This time her breath froze. If Riccardo had come up with that scenario for their engagement story, she wouldn’t be able to breathe anytime anyone told it. Better to stick with the fake one.
“So maybe the hot air balloon idea is a good one.”
“It’s not me.”
“We’ll try not to tell it too often. We’ll use the ‘this is Julia and Alonzo’s celebration’ excuse.”
He nodded. “Good idea.”
He focused his attention on the sheet of facts Riccardo had written up, but stopped reading out loud. Her gaze swept the five o’clock shadow growing on his chin and cheeks, then rose to his nearly black eyes and up to his shiny black hair. Her fingers itched to run through the thick locks, and it suddenly struck her that maybe sometime in the next two weeks she could.
Just as her heart stumbled in her chest, his gaze rose and he smiled at her. “Riccardo also says this flight would be a good time for us to exchange stories.”
“Exchange stories?”
“He thinks I should tell you about things like the time I jumped off the roof of one of the winery’s outbuildings, thinking I could fly.”
She didn’t know whether to laugh or gape at him. “Why would you think you could fly?”
“I was eight and I had a cape.”
A laugh burst from her. “That’s hysterical.”
“Didn’t you ever do anything stupid?”
Her earliest memories were of her mom sleeping on the couch. She’d sit on the floor in front of the sofa and watch her mother’s chest rise and fall, being scared silly because technically she was alone. Four years old and all alone. She was six or seven before she realized her mom kept sleeping because she drank too much alcohol. And it wasn’t until she was ten that she understood what a hangover was.
The only stupid thing she’d done was mention that to a social worker.
“I LED A very quiet life.”
Even as that statement came out of Lila’s mouth, Mitch remembered her answer when he’d asked if she’d maxed out the company credit cards Riccardo had given her. “Weren’t you a foster child?”
She brushed at her dress, as if trying to smooth out nonexistent wrinkles. “Yes. But that doesn’t mean my life was exciting.”
He knew little about the American foster care system, but he did understand the basics. A child was taken in by a family who was paid by the state to care for him or her. He supposed that left little room for being silly or stupid or even experimental, if you wanted to keep your home. Because if you didn’t keep your home—
The picture that brought to mind tightened his chest. Not wanting to think of Lila as a child on the street, alone and scared, and not wanting to examine his motives for the emptiness that invaded his soul just considering that she might have been alone or scared, he changed the subject.
“How were your grades?”
She grinned. “I was a star.”
He knew that, of course. They’d checked into her when they’d hired her. She’d been top of her class everywhere from elementary school to university.
“Anything I should know about your love life?”
She glanced across the aisle at him, caught his gaze. “No.”
“At least tell me the story of your first date.”
She smoothed her hair off her forehead. “Oh. Well, I guess that depends on what you consider a date. I had a huge crush on my next-door neighbor when I was five.”
He laughed. “Not that far back.”
“Okay. I went to the prom in high school.”
“Seriously? That was your first date?”
She shrugged. “I was busy getting those good grades, remember?”
He sighed. “All right. If we really were engaged, I probably wouldn’t know every corner of your love life. But give me something I can take to Nanna that will convince her we’re...” He paused, grappling for words, because now that he was getting to know her everything felt funny. He’d already pictured himself ravaging her. Her fault. She’d brought it up. But, because he’d already seen it in his head, he couldn’t quite say lovers out loud.
Finally he just sucked it up and said, “To help her believe we’re intimate.”
“Oh, my gosh. Seriously? Did you just say that? You couldn’t say lovers...or that we’re having sex or even knocking boots?” She laughed heartily. “Mitch, you have got to lighten up. You’ll do more to convince your grandmother we’re engaged with your actions than you will remembering a bunch of useless information about my life.”
Irritated with himself for all these weird reactions, he said, “Yeah, I guess.”
She caught his gaze again. But this time the light of humor brightened her pretty eyes. “I know.”
The awkwardness of being so informal with her pressed in on him again, and he had to get rid of it. Since she seemed to like humor so much, he went in that direction and said, “I suppose this means you’re not going to tell me the story of how you lost your virginity.”
She laughed. “No. And I don’t want to hear about yours.”
“Mine’s a great story,” he teased, so relieved that the tension had been broken that he decided to keep her laughing.
“I’ll bet.”
“I was about fifteen. A middle-aged woman came to the winery for a tour—”
“Oh, my God!” She put her hands over her ears. “Stop.”
“All right. I suppose that one isn’t exactly G-rated. Want to hear about Riccardo’s?”
Her eyes widened comically.
But he realized something important. “If we really were engaged, you might not know about our sex lives, but you would know about Riccardo’s and my antics as kids. So what do you say I tell you some of those stories?”
She slowly pulled her hands away from her ears. “Okay. If I were your fiancée for real, I would know those.”
“Exactly.”
He told her about skipping school, climbing trees, swimming in the lake behind his family’s property before the family put in the in-ground pool. He told her about Nanna covering for him and Riccardo a time or two, then using her knowledge for blackmail.
“Your nanna’s a pistol.”
“You don’t know the half of it.”
“Thus the reason for the fake fiancée.”
“Sí.” He paused a second, then said, “So what about you?”
She smiled at him from across the aisle. “What about me?”
“What do I need to know about you to fool my grandmother?”
“Nothing.”
“Oh, come on, I have to tell her something.”
“Nope. I’m a nonentity in this charade. I don’t matter. Just as Riccardo made up stories about our getting together and your proposal, I can be anything you need me to be because two weeks from now I’m out of the picture.”
“But doesn’t it make more sense to use your real life?” He peeked at her.