Try Easy: A Slow-Burn Vacation Fling Love Story (Aloha Series Book 1)

by Jill Brashear

  “Recovered from your trip,” Paul said. “You seem a little frazzled.”

  “Frazzled? I’ve had a hard day is all.”

  “And your hair, babe. What’s going on with your hair?”

  “My hair?” Lou asked, running her fingers through her hair. “What’s wrong with it?”

  “I haven’t seen you wear it like that in years.”

  Lou had woken up late and hadn’t had time to do anything with her hair. She’d worn it loose today, instead of tied up in an intricate knot.

  “You don’t like it?” Lou asked Paul.

  “It’s not that I don’t like it, babe. It just isn’t you.”

  Lou drew in a calming breath. The waiter came back to the table with Paul’s drink and asked Lou if she wanted another martini.

  “Do you have any beer?” she asked.

  “Certainly,” the waiter said.

  “Bring me one of those,” she said.

  “What kind, miss?”

  “Any kind,” she said.

  The waiter raised an eyebrow at Lou and then turned away.

  “A beer?” Paul said. “Since when do you drink beer?”

  Lou stared at Paul, hardly hearing his question. He was incredibly handsome, like a leading man in a Hollywood movie, or a walking ad from a magazine. She looked at his mouth. He had a thin, serious mouth, but it was generous. He was a good kisser.

  A wave of guilt washed over Lou. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes. When she opened them again, she was met with the blue steel of Paul’s penetrating gaze. He’d asked her a question, but she couldn’t recall it.

  “I slept with another man,” Lou said.

  The color drained from Paul’s face, and then two red splotches appeared on his cheeks. The waiter put Lou’s drink on the table and went away. Paul cleared his throat and reached into his suit jacket. He drew out his gold cigarette case and popped it open. Plucking a cigarette from the case, he placed it in his mouth.

  “Did you hear me?” Lou asked, watching him light the cigarette with his matching gold lighter.

  Paul took a deep drag on the cigarette and looked at Lou as he exhaled. “I heard you, babe.”

  Lou folded her hands in her lap, attempting to stay calm. She felt tears threaten and she pushed them back, knowing Paul wouldn’t take her seriously if she cried.

  “I think you should wear your hair up when we go to dinner Wednesday night,” Paul said, bringing his glass to his lips and watching Lou as he sipped.

  Lou clenched her fist in her lap and leaned forward across the table. “I just told you I let another man touch me, and you want to talk about my hair?”

  “Keep your voice down,” Paul warned, smiling with false brightness. His eyes flicked over her. “You had a moment of weakness,” Paul said. “It’s not like we’re married yet, babe.” His teeth flashed in a smile, and he sipped his drink, signaling the hovering waiter back to their table. “We’ll have an order of crab cakes,” he said.

  The waiter left.

  “Moment of weakness?” Lou asked indignantly.

  Paul nodded. “Let me guess? You got caught up in the romance of Hawaii? Maybe you even fell in love with it. You took some of your little pictures, and you got confused.”

  “My little pictures?” Lou asked.

  In the back of her mind, a warning bell went off. Could Paul be right? Was it the island that had enchanted her and not the man? Lou had a hard time separating the two. When she thought of Hawaii, she thought of Keoni.

  Paul took a drag on the cigarette, flicked the ashes in the tray, and leaned back to blow smoke into the hazy air. His eyes never left hers.

  “It’s going to be okay. I forgive you.”

  The tears she had been trying to hold back threatened to spill. Lou straightened her back, refusing to cry.

  “Who is this guy?” Paul asked, seeming only mildly curious, as if the man was an afterthought.

  Lou shook her head, not wanting to talk about the details. “He’s a surfer.”

  Paul pinched his cigarette between his lips, and his eyebrows shot up. “A surfer? That’s not a job.”

  “Well, no, it’s not his job,” Lou said.

  “Do you need to have a college degree to be a surfer?” Paul asked, laughing as he exhaled a cloud of smoke. “Or even graduate from high school? This guy sounds like a loser.”

  “He isn’t a loser. He saved me from drowning. The ocean is very dangerous.”

  Paul leaned back in his chair, studying Lou. “So, he rescued you. You were scared and confused. I get it now. I really do, babe. But I’m not going to let a vacation romance ruin all our plans.”

  The words were exactly what she should have been grateful to hear. But they didn’t make Lou feel happy—instead, she felt incredibly sad. Then a terrible thought occurred to her.

  “Have you had a ‘moment of weakness,’ Paul?” she asked.

  Paul looked Lou in the eye. His eyes were his best feature. They were brilliant blue, contrasting nicely with his translucent skin. Paul’s eyes were direct and piercing. They pinned Lou to her seat.

  “Everything will be fine once we’re married,” he said, squeezing her fingers.

  “Do you think so?” she asked.

  “Of course. Now drink your beer, if that’s really what you want, and let’s forget all about this.”

  “Are you sure?” Lou asked, picking up her beer.

  She felt a strange mix of relief, embarrassment, and confusion. She hadn’t expected the conversation to be so clean and precise. In fact, she hadn’t even planned to tell him.

  “I’m sure,” he said.

  The problem was every thought Lou had led straight back to one place—Hawaii, and the man that embodied the aloha of the islands. The thought of forgetting Keoni was unbearable. The thought brought tears to her eyes. The heavy cloud of smoke in the restaurant suddenly seemed too thick to breathe.

  “I need some air,” she said, pushing back from the table.

  Lou made it all the way to the sidewalk before Paul caught up with her. He’d been so quiet that she hadn’t heard him coming. He took her elbow and stopped her, pulling her back under the awning as a light rain started.

  “Lou, wait a second. Don’t just walk out like that.”

  His grip on her elbow was firm, but not painful. She could have easily shaken him off.

  “I can’t go back to the way things were,” she said. “I don’t think I want to.”

  Lou looked up at Paul, waiting for his reaction. She’d never seen Paul angry. She’d never seen him anything other than calm and reasonable. He was too smart to let his emotions take control.

  Paul pulled Lou against his chest and kissed her with a passion she didn’t know he had in him. His fingers shifted up her arm to the nape of her neck, and he tugged the back of her hair hard so that her head fell back. His tongue tasted of cigarettes and brandy.

  Lou clutched Paul’s shoulders for balance as his mouth devoured hers. Paul usually kissed her with expert precision, but this kiss was different. It was raw and messy and full of emotion.

  Paul released her mouth and trailed kisses over Lou’s cheek.

  “I can’t lose you,” he said in her ear, his voice breaking.

  Guilt wrapped around Lou like a soggy blanket. She choked back tears and clutched Paul to her chest. She couldn’t promise Paul that she would go back to the way things had been, but neither did she want to give up on her future.

  “I’ll try,” she said, pulling back to look at him.

  Paul nodded and held Lou close for another moment.

  “I’ll try, too,” he promised. “I’ll do whatever it takes,” he said.

  “Okay.”

  “Let’s go back inside and finish dinner,” Paul said.

  Lou let him lead her back inside where their food was waiting for them.

  Nothing to Lose

  Honolulu, Hawaii

  February 12

  * * *

  Keoni


  * * *

  Keoni dreamed of sharks.

  They circled him in a figure eight pattern, swimming closer with each pass. They were above and below. He was surrounded. They slid through the water, sleek and strong and graceful.

  They stirred a longing deep inside Keoni. He wanted to be like them, a brave predator of the deep, without a care for anything but his next meal.

  He swam closer, reaching for them. Just when he thought he could touch them, he woke with a start. Dread clutched his belly. Something was wrong.

  Keoni sat up too quickly and banged his head on a lampshade. His head spun, causing a riot of pain to slam through his body. His heart raced, and his palms sweat. He thought he was going to throw up. Holding his head in his hands as if it that could make the pain stop, Keoni glanced around the darkened room. It wasn’t his bedroom.

  Something was wrong. He struggled to remember, but he couldn’t place what it was. The dread grew worse, and then with a shiver, Keoni remembered that Bones was missing.

  He was going to be sick. He leaned forward, holding his head in his hands. He heard a shrill noise pierce the air, and it brought him back to the present. His head was still aching, but he remember that Bones was okay.

  Keoni blinked in confusion, inclining his head toward the noise. It was coming from down the hall. That must have been what had woken him up. He glanced around the room. Darkness cloaked the room, but Keoni could make out the lumpy forms of two chairs and a coffee table.

  The tension in Keoni’s body lessened as he recognized Bones’s living room.

  The phone continued to ring, and Keoni realized that no one was going to answer it. The room was still spinning as he pushed to his feet and stumbled into the kitchen.

  He jerked the phone off the wall. “What?” he growled.

  “Hey, Keoni? That you, mate?”

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s Ian.”

  “I know.” Keoni’s brain wasn’t so foggy that he didn’t recognize Ian’s thick Australian accent. A quick glance at the stovetop clock told him it was almost 4:00 a.m. “Why you callin’ so early?”

  “It’s a storm,” Ian said. “My house is shaking.”

  Keoni’s brain cleared enough for him to realize what Ian was saying. Ian lived a mile from Waimea Bay.

  “Waimea’s heavy?” Keoni asked.

  “Yeah, second time this month. It’s a fucking miracle, mate.”

  “I’m coming,” said Keoni.

  “Hurry up.”

  Keoni replaced the phone on the wall and then picked it up again. He switched on the bright light in the kitchen. Momentarily blinded by the harsh light, he squinted and pulled a piece of paper from where it was stuck to the fridge. He dialed the first number on the list.

  After about a dozen rings, Rabbit finally picked up, sounding groggy.

  “Waimea’s heavy,” Keoni said without bothering to say hello.

  “Yeah?”

  Keoni didn’t bother saying goodbye either. He hung up, knowing Rabbit would call the next person on the list. That’s how the hotline worked. One surfer called the next, and before sunrise, they would all be lined up on Waimea Bay’s shore with their boards.

  Keoni staggered down the hall into the bathroom. He wrenched open the medicine cabinet and scoured the contents for a bottle of aspirin. His head ached, and his throat felt like a cat had been using it as a scratching pad.

  “Eh, wassa madda you, brah?” Bones called from the door of his bedroom.

  Bones was leaning on the doorframe, looking sleepy and grumpy. He had on a pair of shorts that hung low off his hips, and his long hair was loose, hanging past his shoulders.

  “I’m going to Waimea,” Keoni said. “You wanna come?”

  “Hell yeah.”

  Keoni started ransacking the medicine cabinet, throwing bottles into the sink and onto the counter.

  “Whatchu you looking for?” Bones asked. He came to stand in the doorway of the bathroom, his big body blocking the hall.

  “Something to make my head stop spinning,” Keoni said.

  Bones shoved him out of the way. “Here,” he said, grabbing a bottle of aspirin and popping it open. He spilled a few of the white pills into his Keoni’s hand.

  “What’s going on?” came a woman’s voice from the hall.

  Keoni cringed at the sound of her voice. The memories of the night before came flooding back. He and Bones had gone to Legends last night. It was a bar in downtown Honolulu where mostly locals hung out. They had run into a few girls they’d known in high school, then they’d all come back to Bones’s house to drink more. Keoni was already wasted when they’d switched from beers to shots of liquor.

  “Go back to bed,” Bones told the girl.

  “Only if you’re coming back with me,” she said, coming to stand in the hall. She leaned against the wall, rubbing her eyes. “Hey, Keoni.”

  Keoni swallowed a few of the aspirin and blinked into the mirror, meeting her eyes for a moment before looking away. “Heh, Lelani,” he said.

  Lelani’s eyes roamed over Keoni’s naked chest and then flashed back up to meet his gaze. The sleepy look was gone, replaced by something predatory. “You can come, too,” she said, giving Keoni a sexy smile.

  “Don’t make A,” Bones told Lelani. Grasping her shoulders, he turned her back toward the hallway. “Go back to bed unless you want to come to Waimea.”

  Lelani yawned, stretching her arms over her head. She was wearing one of Bones’s T-shirts, and it rose up to midthigh as she stretched.

  “I’ll be in bed,” she said, sauntering back down the hall.

  Keoni pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and index finger. “What the hell happened last night?” he asked.

  Bones grunted. “Nothin’ illegal,” he said.

  “Chee, Bones, that makes me feel a lot better. Thanks, eh?”

  “Anytime,” Bones said. He went down the hall into the kitchen. “You want coffee?”

  Keoni stared at his reflection in the mirror. His eyes were bloodshot, his hair stood up all over his head, and he hadn’t shaved his face in a week. Why anyone would invite him into their bed looking like he did was beyond his understanding. He was a wreck.

  At least his face had healed. The bruise under his eye was only a faint yellow memory, and the split in his lip was history. He turned away from the mirror in frustration and left the room.

  In the kitchen, Keoni sank down to the stool at the counter. Bones met his eyes for a moment, and Keoni realized his cousin looked just as miserable as he felt. It didn’t work any better to bury your sorrows in the body of another woman than it did to drown them in a bottle.

  “What the hell are we gonna do, cuz?” Keoni asked, burying his head in his hands.

  Bones turned his back on Keoni and filled the percolator with water. “We’re going to have coffee and surf Waimea Bay,” Bones said.

  The prospect of big waves at Waimea should have had Keoni jumping out of his skin with excitement, but he felt nothing. He had been dead inside since Lou had left. He didn’t even know if he could muster the energy to drive up to the North Shore.

  His whole life had revolved around surfing and making a name for himself on the waves. Normally, he wouldn’t have even waited for the coffee to brew. But he couldn’t get excited about anything, not even Waimea Bay.

  Keoni knew Lou was the woman he wanted, but there wasn’t anything he could do about it. He wished he could have found that spark in a local girl, but none of them had ever seemed right. Why’d he have to go and find that spark with a haole tourist? Someone he’d never see again?

  The whistle of the percolator pierced the air, startling Keoni.

  “Shit,” Keoni said, jumping up from his seat.

  “Calm down, bruddah,” Bones said.

  Keoni stood up from the stool so fast that it clattered to the ground. Bones turned around at the sound, raising an eyebrow at Keoni.

  “I’m outta here,” Keoni said, giving the st
ool a kick as he stormed from the room.

  “Where you goin’?”

  “I dunno,” Keoni admitted, pausing to grab his shoes and shirt off the floor.

  Bones stood in the kitchen looking at Keoni. “I never saw you like this before, cuz,” he said. He walked slowly into the living room, watching Keoni pull on his shirt and step into his shoes. “You really love her, eh?”

  Keoni sank down to the sofa with a sigh. “Yeah. I guess I do.”

  Bones sat down on the chair across from Keoni and leaned his elbows on his knees. “Maybe you didn’t try hard enough, eh?” Bones said. “Not everything is so easy.”

  Keoni glared at Bones. “You’re the one already making time with another girl.”

  In a flash Bones was up from his chair. He grabbed Keoni by the neck of his shirt and yanked him off his feet. Keoni and Bones hadn’t fought since they were teenagers, back when they were matched in size. Since Bones had shot up six inches and gained fifty pounds, they hadn’t laid hands on each other. It wouldn’t have been a fair fight.

  Bones’s face turned a deep shade of purple, and a vein throbbed in his neck. Keoni steeled himself to fight his cousin, knowing he would be lucky to get in a single punch. Bones was going to crush him, but part of Keoni craved the pain. Physical pain would be better than what was going on inside his body.

  Bones dropped Keoni back to the ground as quickly as he’d jerked him up. He stalked across the room, stopping at the window with his fists clenched at his sides.

  “It was never gonna work with Penny and me,” Bones said. “Pops woulda fuckin kilt me if I’da brought home a haole girl like her.” Bones raked a hand through his curly hair, disheveling it even more. “Can you imagine the family dinner?” he asked, choking on a laugh. Turning away from the darkened yard outside the window, Bones pinned Keoni with a stony gaze. “But you and Lou? Different story, eh? You got nothing to lose.”

  Keoni adjusted the neck of his shirt where Bones had grabbed him. “I asked her to stay,” he said. “She shot me down.”

  “So ask again,” Bones said.

  “She has this whole plan for her life. I don’t fit into it.”