Sun Kissed

by JoAnn Ross

  Donovan frowned. “That’s what my ex-wife said. Right before she pointed out all the social disadvantages of my being nothing but a street cop.”

  Stunned by the intrusion of another woman into the conversation, Lani picked up her mug, staring into the dark brown depths as if the cooling liquid held inordinate interest for her.

  “You were married?”

  “For six months.”

  Lani had to ask. “How long have you been divorced?”

  Donovan didn’t want to talk about Kendall. Just thinking about his former wife gave him a sour taste in his mouth. “A long time. Her family and mine were friends and we married while I was still in pre-med. So, understandably, she assumed she was going to be a doctor’s wife. She walked out the day I entered the police academy instead of medical school.”

  “So, you weren’t married when we first met?” Donovan and Nate had spent so many off hours together, Lani thought surely a wife would have come up.

  “We were separated and she’d already filed for divorce. I didn’t blame her for feeling as if she’d had a bait-and-switch pulled on her.”

  “Her loss,” Lani mused. “Why were you in pre-med in the first place?”

  “Because that’s what people in my family do.”

  “Excuse me? What does that mean?”

  “You know how back when Catholics had lots of kids, every family seemed to give at least one to the Church as a priest or nun?”

  “That was before my time,” Lani said. “But we Breslins have had our share of priests and nuns in our family tree. But what does that have to do with you and medicine?”

  “I didn’t feel I had a choice.”

  “Donovan,” Lani said, still uncomprehending, “of course you had a choice.”

  “Not really. Since I was an only child, it was up to me to carry on the Quinn tradition. My father’s a neurosurgeon who invented some special brain stent that made him wealthier than he already was from family money. My mother’s a psychiatrist, who, when I decided to attend the police academy instead of medical school, tried to put me on anti-depressants because she couldn’t believe I was thinking clearly.”

  He’d also turned down the meds after Matt’s suicide. While Donovan wasn’t against better living through pharmaceuticals, he just hadn’t believed either situation called for them.

  He hadn’t not gone to med school because he’d been depressed, but because he’d started meeting a lot of cops while volunteering his senior year at PSU in the ER. And although he’d admittedly been hit hard by burnout and his partner’s death, just being here with Lani proved that he’d only needed a break. By the time the new year arrived, he’d be back to fighting shape.

  Bored with talking about himself, which had never been one of his favorite things to do, he lifted her wrist to his lips and pressed a light kiss against her skin scented with the lotion she’d obviously put on this morning.

  “You taste so good. I don’t think I’m ever going to get enough of you. Come back to bed with me, Lani.”

  “As tempting as that is, I need to finish the tile in the bathroom. And, if I have time, patch your roof.”

  “Those things can wait. I seem to have been struck with the aloha spirit and want to spend the day with my wahine.”

  Lani couldn’t think of anything she’d rather do. “What if it rains and your roof leaks?”

  He shrugged uncaringly. “I’ve got that little problem all solved.”

  She lifted a russet brow. “Don’t tell me that you’re going to fix the roof?”

  “Of course not. If there’s one thing my work has taught me to be, it’s a good administrator. And a good administrator always delegates.”

  “Delegates?”

  “If it rains while we’re making love, I’m delegating you to the top position.”

  “Gee, thanks,” she drawled.

  He pressed his hand against the back of her head, pulling her forward for an intense, explosive kiss. Stars glittered and spun on a backdrop of black velvet behind Lani’s eyes, and she could have sworn she felt the distant rumbling of Mt. Waipanukai. But that was impossible, she told herself as her hands clutched Donovan’s shoulders tightly. The volcano that had once served as Kealehai’s home was now extinct.

  “Wow,” Lani murmured, tilting her head back to stare into his storm-filled blue eyes. “I think I feel an earthquake coming on.”

  “I feel it, too,” Donovan agreed with a slow, inviting smile. “And as much as I’d love for us to make Richter scales go crazy all over the South Pacific, I need to go check out some stuff.”

  “Now?”

  “You’re the one who asked me to help find Britton,” he reminded her. “I’d much rather stay here and rock the island with you.”

  “Later,” she said on a long sigh. “I am worried about Ford. Even more so now that you believe the FBI’s involved in whatever has happened to him.”

  “Later,” he agreed reluctantly. “What’s the name of the police chief on the island?”

  “Manny Kanualu.”

  “I think I’ll pay Chief Kanualu a little visit.” Donovan rubbed his jaw. “Professional courtesy, and all that. And afterward, I’ll check out The Blue Parrot, since that’s where Ford supposedly hung out.”

  “Taylor’s telling the truth about that,” Lani said. “Call me when you’ve left the police station, and I’ll meet you there.”

  “Sorry, sweetheart, but this is something I need to do alone. Not that you’re not an intelligent woman, but I’ve spent more time questioning people than you have. You wouldn’t want to tip any bad guys off, would you?”

  “Of course not. But what am I supposed to do while you play cops and robbers?”

  “You can always finish up my tile,” he suggested.

  Lani’s answer was a brief, pungent curse.

  16

  “Well? Where’s your young man?” Margaret’s bright eyes observed Lani with interest.

  “He’s on his way to the police station. Then some sleazy waterfront bar for thrills and adventure,” she muttered grumpily. “And he’s most definitely not my young man.”

  The elderly woman chuckled. “Try telling that to him,” she advised. “And while you’re at it, would you care to explain why even the mention of Donovan Quinn makes you blush?”

  “This isn’t a blush,” Lani insisted. “I never blush.”

  “Of course you don’t,” Margaret agreed knowingly.

  “It’s this room; it’s like a rain forest in here.”

  The purple head bobbed. “It is nice, isn’t it?” Margaret’s pleased gaze circled the room, enjoying the colorful display of tropical plants.

  Recognizing her chance, Lani changed the subject to her grandmother’s ingenious green thumb. For the next five minutes they discussed the spectacular crimson blooms of the royal poinciana, the lacy pink and white shower trees, and a new night-blooming cereus Margaret had acquired and had high hopes for.

  Unfortunately, Lani was soon to discover that her reprieve was only temporary. With the tenacity of a bull terrier worrying a particularly succulent bone, Margaret deftly returned the conversation to its initial topic.

  “You and Donovan are lovers, aren’t you?”

  Knowing her grandmother’s penchant for speaking her mind, Lani tried not to take offense at the forthright question.

  “Really, Tutu,” she protested with a weak smile, “that’s a very personal question.”

  Margaret tilted the Belleek shamrock teapot, filling their cups. “It doesn’t matter. If you haven’t made love yet, which, I’d bet my Golden Globe that you already have, there was enough electricity between the two of you to set this entire island on fire.”

  “There’s no future for me with Donovan Quinn.”

  Still-bright eyes, sparkling with intelligence, looked straight into Lani’s. “Are you telling me that you’re not going to take
him as a lover because he hasn’t promised you fifty years of married bliss?”

  She made it sound so easy, Lani mused. And why not? She had no doubt that if her grandmother had found herself in Lani’s position, she would have reached out for whatever Donovan had to offer with both hands. Margaret Breslin lived for the moment. In that respect, Lani had believed that the two of them had shared a lot in common as she, herself, had breezed through the past few years taking one sun-filled day at a time.

  It was coming as a distinct surprise to discover that she was not quite as carefree and impulsive as she had thought. Somehow, when no one was looking, the no-nonsense, practical stock of Thomas Breslin’s New England whaling ancestors had slipped into the family’s gene pool, ultimately ending up in her.

  “I’m not like you, Tutu. Yes, you undoubtedly had love affairs over the years. But you had one grand passion in your life, which resulted in my father. And when that relationship was over and Palmer Winfield dutifully returned to his wife, the automobile heiress, you threw yourself into your work and never looked back. No recriminations, no regrets.”

  The sudden rattling of the delicate china cup against the saucer captured her attention, and Lani was appalled to realize that her hands were trembling.

  Margaret sat up on the peacock throne chair, her elderly spine as erect as if someone had slipped a rod of cold steel down the back of her lace dress.

  “I take back what I said about you being bright,” she shot back, her eyes blazing. “You’re a fool if you don’t think I had regrets. Recriminations? My God, I loved Palmer—I adored the ground that man walked on. I thought I was going to wither up and die when he left me.”

  For just a fleeting moment, as Lani observed her grandmother with surprise, she was able to see the young woman who’d obviously experienced many of the same unsettling feelings that Lani herself was currently suffering.

  “But you didn’t.”

  “No. As you already pointed out, I had my work. And of course, I had your father.”

  She reached out and covered Lani’s hand with her own beringed one. Blue veins crisscrossed the back of Margaret’s hand, but her still-soft skin was the color of gardenias, free of the age spots so many of her contemporaries suffered. As Lani lifted her gaze to her grandmother’s face, she thought how the former Hollywood sex goddess was still a remarkably beautiful woman.

  “Don’t let the mistakes of the past stop you from loving, darling,” she said with a sudden, almost desperate urgency. “I’m old enough to have known a great many men. Donovan is one of the good ones. I know it in my heart. And unlike Palmer, he isn’t married.”

  “Donovan is different,” Lani agreed quietly. “He’s like no one I’ve ever known, and when I’m with him, I feel like a different person… No,” she said, “that’s not it. I do still feel like myself. Just better. More fulfilled.”

  Comprehension dawned in Margaret’s eyes. “You’re in love with him.”

  “No. I don’t know. It’s so fast… But maybe I am,” Lani admitted.

  Avoiding her grandmother’s sharp gaze, Lani shifted her attention outside the glass walls, toward a scarlet cardinal that was perched on a twisted branch of a pandanus tree, seeking shelter from the slanting silver drops.

  “Would that be so bad, Lani?” Margaret asked gently. “What’s the worst that can happen?”

  “You really want to know?” Lani’s eyes were burning with tears she refused to shed. “What if Donovan falls in love with me?”

  “I can think of worse fates.”

  “What if he wants to get married?”

  “I’ll dance at your wedding,” Margaret said without missing a beat.

  She didn’t understand, Lani thought miserably. “Can you see me living in Portland? Or following my husband around from posting to posting? Doing whatever it is FBI agents’ wives do? I’ve lived off island. While it was fun for a time, looking back, I realized that like seemingly everyone else there, I was playing a role that wasn’t a good fit for me. Like if you’d been cast in the Faye Dunaway role in Bonnie and Clyde .”

  “If I’d been younger, I would have rocked that screenplay.”

  “I’ve not a single doubt.” But it would have been an entirely different movie. And that was Lani’s point.

  “I enjoyed many parts of my work,” she allowed. “I liked researching and writing questions. It was like changing to a new major every day. I liked taking care of the Beauty contestants. But at the end of the day, I was never truly happy. Nowhere near the way I am here. I don’t want to ever do that again. Not even for Donovan.”

  Margaret didn’t argue. “Then he’ll simply have to move here, dear,” she said calmly.

  Would that it was that easy. Lani was well aware that all of them, herself included, lived in a fantasy land of their own making. Her grandmother, along with her mother, brother, and yes, even her father, had created this special world by their artistic efforts. Citizenship in the magic realm had been Lani’s birthright.

  But Donovan was only a visitor here. When his vacation was over, he’d be returning to the harsh world of reality. Alone.

  “Well,” she said as she got up to leave, “we’ll never know what Donovan would do, will we? Because I’d couldn’t ask him to give up something he’s worked his entire life to achieve. So it’s a moot point.”

  She bent down and kissed her grandmother’s weathered cheek. “Thanks for the tea, Tutu. It was delicious, as usual.”

  Margaret beamed. “Wasn’t it? If you weren’t already destined to be with your detective, I’d spend whatever time I have left fixing you up with Kai. He’s going to do wonders with our tea farm and will need a special woman with your imagination to be a partner in the project.”

  “It’s going to be wonderful.”

  As she drove back to Nate’s beach house, Lani also considered how it was that a woman in her nineties could remain so focused on her future, while Lani, herself, was wearing blinders, limiting herself only to the present.

  But if that’s all she could have…

  She was debating her and Donovan’s situation when the rain suddenly stopped as if turned off at a tap, and a rainbow appeared over the rising green ramparts, painting the sky with bold strokes of colors.

  As the vivid, sun-kissed arc banished clouds of despair, Lani vowed to grasp this positive feeling and hold on to it. Because whatever her future held, sunshine or showers, she was going to enjoy the moment.

  17

  Donovan was aware of Lani the instant she entered the waterfront dive. Every head in the place swiveled in her direction as she stood in the doorway, allowing her eyes to become accustomed to the dim light. When she finally located Donovan, she smiled and crossed the room to the bar and climbed up on the empty stool next to him.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” he asked beneath his breath.

  “Having a drink with you,” she murmured back. “I’ll have a mai tai,” she said, raising her voice to give her order, and a dazzling smile, to the bartender.

  “I don’t remember giving you permission to come here.”

  “No surprise, since I don’t recall asking for permission,” she said easily, thanking the bartender with yet another of those siren smiles as the man with colorful ink sleeves and a prison teardrop tattoo beneath his left eye placed the drink in front of her.

  “That glass probably hasn’t been washed in a month,” Donovan warned as she took a sip of the cool rum drink.

  “That’s all right,” she answered as she was obviously fighting back choking on the fruit and rum drink. “There’s enough alcohol in here to kill any bacteria that might be foolhardy enough to stick around.”

  “Speaking of foolhardy—”

  Lani placed a placating hand on his arm. “Don’t be mad. I really did try to stay away. I even went up to my grandmother’s house. But I couldn’t stop thinking of you h
ere. Alone. Possibly in danger.”

  He shook his head as he lifted the longneck beer bottle to his lips. He’d learned long ago that when forced to drink in places like The Blue Parrot, it was safest to stick to beer. “So you decided to make things dangerous for both of us. Makes sense to me.”

  “I’m a woman of many interests,” she reminded him. “Along with my eclectic college education, I also happen to have a second-degree brown belt in judo.”

  “Good for you.” It was admittedly impressive. It also showed a dedication to study that didn’t surprise him. But there were also cases when a little knowledge could be a dangerous thing. And this could well end up one of them. “So when was the last time you used your judo skills in a real life-and-death situation?”

  “Taylor’s right,” she muttered, which answered his question. “You are mean. All I wanted to do was to be with you. Do you have any idea how bad I’d feel if you suddenly disappeared like Ford?”

  “I’m not going to take off and leave you without saying good-bye, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

  “But you are leaving.” Damn. Lani could have bitten off her tongue as the incautious words escaped her lips. It was the rum. She’d always thought places like this watered their drinks. Then again, when you were pouring the equivalent of kerosene, you probably had a better profit margin.

  Apparently sensing her discomfort, Donovan softened his tone. “You knew all along I have to go back to Portland.”

  “For goodness’ sake, Donovan, there you go again, taking things too seriously.” Her desperate green eyes circled the room, not pausing to light anywhere.

  “This is so much fun,” she gushed with feigned gaiety. “I feel just like Castle and Beckett. With you being Beckett, of course. If she were male. Which, of course, she wouldn’t be, because then it would be an entirely different program.” Cue the babbling. What did this man do to her brain?

  Donovan was watching her carefully. “Lani—”

  Lani refused to acknowledge the concern in his steady gaze, knowing that to do so would prove her downfall. “Have you found out anything about Ford?”