Sun Kissed (3 page)

“It’s certainly…inviting,” he said, taking in the sybaritic scene.

“That’s exactly what Nate had in mind,” Lani said dryly. “Watch this.” She crossed the room and pushed a button, causing bamboo blinds to open and reveal a folding wall of glass that opened to a tropical outdoor rain shower surrounded by yet more plants. Beyond the shower, turquoise water lapping onto coral sand enhanced the unabashed sensuality of the room’s decor.

Blaming the erotic atmosphere for his runaway imagination, Donovan found himself wondering if Lani’s breasts, barely concealed by the flowered bikini top, were as tanned as the visible parts of her body. Then rigidly tamped down lustful thoughts of moonlight skinny-dipping in the lagoon.

“Would you like to know when he requested this little rush remodeling job?” Before he could venture a guess, she answered her own question. “Ten days ago. I’ve been working like a demon in order to get everything done on time.”

“You did all this?”

“I’m something of a local handyman in my spare time,” she said offhandedly. “By the way, the fur is definitely fake. I put my foot down at killing animals just so my brother could create a tropical version of the Playboy Mansion.”

She stuck her hands in her back pockets as she looked around the room. “I did all this with my own two hands at Nate’s request, never realizing that I was setting the scene for my own seduction.”

The sight of her sea-green, thickly lashed eyes and full, lushly inviting lips the hue of a ripe peach, caused an unbidden and inappropriate image of her lying beneath him on the gauze-draped bed to flash on a huge flat-screen in his mind. “You really are mistaken about my reason for being here,” he said.

Lani eyed him consideringly. “Oh, I believe you when you say you’re here in order to get some work done. But believe
me
, Nate has entirely different plans for us.”

He shook his head. “Do all the Breslins have such vivid imaginations?”

She waved away his protest. “I’ll explain later. Right now, I need a shower, and you need to get out of those city clothes. I’ll run over to my place and meet you back here in an hour.”

“Your place?”

“Right around the bend.” Lani pointed out the window to the beach. “Handy, isn’t it?” she said dryly. “Although I stocked the kitchen for you, it seems only right that I should play a proper hostess by taking you out for dinner. But you don’t have to worry.” Soothing him with an indulgent smile, she placed a slender hand on his arm. “I have no intention of setting any feminine traps for you, Donovan Quinn. So, you’re perfectly safe with me.”

With that, she was gone, leaving Donovan to stare out the expanse of glass, admiring the sway of her hips in those faded cutoffs. Glancing down at the spot where her coral polish-tipped fingers had rested briefly on his arm, he imagined he could still feel the heat.

Despite her reassuring words, Donovan had an uneasy feeling that he knew exactly how Adam must have felt when Eve had suddenly shown up in Paradise.

Lani hadn’t always lived on Orchid Island. She had, before returning to the island, lived for six years in Los Angeles, where you couldn’t throw a stick on a beach without hitting a hot guy. It hadn’t taken her that long to become immune to flawlessly straight Hollywood white teeth, sexily shaggy sun-streaked hair, and toned-to-the-nth-degree-of-perfection bodies. So how was it that the too-thin, exhausted-looking Donovan Quinn could, after all these years, still make her go weak at the knees while other, more significant parts had definitely leaped to attention?

The same way they had that first time she’d seen him. It wasn’t that she hadn’t had crushes before. She’d even taped magazine photos of Joshua Jackson, the poster bad-boy-turned-good from
Dawson’s Creek
, onto her bedroom mirror frame and had practiced writing Lani Jackson in her journal. Over and over again.

But a crush on a TV character was a whole lot safer than the way Donovan Quinn had made her feel. Just looking at him in that blue uniform with the big, dangerous gun strapped to his hip had taught her what actual, real life lust felt like. In a desperate attempt to hide her tangled, confused teenage emotions, she’d hidden them behind a mask of petulant hostility.

Proving current appearances deceiving, according to her brother, Donovan was on the fast track. Whether he ended up in the FBI, on some Homeland Security task force, or even, as she could easily see him, Portland Chief of Police, the chances of him staying on the island were about the same as the volcanic Mt. Waipanukai erupting on Christmas Eve.

As were the chances of her ever moving off island again.

So, the question was…now that Nate had thrown them together again, did she follow her heart (which had apparently hung on to that long-ago crush as if it were a virus it hadn’t quite shaken off) and those awakened body parts?

Or her head, which was sternly reminding her that any chance of a long-term relationship was slim-to-none?

Fortunately, Lani decided, unless a crime spree needing Detective Donovan Quinn’s attention suddenly broke out in Oregon, the man wasn’t going anywhere right away. And neither was she.

*     *     *

Although his body felt as if it had just finished a triathlon, and his ankle was throbbing, Donovan took the time to hang up his clothes before taking a shower and shaving. The shave might have been a mistake, since getting rid of the dark stubble revealed a pallor that reminded him of the faces of lifers he’d sent off to the Oregon State Penitentiary.

The bathroom had come equipped with shampoo, body and face soap, along with toothpaste and extra brushes. Making a mental note to pay Lani back for whatever she’d spent on the bath and well-stocked kitchen, he debated taking a nap and knew from experience the buzzing, like a hive of angry wasps, would start up in his brain again, the same way it did whenever he tried to sleep.

Churned up and edgy, he wandered outdoors. Unable to sit down, he stood on the beach and watched the wavelets rolling in to kiss the sand. As the setting sun turned the sky to apricot and the sea to beaten gold, he tried to remember the last time he’d allowed himself to relax and came up blank.

There’d been a helluva lot to deal with the past few years. A divorce, hunting down the Cascades Killer, investigating Tess’s money-laundering case, along with the legal appeal of the Russian mobster she’d been determined to keep in prison, not to mention trying to uncover her stalker. Add in being hit by the driver of that SUV who’d tried to kill him, leaving him with this damn gimpy ankle, and it was no wonder he’d been walking a very thin razor’s edge.

Then, just when he could see a light at the end of the criminal tunnel, he’d shown up at his partner’s apartment with a six-pack and plans to watch the Seahawks-Forty Niners’ game only to find the dull beige wall behind the ratty, thrift store recliner splattered with blood and brains.

Donovan didn’t give a flying fuck what his chief, the department shrink, and the chaplain said. Matt Osborne, who, next to Nate, had been the closest thing he’d had to a brother, had been wallowing in a world of pain, and Donovan hadn’t recognized how bad the problem had become.

Whenever he and Matt would talk about the Cascades Killer case, their conversations had revolved around the investigation, then working with the district attorney’s office to prepare a slam-dunk case for trial. They’d never talked about the victims. The fathers, the mothers, and, God help them, those poor innocent kids who hadn’t done anything but gone on a family camping trip. Something his late partner had been deprived of when his ex-wife had returned to her hometown in North Carolina with their children.

Like most police departments, the Portland Police Bureau was populated with men and women who fit into the tough-guy mold that had existed long before Donovan had been born. Cops don’t cry. That was the unspoken code. Which ignored the unsavory fact that as many, if not more, cops died by their own gun as they did in the line of duty.

Although many cities, including his own, were getting better about tackling that outwardly strong, silent culture, the truth remained that suicide had long been the black sheep in the blue police family.

Donovan was back to beating himself up over the fact that despite being a hot shot detective, he hadn’t caught the clues of his own partner’s downward spiral when Lani came around the cove, appearing like something from a fairy tale.

Her hair, gilded by the last rays of the sun and fanned by the soft trade winds, was adorned with a bright yellow blossom. A strapless dress covered with bright tropical flowers bared her sun-kissed shoulders and skimmed her body enticingly, the full skirt billowing around her legs as she walked toward him, a pair of red sandals in her hand.

Revealing he wasn’t quite dead yet himself, a spark of heat inside Donovan flickered. When she reached the bottom of the steps, stopped, and smiled, the flicker flamed up. Which was definitely problematic. Because after months of living like a monk, the female who’d started his juices flowing again was the wrong damn woman. Seducing the sister of his best friend was absolutely against the Bro Code.

Lani didn’t need to be a detective to catch that spark of interest. One he’d quickly and rigidly banked. Too tense, she thought. And too sad. And once again, dressed as grimly as his expression. Granted, he’d changed out of the charcoal-gray business suit, but the tan slacks and black silk T-shirt were still a far cry from appropriate beach attire. As her eyes moved to his feet, she supposed the supple Italian loafers were his attempt at informality and wondered what had happened to those raggedy old Nikes he’d practically lived in while off duty.

“Don’t you own anything casual?”

He lifted a brow. “What’s wrong with this?”

“In the first place, those shoes have to go. No one, I repeat,
no one
, wears leather shoes on Orchid Island.”

“I’m not accustomed to running with the pack.”

His words fit that young cop she’d crushed on. Even as Lani wondered if it were possible to remain independent while rising within such a structured, military-based law-enforcement system, she had to give him credit for the way he avoided sounding unbearably egocentric, the way most men of his accomplishments invariably would.

“That’s undoubtedly true. And what you’re wearing is a huge improvement over your earlier suit. But you still need work. What time tomorrow do you want to go shopping?”

“Shopping?”

“For clothes. Honestly, Donovan, you can’t possibly hope to enjoy yourself dressed like an FBI special agent.”

“I’m not a special agent. Yet,” he qualified. “I also learned early in my career that the proper clothing encourages respect.”

“If you need to dress like a Wall Street trader in order to earn respect, you’re probably in trouble.”

“Want to guess how far I’d get questioning the business partner of a billionaire commercial real estate developer I know beyond a doubt killed his wife, but can’t yet prove it, while wearing a hoodie, torn jeans, and Chucks?” he countered.

“Point taken,” she allowed. “But you can’t deny that the Italian suit you showed up in looks a lot better on television than the T-shirt and faded jeans I remember you wearing.”

His dark blue eyes became as shuttered as windows painted black. Lani supposed he’d developed that distant, detached expression in order to keep suspects from reading his thoughts. In a way, Lani couldn’t help but admire that skill. She’d never been all that successful hiding her feelings. Which was partly what had led to her life getting so turned upside down during her time on the mainland.

“I didn’t realize you’d been paying so much attention to my attire back then,” he said. “In fact, I got the impression that you couldn’t stand to be in the same room with me.”

Lani shrugged. “I may not have liked you,” she admitted. Which wasn’t the whole truth and nothing but the truth. What she hadn’t liked was the dizzying, unfamiliar way he’d made her feel. “But I never said that you weren’t good-looking back then,” she said. “You’re still a very attractive man, but if clothes really do make the man, as the saying goes, you’re not nearly as open or natural as you were back then.”

“Are you suggesting I’ve turned into a phony?”

Lani reminded herself that this man was, after all, her brother’s best friend. The least she could do was show a little aloha spirit.

“I’m sorry. I don’t know what’s gotten into me.”

“You’ve probably had a long day,” he suggested. “What with that rush remodeling job Nate dumped on you.”

“That’s probably it,” Lani muttered, not wanting to contradict him, for that would entail admitting that something about Donovan Quinn still put her nerves, and other, more vital parts of her body, uncharacteristically on edge. She fell silent as they both stared out over the turquoise water.

“Nate assured me that this was the ideal place to unwind,” Donovan said at length.

“And you need to unwind.” It was not a question.

“Is it that obvious?” He held up a hand. “Never mind. You needn’t bother answering. I don’t know if my ego could take any more battering right now.”

“Most people who arrive here from the mainland need a little decompression time,” she said mildly. “It’s not always easy going from warp speed to island time. I certainly had to go through a major mental adjustment when I returned home from California, which is probably one of the more laid-back states… Meanwhile, I hope you’re hungry.”

“I think I am.”

He sounded surprised. Which, in itself wasn’t all that surprising, considering how much weight he’d shed. She wondered why the hell Nate hadn’t warned her that not only was Donovan coming to the island, he was arriving both physically and emotionally wounded.

“The last thing I ate was a bag of chips on the plane hours ago. Where are we going?”

“To my parents’ house, which is just down the beach. Nate always jokes about this end of the island being the Breslin family compound. Tonight is something of a command performance for me, and since I didn’t think my brother would want me leaving you alone your first night on the island, I figured the best thing to do would be to take you along.”