Island Fantasies: An Island Escapes Travel Romance

by Anna Lowe

  Hours later, she sank back into the cockpit cushions. Tilted her head back to catch the afternoon sun and tried to clear her mind. Her fingers found something hard among the soft cushions, and she drew out Kyle’s watch. An object she contemplated for a good five minutes before putting it aside and busying herself in the cabin. But like a magnet, it drew her back again and again.

  Kyle’s watch. His dad’s watch, he’d told her. Nothing fancy, but precious in its own way.

  She couldn’t not bring it to him, could she?

  Her heart skipped a beat, then thumped a little harder.

  She glanced over at Hugh’s boat, then glanced away. She’d been working hard all day, and Hugh could hardly fault her for going ashore. For all he knew, she’d be going to pick up groceries, right?

  Right.

  And just like that, she went from slow and mopey to fast and hopeful, rushing through a shower and quick change. The least she could do was bring Kyle his watch. She owed him that much, and an explanation, too. Maybe even an apology.

  Definitely an apology.

  She started composing a speech as she steered the dinghy to shore, though the words were all a jumble. She’d make it short and sweet. She’d find Kyle at the hotel, give him his watch and a friendly peck on the cheek, and return to living her own life just as he’d return to his. It was time to get back to reality, or whatever she could salvage of it.

  So why was her pulse rushing through her veins?

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Kyle hammered a last nail into the roof and looked around. The view was even better from the top of the bungalow, and it was all his, from the foreground of the white coral beach to the startling brightness of the slanting sun. He was king of the world, or would be, if something hadn’t been missing.

  Someone.

  His eyes bounced over the rooftop. There wasn’t much he could do about the thatching, but Tiri said her brother would do that. The hard part, she’d said, was getting someone to repair the framing, which was where Kyle came in. He knew plenty about framing, thanks to summer stints with the contractor uncle he’d worked for.

  He tapped a beam and nodded to himself. Funny how the job gave him more satisfaction than the web page had. There was definitely something to be said about working with your hands.

  And just like that, the image of Hannah sweating over someone else’s boat popped into his mind. Maybe she didn’t do it just for the ride.

  Although the roof was done, he was happy to hide up there a little longer. Tiri had insisted on cooking him a special meal — a thank-you, she said, for his help over the last few days. She was making a big fuss of it, and worse, she’d been hounding him about Hannah all day, asking all sorts of questions. Where was Hannah? Had he invited her to dinner? What was going on?

  How could he explain when he wasn’t quite clear on it himself? Hannah had suddenly soured on him. That, or she really, really needed time on her own.

  But two whole days of alone?

  Kyle took in the view one last time and descended the rickety ladder, then wiped his hands on his shirt. It was time for a shower and a beer, and then Tiri’s dinner. His last dinner on his last night in Maupiti, and he’d be spending it alone. No wonder he was procrastinating.

  He gathered up the tools and headed for the main building, following the singsong of Tiri’s voice, telling someone they had come just in time. Just in time for what?

  He came around the corner and froze at the sight of Hannah.

  Hannah, with those intense blue eyes so full of plans and mysteries. Hannah, with an uncertain smile — sad yet hopeful at the same time. Hannah, looking bronzed as ever, if less relaxed than before. Hannah, looking endearingly flustered.

  Hannah. The only thing predictable about her was her unpredictability.

  “Hey, Kyle,” she called softly.

  Something inside him did a slide and bump. “Hey, Hannah.”

  Tiri smiled over them like a couple of prize lambs. “You see? I tell you she comes!”

  Indeed, the woman had been insisting all day that Hannah would come. Kyle had dismissed it as wishful thinking — his as much as hers — but Tiri was right.

  He glanced at his hostess. Ancient Polynesian navigators, Hannah had once told him, could sense land from hundreds of miles away. Maybe some Polynesians could do that with people.

  Maybe they could do that with love.

  Tiri gushed to Hannah about Kyle’s help, half in English, half in French. “First the web page, and now this! La couverture — the roof!” She winked at Hannah. “He’s very good with a hammer.”

  “I bet he is,” Hannah murmured, looking him up and down.

  She took in the dirty shirt, his sweaty face, the scratches on his knees. Her eyes spent a long time on all the ugly details before wandering up to his face in something like approval. Kyle nearly smiled. Some women looked at him like a slab of beef; others had dollar signs in their eyes. Hannah had the look of a collector stumbling across a rare gem.

  She held something up sheepishly. “I came to return your watch…”

  Tiri gave her a little shove, and Hannah stumbled right at him. He caught her when her face was an inch away from his. Her lips cracked open — with words or a kiss, he couldn’t tell. He would have taken either just then, because suddenly the past forty-eight hours seemed terribly empty.

  A second later, she was crushed up against him in a vise of a hug, her face buried in his shoulder. He closed his eyes and lost himself in the blanket of her warmth, her coconut scent. He was only vaguely aware of Tiri moving away, chirping something about dinner. Then there was only Hannah and the sound of waves tumbling over the beach and a hug that squeezed the last two days out of existence. She kissed him in a long, slow kiss.

  Kyle closed his eyes. God, a kiss — a single kiss! — shouldn’t taste so damn good. But it did.

  “Um…” he mumbled when she came up for air. “Can you stay for dinner?”

  Please stay for dinner! his soul cried.

  She tilted her head in the direction Tiri had gone off in. “How could I pass it up?”

  “Can you give me a minute? I have to clean up.”

  She looked him up and down, and the nod she eventually gave was reluctant. “Sure.”

  He raced through a shower, finger-combed his hair in a rush, and decided to forgo a shave. Then he hastened outside, past the dining room, because Tiri had said something about the beach.

  The second he sprint-walked around the corner of the building, he stopped in his tracks and whispered.

  “Wow.”

  A row of tall torches had been lit and set into the ground, lining the path to the beach like a runway. At the end of it was a table set right by the sea: a square of white before an ocean of color. Hannah stood behind one chair, watching the sun set. She had a white flower tucked behind one ear — dressed for the occasion, Polynesian style. She lit up on seeing him, wearing a shy smile.

  In his mind, he stood rooted to the spot for a long time, relishing the sight. But somehow his feet sprinted through time and he found himself at her side. Taking her hand, kissing it, and holding it close. She blushed behind the tan. The pirate queen, blushing!

  They’d exchanged all of three words up to that point, and from the look of things, they might be struck dumb for the rest of the night, which was fine with him. Words could be tricky; sometimes silence was the key. Hadn’t Hannah said as much the first night they’d met? They took their places and looked at each other over a flickering candle set among seashells in a glass bowl. Was it the dimming light or were Hannah’s eyes a little more liquid than usual?

  He sat and sucked in the view like a drink. Not the view of the ocean — the view of her.

  Afterward, he couldn’t remember who spoke first or what the subject was. Only that everything about that evening seemed beautiful, serene, and bright, as if a star had chosen to concentrate all its energy on exactly that spot that night.

  “Hey, you have to remembe
r to taste the food,” Hannah chided at some point.

  Right, the food. He did his best to transfer some attention to his tongue, but even with the coconut marinade and fish there, the best part was still the remnant of her kiss.

  “Delicious,” he said, studying the wine in his glass. Back in New York, he’d drunk wine that sold for three figures and it didn’t taste as good as this one that came out of a box.

  Hannah flashed that secret smile, the one that said she knew just what he meant.

  That was about the sum total of their dinner conversation. The rest they left to the swaying palms, the whispering waves, the wisdom of the stars overhead. At one point Hannah pulled out her camera, considered the scene, and then put it away again.

  “You don’t want to take a picture?”

  She shook her head and gave him a wistful smile. “No picture can capture this.”

  Hannah: a woman who never took the easy way out. A woman who measured life in experiences, not in dollars or in business cards or in the number of photos snapped. A woman determined to live enough adventures for two.

  Kyle mimicked her, letting his eyes slide shut and trying to memorize it all: the feel of coral and sand under his feet, the breeze in his hair, the flicker of torchlight over the beach.

  He heard something like a sigh and opened his eyes to find Hannah studying the stars. Was it a happy sigh or a sad one? Maybe a little of both?

  Tiri came by and clucked over them, then murmured something in French to Hannah, who blushed ferociously for the second time that night. With a lilting laugh, Tiri turned away again, disappearing with their empty plates.

  Kyle watched the proprietress go. “What did she say?”

  Hannah drained the rest of her wine with a heavy gulp before answering. “She says we’ll have beautiful kids.”

  He knew he ought to choke, or cough, or blush, but the idea sat too comfortably in his imagination for that.

  Yes, we will. Come home with me and give us a chance.

  Somehow, though, he doubted that would go over well with the great adventuress.

  Hannah cocked her head at him, and he wondered if he’d blown this perfect night.

  “Think you’ll ever have kids?” she asked.

  He exhaled. At least she wasn’t running from the table — yet.

  He shrugged and answered carefully. Honestly. “Always thought so.” He let his eyes wander skyward, as if the stars might give him some hint of the future. But there was nothing there, nothing he could read, anyway. “The closer I get to thirty-five, though, the more I start to wonder.”

  Hannah snorted. “If you don’t have kids, it’ll be criminal.” He stared at the conviction in her voice. “It’s true,” she insisted. “You’ll be a great dad.”

  He reached across the table and squeezed her hand. Why were the words so hard to say? Come home with me and give us a chance. But, no, he couldn’t. Not with that cheesy old saying bouncing around his mind. If you love something, set it free. That’s what he had to do with Hannah: let her fly like a bird over the boundless sea, to wheel and soar with her dreams. She didn’t belong in his world any more than he belonged in hers, much as he’d enjoyed his visit. Even if her eyes danced with hope now, he knew the magic would eventually wear off. For her own good, he would have to let her go. Sooner or later, she was bound to find the right man. Some adventure-seeking guy with more time than money. They’d go rock climbing together, ascend peaks in the Himalayas, and shag in every yurt. Kyle would be forgotten, a fling in her past.

  “Have you ever been really serious about someone?” Hannah went on, filling the silence.

  Kyle took a long time groping for words — too long, he knew, for a simple yes or no question. Had he ever been serious about someone?

  “Once.” He hoped his eyes wouldn’t give it away — that he didn’t mean Cindy or anyone else in his past. He meant her. Hannah.

  “Cindy?” she whispered.

  He played with a napkin and chewed on his thoughts. “I thought I was, but no. Not after she…” He trailed off there.

  He’d never told anyone exactly what Cindy had done. Should he now?

  A glance at Hannah showed that she wasn’t going to pry or push. If he changed the subject, she’d let him.

  Which was exactly why he blurted it out. “Cindy and I were together for three years. She was always pushing for more — marriage, but no kids.” Brats, she’d said. That was about the only thing Cindy had ever been honest about. “But I wanted to get the company on stronger footing first.” God, to think where his priorities had been. “And one time I walked in on her…”

  Hannah’s eyebrows shot up.

  No, it wasn’t what she thought. “I walked in on her in the bathroom, and she was bleeding. A lot. But she said it was fine.” He had the tablecloth knotted tightly in his fist by then. “She said it was to be expected after an abortion.”

  “An abortion?” Hannah’s voice jumped up. The exact opposite of his, which had dropped an octave or two.

  “She wasn’t even going to tell me. Never gave me a choice. A chance to…” He shook his head, trying to fight the old bitterness away. He still wasn’t sure what he would have done, given the chance, but it would have been a fair decision made together. He flapped his hand in the air, trying to push it all away. Cindy’s lies. The agony of wondering. The betrayal. The kind of vulnerability no one had ever made him feel before and he never wanted to risk feeling again.

  “Anyway…”

  “Jesus…” Hannah shook her head.

  He took a deep breath. “The one good thing about the whole situation was that I finally wised up to who Cindy really was.” Wised up to what he’d wanted in life, too, though he’d been fool enough to keep right on putting work above everything else. “She wanted country clubs, nice cars, fancy vacations, but no kids.” And Cindy had figured he wanted her enough to forgive everything else. Whatever. The past was the past, right? “What about you?” he added in a gruff voice. “About kids, I mean?”

  Not the smoothest transition he’d ever made, but hell, Hannah would understand.

  Hannah studied his face for a second, then traced a pattern in the tablecloth. “Eventually, I guess. Two kids and a dog, that’s what I always pictured.”

  He smiled. “That’ll be an interesting litter.”

  Her smile reappeared, and his broadened, too.

  “You know what I mean.”

  He folded his napkin and pushed back from the table. “How about a walk?”

  Hannah nodded at him over the candlelight. “A walk would be perfect.”

  He stood and offered her his elbow; she wound her arm around his. After showering Tiri with praise on her cooking, they headed out along the seaside road.

  The first ten minutes or so were silent, but movement seemed to loosen their tongues, and Kyle found himself asking questions he hadn’t even known were on his mind.

  “What’s it like going back to work after a long time out?” He felt like he’d been away for months, not days. Hard to imagine what Hannah’s kind of schedule would feel like.

  She laughed. “You’d be surprised. I have to drag myself back, but after the first week, it’s like you were never gone.”

  “Is that good or bad?”

  “I sometimes wonder myself.” Her sandals scuffed the road. “But I guess it’s a good thing. Self-preservation, maybe.” A pause, and then she went on. “The crazy thing is, once you get into work, you feel like you just can’t stop. Like one sick day and the world will fall apart without you at your desk.”

  Yep. He knew that feeling. Knew it all too well.

  “But once you do drag yourself away, whether it’s for a day or a year, you realize you’re not quite as important as you thought. Everything rolls along perfectly well without you. I know that, but still, the next time around, it feels just as hard to drag myself away. Gets harder and harder, every time.”

  For one crazy moment, Kyle was seized with a wild new idea. They cou
ld promise to meet back here in two or three years’ time and do it all over again. Here, or anywhere, really. Sydney. The Seychelles. Curaçao. Wherever. He’d fly out of his humdrum world and let Hannah sweep him off his feet all over again. She’d remind him what life was all about, let him truly live again, if only for a short time.

  A voice growled from the back of his mind. The minute you get home, you’ll let work take over again.

  God, what if he forgot everything he learned here? Or worse — what if he couldn’t stop remembering?

  Hannah was off on her own train of thought, her own questions. “If you could do anything, what would you do?”

  Oh, he had an answer for that. But Hannah qualified the question before he could get it out. “I mean, if you could do any job.”

  He wrangled his thoughts around to that one. His standard answer would be that he loved his job, loved the company, and wanted to see it grow. But that wasn’t what his mind was projecting now. It was playing a slideshow of a whole different idea, one he’d always kept under lock and key. Wild visions flashed through his mind, starting as a vague whirl and moving on to a tornado that flowed off the tip of his tongue.

  “I’d quit the family company and break out on my own. Start my own consultancy and work with small businesses just starting to expand. Not because I don’t like the company,” he hastened to add, as if spies might be listening from the trees. “But it’s like I missed the wave. Stanton Brothers had already taken off when I was fourteen or fifteen, when my uncle let me sit in on meetings if I stayed quiet and out of the way.” He smiled at the memory of sitting stock-still in the corner of the room, sucking it all in. Every day had brought a new challenge, a feeling of excitement. There were risks, yes, but rewards, too.

  “…But ever since our company made it big, that magic is gone.” He shrugged, masking his disappointment. “My job is more about keeping the momentum rolling along than giving impetus in the first place. I’d like to be to the one to set the snowball in motion and push it down the hill, you know?”

  That’s what he wanted. That feeling of standing on the cusp of something bigger and better, like a high jumper facing an impossibly high bar. Stanton Brothers had long since cleared the hurdle and had lost the sense of the ground beneath them. Kyle wanted to recapture the feeling of just skimming the bar, maybe even have it shiver underneath, knowing the whole thing could come crashing down at the slightest imbalance, that he could flop ignobly or land in a glorious rush. One thing, though, was sure: every day would be different.