquired a touch of it. Hope hadn’t caught any.
“No sleepovers.” Mom trapped them into a perfume-coated goodbye hug and looked up at Hope. “Your sister will push the limits. You’re going to have to watch her.”
“Honey.” Dad snapped the trunk shut on Hope’s car with a loud enough click to show he’d reached the end of his patience. “The plane has left by now.”
Mia tried to step back. Mom didn’t let her.
Hope smiled reassuringly. “Mia’s good.” She didn’t have to fake the conviction in her voice. Twenty-four and still so naïve.
“I just want to be clear. Mia may be a senior, but she has a curfew. And watch out for her friend Lauren. She’s an instigator. Did I mention no pregnancies?”
Hope pressed her palms to her blushing cheeks. “Mom.”
Ewww. Mia rolled her eyes. Mom knew Jake had dumped her. By text. Before they’d slept together. That significantly reduced the odds of pregnancy.
“Honey.” Dad took over and turned the cart toward International Departures. They jogged to catch up to him for a quick goodbye hug.
“Enjoy your trip. Don’t worry,” Hope said.
“Be good and take care of each other. If something happens, or you need money, call.”
“Bring me a souvenir, a foreign book,” Mia said.
“You got it.” Dad patted her shoulder the way he did when she was little or sick. “If Hope starts a new painting and forgets you, call us.”
Mia motioned with her thumb to her ear and her pinky to her mouth. Dad’s lips quirked up. She’d inherited his sense of humor.
Hope wrapped her arms across her chest and her voice sounded as defiant as she ever got. “I can take care of her.”
“I know.” Dad gave Hope a confident thumbs-up. Mom gave her a warning look.
Mia waved until they disappeared through the glass door. The twinge of sadness caught her off-guard. There go my parents. Then she smiled. There go the rules.
***
A few days later, Mia elbowed her homework aside and dug through the gallery mail for postcards. There was one. Red mailbox, a furry cow, and an umbrella—the postcard must be from the UK. She flipped the card over. Yep, her parents’ cruise ship had left out of Southampton. She doubted that many cows ran along the English coastline, but the sentiment was nice. She spun her chair around to face the back of the studio where Hope was putting a fresh canvas on the easel. “Did you see these freakish English cows?” She totally wanted a freakish cow.
“Yes.” Hope got out a tube of paint, tilted her head, rejected it and selected another. “Uh, speaking of foreign, do you have any exchange students in your school?”
Kristnaldo, and he was a total perv. Why Italy, why? Why had they sent him over? “Yep, they’re freaks, too.”
Hope winced and squeezed a glob of yellow onto the canvas. “All of them?”
“Do all fish swim?” Mia dropped the postcard and pulled on her jacket. Yeah, it was a hundred outside, but Hope kept the gallery cold, cold. Which made sense, because she was up painting, burning calories and keeping warm, but it wasn’t a comfortable temp to sit and study by. Texas’ overheated outdoors and overcooled indoors must be difficult on the foreigners. It was challenging enough for the natives. “The foreign kids are never like the kids in movies. In a movie, it’s a romantic French guy. In real life, it’s a weird chain smoker who hates America and refuses to bathe.”
“Really? Chain smoking in high school?”
Kristnaldo did. The weird way he cupped it kept it hidden from a lot of teachers, and whenever they called him on it, he acted like he couldn’t speak much English. Which was total BS. “Yeah, and you know me, I love foreign languages and foreign people. So there I was, all eager to meet the new guy, maybe learn some more Italian, and then pow.” Mia threw her arms out for emphasis. “I had to pull my T-shirt over my nose to breathe. What a stench.” She wasn’t even exaggerating.
“How inconsiderate of him.” Hope’s lips quirked in a one-sided smile like Mia was joking, but she was being totally serious.
“I know, right? He doesn’t shower after gym, or Mondays, Tuesdays, or Wednesdays.” Kristnaldo smelled okay if you caught him on a Thursday or a Friday. If he kept to that pattern, she c
ould work with that, but sometimes he switched it up, and the anxiety of not knowing what could walk up was too much. “Until he changes, I figure he’s made his choice, and I’ve made mine.”
The doorbell chimed, and a courier came in toting a small, shiny gold box and an electronic clipboard. Total present. Mia rushed him with a signature and a “Thanks,” and took the box to Hope. As she neared the easel, the smell of paint grew, underplayed with the much fainter scent of Hope’s plumeria lotion. She always associated the two with her sister. “It’s not your birthday. What did you get?” She fought the urge to open the package herself.
Hope checked the card, and her eyes brightened. “Niko.” She said his name the way a choc-o-holic said Godiva. Every time. Niko. Mia didn’t think she’d ever sounded that way when she’d said Jake. She tried it out in her mind. Jake. Nope.
Hope reached toward the box, paused, and then gave Mia a weird look, eyes downcast, mouth twisted. Guilt? Hope squared her shoulders and drew in a deep breath. “Niko asked me to move in with him.”
