Island Conquest

by Brooke Hastings

  She found Daniel's praise unsettling and didn't understand why. What did it matter if his high regard didn't extend to her qualities as a woman?

  After the majority of the guests had departed from the Seavers', Daniel took Lani aside to explain to her that he was returning to Honolulu on business but would arrange for additional time off in order to help her settle her affairs. In spite of the sincerity of his tribute, she was relieved that he was leaving. Nothing would ever change the nervousness and defensiveness she felt in his presence. And now, she realized, she would probably feel guilty every time she opposed him. Clashes between the two of them seemed inevitable, and Daniel had admitted to her that he usually found a way to get what he wanted. Lani wondered if he assumed that his words of praise would assure her meek compliance with all his plans.

  He arrived back in San Diego on Sunday evening, walking in just as Lani was tucking Brian into bed. He promptly took over the ritual of reading the child a story. Lani told herself that there was no point in protesting this usurpation of her role. In any event, she was tired, and well content to curl up on the couch and watch television.

  Since most people had made their condolence calls in the days immediately following the funeral, the weekend had been a quiet one. With no one to entertain and most of the packing awaiting Daniel's orders, Lani was continually battling depression. She had arranged for Brian to play with friends for several hours each day, but when the two of them were alone she sensed that he was becoming increasingly unsettled about their forthcoming move. Their whole life would soon change radically, and neither of them had any idea of how well they would adapt. For the past six years, Lani had coped with crises by throwing herself into activity, but now she could do nothing but wait. She found it a great strain.

  After saying good-night to Brian, Daniel joined Lani in the living room, sitting down next to her on the couch. Although he sprawled at least a respectable foot away from her, she was unable to prevent her body from stiffening defensively. If Daniel's mere presence was sufficient to disturb her, his closeness positively unnerved her. She was never able to relax in his presence.

  "Brian seems to be doing okay."

  Lani was grateful that he had chosen a safe topic of conversation. "He's so little—I don't think he really understands," she replied. "Sometimes he's sad or a little frightened, but basically he's looking forward to living in Hawaii… just as long as I'm with him."

  Lani caught Daniel's nod out of the corner of her eye, and shifted her position so that she was turned slightly toward him and could glance up to catch his expression. At the moment it was pensive. "And you?" he asked. "How are you doing?"

  Lani knew it was unwise to provoke Daniel, but somehow she couldn't help blurting out, "Oh, you know me. I'm a regular brick. Devoted and loving and nurturing, not to mention captivating!"

  "I meant those things, Lani. And I am grateful to you. There's no reason…"

  "Then let us stay here!" she begged. "Please, Daniel."

  "No." The word was spoken softly but forcefully. "I know what's best for you. I'm sorry that you feel I twisted your arm, princess, but I'm going to have to hold you to our agreement."

  Lani made no reply. She couldn't possibly explain her real objection, and if she argued with him he would probably lose his temper. She uncurled herself from the couch and murmured that she was very tired.

  "I know it's been rough on you, honey," he answered sympathetically. "Once you settle down in Hawaii, you'll feel much better." He followed her up and walked off toward the kitchen.

  It was not yet nine o'clock, far too early for Lani to be able to fall asleep. She tried to concentrate on a magazine article she had set aside to read some time ago, but eventually gave up. Her thoughts persisted in wandering to memories of her relationship with her formidable stepbrother.

  He hadn't seemed so formidable the first time she met him. She had been only eight years old. The previous December a mutual friend had introduced her mother to Jonathan Reid; after a five-month courtship they had decided to marry. Lani had liked Jonathan immediately and couldn't wait until her future stepbrother came home, because only his absence was delaying the wedding. Jonathan would not marry Anne until Daniel could be present.

  Lani remembered waiting in the airport in Honolulu for Daniel's plane to arrive from Los Angeles. It never occurred to her to ask why Daniel Reid attended what she later learned was an exclusive boys' prep school in New England. At eighteen years of age he was a distant figure, best compared to the boyfriends of her babysitters.

  Like many little girls, Lani was unconsciously and charmingly flirtatious with men, and quite delighted with herself when Daniel began to use the nickname she now disliked—princess, for her namesake, Princess Kaiulani. Daniel treated her with amused indulgence, teasing and playing with her whenever they saw each other. His visits were frequent; although he had his own apartment, Anne Douglas Reid had extended an open invitation to her new stepson to come to dinner any time, and he took full advantage of it. Lani knew that he had a summer job at one of the hotels in Waikiki, but she never suspected that it was owned by his family.

  He returned to school in the fall, this time to an Ivy League college in Massachusetts. Lani decided that Daniel must be very special, because the older brothers and sisters of all her friends attended college at the University of Hawaii's local campus. She was far too young to realize that although her stepfather earned a comfortable income as a naval officer, he was hardly in a position to afford the type of education Daniel was receiving.

  Jonathan Reid's job was an administrative one, and when Lani was ten he was promoted to Captain and transferred to the naval base in San Diego. The only difficulty Lani experienced as a result of this move concerned her name. In the islands, everyone knew that Princess Kaiulani had been the heiress presumptive to the throne of Hawaii, the young woman who would have succeeded Queen Liliuokalani had the United States not annexed Hawaii in 1893. In San Diego, however, her name was thought to be exotic and bizarre, especially since Lani was a red-haired pixie with skin that needed gradual exposure to the sun if she was not to burn. After a few months on the mainland she gave up correcting mispronunciations of her name and accepted the fact that even her nickname would be butchered by people who insisted on rhyming it with Danny rather than Connie.

  She saw Daniel only twice a year, in June and September, first when he stopped in California on his way to Hawaii and then on his way back to school in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Lani always looked forward to these visits because Daniel invariably spoiled her with gifts and outings, and could always be relied upon to ferry her and her friends to any destination they chose—even Disneyland, if they begged hard enough.

  It wasn't until Lani turned thirteen that her girlfriends started chattering about how handsome her stepbrother was. Most of them had crushes on him, and at one slumber party they took a vote, ranking him just below the year's top teen idol. Lani relayed the compliment to Daniel the next morning, and suspected that he was rather put out that he had come in second.

  Their praise was not undeserved, Lani admitted to herself. Daniel was movie-star handsome, of course, but what really enchanted her adolescent friends was a certain aloofness and reserve that made him seem alluringly mysterious. These traits failed to fascinate Lani. She accepted them as part of his personality. In any event, she told her friends, his visits were infrequent, so naturally he was rather distant.

  Daniel had finished college, worked for several years, and when Lani was almost fourteen decided to attend business school. In the beginning of the following summer he stayed only three days with them, hurrying back to Honolulu and the responsibilities he had temporarily abandoned to attend school. It was long enough to leave Lani smitten with admiration. She had begun to date, a number of carefully supervised excursions to movies and school dances with boys her own age. These evenings usually ended with innocent good-night kisses, none of which succeeded in raising her blood pressure even slightly.<
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  Her stepfather sometimes teased her about how rapidly she was growing up, and Lani had only to look in the mirror to know he was right. By the end of the summer, the transformation was complete. For her fifteenth birthday, her mother permitted her to purchase an emerald green bikini, and by August she filled out every inch of it. Her hair had darkened to a stunning shade of auburn and fell below her shoulders; her face had lost its rounded childish contours in favor of a sculptured beauty that made her look several years older than she was. She was secretly pleased at how often college boys tried to pick her up on the beach, but she knew enough to refuse them. She had heard what had happened to her friend's big sister, who had paid a heavy price for her lack of common sense.

  Daniel returned to the mainland that same month, staying with them for a week and a half before heading back to the east coast for his final year of business school. After two days in Daniel's company, Lani was wholly infatuated with him. In the past, she had never exactly thought of him as a member of the family, but then she had never thought of him romantically either. Now her experiences with boys her own age made her aware of just how attractive he really was.

  His behavior that August was no different than before, but Lani's reaction to it was. Every time they were together, her body flamed with longing. At first Lani was acutely embarrassed by this, but soon her newly awakened senses swamped her common sense and she began to yearn for a fulfillment she didn't really understand. She only knew that she wanted Daniel to notice her, to think of her, as she dramatically confided to her best friend, as a woman.

  Unfortunately, Daniel seemed oblivious to the campaign she mounted. She dragged him to the beach and paraded around in her green bikini, making sure that her body often brushed his, constantly touching him, ostensibly to emphasize some point she was making. Once her mother caught her without a bra under her tee shirt and sent her back to her room to change, her cheeks crimson from the lecture Anne had delivered, right there in Daniel's presence.

  When the first week of his stay ended with no progress toward her goal—which she pictured as a passionate embrace somewhere along the lines of Clark Gable kissing Vivien Leigh in Gone With the Wind—she accelerated her provocations. She was overwhelmed when Daniel finally accepted her insistent pleas that they go for an evening drive. He would be leaving in two days and she had almost given up hope of reaching her goal.

  This time she was more clever about her attire. She donned a white, tank-topped tee shirt that left little to the imagination, hiding the sensuous result with a navy windbreaker. Her skimpy cut-offs molded her hips and bottom in an alluring fashion. At Lani's request, they drove to a secluded spot up in the hills, her excuse being that she wanted to show Daniel the view. When she emerged from the car, ostensibly to stretch her legs, the scenery he saw had absolutely nothing to do with the Pacific Ocean. She had removed her windbreaker and left it on the front seat. She yawned, lazily raising her arms and stretching, her full, high breasts jutting out against the thin material of the tank top.

  Daniel had remained in the car, watching her. She knew all about the way he was looking at her—she had received similar hot stares from boys on the beach and found them rather disgusting. But when Daniel looked at her that way, it excited her wildly.

  He leaned across the seat and called out through the open window, "Get in the car, Lani. We're going home." His voice was husky and tense.

  She complied, tossing her hair and sauntering to the car to sit down only inches from him on the seat. She was pretending to be cool, but in reality her heart was thudding so uncontrollably that she felt faint. When Daniel put out his hand to return the car key to the ignition she quickly covered it with her own. "What's your hurry, Daniel?" she asked in an oddly breathless tone. "Isn't the sunset beautiful?"

  Daniel leaned back against the seat, apparently staring at the sunset, ignoring the fact that Lani had begun to trail teasing fingertips back and forth along his arm, ruffling the dark hairs on it. Finally he turned toward her, his mouth set in a frown and his eyebrows lowered in anger. "You've been asking for this all week," he growled. "Better me than someone else!"

  He made no concessions to her youth and inexperience, striking as rapidly as a rattlesnake. Lani was stunned by the roughness with which he pulled her into his arms. Before she could protest his mouth was on hers, her lips forced apart with brutal insistence, his tongue exploring the softness within with a punishing savagery that shocked and hurt her. She sat motionless, too frightened to struggle. And then the feel of Daniel's mouth changed, gentled. His hand slid under her shirt to caress her breasts, his fingers playing with her in a way that sent waves of heat tearing through her body. She couldn't resist the now-tender explorations of his tongue—didn't want to. With a low moan she began to kiss him back, aware that his embrace was gradually roughening again, but too aroused now to be afraid of him.

  When he pushed her away, she was both confused and disappointed. Then she noticed his rapid, irregular breathing, and the anger on his face, and retreated to her side of the front seat. She watched apprehensively as he brought his features under control.

  "I want you, Lani. I'm taking you to a motel." The husky words hit her like a punch in the stomach. How could she have been such a little fool? Daniel wasn't a boy her own age, who would be satisfied with a few kisses. He was a grown man—and a very virile one at that.

  She was far too inexperienced to know whether she had aroused him past the point where he could stop. The very idea of such complete intimacy terrified her, and she could manage only a shake of her head.

  She flinched when he started the engine, digging her nails into the palms of her hands to keep from crying. She could feel Daniel's eyes on her as the car idled, and was trembling by the time he asked icily, "What's the matter, Lani? Don't you want to sleep with me?"

  She shook her head again, too distressed to care that tears were now slipping out of her eyes. "Please, take me home," she begged wretchedly. "I don't want you to… to…"

  Her shoulders were caught in a firm grip as Daniel turned her around to face him. "Right. If you don't want to be treated like a tramp, don't act like one. You're not a child any more, Lani. You can't turn a man on and then expect him to switch off when you change your mind. You're just lucky you decided to experiment on me, and not on someone else."

  With that announcement he released her and put the car into gear. During the ride home neither of them spoke. Lani began to realize that Daniel had never had any intention of taking her to bed, that he had set out to teach her a lesson. How much of his anger—and his passion—had been feigned for just that purpose? She was so humiliated that she doubted she could ever face him again.

  She managed to prevent herself from trembling as they walked into the house. After a feeble excuse to the effect that she felt sick to her stomach, she fled to her room, where she pulled off her shirt and examined her body in the mirror. She was horrified to see a bluish bruise on one of her arms. What on earth would her parents think?

  She pretended to be ill with an intestinal upset and chills during the next several days. These symptoms gave her an excuse to wear high-necked, long-sleeved nightgowns and explained her loss of appetite. Lying in bed all day, she had ample time to remember her flagrant behavior, and in retrospect she was thoroughly ashamed of how wantonly she had pursued Daniel. Perhaps if he had come in to talk to her she would have managed an apology, but he totally ignored her.

  Just before Daniel left, he stopped by her room to say good-bye. Usually he gave her a smile and a peck on the cheek on these occasions, but now he only stared stonily at her and said in a withering tone, "I expect you'll make a rapid recovery once I'm gone, Kaiulani." With that, he stalked out the door.

  Over the next several months, Lani began to question Jonathan about her stepbrother, but was always careful to sound indifferent and offhand. Previously, she had simply accepted Daniel's polish and sophistication as a part of his personality; it never occurred to her that
these traits must stem from his mother's family. Now she was unconsciously looking for reasons to keep him at a distance, and the revelations about his background provided a perfect rationalization for her attitude.

  Initially, Jonathan merely explained that his first wife, Laura, had been a Prescott, and that Daniel's schooling had been paid for by a personal trust fund established for him by his doting grandparents. He was being groomed to take his place in the family business, Jonathan remarked.

  Lani had only been ten years old when they left Hawaii, but she had already learned about the Prescotts and the Thomases in school. Along with a handful of other powerful local families, they had made a fortune in sugarcane during the nineteenth century. With the profits from that venture they had invested heavily in other island activities, from agriculture to real estate to shipping, from light industry to tourism, until they dominated the commercial life of Hawaii.

  Even as a child Lani had resented the results. As Honolulu became a major Pacific city and Hawaii a favorite retreat for vacationers, the tropical beauty of the area slowly fell victim to a relentless procession of bulldozers. Lani equated development with avaricious destruction and in her own mind Daniel Prescott Reid was soon assigned the role of a ruthless, irresponsible industrial warlord.

  She next saw him during Easter vacation, when he flew to the West Coast to spend the holiday with her family. Her mother was in the final trimester of a difficult pregnancy, and had been ordered to stay in bed because of the risk of a premature birth. Jonathan, who had retired the previous fall, spent most of each day at his wife's side. His efforts at cooking and housekeeping ranged from inept to disastrous, so Lani took over almost all of these responsibilities.