“Sure. I can go with you. I’d like to see the orphanage and conduct an in-person interview. But I should probably spend most of my time with her and let you visit with Tokoni on your own. You know how kids never really take to me.”
“You just need to relax around them.” Although Lizzie championed hundreds of children’s charities, she’d never gotten the gist of communicating with kids, especially the younger ones. A side effect from her own youth, he thought, from losing her mom and forcing herself to grow up too fast. “For the record, I think you and Tokoni will hit it off just fine. In fact, I think he’s going to be impressed with you.”
“You do?” She adjusted her lounge chair, moving it to a more upright position. “What makes you say that?”
“In his culture redheads are said to descend from nobility, from a goddess ruler who dances with fire, and your hair is as bright as it gets.” Max sat forward, too, and leaned toward her. “He’ll probably think you’re a princess or something. But you were homecoming queen. So it’s not as if you didn’t have your reign.”
Her response fell flat. “That doesn’t count.”
He remembered going to the football game that night, sitting alone in the bleachers, watching her receive her crown. He’d skipped the homecoming dance. He wouldn’t have been able to blend in there. Getting a date would have been difficult, too. As for Lizzie, she’d attended the dance with the tall, tanned star of the boys’ swim team. “It counted back then.”
“Not to me, not like it should have. It wasn’t fair that my other friends didn’t accept you.”
“Well, I got the last laugh, didn’t I?”
She nodded, even if neither of them was laughing.
Before things got too morose, he reached out and tugged on a strand of her hair. “Don’t fret about being royalty to me. The only redhead that influenced my culture was a woodpecker.”
She sputtered into a laugh and slapped his hand away. “Gee, thanks, for that compelling tidbit.”
He smiled, pleased by her reaction. “It’s one of those old American Indian tales. I told it to Tokoni when he was putting a puzzle together with pictures of birds.” Max stopped smiling. “The original story involves love. But I left off that part when I told Tokoni. I figured he was too young to understand it. Plus, it would have been hypocritical of me to tell it that way.”
She took a ladylike sip of her tea. “Now I’m curious about the original version and just how lovey-dovey it is.”
“It’s pretty typical, I guess.” He went ahead and recited it, even if he preferred it without the romance. “It’s about a hunter who loves a girl from his village, but she’s never even noticed him. He thinks about her all the time. He even has trouble sleeping because he can’t get her off his mind. So he goes to the forest to be alone, where he hears a beautiful song that lulls him to sleep. That night, he dreams about a woodpecker who says, ‘Follow me and I’ll show you how to make this song.’ In the morning, he sees a real woodpecker and follows him. The bird is tapping on a branch and the familiar song is coming from it. Later, the hunter returns home with the branch and tries to make the music by waving it in the air, but it doesn’t work.”
Lizzie removed her hat. By now the sun was shifting in the sky, moving behind the trees and dappling her in scattered light. But mostly what Max noticed was how intense she looked, listening to the silly myth. Or was her intensity coming from the energy that always seemed to dance between them? The sexiness that seeped through their pores?
Ignoring the feeling, he continued by saying, “The hunter has another dream where the woodpecker shows him how to blow on the wood and tap the holes to make the song he’d first heard. Obviously, it’s a flute the bird made. But neither the hunter nor his people had ever seen this type of instrument before.”
She squinted at him. “What happens with the girl?”
“Once she hears the hunter’s beautiful song, she looks into his eyes and falls in love with him, just as he’d always loved her. But like I said, I told it to Tokoni without the romance.”
She was still squinting, intensity still etched on her face. “Where did you first come across this story? Was it in one of the books you used to read?”
“Yes.” When he was in foster care, he’d researched his culture, hoping to find something good in it. “I hated that the only thing my mom ever talked about was the scary stuff. But I’m glad that Tokoni’s mother tried to do right by him.”
“Me, too.” She spoke softly. “Parents are supposed to want what’s best for their children.”
He met her gaze, and she stared back at him, almost like the girl in the hunter’s tale—except that love didn’t appeal to either of them.
But desire did. If Lizzie wasn’t his best friend, if she was someone he could kiss without consequence, he would lock lips with her right now, pulling her as close to him as he possibly could. And with the way she was looking at him, she would probably let him kiss the hell out of her. But that wouldn’t do either of them any good.
“I appreciate you coming to Nulah with me,” he said, trying to shake off the heat of wanting her. “It means a lot to me, having you there.”
“I know it does,” she replied, reaching for his hand.
But it was only the slightest touch. She pulled away quickly. Determined, it seemed, to control her hunger for him, too.
* * *
A myriad of thoughts skittered through Lizzie’s mind. Today she and Max were leaving on their trip, and she should be done packing, as he would be arriving soon to pick her up. Yet she was still sorting haphazardly through her clothes and placing them in her suitcase. Normally Lizzie was far more organized. But for now she couldn’t think clearly.
She hated it when her attraction to Max dragged her under its unwelcome spell, and lately it seemed to be getting worse. But they’d both learned to deal with it, just as she was trying to get a handle on how his attachment to Tokoni was making her feel. Even with his troubled past, being around children was easy for Max. Lizzie was terribly nervous about meeting the boy. Kids didn’t relate to her in the fun-and-free way they did with him. Of course her stodgy behavior in their presence didn’t help. But no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t seem to change that side of herself.
After her mother had drifted into a deathly sleep, she’d compensated for the loss by taking on the characteristics of an adult, long before she should have.
But what choice did she have? Her grieving father had bailed out on parenthood, leaving her with nannies and cooks. He’d immersed himself in his high-powered work and business travels, allowing her to grow up in a big lonely house full of strangers. Lizzie didn’t have any extended family to speak of.
Even after all these years, she and her dad barely communicated. Was it any wonder that she’d gone off to Columbia University searching for a connection to her mom? She’d even taken the same journalism major. She’d walked in her mother’s path, but it hadn’t done a bit of good. She’d returned with the same disjointed feelings.
Her memories of her mom were painfully odd: scattered images of a beautifully fragile blonde who used to stare unblinkingly at herself in the mirror, who used to give lavish parties and tell Lizzie how essential it was for a young lady of her standing to be a good hostess, who used to laugh at the drop of a hat and then cry just as easily. Mama’s biggest ambition was to be awarded the Pulitzer Prize. But mostly she just threw away her writings. Sometimes she even burned them, tossing them into the fireplace and murmuring to herself in French, the language of her ancestors.
Mama was rife with strange emotions, with crazy behaviors, but she was warm and loving, too, cuddling Lizzie at night. Without her sweet, dreamy mother by her side, Elizabeth “Lizzie” McQueen had been crushed, like a bug on a long white limousine’s windshield.
After Mama killed herself, Dad sold their Savannah h
ome, got a new job in Los Angeles and told Lizzie that she was going to be a California kid from then on.
But by that time she’d already gotten used to imitating her mother’s lady-of-the-manor ways, presenting a rich-girl image that made her popular. Nonetheless, she’d lied to her new friends, saying that her socialite mother had suffered a brain aneurysm. Dad told his new workmates the same phony story. Lizzie had been coaxed by him to protect their privacy, and she’d embraced the lie.
Until she met Max.
She’d felt compelled to reveal the truth to him. But he was different from her other peers—a shy, lonely boy, who was as damaged as she was.
The doorbell rang, and Lizzie caught her breath.
She dashed to answer the summons, and there he was: Max Marquez, with his longish black hair shining like a raven’s wing. He wore it parted down the middle and falling past his neck, but not quite to his shoulders. His deeply set eyes were brown, but sometimes they looked as black as his hair. His face was strong and angular, with a bone structure to die for. The gangly teenager he’d once been was gone. He’d grown into a fiercely handsome man.
“Are you ready?” he asked.
She shook her head. “Sorry. No. I’m still packing.”
He entered her condo. “That’s okay. I’ll text my pilot and tell him we’re running late.”
Lizzie nodded. Max’s success provided him the luxury of a private jet. She’d inherited her mother’s old Savannah money, but she was nowhere as wealthy as he was. He wasn’t the only Native American foster kid in LA who’d made good. He remained close to two of his foster brothers, who’d also become billionaires. Max had been instrumental in helping them attain their fortunes, loaning them money to get their businesses off the ground.
He followed her into her room, where her suitcase was on the bed, surrounded by the clothes she’d been sorting.
He lifted a floral-printed dress from the pile. “This is pretty.” He glanced at a lace bra and panty set. “And those.” Clearly, he was teasing her, as if making a joke was easier than anything else he could think of doing or saying.
“Knock it off.” She grabbed the lingerie and shoved them into a pouch on the side of her Louis Vuitton luggage, glad that he hadn’t actually touched her underwear. As for the dress, she tugged it away from him.
“Did you really have a thing for me in high school?” he asked.
Oh, goodness. He was bringing that up now? “Yes, I really did.” She’d developed a quirky little crush on him, formed within the ache of the secrets they’d shared. But he’d totally blown her away when she returned from university and saw his physical transformation. He’d changed in all sorts of ways by then. While she’d been hitting the books, he’d already earned his first million, selling an app he’d designed, and he hadn’t even gone to college. These days, he invested in start-ups and made a killing doing it.
“It never would have worked between us,” he said.
Lizzie considered flinging her makeup bag at him and knocking him upside that computer chip brain of his. “I never proposed that it would.”
“You were too classy for me.” He gazed at her from across the bed. “Sometimes I think you still are.”
A surge of heat shot through her blood. “That’s nonsense. You date tons of socialites. They’re your type.”
“Because you set the standard. How could I be around you and not want that type?”
“Don’t do this, Max.” He’d gone beyond the realm of making jokes. “You shouldn’t even be in my room, let alone be saying that sort of stuff.”
“As if.” He brushed it off. “I’ve been in your room plenty of times before. Remember last New Year’s Eve? I poured you into bed when you got too drunk to stand.”
She looked at him as if he’d gone mad. But maybe he had lost his grip on reality. Or maybe she had. Either way, she challenged him. “What are you talking about? I wasn’t inebriated. I was coming down with the flu.”
“So you kept telling me.” He gave her a pointed look. “I think it was all those cosmopolitans that international playboy lover of yours kept plying you with.”
Seriously? His memory couldn’t be that bad. “You were tending bar at the party that night.” Here at her house, with her guests.
“Was I? Are you sure? I thought it was that Grand Prix driver you met in Monte Carlo. The one all the women swooned over.”
“He and I were over by then.” She wagged a finger at him. “You’re the one who kept adding extra vodka to my drinks.”
“I must have felt sorry for you, getting dumped by that guy.”
“From what I recall, it was around the same time that department store heiress walked out on you.”
“She was boring, anyway.”
“I thought she was nice. She was hunting for a husband, though.”
“Yeah, and that ruled me out. I wouldn’t get married if the survival of the world depended on it.”
“Me, neither. But what’s the likelihood of us ever having to do that, for saving mankind or any other reason?”
“There isn’t. But I still say that you were drunk last New Year’s, and I was the gentleman—thank you very much—who tucked you into this very bed.” He patted her pillow for effect, putting a dent in it.
“Oh, there’s an oxymoron. The guy feeding me liquor is the gentleman in the story?”
“It beats your big-fish tale about having the flu.”
“Okay. Fine. I was wasted. Now stop taking it out on my pillow.”
“Oops, sorry.” He plumped it back up, good as new. “Are you going to finish packing or we going to sit here all day, annoying each other?”
“You started it.” She filled her suitcase, stuffing it to the gills. She only wished they were going on a trip that didn’t include a child she was nervous about meeting.
“Are you still worried about whether or not Tokoni will like you?” he asked, homing in on her troubled expression. “I already told you that I think you’re going to impress him.”
“Because he might regard me as a princess? That feels like pressure in itself.”
“It’ll be all right, Lizzie. And I promise, once you meet him, you’ll see how special he is.”
She didn’t doubt that Tokoni was a nice little boy. But that didn’t ease her nerves or boost her confidence about meeting him. Of course for now all she could do was remain by Max’s side, supporting his cause, like the friend she was meant to be.
Two
Lizzie awakened inside a bungalow, with a tropical breeze stirring through an open window. Alone with her thoughts, she sat up and stretched.
Yesterday afternoon she and Max had arrived at their destination and checked in to the resort he’d booked for their weeklong stay. They had separate accommodations, each with its own colorful garden and oceanfront deck, equipped with everything they needed to relax, including hammocks. The interiors were also decorated to complement the environment, with beamed ceilings, wood floors, cozy couches and canopy beds.
Nulah consisted of a series of islands, and the sparsely populated island they were on was a twenty-minute boat ride to the mainland, the main island within the nation, where the capital city and all the activities in that area were: the airport, the orphanage they would be visiting, shopping and dining, dance clubs and other tourist-generated nightlife, nice hotels, cheap motels, burgeoning crime, basically what you would find in any city except on a smaller scale.
Of course at this off-the-grid resort, things were quiet. Max had stayed here before, during his sabbatical, and now Lizzie understood why it appealed to him.
With another body-rolling stretch, she climbed out of bed. She suspected that Max was already wide awake and jogging along the beach. He preferred early-morning runs. Typically, Lizzie did, too. But she’d skipped that routine to
day.
She showered and fixed her makeup and hair, keeping it simple. She didn’t want to show up at the orphanage looking like a spoiled heiress. Or a princess. Or anything that drew too much attention to herself.
Returning to her bedroom, she donned the floral-printed dress Max had manhandled when she was packing yesterday, pairing it with T-strap sandals.
Lizzie made a cup of coffee, with extra cream, and headed outside. With a quiet sigh, she settled into a chair on her deck and gazed out at the view—the pearly white sand and aqua-blue water.
She closed her eyes, and when she opened them, Max appeared along the shore, winding down from his run. For a moment, he almost seemed like an apparition, a tall, tanned warrior in the morning light.
He glanced in her direction, and she waved him over. But before he strode toward her, he stopped to remove his T-shirt, using it like a towel to dry the sweat from his face and chest. Lizzie got a sexy little pulse-palpitating reaction from watching him. He’d already told her that his shower was outside, located in a walled section of his garden. He’d requested a bungalow with that type of amenity. So now she was going to envision him, naked in the elements, with water streaming over his sun-bronzed skin.
“Hey.” He stood beside her chair. “What happened? I was expecting to see you out there. I figured you would’ve joined me at some point.”
“I wasn’t in the mood to run today.” She glanced past him, making sure that she wasn’t ogling his abs or giving him the look. Instead, she checked out a foamy wave breaking onto the shore. This island was a certified marine reserve, allowing guests to snorkel off the beach from the front of their bungalows. Lizzie hadn’t been in the ocean yet, but according to Max there were heaps of fish, clams and coral reefs.
“You look pretty,” he said.
His compliment gave her pulse another little jump start, prompting her to meet his gaze. “Thank you.”
Paper Wedding, Best-Friend Bride Page 2
