Sun Kissed

by JoAnn Ross

  Donovan was not nearly as surprised by the question as he might have been a few hours earlier. After hearing the story of Horatio, he had made the decision to simply go with the flow and not attempt to analyze anything having to do with this family whom he was beginning to remember being the most colorful he’d ever met. Which, having grown up with two workaholic, serious-minded parents, had left him envious of his best friend.

  “No. He turned out to be pretty reclusive. At least during the times I was there.”

  “I suppose I can understand that,” Kalena mused. “However, it’s not exactly the behavior you’d expect from a sea captain, now, is it? One would expect such a man to be far bolder and expansive.”

  They had reached a set of sliding doors that led to a flower-filled, glass-walled sunroom dominated by a towering Christmas tree covered with poinsettias and yet more white lights. At their arrival, an enormous orange cat sleeping on a bamboo chair lifted her head. Obviously deciding they weren’t worth the effort it would take to wake up, she closed her amber eyes and dismissed them by flicking her striped tail over her nose.

  “Lani!” A tall, silver-haired man—who gave Donovan the idea of what Nate would look like when he was older—rose from a wicker throne chair and came toward them, his tanned face wreathed in a welcoming smile. Backing up his daughter’s claim about casual dress being appropriate dinner attire, he was wearing a pair of drawstring white cotton pants, flip-flops, and a purple shirt printed with palm trees and coconuts.

  “You’re a vision of loveliness tonight,” Thomas Breslin said as he wrapped his arms around Lani in a bear hug, as if it had been months since he’d seen her. Lani had often thought that while she’d inherited her looks from her mother, her natural exuberance—which her last year in L.A. had nearly knocked out of her—had come from this man’s DNA.

  After he’d released her, his eyes narrowed thoughtfully. “I do believe I’ll paint you, my dear, wearing that very dress.” He rubbed his chin. “We’ll want the correct light, of course. Sunrise, I should think.” He nodded with satisfaction. “Definitely sunrise. It’ll bring out the fire in your hair.”

  “You know how much I adore you, Daddy,” Lani said, “but if you expect me to pose for you before noon, you’re crazy.”

  “Humph.” He turned his attention to Donovan. “What do you think?” he demanded. “Aren’t I right? She should be painted with the first fingers of dawn rising over her shoulder.”

  “And her titian hair blowing free in the wind, like a wayward sea sprite,” Donovan agreed.

  “Exactly.” Lani’s father leaned forward, lifting her hair in soft clouds that drifted over her bare shoulders.

  “Father,” she said sternly as she backed away, “that’s enough for now.” Lani was uncomfortable having the two men discuss her as if she were nothing more than some inanimate object he intended to paint. She’d seen her father look that same way at a pear. Or a tree. Or a fish, during his island marine life stage.

  “It’s good to see you again, Dr. Breslin,” Donovan said.

  “And you, my boy.” Having always been a toucher, Thomas ignored the outstretched hand, giving Donovan an effusive, one-arm guy lean-in hug that ended with three manly pats on the back. “You’ve stayed away too long.”

  “It’s been awhile,” Donovan agreed. “I’m afraid time got away from me while I found myself caught up in life.”

  “He’s become a workaholic,” Lani divulged.

  “Nate suggested that was the case when he and the lovely Tess were here for Thanksgiving,” Thomas said. “Well, we’ll just have to break you of unfortunate habits.” Lani watched a line etch its way across Donovan’s forehead and suspected he was getting tired of people criticizing his work.

  “Did you paint the woman in the airport?” he asked in a less-than-subtle attempt to shift the topic away from himself.

  “Saw the painting, did you?” Thomas said with obvious pride. “What did you think?”

  “I can honestly say I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  Lani hadn’t realized that she’d been holding her breath until she exhaled a sigh of relief and gave Donovan an appreciative smile.

  “I like this one,” Thomas announced. “Where have you been hiding him, Lani?”

  “Portland,” she answered absently, her eyes moving toward the draped easel in the corner. It was so big. Why couldn’t her father take up painting miniatures? “Nate sent him to me for Christmas.”

  Thomas nodded in much the same manner his wife had, on hearing the news. “Your brother always did have good taste in gifts… No peeking!”

  Thomas’s deep voice boomed suddenly, causing Lani to jerk her fingers away from the edge of the white sheet. “We’ll have the unveiling in due course. After dinner. A little suspense will heighten the appreciation. In the meantime, after you call your friend, why don’t you help your mother in the kitchen, my dear, while your young man and I discuss the merits of early morning light.”

  He put his arm around Donovan’s shoulder, leading him over to the pair of chairs. “Tallulah, it’s time for you to join the ladies in the kitchen,” he instructed firmly.

  The orange tabby opened one yellow eye and looked up at him, apparently unmoved by his request.

  “Come along, dear,” Kalena coaxed, “we’re having opakapaka baked in banana leaves tonight, and I saved back a bit of the fish fillet just for you.”

  She’d apparently said the magic word. The cat stretched in a slow, fluid movement, then jumped lightly onto the floor and followed the two women out of the room.

  “Tallulah’s a good girl,” Thomas said, watching the cat leave. “But stubborn. When she digs her claws in, she can give Lani a run for her money, and Lord knows, that one has been known to try a man’s patience from time to time.”

  Of that, Donovan had not a single doubt. “So you think of her as another daughter?” After what Lani had told him about Thomas Breslin’s desire for two sons and two daughters, if the man was off-center enough to consider Horatio the second son he’d never had, he assumed Lani’s father would think of the huge orange cat as an equal member of the family.

  “How crazy do you think we Breslin’s are?” Thomas’s face registered surprise. “While she may steadfastly refuse to admit it, Tallulah’s a cat.”

  4

  The art-unveiling dinner turned out to be what Lani told him was Hawaiian pink snapper, thin slices of gold potatoes, tomato, cabbage, pepper, carrots, herbs, and butter wrapped in banana leaves, then baked in a salted crust.

  Using a silver hammer, Thomas cracked the crust open with a decidedly theatrical flair. As he unwrapped the banana leaves, the rich, herb-fragrant steam that escaped caused Donovan’s appetite, which had been missing in action for weeks, to spike.

  “This is delicious,” he said after taking a bite from the plate put in front of him. His taste buds, which had also been on hiatus, were practically doing the tango on his tongue.

  “I’m glad you’re enjoying it,” Kalena said with a warm smile.

  “I definitely am.” And wasn’t that an understatement? It was all Donovan could do not to lick his plate.

  “Mother’s a fabulous cook,” Lani said. “Just wait until you taste her kalua pulled pork at the Christmas luau.”

  “Luau?”

  “After the parade,” Thomas told him. “We roast the pig underground, with stones, right here on the beach. It’s an Orchid Island tradition you won’t want to miss.”

  “I don’t want to intrude.”

  “That would be difficult,” Lani said. “Since practically the entire island shows up for the dinner show.”

  “Lani’s one of the dancers,” Kalena said.

  That got Donovan’s attention. “Are you talking hula?”

  “Not the tourism kind with the grass skirt and bikini top you’re thinking,” Lani said.

  “I wasn’t thinking anything.”
Like hell he wasn’t.

  “It’s a kahiko hula,” Lani told him, with just enough of a smirk to let him know he’d been busted. “The old style with chants and drums, before it became westernized with ukes, steel guitars, and cheesy lyrics.”

  “Some of the newer songs are quite nice,” Kalena said.

  “True. But the kahiko is not only more authentic, it’s also, in my humble opinion, much more entertaining,” Thomas said. “They all tell a story. Mostly of local legends. You’ll enjoy it.”

  “You also have to come to the parade,” Lani insisted. “Daddy, of course, is always grand marshal, given that he’s technically royalty.”

  “Only because my great-grandmother married into a branch of the old Hawaiian royal family,” Thomas said with what Donovan took to be the same genuine humility that he’d recognized in Nate, even as his friend’s publishing career had taken off like a comet. “I only accepted the position because islanders keep voting to maintain tradition, but it’s not like I ever declare edicts or make laws.”

  “Although I’ve never seen you turn down the opportunity to ride on that head float. And throw the year’s biggest luau,” Lani said with an indulgent smile. That she loved her family was more than apparent. That they loved her back equally so. Which had Donovan thinking of the strained call he’d be having on December twenty-fifth with his own parents.

  As appealing as watching Lani doing any kind of hula would be, Donovan would prefer going skinny-dipping with sharks to attending what he suspected was going to be a noisy, crowded beach bash. But hot shot detective that he was, he’d already determined that Lani wouldn’t let him spend the day alone in Nate’s beach cottage, eating a frozen turkey dinner and watching some TV bowl game. Also, he didn’t want to risk offending Kalena and Thomas Breslin by not taking them up on their invitation.

  “Sounds like fun,” he said. Right behind having a root canal.

  * * *

  The night gleamed silver and black velvet, as stars glistened in an ebony sky and a gentle rain drifted down from indigo clouds scudding across the moon. The intoxicating scent of plumeria, frangipani, and night-blooming jasmine floated on the warm Pacific breeze as sand sparkled like diamonds underfoot.

  “I really like your family,” Donovan said as he and Lani returned down the beach after dinner.

  “They like you, too.”

  “Even Horatio?” The dog hadn’t left Donovan’s side the entire time he was at the house.

  “Especially Horatio.”

  “You were pulling my leg with that bit about him being the other son your father never had, weren’t you?”

  Her eyes sparkled as brightly as the stars overhead as she looked up at him. “Guilty,” she admitted, a runaway smile quirking the corners of her lips. “But I had you going for a moment, didn’t I?”

  “More than a moment. You should have seen your father’s face when I asked him if he thought of Tallulah as his daughter.”

  “You did not!”

  “I did,” Donovan said. “Causing your father to look at me as if I’d lost my mind.”

  “I told you not to mention it to him,” Lani reminded him. “But you needn’t worry. My father’s a very tolerant man.”

  The warm water lapped against their legs as they waded in the foaming surf. She’d been secretly pleased when Donovan had taken off his loafers to join her. Sometime during the day Lani had decided to make Donovan Quinn her new project. She would, she vowed, teach him to relax and learn to enjoy the simpler things in life. And if that included some bumping of happy parts, so much the better.

  “And of course my brother thinks you walk on water.”

  “The feeling’s mutual. I’ve been a fan of his ever since he rode with me researching The Haunting of Hannah Grimm .”

  “My brother has a great many fans. He’s choosier about his friends. He has to be.”

  During those times she’d visited Nate in California, Lani had watched so many insincere industry people fawning over him. Movie studio executives, who saw a gold mine in his vastly popular occult novels, along with starlets, would-be starlets, and established stars, all wanting to be seen out and about with the country’s hottest novelist.

  Then there were all those entrepreneurs wanting licensing rights for everything from the she-wolf vampire dolls to a Day-glo poster series depicting the savagely avenging spirits of a fictional California serial killer’s victims.

  Eventually, Nate had left California for Oregon. Which, in turn, had led him to Tess Lombardi.

  The ironic thing was that before things had come tumbling down around her, Lani had gradually slid into that Tinseltown mentality. The entire life-changing event had begun during one of those visits to her brother during the filming of one of his novels for which he’d also written the screenplay.

  It was at the Sony studio in Culver City, that she’d met a producer of Jeopardy! , which just happened to be not only America’s favorite game of answers and questions, but hers, as well. After attending a taping, when asked how she had enjoyed the show, Lani had offered a hesitant opinion that the audience, as well as the contestants, was capable of enjoying a wider range of questions. Questions that required additional thought, more depth.

  To Lani’s astonishment, the producer had invited her to apply as a researcher, which included taking the same test as potential contestants. Passing with flying colors, she’d been hired. Then promoted to a writer less than a year later. Three years after that, she’d been plucked from TV obscurity by a top producer known for over-the-top reality shows.

  The concept of Beauty Tames the Beast was for a cast of beautiful women to instruct hottie blue-collar guys (who, each week would find various contrived reasons to appear without shirts) on various social graces, such as wardrobe, grooming, and planning romantic dates for the beauties. Each week there would be two tests, and at the end of the episode, the home audience would vote for which hunks had shown enough potential to continue on for another week.

  It had, admittedly, been a long way from Masterpiece Theater , but as a rule, in real life, the participants were actually nicer and more intelligent than some of the editing showed. The best part had been creating challenges that would not only entertain but give the men skills they could take back home to the real world. What woman wouldn’t love a man to surprise her with a romantic breakfast in bed? One he’d actually made with his two manly hands. Or who could actually discuss, with some authority, the topics of love, class, family, and self-deception in Pride and Prejudice ?

  With the exception of a few male reviewers—whom she’d always suspected were secretly jealous of the hottie cast of firemen, cops, cowboys, fishermen, construction workers, mechanics, and even a movie stuntman—most of the entertainment press recognized Beauty as bringing a level of intelligence and behavior not often found in the typical, overly voyeuristic reality-programming genre.

  The show also earned an Emmy nomination, and although it ended up losing to The Amazing Race , wearing a designer gown and borrowed jewels for the awards show red carpet had made Lani feel like Cinderella. Sans the Prince Charming, since her brother had been her date.

  Hired as a junior producer, her actual duties had been that of a contestant wrangler, which she’d enjoyed and had made her feel like a mother hen to a clutch of chicks. Although she’d been too busy working to have time for any serious romantic relationships, if she spent an evening sitting home with a good book, as she usually did, it was by choice, not because of a lack of opportunity.

  Eventually, she’d come to realize that her friendships would wax and wane according to her success. In the beginning, those on the rungs above her hadn’t noticed her existence, while others who’d been struggling along with her during those early days had drifted away as her star had begun to rise.

  After one particularly unsavory public
incident, which had been edited out of Beauty , Lani had realized how badly her life had slipped out of control. Which was when she’d jumped off that glittery hamster wheel and returned to Orchid Island, reuniting with her old friends, and picking up relationships as if she’d never been away.

  “I’m choosy about my friends, as well,” he said mildly, breaking into her thoughts about how the smartest thing she’d ever done was to return home. “In my business, I have to be.”

  With that point silently acknowledged, Lani decided to change the subject. “You don’t have to keep the painting,” she said. “That was a dirty trick.”

  “Giving it to me as a welcome-to-Orchid-Island gift?” He surprised her with a boyish grin that showed off amazing dimples and had her wanting to jump him on the spot. An impulse she resisted. “I thought it was inspired.”

  She laughed, enjoying the moment. Enjoying him. “It was the only thing I could think of. The minute I saw it, I knew I’d simply die if I had to hang it on my wall.” She shook her head. “I do wish my father would get over his Picasso period. At least in the old days, his subjects bore some slight resemblance to reality.”

  “I’ve also no idea what it’s supposed to be,” Donovan admitted. Since it was too large to carry, they’d left the brilliant orange-and-red abstract oil painting at the Breslin house. Thomas had promised to have it delivered to the cottage the following day.

  “It’s supposed to depict the legend of Kealehai.”

  “I’m still lost.”

  “It’s one of our island’s most popular stories,” she said. “One day, Kealehai, an ancient goddess of fire who lives in Mt. Waipanukai’s volcano, decided to take on a human form and walk among the people. When she reached a beach on the far side of the island, a great ceremony was taking place to honor the eighteenth birthday of Taranga, who was not only a prince of the royal family but had been given the gifts of male beauty and charm by the goddesses who’d attended his birth. As Kealehai watched the festivities, she became captivated by him. Not only was he a stunningly beautiful young man, Taranga was the best dancer she’d ever seen.”