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 Mẹ.” It sounded like meh, but with an unusual tonal dip in the middle.

“Mẹ?” 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.”

She leaned toward him but glanced at the front of the shop. “She might be watch—”

He pressed a soft kiss to her mouth. Just one. And he pulled away. “See you tonight.”

13

When Michael walked back into the shop, his mom was watching him with her arms crossed. Through the display window, she had a clear view of Stella’s white Tesla as it backed out of the parking lot. He was certain she’d watched the kiss. That was why he’d made it so short when what he’d really wanted to do was kiss Stella until her eyes glazed over.

She had his body tied up in so many knots, he could barely see straight, let alone think, and she’d caught him off guard here in the shop. That had to be why he’d accepted her proposal when he’d already convinced himself to do the right thing and turn her down. She hadn’t teased him, and she hadn’t laughed. Instead, she’d been impressed with his work and with him—the real him. No one wanted the real him. Only Stella. In that moment of weakness, he’d recklessly tossed his reservations aside. He’d said yes for no other reason than he wanted to be with her.

But now everything was spiraling out of control. Lines were blurring, and he couldn’t distinguish his professional life from his personal life. He might not even want to. His mom thought Stella was his for real, and he liked that way too much for his own comfort. Saying yes had been a giant mistake. He already regretted it and felt how wrong it was, even if he wasn’t entirely sure why. But it was too late now. It was just a month. He was a professional. He could handle a month.

“Stel-la,” his mom said, like she was testing out the sound of the name.

Michael gathered up Stella’s clothes and headed into the work area.

She followed right behind him. “I like her much better than that stripper you dated three years ago.”

“She was a dancer.” Okay, yeah, she’d also been a stripper. He’d been young, and she’d had an awesome body and all those pole moves.

“That one left her dirty underwear in a cup for me to find when I came over.”

Michael rubbed the back of his neck. Even after three years of escorting, he still didn’t understand the strange power games that happened between women. “I broke up with her.”

It had just been about the sex anyway. His dad was a cheater, and rather than commit and hurt people, Michael had spent his early twenties keeping things impersonal. To be honest, it had been a lot of fun, and he’d gone a little crazy, pretty much fucking anyone who showed interest. His memories of the time were a rainbow haze of women’s underwear.

When disaster hit and he needed money, he’d thought, why not get money for it? In his previous line of work, he’d dealt with lots of wealthy older women who propositioned him from time to time. All he’d had to do was accept. Plus, it was the perfect slap in the face to his dad—the reason for the disaster in the first place.

“That was an expensive car Stella drove,” his mom noted.

Michael shrugged, put Stella’s clothes with the other items that needed to be sent out for dry cleaning, and seated himself at his sewing machine.

In Vietnamese, his mom said, “She really likes you. I can tell these things.”

“Who likes him?” Ngoại piped up from her place in front of the TV where she was in the middle of watching Return of the Condor Heroes for the millionth time—the old one starring Andy Lau where the kung-fu-fighting condor was a man in a giant bird suit.

“A customer,” his mom answered.

“The one in the gray skirt?”

“You saw her?”

“Mmmm, I had my eye on her from the first second I saw her. She’s a good girl. Michael should marry her.”

“I’m right here,” Michael said. “And I’m not marrying anyone.” That wasn’t an option when he had to escort. He could still remember all the times when his dad had left during his childhood, the way his mom cried herself to sleep, the way she fell apart but still stayed strong for Michael and his sisters and never missed a day of work. Michael would never hurt a woman by cheating. Never.

Not that Stella would ever want to marry him. Why the hell was he thinking about this anyway? They’d been on three dates. No, not dates. Sessions. Appointments. They were in a practice relationship. This wasn’t real.

“Did I raise you to go kissing people’s daughters like that if you’re not going to marry them?” his mom asked.

He stared up at the ceiling in frustration. “No.”

“She’s good enough for you, Michael.”

Ridiculous. Like he was some kind of rare prize.

Ngoại mmmmed her agreement. “And pretty, too.”

Michael smiled then. Stella was pretty, and she didn’t know it. She was also smart, sweet, caring, brave, and—

His mom laughed and pointed at him. “Look at your face. Don’t try to tell me you don’t like her. It’s clear as day. I’m glad you finally got some good taste in women. Keep this one.”

Ngoại mmmmed.

Michael’s smile froze in place. They were right. He did like Stella, and he wished he didn’t. He knew he didn’t get to keep her.