Page 50 of Hula Girl

“Thank you for giving me a chance,”Ford says once we’ve been seated.

We got lucky, skating by a party of seven to secure the last open table for two. The restaurant is alive with the chatter of a full house, the mood upbeat and a contrast to our awkward unintentional date.

“Listen,” I say, “I can’t even start to talk until I have a drink and some food. I’m too hungry and I’m too irritated.”

He nods and smoothly flags down our waiter, who had until this point been too occupied with other tables to even greet us.

I don’t wait for the waiter to explain the specials. Instead, I ask for an Old Fashioned and an order of shrimp and avocado tostadas. Ford joins me with the same drink and asks the waiter for his recommendation, taking him up on the carne asada entrée.

Taking my earlier warning literally, Ford is silent while we wait for our drinks. He looks around the restaurant, surveying the one long aqua wall, the other brick wall, and the ceiling that’s painted terra cotta between wood beams. In turn, I watch him, trying to decipher what he’s all about.

Tyler was, of course, right. Ford is drop-dead gorgeous. There’s nothing quite like a man who can rock both a business suit and a bathing suit. The way he cleans up is a sin. I can only imagine the impression he must make when he meets a client or shows up in court. I’d thought he was self-assured and entirely comfortable in his own skin in Maui, but seeing how easily he took down Bryce was a whole other level of confidence. It was both him standing up for himself and for me. And it was the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen.

He didn’t need to leap to my defense that way. Hell, he didn’t even need to come over to me in the first place. Now that I think of my interaction with Bryce before that, I can imagine what it might have looked like to an outsider. Bryce was crossing the line. He was also drunk. But I could have handled him.

Still, having Ford swoop in was—once I got past my shock at seeing him—incredibly flattering. It was one thing to have his attention when it was just the two of us in Maui, and yet another when he was making a claim over me to my ex. A very compelling thing, especially when I never thought I’d see him again.

And now we’re having dinner together.

Our waiter delivers our drinks and my order since it’s technically an appetizer. Ford takes the arrival of the food and drinks as his cue to speak.

“I’m sorry, Ava,” he starts. “I don’t know why I said I was your fiancé.” He pauses as if he’s fighting to keep from continuing. In the end, he can’t contain himself. “It’s just, that asshole of an ex needed to be shut down. I mean, I know guys like that. I know they think they’re owed the world. And, he’s clearly an idiot if he gave you up, so I was just pointing out the obvious to help him along in understanding his mistake.”

I watch him for a minute, trying and failing to hang on to my anger with him. I can’t help but smile. He’s just so earnest. And sweet. Not to mention gorgeous.

Picking up my tumbler, I hold it out to him. “Cheers to that,” I say.

“Hell, yeah,” he replies, knocking my glass with his.

19

Ford

We drain our first drink, share her appetizer, and order a second cocktail before conversation turns from purposefully surface-level banter to confronting the circumstances we’re in now.

“So, Mr. McAvoy,” she says, the Old Fashioned having taken the edge off her anger at me, “what is this all about? Why are you in LA?”

Taking a deep breath, I let it out as I consider where to start.

“And what is the deal with your father?” she continues. “I thought you didn’t even know him? That he wanted nothing to do with you when you were growing up? But that wasn’t exactly the truth, was it?”

Looks like I was premature in thinking her anger had cooled off.

“I didn’t lie to you about him,” I say. “I just … didn’t exactly tell you the whole truth.”

She nods as if this confirms something for her. As if she somehow knew all along that I wasn’t to be trusted. That rubs me the wrong way because I never set out to deceive her. I wasn’t running some kind ofconon her. We both knew what we wanted from each other back in Maui. And we gave it to each otherso well. To now turn that around and view our time together as something more calculating is a bit of revisionism.

“Okay, come on, Ava—we weren’t exactly focused on baring oursoulsto each other. We were focused on morephysicalthings, weren’t we?”

Frozen by my words for a second, she suddenly breaks out into a big smile before laughing. “Oh, I see. Thanks for that, Surfer Boy.”

“I’m not saying it wasn’t a fantastic time. I’m just saying, it wasn’t the time to tell you my life story.”

“Well, now that you’ve got me mixed up in this fake fiancée charade, I think you’d better go ahead andbare your soulto me.”

I want to do so many things with her, but baring my soul isn’t one of them. The minute I saw her at that event, I wanted to give in to the intense attraction we’d had as strangers in Maui. I wanted to pull her out of there and explore her body in ways I hadn’t yet. I wanted to disappear into that connection we have and leave behind all the bullshit I’m dealing with in my real world.

That instinct is probably why I’ve been drooling over her nonstop. Well, that, and because she’s undeniably beautiful and sexy. And I can practically still taste her. I want more of her. So much more.

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