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around, there was no mistaking it. The mother actually dropped her paper plate of food, she was so surprised to see Suro.
    Sparkle’s mother, the woman Kenji wanted him to marry, was the woman from the bar, the same one he’d had unexpectedly hot sex with the night before.

CHAPTER 4
    AFTER standing there like an idiot for several stunned seconds, Lacey hunkered down and busily started dealing with the dropped plate of food.
    This was not happening. This could not be happening. Mr. Hot Asian Dude, Mr. Crazy Good In Bed, Mr. Perfect One-Night-Stand could not be Kenji’s dad.
    But then there he was, squatting down next to her in another linen suit and taking the plate from her. “It’s okay,” he said.
    He took her by the elbow and brought them both to a standing position, before beckoning one of the nearby camp caterers to come clean up the mess.
    “I can do it,” she said, preferring to clean food up off the ground than face the guy who had made her come no less than six times the night before.
    He didn’t answer, just stood there, still holding her by her elbow. Maybe his fingers were magic, because she could have swore she felt the same currents on her arm that had run through her last night when he touched her.
    “Hi,” she said for lack of anything better to say.
    “Hello,” he answered. He nodded toward the large black man standing next to him. “This is my business partner, Dexter.”
    “Hey, how you doing,” Dexter said, grinning in a way that made it clear he already knew all about Kenji’s plan to set them up. “And don’t worry, we’re just business partners. Suro is all the way single and ready to mingle—with the ladies.”
    “And I’m Tetsuro Nakamura, Kenji’s father,” Hot Asian Dude said, throwing his business partner a distinctly unamused look.
    “But all his friends call him Suro,” Dexter added, still grinning.
    “Hi, Suro,” she said, happy to finally know his name, even if she was mortified by the circumstances. “So it looks like our kids have hit it off.”
    “Yes,” he said.
    They continued to stare at each other, her not knowing what to say, and him clearly preferring silence to speech.
    “Mom, Mr. Dexter, Kenji, and I are going to go stand somewhere else. You and Kenji’s dad should talk,” Sparkle said.
    “About the terms of your future relationship,” Kenji added, as if Lacey and Suro had no clue why they were abandoning them like scheming sitcom characters.
    And then they were all gone, and though she and Suro were surrounded by food and people, Lacey couldn’t help but feel they were standing in an empty field, alone, with the strange current running between them, his hand glued to her arm.
    “Refill your plate,” he said. “We can find a space to eat over there.” He gestured behind him.
    “I’m not that hungry anymore,” she told him truthfully.
    “You should eat anyway,” he said. “You worked up quite an appetite last night.”
    She couldn’t help but laugh. “In that case, you should eat, too. If I’m remembering correctly, you were right there with me.”
    His face remained impassive, but she could see a spark of humor in his eyes when he finally let go of her arm and grabbed a plate of his own.
    As awkward as the rest of the brunch should have been after that, it really wasn’t. She actually found Suro easy to talk to as they both ate off of paper plates, seated on a picnic blanket underneath a shady oak tree.
    She talked mostly about Sparkle and how much her daughter had enjoyed her first year at Rise Academy. “I really didn’t want to send her at first. It’s a lot of money and I didn’t want my baby so far away. But you know, she was having a hard time in public school. The teachers didn’t really understand her and she had no friends. She’d stopped having meltdowns around third grade, but then we moved to a different part of the city. One year at her new school, and they were back with a vengeance. I didn’t know how to help