Rescuing Hi`ilani (Special Forces: Operaton Alpha) (Delta Force Hawaii)

by Reina Torres

  Rayne smiled at him as she set a comforting hand on his shoulder. “If you’d like us to talk to her, Mary and I would be happy to.”

  Ghost brushed a kiss on his wife’s cheek. “I love that you’re so positive about this, but she might not be so eager to jump back in so quickly when he tells her that he’s Delta before our vacation is over.”

  “Positive thoughts, please.” Rayne’s smile dipped a little at the corners, but Mary picked up the thought. “Then they can come and visit us in Texas. She can meet all the women.”

  Ghost groaned softly and looked at Ajax. “Make sure you’re in for good before introducing her to all of our women. If she’s at all on the fence, she may go running and - ow!”

  “What the hell, woman?”

  Ghost leaned to the side as more ushers appeared in the lobby. Some continued up the stairs on either side of the lobby and the rest formed two long lines in preparation.

  “That was just a taste of what you’ll get if word gets back to the others about what you said.”

  He used his hands to intercept hers as she tried to pinch him again. “It was a joke!”

  Rayne’s eyes narrowed at him. “It better be.”

  A side door opened and a tiny woman stepped out, dressed in a floral print gown with a high-collar ending just under her chin. Her elegant hairstyle was made even more classic by the silver hairs tracing through her darker strands.

  Ajax murmured his apologies and stepped off to the side to speak with her.

  “Aunty Skinny. You might not remember me, but-”

  “Oh, I remember you, Army man.” Her voice was soft but the edge in it was telling. “You better not be here to cause trouble.”

  He shook his head, adamant in his tone. “I want to apologize to her when she’ll let me,” he explained, “but first, I was wondering if you could send these flowers back to her dressing room.”

  She gave him another look and then flickered a glance over at the two couples. “Those the ones that went into the shop today?”

  He nodded. He thought that Lina would tell her sister and he’d been right. “The ladies are on vacation and wanted something beautiful to wear.”

  She gave him the slightest smile. “You trying to make nice?”

  “I’m trying to make up to Hi`ilani for what I did. But I didn’t send them to your shop just to be nice, they love their dresses.”

  She gave him a smile full of pride. “Good. I’ll take her the flowers, but you hurt her again, I going kick you somewhere gonna drop you to your knees, hmm?”

  He could tell from the look in her eyes that she meant it. “Never again, Auntie. Never again.”

  She narrowed her eyes at him and stared as if she could see right through him straight to his heart.

  “K’den.” She held out her hand and he gave her the bouquet.

  Then she turned her cheek toward him.

  Laughing, he leaned forward and pressed a kiss on her cheek. “Thanks, Auntie.”

  She glared at him, telling him with a look that he should know better.

  “Mahalo, Auntie.”

  Smiling with joy, she gave him an approving nod. “A`ole pilikia.”

  She disappeared into the lobby leaving him to return to the others.

  Mary was the first to pipe up. “Looks like you passed the first hurdle. So she’s Hi`ilani’s aunt?”

  “No.” He continued on because he knew how the conversation was going to go since he’d gone through it himself. “Here you can use Auntie or Uncle for someone close to you… someone at least a little older than you. But careful, if you use it with someone you don’t know they might think you’re calling them old.”

  The group laughed and all four of them swore to avoid that particular situation, Truck finishing it off for all of them. “I didn’t come to Hawaii to get into a fight.”

  The main doors to the lobby opened up and the crowd started to move forward. Jackson let the ladies and their husband’s go first while he took a steadying breath.

  Ghost must have seen him go still. He turned around and looked at him. “No second guessing it now. Let’s go.”

  Hi`ilani looked into the mirror and tried to reconcile the woman before her with the woman she was inside, excited and brimming with possibilities. The face looking back at her was a little melancholy, a little down, and no amount of make-up would fix it.

  She looked at her phone on the top of the counter and bit into her bottom lip. She still had Jackson’s phone in her contacts. Sure, she’d removed it from her speed dial, but that really didn’t matter. Hi`ilani didn’t even need it saved in her phone.

  His phone number was stored in her memory.

  Going nowhere. Just like her thoughts.

  Jackson had brought a new kind of joy into her world. He’d swept her off her feet and while it hadn’t been like that scene in ‘An Officer And A Gentleman,’ but the feeling had been the same.

  Life with him in it had been a rush of all kinds of emotions as well as all the amazing physical things that went with it, but right before she’d decided to tell him that she was in love with him, he broke up with her.

  His life was too dangerous. He wanted to protect her.

  She dropped her blush brush down onto the counter top and let out a loud groaning sigh.

  “Uh oh,” a voice reached her from the door, “sounds like you might need these.”

  Hi`ilani turned in her seat and stared. Auntie Skinny, one of her most favorite calabash family members. “Aloha, Auntie.” Hi`ilani started to stand and greet her, but Auntie waved her back into her chair.

  “I have to get back out to the house and help people find their seats, but someone wanted me to bring this to you.” Walking closer, she held out the large bouquet of flowers. “Here. Take them.”

  The flowers were a mix of flowers in half a dozen colors. Roses, dendrobiums, tuberose, and a few others that Hi`ilani couldn’t name off hand with her brain turning to mush. She didn’t have to open the card inside the armful of flowers. The handwriting was all too familiar to her.

  “Jackson.”

  “He’s in the audience tonight with some friends.” Auntie grinned. “I told him not to be stupid, or I’d karang his alas.”

  Hi`ilani felt her cheeks warm at the idea that her teeny tiny Auntie Skinny would threaten Jackson with bodily harm… especially ‘that’ part of his body. Still… “How scared was he?”

  “Enough,” she sounded proud of herself. “You think he’s here to apologize? Ask you out?”

  Like a pail of cold water splashing over her, Hi`ilani sighed. “I don’t know, but that’s going to have to wait until after the show anyway.”

  Hi`ilani lifted the bouquet and drank in the scent of it, brushing her cheek against the silken petals before setting it down on the counter.

  “I’ve got a job to do.”

  “You have an audience to dazzle.” Auntie Skinny’s smile lifted her spirits. “And an Army man in dress uniform watching your every mood.”

  “Auntie,” Hi`ilani sighed, “you’re not helping.”

  The older woman gave her an arch look. “I can tell by the look on his face, you don’t need my help. Give him a chance, Hi`i. I know you’ve missed him.”

  “Well,” she hedged, “I’ll talk to him later. Okay?”

  Auntie shrugged and turned away, letting her voice trail after her. “He looks damn good in that uniform. So ono.”

  Now her cheeks had to be fire red with the heat she felt. Having her auntie saying that Jackson looked delicious? She had to get herself together before she went on stage and forgot her lyrics or chords.

  Less than a half an hour later, she was in the wings trying to sneak a look through the grate behind the ornamental molding. She had to be careful. The old adage was true in theater – if you could see them, they can see you.

  So there she was trying to see through the minute spaces between the slats of wood that hid the backstage from the audience and still trying to see where Jackson
was sitting.

  “What’s up with you, sis?”

  She shook her head. She didn’t have to look to know who was standing behind her. Kaleo Hubbard was a rising star in the music world. Just like his father and uncle, he had a rich voice that paired perfectly with both the older style of Hawaiian music and some of the newer sounds that were building a younger audience. They’d been friends forever.

  “Nothing. Just waiting for Mackie to introduce me.”

  “Right,” she heard his burst of laughter, “who are you looking for?”

  She struggled to keep her voice even. “Jackson’s in the audience.”

  “Ha! I knew it. Haole boy walks out on you and here you are-”

  “Don’t start, Kaleo.”

  “Did you invite him?” He stepped up beside her and squinted through the slats even with his eyes. He was a good half-foot taller than she was.

  She shook her head. “I haven’t talked to him since… you know.”

  Kaleo mimed crying his eyes out as he stood beside her which only ended up within him getting a pinch in his side.

  “Hey!”

  “Kuli kuli,” she told him and he stuck his tongue out at her since she was trying to shush him like a child.

  His mood changed quickly. He narrowed his gaze at her. “You goin’ take him back?”

  She heard the hard edge in his tone. All joking aside, he’d been her friend since small kid days, and he’d seen how much she suffered when Jackson had broken things off with her. “I haven’t talked to him. Not even sure I want to do that.”

  “Mo’ bettah you leave him alone, Sis. If he hurts you again, I going drop kick him into the Ala Wai and let him sink.”

  “I’m not sure if I should hug you or hit you,” she was laughing softly.

  He shrugged. “Whatevah you like. Jus’ don’t let him jerk you around, ‘eh?”

  “Yes, sir.” She saw the tight pinch of his lips at her playful answer. “I promise, okay?”

  He saw Uncle Mackie heading for the microphone at the corner of the apron on Stage Left and nodded in his direction. “When you done singing, whatchu going do until your next set?”

  She shrugged. “Get changed. I have a good half hour, maybe forty minutes before I’m due back on stage for the next set.”

  He grinned at her. “Stay and dance for me. Like old times, K?”

  “You’re just doing this to make him suffer, aren’t you?”

  “Everyone like see you dance. You got one killah way of swaying your hips.” Kaleo laughed as loud as he could with the show going on. “Why not make him pay? ‘Sides, you look good in that mu’u. He going swallow his tongue.”

  She shoved him back with a playful push of her hand and managed to school her expression from laughter to a gracious smile as she stepped out onto the stage to Mackie’s generous introduction.

  Hi`ilani walked over to him and took his hand.

  At his urging she made a bow that looked more like a curtsy and the audience burst into applause in anticipation.

  As she stood back up she took a good look at her mentor.

  Mackie had been her teacher, her Kumu Hula, when she was a little girl, taking a real interest in her talent and her education. And through the years, he’d developed that talent and inspired her to sing and learn to play the ukulele and the guitar.

  When he handed her the microphone she saw him turn to leave.

  “Hold on, Mackie,” she chided him with a big smile, “don’t run off yet.” She held out her free hand and he walked closer and held her hand in his, the stage lights glimmering over the fabric of his vintage suit-coat.

  Hi`ilani turned to look at the audience. “Mackie has been my inspiration for most of my life. He’s an amazing performer in his own right, but he gives all of his time and effort to help discover, train, and promote young artists in Hawaiian music and dance.

  “I’d like to ask you to help me acknowledge the true treasure on the stage tonight. Tommy Mackie!”

  She turned off her microphone and led the audience in a round of applause.

  Tommy was trying to wave it off, brush away the adoration of the crowd. He gave her a look that said he loved her just as much as it said he was going to give her a stern talking to later.

  She pressed a kiss to her fingers and blew it toward him as he walked sideways toward the wings.

  Once he stepped into the shadows, she turned the microphone back on and set it in the stand waiting for her at the center of the stage.

  The lights were still on in the audience, a favor she’d asked of the lightboard operator. She quickly scanned the audience as she moved down toward the edge of the apron.

  “Tonight, I’m starting with a song that Mackie knows well,” she spared a glance for the audience as a whole, “and most of you as well. A song about the stars and brown eyes…”

  She continued to speak, knowing the words to say since she’d said them over and over again, show after show, but her eyes were only on one person.

  Jackson.

  She saw him in the audience.

  He was taller than most of the people around him, save for two men sitting near him in his row, but she couldn’t really focus on them.

  Seeing Jackson again was like that first breath of air after diving down into the water and searching the sea floor for shells and pretty pieces of smooth glass. That gulp of air that burns as much as it restores the air.

  He was gorgeous, achingly so.

  And he’d once been hers.

  She saw the look in his eyes, the hope and worry that seemed to war with the other and she said a little prayer that the same look wasn’t fixed on her face too.

  She thought she’d started to work him out of her system, but she’d been wrong, so very wrong. All she could do was hope that Jackson was here because he thought he’d been wrong too.

  It killed him to sit there, watching her.

  Oh, it wasn’t her performance that made things awkward.

  No. In fact, in the time that they had been apart, she had become a better performer when she’d already been amazing to watch.

  When she began the song, strumming the strings of the ukulele she’d picked up from the stand beside her, joining a guitar player who sat with the rest of the stage band, the whole room hushed around them.

  The few glowing phone screens that he’d seen intermittently around the room turned off or were lowered down.

  The audience listened as she sung with a longing in her voice that called to all of them, making it all the more difficult for him.

  He’d known that voice.

  She’d whispered into his ear in the late-night darkness of her bedroom. He’d heard her gasp and sigh in his arms. Felt her murmur against his lips.

  And he’d lost that.

  Given it up.

  But he was going to get it back.

  He just had to convince Hi`ilani that forgiving him was going to be worth it.

  Chapter 3

  What a rush. Hi`ilani rushed up the stairs to her dressing room. The Old Hawaii Theater had several floors of dressing rooms in the stage right wing that looked like a tenement from West Side Story. The rooms were small-ish but all of them were just perfect as far as she was concerned.

  Performing with Kaleo had been like old times, except they weren’t wearing t-shirts and jeans and sipping on sodas in between songs. They were friends as well as contemporaries of each other and it showed on stage, which is probably why she stayed for more than one dance, singing along with him on an old romantic song that they’d sung back in their Brown Bags to Stardom days.

  And now… she had to rush.

  Her second set was still due to start in ten minutes and she had to change her clothes. Tugging on the waist and hips of her long body hugging mu`umu`u and raised it up high enough that she could reach a hand over her shoulder and grasp the zipper pull.

  With a little grunt and a little huff she managed to pull it down enough to shrug out of the gown. A quick step out
of the garment and she was able to lay it over the back of her chair and reach for the next gown in the rack. Another stylized gown of red with a black pattern of falling kukui leaves was her second and final gown of the night. The wide scoop neckline of the gown set it on the edge of her shoulders and descending down to the near floor-length hem and back into the short train at the back.

  She was going to debut one of her own songs in the second set and then end with a cover of Ku`u Home O Kahalu`u. That song always felt like it was coming from her soul, the loss of an innocence in her heart when she had to walk away from her first, and what she felt was her true love. So it was strangely apropos that she was set to perform the song with Jackson in the audience.

  She shivered as she smoothed her hand up her bare arm. Hi`ilani had told herself time and time again that she was over him and now she couldn’t deny that she’d been lying to herself.

  Needing a little bit of fresh air she moved to the windows at the back of the dressing room. A few circles of the handle had the window cracked open enough to feel the difference.

  And it allowed her to see the park next to the theater. In the day it was a pretty park with a pond and a turtle statue, but at night, the shadows that fell across the park gave it a dangerous look.

  She heard a few cars rush along Bethel Street and she turned to look as someone honked. Thank goodness that she’d closed the changing room door behind her or the noise would have gone straight into the stage area and out into the audience.

  A soft metallic squeak sounded below her, followed by a soft thud. It wasn’t unusual for someone to go outside. Stagehands and performers were known to take a smoke break every once in a while. Curious, she looked down and was surprised to see the wall lamp catch on Mackie’s distinctive suit coat. It looked like diamonds in the light, tiny little chips of some kind of reflective material had been worked into the fabric. That jacket had been part of his onstage presence since the 60s.

  She almost called out to him, but she looked at the clock and saw that she had five minutes to spare.