by Anna Lowe
She leaned over a faded display of chocolate bars, then shook her head, muttering. A minute later, the chimes over the front door sounded, and she was gone, a baguette in her hand. Kyle glanced at the chocolate display and did a double take. No wonder she hadn’t bought any. One little bar cost ten times what it would have at home. Which made sense, considering the halfway-around-the-world trip that chocolate must have had.
He bought a cold Fanta, a baguette, and an overpriced hunk of cheese and headed outside. It wasn’t exactly his favorite New York deli, but the views outside more than made up for it. He’d never seen a sky quite so blue, a horizon so endless…
…or a woman so mesmerizing, because there Venus was again, filling a dozen water jugs at a public tap by the roadside. Drinking water for the boat maybe? Then why was she staying at the hotel? His mind ran away with possibilities, as if she were the cliffhanger of a TV special and he was dying to know the answers.
In any case, it was a lot of water for one person to carry, so he stepped over. “Can I give you a hand?”
Her words were polite, but her eyes — not amused. “Thanks, I’ve got it.”
“Lots of jugs to carry there. How far are you going?”
“Just to the dinghy,” she said. “Not very far. And yes, I have it under control.”
“I can help…” he said, eyeing the distance across the road to a rickety dock.
“I’ve got it,” she said.
“Really, I don’t mind…” He reached forward, but she blocked his way with her foot.
“I’ve got it,” she said, closer to a hiss this time.
Turning away from doing the right thing went against everything his mom had ever taught him. It went against everything his uncle had taught him, too — except the part about when a woman said no, it meant no. So what could he do but give up?
Not giving up, his heart declared. Not yet.
And since he didn’t have any bright ideas, he pedaled off, telling himself there was no reason for the shame building in his gut. Maybe he should head back and help anyway. Maybe he could talk her into it…
One glance back at the proud tilt of her chin and he turned away again. Maybe not.
Chapter Seven
Something had to be done.
Kyle sat at his dinner table — alone, again — watching the sun slide toward the horizon. His second sunset on Maupiti. Two down, ten to go. The French lovebirds were necking — as usual — and back in the corner there, Venus was reading her book. As usual.
He rubbed a finger around the edge of his glass, thinking about her. They’d talked on exactly three occasions, and all he’d managed to do so far was antagonize her. He wasn’t such a bad guy, was he?
No, he wasn’t. He was only trying to help.
And she was only trying to be Miss Independent. He could see that now. Clearly, the best thing to do was to just leave her alone.
So he tried — he really tried — all through a delicious dinner of the tastiest marinated fish he’d ever had. Bite by succulent bite, he kept his eyes on the lagoon, studiously ignoring her, yet somehow hoping for her attention. All he wanted was a chance to set the record straight.
He fought the urge all the way through dinner, and he was almost out of time. Any minute now, sailor chick would snatch up that book of hers — a different one today, with a submarine on the cover — and take off for the night.
So finally, he did it. He reached into his backpack, grabbed the chocolate bar he’d bought that afternoon, and approached her table, step by heavy step. God, he felt more nervous than the first time he had to address the board of directors.
Finally, he was there, at the boundary to her little fiefdom in the corner. Her eyes slid, slowly, skeptically, from her book to his face.
“Truce,” he said, thumping down the chocolate bar.
He saw her gaze drop to the chocolate, and the corner of her mouth twitched. Her impossibly blue eyes went wide.
“Truce? Why?” Her voice was hard and gritty, like the coral underfoot.
He took a deep breath. “Who else are you going to talk to here?”
She looked around, then pointedly settled her gaze on a gecko climbing up the wall. “Silence has its merits. You should try it sometime.”
He wasn’t going to be put off that easily. He pulled out a chair and sat down. “So, where are you from?”
She made an exasperated sound.
Slowly, deliberately, he picked up the chocolate bar and started getting up. “Okay, well, enjoy your silence.”
Behind him was a stunned silence, then a protest. “Hey! That’s cruel!”
He turned back with a mischievous grin. “What is?”
“Offering me chocolate and then taking it away!”
“Oh, you mean this chocolate?” He held it up innocently. “This very delicious chocolate is for my new friend who wants to make nice conversation with me.”
Her right eyebrow arched up. “I do?”
“Look, I think we got off on the wrong foot. Did I do something to annoy you?”
“Where do I start?”
Wow, she really was mad. “What did I do?”
She counted on her fingers, ticking off a long list of crimes. “Rescuing me when I don’t need rescuing, carrying things that don’t need carrying — twice.”
“I was just trying to help.”
She opened her mouth as if to fling back a retort, then caught herself and closed it. “Maybe… maybe next time, you should think about whether you’re helping someone or just telling them they can’t manage alone.”
So that was it. He slid back into the seat. “And you like managing alone?”
“I have my pride, yes.”
Now that she said it, he could see it stitched into every line on her face. “Well, I’m very sorry if I hurt your pride. I didn’t mean to,” he said, sliding the chocolate bar across the table.
Her eyes followed it, and that twitch started again. She moved her lips but couldn’t quite find the right words. He held his tongue and let the bar dance in front of her eyes.
“Valley Cottage,” she said at last.
“Pardon me?”
“Valley Cottage,” she repeated, going pink like the slanting sunset. “I’m from Valley Cottage, New Jersey.”
Kyle smiled and pushed the chocolate bar all the way over. Her cheeks bunched in a smile that grew as she unwrapped it slowly, like the last present under a Christmas tree, and something in him warmed.
“So what’s life like in Valley Cottage, New Jersey?”
“Boring as hell,” she said without a second’s hesitation. She held the chocolate up to break off the first section but stopped short and held it toward him, offering a piece.
“Thank you.” He smiled, accepting it. “Valley Cottage,” he prompted, not wanting her to get off track.
“Boring,” she repeated, breaking off a square for herself. “Growing up there, I always wished I was from somewhere else. Like Montana. Or Alaska.”
“Alaska?”
“Yes.” She sounded a little dreamy, whether for the place or the chocolate, he wasn’t sure. “Somewhere with a lot of space.”
Kyle thought about the thousands of miles of open ocean surrounding this speck of land. Yep, she’d definitely come to the right place.
“A lot of space and the chance at a little adventure,” she continued, then popped in another bite.
Adventure? She certainly had that.
“That or I wished my parents were diplomats, so we could live abroad, or that they were circus owners, so I could have a few lions and monkeys.” She chuckled between bites.
He turned down her offer of more chocolate, content to watch her chew. “I’m Kyle.”
She nodded and took the offered hand, her grip firm; no surprise there. “Hannah.”
Kyle tried to hold back his smile. Progress at last. “Good book?”
She blinked, then held up the book: Clive Cussler’s Raising the Titanic. “Well, I found it
at a book swap.”
“And?”
She shrugged. “I think Clive was writing for a male audience. A fun enough story, except for the helpless females who fall right into the hero’s bed.”
Okay, he got the message there.
“But you still read it,” he said.
Her eyes bounced to the table, then out to sea. “I put in my own characters. My own adventures.”
Ah, a dreamer. An adventurer. Kyle nudged a second piece of chocolate toward her.
“And what adventures brought you to Maupiti, Hannah?”
Her face took on a warm glow, and Kyle let himself bask there for another second, waiting for what she was about to say. Whatever it was, it was sure to be good.
It was. She was a good storyteller with a great tale. Starting on the East Coast of the US, she’d worked her way south, hitching rides on different sailboats. First as far as Florida, then offshore to St. Thomas, and on to Panama, mostly with retired couples looking for a third hand. In Panama, she’d met a boat called Dreamtime and had sailed with them to the Galapagos Islands, through a number of islands he’d never even heard of to Tahiti, and finally Bora Bora in a five-thousand-mile long trip.
“The bummer was, they decided to end their trip there, so I had to find another ride.”
“And that’s this boat here? The red one?”
She nodded, still looking a bit droopy. He wondered why. “Windfall, that’s the name of the boat.” Then her face brightened up. “It’s going to the Cook Islands and Tonga.”
Kyle couldn’t help it; he was shaking his head.
“What?” she demanded.
He put his hands up. “Nothing. I mean, you weren’t kidding when you said you wanted adventure.”
She shrugged modestly, but she couldn’t hide the shine in her eyes.
Kyle let his gaze wander out to the lagoon, inky now in the moonless night. Wondering how adventurous he was. Not in her class, that was for sure. What risks did he ever take — and to achieve which dreams?
Adventure was frowned upon in his line of work. Of course, he’d learned to take calculated risks. Had gotten pretty damn good at it, actually. But it was always in a familiar arena with familiar rules. This woman — Hannah — stepped right off the edge of her world, diving into the deep end. Literally.
“So why are you in this hotel?”
Her face fell again. “The owner’s friends are staying on the boat for a couple of days, so I’ve been kicked out.”
“That’s not a very nice way to treat your crew.”
She shrugged. “Well, they did pay for this hotel.”
“And all that water you were hauling today? Was that for the boat?”
She nodded. “There’s no dock big enough to tie the boat alongside, so it all has to be carried over by dinghy. I bumped into Darren and Cynthia, and they let me use the dinghy while they took a walk. There’s so much to do on the boat…” She trailed off, shook her head, and changed the subject. “And you? Vacationing?”
“Twelve days here, then three in Bora Bora, at the Meridien Hotel.”
Her eyebrows shot up. “That’s one of those places with little bungalows on stilts, right?”
He nodded, suddenly wishing he hadn’t mentioned it.
She gaped. “The thousand-dollar-a-night hotel?”
He corrected her quickly. “Nine hundred.”
She whistled, and Kyle cursed himself. Yes, he had money to burn. But it was all hard-earned, honest money from a family firm he had helped build up. He rushed in for damage control. “I haven’t taken a vacation in three years, so my brother pushed me into it.” He decided to leave the part about the bet out.
She still looked dubious, though. “So…what exactly do you do for work?”
When Kyle needed to, he would tell it straight. I’m a senior partner in a management consultancy. Kyle Stanton of Stanton Brothers. That way, they’d know where he stood. But he suspected that Hannah was the type who might take it the wrong way, so he watered it down a bit. “I work in management consulting. A small, family business.” One his father and uncle had launched, and one Kyle and his uncle had propelled into the big league. But no, she didn’t need to hear that. He decided to move on quickly. “What do you do?”
“I’m a teacher.”
He tilted his head, trying to picture her in a room of rowdy kids. Then he pictured the Evil Eye and figured, yes, she’d have the students well under control.
“But this trip… How long is it?” It was May — not exactly summer vacation.
She smiled, letting a little of that pride leak out. “I’m taking two years off.”
Now it was Kyle’s turn to whistle.
She shrugged. “I love teaching, but I love to travel, too. At first, summer vacation seemed like enough, but then I wanted to do more. So after my first three years teaching, I saved up and took a year off. Then I went back to work, kept my expenses down. With no car and living in a shared apartment, you’d be amazed how much money you can save.”
On a teacher’s salary?She must really know how to save. “What other trips did you do?”
“Last time, I took six months to backpack through South America.”
“And before that?”
“I took a year and biked around Europe.”
“Biking, vroom, vroom?” Kyle mimicked revving a motorcycle.
“No, biking, biking,” she made a pedaling motion.
“Where?”
Everywhere, from the sound of it. “London to Istanbul.”
Kyle took a minute to swallow that one. “You biked to Turkey? Alone?” Didn’t she know about things like Eurail passes?
She looked into her glass and spoke softly, a little wistfully. “You can wish you had someone to go with, or you can just go and do it alone.”
So she wasn’t alone by choice. But why would that be? Wouldn’t a woman like her have her pick of men? Okay, the pride thing might be a bit of a barrier. Maybe he wasn’t the first one to hit it. The question was, had anyone every gotten past it?
Kyle felt his pulse spike. Suddenly, he found himself very interested in giving it a go.
“Did you always want to be a teacher?”
She laughed. “No, I wanted to be a lion tamer. Or a firefighter. Me and my friend Lindsay, we were the only girls in our kindergarten class who didn’t want to be nurses, singers, or vets.”
“So how’d you end up a teacher?”
She shrugged. “When I went to college, I wanted to focus on animal behavior. Be like Jane Goodall, go study lions or apes in Africa. So I studied biology. But then I saw how it works: another couple of years of school to get a Ph.D., only to spend half your life writing grant proposals just for a summer of field work. With teaching, I figured I’d have summers free to travel and volunteer on projects. And anyway, you’d be surprised how much animal behavior you can observe in a high school.” She laughed. “And it’s not that far off from lion taming, either.”
“And your friend Lindsay, what did she end up doing? Lion taming or firefighting?”
Hannah’s laugh crumbled. “Neither,” she said simply, then cleared her throat. “What about you? Did you always want to be a consultant?”
Kyle tried to remember wanting to do anything but join the family company. His mother used to say it’s what his father would have liked best, and that had been motivation enough. For a long time, anyway.
“I pretty much always wanted to join the company. Even when I was little, I got to go in and do little jobs, like watering the plants and stapling papers.” He laughed at the memory of how eager he’d been to be part of it all. “I guess I moved up from there.” Right to the corner office, in fact.
It was funny, thinking back on it all like that.
She was smiling by then, really smiling. Maybe she didn’t hate him too much, after all.
But then Hannah straightened and dropped the empty chocolate wrapper in the ashtray between them. “Anyway, I better turn in. Thanks for the chocol
ate,” she said. And just like that, she was on her feet. Leaving so soon?
“See you tomorrow?” Kyle tried, already wondering how he might get around her defenses.
Why? Because she was intriguing. A challenge. And yes, pretty, in her windblown, Amazon warrior way. Just thinking about her made his Bad Boy side growl for more, setting off another inner war.
Don’t even think of her as a conquest. That would only piss her off more.
Hey, two consenting adults, man. The perfect vacation distraction! What else do we do here for twelve days?
Honor code, buster. You treat a lady right.
Bad Boy licked his lips. I’m thinking this lady has a streak of bad girl in her, too. One that’s just waiting to get out.
Then reality slammed both of them in their places. “Well, I’m moving back to the boat tomorrow, so maybe.” She sounded doubtful and none too dismayed. “But, yeah, see you around.”
And with that, she walked out of the dining room and out of Kyle’s life.
Chapter Eight
Hannah helped Darren and Cynthia get to the next morning’s ferry, then moved her things back on to Windfall.
“Finally!” She even said it aloud. Finally, she had the boat to herself.
Funny, though, how it wasn’t quite the high she expected it to be. Why? Hadn’t she been wanting just this?
She looked around the empty cabin, the silent cockpit, and it came to her. Once again, she was alone. Yes, it was better than having Robert around, but alone was still alone.
She headed the thought off before it led her to dangerous places, like thoughts of a man it would be much more complicated to like than to dislike. Kyle.
No, no. She had a lot to do, a job list to work down. Clean the bilge, rerun the genoa sheets, sew new sliders onto the mainsail. Change the engine anode, check the steering cables, and, and, and.
Hannah got to work, starting with the anodes and steering cables, in the same part of the boat. By one o’clock, her stomach was growling, and she hopped in the dinghy — grease smudges and all — for a quick run ashore. A fresh baguette, that’s what she needed, to go with some canned olives and ham. A dinghy ride and a five-minute walk later, she was at the store.
