by Annie O'Neil
A desperate longing to revert to the strangely flirty, competitive, excited-to-see-each-other vibe that had been humming between them gripped her. She microscopically analyzed the exchange.
She’d said something about him finding fault with her...
He’d said he didn’t think he could...
That comment had pulled them both up short, instigating another one of those magic moments they’d been sharing with increasing frequency. Those moments when their eyes connected and the rest of the world seemed to fade away, when their bodies—hers, anyway—buzzed with an energy that felt anything but earthbound.
Then they’d kind of leaned toward each other.
No. That wasn’t right. It had been as if they were being pulled toward one another by an invisible force, proactively begging them to kiss. She might have even closed her eyes.
And then it had ended.
He’d got up, they’d sorted the gear, and from the look on his face something had happened in that head of his that had turned their magic moment into a dark one.
She couldn’t think what it could be apart from the almost-kiss.
Equal rushes of shame and anger twisted in her gut. Was she that horrendous an option?
A vulnerability she rarely let herself acknowledge exploded inside her. Zach was a class-A example of the type of man she had promised herself she would never, ever fall for. An uptight, regulations-mad mainlander. And yet none of it seemed to matter. This wasn’t just a crush anymore. She genuinely liked him. Respected him. She also liked his kid.
If he had no plans on returning her feelings, she was going to have to find a way to rein hers in quick smart.
And then another thought occurred.
Makoa.
Her brother had quite the track record in meddling in her ever-diminishing private life. Maybe he’d got to Zach. Warned him off.
Another twist of white-hot frustration wrenched her stomach into a hot, tangled mess.
Her brothers didn’t understand boundaries. They had no problem pulling unsuspecting suitors to one side for a “quiet word” that sent them running for the hills—or, as was more often the case, the airport. Hence the no-mainlanders rule.
But Zach didn’t seem like someone who would be intimidated by her brother. He’d worked for the New York City Fire Department, for heaven’s sake. She’d seen the calendars. Muscular hunks were a dime a dozen over there.
So what was it, then?
They hiked in silence.
An unbearable one.
Unable to take it anymore, she reeled on him. His body slammed into hers, the impact forcing out the question running over and over in her mind.
“What?” she demanded. “What’s wrong with me?”
They had grabbed on to one another for balance. Her fingers were pressing into the musculature of his lower back. Or were they? Oh, no. That wasn’t his back. She’d just grabbed his butt.
His arms were wrapped around her entire body, as if he were protecting her from an avalanche. It was an instinctive move. One that had to mean he felt something for her. Didn’t it?
She chanced a look up into his face.
Her question hung in what little space was left between them.
“Nothing,” he whispered.
Again, that taut, hypnotic energy wrapped around the pair of them like a thick, opulent, tingle-inducing ribbon. Their breaths came deep and charged. His eyes darkened to a rich sapphire blue and shone with a brightness she’d not seen in them before. Before a single, helpful thought could find its way into Lulu’s brain, he was lowering his mouth to hers. His touch was soft at first. Tentative. But when he felt she was returning his kisses they grew more heated. Hungry.
Her mouth was exploring his. His lips were teasing and taunting, then rewarding her for her curiosity. Her desire. She wasn’t in charge of her body anymore. It had a mind of its own. As their kisses intensified she was vaguely aware that she was arching her chest into his, raising up on her tiptoes the better to pull his lower lip slowly, achingly against her teeth.
Her hips fitted perfectly between his. There was no doubt that his body had lost control as much as hers had. Her limbs twitched with the desire to regroup, find new handholds. To climb him like a tree, wrap her legs round his hips and press her mouth to his as if their kisses would save the world.
And then she heard the helicopter.
Her brain was instantly yanked back to reality.
What the actual hell? She was making out with her boss when they were supposed to be rescuing someone.
This was why “office” romances were verboten. This was also why there was always that added layer of frisson whenever she was with him. It was a relationship that had death knells tolling around it before it had even begun.
She stumbled back a few steps, instantly feeling cold in every part of her body that had been touched by his. “We should get on,” she managed, through short, sharp exhalations.
“Yeah.”
Zach’s voice was rough. Not angry rough. Heated rough. As if they’d just been caught in a tornado, whisked up high enough to catch a glimpse of whatever it was on the other side of the rainbow, then unceremoniously dropped straight back down to earth again.
* * *
Pounding his fists into his own head wasn’t an option. Nor was ripping up his contract. Nor was yanking his heart out of his chest and flinging it off the edge of the cliff.
Finding this hiker and getting her to safety was. Quickly followed by opening up his laptop, applying for a new job and booking a one-way flight to...
Where?
He couldn’t move every time something happened that wasn’t part of the plan.
Couldn’t break up with it.
Couldn’t divorce it.
Couldn’t sugarcoat it with the godsend that Grandma and Grandpa would be there to take up the slack where Mommy had once been.
The pragmatics of his “well-laid plan” seemed insignificant now.
From the moment he’d met her, Zach had known right down to his very cell structure that falling for Lulu Kahale was out of the question. And yet he’d been the one to instigate it. The one who’d crossed the line he’d thought he’d drawn in the sand.
What on God’s green earth had he been thinking?
Nothing. Obviously. He’d let his more primitive instincts take over when he should’ve pushed them off the side of this ravine they were now edging along.
He picked up the pace, curling his hands into fists, pumping them ahead of him as if trying to build up enough speed to take off and fly. Unspent energy, trying to find something useful to do with itself.
It was a real kick in the teeth to have been put in his place by the job. The one thing he prioritized after his son. Those were the two things that had kept him upright while he’d come to terms with the fact that his wife didn’t want to parent their disabled child.
He let a stream of silent curse words loose in his brain to try to get his body to forget how good Lulu had felt in his arms. Pressed up against him. Matching the energy of his kisses as if she’d been waiting a lifetime for just that moment.
“Hey.” Lulu stopped and pointed a hundred meters ahead toward the ravine.
He saw it in an instant. Smoke.
They began to jog, Lulu pulling out her phone and calling the station to give Stewart the coordinates.
A weak-voiced “Help...” bounced up the ravine walls.
Swiftly they pulled out their rappelling gear. Zach looked at Lulu. One of them had to stay up top to signal to the helicopter—the other would go down and perform as much first aid as possible.
“You go,” she said.
“You sure?” Even after only a few weeks, he knew she would’ve happily jumped into the harness and onto the end of the rope line every single time.
“I
’m sure.”
The subtext of the decision was coming through loud and clear. You’re the boss. We shouldn’t have kissed. Now, go.
He swiftly lowered himself down the edge of the ravine into the jungle canopy. The hiker was only a few meters away from the spot where he touched down.
He gave a shout to Lulu that this was the spot, unclipped his harness and ran over to her. “I’m Zach. I’m guessing you’re Julia?”
She was in obvious pain. Her ankle, just visible above her hiking boot, was a myriad of purples and blues.
She nodded. “Good guess. Did...” her voice faltered “...did my husband tell you I was missing?”
Zach nodded.
Her features tightened as if she was going to cry. She pointed at her right foot. “I didn’t take my boot off because I thought if anything was sticking out I didn’t want to see it.” She winced as she readjusted her feet on the ground.
“That was smart. Compound fractures need to be kept as stabilized as possible, but I think you’d know if you had a break that bad.” He knelt down beside her and gave her a quick scan. A few cuts and bruises. Dirt streaks on her face, arms and legs. Quite a few mosquito bites. “They’ll take a proper look at that ankle in the hospital, but it looks like a long hot bath in some Epsom salts would be the best medicine for the rest of you.”
“No!” She protested with a feeble laugh. “No hot baths. No hot anything. I’m desperate to be in a room with aircon. If you could put me in a room with a snowman I’d be over the moon.”
Zach smiled, pleased she still had enough spirit to make lame jokes.
He unhooked his first aid kit from his shoulders and tugged out a bottle of water. “Here. You must be thirsty. Slow, steady sips. Don’t gulp it.”
She gave another tired, weak laugh. “That’s the one thing I have managed to do. Drink lots of water.” She nodded at a nearby stream. “I wasn’t sure if it would be safe, but after a few hours in the heat I didn’t really care.”
He nodded, quickly taking note of her tiny day pack and the small fire she’d managed to build. She’d be hungry, too. He pulled an energy bar out of his backpack and, again, cautioned her to eat it slowly.
It had been three days since she’d disappeared. He was about to ask why it had taken her so long to build the fire when he pulled himself up short, wondering what Lulu would’ve done if she was in his shoes.
Focus on the positive, fix what you can, then find the facts.
“Good thing you brought matches,” he said.
Her smile faltered. “Lighter, actually. It’s the reason why I’m in this mess.”
He arced an eyebrow.
“I suppose it’s also the reason you found me.” She made a small sobbing noise and a solitary tear trickled down her cheek before she covered her face with her hands and explained, “Even when he’s angry with me he’s always there, looking after me.”
“Who?”
Zach looked up at a sharp noise and saw that Lulu had fired the flare gun for Stewart.
“Not long now,” he said, pointing at the sky, where the helicopter could be heard approaching. He tugged a couple of instant ice packs out of his first aid kit to strap on to her ankle.
Absorbed in the story she had to tell, Julia began to speak as if her life depended upon it. “My husband and I were on a hike. We had a fight about his smoking. He got so angry he pulled out his cigarettes and his lighter, saying I made him so stressed he had to smoke. So I grabbed them and threw them into the ravine. But the lighter was his dad’s, you see. Engraved and everything. I’ve never seen him so angry.”
The words continued in a torrent.
“He stormed off. I stayed where I was for a while, certain he’d come back, but after an hour or so I figured he’d gone back to the hotel. So I thought, I know! I’ll find the lighter and take it to him, and we’ll make up, and this won’t be the worst vacation of our lives after all! I love him so much... I just hate his smoking. But after one night in the jungle on my own I realized making a stand about something that really is his choice isn’t worth living without him, you know? I just couldn’t imagine a life without—”
Emotion strangled the rest of her sentence into nonexistence.
“Hey.” Zach gave her hand a squeeze. “We’ve got you now. And you found the lighter. It helped us find you. That’s got to be a sign that things will be all right, doesn’t it?”
She nodded. “I hope so.”
Zach gave her hand another squeeze, then excused himself to go and help as the helicopter approached, hovered overhead, then lowered the static stretcher, which Lulu jumped on from the hiking path above.
When their eyes connected he saw questions in them. Doubts. Seeds of insecurity he knew he’d sown because of his lug-headed response to having kissed her.
They loaded Julia onto the stretcher, and after Zach volunteered to hike out with the gear, Lulu silently agreed to ride in the chopper with her.
Come to think of it, she’d barely said a word since she’d joined them. He didn’t like seeing her this way. And he liked it less that her silence was his fault.
“I’ll see you at the hospital, yeah?” he said before they began their ascent.
She gave him a sharp look. “I don’t know. Will you?”
The question remained unanswered as Lulu gave the signal to pull them up.
Zach nodded at Julia, his mind still whirring on the fight she’d had with her husband over something that on the surface seemed small, but really was enormous. She wanted him to live a happy, healthy life. With her.
Zach wanted to live a happy, healthy life, too. A safe, secure, predictable life. It seemed the wisest option.
His eyes followed Lulu as she was pulled up and beyond the jungle canopy, and he thought of how she put herself in the face of danger every single day but came out unscathed.
He’d never allowed room for the possibility that he could love someone again. Least of all someone who did search and rescue. It wasn’t just him he was looking after. It was his son.
An image flashed through his mind’s eye of Harry and Lulu on the surfboard. Harry’s slight, little-boy body being held upright on the board as he and Lulu caught a wave. His son’s smile bigger than he’d ever seen it before at his achievement.
Would seeing that smile on a regular basis be worth risking his heart?
He zipped up his run bag, shouldered it, and began to hike. He didn’t know. He didn’t know anything anymore except that he and Lulu were going to be spending three entire days together on the Big Island, competing in those blasted games. The proximity would make or break them. Give them answers to the questions he was too damn scared to ask.
He looked up at the sky and caught a glimpse of the retreating helicopter.
One foot in front of the other, he told himself. That was how he’d climbed out of the dark hole he’d fallen into during the breakdown of his marriage, and eventually he’d made it to the top. He hadn’t expected to find himself at the bottom all over again for the completely opposite reason. He’d thought falling for someone was supposed to feel good.
He caught himself up short. Was he falling for her?
He shook his head. Nope. He already had. Now he’d hit the crossroads where he had to figure out whether or not to do anything about it.
CHAPTER EIGHT
“WATER AND SUNBLOCK,” Lulu said sternly to the little girl.
She pouted.
Her mother gave an exasperated sigh. “I’ve been telling her the only way to stop the freckles is to wear sunblock!”
Lulu gave the mother a quick scan, noted her immaculate make-up, nails and generally stylish aesthetic. Her little girl had almost succumbed to heatstroke and was only a couple of shades of red away from a dangerous sunburn.
She decided common sense and threats of skin cancer weren’t going to work
, so she tried another tack. “Are you cool with face painting?”
The mother shrugged, a bit confused, so Lulu asked the little girl what her favorite animal was.
“A cat!” she said, a big smile replacing the pout.
“Cool. Cats...”
Lulu grinned, then grabbed a couple of different tubes of colored sunblock. She was more of a dolphin person herself...but to each their own. She could work with a cat. Which kind of rhymed with Zach. Which instantly made a wash of guilt pour into her as she remembered the multiple texts she’d ignored from him after she’d taken herself off shift, claiming she was due vacation time, and then promptly signed up for some shifts with the ambulance crew and about a million training hours at the gym.
All time they could’ve spent training for the games.
Together.
Like a proper team.
Today’s ambulance posting was at Waikiki Beach—the most popular expanse of surf and sand on the island.
She drew for a bit—a few whiskers, a splotch of a nose and, of course, some large freckles to cover the real ones—then leaned back and grinned. “Wanna see?”
The little girl clapped her hands. “Yes, please!”
Lulu dug her phone out of her pocket, took a picture, then showed the girl—who cooed at herself in the way only little girls could. With undiluted delight.
The mother gave Lulu a grateful smile of thanks, then the two of them padded off, hand in hand, the little girl skipping a bit now that she was rehydrated, and gabbling away about how much she loved it here.
Watching the two of them scraped against something in Lulu’s heart she rarely let herself acknowledge. She’d never really wanted to have a baby. It was a tie that bound you to another human being in a way that freaked her right out. To two humans, actually. The father. The child itself.
How her parents had apportioned their hearts out to six children and each other boggled her mind.
The thought caught her up sharp.
The portions hadn’t been equal.
The bonds of marital love were what had compelled her father to jump on his surfboard to go and find her mother, even though he had known two lives might be lost that day. From Lulu’s perspective, it was indelible proof that loving someone meant making choices.