Sun Kissed

by JoAnn Ross

  Sun Kissed

  Copyright © 2015 by Castlelough Publishing, LLC

  Kobo Edition

  Cover design by Syd Gill Designs

  Publisher’s note: This is a work of fiction. The characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation to anyone bearing the same name or names. All incidents are pure invention and any resemblance to actual persons, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  From New York Times bestselling author JoAnn Ross comes the first in a new series set in paradise. From its soaring mountain peaks to its turquoise lagoons, Orchid Island, the jewel of the Pacific, offers endless opportunities for romance to bloom.

  Lani Breslin has had it with the mainland rat race. A free spirit in an eccentric family, she’s returned to her Orchid Island home to live an idyllic life. And if her brother happens to send along a yummy hunk to seduce her? That’s just fine with Lani.

  Police detective Donovan Quinn’s last case nearly killed him. Burned out and still recuperating from an injury, he escapes to the tranquility of Orchid Island to reboot his life. It’s a sweet surprise to discover Lani has blossomed like one of the island’s tropical flowers, even if the Bro Code says you shouldn’t crave moonlit kisses from your best friend’s sister.

  As Donovan struggles to resist Lani’s charms, matters get more complicated when her best friend’s fiancé goes missing and he finds himself caught up in a chase involving the FBI, sunken treasure, and pirates. It’s not easy solving a mystery when he keeps stumbling over his heart and may have to choose between the opportunity of a lifetime or a lifetime in paradise with the woman he loves.

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  About the Book

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Excerpt from Sunset Point

  Other Books from JoAnn Ross

  About The Author

  1

  Portland Police Bureau Detective Donovan Quinn was not filled with what the residents of the neighboring Hawaiian Islands would call the aloha spirit. He was hot, thirsty, tired, and cursing his decision to come to Orchid Island. Back in Oregon, the idea had made sense—a remote, tranquil place to escape the demons that had been haunting him. And worse yet, the sense of drifting, almost like those people who claimed to have near-death experiences, floating above their bodies, watching their lives and souls drift away.

  He’d talked with the department chaplain. With the shrink who’d offered to prescribe anti-depressants, which he wasn’t yet prepared to take. He’d also gone out to dinner with his best friends, only to belatedly discover that they’d planned an intervention.

  “You’ve been there,” Nate Breslin had reminded him over fried clam strips and shrimp po’boys with him and Tess Lombardi at Bon Temps on the coast in Shelter Bay. “It’s a tropical paradise. Lush greenery, palm trees, sparkling beaches, turquoise waters, and the most beautiful women found anywhere on earth.”

  The horror novelist had turned toward his fiancée and given her a quick kiss. “Present company excluded, of course.”

  “Thank you, darling.” Her smile suggested that he’d be rewarded for that qualification once they got home to Sunset Point.

  Then she’d turned back to Donovan, her expression turning serious. “When Nate took me to the island to meet his family, I was tempted to stay. And I swear, within the first few hours of landing, I was more relaxed than I’ve ever been in my life.”

  Given that the Multnomah County deputy district attorney had recently escaped a harrowing ordeal that had nearly cost Tess her life, that had been saying something.

  “You’d probably be out of work,” he’d countered. Especially given her workaholic habits. Though he had noticed that she’d actually begun taking time for a personal life since falling for Nate. Even more so since returning from their Thanksgiving trip to the Pacific island. “Given that there’s undoubtedly even less crime on Orchid Island than here in Shelter Bay.”

  “That would probably be true.” She’d snagged a clam strip from her fiancé’s plate and dipped it into the restaurant’s signature comeback sauce. “But I was seriously tempted. And if you’re not going to go there for yourself, Donovan, please do it for me.” She’d reached across the table and put a hand on his. “Bad enough that you landed in the hospital because of me; you’ve recently been through a horrible personal experience. If you’re not going to stick with therapy, try the meds, or cancel that damn speech you agreed to give in Hawaii, the least you can do is steal some additional time for R and R.”

  “I can’t cancel the speech, because I gave my word.” Which had been nine months ago. Before his life had begun unraveling at the seams.

  So, he was going to give the speech. But, as Tess had known he would, he’d caved in on taking a side trip to Nate’s home island.

  He should have taken the three-hour flight delay before departure from PDX as a sign. The delay had him arriving in Honolulu with minutes to spare before giving a speech on Pacific Northwest serial killer clusters at a joint Oahu Police Department and FBI conference. The speech had been booked by the special agent in charge of the Portland FBI field office, who’d been actively recruiting him for the past year.

  It would not only polish his credentials for the lengthy acceptance procedure, Donovan had been told, but hanging out with some agents in a social situation would allow him to get a feel for the type of men and women he could be working with.

  His speech, centered on possible reasons for the high body count in an area of the country FBI profiler John Douglas had once referred to as “America’s killing fields,” had been well received. The Cascades Killer had terrorized the mountainous region from southern Oregon up to the Canadian border for nearly a decade. After inheriting the case when the original detective retired, Donovan had upped his professional profile by apprehending the serial killer by using methods he’d learned from the FBI Behavioral Research and Instruction Unit.

  While all serial killers were heinous, this one had been particularly so, targeting entire families camping in the Cascade Mountains. Last month, his partner, a divorced father of three who hadn’t been able to overcome the nightmares of all those other murdered children, had committed suicide, leaving Donovan with what both his shrink and police chaplain had diagnosed as survivor guilt.

  Putting a name to his problem hadn’t done much to help, and while talking about those crimes as he’d forced his way through the speech, he’d wondered how many of the conference attendees in the standing-room-only audience were concealing the same problem. Afterwards, feeling the walls closing in on him, Donovan had passed on the special agents’ invitation to have drinks in the bar, reluctantly agreeing to a rain check when he returned to Honolulu on
his way back to the mainland.

  Now, sixteen hours into an already over-long day, as his shoes filled with sand and he melted under the tropical sun, Donovan had come to the conclusion his mistake had been buying into Nate’s sales pitch that palm trees, sparkling beaches, turquoise waters, and stunning women were exactly what he needed to regain his mojo.

  So far—except for the aerial view of lush green mountains from the commuter flight to the island of Kauai, where he’d boarded a ferry for the thirty-minute ride to Orchid Island—the only foliage Donovan had seen was the tall, tasseled sugarcane flanking the road the taxi driver had turned onto soon after leaving the ferry terminal.

  After what seemed an eternity of tearing along in a cloud of red dust, with the man apparently determined to hit every pothole in the dirt road, steam had started rising from beneath the hood of the ancient taxi. While the driver waited for whatever consisted of a motor club on Orchid Island to arrive to repair the radiator, Donovan had begun walking.

  That had been twenty long, hot minutes ago, and with his recently injured ankle aching like a son of a bitch, he’d made the decision that if he didn’t reach Nate’s beach house (which he hadn’t owned the first and only time Donovan had been here) within the next thirty seconds, he was going to throw himself, fully clothed, into the Pacific Ocean. Then, once he had cooled off, he was going to trudge back up that damn cane road, flag down the first car he saw, and beg, if necessary, a ride to the ferry terminal, where he could begin the long journey back home to Portland.

  It was then that he saw her.

  At first, Donovan wondered if the vision might be nothing but a mirage, the product of his heat-crazed mind. She was clad in a brilliantly flowered bikini top and cutoff jeans, her skin tanned to a warm, dark honey, her hair sunlit strands of glistening copper, gold and bronze. If she had been perched on a rock jutting out of the water, instead of sitting atop the roof of the vine-covered house, Donovan could have easily believed that he had stumbled upon a mythical siren. If she wasn’t a hallucination, she was definitely a sign that things were looking up.

  * * *

  Lani Breslin recognized him immediately. He had, unsurprisingly, grown older, and the frown lines cut between his brows had her wondering if his devastating smile had diminished in wattage. Not that she was at all interested, having gotten her fill of that smile years ago.

  At the moment, however, the individual trudging through the sparkling coral sand was definitely not at his charismatic best. He had discarded his gray suit jacket and tie and rolled his starched white sleeves up to the elbow, but his attire was far more suited to Oregon rain than the tropical Orchid Island sun. And his shoes—black wingtips, for heaven’s sake, Lani thought critically—were definitely not proper beach footwear. No wonder he was limping.

  Since the only two residences on this stretch of isolated beach were her own cottage and this one, Lani put down her hammer with a resigned sigh and waited.

  From her vantage point above him, she noticed the almost imperceptible straightening of his spine and the squaring of broad shoulders. He’d come a long, long way in the past fifteen years. Not only was former Portland patrolman Donovan Quinn now a detective, from what her brother had told her, he was the top candidate for chief of the Portland Police Bureau at the same time he was being actively recruited by the FBI.

  His ability to slip unconsciously into a public persona of masculine authority was, along with the suit, evidence that he was no longer that reckless young cop she’d met so many years ago. He’d changed. But hadn’t they all? Nate’s name now appeared on all the bestseller lists, and she certainly wasn’t the petulant, self-centered teenage girl she’d been back then.

  Still, Lani was somewhat saddened by the idea that Donovan had changed so drastically. All the professional success Nate had told her about hadn’t been kind to him. His six-foot, broad-shouldered frame had lost weight to the point of being almost gaunt.

  “Hello,” he called up to her, dropping his luggage onto the sand. “I’m looking for Nate Breslin’s cottage.”

  Of course he was. Remembering Nate’s promise to send her something special for Christmas, Lani vowed to give her older brother a piece of her mind at the very first opportunity.

  “You’ve found it.” Her calm voice betrayed none of her annoyance.

  “Thank God. I was beginning to feel like Robinson Crusoe.”

  “This is one of the most deserted stretches of beach on the island,” Lani acknowledged. “That’s why Nate picked it. He values his privacy.” She didn’t add that the beach’s remoteness held the same appeal for her.

  “I know about his penchant for being off the beaten track,” Donovan said. “His house on the Oregon Coast is even more remote than this place. You practically need a mountain goat to climb up that road of his… I’m forgetting my manners. I’m Donovan Quinn.”

  He’d taken off the aviator sunglasses, revealing deep shadows beneath midnight-blue eyes. “Introductions aren’t necessary, Donovan. Despite the fact that you seem to have taken to dressing like an undertaker, I had no problem recognizing you.”

  Donovan shaded his eyes with his hand as he looked up at her. There was something naggingly familiar about the redhead. They’d met before, he determined, but as demanding as his life had been, especially the past few months, what with Tess’s stalker, followed by his partner’s suicide, Donovan couldn’t imagine forgetting this woman.

  Although her eyes were hidden by an oversized pair of shades that reminded him of Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s , it was her fiery hair, pulled up into a messy knot atop her head, that rang a distant bell. He forced his mind to concentrate, to remember.

  Eventually, a hazy vision stirred. One of a fourteen year old with a mouthful of braces who’d surprised her older brother with a visit one long-ago winter vacation. A teen who’d been less than pleased to discover that she would be sharing that brother with an outspoken rookie cop.

  The friendship between the novelist and the patrolman only six weeks out of the police academy had begun purely by chance. Nate had been researching his second novel, and since his protagonist was a Portland patrolman, he had arranged to spend his nights in a cop ride-along program.

  After a week of boring, routine calls, they’d gotten involved in a hair-raising adventure. The high-speed chase of an armed robbery suspect, which made every police movie they had ever seen pale by comparison, had ended abruptly at a warehouse by the docks where the suspect took an elderly night watchman hostage.

  The standoff had gone on for hours before Donovan was able to convince his superiors that he had learned his way around every inch of this particular warehouse while working on the loading dock to put himself through Portland State.

  As dawn had broken on the horizon, his heart beating wildly and his body pumped with adrenaline, he’d crept stealthily through the shadows, ultimately freeing the watchman and apprehending the perpetrator, who’d still managed to put a twenty-two slug in Donovan’s shoulder before being handcuffed.

  The following week, the rookie cop had been rewarded with a departmental commendation, Nate had enough material for ten books, and the kid sister had returned to Orchid Island in a teenage huff.

  No. It couldn’t be her.

  “Lani?” he asked hesitatingly, still having problems processing the idea that this hot female could be Nate’s skinny, redheaded, smart-mouthed kid sister.

  “Got it on the first try. Congratulations. I was wondering how long it’d take for you to make the connection.”

  “How could I forget you?” he hedged, unwilling to admit that he hadn’t immediately recognized her. That admission would lead to the less-than-complimentary implication that Lani Breslin had changed dramatically over the past fifteen years.

  “How indeed?” she asked with a shake of her head. “Especially after I ruined your holidays.”

  “You weren’t that bad.�
�� Okay, that was a lie. She’d been a petulant pain in the ass even as he’d done everything humanly possible to welcome her to Portland.

  He’d offered to take her to the zoo on his day off, but she’d professed an allergy to wild animals. The Japanese Gardens were out, as was a Trailblazers’ game since she had no interest in basketball. And FYI, according to Nate’s sister, The Nutcracker , which he’d also suggested, despite having preferred to be zapped with his own Taser than spend a Sunday afternoon at the ballet, was for little kids.

  “Besides, it was only natural that you’d resent Nate spending so much time with a stranger after you’d flown all the way across the Pacific to be with him,” he said.

  “You don’t have to be so chivalrous, Donovan,” she said, waving away his attempt to excuse her behavior. “I was a brat. I’m surprised you didn’t toss me into the river.” A smile played at the corners of her full lips. “Especially when I crashed that intimate little New Year’s Eve party you and Nate had planned with those two hot Air France flight attendants.”

  “I thought about it a time or two,” Donovan was surprised to hear himself saying. He was always more circumspect, having learned to carefully weigh his words when he was a Portland patrolman because cops with runaway mouths weren’t very likely to rise through the ranks. And they damn well didn’t get invited to join the elite FBI. Which had been another of the reasons he’d gone along with Nate and Tess’s idea to come to the island. He’d hoped that the bright, tropical sunshine might burn off the fog dulling his brain.

  Lani didn’t appear to take offense. “What a relief to know that the outspoken Donovan Quinn I remember so well is lurking somewhere inside that funeral suit. I was afraid rubbing elbows with all those politicians and cable news talking heads might have ruined you.”

  “I haven’t changed that much,” he insisted, knowing it to be another lie. Sometimes lately, he found himself wondering if the rookie cop who had crawled through those dark and threatening shadows in that warehouse so many years ago even existed any longer. “I’m still just a cop.”