Pretenders (Firsts and Forever 3)

That made her happy. She asked, “Can I touch your hair?”

“Of course.”

I bent my head, and she tentatively ran a finger over the lavender bit, followed by her whole hand. “It’s soft. It’s like doll hair.” Then she said, “I’m Millie. What’s your name?”

“I’m Ash.”

She mulled that over for a few moments as she adjusted her little glasses, which had pink frames. “I’ve never heard that name before,” she said.

“It’s short for Ashley.”

Her brown eyes lit up, and she exclaimed, “Oh, that’s pretty! I’m going to call you Ashley. Is that okay?”

I sat down cross-legged on the grass and smiled at her. “You can call me anything you want.”

A mischievous sparkle glinted in her eyes. “Anything?”

“Yup, and I’ll even answer to it.”

“What about Pineapple?”

God, I loved kid humor. There was zero logic to it. “You can absolutely call me Pineapple, but then I get to call you Baroness Banana Bottom of Bora Bora.”

She shrieked with laughter, which was the best sound ever. Then she started playing with my hair as she said, “I think you should just call me Millie, and I’ll call you Ashley. My name’s short for Camille, but that’s my mom’s name so I don’t like being called that. I like having a name of my own.”

“That’s very wise,” I said.

She was wearing a pink, sleeveless top and matching capris, and she touched the flowers on my shirt, then the daisies on hers and said, “We match.”

“Yes, we do.” As she went to work trying to get my hair to form spikes, I said, “So tell me, Millie, what have you done while you’ve been here in Bora Bora?”

“I got to swim in the pool yesterday, but Daddy says I can’t today because we’re having guests.”

“Maybe we can both go swimming in the lagoon tomorrow. That reminds me, guess what I saw on the way over here?”

“What?”

“A sea turtle!”

Her eyes went wide, and she yelled, “Be right back!”

As she dashed back to the seating area, I glanced at Wes and smiled. He was sitting on a teak bench and watching me with the sweetest expression on his face.

Millie returned a moment later with a book, which she thrust at me as she exclaimed, “Look what I was reading!” It was a kids’ nonfiction book about sea creatures with several animals on the cover, including a turtle.

“Awesome! Will you read me the part about sea turtles?”

She took the book from me and handed it to Wes. “Uncle Wesley should read it to us. He’s really funny. He reads me stories every weekend when we video chat. Do the funny voices, Uncle Wesley!”

He glanced at me self-consciously, and I smiled at him and said, “Pretty please?”

“The funny voices work a lot better with books that have characters,” he told us, but gave it a shot anyway. He read the section on sea turtles in a high-pitched, nasal voice, which made him sound like a cartoon character.

Millie and I howled with laughter. She fell over backwards, then got up and climbed into my lap, and I wrapped my arms around her. When Wes finished the section on turtles we both begged for more, so he read about seals with a perfectly ridiculous accent, which I eventually realized was meant to be Scottish. I laughed so hard that I thought I was going to hurt myself.

When he finished, an amused-sounding voice from the doorway asked, “For someone who speaks four languages, why are you so awful at doing accents?”

Wes turned to his big sister and grinned. “I’d like to see you do better, Cami.”

Camille grinned, too. “I’m not saying I could do better. I’m merely pointing out that you suck.” She glanced at her daughter and said, “Please don’t start using that word.” Okay, so all of a sudden I liked Camille.

Millie asked, “What’s wrong with saying suck?”

“Nothing. Sweetie, it’s going to be another half hour or so until brunch is served, but Daddy made you a nice bowl of tropical fruit, because he thought you might be hungry. Go find him in the kitchen, okay?”

“Okay.” Millie got up and looked at Wes and me. “Can we play later?”

“Of course,” I said.

She took off running down the hallway, and her mother called after her, “Walking feet inside, please.” Then Camille turned to her brother and grew serious. “I wanted to let you know Warren and Jack just arrived. Are you up for this, Wesley?”

He stood up and shrugged. “I guess I have to be. Excuse me for a moment, I want to visit the bathroom and possibly throw up before I go and say hello.”

Once he went inside, Camille turned to me with a curious expression. “I wasn’t sure about you when Wesley introduced us. But my Millie is a very shy little girl, and I’ve never seen her warm to a stranger so quickly. That says a lot.”