Island Conquest

by Brooke Hastings

  Chapter Six

  On Saturday morning, Daniel took Lani and Brian out to buy a car. He was exceptionally accommodating, merely reminding Lani that the car she selected must seat five adults comfortably, then leaving the choice up to her. Ultimately they agreed on a large Mercedes which handled easily while providing a smooth ride.

  "And the color, Mr. Reid?" The showroom manager had dismissed the salesman who had first approached them; Daniel seemed oblivious to his fawning manner, but then he was probably so accustomed to such treatment that he no longer noticed it.

  Lani motioned toward a blue model with fawn-colored upholstery. "That's a nice combination," she said.

  The manager looked uncomfortable. "I'm terribly sorry, Miss Douglas, but we only have this one in stock. And it's for another customer. He's coming in Monday to pick it up. I promise I'll have another one for you in less than two weeks."

  "We'll need the car immediately," Daniel said firmly. "I want Miss Douglas to spend the next week driving it, getting completely accustomed to it."

  "Perhaps you would take a demonstrator in the meantime?" the manager quickly offered. "They're all…"

  "I really don't care what color it is, Daniel," Lani cut in. She thought the entire discussion was silly. "I'll take whatever they have in stock."

  He ignored her comment completely, asking the manager, "The blue car, who's it for?"

  By now the man was perspiring lightly, his face twisted into a seemingly permanent worried frown. Even Lani recognized the name he murmured; Robert Bradley was another powerful Hawaiian businessman, like Daniel, a descendant of royalty and missionaries.

  Her stepbrother's nod was aristocratic. "I'll see what I can arrange. May I use your phone?" He didn't bother to wait for a reply, but simply strode into the man's office and took possession of his desk.

  Such lordly assertiveness was wholly outside Lani's experience, and she listened in bemusement as Daniel placed the call, cheerfully explaining the situation to the man on the other end of the line. "No," he was laughing, "I won't close the Maunalua Bay if you agree. But I'll have my stepsister give you a personal guided tour." There was a brief pause. "5'4", about a hundred pounds, dark auburn hair, blue eyes. She's spectacular, Rob." Daniel listened for several more moments, still smiling, then said, "Okay, Rob, you've got yourself a deal. Why don't you confirm it with Atkins?"

  He handed the phone to the manager, who emitted a stream of "Yes sirs," and "Thank you, sirs" and looked very relieved indeed when he hung up the phone.

  A short time later Lani was seated behind the wheel of her new car, following Daniel out of the parking lot. As she drove, she wondered just what kind of "deal" Robert Bradley had offered, and why her beauty or lack of it had come under discussion. Did Daniel really think she was "spectacular"? The thought was as potent as a caress.

  Unable to contain her curiosity, she pulled her car alongside Daniel's Mercedes in the garage, and blurted out through the open window, "What deal?"

  She was certain that his quizzical look was an affectation. "What deal?" he repeated, his eyebrows knitted together in apparent puzzlement.

  "With Robert Bradley. About the car!" Lani prompted.

  There was a lazy shrug before he opened the door and stepped out of the car, Brian behind him. "Oh, that deal. It's nothing much. He wants to spend the night with you in return for letting you have the car."

  "Daniel!" Of course he was teasing, and it was ridiculous of her to play into his hands by blushing like a schoolgirl.

  "He's taking you out to dinner two weeks from tonight, princess. Is that okay?" Even though Daniel had burst out laughing after her initial shocked reaction, Lani managed to forgive him.

  "As long as it's not dinner for two in his bedroom," she replied.

  Brian had begun to giggle, though Lani was quite sure that the conversation was miles above his head. Now Daniel chased him into the house, taking Lani's arm and saying in a dry tone, "The only way I'd let you alone with Rob in his bedroom is if he were either unconscious or tied up!"

  Lani saw almost nothing of Daniel after they finished lunch. He had secluded himself in his second-floor office, while she had taken Brian out to the tennis court and vollied the ball back and forth with him. Afterward they went for a walk on the beach, and Lani explained to her little brother that Daniel thought she should begin working the following week.

  "He does?" Brian was silent for several moments, then said, "Then you have to, if Daniel says so."

  "Do you mind, honey?"

  "Is Linda gonna take care of me?"

  Lani nodded. "Is that all right with you?"

  "She's nice." There was another pause. "Besides, if Daniel says so, then you'd better." As far as he was concerned, the matter was decided: Daniel was the boss, and his wishes were to be obeyed.

  If ever there was a strong male role model, Lani thought with amusement, it was Daniel Reid. It was probably just as well, little boys had a way of becoming difficult to handle as they grew up, and Daniel would keep Brian under firm control.

  It was late afternoon by the time they returned to the house; Daniel appeared in the kitchen just as they were sitting down to drink some lemonade. He was dressed in a dark dinner jacket, ruffled white shirt, and black tie, and looked so strikingly handsome that Lani had to keep her eyes on her drink or risk staring at him in amazement.

  "I've been drafted by an old friend as a substitute escort this evening," he told Lani. "It's a charity dinner-dance chaired by Elizabeth's mother, so she has to put in an appearance. Her date is stuck in Hong Kong on business. I really didn't plan to use my ticket, princess. I'm sorry."

  Lani seized upon a single word of the explanation. "Elizabeth?" she questioned.

  "Elizabeth Thomas. As in Prescott & Thomas. You'll meet her in two weeks. I mentioned a wedding the other day, remember? Her brother, Everett, is the one who's getting married." He held out a ten-dollar bill. "Take Brian out for burgers."

  "Inflation isn't that bad, yet," she joked, taking the bill from him. "Will you be late?"

  He shrugged. "There's a private party afterward. I suppose I'll have to go along to placate Elizabeth. Don't wait up for me." He lifted Brian up and stood him on the dinette chair to give him a hug. "Take care of your sister, superstar," he instructed.

  They spent a quiet evening in the library, Lani sorting through travel brochures and guide books while Brian watched his favorite shows on television. The child cajoled her into piggybacking him up the stairs, and as Lani carried him she told herself that he was becoming much too heavy for her to tote around this way. He wasn't a baby anymore, she thought sadly.

  Afterward she returned to the library with a cup of hot chocolate and outlined her plans for the following week. She would have to familiarize herself with the layout of the city streets and revisit the popular tourist attractions she had last seen as a child.

  It was one o'clock when she finally went up to bed, but there was no sign of Daniel. Only a few nights before he had remarked that people were accustomed to seeing him with beautiful women, "like Michi and Elizabeth." She wondered if the aristocratic Elizabeth Thomas was as stunning as Michi Hansen. Tommy Prescott had told her that his mother was a Thomas. Were marriages between the two families a common occurrence, and if so, was Daniel considering following in his cousin Richard's footsteps? For some reason, Lani found it a highly disagreeable idea.

  She tried to sleep, but succeeded in snatching only a series of fitful catnaps. She kept dreaming of Daniel embracing Elizabeth—whom she pictured as a red-lipped, black-haired temptress—and invariably jerked awake again.

  As the hours passed and there was no sound of a car in the driveway, Lani became increasingly disturbed. It was so late—suppose something terrible had happened to him? Like any resort area, Oahu had its share of tough characters who would find Daniel's oversized Mercedes a tempting target for mayhem. By three o'clock she resigned herself to worried sleeplessness, switched on her bedside lamp, and started to
read a paperback history of Hawaii.

  After an interminable half-hour, the glare of headlights made moving shadows on the walls of her dimly lit room. Lani threw back her covers and trotted to the staircase, oblivious to how much of her body was revealed by the baby doll pajamas she wore. After a minute the downstairs hall light was clicked on and Daniel came into view. He was clad only in navy blue trunks with a gold stripe down each side; around his neck was slung a damp towel, and over his arm he carried his shirt, suit and shoes.

  "I was worried about you!" Lani cried as he climbed the steps. "Do you know what time it is?"

  "I told you I'd be late." For some reason, Daniel seemed to be irritated by her presence. "Go to sleep, Lani."

  Lani refused to be intimidated by his domineering tone. She stood her ground until he reached the top, then told him, "All right, Mr. Reid. Then when I go out with Robert Bradley, I'll stay out as long as I want, and I won't call you no matter how late I'm going to be!"

  There was an exaggerated sigh. "Were you waiting up to join me? Because if you were, I don't care for your taste in nightclothes. You look like a little girl."

  "Unlike Elizabeth!" Lani felt like biting her tongue. Why on earth had she said that?

  She was further embarrassed by how much the comment seemed to amuse him. "Elizabeth doesn't sleep in anything," he said with a lazy smile. "Take my word for it… I know."

  "I'll bet you do!" Lani turned on her heel and stormed off into her room.

  But once she was alone in bed, a forlorn sigh escaped her lips. What was the use of pretending that she was anything but bitterly jealous of Elizabeth Thomas, Michi Hansen, and any other woman Daniel so much as looked at? Seven years had passed since she had last seen him in a bathing suit, but she remembered exactly how he had looked. There had been a certain boyishness to him that summer, a less threatening, more youthful masculinity. He had matured during the interim, and at thirty-two carried an aura of rugged male power that would have frightened her when she was fifteen. Now it both fascinated and aroused her.

  How would it feel to have those hands stroke her body, intimately caressing the most secret of places? To lie in bed next to him, without even the thinnest cloth barriers between them, pressed close together? She remembered their kiss only too well, and the way his tongue had probed her mouth, but now she was old enough to know that there were other parts of her body he could kiss as well. Would she enjoy that?

  Good heavens, how could she have pretended to herself all these years that she was anything but wildly and passionately in love with him? Her coldness was a defense mechanism, her taunts an unconscious attempt to provoke him into showing something besides aloof tolerance of her. It was obvious that he didn't return her feelings. How could he? She had caused him nothing but trouble since she was fifteen, rejecting his offers of help, spitting out sarcastic digs at his family, criticizing his company, and automatically disagreeing with every viewpoint he expressed. It was a miracle he had put up with as much as he had. Probably it was for Jonathan's sake.

  But what about now? Lani wondered. When Daniel teased her and smiled at her, was it because of some promise to his late father? Or did he really have some feelings for her? And even if he did, how could she possibly compete with a no-doubt enticing creature like Elizabeth Thomas, or the intelligent, beautiful Michi Hansen?

  After such a restless night, Lani was not surprised to wake up closer to lunch time than breakfast. She walked across the hall to Brian's room, found it empty, and glanced out the window overlooking the back of the house. Daniel and Brian were out on the tennis court; her stepbrother, laughing and trotting after the ball, showed no sign of the previous night's revels.

  By the time Lani dressed and went downstairs for something to eat, the tennis lesson was over and the two were in the kitchen drinking iced pineapple juice. Daniel suggested brunch at the Maunalua Bay Hotel and the food turned out to be as scrumptious as it was bountiful. Afterwards, he dropped Lani and Brian off at the beach on his way to the office, where he intended to spend the afternoon working.

  Over the next week, Lani found out that Daniel devoted far more than the usual eight hours per day to his job. He generally left for the office before she was even out of bed, usually preparing breakfast for Brian as well as himself. Although the child was up with the sun, he went down with it, too. To Lani's disappointment, however, there were no intimate evenings spent alone with Daniel.

  Frequently he was out at business meetings or civic functions; when he was home he would seclude himself in his study after dinner to work. Their only contact was at evening meals, and Brian was inevitably bursting to relate the day's events, thereby keeping the conversation innocuous and impersonal.

  It was a busy week for Lani. She obtained her local driver's license, stocked up on groceries, and gave the house a light cleaning. Then she began methodical preparations for her job as a tour guide. Each morning she and Brian set out to sightsee, Lani working her way through a list of attractions she felt she should visit. By Friday she was able to find her way around the area with little difficulty, in spite of the city's many one-way streets and dead ends. Each afternoon she took Brian to the beach, a reward for his good behavior on these morning expeditions.

  On Friday, Daniel flew to Hilo on the Big Island for a weekend conference; he did not return until Sunday night. Lani knew that Michi Hansen would be accompanying him, and wondered if the couple planned to mix pleasure with business. Jealousy gnawed at her as she pictured the two of them together.

  It might have been a tedious weekend save for Tommy Prescott's undemanding company. He had called on Friday night to invite Lani and Brian to join him for a coastal tour in his parents' cabin cruiser the next day. Lani offered to fix a picnic lunch, and early the next morning Tommy picked them up and drove them out to the marina near Ala Moana Park.

  They headed toward Diamond Head, cruising past the tall hotels and apartment houses which rose like concrete stalagmites out of the sands of Waikiki Beach, and rounding the gentle point of land holding the crater that got its name when nineteenth-century sailors mistook calcite crystals for precious diamonds. As the boat purred past the shores of the Kahala District, Lani automatically picked up Tommy's field glasses to look for Daniel's house. Although it was largely hidden by vegetation, the property had a substantial, important air about it—as befitted the millionaire who owned it, Lani thought sourly.

  Soon afterwards the Maunalua Bay Hotel came into sight, the building dominating the hillside upon which it rested. The view was an impressive one, with the emerald golf course providing a dramatic backdrop for the fifteen-story stone, steel and glass tower. They travelled around Koko Head Crater, cruised up the northeast side of the island, and then headed back.

  The picnic lunch was doubly delicious given the sunlit perfection of the weather and the calmness of the sea. Lani was happy and relaxed in Tommy's company, but couldn't help comparing him to his cousin. Whereas Daniel was mature, self-assured, and carried great responsibilities thoughtfully and gracefully, Tommy was still a basically hedonistic young man who had no greater goal in life than to amuse himself. He was aware that one day he would have to toe the mark, so for the next few years he wanted no commitments at all. Certainly he was amusing, but he was also rather juvenile.

  Linda Wong moved in on Monday, aided by her two wiry teenaged brothers. Lani's initial favorable impression was reconfirmed by the easy rapport Linda soon established with Brian. It was lovely to have some free time, and she took full advantage of it, driving over to the Ala Moana shopping center and purchasing half a dozen outfits she felt she would need for her new job, as well as a dress for Everett Thomas's wedding.

  Daniel had assured her that she needn't be apprehensive about attending the celebration. Still, a raft of Prescotts and Thomases would be present, as well as many of Hawaii's kamaainas—old-line, established citizens. Lani wanted to look her best; even with Daniel by her side she was bound to feel insecure in the company of suc
h people, who probably considered her an insignificant little mainland haole in spite of her position as Daniel's stepsister.

  Her ultimate choice was a classically simple Grecian-style gown in a cool mint-green that accentuated the flaming highlights in her hair. The ankle-length, full-skirted dress was wrapped at the waist and across the bodice with a gathered swath of material, which ended in a soft bow on one shoulder, leaving the other shoulder alluringly bare.

  Michi Hansen called late that afternoon, asking that Lani join her and the Mayakawas for dinner, in order to discuss an itinerary. Lani agreed to meet them at the entrance of the Koolau Room in the hotel.

  She put on one of the dresses she had purchased earlier in the day, a street length print with leaves and occasional rose-colored flowers against an off-white background. It had a pleated bodice, square neckline, and cinched belt, all of which made her look as delicate as the frangipani blossoms on her dress.

  Armed with guidebooks and brochures, Lani arrived at the hotel elevators just as Michi Hansen and the Mayakawas came walking down the corridor from the direction of the manager's office. By the time everyone was seated in the restaurant, they were chatting companionably in Japanese; Lani was relieved to find that she could keep up with the conversation. Although Mr. Mayakawa was fluent in English, his wife had never progressed beyond an introductory course in high school. Their manner was politely formal as they thanked her in advance for her services as a guide.

  Lani suggested a leisurely itinerary, aware that the couple's six year old daughter, presently in their suite with a babysitter, would be joining them when they went sight-seeing. Tuesday was reserved for a drive around the Honolulu area with stops at several popular attractions; Wednesday she planned a trip to the Polynesian Cultural Center on the north shore of Oahu; and Thursday Michi had arranged for a tour of Iolani Palace and a cruise to Pearl Harbor, where a relative of Mr. Mayakawa's had died in the war.