HIGH TIDE (2 page)

“Nick McCord, USGS.” His grip was firm and lingered for a second.

“A geologist? What on earth can I do for you, Mr. McCord?”

“You could stop your construction.” His tone was frank. “You could put an end to this development, and you could donate the land back to the native residents.”

Reeling, Briana scanned the lots immediately visible. Single-story homes flanked by sloping palms that she was diligent not to excavate. Even the cul-de-sac kept the natural landscape intact with plush Birds of Paradise, their ginger and gold pointed petals nestled amidst a bed of verdant leaves. For the life of her, Briana had no idea what the Geological Survey would be after.

“Unless you present me with something a little more tangible, I’m not even going to dignify that with a response, Mr. McCord.”

“Tangible, you want tangible?” A muscle in his jaw flexed. “If you hadn’t been so intent on distracting me before, and if I had
known
who you were, I could have showed you the problem right there.” Brown eyes flashed as he seemed to toy with that notion. “As a matter of fact, why don’t we just go take a walk, Ms. Holt?”

This was not a gracious invitation, Briana realized. She chanced a look at Naoki whose arms were crossed, his forehead knotted.

“I’ll just go see to this matter, Naoki.” She tried to sound composed. “Take over here.”

Naoki eyed the geologist warily, and whispered out of the corner of his mouth, “Are you sure?”

“I’m fine. This won’t be a setback, I can assure you.”

Nick muttered to the contrary and climbed the rest of the embankment, not glancing back to see whether she followed.

***   

Forced to sprint to catch up with his long stride, Briana cursed as sand poured into the heels of her sandals. She slipped, but when Nick halted and glanced over his shoulder, she stood straight and unbothered. As soon as he turned to face the ocean, she frantically kicked the tips of her toes against a rock.

At the shadowy line where bleached granules turned dark from moisture, Nick continued until his feet were immersed in the advancing foam. He seemed heedless that obviously expensive shoes were being saturated by saltwater. Crouched down, he scooped up a handful of sand and let the moist muck slip through his outstretched fingers.

Nick’s expression was bitter as he stood and faced her. “Do you have any idea what you are doing here?”

Defensive, Briana crossed her arms. “Apparently not.You’re about to tell me, though.”

“Yes
. Look at this waterline. It’s two feet higher than it’s supposed to be.”

“Translation?”

“Translation is—” Nick reached for the back of his neck, momentarily lost in thought. “—that unless the solar and lunar gravitational forces that create tides have miraculously shifted, this basically defies Mother Nature, which implicates man, or
woman
, if you will.”

Briana studied the methodical arches of water, the lather extending and trying to inch up the slight incline until it finally lumbered back to sea. She had been too busy with the construction site to spend much time along the water, and was unaware of the normal levels for this beach. Regardless, she was not about to be condemned by some pompous scholar who she was just now imagining with his shirt off.

Briana’s fingers swept her forehead. “And how in God’s name have you tied
Manale Palms
to possible erosion?”

Nick slanted a brooding look in her direction, and for a moment she caught him staring at her lips. Or did she just imagine that?

“Where are you going with the dirt that you’re digging up? I’m awaiting results from sediment tests and I’m certain it will implicate your site. There’s just no other explanation for alterations like this. Not to mention that fishermen have reported seeing fish wash up on shore here.”

Scanning the active beach, Brianna could find no signs of dead sea life. Not even a crab.

“The
soil
that we’ve excavated is being recycled as you can see by those three dump trucks parked over there,” she defended. “Some of it will be used for landscaping in
Manale Palms
, and some will be donated to nearby ranches. We’re not dumping it in the ocean as you are implying.”

Perhaps there was
the briefest bout of uncertainty in Nick’s dark features. Then he scowled and shook his head, crossing the ground that separated them.

From this close perspective Briana had to tilt her head back to meet that angry gaze. Dark hair with auburn highlights was cut short, but ruffled in the ocean breeze. She searched his face, which was haloed by the sun. The eyes were brown, although on closer inspection she saw myriad swirls of cognac beneath a veil of black lashes. Her gaze traced jaw muscles clenched in determination until she dropped to the full lips, flattened by ire.

“Look,” the lips moved and Briana blinked, “I’ll be seeing you again, Ms. Holt, only the next time it won’t be under such
amiable
circumstances. I’ll be armed with a lawsuit that will put an end to your construction site.”

As unsubstantiated as his accusations were, Briana felt the first tentacles of fear. Damp palms clutched the cool fabric of her skirt.

Could this government representative really shut down her dream?

Rather than reveal her panic, she challenged in a low voice. “Try it.”
 

CHAPTER TWO

“Okay, so I tracked his name down to UH. He has an office there, but he works mostly in the field.” Naoki recited, looking up from behind the monitor at Briana as she paced back and forth before his desk.

He shook his head and delved back to the screen. “Dr. Nicolas J. McCord, a Ph.D. in Marine Geology, but seems to tackle most every natural catastrophe that hits this state. He was involved in those landslides at Kohala Gulch. Nearly got himself killed from what I can see.”

Briana refused to be impressed. She crossed her arms and resumed her stride. “That’s all great. So what’s he doing at Manale, and what does it have to do with our housing project?”

Naoki reclined in the chair. He studied her and offered, “Beach erosion is something taken very seriously.”

“I
know
that.” She plunged both hands into her hair to draw it back from her flushed face. “But we’re doing nothing to tamper with the water—oh, never mind he’ll probably drop it anyway. He’s most likely just some professor looking for fodder for his next class, I’m not going to sit here and let it eat at me.”

That was exactly what she was going to do. Naoki knew it, and Briana knew that he knew it. She managed a weak smile. “Go on home, Takanawa. We’ll deal with it tomorrow.”

The digital clock on the wall read half past six.

“I’ll go, because if I sit here and read all the notable facts on Nic
olas J. McCord, you’re going to get sick.” He waited for Briana to rise to the bait, but she remained mute. “Okay, I’ll go, but one last question—”

Briana’s eyebrow arched. “Yes?”

“What did the Professor mean when he said,
if you hadn’t been distracting me?
And how did you know him, because you can’t deny that you didn’t, the two of you looked like you were either ready to kill, or—”

“I—”
She cleared her throat and retreated to the doorway, prepared to make good on an escape. “I ran into him, more or less, about a half hour earlier. He seemed like a decent enough guy, at least when I didn’t know who he was.”

Naoki shoved his glasses high atop the ridge of his nose. “Mmmm
-hmmm.”

“What,
mmm-hmmm?”

“Nothing.” He smiled. “Look, have a good night. And please, dear God, don’t spend the rest of the evening sitting here going over zoning restrictions.”

***  

Alone in her office on the fourteenth floor of the Kapaa Tower, Briana set the stack of
zoning blueprints down on her desk and moved to the wall-length window. Her forehead rested against glass made cool by the air conditioning as she gazed out onto the harbor. Beyond Aloha Tower the ocean was turning dusky rose under a violet twilight. The lights of the marketplace flickered on, and further beyond, a freighter moored at Sand Island became an illuminated hulk on the dark horizon.

From up here, or even on the crystal shore at Manale, the water looked innocent. Briana knew that the placid surface was full of deception, though. Yes, she as much as everyone else loved to look at the ocean, to stroll its opalescent beaches
—but she would not go in. No, she would never go in.

The ocean was a killer.

It murdered her parents.

After nearly twenty years, their faces never faded. Her father, Thomas Holt, the strong lieutenant at Kaneohe’s Marine Corps Base, and her Mother, Maria, the teacher at the Haiku Road Middle School. Maria Holt was a woman with exotic eyes that hinted at Polynesian influence. People often told Briana that her high cheekbones and striking features were the mirror image of her mother, and that the sun-streaked hair and rapt azure gaze distinctly intimated her father. At one time, the pain over their absence was devastating, but years had passed and left
her with only a hollow sense of loss.

As the sun dipped into the Pacific, Briana’s reflection was cast back from the fluorescent light in the empty corridor. Her face was in shadows, her meditative expression concealed by the dim glow behind her. She recounted the events of the past month, searching for any mistake, any chance that she had inadvertently damaged the integrity of the nearby beaches. But she kept coming up empty
.

Why had she been so quick to believe Nick McCord? Was she that much of a masochist that she
doomed her achievement before it ever came to fruition?

With her eyes closed, a brief image of the tall geologist formed. A tanned face with a strong jaw
, and an intense gaze that could paralyze a person with the briefest perusal. His body was lean and strong, an observation that was confirmed when the wind molded his shirt to his chest. Briana had been left helplessly staring as he unjustly berated her.

Well, next time they met the roles would be reversed. She would be in control. Nick McCord was no longer attractive to her. Instead, when she conjured up his face, she formed the image of an adversary
.

She
peered out over the black ocean, where a sparkling cruise ship lumbered peacefully past the lights of Waikiki. Beyond it, she studied the dark void, unaware that only a mile offshore, the sea floor churned. It erupted in soft recurrent swells. Tiny flares, doggedly assaulting the coast.

***
  

Seated on the edge of the lanai, Nick’s legs dangled over a drifting mound of sand. The ocean was discerned only by its placid splash against the shore, a shimmering strip beneath the moon.

Nick lifted a bottle of beer to his lips, but forgot to sip. His thoughts were monopolized by the initial results of the tests he ran today. It made no sense
.
There were traces of sediment from a coral reef far off shore that couldn’t have been disturbed without human interference. The only likely candidate for that interference had to be the new housing development going up in Kaneohe.

Unwillingly, this thought triggered images of the stunning contractor. First on
his agenda for the morning was to pay a visit to Moku Land Inc. and apply more pressure on Briana Holt, and anyone else within that firm that could shed light on the erosion of the northern tip of Manale Beach. He had already appealed to the Marine Corps Base, and was satisfied that none of their research ventures produced the damage he had witnessed.

That left only Briana Holt’s project as the primary suspect.

Nick rested his head back against one of the wooden columns that suspended the roof over his porch. Finally, he took a swig of beer.

Glossy blond hair, endless legs, striking azure eyes and soft lips that looked entirely too kissable were not going to thwart his efforts. It was his responsibility to ensure the quality of Hawaii’s water and to preserve the natural beauty of its coastline. The fact that he had not been with a woman in well over a year wasn’t going to make him any less sharp.

It was a damn shame, though. A damn shame that the woman he had met on the beach today, the woman who entranced him with her wary reaction, the woman whose golden hair was whisked into silky waves by the coastal breeze—it was a damn shame that she had to be chin-deep in the very project he was about to take down.

But
power-play
women weren’t his thing. Been there, done that. Yeah, he had thought about marriage with Meleana Kane. She was beautiful and headstrong, and in the end, her career came before her relationship.

Still, an image of the beguiling creature on the beach today with sandals in hand fascinated him. She didn’t look like she was hungry for power. She looked like a woman who wanted to indulge her bare feet in the pleasures of the sand, and was startled when she was caught doing it.

Nick touched the cool glass to his lips. That woman on the beach was just a fantasy brought on by the sun. Reality was the contractor that pointed her finger at him in open challenge.