Island Love Songs: Seven Nights in ParadiseThe Wedding DanceOrchids and Bliss

by Kayla Perrin

  “What is that?” he asked Baden.

  “Newsprint. The guy who owns the place buys it from the local newspaper. He says it’s cheaper than washing and maintaining linens or getting place mats printed up. When you finish eating, you gather up your trash, ball it up and toss it in either the trash if there’s leftover food or in the recycling bin over there.”

  She handed him a small laminated card, and they got in line behind six other customers waiting to put in their orders at the counter.

  “The wait isn’t too long for a table,” Baden said. “A lot of orders are takeout. Menu,” she added to explain the card. “There are only six things on it. All of them are wonderful though, so whatever you get is going to be good.”

  “Hmm,” he said. “Six? That’s not much to choose from.”

  “You’re just a regular Doubting Thomas, aren’t you?”

  “No. I’m just a cop who has had his share of heartburn from bad food in greasy spoons.”

  She laughed. “Well, I think you’re going to be pleasantly surprised with your lunch today. My treat since you’re such a wuss.”

  “Hey, I resemble that!”

  She shook her head at Jesse. “I’m having a number three,” she told him without even looking at the menu. “It’s my favorite.”

  “Then I’ll have that, too.”

  Baden took the menu from him and flipped it over. “What do you want to drink?”

  They moved up a place in line.

  Jesse snorted in amusement. “Just six food choices but there’s no skimping on the libations, huh?”

  More than a dozen different kinds of beers, domestic and imported, were listed, as was a full line of sodas, fizzes, waters and tropical creations. While a cold beer sounded refreshing on the warm summer day, he remembered her advice about the locavore movement and opted for one of the local beverages, a Kula strawberry concoction that he prayed didn’t come with a little umbrella in it.

  “That has a kick to it,” Baden said. “It has two kinds of rum.”

  He spread his hands. “While in Hawaii...”

  She grinned.

  Just a couple minutes later, they were placing their orders. And before long, they settled at one of the tables ready to enjoy piping-hot food.

  It all looked kind of foreign to Jesse, and he said as much.

  “There’s more to the culinary universe than Carolina-style pulled pork, coleslaw and an ice-cold Bud.”

  “But nothing better.”

  “So you say,” she said in a singsong voice. “We’ll just see what you’re saying after a couple bites.”

  A few minutes later, he had to take that statement back.

  “Oh, my God. What did you say this is called?”

  “Laulau,” Baden said. “It’s pork, beef and chicken with taro. They wrap and steam them in ti leaves. It’s like, well, I guess its closest mainland cousin would be a burrito.”

  “I think I’m gonna need to get another order of it.”

  “What? You’re skipping the bugs and the alligator toes, and what was it—lizard burgers?”

  He smirked and got up to place an extra order of the laulau.

  “Save some room for haupia, our dessert,” Baden called after him. “It’s a coconut pudding that’s gonna curl your toes.”

  His gut tightened. Jesse didn’t know what was turning him on more, Baden or the way she referred to Hawaiian food.

  He glanced back at her and grinned. “Promises, promises.”

  Heat rose to Baden’s cheeks.

  Jesse may have been talking about food, but the look in his eyes said he was hungry for something else entirely.

  Chapter 3

  Baden could not sleep that night. She padded to the kitchen of the cottage for a glass of warm milk. When she realized the very idea turned her stomach, she slipped on a silk wrapper and wandered outside to walk the grounds. She found the tropical garden soothing and definitely needed something to soothe her raging thoughts.

  An image of being wrapped up in Jesse Fremont’s strong arms came to mind.

  Not that!

  Although she had no doubt that, after a night of passion with Jesse, she would fall soundly, contentedly and deeply into a satiated sweet oblivion.

  Along the garden pathway, Baden paused and bent to inhale the luxurious and calming scent of a hibiscus flower. Then meandered to the garden bench at the base of a kukui tree. Its white and yellow blooms somehow reminded her of home.

  Keeping her cool under pressure served Baden well in selling high-end real estate. She had negotiated complex deals by maintaining her cool. Always. She knew how to ride and best the storms, hers coming in the form of millionaires and a few billionaires who were used to flunkies and “yes men” fawning over them. But Baden was a Calloway and she, like every other Calloway, played hardball to win.

  She also played poker with the best of them. She had earned superfat commissions and bonuses and every one of the Kona Realty Company’s top sales awards by knowing when to push and when to retreat. She always played her hands well.

  But now. This. This was something else entirely.

  She got up and continued her meandering, pausing at the pool and hearing the ocean just a few steps away.

  This business with Jesse, well, it wasn’t business. It was personal. And for a long time now, she’d relegated personal to a dark corner of a closet she didn’t use anymore.

  She wanted Jesse.

  The discipline she had honed at the negotiating table in the cutthroat real estate market served her well today. She’d kept her game face intact even though she’d been quivering on the inside.

  She wanted Jesse Fremont.

  After the initial shock to her system, she’d pulled herself together. Her idea to play impromptu tour guide had been a stroke of not genius but brilliance. It got her out of the confines of the estate and the cottage. At three thousand square feet, they hadn’t really been on top of each other in the guest cottage, but Baden felt closed in, claustrophobic and on edge.

  She knew what the problem was. And she knew that the elephant in the room between them would be there no matter what. And so she’d run. Again.

  It was infinitely simpler to get out and play, as Jesse called her, the Miss Hawaii Chamber of Commerce.

  Showing him Hawaii was easy. Talking about the past, not so much.

  Now though, as the lush tropical night wooed her on the lanai, she had no shield. No farmers’ market or local hot spot to keep her distracted. No tourism brochures to parrot with a running commentary on island culture and customs.

  With a year and a half to buffer her defenses, she found them stripped away in an afternoon. She was Baden Calloway, the runaway bride-to-be of Cedar Springs, North Carolina.

  She’d embarrassed Sean, a good man whose only fault was that he had loved her.

  She’d embarrassed her family, though they all stood beside and behind her during the ordeal.

  But most of all, she’d embarrassed herself. While she could apologize to her family and eventually come to terms with what she’d done, there was no longer the time she thought she would have or the opportunity to apologize to Sean...to explain to him why she’d bolted. He had deserved an explanation. His death had meant that she would forever carry the guilt.

  And now, now, when she had finally made some peace with herself, started a new life, learned that she could be more than her reputation back home, back home had come knocking on her front door and disrupting her life.

  She hadn’t run away from her wedding because of Sean.

  He didn’t know that. Sean hadn’t known. Baden had not wanted to even acknowledge the fact to herself. But it was true.

  How could she stand before God, sharing vows for a lifetime with Sean, when a p
art of her kept wondering if the better thing was someone else?

  How pathetic was that?

  * * *

  Later that night at the time-share resort he’d leased for a week, Jesse stood on the balcony and watched the sun go down on the beach and wondered if he’d have the nerve to tell Baden why he’d really come to Hawaii.

  Spending such a wonderful day with her made him realize that he needed to give her the message from Sean that he’d come to deliver...and that, after he did, she would probably never speak to him again.

  He glanced at the envelope on the dresser top, then uttered an expletive.

  There was no probably about it. She’d hate him for what he had to tell her and for withholding the information all this time.

  * * *

  Baden wasn’t surprised to get a text message from Jesse first thing the next morning. He thanked her for the tour and the meal at Uncle Jimmy’s, then asked if she were free that day.

  As in for a date? she wanted to ask, but didn’t.

  It didn’t matter if he was asking her out. A part of her was glad, very glad, she had appointments booked for most of the day, including shepherding the Lis on their home-buying visit to Maui.

  She texted Jesse back that she wasn’t available.

  Then, biting her lip and wondering if what she was thinking was a really good idea, she sent another text message telling him when she would be free to see him.

  * * *

  “Let’s go holoholo,” Baden said.

  Jesse had not the first clue what that meant, but it sounded like something that involved Baden not wearing many clothes, so he was all for it and told her as much two days later.

  “Should I change into trunks?” he asked.

  She gave him a quizzical look and then smiled. For Jesse, that smile was like the sun rising off the east side of his hotel room. “Do you even know what holoholo means?”

  “I can’t even spell it,” he admitted.

  She gave him the spelling and then added, “It just means hang out, do nothing in particular. You know, like a Sunday drive to nowhere.”

  He would hang out in hell with her if she asked. But Jesse just nodded. “Sounds cool. You can show me this island you fell in love with.”

  She cocked her head in that little way that he’d come to recognize and identify as her “considering things” look.

  “I’ll drive,” she said.

  Since his rental was a standard-issue sedan, slate gray, late model and looked like all the others he’d seen, he had absolutely no objection to cruising in her luxury Jag.

  “About that condo you suggested earlier,” Jesse began as she whipped into the island traffic and waved a thank-you when another driver let her in.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Can we look at a couple of them?”

  She grinned. “Really?”

  When he nodded, she smiled even broader. “Sweet!”

  He laughed and settled in to watch her drive. He loved the way she handled the powerful car.

  Relaxed and comfortable, he braced his hands behind his head, happy to just be in her company.

  “Show me what your clients see,” he said.

  Jesse did not really have a plan for his stay in Hawaii. He’d simply come to the place where Baden was.

  And he hadn’t lied when he had told her that he had a hotel. It was a resort recommended by a cop buddy who rented out time-share units he owned. Jesse claimed a week and figured he would find Baden then go home. The only plan he had after that was to spend the other five weeks of his forced exile from work catching up on projects around his house, projects he’d let go undone for too long—cleaning the gutters, painting, putting in some drywall in his den, a job unfinished from the last nor’easter. That storm blew through doing damage, but not enough to warrant an insurance claim, the deductible or the hassle of the paperwork and forms his insurance company would require.

  When given the choice of being Mr. Home Improvement or breathing in the scent of Baden Calloway, Jesse knew he’d let his house fall into ruin without regret or the slightest remorse.

  Thank you, Dr. Kleinmann, he thought.

  It was the first kind thought he’d ever had for the police department’s shrink for hire.

  He even spared a warm thought to the airline that would make him pay through the nose for changing the date of his return flight reservation.

  When Baden mentioned something about renting a condo, he leaped at the opportunity to spend even a bit of innocuous time with her.

  An hour later he realized that he hadn’t exactly been specific enough on what his realistic budget was like.

  The first one they looked at was the sort of place A-list Hollywood stars and professional athletes who sported Super Bowl rings and championship trophies might rent out for a Hawaiian getaway.

  The great room was a three-story affair that had open and railless staircases winding up on either side of the room. A curved sofa big enough and long enough to comfortably seat the entire defensive line of the National Football League’s Carolina Panthers was the centerpiece of the room. The place was clearly for someone who entertained very large groups of people very often.

  “You do remember that I’m a cop, right? A cop from North Carolina,” he added as if to remind her about his decent, but still-modest salary as a public servant. “This is like a high-roller’s suite on the Las Vegas strip.”

  Baden laughed. “You said ‘show me the type of place you’d present to your clients.’”

  He frowned. “Who are those people, Bill Gates and company?”

  He’d been joking, but she said, “Close. I’ve sold to a couple of Microsoft execs. Many of my clientele are from Pacific Rim countries looking for a Hawaiian retreat.”

  “Well, that place back there sure fits the bill. I’m afraid to even ask how much it would cost.”

  She told him anyway.

  Jesse stared in amazement. Just to lease the place for six months cost more than he made in a year.

  “How about something a little more realistic? I just need a place to sleep for a few weeks.”

  Shaking her head, Baden made a tsk-tsk sound.

  “A home, even a temporary one, should be a respite,” she said, “a retreat from the hassle and hustle of everyday life. Home should be a place of serenity.”

  There was wistfulness in her voice that she was unable to mask. Jesse noticed it and knew that she had, as well.

  “Do you miss yours?”

  Baden didn’t pretend to misunderstand. She briefly considered lying because the truth hurt sometimes.

  “Sometimes,” she told him. “I was actually thinking after I sell the Kapule Garden Estate that I might take a couple weeks and go on...go home to North Carolina.” She gave a little self-deprecating laugh. “I was about to say go on vacation, but it sounds crazy to leave a place like this to go on vacation to Cedar Springs, North Carolina.”

  “You can always return to Paradise.”

  “Hmm,” is all Baden said.

  She felt him give her a questioning look, but she didn’t elaborate. In truth, she wanted to go home to Cedar Springs. It seemed like forever since she’d seen Aunt Henrietta and Uncle Carlton. But most importantly, she felt a need to go back to North Carolina to finally put to rest the doubts she had had about why she’d never returned.

  Since part of the reason for bolting was right here next to her, she may as well finish the thing and return to the scene of her crime.

  At first, she knew, it was the sheer humiliation. She didn’t want to face her friends, her cousins, her family or former coworkers after pulling so thoroughly a Julia Roberts in Runaway Bride. As the days turned into weeks and the weeks into months, it was just easier—it became easier and therefore inevitable—that s
he stay put and make a new life in a new place.

  The islands gave birth to the new Baden, a self-assured professional woman who excelled in all things—except her lingering doubts that she was somehow flawed because she had let things get so far out of hand with Sean. He was a good man who deserved better than she had given him.

  Six months ago marked the beginning of the first pangs of homesickness. That’s when Aunt Henrietta had called to tell her Sean had been killed in a shoot-out in Raleigh. Online she had read all the reports and followed the case, but North Carolina was practically a world away.

  She’d made a life here in Hawaii, a successful one, she had reasoned at the time. She and Sean had been over for a year by that point, and she was fully entrenched in the island life.

  When an old girlfriend came to Hawaii on a business trip, they’d gotten together and it was like nothing had changed in Baden’s life. She was in consistent, if not regular, contact with her aunt and uncle, so there had been no real reason to go back to Cedar Springs.

  The fact that she’d flown into a tailspin when Jesse Fremont appeared on her doorstep was testament that she had unfinished business—of the sentimental variety—to tend to. They needed to talk about Sean. But she didn’t want to.

  Not yet at least.

  Baden once confided to her cousins Phoebe and Sasha that, if she and Sean hadn’t hooked up, she’d want to be with Jesse. The three women then spent the next half hour dissecting the pros and cons—they couldn’t think of any of the latter—of a ménage à trois featuring each woman with Jesse Fremont and assorted celebrities and athletes.

  “What are you smiling at?”

  Jesse’s question startled her and then made her giggle.

  “I was just thinking how great it would be to hang out with my cousins again.”

  “Which ones? There are about a hundred of you Calloways.”

  “Phoebe and Sasha, also known as Miss TMZ and Miss Breaking News.”

  At his puzzled expression, she explained. “You probably don’t know Phoebe. She lives in L.A. and Detroit.”

  He made a wry expression. “Now there’s a clash of cultures.”