by Edie Claire
Maddie shook her head. Her own treat was almost gone as well. “I didn’t have time. There’s a million things I still want to do there, but they’ll have to wait a while.” In retrospect, she wished she had stayed on Lana'i a few more days, since she didn’t officially start her post-doc until Monday, and getting settled in at the field station hadn’t taken nearly as long as she thought it might. She didn’t regret cruising on the catamaran — meeting the captain had been a delight and the whale watching had been spectacular — but it hadn’t come cheap.
“I’d go back every weekend if I could,” she admitted, “but the truth is, I’m pretty broke. I’ll have to wait until my stipend kicks in, then I’ll hop on the ferry.”
Kai watched her for a moment, then stood abruptly. He held out his hand for her empty cone and spoon and then tossed them into the can for her. “I’m afraid I’ve got to get back to the office,” he said.
“Oh,” Maddie replied, rising also. “Sorry. Don’t get fired on my account.”
He smiled shyly. The sight gave Maddie a bizarre twinge in her middle. Kai might have been shy with every other girl on the planet, but he had never been shy with her, not after that first day of first grade, anyway. He had never treated her like a girl. Nor had he treated her like one of the boys. She had always occupied some nether space in between.
“I was planning on taking the ferry home this weekend,” he told her. “Why don’t you come along? You can stay at Nana’s again. I usually stay there myself, but I can crash on the couch at home. I have a feeling this will be my last chance for a while. I’ve got to start doing some overtime with one of the consultants; I’m only getting away this weekend because she’s got family visiting.”
Maddie’s heart skipped. Back to Lana'i? Tomorrow? She would love nothing better. But. “I already told you, I don’t have ferry money right now.”
“It’ll be my treat,” he offered. “Consider it a homecoming gift.”
Maddie frowned. “Aren’t legal interns poor, too?”
He shrugged. “Not as poor as I would be if I wasn’t renting a room on the cheap at my uncle’s house.”
Still, Maddie hesitated. She didn’t want to be indebted. Debt could be used as leverage. Had been used as leverage. Many times.
Kai shrugged and started walking. “Forget it. It was just an idea. I know. I don’t like to take handouts, either.”
She watched him as he walked away. His added height hadn’t changed the distinctive way he carried himself. That weird way he swung his left arm to the side, particularly when he was upset…
You’d take a quarter from the old men! Her own, younger voice argued from somewhere in her brain. But you won’t take money from me? Why not?
Kai had been upset with her. Even as a girl, Maddie could see that his pride was hurt, but she still thought he was being ridiculous. She’d just gotten money for her birthday, and she didn’t need it and Kai did… for what? She couldn’t remember. But he had refused her.
I don’t need your stinking money!
But I want to give it to you!
I don’t care!
But he had needed that money, whatever it was for. Maddie remembered sneaking into the tiny bedroom he shared with Chika and shoving the dollar bills under his pillow. She also remembered finding the same amount, several months later, tucked beneath her own.
He had never said a word about it. And neither had she.
“Kai?” she called.
He stopped and turned around.
“If we call it a loan, you’re on,” she offered.
He smiled back at her.
He nodded.
Chapter 11
Kai followed Maddie as she filed along with the other waiting passengers into the lower cabin of the ferry. He exchanged nods with the folks he knew, but declined to engage in conversation. Maddie spied two seats by a window and hustled forward to claim them.
Kai knew she would have preferred to climb up top and ride in the open by the railing; but it was raining both hard and steadily, a relatively unusual circumstance for which neither of them had come prepared. Kai sat down beside her, being careful to leave a polite distance between them. They had spoken little since dinner the evening before. With neither of them having a car, Maddie had been happy to take him up on his offer of a ride to the ferry dock in Lahaina via his cousin’s dilapidated SUV, but Risa’s chatter about her gigs as a wedding florist at the Ka'anapali resorts had left zero space for other conversation.
“Darn this rain,” Maddie grumbled, frowning at the spattered window. “I was hoping to do some more whale watching.” She cast a disparaging glance at her lightweight jacket, which did not appear to be waterproof. “I couldn’t care less if I get soaked, but it would be rude to show up at Nana’s dripping wet.”
“You could reminisce over a dryer cycle at the launderette first,” Kai teased, recalling a litany of childhood complaints about laundry days. He didn’t remember Maddie as a complainer in general, but she had always bored easily.
Maddie threw him a strange look he couldn’t decipher. “I suppose so.” She drummed her fingers anxiously on the back of the seat in front of her, then slumped into her own. “Never mind. I’m sure it will clear up soon enough.”
She turned her gaze out the spattered window again. Kai perceived that she was uptight, and her discomfort had a mirrored effect on him. Why the angst?
He did a quick analysis of her body language. His skills at the art had improved since Haley had begun working with the firm, but it didn’t take an expert to read the message Maddie was sending now. If she had dressed to avoid undue attention last night, today she had dressed one step short of a nun. Her hair was tightly swept into braids on either side of her head, and much of her face was concealed by the brim of a floppy hat. Whatever shirt she wore was completely covered by the jacket, and her legs were obscured to her shins by baggy cargo-style capris. The attempt to hide her assets was so blatant it was almost laughable, because short of putting a bag over her head and suspending a barrel from her shoulders, the quest was hopeless. Her attempt, however, spoke volumes.
Don’t hit on me, okay? Don’t even look at me that way.
Kai found the message disheartening, to say the least. But he also found it sad. Beauty like Maddie’s should be allowed to shine, no matter whom it drove to distraction.
He was definitely among that number. The fact that he had extensive experience in gentlemanly behavior was not helpful in the slightest, because the strictures that had bound him for the last seven years happily no longer applied. He’d been looking forward to his freedom for a very long time now, and thus far, he’d had precious little chance to exercise it.
Still, she had made her wishes clear, and that was that. If there was ever to be anything more between them — and he reserved the right not to lock that door, even if he did agree to close it — the first move would have to come from her. He wanted to tell her that she had nothing to worry about, but they weren’t at a place where that was possible. Despite their shared history, they were still virtual strangers, feeling each other out. Getting back to a place of comfort — and of genuine trust — would take time.
He relaxed into his own seat, careful not to touch her. He could handle this. Really, he could. But why did she have to turn out so ridiculously sexy? Under the circumstances, he felt like the butt of somebody’s joke.
“Was Nana okay with me coming back again so soon?” she asked.
“Of course,” he assured. “She loves having company. You and I aren’t the only ones making use of her spare room. She could charge rent for it.”
“She probably should,” Maddie agreed thoughtfully.
Kai watched what portion of her face he could actually see and wondered what she was thinking. He wondered if she was aware that Nana was one of the few Lana'ians who actually owned her own house. It had been purchased by a prudent ancestor during a brief window in time when doing so was actually possible, and for Nana to own it outrigh
t now and be able to live alone was a rare privilege. Over a hundred years ago, one wealthy rancher from Kauai had bought up almost all the land on the island, and it had been concentrated into one parcel ever since. Most Lana'ians were renters, and housing space was at a premium. If Nana hadn’t owned her little house, odds were she would have been displaced from it years ago.
Another silence ensued, and Kai exhaled with frustration. The awkwardness between them, in and of itself, was awkward. Their childhood friendship had been anything but polite. Maddie was just as likely to punch him in the shoulder to get his attention as she was to say hello. They’d had mud fights after a rain. She thought nothing of wearing the same shirt three days in a row and her toenails were always too long. He honestly never even thought of her as female. Good God, they used to go swimming together in their underwear!
Back then he could have told her anything, said something stupid, done something rude, and it wouldn’t have mattered; they would still be friends. He would give anything to be even half so comfortable with her now, but that happy past seemed light years away. Perhaps it would put them both more at ease if they continued talking about their childhoods?
“Tell me more about Kentucky,” he suggested. “What was it like starting middle school there after being on Lana'i? Did the other kids find you exotic?”
Kai could just see Maddie’s lovely gray eyes underneath the brim of her hat. They were swimming with emotion. “I had to finish the fifth grade in Ohio first. That was pretty awful. I remember it seemed so dark all the time. No green anywhere. Just shades of brown and gray. And cold. And wet.”
Kai cursed under his breath. He hadn’t meant to take her that far back. The first few months after her mother died must have been sheer misery, no matter what her father told her.
“I was pretty depressed,” she confirmed. Then she tilted her head and looked him fully in the face. “I wrote you a letter once. Did you get it?”
Kai’s pulse quickened. Her letter. Memory flickered, a stab of guilt. A sense of failure. Of weakness.
Knock it off.
“Yes, I got it.” He cleared his throat. “I’m sorry I didn’t respond.” He was sorry, but he was not going to beat himself up over it. He was past all that now.
Yet Maddie’s accusing gaze would not let go. “Why didn’t you?” she demanded.
A sick feeling surged. Dammit! He was not going to do this. “I was a kid,” he answered, somewhat more flippantly than intended. “I guess I didn’t know what to say.”
Maddie’s face flashed with hurt. She turned to the window.
“It wasn’t that I didn’t care,” Kai amended. “I did miss you. I missed you a lot, actually.”
Maddie turned back around. “Really?” she said skeptically.
“Yes!” he said firmly. He smiled at her. “Who else would sneak out at midnight to stare at the sky with me?”
She huffed. “Nobody sane. I got bit by so many bugs!”
He laughed. “Nobody thinks Lana'i has a lot of mosquitos except you.”
“They never bit anybody on Lana'i except me!” she protested. “If there was one mosquito on the whole damn island, it would fly the length of it to sniff me out! Speaking of which, I haven’t even been on Maui a week yet, and I’ve got half a dozen bites already, in the middle of winter. I wonder if I could tattoo myself with DEET?”
She lifted her foot and slid up her capris to expose a calf and knee, then suddenly thought better of it. Her reversal of action was just as well, since whatever bites she had intended to show Kai were eclipsed by the shapeliness of her leg.
“I have to admit, though, the bugs were even worse in Kentucky, at least in the summer,” she continued. “And in Alabama. What about Utah? Oh, wait. I forgot. Bugs don’t like you.”
Kai smiled smugly. “Guess I’m just lucky.”
Maddie scowled at him. She looked cute when she scowled. She always had. Her gaze dropped to his arms, and she studied him with a wistful look that made him restless. When she was a child, she used to tell him how much she envied the color of his skin. How smooth and attractive it was, unmarked by the myriad bug bites, scratches, and bruises that stood out so obviously on her own. He wondered if she still felt that way.
He doubted it.
She seemed about to say something, but thought better of it. Her mouth closed and she turned around to pretend to stare out a window obscured by raindrops.
Why was this so difficult?
“You never did tell me about your job,” she blurted suddenly, turning around again. “You asked me all about my life last night, but I didn’t have time to return the favor. So do you like being a lawyer? Living the high life in Kahului?”
Kai had to chuckle at that. “If you call living at my uncle’s house and working like a dog ‘the high life,’ then I guess I like it fine.”
She studied him again. “You never said you wanted to be a lawyer. All I remember you saying you wanted to be was an astronaut.”
“What ten-year-old wants to be a lawyer?” he replied. “Wanting to be an astronaut made me seem weird enough, as you recall. Kind of retro for the nineties.”
Maddie considered. “I don’t even remember what I said I wanted to be.”
“That’s because you kept changing it.”
“Ah, right,” she agreed. “I just knew it would be something exciting. Still, how could I ever have dreamed that one day I would spend weeks at a time staking out dumpsters in rural Alabama waiting for feral cats to come paw through the trash?”
Kai grinned. “At least one of us got to live the high life.”
She grinned back, then stared at him thoughtfully. “You might have said you wanted to be an astronaut, but what you always wanted to do was help the people of Lana'i. You wanted to do something that meant something. You just weren’t sure what. Is that why you went to law school? To find out how to make things happen?”
Kai felt an odd, fluttering sensation in his gut. She remembered that? Not only had she remembered, but she had just effortlessly pieced together what had taken him ages to figure out for himself. He felt laid bare — by a woman he barely knew. The sensation was disconcerting, yet at the same time, it gave him a peculiar feeling of elation.
“Yes,” he confirmed. “Exactly. I knew that politics wasn’t for me, but law seemed to be a good fit. I wanted to make life better for the people of Lana'i and all the islands. Economic opportunity. Social justice. That’s what I focused on most in law school, public policy. I had a couple of prospects for work in Honolulu that would have been more along those lines, but then the opportunity came up with EarthDefense on Maui.”
“And you couldn’t resist,” Maddie suggested.
He smiled at her. “No, I couldn’t. I’ve never wanted to live in Honolulu, and both those jobs had other drawbacks besides. But I really liked the people and the whole mission at EarthDefense, and after being so far away from home for so long it’s great being able to hop on the ferry whenever I want. Environmental law wasn’t my first choice, but it’s growing on me.”
“Oh?” Maddie beamed at him approvingly. “As an ecologist, I heartily approve. Somebody has to preserve the natural resources of the islands, or the economic issues will be a moot point. And if we don’t stop climate change, so will social justice. Get to work, Nakama!”
“Hey, this is the first whole weekend I’ve taken off in a month!” Kai protested. “I usually only get one night in, and lately I’ve spent most of my downtime trying to straighten Gloria out.”
His mind flashed with an unwelcome image of his beloved baby sister screaming profanities at him, and his insides roiled with the sick sense of worry that had become second nature. He shouldn’t have mentioned the topic — he had wrecked his own mood just when he and Maddie were finally getting a light-hearted vibe going. But Gloria was never far from his thoughts.
When he’d first come home last summer she’d treated him like her hero, just as she always had. So when the trouble started and his
parents had asked for his help, he’d been certain he could fix everything.
Wrong.
Oh, the carnage.
God help him. He’d made things so much worse. Whatever Gloria thought of him now, he was definitely no longer her hero. They’d been apart for so long, and she’d grown up so much, he had no idea how to relate to her, how to deal with the changes in her. Now his ordinarily happy family was spiraling into chaos. Last weekend his grandmother, whom everybody respected, had seen Gloria’s paramour pawing up another girl behind a neighbor’s house, and Nana had reported the incident to her granddaughter only to be screamed at and called a liar.
“Gloria’s not stupid,” Maddie assured him, looking absurdly confident of the fact.
Kai felt himself bristling. What could Maddie possibly know about the situation? She had been around his teen sister for what, one day? Of course Gloria wasn’t stupid, but that didn’t mean her judgment wasn’t pathologically impaired. Growing up was one thing, but for his sweet baby sister to go straight from wearing frilly princess outfits to being possessed by multiple demons couldn’t possibly be normal! He frowned. “Do you have any idea what a piece of work this guy is that she’s so crazy about?”
Maddie had the nerve to smile slightly. “Love can be blind.”
“It’s not love!” he pronounced. “I don’t know what it is, but it’s not that! She’s going to get herself hurt.” He felt his face growing hot. He drew in a deep, slow breath to calm himself. “You know, I could count on one hand the number of times I seriously thought about resorting to physical violence. And every time had something to do with one of my sisters.”
Maddie laughed. But her expression soon turned serious again. “I believe the cracks in this guy’s armor are starting to show, Kai, but you can’t speed that up. You can only slow it down by forcing her to defend him. I realize nobody asked me, but if you did ask me, I’d say just drop the subject. She’ll break up with him soon enough.”
Kai kept his mouth shut. Similar points had been made and rebutted across his family’s dinner table for weeks now. Nana agreed with Maddie, believing that Gloria needed the space to learn from her own mistakes. Kai was more sympathetic with his father, seeing a simpler solution in encouraging the guy to surf solo at Polihua beach, then waiting for his corpse to wash up. Malaya’s views alternated with the wind, but lately she’d been leaning toward the corpse idea.
