Meet Me in Tahiti

Chapter Fifteen

Zoe woke to two emails.

The first: from Lily thanking her for the “perfect” eulogy, with a postscript reminder from Victoria to send her measurements. The second: from her parents, saying how much they’d enjoyed reading about her fishing expedition and—in the same spirit, they said—sharing the goings-on in the village as well as including a reminder, passed on via Lily (whom they’d seen the night before at Lily’s restaurant, The Sea Rose) that Victoria was waiting for Zoe’s measurements. That was Lils—covering everyone’s bases twice no matter what was happening in her own chockablock life.

Zoe frowned when she came to the end of that second email because something was off about it.

It took her a minute to pinpoint the problem: it wasn’t something off it was something missing; the reminder about her measurements was the only instruction in it.

She distinctly recalled mentioning in last night’s email that she’d be spending the day at the beach and would be trying out the resort’s all-terrain submersible wheelchair. So where were the warnings about sunblock and heatstroke? Where was the request for details on the chair’s safety certification? Where was the reminder to put her phone in a waterproof bag, not forget her painkillers, et cetera, et cetera?

How...interesting.

Zoe was impressed that Matilda made it to the beach not only on time but looking remarkably fresh for someone who’d probably been in the bar half the night.

“Hangover?” Matilda said, sounding surprised when Zoe quizzed her. “I never get them! I don’t drink that much.”

Zoe raised a questioning eyebrow. “And here I was thinking you were planning to woo Mr. Doherty over that Long Island Iced Tea I never got to try.”

“Oh, it was Daniel I was wooing last night,” she said blithely. “I plied him with enough booze to fell an entire football team.”

“Tilly! You didn’t!”

“Someone had to console him after you ran away so early.”

“It wasn’t early and I didn’t run away. I left because I got a call about a brief I wrote for that surf school documentary I told you about. And I wasn’t talking about you consoling him—go ahead with my blessing—I was talking about getting the poor guy drunk.”

“OK, confession time. I know you don’t want anyone fighting your battles for you, tough girl, but Daniel said something about you being too pretty to be in a wheelchair and Finn looked ready to murder him so I figured I’d better step in as a lifesaving measure.”

“Oh.” Zoe wasn’t sure how to respond. A bubble of delight was trying to effervesce inside her but she knew that was a bad, bad idea so she opted for outraged dignity given she could look after herself as she’d already told Finn and...and he didn’t seem to want to do anything...anything important with her, anything she actually wanted. “Just because Finn Doherty has a savior complex—”

“If that’s what he’s got, I’m ready to be saved!”

She started laughing. “You’re way past saving, Tilly.”

“Savior complex or not, Mr. Doherty looks mighty fine behind a bar. He’s the one who decided to mix the Long Island Iced Tea. Apparently, he used to work in a pub. But of course you know that.”

A memory. Finn, serving drinks at the pub a week before the summer ball. Claudia was there. Zoe had felt confused, uneasy. Something else. Ashamed?

“Zo? Are you OK?” Cristina asked her.

Blink, blink, and the memory was gone.

“Fine,” she said. “Just remembering...” She lost her train of thought because that memory fragment had shaken her. She’d felt it, actually felt it. Stop. Shake it off. Not now, on a beach, in public. “Remembering the Great Barrier Reef.” Smile, Zoe. “Cris, how would you compare the snorkeling here?”

“Wait!” Matilda, wide-eyed. “You’ve snorkeled the Great Barrier Reef ?”

“Snorkeled?” Zoe waved a dramatically nonchalant hand. “We’ve dived there.”

“Dived?”

“Dived!” Zoe confirmed with relish.

“Of course you dived. You don’t do ‘easy,’ do you!”

“If I did, it wouldn’t be good for my character.”

“Oh, if we only did things that were good for our—” Matilda stopped abruptly, then whipped off her sunglasses. “Well, well, well, our favorite bartender approacheth.”

Gulp. Skittering pulse. Drying mouth. So hard to resist the urge to look behind her and an even more powerful urge to check that her hair was perfect.

“He thinks he’s so stealthy with all that stopping to chat with the hotel guests,” Matilda went on under her breath, “but anyone with eyes can tell what he’s up to.”

Zoe swallowed, hard. “So it did go well last night after I left? You and Finn?”

Matilda gave an oh-so-casual shrug. And OK, Zoe had to look. Just once. Fast.

There he was, and yes, he was talking to one of the hotel guests, and dear God he looked amazing. Board shorts. A loose, short-sleeved cotton shirt that did nothing to disguise his muscles. The jaw-dropping strength of him. Even his feet, in flip-flops, were sexy.

He darted a look in their direction and she whipped her head back around—in time to intercept a look between Matilda and Cristina. “What?”

Matilda rolled her eyes. “Don’t get me wrong, Zo, but it’s not for me he’s full-steaming-ahead. More’s the pity.”

“Huh?”

“The only person who can’t see that Finn Doherty is hunting you is that lovable rogue Daniel.”

“Oh puh-lease!” she scoffed but she had to admit it sounded a little bit like the lady protesteth too much.

Matilda raised that highly articulate eyebrow of hers. “Remind me who Finn invited to a private dinner Monday night?”

“That was work!”

“And who popped in and out of Tāma’a all night, searing us all with his deliciously blue searchlight gaze? And who, when he didn’t find the one person he was looking for, decided not to join the rest of us but instead eat in the kitchen?”

“You can’t know he was looking for me, or that he ate in the kitchen.”

“I’ve got spies everywhere.”

“You’re crazy!”

“Not as crazy as you if you have no idea how many times he looked at you on the cruise on Monday.”

“He looked at all of us.”

“He may well have done, but not like he wanted to strip us naked.”

Zoe sucked in a spluttering breath. “You have seriously got to meet my friend Malie!”

“So I can talk to her about your boy trouble?”

“No, because she said the sa—Oh never mind.”

Up went Matilda’s other eyebrow. “I think I can guess the rest of that sentence.”

“You’re crazy!”

Matilda rolled her eyes. “Uh, repeating yourself!”

“She’s not crazy, Zo,” Cristina said, entering the fray. “But it’s not a strip-you-naked look. At least, it is. I mean it was, that the first night at the cocktail party, so intense it was kind of scary. But now... Well now, the ‘strip you’ thing is still there, no doubt about it, but it’s tempered by something more...romantic. Quite desperately romantic, if you ask me.”

Zoe rubbed her hands up and down her thighs. “I’m not asking you. Because the...the way he looks at me is...is meaningless. If anything were going to happen between me and Finn, it would have happened twelve years ago, but it didn’t happen because I was like...like a sister to him.”

Matilda gave Zoe an incredulous look. “Guy looks at his sister the way he looks at you, I’m going to call the police!”

Zoe giggled despite her embarrassment. “Stop it!”

“OK, let’s cut to the chase. If you’re not interested, you won’t mind if I have a crack at him, hmm?”

Zoe opened her mouth to say, Go right ahead...and out came, “Oh shut up!”

Matilda started laughing. And then Cristina started laughing. And of course, Zoe started laughing.

And then, suddenly, Finn was there, asking, “What’s so funny?” and they were laughing even harder.

“Nothing,” Matilda wheezed out. “Just...nothing.”

“Um...so...” Finn darted a look from one to the other of them, “are any of you interested in vanilla? I’ve got the use of a pontoon boat and there’s a plantation on an island not far from here.” He looked only at Zoe then. “The ‘live like a local’ thing we talked about. Most of the tourists go to Taha’a but this place is off the tourist track and since I’m going there anyway...” He cleared his throat. “Well, I’m leaving at eleven. There’s a beach on a motu just off the island if you want to swim afterward and I can arrange a picnic lunch. If you want to come.”

“Oh, I—I do,” Zoe said. “I mean, I want. To come. I’m interested. In vanilla. And motus. They’re the tiny islets, right? Lunch. Yes. Yes, please.” Oh God! Three pairs of eyes were on her and knew she sounded like a complete imbecile. The urge to bury her face in her hands was so strong it took a huge effort to fight it. “So eleven at the pier? See you there.”

As the three of them watched Finn’s departing back, Matilda waved her hand fanlike in front of Zoe’s face. “Do you need a moment to cool down, Zo?”

“Shut up!”

“I just hope that ‘vanilla’ wasn’t a euphemism,” Matilda said and winked at her. “You know, vanilla.”

“Vanilla?”

Matilda threw up her hands. “As in sex, of course! Geez.” She let out a gusty sigh. “It would be too depressing if that bad boy didn’t get a little dirty in the sack.”

“As in—A little dir—A little—” But it was no use. Zoe had collapsed with laughter. Almost snorting with it, she said: “Village gossip is he’s plenty dirty in the sack, nothing vanilla about it.”

“In that case,” Matilda said, “I’m wearing my red bikini for that swim and giving you a little competition.”

“I see your red bikini,” Zoe said, “and raise you a purple two-piece 1960s swimsuit with ruffled skirtlet—”

“Ruffled skirtlet?”

“Adorned with sequins! My fashion designer girlfriend Victoria found it in a vintage shop in London and tweaked it for me.”

“Hey! Unfair! London, fashion designer girlfriend, vintage, skirtlet—whatever the hell that is—and sequins?”

“I’ll have a handicap, though—and no it’s not my wheelchair, it’s my hot pink rash vest. The clash is eye-popping, and not in a good way.”

“Um...so buy a new rash vest?”

“Hell no!” Zoe grinned. “This pink one is from Malie’s godfather’s surf school in Hawaii and it’s a reminder to get me some ‘boy trouble.’”

And all three of them started laughing again.