by Edie Claire
Maddie shrugged as she lifted one of her own tacos and took a bite. She chewed it a moment, then took a sip of tea. “The kalua pig’s good. Do you eat here often?”
“Yes. What just happened here?”
She sighed. “Nothing out of the ordinary. Can we move on? Talk to me. Tell me about your job.”
“No!” Kai retorted, feeling ten years old again. Why, he couldn’t fathom, but it was as if they’d both just sunk two feet lower at the table. Grown-up Maddie had disappeared and he was once again staring at that forever disheveled, mule-headed little girl who refused to believe there was a single thing on earth she couldn’t handle.
“What about the guy I saw you with in the parking lot? Was he just some stranger, too?” Kai could feel his blood pulsing in his veins. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been so angry. Indignant over what was right, yes, but not angry. That wasn’t like him. The fact that men could behave like asses was no newsflash, but to see his Maddie looking so… like that... and then within the space of twenty minutes to have two other men take one look at her and feel like they had some God-given right to—
“Kai,” Maddie protested, seeming suddenly more self-conscious. “Stop looking like that. I’m used to it. It’s no big deal.”
He begged to differ. “You didn’t know either one of them, did you?”
She shook her head.
“They were just hitting on you out of nowhere.”
She shrugged again. “I can handle it. You saw that.”
“Why do you tolerate it?”
Her perfect eyebrows lifted wryly. “And your alternative suggestion is…”
Kai felt like an idiot. What was she supposed to do? She wasn’t dressed inappropriately. She hadn’t been acting provocatively in any way. “I’m sorry,” he said genuinely. “I don’t know what I’m saying.” He reached out for his taco and took a bite. They ate in silence for a while as he collected himself.
The quiet could have been nerve wracking, but for Kai it had the opposite effect, and he suspected that Maddie felt the same. They had often eaten together in silence when enjoying one of their childhood picnic spots, every one of which had a drop-dead gorgeous view of some combination of fields, mountains, ocean, or cliffs. The commercial district of Kahului, Maui’s largest city, bore no resemblance to anywhere on Lana'i, but with a warm breeze rustling the fronds of the planted palms nearby, their imaginations were able to make do.
Kai stole a look at Maddie and realized she was grinning at him slyly.
“What?”
She grinned more, and her gray eyes danced impishly. She didn’t even look ten years old. At that moment, she looked about eight. “You got all protective there for a minute, didn’t you? If you think about it, that’s really cute.”
His teeth gritted. She always did know how to get to him. “Cute?” he repeated with annoyance.
She chuckled. “Totally. You used to do the same thing when the other kids tried to bully me. Even though I was bigger than you were. It was sweet.”
Kai smothered a groan. After his recent debacle in negotiation, he didn’t care if he ever heard the words “sweet” or “cute” again.
“You don’t really even know me anymore,” Maddie continued. “But when you thought I was in trouble, you jumped right back into protective mode, just like you used to. Just like time had stood still.” She pursed her perfect pink lips around her straw and took another sip of tea. “There’s some funky psychology behind that, for sure.”
Kai diverted his gaze back to what was left of his taco. “How about the fact that you went right back to baiting me?”
“I did?” Maddie asked innocently.
Kai arched his eyebrows at her. “You know perfectly well I despise being called ‘cute.’”
Maddie grinned at him again. “Touché.”
Now she looked twenty-five. And she had told Nana that she was single.
His thoughts were all over the place.
“Thanks, by the way,” she said softly, her gray eyes glittering at him so intently it made his knees weaken. He was glad he was sitting down.
“Thanks for what?” he asked.
“For being protective,” she answered. “And for getting through an entire fast food meal now without once laying a hand on me or suggesting how much you’d like to. Forgive my bluntness, but that’s a rare treat for me. I suggest we celebrate. With dessert.” She leaned out and looked up and down the block. “Are there any ice cream places within walking distance? Or shave ice?”
Kai didn’t answer. He could hardly accept such credit from her, when the mere act of her leaning out from the table, stretching her torso, and letting her long ginger locks drape softly over her shoulder nearly undid him. His thoughts were anything but pure, and as far as his actions went, if she was giving out awards for a man’s being able to go a mere thirty minutes without pouncing on her, she was setting the bar pathetically low.
But if the last half hour was any indication of the frequency with which she got badgered for casual sex, her low expectations were no wonder. It would also be no wonder if any kind of flirtation repulsed her. In which case, her “thank you for not pawing me” line was probably not a spontaneous thought so much as a carefully calculated, preemptive declaration.
Please make a note of it.
“Oh!” she cried, bouncing in her seat a little. “I see a shave ice place. You want to try it?”
Kai took a slow, deep breath. Then, without really thinking, he answered her the exact same way he had answered her a thousand times before.
He shrugged. “Sure.”
Chapter 10
Maddie dug her spoon into the passion fruit section of her shave ice, shoveled the cool, tangy-sweet slivers onto her tongue, and closed her eyes with delight.
“Bliss,” she murmured.
Kai chuckled.
Her eyes remained closed, and it occurred to her that if she didn’t know who he was, his voice wouldn’t help in the slightest. It was so much deeper now. And as embarrassing as it was to admit, for all her guesses about what he might look like now, the truth was that if she had passed him randomly on the street she wouldn’t have recognized him.
She opened her eyes to find him laughing at her as he dug into his own shave ice.
“I’m guessing you haven’t had one of these in a while,” he said.
Maddie shook her head, then spooned in some of the mango flavored section. The rounded mound of shave ice had three stripes: mango, passion fruit, and coconut cream, with vanilla ice cream filling the paper cone beneath. “There was a place in Gulf Shores that claimed they had Hawaiian shaved ice,” she said derisively, rolling her eyes. “Really, like who says, ‘iced cream?’ And it wasn’t shave ice at all, it was crushed ice like a snow cone.”
“Gulf Shores?” he repeated. “Where’s that?”
Maddie met his eyes, albeit with a certain, ill-defined reluctance. Dear God, the man was gorgeous. He had always been coo-out-loud cute — with those liquid dark eyes and long lashes, not to mention the high cheekbones and killer smile — but when you added tall and broad-shouldered to cute, the effect really was over the top. His appearance was not at all what she had expected, and it was throwing her off balance in a major way. Grown-up Kai Nakama was, in two words, totally hot. And totally hot guys were used to getting what they wanted.
Which messed up her plans entirely.
“Gulf Shores is in Alabama,” she explained. “I got my doctorate in ecology at Auburn University, also in Alabama.” She searched his face for genuine interest in the topic and found some, which relaxed her a little. But although she was doing her best to appear calm, inside she was a tempest. She wanted so much for Kai to enjoy her company again. But although his actions thus far had been nothing short of gallant, his eyes were hot with desire.
She shouldn’t have worn her hair down. She had debated with herself for nearly an hour over the issue, finally deciding that the outfit she’d chosen was already so
lame that if she wore braids or a ponytail she might as well carry around a giant lollipop. But striking the right tone on this first meeting was too important. She should have swallowed her pride, braided her hair, and carried around a damn lollipop besides.
She offered Kai a summary of her graduate work as she ate, along with the briefest of bios in terms of where she had spent her time over the years. She left out huge chunks of her life, events that were really important to her, and even to her own ears her voice sounded increasingly distant and stiff. Her frustration mounted. There was so much that she had been dying to share with him. But now there was a six-foot-one-inch wall between them. She didn’t know this Kai.
She didn’t trust him.
“So I hear you’ve been living in Utah?” she asked, tacking the question onto the end of her spiel before he could ask her anything else about herself. She dropped her eyes and focused on a mynah bird that was pecking the ground nearby. It cocked its head and looked up at her hopefully. Mynahs, which were ubiquitous in the islands, looked something like robins but were shameless trash scavengers.
“That’s right,” he answered. “For undergrad and law school.”
“Both at the same place?”
“Yes. I have family there, and I got a nice scholarship.”
Maddie started to ask something else, something about his grandparents that weren’t really grandparents. But she wasn’t feeling it. In fact, a part of her felt a sudden, inexplicable urge to cry. Their previous selves would have shared everything. They would have taken one look at the bland mass of generic box stores and strip malls around them, run until they reached a grassy field or mountainside somewhere, huddled up against a tree trunk, and talked all night and all the next day.
A flicker of ire shot through her as she lamented how different their reunion could be if time had stood still. If they could meet each other again in their happily simplified, ten-year-old bodies. She would take one look at that short, skinny Kai and hug him until his bones cracked.
This one, she was afraid to even smile at.
She dug her spoon deeper into her cone, aiming for the ice cream. The thin neck of the spoon promptly cracked, and she swore under her breath with annoyance.
To her surprise, Kai exploded with laughter.
“What’s so funny?” she challenged irritably. Why couldn’t anyone manufacture a decent plastic spoon?
The look on her face seemed only to amuse him further, and it took several seconds for him to sober enough to answer her. He seemed more familiar when he laughed. She was tempted to throw the handle stub at him.
“Don’t you remember?” he asked, chuckling still. “Those little strawberry ice cream cups, at the market? The paddle spoons?”
Maddie’s brow furrowed. She really had no idea what he was talking about. “I remember getting ice cream cups. Kind of.”
“You broke those spoons every time!” he accused, his eyes still dancing with amusement. “You’d hold the thing like a spear and jab at the ice cream like it was trying to escape. And then you’d blame the company. Said they weren’t made right!”
Maddie felt her cheeks redden. “You must be remembering somebody else.”
Kai laughed again. “There was nobody else like you, Maddie. Hang on. I’ll get you another spoon.” He straightened from the wall against which they’d been leaning and headed back toward the concession window.
Maddie shook her head in confusion. How could he remember something like that when she couldn’t?
A bright yellow bird fluttered through her field of vision and into a nearby cluster of trees. Grateful for the distraction, she turned and followed. It landed on a branch bordering the outdoor seating area of the barbecue place next door, and as Maddie leaned out to get a better look, the smell of smoked meat made her hungry again. “Hello, little white eye,” she whispered to the bird with a smile. “Haven’t seen one of you in a long, long time.”
She was absorbed with watching the bird’s quick, anxious movements when a man walked up from the barbecue place and stood, smiling, just opposite her. “Bird watching?” he asked, his tone mocking.
Maddie looked over long enough to see a man in his fifties, well dressed, wearing a wedding ring and making no effort not to leer.
“You look more like a swimsuit model to me,” he pronounced, smirking.
Maddie was in the process of running through her library of responses and had decided on the smiting turn-around-and-walk-off-with-no-acknowledgment strategy when the man’s facial expression changed. She stood still and watched as his smirk melted first to a look of uncertainty, then to sheepishness, then rapidly to alarm. He said nothing else but turned from her and moved away.
A plastic spoon appeared over her shoulder. “If you break this one, too,” Kai instructed, “maybe you should consider packing stainless steel.”
Maddie whirled and looked at him.
He looked innocently back at her.
His eyes were the same, she thought. Housed in a different package, perhaps, but the same. They could be inscrutable on occasion, when he tried really hard, but most of the time she could see right through him.
“Kai Nakama!” she chastised. “You gave that man the stink eye! Didn’t you?”
A sly grin played on his lips. “What man, now?”
Maddie felt a welcome flush of warmth in her veins, and she laughed out loud. The “stink eye” was local lingo for a dirty look, which could be employed in various ways for various reasons. In Kai’s case it was rarely employed at all. But when the boy Kai did get riled — which usually happened only after a particularly egregious miscarriage of justice — his execution of stink eye had been so potent it had scared her witless.
She felt a strong impulse to hug him, but as always with men, she squelched it. “Thanks,” she said instead. “That was sweet of you.”
He threw her a feigned look of disgust.
She chuckled. “Oh, right. Sorry. That was… very considerate of you.”
They walked back towards the concession window, found an open table this time, and sat down. “It wasn’t necessary, though,” she continued. “As I said, I can handle these things.”
She wasn’t sure why it was so important to her to point that out, but it was. Maybe because so many guys had turned the issue against her in the past, setting themselves up as bodyguards when they were the ones she had to protect against.
He studied her a moment. “I can see that,” he praised. “But you shouldn’t have to.”
His eyes flickered with unmistakable desire again, and Maddie dropped her gaze. Dear God, this was confusing. She wanted to get close to him again. But not that kind of close. Not now.
That kind of close would ruin everything.
Not that she wasn’t interested in men. Of course she was. She was twenty-five years old, she was lonely as hell, and she was getting lonelier. But was it so much to ask that once, just once, a guy could want her for her? Did it always have to be about sex, and did it always have to be about sex so soon? It’s not that she was holding out for marriage… necessarily… but was it so much to ask that a guy actually be in love with her first? Really care about and be committed to her?
She didn’t think so. But she was beginning to wonder.
No guy had wanted Meggie, that’s for sure. And Meggie was exactly like her. Meggie had been her online persona, her dating profile, her “out there” self. She had poured every ounce of her wit and charm and zing and zest into Meggie’s quest for the perfect man. The only thing Maddie hadn’t shared with Meggie was a profile picture. Meggie’s picture, doctored with a friend’s software, showed a woman who was multiracial, flat-chested, and had an overbite.
In eighteen solid months, Meggie hadn’t scored a single date.
Except, of course, for the dozens of men who wanted casual sex.
“Is it as good as you remember?” Kai asked.
Maddie jumped. “Excuse me?”
He looked confused. “The shave ice?�
�
“Oh,” she breathed out heavily. “It’s fabulous. Especially the passion fruit. I miss passion fruit.”
Crap! Was that too suggestive?
Maddie felt her cheeks flaming. Perhaps she had made a mistake. She had multiple reasons for wanting to come back to Hawaii besides the possibility of reconnecting with Kai Nakama, but she had wanted to find him again, and she did have an ulterior motive. What she sought, embarrassingly enough, was reassurance that some man somewhere was capable of caring for the woman inside her body, and she had fixated on Kai as the perfect candidate. After all, he had genuinely liked her for herself once before, hadn’t he? She had set out with fond hopes of rekindling a platonic, adult friendship with him — a goal that had seemed both simple and reasonable at the time.
Now, suddenly, it seemed neither. Because he was available. And she was available. If he was attracted to her, what then? She could hardly blame the man for not passing some arbitrary test she had set up in her mind.
She hadn’t thought this through.
“Did you like Utah?” she blurted.
He nodded, seemingly unaware of her inner turmoil. “It was beautiful there. The mountains were awe inspiring. And I liked the wide-open spaces. But I don’t miss the weather. Winter was so cold. And sometimes the air would get smoggy. I hated that. And it was always very dry. Coming back to Lana'i in the summers, I felt like the air was soup.”
“Ha!” Maddie chortled. “You don’t know from humid till you’ve lived in Southern Alabama, my friend. We swim through the air in summer, and we don’t stop till October.”
Kai smiled back at her. She wasn’t sure, but she liked to think that he, too, liked the sound of the words that had just rolled so easily off her lips.
My friend.
Perhaps there was hope.
She needed to be polite, nothing more. Maybe she could even be herself, seeing as how she was never a flirt anyway. Relax.
“Did you get to swim at Hulopo'e while you were on Lana'i?” he asked, finishing off his shave ice and propelling the paper cone into a nearby trashcan.