by Annie O'Neil
Logging the thought and shelving it, Lulu pulled out a temperature gun and held it to Jamie’s forehead. “Hands up!” she commanded playfully.
Once again, the little boy did try to play along as she took his temperature. It was up by a degree. Nothing serious, but something to keep an eye on. It was also a reason not to apply hydrocortisone cream straight away. That course of antibiotics was looking more and more likely.
“Is he going to have to go to the hospital?” asked the boy’s father. “Our flights are first thing tomorrow morning, and if he needs extensive treatment I’m going to have to talk to the airlines. I heard you’re meant to, you know...” the father lowered his voice “...urinate on the injury.”
Lulu wrinkled her nose. “Luckily, that’s a myth.”
“Of course.” He gave a nervous laugh. “I knew that. I was just confirming it for my wife.”
His wife threw him a chastening look.
“Hey, chief!” Casey called from the side of the boat, where she was standing at the ready. “Need a stretcher?”
Lulu eyed the water depth, ever-increasing. Her very tall brother could have carried the boy. With one hand. All of her brothers could. It was like being related to five Jason Momoas or The Rocks. Tattoos... Muscles to spare... And more than enough attitude to circle the entire island group.
They constantly teased Lulu for her diminutive stature, insisting she’d been adopted because of her much smaller frame—which had, early on, earned her the nickname Mini-Menehune. She didn’t know how many times she’d bellowed at them to take it back, telling them that, at five foot two, she was volumes taller than the island’s mythical dwarves. Besides, she didn’t have magical powers. If she did they’d know all about it.
These days when they Mini-Menehune’d her she just rolled her eyes. She’d made her stature work for her the same way they’d made theirs work for them. No one was better in an earthquake or collapse rescues than she was.
Boo-yah!
“A stretcher would be great,” she said, and Casey began climbing over the edge of the boat with one.
They both knew the family’s safety was more important than pride. They quickly transferred Jamie, then Robbie, and then the parents. Another quick boat ride and they were back at the OSR dock. A man they didn’t recognize was waiting on the dock with a wheelchair.
The closer they got, the more Lulu’s spine pulled up to attention. He was looking out at them with an unsmiling face. That wasn’t what had her attention, though.
He was drop-dead gorgeous.
Frowning possibly made him even sexier. He was tall. Not as tall as her brothers, but he definitely would clock in at six foot something. Athletic... The lean variety as opposed to her brothers’ bodybuilder aesthetic. Amazing blue eyes that could easily put a girl in a trance. Cheekbones begging for some fingertips to run the length of them. Chestnut-colored hair... Not sun-kissed... So a haole. A haole wearing an OSR jacket.
A wash of horror swept through her.
The grumpy hottie was the new boss.
She knew he was coming. Had known it for weeks. They all had. But...kind of like the mythical dwarves...she’d never entirely, actually believed he would come.
She forced on a smile and waved. “Aloha!”
Ew! That had been high-pitched. She didn’t dare look at the rest of the crew, because she could feel them staring at her with What kind of weird voice was that? in their eyes.
He did that chin-lift thing guys did when they chose actions over words and didn’t answer—which was rude. His eyes narrowed as if inspecting her for flaws.
A weird urge to rattle them all off for him seized her. She wasn’t in regulation uniform. They shouldn’t have taken this call. They should’ve left someone back at base. They should’ve locked the office. She should’ve done the towering pile of paperwork sitting in the in tray.
There were also the more personal flaws. Her hair was probably mental. She chose gut reactions against by-the-book reactions. She hated peas. Probably could’ve eaten more vegetables in general. And there was always room for improvement in her flossing routine.
Bah!
Woulda...shoulda...coulda...
They’d saved this family from drowning. That was what mattered.
So she kept her smile bright, and waited for a response to her cheery island greeting other than a frown.
His bright sapphire-blue eyes scanned her, then flashed with an unchecked hit of warning when their eyes met. She fought the tiniest of trembles and turned it into a careless shrug. Their dueling I see you stares changed into something else. Something every bit as heated but...different. Like butterflies in her stomach. That kind of different.
Which was entirely unprofessional and made any I’m right, you’re wrong posturing completely evaporate along with her high-pitched aloha.
She couldn’t have the hots for him. No way.
Not for a haole. Not for someone who was this frowny and bereft of manners. And definitely not for a boss who had yet to say hello.
Hmmph.
From the thinning of his irritatingly sensual mouth, it was looking like someone needed a little lesson on island greetings.
She jumped onto the dock the second they pulled up and gave him a jaunty salute. Maybe he was ex-military, like their last chief.
He didn’t salute back.
Okay. Whatever. She still wasn’t going to let his whole stoic I can play statues better than you can thing unnerve her. Unlike the last boss man, this one was going to know that Lulu Kahale was a force to be reckoned with.
“Aloha,” she said again, lifting her hand into the shaka sign. “Lulu Kahale. Acting crew chief at your service.”
“Zach Murphy,” he said, without returning the shaka. “You’re grounded. I’ll take over from here.”
CHAPTER TWO
ZACH MIGHT AS well have pressed an “erupt” button on the island’s volcanoes for all the tension there was in the air. Or maybe it was the tropical heat he was pretty sure he’d never get used to. Either way, he was uncomfortable.
Hell.
He’d wanted to make an impression when he arrived here at the station. A bad one, however, had not been the goal. And this one was about as bad as it got.
Before he’d even met her, Lulu Kahale had managed to crawl right under his skin. Which took some doing. Now that he had met her, he knew his instincts had been spot-on.
Beautiful. Proud. Brimming with unchecked energy. She was a force of nature. More hurricane than rainbow at this exact moment. Although even that barely disguised sneer of hers didn’t detract from her striking aesthetic. It might even be illuminating it.
Pitch-black hair he bet mimicked an oil slick when it was fanned out on a pillow. Liquid eyes that looked like molten gold. Lips so full and soft that a dangerous image of what they’d look like bruised from kisses temporarily blinded him.
He rubbed his thumbs in his eyes, refocused his brain and forced himself to pour the energy she was pulling from him back into the task at hand.
Even so, as he took the boy from one of the crew’s arms and placed him in the wheelchair, Zach was giving himself invisible punches in the face.
His parents had warned him. Hawaiians do things differently. There’s another way of getting things done out here. And, more pressingly, Don’t expect things to run by the same book they did back in New York.
They’d got that right.
Rescue crews were extraordinary people. They willingly dove headfirst into scenarios most humans were genetically programmed to flee. Dangerous ones. Fires. Floods. Cliff edges. The whole damn ocean. They didn’t deserve coddling, but they certainly deserved respect.
That ethos had been the key to managing the fire rescue medical teams he’d helmed back in New York. Gratitude combined with one crystal-clear edict: no bending the rules. Ever.
They weren’t part of Hawaii’s famous Ocean Safety Team. This crew was more...off radar. They went a step beyond. Took the rescues the OST weren’t trained for. Belayed into the steepest ravines to find hikers who’d lost their way. Dove out of helicopters into a stormy ocean to find surfers sucked out to sea by the powerful currents. And countless other scenarios. In short, they risked life and limb to save other people’s.
His new bosses, based back on the mainland, had drilled a second message into him when granting his three-month mandatory probation. One that had been ringing in his head from the moment he’d accepted the job. Funding for Oahu Search and Rescue would only continue if everything was shipshape. From what he’d seen so far, it most assuredly wasn’t.
He needed this job. He needed it as much as he needed the heart that beat in his chest. The heart that beat in his son’s. They were both battered and bruised and they were relying on this new start more than he could put into words. So, yeah...
When he’d arrived at the office and found no one there, the door wide open and an overflowing tray of weeks-old paperwork, then eagle-eyed the crew returning, half in regulation gear, half very definitely not, he’d seen red. They weren’t just compromising his professional future with this slapdash approach. They were compromising everyone’s health and safety. And that was unacceptable.
If this had officially been his first day, he’d have been halfway through reading this woman the riot act. This... Lulu.
For the first time ever he felt as if his perfectly appropriate anger was hobbled.
Shouting at Lulu would feel like shouting at a happy-go-lucky puppy. Between his gut and the vibes she was arrowing straight at his jugular, he knew shouting would only turn things from bad to worse.
One eyebrow lifted in an imperious arc, she shifted from one hip to the other, droplets of water glistening on the high-cut arch of her wetsuit where her hip met her thigh. Caramel-colored thighs that should very definitely be hidden behind regulation board shorts or a knee-length wetsuit. Not this...this body-hugging short wetsuit that swept up and along her curves to her heart-shaped face.
Those flame-licked amber eyes were unblinking as she maintained her gaze on him, pulled some lip balm from who knew where and swept it along first her upper lip, then her lower, as if preparing for battle.
He felt as if they were speaking to him. Her lips. Begging him to kiss the disdain away. Turn it into something sweeter.
Or maybe the heat had officially sent him tropical.
He threw some imaginary cold water on his head.
He’d thought he was immune to “drop-dead gorgeous” after things with his wife had gone so spectacularly wrong, but no. This woman’s beauty was something else altogether. Natural. Spirited. Every bit as heated as the lava threatening to make a show over on the Big Island.
As his eyes swept the length of her, hot licks of desire tugged at parts of him he’d rather not be dealing with right now. He saw her giving him the same once-over, with an expression that shifted from angry to impossible to read. One enemy sizing up the other? Or two people getting off on the wrong foot, then realizing seconds too late there was one hell of a mutual attraction?
He made a big mental X over the latter option and concentrated on the task at hand. Getting things back on track for a positive working relationship.
To keep the unwanted carnal sensations from making any visual impression, Zach pulled himself up to his full height and crossed his arms over his chest, hoping to draw Lulu’s attention back to his face.
“So. What exactly does my being grounded entail?”
Lulu was staring him straight in the eye, clearly unintimidated by him physically or professionally.
“Are you sending me to my room? No dates for a month? No candy bars till Christmas?”
One of the crew behind her tried and failed to turn a snigger into a cough. This was Lulu’s crowd, and he had five seconds to find a way not to be permanently branded The Bad Guy.
Zach shifted on his feet, transfixed by Lulu’s amber-colored eyes that were flaring with coppery hits of indignation. He’d definitely made the wrong call. She wasn’t belligerent—she was proud. She wasn’t reckless—she was permanently poised for action. She wasn’t trying to one-up him—she was trying to hang on to her hard-won rung on the ladder.
Not hard enough, though. He was the new chief, and as such there had to be some lines drawn in the sand.
“The patient’s your priority for now,” he said.
It was as much of an olive branch as he could give without throwing up his hands and conceding defeat.
“Oh? So you do want me to do my job, then?”
Lulu didn’t bother double checking. She made a signal to her team that they should carry on what they were doing—which was, in fairness, their job. A blonde woman and two other men, all kitted out in regulation neon orange OSR shirts and board shorts, helped the rest of the family off the boat, while Lulu took command of the boy in the wheelchair.
One of the crew offered him a quick, apologetic, “Pretty sure she needs an extra set of hands...” in explanation as they hurried after Lulu, who was strutting down the dock as if she were a pop star who’d just swept the Grammys.
Whether her intent was to show off her curves or not was hard to tell, but suffice it to say she had it and she was flaunting it.
He couldn’t help it. He grinned. Lulu was gutsy. He was going to have to match her point for point, then win some extra ones if he wanted to win the team’s respect.
“Eh, bruh?” The man who had been piloting the speedboat clapped him on the shoulder. “I’m guessing you’re the new boss man?”
Zach nodded.
He introduced himself as Stewart, rattled off a quick ream of credentials, then lowered his voice as he tilted his head toward Lulu, now disappearing into the clinic.
“She’s all right—so cut her some slack, yeah? She’s spent a lifetime proving to her five big brothers that she’s just as tough as they are, so she tends to come on a bit strong at first.”
Zach whistled. Five big brothers, eh?
There had been plenty of second-and-third-generation firemen at his station like that. Trying to prove they were just as good or better than those who had come before them. Hell... He was a bit like that.
Nothing like following in the wake of a father who had all but been the poster boy for the 9/11 rescue effort. Everyone on the fire crews had gone above and beyond, but his dad’s rescue efforts had captured the press’s attention. For a while. The fact that he’d had to take early retirement because of the battering his body had taken hadn’t warranted so much as a column inch. No one had cared about pulmonary fibrosis in a fireman outside of his prime. They’d cared even less when he’d moved to Hawaii to try to give his lungs a break.
Anyway... He shook his head and focused on the problem at hand.
“Rules are the same for everyone,” Zach said, almost by rote.
Stewart rocked back on his heels and made a noise that, once again, had Zach giving himself an invisible pop on the kisser. He was definitely walking an out-of-the-frying-pan-into-the-fire path today.
“Yeah, bruh... I see where you’re going. But...” Stewart cleared his throat and gave his chin a scrub, obviously trying to put his words in an order he thought would penetrate Zach’s thick skull. “The thing is... Lulu’s got health and safety ingrained in her bones, you know? She’s lived and breathed this stuff her entire life, but never been given proper recognition for it. The last boss...he tended to ‘put Baby in the corner,’ if you know what I mean.”
Zach shook his head. No. He did not.
“You know...” Stewart opened his hands as if it was obvious
. “Dirty Dancing?”
Another vision of those water droplets skidding along Lulu’s bare thighs blinded Zach for a second. “Nope,” he said.
“Not a film reference kind of guy?”
“I prefer facts to fiction,” Zach said, knowing that the direction this conversation was headed wasn’t endearing him to Stewart, who would inevitably report back to the rest of the crew. He put up a hand in an attempt to rescue the situation. “Look. I’m still a bit jet-lagged, and I probably shouldn’t have rocked up barking orders in the middle of a rescue. I suspect we’re all going to have to take a bit of time to get used to one another.”
“Don’t worry, man.” Stewart gave him a congenial clap on the shoulder that made it very clear the man’s age had done little to diminish his strength. “We all have false starts. The thing about Hawaii is...” He looked out to the sea, then up to the sun, then back to Zach. “We all come here seeking instant perfection, but the thing about paradise...”
He opened his eyes wide, actively inviting Zach to ask him to unveil the mysteries of Polynesia.
“What is the thing about paradise?” Zach asked, finally realizing that Stewart wasn’t going to share his island wisdom until he was asked.
“You have to earn it.” Stewart said tapping the side of his nose. “Ho‘oponopono.”
“Come again?”
Stewart repeated the word, then explained. “It’s the Hawaiian practice of reconciliation and forgiveness. A way to free yourself from negative thoughts and feelings. Building a gateway to happiness and fulfilment of your dreams.”
Zach looked at Stewart. Really looked at him. Beneath the tan and the laid-back stance he saw a man who’d fought and failed and fought again, until he’d truly won that aura of inner calm and—dare he say it?—control of his own destiny.
Another thing to take note of. Just because a person was relaxed and smiley didn’t necessarily mean they flaunted the rules. They respected them. They just had their own way of paying said respect.
Son of a gun...
He couldn’t believe that he, Zach “Read the Regs” Murphy, was even thinking this. But maybe every now and again seeing the rules from another angle was the better option.