by Anna Lowe
Kyle had barely arrived in Bora Bora, yet all he wanted was to go back to Maupiti. To Hannah.
Tough, said a surly voice inside. There is no going back.
He walked into his nine-hundred-dollar-a-night, over-the-water bungalow, let his bag drop with a dull thud, and flopped down on the king-size bed in the same way. The sheets were cool and clean. A ceiling fan hummed overhead. But all he could do was wish for Hannah’s dark little bunk on Windfall.
Paradise, he realized, could have a variety of definitions, and his had definitely changed. A lot had changed for him in the past twelve days.
He watched the fan go around and around in the same impatient way he’d first observed the scene back at Le Beau Soleil, wondering how the hell he was going to pass a couple of days here. He tried to remember what his plan for these three days was.
Oh, right. He’d planned to get in touch with home, check on the company, and email his brother to rub in the fact that he had, in fact, survived his twelve days off the grid. He might have laughed if he could manage to dig up any humor. Twelve days had seemed so long at the start, and yet they’d zipped right by, right up until the slow-motion moments of his parting with Hannah at the ferry dock.
Her eyes had glimmered with tears, and her normally cheery face was crestfallen. Why hadn’t he said what he felt? What had been holding him back?
I want to stay, Hannah, or take you with me. I don’t want to leave you. Ever.
But the words had remained locked behind bars, because it could never work. A guy like him would only clip her wings.
That’s what it boiled down to. Soon, she’d head off to sea with Robert and live her dream. She’d forget about him, even if he never forgot her. Hell, he might even see Windfall’s wake from a thousand feet up once his plane took off. The sailboat would be a tiny dot far, far below, and Hannah would be on it, heading into a world of islands and palms and twinkling stars.
Meanwhile, he’d be heading back to the office, and all of this would take on the vague outlines of a dream.
His mind flashed a rerun of last night with Hannah. The incredible high of joining with her, then the quiet that followed. For one moment when she had pulled away from him, anxious to get back to the boat, he had a flashback of being a kid, alone in bed in the dark. His mother would come by to say a quick goodnight, then rush off to his younger siblings who needed her more than he did.
That was the feeling he’d had with Hannah at the dock: that forced bravery, that I can do this sense of duty.
Hannah, he’d been ready to whisper, I don’t want to go.
Then his mind jumped to the way she’d tidied the boat before they left, wiping away all traces of him. He couldn’t blame her. He never wanted to endanger her dream — but God, it hurt to see her erase the past week that way. The sheets straightened as if there’d never been burning passion in her bed. Two cups, carefully washed and put away as if two people had never smiled at each other over the rims. The cockpit cushions all put away, now that the impostor was on his way.
As much as part of him wanted to rush back to Maupiti, another part wanted to board a plane immediately and get it over with. Good-bye, South Pacific. Hello, real life.
Eventually, he forced himself to his feet and out onto the patio, where he stood shaking his head for a good minute. Nine hundred dollars a night for a view any sailor could get for free. Bora Bora was magnificent, to be sure. The peak was even taller and craggier than Maupiti’s, but instead of a fringing reef and sandy islets, Bora Bora sported a fringe of hotel chains: a hundred identical bungalows on stilts, looking like so many gangly storks. Hannah had been right. The charm of Maupiti was the quiet, the amateurism.
He glanced around. At this fancy hotel, everything was coordinated, right down to the logo on the soap. But had anyone slowed down to talk to him? Not the other guests, and certainly not the manager. The staff was there to do their jobs, not to be your friend. If it weren’t for the trade wind breezing through his hair, he might have been in any fancy hotel in Paris or Nice.
Kyle sighed. He really ought to get on his email and check in with the real world.
But he put it off a little longer and headed to the bar instead. He perched on a tall stool from which he could observe the scene. Honeymooners walked by, hand in hand, glassy-eyed with love. Kyle glanced at the bar mirror and saw only haggard eyes. What would he have seen if he’d checked a few days ago?
On a whim, he pulled out his camera and brought up the selfie he’d snapped with Hannah atop Maupiti’s peak. Yes, there it was. The broad smile, the happy glow.
He shifted in his seat, hiding from his own reflection.
The bar was half a level below the central walkway of the hotel, and he couldn’t help but check for anklets on the legs that strolled by at eye level. He counted four tattoos and three toe rings, but no beaded anklets. On the other hand, there were a hundred pairs of designer footwear more suited to a dance floor than to boats or mountain peaks or sandy islets where one might lie beneath the palms and make love.
No bare feet.
No cheap flip-flops.
No Hannah.
An image hit him, so alive and real that he had to squeeze his eyes shut: Hannah, sleeping beside him, so beautiful and serene. Then Hannah, with her snorkel pushed back over her tangled hair, marveling at the mantas. Hannah, so full of spark and life.
“A table, monsieur?”
He followed the waiter to a corner table, ordered without thinking, and idly flipped through a week-old edition of the Wall Street Journal. The print was a blur he couldn’t quite focus on. Not too far away was a table of sailors who’d dinghied over and splurged for dinner. Their conversation flitted from island to island the way some people talked about stores in a mall. They discussed places, winds, and boat parts that he’d never even heard of like it was the most natural thing in the world. And when they looked over the lagoon, it was with X-ray vision that stretched beyond the horizon, beyond the range of mortal men and their landlocked lives.
When a woman walked by, leaving the scent of coconut shampoo as she went, Kyle sniffed, then crinkled his nose. Not Hannah’s scent. Not her scent at all.
It was the same with everything else: the view wasn’t quite as peaceful, the lobster not quite as succulent. The sunset, just a little too pale. His feet weren’t in the sand; his eyes weren’t filled with Hannah’s smile.
A pale-skinned vacationing couple sat near the sailors. The man had a sort of forced-casual look with neatly pressed chinos and a polo shirt, but you could practically see the seams of a suit etched into his skin. He spoke into a cell phone while his fashionably thin partner in a virginal white beach dress fiddled with her salad, then her tablet. If they were on vacation to get away from it all and spend quality time together, well… Kyle wondered why they’d bothered with the long flight out.
He, on the other hand, certainly had gotten away from it all. So much that he was starting to doubt his ability to ever fit back in.
Dinner dragged by, and when it was over, he headed to the hotel “library,” a place void of books where several desktops had been set up for guest use. It was time to check in with home. How had the dance recital gone? What was new at work?
When his account opened, he sat back at the sight of six hundred emails. Six hundred! Did he really want to start on them tonight?
With a sigh, he did a sort, pulling up all the messages from his sister, brother, and uncle. It seemed they’d counted on him losing the bet from the beginning, because they’d all sent a lot of emails, and often.
Like him, they hadn’t counted on Hannah entering his life.
He scanned the message headers in reverse order, sitting up straighter all the time. Tempted as he was to click on his niece’s ballet photos, the bold type of the business emails caught his attention first.
Whew, the top message said.
All’s well that ends well! said one several lines below.
What was that all about? He scrolled back in time to f
ind red-flagged messages that screamed urgency.
The shit hits the fan.
Who the hell does Kaufmann think he is?
Damage control.
Apparently, there’d been some crisis in his absence. He tore through the messages, wondering what had gone wrong.
One of their big clients had gotten his hackles up about some minor issue, which had snowballed out of control and set off a chain reaction through several of their biggest accounts. Feathers had been ruffled, knives sharpened. But Len — his little brother Len! — had apparently handled it with aplomb.
A real diplomat and a sharp businessman, his uncle wrote in an email that burst with pride.
Kyle sat back, processing it all. The shit had hit the fan while he’d been gallivanting under the palms. At first, the guilt was crushing. He should have seen it coming. He should have been there to handle things. His poor brother! His poor uncle! How had they managed without him?
Then it hit him. They’d done just fine without him. He squinted at the screen.
Imagine that.
Slowly, his pulse calmed as he read and reread the messages, then waited for Skype to patch his call through. It was early in New York, but his brother answered on the second ring.
“Leonard Stanton, hello?”
Kyle expected a barrage of information, a strained voice, a Where the hell were you when we needed you most? accusation. What he heard, even through the time-delayed connection, was elation. Triumph. Pride. Little Len had weathered his first crisis as acting second-in-command. Little Len was fine.
“You should have seen it!” Len started.
Little Len, Kyle realized, might not be that little any more. Not that helpless. All the effort Kyle had spent over the years sheltering his younger brother, not quite trusting him to cope, had either paid off or been completely unnecessary. Len could handle things as well as anyone. As well as Kyle, in fact.
“Things are great!” Len crowed. “No need to rush back.” His chuckle vibrated through Kyle’s earpiece. “Take another twelve days. Another twelve months! I’m liking your corner office more and more.”
Len was joking, Kyle knew, but only half joking.
He clicked through the ballet photos next, sent his niece a message saying how well she’d done and how perfect she’d looked, then stepped out of the library and reentered the tropics in a daze. He tried settling down to sleep, but a room with four solid walls felt strangely stuffy, and his mind was crowded with a stampede of thoughts. Somewhere after one a.m. he gave up and walked out on the deck. A quarter moon left a glimmering trail of light over the water of the lagoon, and he could hear an echo of Tiri’s words in the soft lap of waves over coral.
We Polynesians need to breathe.
Kyle leaned over the railing, contemplating the night.
Maybe Polynesians weren’t the only ones who needed to breathe.
For so many years, he’d done all the things he was expected to do. Studied hard, worked hard, looked out for his family. And now…maybe the time had finally come to do what he wanted to do. Things that didn’t seem so criminal after all.
Take a break.
Take a vacation.
Follow his heart.
A minute ticked by, then another as he studied the yachts anchored off the resort. Soon, the sailors would awake, hoist their anchors, and set a course to the west, migrating like so many birds with the seasons.
Kyle wondered what that might feel like. He wondered if he would ever find out.
We could join that tribe, the inner voice said. Hannah’s tribe.
Out of nowhere, habit slammed on the inner brakes, sending him into a wild skid. How could he even be thinking such thoughts? He had a business to run! He had appointments to keep! He had…
…a brother who could do all that.
A brother who was aching for his chance, just like he was aching to get back to Hannah. He couldn’t force her away from her world. But what if he stepped into it himself? Would she let a little reality enter her dream? The real him, for better or worse, not the fantasy. In sickness and health, for richer or poorer, all that kind of thing?
One way to find out, he thought, straightening his shoulders.
A second later, he wavered. What if he was too late?
Chapter Thirty-Four
Hannah stood at the ferry dock, scuffing the dirt with her flip-flops. The straps of her backpack cut into her shoulders. It was heavier than she remembered now that she’d shoved everything in there. All her pictures, her clothes, her sailing gear.
Twenty-four hours with Robert had been enough. She’d sweated through his grumbling all day, served him dinner, woke early to brew him coffee, and then quit.
She took a deep breath, wondering if she was crazy to throw away her dream — not just once, but twice. Because Luc and Marie had come to fetch her that morning; they’d heard Robert’s fuse blow all the way over from Imagine and came rushing over right away. They’d brought her over to Imagine, where she had closed herself in the bathroom and stared in the mirror. Luc and Marie must have been talking, because when she came out, they had an offer. An offer no sane adventurer could refuse.
“Hannah, you can sail with us,” Marie said.
“Yes, you help us sail Imagine,” Luc added.
“To Tonga. Maybe more. We will see, yes?”
She could imagine it so well. There’d be no Robert, no galley slave duty. Just a fair share of work and the occasional toy to stumble over. The crew job of her dreams. So what had she done?
She’d turned it down.
“Thanks, but…”
She felt a little dizzy just thinking about it. But her mind was made up. Kyle might still be in Bora Bora. If she could find him and lay her heart on the line, he might just give her a chance. Give them a chance. Because the more she’d replayed their goodbyes, the more she suspected that Kyle, despite his words, might have felt the same. The way he looked at her, the way he moved a little too slowly, the way his shoulders slumped, all suggested that he felt something, too.
Maybe they couldn’t keep each other in paradise. But maybe they could give it a try back home. She could pick up work easily enough, even in New York. And while that didn’t exactly offer the glamour of the South Pacific, it had another reward: Kyle, or at least a chance to work things out.
If she found him.
If he let her.
If, if, if. But what would life be without a little risk-taking from time to time?
The ferry pulled up and docked. Shoreside passengers squeezed in around her, ready to board, leaving only a narrow path for off-loading passengers to follow into paradise.
“Au revoir, Marie,” she murmured, giving her friend a hug. “Merci, Luc.”
She hugged each of the girls in turn, holding back her tears, and finally turned away. In another minute, she’d be leaving Maupiti forever. She closed her eyes, turned in a slow circle, and blew a kiss into the wind.
Here’s to you, Lindsay. Here’s to a couple of kids and their crazy dreams. Dreams that change, but don’t become any less important when they do.
Hannah tugged down the brim of her hat, opened her eyes, and found herself looking at a strangely familiar pair of feet.
Her heart beat faster.
Slowly, she traced the line upward from the feet to the knees, over the waist and broad chest, right until she was face-to-face with a dream.
Kyle stood locked in midstep after practically knocking into her, his eyes a mile wide. She shut her eyes and opened them again, just in case.
“Hey, Hannah,” he breathed, barely a foot away.
“Hey, Kyle,” she managed.
They stood staring at each other like a couple of stupid sheep before a burly Polynesian gave them a good-natured tap on the shoulder, urging them aside. Kyle’s hand closed around hers and he pulled her under a nearby palm.
But the ferry! she thought, thoroughly addled. She had to catch the ferry and get to Kyle before he…before he… Wait a
minute…
“Hannah.” His voice was heavy, tense. Determined.
“What are you doing here, Kyle?”
“What are you doing here?”
She pursed her lips, feeling completely off-balance. “I was coming to you.”
His mouth cracked open. “I was coming to you.”
Hannah felt her mouth open and close, fishing for words. “Don’t you have a business to run?”
He broke into the tiniest of smiles, and it was like the first shaft of dawn brightening the horizon. “Don’t you have an ocean to cross?”
“I, uh…um…I quit.”
“You what?” Kyle barked, and a dozen heads turned.
“I quit Windfall.”
“Why would you do that?”
She shook her head. Wasn’t it obvious? “I missed you,” she said, hating the warble in her voice.
He looked incredulous. “Enough to give up sailing?”
Hannah gulped and nodded. What else could she say? “I wanted us to have a chance. I mean, here, or back in the States. If you think…if you say…if—”
He cut her off with a hug that said he’d say, think, or do anything it took.
“What about your job?” she mumbled into his shirt. If he had second thoughts now, though, she might just have to hog-tie him and throw him over her shoulder.
He sniffed into her neck. “What about it?”
“Whoa.” She pulled back, realizing where he’d just come from. “What about your thousand-dollar-a-night hotel?”
“Nine hundred dollars,” he corrected and pulled her close again. This time, he didn’t let go for a long, long time.
Until, that is, a kind-faced woman tapped Hannah on the shoulder. “Madame, le ferry.” She gestured to the crew, already preparing to cast off the lines.
Hannah fingered her ticket — her expensive, non-refundable ticket — completely unable to summon rational thought. “Um, Kyle, what do we do?”
He smiled and took the ticket from her hand. “We take it slow.”
He slipped into a gentle kiss. A kiss that worked her lips softly as if he was mouthing a promise right there and then. Hannah had a vague sense of her fingers going limp. Of the ticket fluttering away and the lady laughing and saying something about some things having no price. Behind her, the ferry horn tooted, Last chance, but she was firmly attached to Kyle’s lips by then. He squeezed her close. So close, she imagined his hands everywhere at once: on her back, on her arms, on her legs…