CATHY WILLIAMS can remember reading Mills & Boon books as a teenager, and now that she’s writing them she remains an avid fan. For her, there is nothing like creating romantic stories and engaging plots, and each and every book is a new adventure. Cathy lives in London. Her three daughters—Charlotte, Olivia and Emma—have always been, and continue to be, the greatest inspirations in her life.
Also by Cathy Williams
Contracted for the Spaniard’s Heir
Marriage Bargain with His Innocent
Shock Marriage for the Powerful Spaniard
The Italian’s Christmas Proposition
His Secretary’s Nine-Month Notice
The Forbidden Cabrera Brother
Once Upon a Temptation collection
Expecting His Billion-Dollar Scandal
Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk.
Forbidden Hawaiian Nights
Cathy Williams
www.millsandboon.co.uk
ISBN: 978-0-008-91366-3
FORBIDDEN HAWAIIAN NIGHTS
© 2021 Cathy Williams
Published in Great Britain 2021
by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF
All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.
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To my treasured kids and supportive partner, David.
Contents
Cover
About the Author
Booklist
Title Page
Copyright
Note to Readers
Dedication
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
Extract
About the Publisher
CHAPTER ONE
MAX STOWE LISTENED to his brother’s voice down the end of a telephone line thousands of miles away and did his utmost not to cut short the placatory monologue, which was designed to defuse the situation but was having the opposite effect.
James was currently in Dubai, dealing with the final nuts and bolts of the state-of-the-art eco-super-yacht they had commissioned to be hand-built a little over a year ago.
He, on the other hand, was here, staring out from the balcony of his hotel at a long strip of beach, mentally working out the approach he would take to discover the whereabouts of their wayward sister, who had done a midnight flit with only a brief goodbye and ‘Don’t worry about me’ delivered via text message.
Who, Max wondered, had got the better deal?
Jaw clenched, handsome features rigid with the simmering tension that had had ample time to build on the long and exhausting flight to Hawaii, he cut short the conversation and slipped his mobile back into his trouser pocket.
The glorious view was completely lost on him. He had already had a shower but out here, standing on the broad balcony, he was still baking hot and uncomfortable.
And he was in a foul mood.
Under any other circumstances, heads would have rolled for this. He was as fair as the next man, but you didn’t get to be at the top of the food chain by accepting incompetence and unreliability.
Unfortunately, these were far from normal circumstances, and with a sigh of frustrated resignation he spun round and headed back into the coldly air-conditioned penthouse suite of the five-star hotel.
Izzy. His sister. Where the hell was she? He knew where she wasn’t and that was here, in Hawaii, doing what she was being paid handsomely to do.
Max refused to succumb to dark thoughts and alarming hypothetical scenarios. He was a man finely honed when it came to dealing with facts and adept at finding solutions to problems as they arose. Izzy’s disappearance was simply a problem and he intended to find a solution to it. He knew exactly what road he was going to take to get where he wanted to go.
He glanced at his watch. It was four-thirty. The sun was beginning to dip outside, even though the heat continued unabated. On that beach, somewhere, lay the answer to this situation in the form of one Mia Kaiwi, age twenty-seven, height five-six, occupation landscape gardener and jack-of-all-trades at the boutique hotel he was currently having built on Oahu.
Two days ago, he had received his sister’s text. Two days ago, he had communicated with Nat, the foreman in charge of the project, to find out what the hell was happening. And two days ago he had found out that, while neither Nat nor his sidekick Kahale seemed to have the foggiest idea where his sister had gone, her close friend, Mia, would.
It had taken him twenty-four hours to close various deals he couldn’t possibly leave half finished. During that time, Max had resisted the temptation to get one of his people to track his sister down. It would have been easy enough, but he would wait until he could confront the best friend and get the information he needed from that source himself.
Weighing in with a heavy hand might win the battle but it wasn’t going to win the war.
But, hell, this was the last place he wanted to be—waiting for five o’clock to roll round so that he could walk the crowded strip of beach in search of some woman he didn’t know. A woman who, according to Nat, would reliably be found teaching surf lessons to kids, which was what she did like clockwork every Saturday afternoon between three and five.
He’d given orders that she was not to be alerted to his arrival. No time to do a runner or to rehearse any non-answers to his questions. No, he intended to surprise the woman into telling him what he wanted to know. Once he’d done that, he would allow himself the grand total of four days to sort out
this thorny and inconvenient business so that he could return to London to pick up where he had left off with his fast paced, no-time-to-breathe life.
He would unearth his sister from wherever she was hiding, find out what the hell was going on, remind her of the easy ride she had been given—even if he had to write it down for her in bullet points—and get her back on track.
And he would do it in as non-judgemental a manner as he could possibly muster, even though he was genuinely having a hard time grasping her immaturity at taking off without warning.
Fifteen minutes later, he hit the beach at an easy pace. He’d packed the bare minimum of clothes because he anticipated a speedy return to London. Shorts had not featured. He possessed none. Right now, as he began strolling along the long and extremely crowded arc of sand, he was beginning to regret the lack of them because he was sweltering, even though the sun was beginning to set with dramatic splendour.
He walked slowly, eyes narrowed, missing nothing. The beach was emptying out and it was more beautiful than he had first thought. The ocean was darkening from rich turquoise to deep navy and the buildings behind him, of which his hotel was one, were beginning to twinkle as lights were switched on.
The air was filled with voices, bursts of laughter and the revving of motorbike engines.
And then there she was. Unmissable, as Nat had said. She was stacking surfboards, her movements fast and graceful, and she was so slender that she looked as though a puff of wind might blow her over. Her hair was tied up in a ponytail and she was surrounded by a bunch of excited kids. Surf for Kids. The sign was almost obscured by the upright arrangement of surfboards.
She was laughing and barefoot, wearing a bikini top and a sarong that dipped just below her belly button. When the last of the kids was led away she immediately slipped on a baggy tee shirt, consulted the over-sized watch on her wrist and began heading away, having roped the surfboards together and padlocked them.
Max quickened his pace. He was here to do a job and, the quicker the job got done, the quicker he would be able to leave.
Mia sensed Max behind her with a sort of sixth sense she had developed over the years. She had become accustomed to blowing off men who tried to chat her up. Here on the beach blowing off men was as irritating as swatting flies and she wasn’t in the mood for it. She was never in the mood for it, and she particularly wasn’t in the mood for it this evening.
She spun round without warning and stood back, arms folded, determined to give whoever it was a piece of her mind.
Her eyes travelled from the bottom up. From loafers and long silver-grey chinos, to the white polo shirt with the tiny black logo on the pocket, and up, up until her brown eyes collided with eyes very much the colour of the ocean as it was now—deep, dark and fringed with the thickest of lashes she had ever seen on a man.
The man was stupidly, sinfully drop-dead gorgeous, from the perfectly sculpted, lean features to the imposing beauty of his muscled body, which not even his idiotically inappropriate clothing could conceal.
The guy oozed sex appeal and Mia was so taken aback that she could only stare for a few addled, frozen seconds.
She recovered fast from the temporary lapse.
‘Forget it.’ She turned around and quickly began walking away, head held high, backbone straight, her body language informing whoever the guy was that she wasn’t on the market for any kind of casual pick-up.
‘Come again?’
His voice was dark, smooth and velvety. Mia didn’t stop to look around, but she felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end.
‘You heard me,’ she snapped, spinning round again and then taking a step back, because he was just so damned tall, his presence just so damned overpowering. ‘I’m not interested. I don’t want to have a drink with you. I don’t want to go to a club with you. I don’t want to have dinner with you.’
‘I don’t believe I asked you to do any of those things.’
Mia heard the coolness in his voice and was taken aback. There was a stillness about him and a feeling of complete self-control that she found a little disconcerting.
Who the heck was he?
The mere fact that the question had the temerity to pop into her head annoyed her.
Mia knew, without a trace of vanity, that she drew looks. She was five-six and slender, with a heart-shaped face and full lips that turned heads. She was olive-skinned by birth, but a lifetime of living and working in the sun had deepened her natural colouring, and she was now a rich bronze with long, dark hair and caramel eyes.
So what if men looked? None of them got to her. After Kai, she had retreated from the dismal, soul-destroying business of looking for love. Her short marriage had been a slow and illuminating process of disillusionment. You go through that, she figured, and you were a fool not to learn from the experience.
She’d learnt.
‘I’m not having this conversation,’ she said, her coolness a match for his.
‘Mia Kaiwi? That is your name, isn’t it?’
Mia froze on the spot. This time, a thread of apprehension raced through her. She turned slowly to find that he was standing quite still, his head tilted to one side, his expression shuttered.
‘Who the hell are you?’
‘I’ll tell you who I’m not,’ Max said silkily. ‘And that’s someone looking for a pick-up.’
‘How do you know my name?’
‘Is there somewhere we can go to talk?’
‘I’m not going anywhere with you.’
How did the guy know her name? Was he a dad to one of the kids in her surfing group?
No, of course he wasn’t. You didn’t forget a face like that, and Mia had never seen him in her life before.
Even on a beach where most of the guys were in shorts, and many of them young, good-looking and at the very peak of their fitness, this guy attracted attention. She was aware of people walking past, looking once and then looking again. He didn’t seem to notice or, if he did, he didn’t care.
‘Oh, but you are.’ Max paused. ‘Now…’ He looked around. ‘Is there somewhere quiet around here? I would suggest my hotel, but as you seem to be under the mistaken impression that I’m about to make a pass at you I don’t suppose that would be appropriate.’
‘I could call someone to have you arrested,’ Mia said, but she was beginning to get the feeling that she was on shaky ground, because there was a self-assurance in the man that was unsettling.
‘I wouldn’t do that.’ Max indicated a café further along the beach. It was a little busy, but they would be able to sit without people jostling them. ‘There will do.’
Mia’s mouth dropped open as he coolly began walking away, expecting her to follow.
Heart pounding and head beginning to throb with nervous tension, she found herself snapping out of her daze, tripping behind him to the café. At least she knew the owner at this place, so there was no way he could do anything to her.
Although, would he?
She was beginning to think that she had read the situation wrong, even though she couldn’t work out what the alternative could be. He glanced over his shoulder to her and then stopped so that she could catch him up.
He must be at least six-three, she thought faintly. He seemed to tower over everyone in the café. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Mack, the owner, and his wife Rae, and she nodded. The café was only just beginning to fill up with another wave of people arriving at the beach. The families had left and all the twenty-and thirty-somethings would be heading down to have dinner at one of the food trucks that lined the strip of road at the back, or else just hang out in groups on the sand.
‘Don’t worry,’ he drawled, looking down at her. ‘Your friends will make sure you don’t get kidnapped by me.’
‘My friends?’
He nodded to the counter. ‘I’m guessing you know
those two behind. Good. If I can’t reassure you that I’m not about to take advantage of you, then the presence of those two should.’
‘I would be reassured if you actually told me your name,’ Mia returned without batting an eye. ‘You know mine, so it’s only polite.’
‘And I will. What do you want to drink?’
‘A glass of water would be fine.’
The man shrugged. There were empty tables to choose from and he opted for one to the side of the café and away from the window.
‘Everything okay, Mi?’
Mia forced herself to smile at Rae, an attractive woman with cropped blonde hair and an easy smile who had approached them with a pad and a pen. Right now, there was a question in her eyes, and Mia couldn’t blame her. She had spent long enough joking that the next time Mia came to the café she wanted to see her with a nice young man. That hadn’t happened yet so her curiosity would be spiked by the sight of Mia with the man semi sprawled in the chair opposite her, their knees practically touching, because the wooden table was tiny.
‘Sure!’ They ordered their drinks and Rae left them alone.
‘Is it always like this?’
‘What do you mean?’ He had a voice that was lazy, only mildly interested, and yet strangely commanding. She was momentarily distracted by his direct gaze. Something about him was mesmerising and she wasn’t quite sure why. Surely it couldn’t be just a matter of good looks?
‘Recognised wherever you go…’
‘I’ve lived here all my life, and it’s not enormous—not when so much of my time is spent on this beach. I teach the kids on a Saturday and a Sunday. I surf whenever I can. It can be a tight-knit community. And you still haven’t told me your name.’
‘Max Stowe. I’m Izzy’s brother.’
Mia went very still.
That was the last thing she’d expected to hear even though she hadn’t had a clue what she had been expecting.
He looked nothing like Izzy. Izzy was small and blonde with big, blue eyes.
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