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Where had bashful Kai gone? People didn’t just blurt things like that out of the blue. Well, technically I did, but that didn’t count. I’d made a horrific blunder when I been so direct. “Come again?”
“I wanted to kiss you, but I held back for my family’s sake.”
“You don’t think your family would approve?” The idea stabbed a bit deeper into my heart than it would have under normal circumstances. That pesky guilty conscience was acting up again, but I was compelled to buck against it and proclaim my worthiness, even though I knew better. “Your mom didn’t seem to have a problem with me.”
“Oh, no. I didn’t mean that. My family would love you. I think my mom already does.” The tips of his ears turned red.
There was Bashful.
“I just think we need to figure out what our working relationship is going to look like first… before we test any other waters.”
I nodded, my stomach souring a tad. I already knew what our working relationship was going to look like. I would be working. He wouldn’t be.
I squeezed my eyes shut for a moment, forcing the image of a panhandling Kai to the back of my mind.
“Our family business supports more than my parents and me. My aunt, two uncles, and more cousins than I care to name all work hard to keep us afloat.”
Nice. It was good to know that I’d be sending multiple generations to the soup kitchen. What was it that Lolani had called me? A good girl.
Yeah, not so much.
“I just don’t want to sabotage what could be a lucrative partnership for my family because I move too fast on a personal level.”
“I hear ya. We should totally keep things all business.”
A movie reel instantly started playing in my head. In it, I was standing over Kai’s dead business with a smoking gun in my hand. My hair was slicked back with a pound of gel and my voice sounded like the Godfather. “It wasn’t personal, Kai. It was strictly business. Badda-bing, badda-bang, badda-boom.”
“Well, we don’t have to go to the extreme.” Kai’s voice jarred me back into reality.
I looked over at him and that old familiar glint flickered in his dark eyes. I fought back the shiver trying to rattle my body.
“We don’t have to be all business,” he said. “We just won’t cross too many lines.”
“Sure.” I couldn’t look at those piercing eyes any longer if I wanted to keep from crossing those lines myself. I glued my gaze to the empty bowl in my hands, scraping the sides with my spoon.
“You like that flavor?”
“Yeah, what was it called again?” It was past time to change the topic of this conversation.
“Lilikoi.”
I glanced over at him, and his gaze captured mine, chasing away all coherent thought. “Lili—what?”
“Lilikoi. Passion fruit.” His voice was low and rumbly like an earthquake that hits just before a volcanic eruption. “I saw it and thought of you.”
Heat rushed up my neck, and my ears throbbed with the beat of my own heart. How someone could feel jilted about not receiving a kiss they knew would have been a mistake was beyond me. But I was feeling it.
I was feeling it hard.
Kai sure had an interesting way of not crossing too many lines.
