“You just fly in, Declan?” Bones asked.
“Yeah, I came from Cabo. The waves are this big,” he said, raising his arm over his head.
Keoni smiled, and Lou saw some of the tension leave his stiff shoulders. “Sure, bruddah, whatevah you say.”
Declan smiled back at Keoni. “I swear. They were monsters.” Declan glanced over at Penny and Lou as if noticing them for the first time. “Aren’t you going to introduce me to your friends?” he asked.
“Mary Lou and Penny,” Keoni said, indicating them each. “This is Declan Bishop.”
Declan bent over Penny’s hand and kissed it, then did the same with Lou’s. He looked up at her as his mouth brushed over her knuckles, giving her a cocky smile. His blond hair fell over his forehead and he swept it aside in a practiced move.
“What are you two lovely women doing with these thugs?” Declan asked.
Lou straightened her shoulders and did her best to look down her nose at Declan. “They were kind enough to give us a ride,” she said.
“You gonna give them a tour of the islands, too?” Declan asked, grinning. “Show dem da Reel Ha-vhy-ee?”
“Sounds like a good idea,” Penny said. She gazed up at Bones. “I bet you know all the best spots.”
Declan laughed. “You bet he does.”
Bones glared at Declan. “Watchu doin’ home?” he asked.
The color drained from Declan’s face and he glanced at Keoni, concerned. “You didn’t hear?” he asked.
“Hear what?”
Declan shifted from one foot to another, then reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a red envelope. He handed it to Keoni, who held it reverently with both hands before opening it and reading the card inside.
“I’m surfing in the Duke,” Declan said.
Keoni wet his lips and cleared his throat, then handed the invitation back to Declan. “Congratulations,” he said.
“Yeah, well,” Declan muttered, looking down at the curb. “It shoulda been you,” he said.
Bones defused some of the tension in the air with a hearty laugh. “You bettah be glad they didn’t invite Keoni to surf the Duke, or you woulda had no chance, cuz,” he said.
Declan laughed along with Bones, nodding. He tucked the invitation back in his pocket. “You girls are coming to watch the Duke, right?” he asked.
“What’s the Duke?” Lou asked.
“It’s a surfing contest,” Bones said. “The whole island comes out to watch. Everyone will be there. Right, Keoni?”
Keoni nodded. His jaw was clenched so tightly that a muscle ticked in his cheek.
“You’ll come, won’t you?” Declan asked.
After a moment, Keoni nodded again. “I’ll be there,” he said, reaching out to shake Declan’s hand. “I hope you win.”
“Thanks.”
They shook hands again, then hugged briefly.
“I gotta go,” Declan said. “My car’s here.”
Lou looked down the sidewalk to see a white Rolls Royce parked at the curb.
“Laydahs,” Keoni said.
Declan waved and left. Keoni watched him get in the car.
Bones clapped a hand on Keoni’s shoulder and said something in a low voice that Lou couldn’t hear. Keoni shrugged his hand away with an unintelligible response.
Chuckling, Bones went to the passenger door and held it open for Penny. “You ready?” he asked.
Penny nodded and climbed in, leaving Lou no choice but to sit in the back with Keoni.
Lou got in the back, then slid over as Keoni got in beside her. He leaned his head back on the seat with a heavy sigh and pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and index finger. Lou could feel the tension rolling of his body in waves of heat. She wished she knew him better, so she could comfort him, but once again, all she could do was stare.
Keoni glanced at her from the corner of his eye. “It looks worse than it feels, eh?” he said.
Lou glanced away, realizing Keoni thought she was staring at his bruises. He’d said something about Waimea Bay, which rang a bell in Lou’s memory. She’d seen a movie about surfing that had been filmed at Waimea Bay. The waves had been monstrous.
“Did you do that surfing?” she asked.
“No,” Keoni said with a grimace. “I did this wiping out.”
Lou laughed. Keoni’s eyes narrowed on her, and she realized too late that he hadn’t been trying to be funny.
“And your ribs?” she asked.
“What about dem?”
Lou reached over and touched his side.
“Oomph,” Keoni said, grimacing.
“They’re broken.”
“Nah.”
“Are they as bad as your face?” she asked.
“Nothin’s as bad as his face,” Bones joked from the front seat.
“Shut up,” Keoni said.
“In this movie I saw, the waves at Waimea looked fifty feet high. Are they really that big?” she asked.
Keoni pressed his tongue to the raw cut on his lip. “We don’t measure the waves in feet,” he said. “We measure them in fear.”
Lou stared at Keoni in horror, and then realized from the quirk in his smile that he was teasing.
“That must have been pretty scary,” she said.
“Yeah.”
“But you went out there anyway?”
“I live for days li’dat.”
This time Lou sensed he was serious. There was something far off in his gaze as if he was planning out his future.
“So, you girls want to start the tour right away, or what?” Bones asked from the front seat.
“Sure,” Penny said. “But you’ll probably have to feed Lou pretty soon. She turns into a beast if she doesn’t eat every two hours.”
“That’s not true,” Lou said.
Bones laughed. “I could eat,” he said.
“Me, too,” Keoni said.
Lou glanced at Keoni to see that some of the tension had gone from his body. He looked almost relaxed with his legs sprawled into the space between them.
“You sure?” Lou asked.
“Yeah,” he said. “What about you?” he asked.
His words almost sounded like a dare, and she straightened her shoulders and nodded.
Keoni smiled, and the temperature in the car suddenly rose ten degrees. Lou grabbed the tourist pamphlet she’d taken from the airport and fanned her face. Dammit if she didn’t feel Keoni’s smile from the roots of her hair to the tips of her toes.
Lou looked away from Keoni, opening the tourist pamphlet to the map on the back. She spread the map over her lap and pretended to study it while trying to clear her senses of Keoni.
It didn’t work.
He was too big. Too close. His leg brushed against hers as Bones switched lanes. If Lou took a deep breath, she could smell the ocean in Keoni’s hair. He smelled like a lazy afternoon on the beach with the sun caressing her body.
He leaned over and draped his arm over the back of the seat, pointing to something on the map.
“Waimea Bay is right here,” Keoni said.
“Oh?”
Lou glanced up at Keoni. He’d moved closer. She could see the individual hairs of his stubbly beard and the fine lines radiating from the corners of his eyes. His hair was nearly dry. It was long and flopped over his forehead, concealing the gash near his hairline. If they’d been in Seattle, Lou would have thought Keoni needed a haircut and a shave, but in Hawaii, he seemed perfect.
Lou cleared her throat and asked, “Is that where they will have the Duke contest?”
“Nah.” Keoni shook his head. “Waimea’s too wild. They’ll have it here,” he said, trailing his finger north along the map to stop at Lou’s knee. “Sunset Beach.”
“You have to be invited?” Lou asked.
“Yeah,” Keoni said.
Lou waited for him to go on, but he didn’t. From what Declan and Bones had said, she thought Keoni must be pretty good at surfing. Then again, judging fro
m his injuries, maybe he wasn’t so good.
Tropics Drive-In
Keoni
* * *
They stopped at Tropics Drive-In and ordered burgers, fries, and shakes.
Keoni ate automatically, even though he didn’t feel hungry. Seeing Declan had taken him back two years to Eddie’s death. The last time Keoni had seen Declan had been at Eddie’s memorial. They hadn’t parted on good terms.
After Keoni had a chance to cool off, he’d dropped by Declan’s to apologize. Declan had already split, and he hadn’t come back yet. That was two years ago.
Keoni had seen Declan’s name on the list of invitees to the Duke last month, but he’d put it out of his mind, too angry that he hadn’t been selected.
Maybe next year, Keoni hoped.
He’d been hoping that for three years, but he didn’t let that discourage him. He knew he needed to be patient. Times were changing. They couldn’t keep ignoring Hawaiians.
Even though the Duke Kahanamoku Invitational Surfing Championships was named after the most famous Hawaiian surfer in the world and held in Hawaii, it was an exclusive contest. No Native Hawaiian had ever been invited. Keoni planned to be the first.
It shoulda been you, Declan had said.
And he was right. There was no one better at surfing on the North Shore than Keoni. But if he couldn’t win, then Declan was the next best thing. Keoni had meant it when he’d told Declan he hoped he’d win.
Declan could do it, too. He was as talented as anybody, and he knew the waves better than most. The only problem was that the contest was at Sunset Beach—where Eddie had died.
Declan had to keep from pressuring out on the same waves that had stolen their best friend.
“You gonna eat those?” Lou asked.
“Hmm?”
“Do you want your fries?” She pointed to the uneaten fries on Keoni’s tray.
“Nah,” he said, passing Lou the fries.
She smiled and helped herself to them. Keoni watched as Lou polished off his fries. When she was finished she pushed the tray away and climbed out of the car, taking her camera with her.
“So, where should we go first?” Penny asked.
Keoni got out of the car, leaving Bones to answer the question. He watched Lou wander off to the edge of the parking lot with her camera in front of her face. She was so absorbed in looking through the lens that she nearly stumbled over a curb.
She righted herself quickly enough and then bent down and aimed her camera up at the Tropics Drive-In sign. When she got the shot she wanted, she stood up and dropped her camera to her chest, then headed back.
Keoni liked watching Lou take her pictures. She was so completely absorbed in what she was doing that she didn’t notice what was going on around her. A hurricane could be coming and she wouldn’t see it blow by.
It reminded Keoni of how he felt when he surfed. He got lost in himself the same way Lou did.
It was easy to watch her. She was pretty. She was tall and curvy, like the paintings of the Hawaiian goddesses, and she had unusual eyes—more green than blue. But her hair was her best feature. She had it pinned on top of her head, but most of it had escaped to curl around her neck and shoulders. The sun picked up the blond and copper highlights among the strands of brown, turning it a dozen technicolor hues.
Lou saw Keoni and smiled at him. She did that a lot, he’d noticed. Something squeezed in his chest, and he amended his earlier assessment that Lou’s hair was her best feature. It was definitely her smile.
When she smiled, a dimple winked in her cheek, and her whole face lit up. Even though it hurt his mouth, Keoni felt himself smiling back.
With the lei of flowers around her neck and the camera in front of her face, Lou looked like the very definition of a tourist fresh off the boat. Keoni hated tourists, but he couldn’t help thinking Lou was cute.
No- cute wasn’t the word. The only thing cute about her was her delicate nose. The rest of her, from her long legs to her wide smile, wasn’t cute—it was sexy as hell.
“It’s beautiful here,” Lou said, coming to stand next to him.
“Hmm,” he said, dragging his eyes away from Lou to the scenery. When he saw what she was looking at, Keoni laughed. They were on a busy road in Honolulu. “This is nothin’.”
“I can’t wait to see somethin’, then.” She grinned, and Keoni realized she was imitating his accent.
“What’s it like in Seattle?” he asked.
“Rainy,” she said. “We hardly ever see the sun.”
“I couldn’t live li’dat.”
Lou glanced over Keoni’s shoulder to the car where Bones and Penny were chatting with their heads together in the front seat. They looked to be hitting it off nicely. Bones was probably already planning on giving Penny the deluxe tour of Hawaii that ended at his apartment in his bed.
Bones didn’t discriminate against tourists the way Keoni did. The legendary Beach Boys of Waikiki had gone out of style years ago, but Bones did his best to make sure tourists got an authentic experience. Especially the pretty ones like Lou and Penny.
“I think they are planning out the tour,” Keoni said, noticing the way Lou watched Penny protectively.
“Yeah. Looks like it.”
“Anywhere in particular you want to go?”
Lou smiled, making the dimple in her cheek wink. “Everywhere.”
Keoni laughed. “How long are you staying?”
“Twelve days.”
He shook his head, his eyes lingering on her wide mouth. “That’s not nearly enough,” he said.
Lou’s mouth dropped open, and her eyes flew to Keoni’s. He realized he was flirting with her, and he stiffened and pulled away. He hadn’t meant for it to come out that way, like a come-on.
That wasn’t Keoni’s style. He didn’t flirt with tourists.
He turned away from her and headed back to the car.
“Heh,” he said, leaning in the window of the driver’s seat. “I just remembered Kimo is coming by today. I better get home.”
“Kimo’s coming home?” Bones asked.
“That’s what I said.”
“That’s perfect!” Bones said. “We were just deciding where to go first, and your parents’ place is perfect. Everyone will be there, and Auntie Palu probably has malasadas in the oven.” He turned to Penny. “You evah had a malasada?” he asked.
“Nope.”
“Let’s go,” Bones said.
“Can I holler at you a minute?” Keoni asked, opening the car door.
“Awrite.” Bones climbed out and they walked off a few feet from the car. “What’s wrong?” he asked.
“Nothing.” Keoni took a deep breath and then looked at Lou. She was leaning into the car talking to Penny. She glanced up and caught his eye, then looked away quickly. “I said I would go to the airport, but I ain’t gonna spend all day showing around some tourists.”
“Why not?”
Keoni sighed. “I got better things to do.”
“You got better things to do than hang around two girls who look li’dat?” Bones asked, raising his eyebrow at Keoni.
“I gotta work tonight.”
“Not until midnight. It’s 4:30.”
Keoni cast around for another excuse, but he couldn’t think of anything.
“Come on,” Bones said, slapping Keoni on the back hard enough to make his ribs rattle. “Be cool.”
“I am cool,” he said. “Just take me home, will you? Then you can do whatever you want after that.”
Bones shook his head at Keoni as if he was crazy. “Whatsamattah you?”
“Nothing,” Keoni insisted, walking back to the car.
He opened the door for Lou, and she slid along the seat, making room for him. Bones got in the front and started the car.
“Everything okay?” Lou asked.
“Yeah.”
“We’re going to Keoni’s parents’ house,” Bones said. “It’s not far.”
Lou unfolded the p
amphlet again. “Where is it?” she asked, seeming genuinely interested.
She spread the map on the seat between them and leaned over it, her hair spilling forward. Keoni breathed in the honey scent of her shampoo and felt the soft sweep of her hair on his forearm.
He turned toward her and pointed on the map, running his finger south along the mountain range that ran the entire length of the windward side of the island.
“Here,” he said, stopping at a brown valley that was tucked into the steep green slopes of the mountains.
She leaned forward to study it. “Right between these mountains?” she asked. “Must be beautiful.”
“It is.”
Keoni’s parents’ house was his favorite place on the island besides Waimea Bay. Set deep in the valley of the Ko’olau Mountains, his parents’ place had views of the mountains, the city, and the ocean.
Keoni folded up the map. He made sure to hand the brochure back to Lou faceup, because he was pretty certain his picture was on the back cover. He didn’t want her seeing it and thinking he was some kind of big deal.
“My house might not be what your expecting, eh?” he said.
Lou put the brochure back in her bag and looked up at Keoni, waiting for him to go on. After a moment, her eyebrows drew together, and she asked, “What do you mean?”
“You’ll find out,” he said.
Soon after they exited the city, Bones turned onto a hilly road that ran parallel to the coast. The road was made up of small houses with postage-stamp-sized yards. As they wound higher into the hills, everything got bigger.
The yards stretched out, the houses grew, and the trees reached higher. The dark green foliage on the trees looked like something out of a fairy tale. Flowers grew on shrubs, in pots, and up the sides of fences. The car climbed higher into the mountains and then dipped down a steep descent.
At the bottom of the hill, Bones turned onto a gravel road that lead to a valley between the green ridges of the mountain range. He took another turn, and they came upon a gate that was guarded by two large Chinese-style stone lions.
Keoni glanced over at Lou as they drove past the red-roofed pagoda that held a sign reading Manoa Chinese Cemetery.
Her mouth dropped open, and she reached for her camera as if on automatic pilot.
Try Easy: A Slow-Burn Vacation Fling Love Story (Aloha Series Book 1) Page 4