by Piper Lennox
“But it isn’t right for you,” I finish, and both of them nod. “I totally get that. And that’s why we’re not asking to absorb your business, or buy it out, or anything like that. When I call it a ‘partnership,’ I mean it.” I spread my hands on the countertop. “My only goals are to bring you guys as many customers as possible, and give my customers something fun to do in Kona.”
Wendy stares at Greg as she sits back down and slides him the mug. He stares back.
“Rhett did say his profits doubled in just two months,” she says softly.
I’m tempted to jump in and confirm this—Rhett, another local business owner, joined as an affiliate the first year we were franchised. His shaved ice carts were a popular little tourism gem before; now, he’s got a stand on our property, five carts scattered throughout the island, and another stand in the works near the coffee plantation.
I keep my mouth shut, though. The Kalanis are easygoing people, and nothing puts them off something like high pressure.
“But what about Kona Tours?” Greg counters. Both of them look at me.
“Kona Tours was bought out, yes,” I admit, taking a breath, “but that was entirely up to the Lee family. They wanted to retire, so we made them an offer. Which should make you happy, since they’d be a competitor right now for your Segway tours. Right?”
“Luka, honey—you know if it was just you and your family’s business, we’d team up in a heartbeat. But those people you work for,” she goes on, spitting the word “people,” “made it very obvious to us that if we accept one offer, they’ll just keep on asking for more. We don’t want to be bought out, no matter how much it’s for.”
Greg cuts his eyes to her during this part, but stays silent.
“I understand,” I say again. “But I also think it says a lot for Paradise that they want to team up with a local business, instead of competing. Because, let’s face it—they could just buy a fleet of Segways, if they wanted to, and set up their own tours.”
“Like they did with the Lee family, when they bought their shuttles.”
Stay patient, I coach myself. I knew this wasn’t going to be easy.
“My point is,” I go on, giving a polite smile, “Paradise Port isn’t out to be some monopoly, here. They want to boost local businesses, not harm them. What happened with Kona Tours was a mutually beneficial arrangement—like I said, the Lee family is still very happy with the buyout—but I understand that that’s not what you two want. So I’m here to make you another deal.”
Wendy finishes her coffee. I half-expect her to jump up and make another cup, right then and there, but she doesn’t. For once, they’re both looking at and listening to me.
“No one will pressure you into selling your business. And if they do—if anyone so much as hints at the possibility—you come to me, and I’ll make it right.”
They look at each other again. “I don’t know,” Wendy sighs, rubbing her arms. She turns back to me. “When our restaurant closed down, this business was such a huge gamble for us. We started from nothing, all over again. I know you understand that, Luka, but I really am worried the company doesn’t.”
“I’ll make them understand. I promise.”
They exchange looks again. My phone buzzes as soon as they start whispering, so I pull it out of my pocket, giving them some pseudo-privacy.
“Here. But can’t hang out. Sorry.”
I read Tanya’s text twice. I’m disappointed; I’ve been looking forward to seeing her for weeks. Maybe longer, if I let myself admit it.
But I can’t tell her that or protest, obviously—and right now, my focus is entirely on this deal. “Same. TTYL,” I type back, and slip the phone into my pocket.
“I think we’re going to have to pass.”
My head snaps up. Wendy is already clearing the mugs; the meeting is over.
“Wait, wait, Mrs. Kalani—I can’t go back to them without something.”
“Luka.” She gives me a smile, but I know a mom-scold when I see one. “I’m sorry. We’re both very hesitant about this, and for us, when we hesitate?” Her head jerks to Greg, who’s diving face-first into that Swiss mocha and doesn’t notice. “It means our gut is telling us no.”
My gut is also telling me no—as in, no more sitting upright. No more work bullshit. No more coffee, no more Kalanis, no more smell of cat shit wafting from the front hallway.
“I might be back,” I confess, when we’re shaking hands goodbye on the porch. They give me smiles like I’m peddling high school band candy out of a cardboard box.
Halfway back to the resort, I pull over. My stomach is killing me: definitely figuratively, possibly literally. I check my phone again and don’t have any new messages from Tanya, so I guess she’s still busy.
How busy can she be? She’s on vacation.
“K, free now,” I type. “Dinner?”
She has to be waiting around for me. I’m the only reason she gets her room upgraded from the tiny, basic ones near the bottom floor, to the sprawling suites near the top, where the views go on forever. Not that I think she’s using me for a better room, but I know it helps.
“Meet you in the upgrade,” I text, after ten minutes pass without an answer.
I start the truck. My stomach still hurts, but at least now it’s just a dull burn.
When the resort comes into view, it gears up again.
I can’t go in and face them, or even the blinking light on my office phone from their messages, without good news.
Fuck this day. I started the morning as a company hero, about to spend the week with an incredible woman. Now I’m screwed on both counts, and the day’s not even over.
The day’s not over.
She can claim she’s busy all she wants, but I’m going to get at least one good thing tonight. Since the affiliate deal is out, that leaves Tanya.
“Full disclosure: right after our kiss hello, I’m going to barricade us in that bedroom and get you calling me Sir again.” I send the text, tongue my cheek, and wait.
Finally, she starts to type back.
Four
Tanya
Heat splashes across my face and chest as soon as I read his message. Barricade. Sir.
He’s not kidding, either.
Every time I come to Kona, things with Luka get wilder, like he’s revealing a little bit more of himself each trip. Just when I think I’ve seen it all and know him inside and out—at least, the bedroom part—he shows me more.
“You into anything...weird?” he asked, the last time I was in town. The way he asked broadcasted the truth to me like a PSA: I’m asking if you’re into anything weird, because I definitely am.
I thought about this as he poured another shot of tequila into my navel and drank. It had started as a silly dare on my part; now, the cool trickle on my skin, followed immediately by the hot suction of his mouth, combined with the newness of it all to form an addiction I hadn’t expected.
“Other than body shots, apparently,” I answered, giggling as his tongue trailed from my navel to the side of my stomach, “maybe...spanking?”
His head lifted, grin already quirking to the side. “Really.”
“Not anything crazy, but...sure. Who doesn’t like some light spanking?”
“A lot of girls.” He sat up and wiped his mouth before kissing me. “I’ve always liked it, though.”
“Getting spanked?” I slapped the back of his leg; he laughed and bit his lip, wrestling me out from underneath him. How a man could seize and maintain complete control with the woman on top was beyond me, but Luka always managed to do just that.
“Ride my cock, baby,” he ordered. The grin melted. When things got going, he was all business.
Slowly, I eased my sex down onto his tip, savoring the stretch. Luka did happen to be one of—okay, the—biggest I’d ever had. And I’d had a lot.
He slid one hand up to my neck like a silk scarf, cool and flowing and invisible until it was there, holding me behind my ear.
“Faster,” he breathed, and, all at once, pulled me down onto his full length. The grin flashed back when I whimpered. “Too much to take?”
I caught my breath. “You know it isn’t. Don’t get cocky.”
He made the face he always made before a tasteless or corny joke, but shook his head. “Too easy.”
When I adjusted, I let him set the pace he wanted—deep and rapid-fire plunges, right away. It was another unpredictable facet of our hookups: sometimes, he started off at zero and gradually built to sixty. Other times, he reversed it and staggered his speed, his force. The strength of his pull on my hips varied, too. He somehow managed to find new spots on my body to kiss and tease, places I didn’t even know had nerves until he enticed every single one.
He always had two goals: to keep me coming, and keep me guessing.
“Oh, my God, Luka,” I cried, tilting my voice to the recessed lighting of the suite when his hand left my hip and found my clitoris. “Keeping doing that.”
Without warning, he brought his open hand down from my neck and slapped my leg, in the same place I had done it to him, but much harder. I wasn’t sure if the pain or the sound startled me more.
“Ow!”
“‘Keep doing that...sir.’”
Our motion ceased. I locked my eyes with his.
“So that’s what you’re into, huh?” I asked, panting through a smile. He slapped my ass again, lighter this time.
“Say it.”
The growl of his voice got to me. He could’ve demanded anything of me, and I’d have done it.
“Please keep rubbing my clit like you were doing.” I concentrated my muscles to pump him like a vice and release. “Sir.”
His exhale was almost a noise of pleasure, but he controlled himself. “Better.” The brush of his fingers on my sex turned to a steady, concentrated circle again.
Every time he found the perfect rhythm and I saw the light at the end of the tunnel—made obvious to him by the way my muscles tensed and my head rolled back—he eased his pressure or slowed his pace. But thankfully, never both. He knew how to keep the pleasure within my sights, without ever letting me reach it.
“Guess I’ve teased you enough,” he said, after an endless ribbon of this pattern had left my legs twitching and my eyes rimmed with tears. He brought me down for a kiss and then, as I straightened my back, pulled one of my nipples between his lips and caressed it with his tongue—at the exact pace and force of his fingers on my sex, the plunge of him into my depths. “You ready to come, sweetheart?”
“Yes,” I whimpered. I felt the sting of his palm against my thigh and knew exactly what he wanted.
“Yes, sir,” I cried, “please, keep doing that and you’ll make me come...yes, sir, yes, sir, yes, sir.....”
His stare carved into me as he watched my orgasm unfold. My fingernails scratched his chest; my elbows threatened to give as my walls quivered around his erection.
When I was spent, he caught me before I could collapse, both hands on my shoulders. I was sure he could lift me by nothing but that, if he wanted.
Instead, he lowered me gently to his chest, maneuvering himself to slip out of me, and stroked my hair until the last tremor left.
“What about you?” I asked. It was just part of our pattern. I knew damn well that Luka didn’t let himself finish until he’d brought me to the peak—and sent me crashing down—as many times as possible.
“Don’t worry about me.” He hugged me into him, another prominent but underrated part of the pattern: the comfort after a storm, so I’d be strong enough for the next. “We’ve got all night.
I read his text at least seven times. My panties grow damp, my sex already opening for him, brain already primed for whatever incredible torture and redemption he has planned.
Without thinking, I start to text back.
“Fair enough. But I hope you know, it’s my personal mission to get you coming first, for once.”
“Where should we go for dinner?”
Oscar’s voice jerks me out of my fantasies and back to reality. To the universe where there’s a ring on my finger.
I backspace it all and close the message app.
“Um...there’s a few places around here,” I tell Oscar, as he fixes his tie in the mirror by the suite’s door. Like Luka, he almost always wears a suit. And technically speaking, he looks good in them; they fit him correctly, and they’re high-quality. But somehow, it just isn’t the same.
“Oh, what about the restaurant here? I remember you raving about it.”
Great: the one place I’m guaranteed to run into Luka.
I think up a lie, and a pretty good one—food poisoning; bad memories—but don’t say it. I’ve got to tell Luka about Oscar sooner or later. And as tempting as later is, sooner ensures I’ll actually get to enjoy my vacation.
On our way out of the suite, Oscar brushes a piece of hair off my neck. It’s soft, and it’s sweet—but all it does is remind me of that night with Luka all over again, and how different two men’s hands on my body can be. How different each makes me feel.
“We could always elope,” Oscar says at dinner, between the salad and main courses. Until now, I haven’t been paying him much attention.
“Instead of a wedding?”
“Yeah. If you want to, I mean.” He trails his fingertips over mine. “Whatever you want is what I want.”
Guilt mangles my throat for a minute. Oscar is a wonderful boyfriend. He’s a stand-up guy, respectful and sweet. And successful.
True, so is Luka. But Oscar isn’t a plane ride and savings drain away. Oscar asked me to be his girlfriend, and then fiancée; Luka and I have never asked more commitment from one another than a few hours, once or twice a year. Less time than we spend waiting for coffee annually. Less time than I binge-watch stuff on Netflix.
In fact, if I sat down and actually calculated all of it, I’d probably find that Luka and I have spent less time together than Oscar has spent holding my hand, or driving me to restaurants.
Of the two, it’s no contest as to who makes more sense.
Forget about Luka. It’s just because I’m here, in a place my brain is accustomed to seeing him. Like Pavlov’s dogs.
“Elopement could be fun.” I turn my hand over on the tabletop and squeeze his fingers in mine.
When I get up to use the bathroom, I just know, in that way of bad luck, that’s exactly when I’ll run into Luka.
I make it there without any sight of him. I don’t dare check my phone. Focus. On the pattern in the tiled floor while I pee. The spot on the mirror while I wash my hands. The click of my heels as I cross the room to the door, swing it open, and step outside again into the twinkling lights of the deck.
Good, I tell myself. See? You can stop thinking about him, if you try hard enough. Once I tell him our arrangement’s over, my brain will accept it. Just because it feels impossible doesn’t mean it is. I mean, not that long ago, I thought six months with the same guy would be impossible, but here I am.
The sour adrenaline in my system drains free. I relax.
Until I round the corner to our table.
“Everything’s been perfect,” Oscar tells the man in front of him, who’s got his hands braced on the table in an easygoing yet confident way I instantly recognize.
“Glad to hear it.” He notices the extra wine glass, the arc of lipstick on the rim. “Is your wife enjoying everything, as well?”
“Fiancée, actually. We just got engaged last night.” Oscar is grinning like...well, like a guy in love. It makes me feel like shit.
But not quite as much as when he spots me behind Luka and says, “There she is! Honey, have you met—Luke, is it? He actually owns this whole location.”
I step closer, purse clutched in both hands, as he turns. There’s barely a second before his face changes. I feel the marrow in my ribs splinter at the sight of his Adam’s apple, shifting as he swallows.
“Fiancée,” he repeats. His executive-level
smile weakens, a ghost of itself.
He holds out his hand.
“Congratulations to you both,” he says quietly, as I force myself to press my palm against his, thank him, and pretend I don’t know every callous and scar on these hands already.
Five
Luka
The day we met, it felt like my life was starting over.
Not because of Tanya—that was a perk, getting checked out by a woman whose bathing suit left incredibly little to the imagination—but because I’d finally gotten a chance. I was going to show my dad I could run this place even better than he could.
“Today’s my first day. I’ve been checking in with all the guests and running around all morning,” I told Mollie, the tourist my brother Kai had been fooling around with for days. Her friend, I noticed, was studying me behind her sunglasses. “Guess it’s coming off as creepy, though, huh?”
“Not at all.” The girl slipped off her sunglasses, revealing long lashes (batting, no less) and eyes so green, I couldn’t think of any description but emerald. It sounds hackneyed—“emerald green eyes.” But hers really were. Bright and clear, like gemstones.
“First day?” Mollie tilted her head, confused. “Aren’t you the bartender?”
“Not anymore,” I smiled, and swept my hand down my suit. “You’re looking at the new owner.” Her friend was clearly impressed by this, which made it all the more humbling to add, “Well, almost. Right now I’m, like, the substitute owner.”
“What? Kai said your dad gave him the job.”
God, that had been one hell of a battle. Dad had just suffered a stroke, and doctors were basically ordering him to retire. He wanted Kai to take over, which was a terrible choice for several reasons, the largest being that Kai didn’t even want this place. But I did.