by Annie O'Neil
After all, the divorce lawyers had recommended he and his son stay in New York, but in the end he’d gone with his gut. Harry’s special needs could as easily be catered for in Hawaii as they had been in New York, but if he was going to continue working he needed help. The kind you only got from family.
His ex, Christina, had always prioritized her work over the two of them. It had been one of the first fault lines in their marriage. Her modeling career had meant she was rarely in New York, so in order to be close to family—proper family—he’d sought out a nine-to-five job that tapped into his skill base, moved to Hawaii, and bought a house not far from his parents’ condo.
He’d seen his parents transformed by island life, and was hoping that whatever was in the water out here would do the same for him and his son. The simple truth was that his parents had moved to Hawaii because they’d been hurting. Just like he was now. So, yeah. Like it or not, Zach needed some of this ho‘oponopono. Big-time.
Stewart made the hand gesture Lulu had and said, “We good, boss?”
“Absolutely.” Zach nodded, with a Thanks for the insight smile.
He watched him walk down the dock and disappear into the clinic, where a roar of laughter seemed to add an extra hit of color to the scene. Bright red plantation style building... White sand... Blue sky... Greener than green mountains soaring up in the background...
He decided to stay where he was. Absorb some of the atmosphere. After all, this was going to be where he worked and, to be fair, there were several highly trained emergency medical professionals in there with the boy and his family, who knew more about stepping on sea urchins than he did.
Not much call for sea urchin spine extraction in the heart of Manhattan.
About twenty minutes passed. Then the family left, the father carrying his little boy in his arms, white bandages round his feet, and the blonde woman—Casey, if he remembered correctly—walking with them to their car with a small sheaf of papers.
He gave a begrudging smile. Okay. They weren’t so “off regulation” that they didn’t give their patients the paperwork they’d need for their insurance and the doctors back home.
Before they got in the car, Casey put a fresh lei round the little boy’s neck and called out a hearty “Aloha!” as they pulled away.
Zach leaned back on the rock he’d taken up residence on and let the sun hit him full on the face. It was a warm day, but not the kind of “city hot” Manhattan sometimes sweltered under. The air was a mix of sweet and salty. The breeze felt like silk. Even the birds seemed to ratchet their songs up a notch out here in the tropics.
“He what?”
Zach sat up. Definitely not a songbird’s cry.
He looked round at the parking lot. The beach. The rescue HQ and—ah...there she was. Five feet and two inches of electricity and venom, heading straight toward him without so much as a trace of a smile on her face.
Lulu was wearing a pair of hip-hugging jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt with the name of a security company on the front of it. The neck was ripped out so that it slipped off one of her shoulders as she stormed his way. She was also dragging an ominous black thunder cloud in her wake.
Zach felt the sand shift beneath his feet as he quite literally dug his heels in for whatever confrontation was about to come.
“Zach Murphy?” Lulu asked, her voice with a low, ominous tone.
“Yes?”
“I have a bone to pick with you.”
He shrugged some fortitude into his bloodstream. It was better that they resolve whatever it was now rather than let things simmer.
“Fair enough.” He closed the space between them, keeping his voice on the lighter side of neutral. “What’s on your mind?”
“You bought my house.”
CHAPTER THREE
ZACH GAVE LULU a double take—which, insanely, made her even angrier. There were the tiniest fractals of vulnerability piercing through the defensive stance he’d shifted into, and she didn’t like thinking she’d put them there. She was angry. Sure. But she wasn’t a bully.
Now she had to be angry with herself and him! Jerk. He really knew how to make a bad day worse.
His three-month probation was going to be exhausting if every day was like today. Particularly now that he’d bought a house. Her house. It meant he had no plans to fail the probation. No back-up plan in place back on the mainland. He was putting down roots. This was a man who planned to stay.
Zach Murphy scrubbed a hand through his regulation haircut, making it adorably messy. Idiot. He looked over his shoulders toward the sea, as if expecting a support team of combat mermaids to appear, and when that didn’t happen he returned his gaze to her, the bright blueness of it knocking a lungful of air out of her for the second time today.
“I—sure. I bought a house. It was for sale. I have the paperwork and the mortgage to prove it.”
He looked confused rather than confrontational—which, if she were in a reasonable mood, she knew was a pretty generous response. But in true Lulu style she had to finish what she’d started, and this little chat they were having wasn’t about making nicey-nicey with the man who had not only bought her dream house but had also taken the job that would have enabled her to buy the house in question.
The fact that she didn’t really want said job wasn’t important now...
“The thing is,” Lulu intoned, feeling the steam almost literally coming out of her ears, “Turtle Hideaway was mine.” She poked herself in the chest with a bit more gusto than she probably should have.
Zach shook his head again, even more confused. “So...if you didn’t want to sell it, why’d you put it on the market?”
“No!” Lulu threw up her hands, cross with herself for letting the conversation get so muddled. “I wanted to buy it and you beat me to it!”
“The Realtor didn’t say anything about anyone else having put in an offer...”
Lulu barely stopped a low growl from roaring up and out of her throat. “I was going to put in an offer, but I needed a few more months to increase my deposit.”
She bit down on the inside of her cheek. Crud. She hadn’t meant to admit that.
Zach Murphy was an intelligent man. And talented. And married to all the rule books that had ever been written about anything ever.
Not that she’d ever admit it, but—yes. She’d totally looked him up on the internet just now, while Casey had picked sea urchin spines out of that poor little boy’s feet. He had qualifications she couldn’t imagine garnering. Emergency medicine clearly stoked his arterial fires.
His father had been a fire station medic during 9/11, in charge of multiple rescue crews and lauded as a hero by the press. His grandfather before him had actually started a fire station in a poor area of town where no one else would work. And Zach, in keeping with the family tradition, had led a junior firefighter youth group from the age of fourteen and had been the first to acquire all his first aid badges.
He’d risen through the New York City Fire Department ranks on his own merit rather than hanging on to the coattails of his forebears, and at last check had overseen half the medical crews operating out of over two hundred fire stations dotted across Manhattan. There was no chance she could outrank this superstud of emergency medicine. And yet again she’d given him the upper hand by admitting that he had not one, but two things she wanted.
She gritted her teeth. Something was going to have to give. Either she was going to have to find some way to work with this Mr. Goody-Rescue-Boots, or act on her years-old threat to pack up her surfboard and find a new shore.
As those thoughts rattled uncomfortably from her head down to her heart, Zach’s demeanor shifted from defensive to composed, with the clear arrival of a light bulb moment. His stupid eyes were ridiculously expressive. A perfect window into his deep and incredibly detail-oriented thought-process.
This was not the lifeless, gimlet-like lizard gaze of his predecessor. No, Zach’s eyes were more like a kaleidoscope. Dark sapphire-blue when he was angry—which he had been when they’d first met—and shot through with shards of flint when he had made up his mind about something. They were bright, like the sea beyond the reef, when he reached a place of understanding. As he had now.
The well-defined lines of his facial features relaxed into a strangely comforting expression. One that spoke of having hit a thousand rocky shores but, fueled by willpower alone, having found a way to pull himself out of the fray.
Every. Single. Time.
For heaven’s sake. Even his emotional scar tissue was better than hers.
“It’s a big house for one person,” she muttered, hoping the comment would serve as a concession that, yes, she got that it was his—but, no, she wasn’t quite ready to buy him a housewarming present.
“I didn’t buy it solely for myself,” he said.
His tone was not exactly apologetic, but she could sense that he was sorry she was hurt. Which, of course, flicked off another plate from her armor. People who had compassion were impossible to be furious with.
She narrowed her eyes and tried to scan him for glimpses of insincerity, hoping he’d learned that pacifying technique in a management class.
Nope. It was organic. Real. He actually genuinely did look as though it bothered him that he’d upset her.
She absently traced some lines into the sand between them, realizing too late that she’d drawn a heart. She swiped it away with her foot before he could notice, then met his gaze. “Well, I hope you and your wife enjoy it.”
His eyes darkened to near black, then cleared. “It’s just me and my son,” he said, his voice unnaturally bright. Or...no... It was affection. Protectiveness. The same way her brothers would say, Oh. You’ve met Lulu, have you? She’s my kid sister. Two parts love to one part If you do a single thing to hurt her...
There was definitely a story there.
Something in her softened. She should probably cut the guy some slack. After all, he hadn’t exactly been sent a memo warning him that he’d taken both her job and her house.
“Hey,” he said, after a quick glance at his watch. “I’ve got to get back to the house. My parents are looking after my boy and I said I’d be back by now. We haven’t unpacked anything yet... I don’t know if it would rub salt in the wound, or serve as what it’s intended to be—a peace offering—but maybe you could show us somewhere good to eat? My shout. It might give us a chance to...” His lashes brushed his cheeks as he lowered his eyes to choose his words. He looked back up at her. “I think we need a do-over in the first-impressions department.”
A rush of excitement and half a dozen options flew to mind and, rather surprisingly, she felt a warm, happy smile replace the tense scowl she’d been wearing. Wednesday was two-for-one burger night at the Moo Oink Quack Shack.
“Burgers suit?” she asked, quickly adding, “They cater to all types. There’s tuna, turkey, beef, pork and taro if you’re veggie.”
She gave his lean yet muscular physique a quick scan, trying to determine if someone that solid could be made of mushrooms and spinach. Her eldest brother was a vegan and he could pull a car down the road if necessary, so anything was possible really.
“Sounds good. I know Harry, my boy, will definitely be on board for a turkey burger.”
“A carnivore, is he?” Lulu grinned and patted her tummy. “A man after my own heart. I like a boy who knows what he wants from life.”
Something shadowed Zach’s features, then slipped away before she could define it. He pointed toward a bright red convertible Jeep parked under a stand of palms shading the staff parking lot. He had, she could see, parked in the chief’s spot.
“Can I give you a ride?”
“I’ve got my own, thanks. Shall I lead the way, seeing as you’re a newbie on the island?”
“That’d be a big help. I’m still working on getting my bearings here.”
Zach folded into a courtly bow. When he rose and met her eyes, she saw what she hadn’t seen before. A kind man. A worthy man. Someone who was starting over after having been brought to his knees by an unexpected blow. As blindsided by life’s cruelty as she’d been when her parents had died.
She turned away before he could see her eyes fog with the tears she’d sworn she’d never spill, semi-audibly muttering something about getting her backpack and keys.
Urgh. Now she had compassion for him as well.
Zach Murphy made hating him very, very difficult.
Shouldering her pack, emotions back in check, she tried to wipe the muddied shoreline of her mind clean, just as the tide swept the beach clean twice a day. It was a meditation thing her navy SEAL brother Kili did. He said if the beach could start over twice a day so could he.
Sure, he’d been talking about making it through boot camp with a broken arm at the time... But Lulu was sure the theory could be applied to rotten first impressions.
She totally got the “fresh start” thing. She saw it a lot on the island. Haoles arriving from the mainland, hoping to change their lives for the better. To leave whatever it was that had turned their lives dark behind them.
Heaven knew she’d threatened her brothers with a move to the mainland where no one knew her—or them—enough times. It was always threat enough to get them to back down. For a bit, anyway. There was a part of her that lived in fear of the day when one of them would call her bluff. A day she hoped would never come. She loved it here. Loved her family. She missed her parents—her mom, in particular—in the same way she’d miss her own blood pumping through her veins, but...she had her memories.
She decided there and then not to make Zach’s probation harder than it already would be. Then again, she thought as she pulled on her helmet and revved up her motorcycle, she wouldn’t make it entirely easy...
* * *
“What are you? Hawaii’s answer to Steve McQueen?”
Zach was laughing as he spoke, getting out of his Jeep, and he took Lulu’s helmet from her after she’d tugged it off over her thick-as-molasses hair, but she could see a question in his eyes.
She couldn’t help it. She bristled. Riding her bike was her happy time. Well... Surfing was her happy time. But when she wasn’t in the water, riding her motorcycle was her happy time. Speed and a connection with all she held dear.
The thick, tropical air. The breeze off the ocean. The sharp scent of the coffee plantations they’d swept past (possibly at a mile or two above the speed limit). The warm, mouthwatering aroma of frying garlic about to be united with some gorgeous shrimp. The green jungle tang of unfettered growth as they’d passed Oahu’s famed North Shore on the way to this quiet little slice of heaven she’d prayed she might one day call her own.
So, Yeah, pal. It was a big fat yes—because she’d driven to Turtle Hideaway at precisely the right speed. Her speed.
She already had five big brothers commenting on everything from the length of her hair to the shortness of her skirts. She didn’t need to add a micromanaging boss to the mix. Even if he was as hot as blue blazes.
“That’s Stephanie McQueen to you,” she said with a grunt as she kicked the stand into place, trying to take as much of the bike’s weight as she could as it fell into place.
Zach snorted good-naturedly, then sobered. “I thought fifty miles per hour was the maximum speed across the whole island?”
“You want to be a policeman now, as well? Solve crimes? The Five-O are always recruiting.”
She winced at her tone. The comment had come out more snarky than jokey. “Okay. You got me.” She held her hands wide, as if about to ask a universal question not even the wisest of souls could answer. “Who doesn’t want to show off for the new boss?”
Zach’s expression shifted to something inscrutably neutral, as if he were priv
ately assessing her but saving his feedback for her staff assessment—which, annoyingly, he’d be giving her in a few weeks’ time.
She might as well have told him she wanted to lick his sweaty chest then feed him grapes before they made mad, ferocious love under a moonlit sky.
Oh, man. Did she?
Kind of.
Maybe not the sweaty chest thing...but all the rest of it...
She rolled her eyes behind her lids, wondering if she should dig a hole now or wait for the earth to open up and swallow her whole.
If any of the Hawaiian gods were real, or helpful, or both, it would crack open any moment now.
She reminded herself of one of her grandmother’s countless island proverbs. Energy flows where attention goes. If she kept drawing everything Zach said to a dark or sexy space, the way they related to one another would inevitably be combative. Or sexy. Or both. And that was no way to work with someone. Not with the job they did. Pure synchronicity was essential. They had to trust one another with their lives, and as such there wasn’t any room for negativity or out-of-control hormones.
You can’t stop the waves, but you can learn how to surf.
Her father’s favorite saying.
Pffft.
She already knew how to surf.
She reached out to take her helmet back from Zach, scraping round for a new line of thought. His problems would be better to focus on than hers. What was it that had chased a man so inherently in control of things so very far away from home?
“Daddy!”
A young boy—six years old, maybe seven?—came running down the packed red earth path that led to her—to Zach’s new house. The boy’s gait was a bit off. He was up on tiptoe and his arms windmilled as if he was constantly on the verge of tripping over his own feet. She did a lightning-fast scan of the boy as both she and Zach quickened their pace to meet him. His movements were definitely clumsy, and his hands weren’t moving in sync with the rest of him.