Paradise Found

Chapter 1 Axel

Pinched by an obnoxiously loud Hawaiian shirt too small to accommodate his bulging biceps, Axel Talstad tried to find regret over the last ten hours.

Surprisingly, regret was nowhere to be found.

That might have something to do with a couple of champagne bottles consumed during the transcontinental flight in the first-class cabin. Or maybe Pacific Ocean breezes had mind-altering power.

How else to explain the impulse to buy a shirt covered in tropical flowers?

Goodbye Henley pullover and dark jeans, hello swim shorts and flip-flops. And he hadn’t even left the Honolulu airport.

Or—and this was the most likely—avoiding the avid fans, nosy friends, and concerned family members in Sweden while the professional hockey player considered the possibility of surgery felt too damn good to regret. Because instead of heading to Stockholm, his original travel itinerary from Minneapolis, Axel bought the first and farthest ticket westward he could find.

Regret was nowhere to be found in this uncharacteristically spontaneous decision.

The star defenseman was ready for a vacation where no one cared about professional hockey or bugged him about fitness training. He needed a break from the constant reminder that he was nobody without the one thing he was good at: his hockey career. Axel was ready for a vacation from himself.

“Just a minute, Mr. Talstad,” the nervous young man muttered while searching for hotel vacancies. “It’s conference season for Waikiki, but I have a few other places I can check.”

“Take your time,” Axel droned casually. “Any room with a beach view will do.”

This was an island. How complicated could that be?

Unfortunately, fifteen minutes of him standing by the “Welcome to Hawaii” station at the airport yielded no room at all.

“I’m so sorry!” the man gushed while calling over his supervisor, a woman wearing a long Hawaiian dress. Gotta love a place where the manager wore flowers around her neck and in her hair.

“It doesn’t matter how much it costs,” Axel stated, hoping to move things along.

“Mr. Talstad, I’m afraid everything on Waikiki beach is completely booked. I’ve been on the phone with clients all morning. There’s an agronomy conference and a modern languages seminar and an adult film festival.”

She listed the excuses as if reasons made a difference. He stopped listening after she said completely booked.

Regret, dependable after all, reared its ugly head.

“Would you be willing to try something off the beaten path?” she prompted.

He responded with narrowed eyes and automatic suspicion. “How far off the beaten path, exactly?” Before she could answer, he shook off his reservations.

He was currently wearing a hibiscus-covered shirt and flip-flops. He had given up his right to be suspicious.

“You know what? Sure, I’m game.”

***

A minivan picked him up. A fucking maroon minivan from the nineties rolled up to the airport curb. The highest-paid defenseman in the central league was getting shuttled around Oahu like he was heading to kindergarten.

“Axel, what kinda name is that?” Greg, the middle-aged driver with a shirt even louder than Axel’s, asked incredulously.

“Mine,” was the gruff answer.

He had been away from a bed for over twenty-four hours if you counted the long day before heading to the airport. Axel needed to get his lower back pain under control.

Instead of being insulted, the driver snickered. “Bruh, you backed up?”

“Backed up?”

“Yeah. You got something pluggin’ you up, or what?”

Axel could not remember the last time somebody said something so rude to him. When he turned to the driver, however, the man had a wide grin as if they exchanged an inside joke. Axel shook his head and held his tongue.

His already tight shirt was like plastic wrap to his sweaty skin. There wasn’t much of an island breeze through the interstate, which barely moved for another forty minutes of heavy traffic.

Finally, as car after car dropped away at consecutive exits, a flowing pace invited Axel to open his window. Clean air blew through. The edges of the Pacific rose on the horizon right before the van turned off the highway.

“Where are we?”

They no longer faced the ocean while driving through red clay roads. Inexplicably, the air smelled sweet yet tinged with the gritty salt of island breezes. Salty-sweet was as close as he could describe the air. Delicious was the other description that came to mind. His empty stomach grumbled.

“You’ve not been to Kamea Koa before? Howzit Lehua set you up?”

“You mean the manager at the airport?”

“She doesn’t usually send new people.”

“No vacancies at Waikiki. Why doesn’t she usually send new people?”

Greg snickered, and Axel’s pain spasms snickered right back. Those traitorous lower back muscles kept spasming as the van erratically navigated off-road terrain through red clay paths. They were soon surrounded by tropical foliage and trees with ropy growth hanging like dreadlocks.

The van stopped in front of a modest-sized cottage in the middle of a clearing. Axel stepped out cautiously. That’s when he realized the van wasn’t maroon colored at all. It was beige, covered with the red clay getting between his toes.

“This has to be a mistake,” he mumbled under his breath.

Greg shrugged nonchalantly. “You want me to get your luggage?”

“No,” Axel answered because he was contemplating the possibility of getting back in the van to return to the airport.

If he could pay almost a thousand dollars a night to stay here, he should be able to demand a turnaround. They could keep the money as long as they gave him a ride.

“Roger that,” Greg exclaimed. The man began walking toward the cottage, a vague wave of his hand the only indication that Axel should follow.

He could stay one night. Tomorrow, he would either secure a hotel room or buy a plane ride to Stockholm.

At the moment, his back needed a bed. Swearing under his breath and grabbing his luggage, Axel followed Greg.

Tall plants with dark-purple leaves and an overgrown jasmine shrub flanked a wooden door through which Axel had to duck his six-foot-two frame. He glanced around and sighed with some measure of relief. The cool tile floors were clean, a small but uncluttered kitchen to his right. To his left was a simple sitting area that led to a sliding glass door.

Through the glass, he saw a patio surrounded by thick, tropical greens and shaded by a wooden structure with multicolored flowers climbing on the side and above. Axel stepped on the patio and looked up. It was as if plants exploded overhead, creating an abstract painting and a shelter over a swinging hammock.

Beyond the expanse of grass and past distant coconut trees was the ocean. The edges of white-capped waves mixed with flashes of sunlight on the blue water. It was the most beautiful view he had ever seen.

“Welcome to Kamea Koa, Mr. Talstad.”

A woman’s voice tugged him out of his reverie. Not because it was loud or annoying, but because it sounded like it was part of the breeze. It sounded like the soundtrack to the salty-sweet, delicious air.

When Axel turned around to face her—a young woman of medium height wearing a long flowery dress not too different from the one worn by the manager at the airport—she struck him speechless.

Her dress hugged the curves of her supple hips and perky breasts. Long hair lay over one shoulder like the silkiest shawl, and a bright red flower, the exact color of her plump lips, sat on one ear. Axel’s stomach knotted when large brown eyes twinkled and met his gaze. The sun-darkened skin of her high cheekbones was smooth and shimmery. Axel’s fingers prickled at the intriguing suspicion that her skin was very, very soft.

She had the kind of beauty that was surprising and yet familiar. It was uncanny to recognize someone you never met.

Axel realized that this woman, standing under the explosion of overhead flowers and offering him a dazzling smile, was the most beautiful view he had ever seen.