Sun Kissed (18 page)

“Would that be so bad, Lani?” Margaret asked gently. “What’s the worst that can happen?”

“You really want to know?” Lani’s eyes were burning with tears she refused to shed. “What if Donovan falls in love with me?”

“I can think of worse fates.”

“What if he wants to get married?”

“I’ll dance at your wedding,” Margaret said without missing a beat.

She didn’t understand, Lani thought miserably. “Can you see me living in Portland? Or following my husband around from posting to posting? Doing whatever it is FBI agents’ wives do? I’ve lived off island. While it was fun for a time, looking back, I realized that like seemingly everyone else there, I was playing a role that wasn’t a good fit for me. Like if you’d been cast in the Faye Dunaway role in
Bonnie and Clyde
.”

“If I’d been younger, I would have rocked that screenplay.”

“I’ve not a single doubt.” But it would have been an entirely different movie. And that was Lani’s point.

“I enjoyed many parts of my work,” she allowed. “I liked researching and writing questions. It was like changing to a new major every day. I liked taking care of the
Beauty
contestants. But at the end of the day, I was never truly happy. Nowhere near the way I am here. I don’t want to ever do that again. Not even for Donovan.”

Margaret didn’t argue. “Then he’ll simply have to move here, dear,” she said calmly.

Would that it was that easy. Lani was well aware that all of them, herself included, lived in a fantasy land of their own making. Her grandmother, along with her mother, brother, and yes, even her father, had created this special world by their artistic efforts. Citizenship in the magic realm had been Lani’s birthright.

But Donovan was only a visitor here. When his vacation was over, he’d be returning to the harsh world of reality. Alone.

“Well,” she said as she got up to leave, “we’ll never know what Donovan would do, will we? Because I’d couldn’t ask him to give up something he’s worked his entire life to achieve. So it’s a moot point.”

She bent down and kissed her grandmother’s weathered cheek. “Thanks for the tea, Tutu. It was delicious, as usual.”

Margaret beamed. “Wasn’t it? If you weren’t already destined to be with your detective, I’d spend whatever time I have left fixing you up with Kai. He’s going to do wonders with our tea farm and will need a special woman with your imagination to be a partner in the project.”

“It’s going to be wonderful.”

As she drove back to Nate’s beach house, Lani also considered how it was that a woman in her nineties could remain so focused on her future, while Lani, herself, was wearing blinders, limiting herself only to the present.

But if that’s all she could have…

She was debating her and Donovan’s situation when the rain suddenly stopped as if turned off at a tap, and a rainbow appeared over the rising green ramparts, painting the sky with bold strokes of colors.

As the vivid, sun-kissed arc banished clouds of despair, Lani vowed to grasp this positive feeling and hold on to it. Because whatever her future held, sunshine or showers, she was going to enjoy the moment.

Donovan was aware of Lani the instant she entered the waterfront dive. Every head in the place swiveled in her direction as she stood in the doorway, allowing her eyes to become accustomed to the dim light. When she finally located Donovan, she smiled and crossed the room to the bar and climbed up on the empty stool next to him.

“What the hell are you doing here?” he asked beneath his breath.

“Having a drink with you,” she murmured back. “I’ll have a mai tai,” she said, raising her voice to give her order, and a dazzling smile, to the bartender.

“I don’t remember giving you permission to come here.”

“No surprise, since I don’t recall asking for permission,” she said easily, thanking the bartender with yet another of those siren smiles as the man with colorful ink sleeves and a prison teardrop tattoo beneath his left eye placed the drink in front of her.

“That glass probably hasn’t been washed in a month,” Donovan warned as she took a sip of the cool rum drink.

“That’s all right,” she answered as she was obviously fighting back choking on the fruit and rum drink. “There’s enough alcohol in here to kill any bacteria that might be foolhardy enough to stick around.”

“Speaking of foolhardy—”

Lani placed a placating hand on his arm. “Don’t be mad. I really did try to stay away. I even went up to my grandmother’s house. But I couldn’t stop thinking of you here. Alone. Possibly in danger.”

He shook his head as he lifted the longneck beer bottle to his lips. He’d learned long ago that when forced to drink in places like The Blue Parrot, it was safest to stick to beer. “So you decided to make things dangerous for both of us. Makes sense to me.”

“I’m a woman of many interests,” she reminded him. “Along with my eclectic college education, I also happen to have a second-degree brown belt in judo.”

“Good for you.” It was admittedly impressive. It also showed a dedication to study that didn’t surprise him. But there were also cases when a little knowledge could be a dangerous thing. And this could well end up one of them. “So when was the last time you used your judo skills in a real life-and-death situation?”

“Taylor’s right,” she muttered, which answered his question. “You
are
mean. All I wanted to do was to be with you. Do you have any idea how bad I’d feel if you suddenly disappeared like Ford?”

“I’m not going to take off and leave you without saying good-bye, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“But you
are
leaving.” Damn. Lani could have bitten off her tongue as the incautious words escaped her lips. It was the rum. She’d always thought places like this watered their drinks. Then again, when you were pouring the equivalent of kerosene, you probably had a better profit margin.

Apparently sensing her discomfort, Donovan softened his tone. “You knew all along I have to go back to Portland.”

“For goodness’ sake, Donovan, there you go again, taking things too seriously.” Her desperate green eyes circled the room, not pausing to light anywhere.

“This is so much fun,” she gushed with feigned gaiety. “I feel just like Castle and Beckett. With you being Beckett, of course. If she were male. Which, of course, she wouldn’t be, because then it would be an entirely different program.” Cue the babbling. What did this man do to her brain?

Donovan was watching her carefully. “Lani—”

Lani refused to acknowledge the concern in his steady gaze, knowing that to do so would prove her downfall. “Have you found out anything about Ford?”

“Not a damned thing,” he muttered. “It appears the aloha spirit hasn’t quite reached The Blue Parrot. At least not when it comes to a mainlander.”

“Haole,” she murmured. “Perhaps I can help.”

Before Donovan could stop her, Lani slid off the stool and made her way to the end of the bar, where a group of dockworkers were standing in front of a flat-screen, playing a video game that appeared to involve a great deal of gratuitous violence.

“Hey, brah,” she said in a silky, sultry voice that made Donovan, as he came up behind her, want to drag her right out of the bar. Now. “Any of you know where I can find da kine scuba man, Ford Britton? Haole here wanna take diving lessons.” She jerked her tawny head in Donovan’s direction.

“Wasetime to look for him here,” an affable giant with arms the size of tree trunks answered in the relaxed pidgin English Donovan had been hearing since entering the bar. “Mo’ betta you find his ipo, Wainani… girlfriend,” he elaborated for Donovan’s benefit.

“Taylor Young’s scuba man’s ipo,” Lani corrected.

“Scuba man been makin’ fastime with a new ipo,” the man insisted. “Dat lady got mo’ dolla than can count. Scuba man buy drinks for the house udda day. He say by’m’by he be a fucking rich man.”

Lani couldn’t believe Ford would leave Taylor for another woman. Even a rich one. “
Mahalo
,” she murmured absently as she considered this new aspect of Ford’s disappearance.

As the man’s dark eyes skimmed down Lani’s body with unmistakable interest, Donovan slipped a folded bill into the pocket of the dock worker’s flowered shirt. “Thanks,” he said.

After checking out the denomination of the bill, the man’s face lit up in a broad grin that was missing a front tooth. “Hey, brah,
mahalo
yourself.”

When he noticed two guys at a nearby table watching them closely, Donovan grasped Lani’s bare upper arm. “Come on, sweetheart. It’s time to go.”

“But I haven’t finished my drink.”

“Yes, you have.”

“Really, Donovan,” she complained as she found herself being unceremoniously hauled out of the waterfront bar. “Has anyone ever told you that you can be very bossy?”

“All the time. And I do my best to live up to it. Now if you don’t mind, I’d like to get out of here before those Feds come to the mistaken conclusion that we know more about all this than we do.”

“Feds?” Lani looked back toward The Blue Parrot as Donovan practically dragged her across the parking lot. “As in FBI?”

“Not the IRS,” he agreed grimly. “Although at this point, I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that they had a hand in all this, too.”

“Had a hand in what?” Lani asked, clearly confused.

“Give me the keys to the Jeep. We’ll come back for the rental car later.”

“Okay,” she murmured distractedly as she dug the key ring out of her purse. “What’s going on?”

“I don’t know,” he said as he shoved her ungently into the Jeep. “But I’m sure as hell going to find out.”

They drove for a while in silence, immersed in thought.

“By the way,” Donovan asked, “where the hell did you get that dress?”

Lani smoothed the skirt of the red sarong-style strapless dress that could have been sprayed on. “I borrowed it from a friend who dances in a show at one of the resorts on Maui. I didn’t have anything that looked appropriate for a place like The Blue Parrot,” she added as an afterthought.

“That’s a relief.”

“What’s the matter? Don’t you like it?”

“You look freaking amazing. Even if you did look as if you were trolling for Johns,” he tacked on. “The guy sitting next to me practically fell off his stool when you strolled in the door.”

Lani’s face lit up with a bright smile. “Why, Donovan Quinn, I do believe that you’re jealous.”

“I just don’t like you looking like the sort of woman who belongs in that kind of place,” he muttered.

She leaned over, running her fingers through his hair. “Hey, brah,” she murmured silkily into his ear, “you wanna come over to my place, find out da kine woman you got?”

Donovan caved, as she’d known he would. He ran his hand up the long expanse of leg bared by the deep slit in her skirt. “Lady,” he growled seductively, “thassa mo’ betta offer than I get all day.”

“It’s a boat,” Donovan said suddenly as he and Lani lay together, arms and legs tangled, in her bed after having, what she’d assured him, was primo, number-one sex.

He’d also discovered that the Hawaiian pidgin could sound really sexy coming from those luscious lips, especially when she used dirty words that didn’t need any translation.

It was the first time they’d been together in her place and the minute he’d walked into the beach house, he’d decided it definitely suited her. The bleached wood floor reflected the light of the Orchid Island sun, bathing everything in a warm yellow glow. The furniture was light and airy white wicker and rattan, the cushion covers printed with a brilliant tropical print.

Flowers were everywhere—scarlet and gold hibiscus blossoms floated in a pair of bright blue ceramic bowls, and branches of purple bougainvillea and snowy-white oleander were stuck haphazardly into colored, one-of-a-kind bottles. On the sunshine-yellow walls, a veritable garden of oversize tropical flower prints bloomed within the borders of narrow aluminum frames.

The entire atmosphere in the small house—the furniture, the flowers, the whimsical goddess figurine made from the leaves of the hala tree—was as free-spirited and unpretentious as its owner. As different as it was from his modernistic Portland apartment, Donovan was surprised to find himself feeling at home.

“What’s a boat?” Lani asked, snuggling up against him, her head on his chest.

“
Wainani
. She’s not Britton’s new girlfriend. She’s a damned boat.”

She looked up at him. “How on earth did you come to that conclusion?”

“It only makes sense,” he argued. “Look, he’s a scuba diver, right?”

She nodded. “Right.”

“And he knows these waters pretty damned well.”

“Like the back of his hand.”

“Let’s say, just for argument’s sake, that while he’s out diving one day, he runs across a sunken wreck.”

“One with treasure on it,” Lani said, warming to the idea.

“Exactly. So he concocts a plan to get the loot off the boat without anyone knowing.”

“But Taylor finds out and turns him in to the FBI?” she asked skeptically. “I’ll admit she appears to be lying about what she knows about all this, but a woman can tell when another woman’s in love. And Taylor is definitely in love with Ford. She’d never do anything that would risk getting him arrested. No matter what he’d done.”

Lani shook her head firmly. “I’m sorry, but that piece just doesn’t fit at all, Donovan.”

“Sure it does.” As his eyes gleamed with enthusiasm, Lani decided that she loved watching Donovan’s detective mind work. “Let’s assume that Britton told Taylor about the ship,” he continued patiently. “Or that she got suspicious enough about all his absences to break things off.”

“She told me she’d considered calling off the wedding,” Lani allowed.

“Which underscores my point. So, taking the matter one step further, let’s also suppose that the cargo, whatever it is, belongs to the U.S. government.”

“All right. So far I’m with you, but…”

Lani’s voice trailed off as comprehension suddenly dawned. This must be like how Nate felt when he was plotting a book. “Next chapter…

“Since Taylor loves Ford, she doesn’t want him to go to prison. So, without telling him what she’s doing, she goes to Oahu to talk to the FBI, and without giving any details, tries to find out if they’d be willing to pay a reward.”