The Kiss Quotient (The Kiss Quotient #1)(35)

From the look on the older woman’s face, she’d seen everything . . . and was curious. Round-lensed glasses perched on the top of her head at a gravity-defying angle, and her black hair was pulled back in a ponytail, though several strands stood out in busy disarray. She wore a hound’s-tooth sweater and green plaid pants. Like Michael, she wore a measuring tape around her neck.

The woman held out a deconstructed garment and pointed to a section of a seam. The two of them proceeded to speak in a rapid, tonal language that had to be Vietnamese.

As he bent over the garment with that sexy thinking look on his face, the woman aimed a distracted smile at Stella and patted Michael’s arm. “I taught him when he was little, and now he teaches me back.”

Stella eked out a smile. Had his mother just caught them kissing? She tried to find similarities between them, but nothing stuck out. Michael’s facial features were a striking balance of eastern edges and western angles. Broad shouldered, thick, and vital, he towered over the petite woman.

Stella pushed her glasses up and smoothed her hands over her skirt, wishing she had a white lab coat and a stethoscope.

On the other side of the open back door, racks of in-process clothes and various commercial sewing machines cluttered a large workspace. A mechanized circular rack carrying clothes in plastic wrap occupied the far left side of the room, and countless spools of thread in every shade imaginable lined the walls. The little old lady from earlier sat on a worn couch in the right corner, watching muted television on an ancient CRT. The lawn shears were nowhere in sight.

“What do you do for a living? Are you a doctor?” the woman asked with ill-disguised hope.

“No, I’m an econometrician.” Stella linked her fingers together and stared at the tips of her shoes, awaiting disappointment.

“Is that economics?”

Stella’s eyes darted back up in surprise. “Yes, it is, but with more math.”

“Has your girlfriend met Janie yet?” she asked Michael.

Michael looked up from his garment, his expression worried. “Mom, no, she hasn’t met Janie, and she isn’t my—” He stopped speaking, and his gaze jumped from his mom to Stella.

His dilemma was perfectly clear. What did they call one another in public situations now?

“She’s not what?” his mom asked in confusion.

He cleared his throat as he focused on the garment in his hands. “She hasn’t met Janie.”

Warmth splashed at Stella’s body in unexpected waves. He didn’t correct his mom. Did that mean they were going by boyfriend and girlfriend in public situations?

A desperate yearning gripped Stella, surprising her in its intensity.

“Who’s Janie?” Stella managed to ask. She remembered that name from before.

“Janie is his sister.” There was a thinking slant to his mom’s eyes before she brightened and said, “You should come to our house for dinner tonight. Talk to Janie about economics, ah? She’s studying that at Stanford and is trying to get a job. His other sisters will want to meet you, too. We didn’t know he had a new girlfriend.”

His mom’s words swamped whatever giddiness she’d experienced from being called Michael’s girlfriend. House. Dinner. Sisters. The words rattled around in her head, refusing to make sense.

“Just come, ah? Even if you two have plans, you still have to eat. Michael can make bún. His bún is very good . . . I forgot to ask. What is your name?”

Dazed, she said, “Stella, Stella Lane.”

“Call me M?.” It sounded like meh, but with an unusual tonal dip in the middle.

“M??” Stella repeated.

His mother smiled her approval. “Don’t eat anything before you come, ah? We have lots of food.” With that, she brushed her hands together like business was settled, filled out the invoice slip for Stella’s clothes, and handed it to her. “This will be ready Tuesday morning.”

In a state of panic, Stella stuffed the slip into her purse, murmured a quiet thank-you, and walked out to her car, passing by his grandmother’s herb garden—at least, she assumed the old lady was his grandmother. As she sat down in the driver’s seat, his mom’s words repeated in her head.

House. Dinner. Sisters.

The front door swung open and Michael jogged to her side. She opened the window, and he propped his hands on the side of the car. “You don’t have to come if you don’t want to.” A notch formed between his eyebrows as he hesitated. “But maybe . . .”

“Maybe what?” she heard herself ask.

“Maybe it’s the kind of practice you wanted.”

“You’d let me practice with your family?” The fact that he trusted her with the important people in his life touched her in ways she didn’t understand, made her feel off-kilter. That yearning from earlier returned.

“Would you be good to them?” he asked with a searching gaze.

“Yes, of course.” She always strove to be good to people.

“And keep our arrangement between us? They don’t know about . . . what I do.”

She nodded. That went without saying.

“Then I’m okay with it. If you want to. Do you?”

“Yes, I do.” But not because she wanted practice.

“Let’s do it, then.” His eyes fell to her lips. “Come closer.”