by Edie Claire
“I’m sorry,” he said distantly, still thinking about the brief. “Was there no one at the front desk? You’re at EarthDefense. If you’re looking for the Regus Agency, it’s at the other end of the building, around the corner.” He pointed his visitor in the right direction.
Now go away, please, he thought uncharitably, trying not to look at the vision of femininity that stood not six feet away from him. How anyone had mistaken his law office for the modeling agency was beyond him, but clearly, this woman had. He hated to be rude, but he really had no wish to stop and escort her out; if he did, he would never get his mind back on his work.
He buried his nose in his papers again and began flipping pages. To his surprise, the woman didn’t move.
“I was looking for you, Kai.”
His hands stopped shuffling. The voice was unfamiliar, yet oddly intriguing. He looked up.
He saw what he had seen the first time. An impossibly beautiful woman around his own age, both her face and figure exquisite. But this time, he looked closer. She was tall and lithe, with a mane of wavy red-gold hair that began by framing the face of a goddess, then went on to curl lazily around the most perfectly proportioned torso known to mankind. Her eyes were an unusual shade of grayish blue, light in the center, but darker around the edges, striking in their contrast both internally and to the reddish hue of her hair. Her cheekbones were high, her facial features proud and strong rather than delicate, with the exception of an ever-so-slightly tipped nose, which cast a vague look of mischief about her.
Mischief?
Good God.
It can’t be.
“M… Maddie?” he stammered stupidly.
No, seriously. It can’t be.
A brilliant smile spread across her face, and her eyes lit up so brightly Kai wheeled himself backward several inches in his chair.
Impossible.
“I was hoping you would recognize me!” the stranger replied happily. “I’m so glad you did, even if it did take you a couple seconds. Everyone else has needed a hint first!”
Kai knew he should reply. Or get up from his chair. Or something. But he couldn’t seem to move. This woman was not his Maddie. She couldn’t be, no matter what she said. His Maddie was heavyset, and brutish, and pushy, and impatient—
“Well, geez, Kai, aren’t you even going to talk to me?” the woman demanded, planting her hands on her hips and glaring at him playfully. “I don’t look that horrifying, do I?”
Well, damn.
It was her.
Kai studied her another moment. He had never been one to speak before he thought. Then slowly, he rose. “I’m sorry,” he said in a more normal voice. “If you were trying to surprise me… you can count this as a win.” He caught her amazing eyes and smiled at her, a budding warmth quickly replacing the shock that had derailed him. “Hello again, Maddie. It’s… really, really good to see you.”
He didn’t know what to do. A handshake seemed too formal for the occasion, but a hug didn’t seem right either. They had never hugged before. They weren’t the hugging kind of friends back then. And hugging her now would be… awkward. But it didn’t matter; the desk was conveniently between them.
His thoughts were interrupted by the sudden change of expression on her face. No sooner had he stood up than her smile disappeared, replaced with a look of confusion.
“Kai!” she cried, distressed. “What happened to you?”
He looked down at his now thoroughly rumpled cheap-as-I can-get-away-with dress shirt and slacks and held up his palms. “Excuse me?”
Maddie was staring at him as if he had morphed into another species. “How did you get so tall?” she demanded.
Kai lifted an eyebrow. “I’m six-one. I don’t think the NBA is interested. Besides, who’s talking? What are you, five-nine?”
“Five-ten,” Maddie murmured, “But I’ve always been taller than you.”
“We were kids!”
“Yeah, but still…” she mumbled something unintelligible.
Memories tumbled through Kai’s brain, alternately delighting and confusing him. The tone and inflection of her voice, if not its tenor, were warmly, wonderfully familiar. Every gesture of her hands, every twist of her lips and slant of her eyebrows must have been unknowingly archived all this time, because he knew them. As drastically as her body had changed, her mannerisms, at least, were all just as they had been, and if he allowed his mind to overrule his eyes, myriad pictures of the past filed before his vision in vivid color.
Maddie. Maddie at school, standing up to the bullies, pulling their hair. Maddie swinging on the Tarzan trees, yelling like a maniac. Maddie yelling at him for taking too long to fish. Maddie goofing around with Kenny on the trail to Pu'u Pehe and nearly tumbling into Shark’s Cove. Maddie eating her own dinner and half of his. Maddie calling him a wimp. Maddie telling Sabina in front of the entire class that Kai was way smarter than Sabina’s father. Maddie giving him a piggyback ride home from the baseball field — the long way through the brush so that no one would see them — when his bruised shin was too painful to walk on and he didn’t want to admit it. Maddie laughing at the crazy stories he made up. Maddie not laughing when he shared his dreams… and his fears.
So many scenes, so many memories long untapped… all of it tumbled forward in one giant rush. He felt like he needed a time-out to breathe.
“I know this is terribly unfair,” Maddie said, smiling at him again. “I’ve had all this time to prepare, and you get zero. Rude of me, I know. But I couldn’t resist trying to surprise you. I made your parents promise not to tell.”
“My parents?” With a start, Kai remembered his mother’s phone call. So Maddie was the person he “used to know.” Indeed. But what was the other part of it? Don’t bring up anything “unpleasant?”
Oh. That. Why on earth would he? It was the last thing he wanted to talk about, with Maddie or anyone else.
“You’ve been to Lana'i already?” he surmised.
Maddie nodded. A healthy blush rose in her cheeks, and Kai could see that thinking about the island made her bloom with happiness. Had she missed it so badly?
“I had a lovely time,” she gushed. “I stayed over the night before last, with Nana. And I saw the old men again. And I had dinner with your family, and I met Gloria. Oh my, is she grown up!”
A flicker of worry intruded on Kai’s high. He exhaled roughly. “In a manner of speaking.”
Maddie’s eyes turned sympathetic. She took a half step toward him. “She’ll be all right. I don’t think she’s quite as confused as you think she is. We had a good talk yesterday.”
Even as she moved toward him, Kai reflexively moved backwards. This mature, genuinely-concerned-for-his-sister Maddie put him further out of sorts. As long as she was teasing and quirking with her little quirks he could see her as the Maddie he knew, but if he saw her as a woman at the same time he thought of his child-friend his brain would explode. Either way, he had to block out the raw effect of the visuals or he’d be no better than a starving wolf faced with a steaming rack of lamb.
Think child-friend. Think child-friend.
He could do this. He was good at self-denial. He’d had enough damn experience at it, hadn’t he?
“Um…” she said uncertainly, studying him. Then she smiled again. “I would apologize for the surprise, but you know I’m not really sorry. It was too much fun to see the look on your face. But I’ll take mercy on you and leave now. It’s obvious you were working. I just wanted to tell you that I’ll be living here on Maui for the next year, working on my post-doc in ecology at the Haleakala Field Station. And I’d love to have dinner some time and catch up.”
Kai processed her words slowly. This visit was not a one-off. She was living on Maui now. She was back.
She was staying.
His mind spun with chaos. Maddie. He could remember her so very well now, even though, if you’d asked him an hour ago, there’s no telling what he might or might not have recalled abo
ut her. If he said that he had missed her every day of the last fifteen years he would be lying; he had been a child when she had left, and his own life had taken several drastic and unforeseeable turns since then. He had never expected to see her again and had put no effort into keeping her memory alive. In fact, there had been a time when he had devoted some effort to the opposite. But when he looked in her eyes he could sense it: that old connection, buried deep yet holding on, with a mountainload of covertly entrenched memories to shore it up.
She most certainly could not leave him now. Where had she been all this time? What had driven her to come back? He had a million questions to ask her, and he wanted to lose himself in those eyes — and stare at the gorgeous rest of her, tolerance permitting — while he was asking them.
“How about now?” he suggested.
She looked pleasantly surprised. “Are you sure you can? I mean, that would be great. But don’t get in trouble with ‘the man’ on my account.”
Kai smiled and began to straighten up his desk. “‘The man’ is a woman. And she expects me to eat dinner. Just give me five minutes.”
“Okay, then. I’ll wait outside.”
Kai stopped to watch as she turned and walked out his door. His heart beat like a jackhammer. He was dreaming all this, wasn’t he?
Cut it out. If nothing else, she’s bound to be taken already.
Kai forced his breathing to slow. He wasn’t used to this much excitement in his life. And if he was smart, he wouldn’t get used to it now. Of course Maddie was already spoken for. When was a woman like her ever not? All she’d said was that she wanted to have dinner and catch up. With an old friend.
Chill, bruddah.
Kai blew out a breath, pocketed his wallet, and shut off his computer. He was okay. Everything was good.
He finished packing up and walked out of the office to find her standing beneath a palm tree in a grassy area at the edge of the parking lot. His heart sank to see that she was not alone. Evidently, he had invited himself to a dinner for three. The man standing opposite her appeared to be in his forties, dressed in the pricey style of casual reserved for tourist golfers, and as Kai studied the couple his head spun yet again. His Maddie had had many and varied aspirations for her life, but “trophy wife” had never been among them. Kai could not see her expression because she was facing away from him, but as he watched, the man’s confident, smirking face turned beet red. Kai began to walk towards them, having no idea what was going on, but by the time he reached the palm tree Maddie had turned around to smile at Kai and the man in question was moving rapidly in the opposite direction.
“Where would you like to eat?” she called out pleasantly.
The wind lifted her red mane and tousled it about her shoulders. Most of her hair was hanging freely down her back, but the front part she had swept away from her face and pinned up. Kai’s breath nearly caught at the sight of it. She had never worn her hair down as a child. At least not intentionally, although bushy clumps of tangles were always escaping from her braids and ponytails. The clothing she wore was unremarkable, consisting of a solid-colored, loose cotton shirt and shorts with nothing cut too low or too high. Maddie had never cared a fig what she looked like when she was child, but somehow Kai didn’t think that this particular modest, nondescript outfit was an oversight. He suspected she was making a conscious effort not to attract attention.
She was failing miserably.
“Wherever you like,” he answered.
“Actually, I had my eye on the Mexican place around the corner,” she replied, pointing. “I was going to eat there after I saw you, anyway. I’m starving.”
Kai chuckled. “Still starving all the time, huh?”
Maddie grinned. “Always. I can’t get away with eating quite so much anymore, though.”
No way was Kai making any comment on her figure. “Mexican sounds great.”
They began walking towards the restaurant side by side, and Kai felt an odd prickling of deja vu. It was as if he had suddenly reclaimed a lost appendage.
Then he realized that she was looking at him strangely.
“I’m not sure I like looking up at you,” she exclaimed. “It’s too weird. I still don’t see how you got so tall. I mean, everyone else in your family is so short! How is this possible?”
Kai’s eyes left hers. Oh, right. She didn’t know. And why would she? He certainly wouldn’t have spelled it out for her, not back then. His family situation was nothing to be ashamed of, but neither did he want to stop and explain it all right this second. There would be time later. “Worried you can’t push me around anymore?” he teased. “Maybe an arm wrestling rematch is in order.”
Maddie grinned. “Don’t be so sure of yourself.” Her gaze settled on his biceps, at which point her smirk faded. “You work out?”
Kai smirked back. “No. I just work.”
His cell phone rang. He groaned and stopped walking. “Hang on a second. If this is anyone from the office, I’ll have to take it.” He pulled out his phone and checked the number. “It’s one of the staff attorneys,” he reported glumly.
“No problem,” Maddie said gaily. “I’ll go ahead and order. What do you want?”
“Fish tacos?” Kai called out as she began walking ahead.
Maddie smiled over her shoulder. “You got it!”
Kai indulged in the view of her departing form for another second before answering.
The call did not please him. It was nothing but unnecessary blather, a request for him to repeat a bunch of information he had already passed on earlier in the day. The garrulous attorney on the other end of the line not only had nothing better to do than talk on the phone but also had no qualms about obliging a powerless intern to listen, and even Kai, who ordinarily prided himself on his patience, was about to lie and claim signal failure when the man finally relented and let him go. Kai hastened around the corner and looked for Maddie. She should be through the counter line by now, and if he knew her tastes she would have headed for the outdoor seating area. He located her red head immediately, but was discouraged to see that she was sitting with another man. This time, a twenty-something one.
His phone rang again.
Dammit!
He paused and looked at the number. It was his mother. The man sitting with Maddie was laughing and smiling at her. Once again, Kai couldn’t see her face. Had Maddie arranged earlier to meet him here?
He answered the phone. “Hi, Mom.”
“Kai!” Malaya’s excited voice replied. She was quiet a moment. “Well?”
“Yes, I’ve seen Maddie,” he confirmed. “She showed up at my office a little while ago.”
“And…” Malaya prompted. “She’s turned out somewhat… attractive, wouldn’t you say?”
Kai made no response.
Malaya chuckled. “I knew you’d say that.”
“Look, Mom,” Kai suggested. “Can I call you back? We’re meeting for dinner now.”
“I see,” Malaya said, her voice quickly turning anxious. “Kai, the reason I called…”
“Yes?” Kai kept his eyes glued to the scene at the table. The man sitting with Maddie had acquired a more serious expression.
“Listen,” Malaya continued. “Maddie thinks her mother had a heart attack.”
Kai’s gaze dropped. He gave his head a shake. “Wait. What did you say?”
“I said that Maddie seems to believe her mother died of a heart attack. Nana and I figure that’s what her father must have told her back then. You know, to make things easier. And I guess he never told her otherwise.”
Kai felt a cold, prickling sensation inching up his limbs.
Oh, for God’s sake! he chastised himself. Stop it! That was ages ago!
He forced the black images to the rear of his mind. “But that’s ridiculous!” he said hotly, regretting his tone even as he spoke, knowing that whatever he was upset about was hardly his mother’s fault. “She’s not a child anymore!”
“I agree
with you!” Malaya replied with equal ardor. “But it’s not our business, is it? I’m only telling you so you can keep from putting your foot in your mouth. She’s so happy to be back on the islands, Kai. Let’s just let her enjoy herself. All right?”
The man at the table leaned in closer to Maddie, touching off a flare of angry heat within Kai’s chest.
“Kai,” Malaya continued, her tone anxious again. “I know you don’t want to hear this from me, but I’m going to say it anyway. I can’t help worrying about what seeing her again is going to do to you. I mean… catch up, yes, have a nice time. Just don’t let yourself go back there. Okay?”
Kai didn’t answer. His attention was fixed on Maddie. Her body language seemed tense.
Malaya sighed. “Look, I’m just going to say this. I know you’re… looking right now. And I know Maddie isn’t attached either because she told Nana she doesn’t have a boyfriend.”
Kai watched, frozen in place, as Maddie calmly scooted her chair back, collected her trays, moved to another table, and sat back down again.
“But I really don’t think—” Malaya continued.
“Mom,” Kai interrupted, “I have to go. We’ll talk later. Thanks.”
He hung up and started moving toward Maddie, watching in disbelief as the man pursued her to the next table, came up directly behind her, laid an arm across her back, and began to caress her shoulder.
Kai doubled his steps, but by the time he reached the table several things had already happened. First, Maddie shoved her chair backward with such force the man nearly toppled onto the patrons behind him. Second she stood up and faced him eye to eye, fixing him with the one and only Maddie Westover freeze-glare, which Kai knew from personal experience usually preceded violence. Third, other customers turned and stared at them. Fourth, the man’s face turned purple, he straightened his shoulders, and he walked away.
“There you are!” Maddie called out cheerfully to Kai as he approached. She sat back down and slid a tray in his direction. “I ordered the plate with three tacos and got some Maui onion chips on the side. Hope it’s what you wanted.”
Kai fell into a chair and stared at her. He was breathing heavily, thoroughly rattled. Maddie seemed unaffected. “What just happened here?” he demanded, albeit in a hushed tone.
