Chapter 4
“She’s a delight,” Halea says, watching Vera work the crowd like she didn’t just openly threaten half of it.
Vera Crowned Vanderkamp just stepped off the stage after giving the world’s worst pep talk to the forty beauties who have descended on my resort for the Miss Mango Beauty Pageant.
“I’ve seen thunderstorms make landfall with more warmth,” I say.
“She’s the queen of mean.” Halea nods, and then immediately looks around to make sure nobody heard that. “And I mean that with the deepest professional respect.”
“Noted and agreed.” And I mean that with the deepest professional awareness that her pageant is keeping the lights on around here.
Halea tucks her clipboard under her arm and glances at me sideways. “She’s going to be a problem this week, isn’t she.”
I nod. “She was a problem eleven seconds after arriving at this resort. I think we’re well past the prediction stage.”
Halea sighs, already mentally reorganizing the week’s logistics to accommodate a new and terrible variable. “I’ll make sure the camera crew stays out of her way.”
“I’d start with the banner. If that thing is still crooked in the morning, she’s going to have it removed and replaced at our expense. And maybe at the cost of our mangoes.”
“It’s already on the list.” Halea takes off like a hurricane gaining speed.
Speaking of hurricanes, Ruby and Lani materialize beside me approximately three seconds later, which means they were closer than they were pretending to be, which is always the case with Ruby and Lani.
“Queen of mean is putting it nicely,” Ruby growls, proving my point. “And I have been married to some genuinely mean men, so I say that with authority and a little respect.”
“She makes my third husband look like a golden retriever,” Lani says, which is saying something, because Lani has never once spoken warmly about any of her husbands.
“She makes all of my husbands look like golden retrievers,” Ruby agrees. “And two of them are serving time for things nobody should speak of.”
“Did she have to look at Kali like that?” I say. “During the speech?”
“She looked at everyone like that,” Lani says.
“She looked at me like that and I’m not even a contestant.
I’m the caterer. I was standing near the malasadas minding my own haupia pudding and she swept those eyes right over me like I was a problem she was deciding whether to address.
” Her famous, and sometimes infamous, wooden spoon comes out of her apron briefly.
“I’ve got news for her. I don’t fight my battles alone. ”
“With the spoon?” I ask.
“With my eyes. I have very expressive eyes.”
“You do,” I confirm. And a wooden spoon on standby for when the stink eye needs reinforcements.
Ruby scans the beach again with serious focus, because she has not forgotten why she came to this party.
“Now,” she says, smoothing her fuchsia muumuu with great purpose, “the widower in linen is currently standing by the new tiki bar looking lost and slightly overwhelmed, which is my absolute favorite combination in a man.” She straightens her gold hoop earrings.
“I’m going to go get him a shave ice and let nature take its course. ”
“Ruby,” Lani says.
“What? The shave ice bar is new. I’m supporting the resort. It’s practically community service.” She’s gone before I can respond, cutting through the crowd toward the new tiki bar with a confidence that has never once doubted its own navigation system.
Lani watches her go. “Heaven help the single men among us.” She tucks the wooden spoon back into her apron. “I need to go address the malasada situation and maybe get a new shrimp platter that doesn’t have cat hair in it.”
“What malasada situation?”
“Spam has staged a second offensive.” She’s already walking. “He ate through half the inventory. He’s escalating and I won’t have it.”
She disappears into the crowd, and then there were none.
A warm hand touches the small of my back, proving me wrong, and I don’t need to turn around.
“They disbanded quickly,” Koa whispers.
“Ruby spotted prey and Lani’s in a territorial dispute with Spam over the malasadas. It’s a whole thing.” I turn to find those espresso eyes already on me, warm and slightly amused, and my central nervous system does its established routine of briefly forgetting what it was doing. “Hi.”
“Hi.” He hands me a drink, something frozen and fruity that I didn’t ask for and very much needed, and takes a sip of his own glass of amber liquid. He’s completely at home on this beach, loose and easy, like the party assembled itself for his benefit. “You survived Vera.”
“Barely. She’s going to be a problem all week.”
“She’s already a problem.” He says it mildly, which from Koa means he’s been paying attention since she arrived and has formed a thorough opinion he’s not going to fully share with me yet, because that’s how Koa operates and I’ve made my peace with it. Mostly.
The music kicks up and the party finds its second wind.
The new tiki bar is doing tremendous business, shave ice cones in every tropical flavor going out to people who very much need something cold and sweet after the last twenty minutes.
Lani’s malasadas have appeared on a fresh platter, and I can see that someone has brought out a new shrimp platter as well.
A rooster is investigating all of it from a respectful distance, which means he’s already planning something.
Beside the malasadas sits a tray of Lani’s mango butter mochi, cut into neat golden squares and already half gone, which is the highest review a dessert can receive at this resort.
The corner pieces, the chewy ones everybody fights over, vanished first. There’s a lesson about human nature in there somewhere, and I choose not to examine it tonight.
Koa’s hand finds mine and we drift, sideways and easy, following the waterline away from the loudest part of the party.
“Dance with me,” I say.
“Here?” He lifts a brow and looks cuttingly handsome in the moonlight.
“Yes here,” I say with a laugh. “We’re at a party on a beach in Hawaii with tiki torches blazing and amazing music. The entire setting is demanding it.”
He takes my drink out of my hand, sets both glasses on a flat rock, and pulls me in, and we sway right there at the soft edge of the tiki-torch light where the plumeria is strongest and the ocean keeps its steady rhythm underneath everything else.
“You’re a better dancer than you let on,” I tell him.
“I let on nothing.”
“Exactly.”
He turns me once, slow, and I decide with full conviction that everything is fine. The booking is solid. Vera will do her worst and go home next Sunday with her trophy and her three-inch heels, and life will proceed accordingly.
I casually glance down the beach and do a double take. Past the point where the tiki torches give out and the sand grows darker, a figure stands where the black sand beach begins. Bright hair catches what little moonlight reaches that far.
It’s Vera. I can tell from the posture alone. Her spine is ramrod straight, and that trophy is still tucked in the crook of her arm.
She’s not alone. A woman stands opposite her, and the breeze is moving her long red hair. At their feet, something small and rust-colored circles in tight, agitated loops. Whatever is happening above it, the dog does not approve.
“Hey.” I stop swaying. “Isn’t that Vera down by the black sand beach?”
Koa looks. His eyes go into full cataloguing mode. “It is.”
“And that woman with the red hair. That’s the same woman from earlier, the one Vera couldn’t stop looking at. And look, she’s got a small dog with her.”
“It’s her,” he says again, in the tone that means he already spotted this situation approximately forty-five seconds before I said anything.
“Should we go over there?”
He watches for a moment. The two women are standing close, heads angled toward each other, and whatever is happening between them is not a casual conversation.
The dog circles tighter. The red-haired woman lifts one hand, and Vera takes a step back, and then there’s a long beat where neither of them moves, and then the red-haired woman turns and walks back toward the far path, quick and deliberate, and Vera turns back toward the party, and just like that the whole thing is over.
“It looks as if it resolved itself,” Koa says.
“Did it though?”
“Jinx.”
“I’m just saying, that looked very unresolved. That looked like a pause, not a conclusion.”
“It looked like two people having a private conversation that ended.” He pulls me back into his arms and we begin to sway again. “Let it go.”
I let it go. Well, I hold it at arm’s length, which for me is functionally the same thing.
The music stays warm and honeyed, the tiki bar keeps turning out shave ice cones, Lani is battling a cat, Ruby is somewhere in the crowd working her plan on some unsuspecting widower, and the night is genuinely beautiful as Koa and I dance under the moonlight and I decide once more that everything is fine.
About twenty blissful minutes pass, and I’m pretty sure they’re the best twenty minutes of my life.
And then I glance to my left and do a double take. “Hey.” I straighten. “Isn’t that Vera? Down by the black sand beach again?”
Koa looks. His jaw tightens the way it only does when he sees something he doesn’t like. “It is.”
The figure is unmistakable. That posture, that hair, that trophy catching the faint edge of the tiki-torch light. She’s standing at the same spot, at the waterline where the black sand starts, and she appears to be alone this time. Honestly, it’s probably safer for everyone involved that way.
“Let’s head over,” I say, “because ruining a quiet, peaceful moment is something I seem to specialize in.”
“I won’t argue with that.”
I elbow him for agreeing with my harsh truths even if I did espouse them myself.
Koa is already moving in that direction, which tells me he’s been thinking the same thing for longer than he let on, and we’re moving quickly now, hand still loosely in hand, and then faster, because something feels off, something feels foreboding—and then his grip changes.
“Jinx.” His voice has gone flat. “Who’s that behind her?”
I look. At the treeline past Vera, where the darkness is fully dark, something shifts. A shape that could be a shadow, or a palm moving in the wind, or neither.
We’re moving faster now, and then faster than that—
BANG.
BANG.
The shots tear through the music and the laughter and the whole warm torchlit perfection of the evening like someone put a fist through it, and the night comes apart all at once.
Vera goes down by the rocks, and both she and her trophy hit the sand.
And to my horror, Koa drops directly in front of me.