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In the end, we took a thirty-minute break while Chloe got fixed up, and she walked down the aisle again wearing a plain white cocktail dress that she’d planned to wear later, when leaving the reception. I sat with my parents and the rest of the guests during the ceremony, instead of up there with the bridal party, and she barely spoke to me the rest of the evening.
I had expected her to delete me from her followers on Instagram, but she never did. I’m guessing she didn’t want to ruin her follower numbers, but they skyrocketed after her wedding when someone made a clip of her falling into the pool and it went viral. She’s an influencer now. Or at least she thinks she is.
Call it karma, or whatever you will, but I still feel horrible about it. It was after Chloe’s wedding that I began to recognize a pattern. But there were still two more weddings for me to ruin before I really believed it.
Mila
THE NEXT MORNING, IT TAKES me a minute to figure out where I am, but when I do, the reality of the night hits me hard.
I’m in Hawaii with no luggage and sharing a bed with the star of 94 percent of my romantic dreams, the person I have a crush on when I most certainly should not. My freaking boss.
Fake Dave couldn’t even get me out of this one. Poor Fake Dave. He deserves better.
Honestly, though, of all the people who shouldnotbe sharing a bed with their boss, it’s me. I already have issues there. It wasn’t like I had much of a choice, though. I couldn’t have let him sleep on the hard floor. That would have been cruel.
Besides, nothing happened. We both stayed on our sides, the pillow barrier still between us. Not that I didn’t think about accidentally-on-purpose rolling over to his side of the bed and snuggling up to him. I’m going to add that to my list of daydreams. Just after the fantasy of us really and truly kissing on Saturday night, instead of what actually happened. Grayson is an excellent kisser in my head.
No, brain, don’t go there. It’s already going to be awkward when he wakes up, because of our current situation. I don’t need to add how I’ve been feeling about the kiss that didn’t happen. I was able to let it go yesterday on the flight to Honolulu when I decided I needed to get over myself. It ended up being much easier to do after our arrival and the train wreck that followed.
Yes, I know it could have been worse. Much worse. I’m alive. I have a roof over my head. No harm or injury has befallen me or Grayson. But a girl needs her toiletry bag. It’s just the facts. Not to mention that the dress I’m wearing for Nadia’s wedding is in my lost suitcase. I can’t believe my bad luck has started already. It usually has the decency to wait until the actual wedding day.
Or maybe someone’s looking out for me? Maybe I’m looking at this all wrong. If I don’t get the dress in time, I can’t be in the bridal party, and Nadia’s wedding will be saved. Except I know Nadia, and she’d find me a dress to wear. She doesn’t give up that easily.
I can hear Grayson breathing slowly and steadily next to me, and I roll my head to look at him. He’s on his side, his face toward me, and he looks like a freaking angel. Why can’t he look like an ogre when he sleeps? The man doesn’t even drool. At the very least, he could be one of those ugly sleepers, with hair going every which way.
He’s so kind, too. He hasn’t judged me for being upset about my missing suitcase like Monty most likely would have done. And when he offered to sleep on the floor last night? Come on. What kind of man does that? Grayson, that’s who. The man who also looks like a supermodel in his sleep. Why, cruel world? Why? I need to text Nadia and tell her all about this.
I can’t, though. She’ll have too many questions that will lead to answers that I don’t want to give her right now. She’ll get every last detail out of me, I have no doubt. But for now, I’ll just keep it to myself. I’m not ready to tell her about my lost luggage, the single reservation with only one bed, how Grayson’s T-shirt feels soft against my skin. How I pretended to sleep until he fell asleep—which took way too long—so I could sneakily take off my bra.
“Are you watching me sleep?” Grayson says, his eyes still closed, his face toward me.
“No,” I say, quickly turning my face away from him.
“I never pegged you for a stalker,” he says, his voice groggy.
“I’m not … I … shut up,” I say. “You were snoring. I was trying to talk myself out of smothering you with a pillow.”
“Lies,” he says, chuckling low and throaty, and it’s quite possibly the hottest sound I’ve ever heard.
“It’s the truth,” I tell him. It’s not the truth and we both know it. The truth is I really was watching him sleep. I should start a list of all the embarrassing things I’ve done on this trip. The first one would be getting chocolate on my shirt during the flight here, the second would be falling asleep on a stranger, the third would be having to share a bed with my boss, and now … acting like a creeper.
“What time is it?” Grayson asks. Rolling to his back, he swipes a hand down his face.
“I think it’s almost eight,” I say. I’d checked the clock on the bedside table when I first woke up and it was seven forty-five. Which felt way too early to be awake after going to bed so late. But then I realized with the time change, I actually was in bed before midnight here.
Grayson sits up and swings his legs over the side of the bed. “I better hop in the shower,” he says. “Then I’ll call Vik to let him know about the hotel mix-up with the app.”
“What will you tell him if he asks how we managed it?” I asked, a slight bit of panic racing through my body. It’s one thing that I shared a bed with my boss in a totally platonic way; it’s another to have the entire company I work for knowing about it. Not that Vik is a gossip. But if Jason finds out, everyone will know within the hour.
“I won’t give him details. He can just assume we found another room.” He stands up from the bed and walks over to his suitcase and riffles around in it. Must be nice to have clean clothes to wear today.
“Oh, right. Good plan,” I tell him.
“We’ve got a snorkel tour that I booked through the app in a couple of hours. Then a luau tonight,” he says, standing just outside the entrance to the bathroom, fresh clothes in hand.
“Yes, I saw that on the itinerary,” I say. One of the beauties of the app is you can share itineraries with other people, and they can even be interactive for a group trip. The itinerary Grayson made for us is calledMila and Grayson Hawaii Test. I will not admit how much time I spent thinking about how good our names sound together after seeing it.
“I’m going to call and see where my luggage is,” I say, still tucked under the covers.
