Chapter 5
Zara’s heart raced as she followed Big Joe into hale twelve. He was the largest, most intimidating security guard who worked here, but he was also a romantic with a huge crush on her. The fact that she’d called on him would probably keep that torch burning for another few months.
“Sir, are you a guest here?” Big Joe’s rumble of a voice, louder than a boat engine, made the intruder startle.
He turned and gazed at them from behind enigmatic black sunglasses. He wore a dark button-down shirt tucked into belted dark pants, and looked like someone from a kung-fu movie. He held a phone in his hand, but smoothly tucked it into his pocket.
Suddenly she wished she’d called more than one security guard.
“My apologies,” said the man with a polite bow of his head. She recognized his accent as Japanese; many of their guests came from Japan. “I take photos for my boss. He wants to know security arrangements if he choose to come.”
“I’m on the security staff,” boomed Big Joe. “Next time just come to us. Come on now, time to go. Rules are rules.”
“Of course.” Again he bowed his head. Zara didn’t trust him at all, nor did she believe him. She’d dealt with other wealthy and security-conscious individuals who required a thorough breakdown of the resort’s security arrangements. Not once had someone shown up out of the blue and taken pictures.
Come to think of it, how had that happened? Had the guards at the entrance gate just let him in?
“Who do you work for?” she asked the intruder. “I’d be happy to discuss this with him or her. We’ve never had a security breakdown with any of our guests.”
“His name is Lincoln Kerr.”
A noise from outside the hale made them all look toward the window. She saw nothing but shrubbery out there. Were the kids hiding in the bushes? No sign of them inside so far.
“Did you say Lincoln Kerr?” she asked, to bring everyone’s attention back inside the hale.
Although the L’s and R’s in that name gave him some trouble, Zara knew who he was talking about.
Lincoln Kerr was one of the billionaires involved in the luxury survival bunkers she’d been hearing about.
He’d been in the news lately because his half-sister had staged a boardroom coup and ousted him from the top of his own company. No doubt he’d deserved the comeuppance.
“I think you have the wrong island,” she told the man in black. “That billionaire bunker is on Maui.”
“Not wrong island.” He shook his head. “He not call here yet?”
“Lincoln Kerr?” She started to shake her head no, then remembered she wasn’t supposed to give out any information about guests. Or non-guests, she supposed. “I couldn’t say,” she said primly.
“You’ve not seen him?”
These questions made no sense. If he was scouting security arrangements for his boss, why would he think she would have already seen the man?
“It’s time for you to go. This hale is not available,” she said firmly.
She cast a glance toward Big Joe, who put his hands on his hips and puffed out his chest to emphasize her point.
The intruder didn’t look one bit intimidated. He strolled toward the door as if he had all the time in the world. The way he carried himself made it clear that he was in charge of this encounter, not them.
As he passed by her, Zara resisted the impulse to stick out a foot to trip him up. Even if he stumbled, he’d probably Ninja it into some Jedi move that wound up with him still standing and her plastered to the ceiling.
He slid into his dark sedan and started it up. She peered at the license plate, but it seemed to be some special kind of plate with no numbers. Maybe a diplomatic plate, or something else that exempted you from normal rules. A “numbers are for little people” kind of license plate.
“Phew.” She let out a breath as soon as the car rolled away from the hale. “Thanks for coming out here, Big Joe. That was…weird, to say the least.”
Big Joe put a finger to his lips. She froze. He tiptoed to the side window. Quietly, he eased it open, then reached one long arm out the window and into the shrubbery.
“Someone’s out here,” he called.
“Oh, that’s probably…” She clamped her mouth shut. Big Joe wasn’t on the very short list of people who knew she let her brother and sister hang out in the hales.
Anyway, it wasn’t Mia and Eddie, she quickly saw, as Big Joe dragged the skulker into view.
It was the gardener, Jim, and he looked absolutely furious.
“Let me go,” he ordered Big Joe from between gritted teeth. The big security guard had a solid hold on his shirt. His straw hat had gotten skewed to one side, giving him a drunk-and-disorderly appearance. “Zara, tell him I work here.”
“Don’t let him go,” she told Joe. “I have some questions for that dude.”
She ran out of the hale and around the side, to the spot where Jim was fighting to free himself from Big Joe’s grip. He held something in his hand, which he was maneuvering into position. Fearing it was a gun, she felt her heart race.
He pressed the trigger and blasted a stream of water against the open window and Big Joe on the other side. A hose, not a gun.
Joe yelped and let go of the gardener’s shirt, then backed away.
“Hey!” yelled Zara. “Was that really necess—”
Jim turned, the hose moving along with him, and suddenly a rush of water hit her face. She shrieked in surprise and stepped backwards into a patch of mud. No matter how much she windmilled her arms, she couldn’t keep her balance.
She landed, without any shred of grace, in the middle of a wet bush. It broke her fall but also poked her with its sharp leaves. “Ow!” she yelped.
Jim tossed aside the hose and reached out to help her. “Sorry about that,” he muttered, as he pulled her off the bush. “You surprised me. Are you all right?”
“No.” Water dripped from her face. Worse, her hair had come out of its knot and gotten snagged on those sharp-edged leaves. Every time she tried to move, she just got more tangled up. “What is this horrible bush I’m trapped in?”
“That would be a Kona cheesewood. Pittosporum hosmeri. It’s a native plant—”
“Spare me the botany lecture. Can you just get me out?”
“I got you!” called Big Joe from inside the hale. She heard thumping and bumping in there, and imagined him scrambling to come to her rescue.
Jim the gardener braced himself for action. His straw hat had gotten knocked entirely off his head now and hung by its leather string around his neck. His dark hair was a sweaty mess. Somehow, despite all that, she experienced that same zing of attraction.
She squashed it and focused on the crisis at hand. She needed to get rid of Big Joe so she could ask the gardener where the kids had gone.
As soon as she heard the security guard emerge from the front door, she called, “I’m good, Joe. Why don’t you go find out how that car got in here? Talk to the gate guards. That shouldn’t have happened.”
“You sure, Zara? I don’t like leaving you alone with that—”
“It turns out he’s one of our gardeners. He was just watering the shrubs, right, Jim?”
“That’s right,” Jim called, a muscle ticking in his jaw. She got the impression that being manhandled by a security guard had been a shock to his system. “But thanks for being extra cautious, man.”
She could practically hear the reluctance in Big Joe’s heavy footfalls as he headed away from the hale.
“Where’s Mia and Eddie?” she asked in a fierce whisper as soon as he was gone.
Jim set to work disentangling her hair from the foliage. She was still dripping wet, but the Kona sun would dry her in no time.
“Behind the bromeliad out back. Hold still.” The note of command in his voice took her by surprise.
“You’re awfully bossy for a gardener. Is that how you make the plants grow? Just order them around?”
“I’m trying to get you free, and you want to give me a hard time?” The irritation in his voice made her smile. Despite the awkward situations in which she’d seen him so far, he was such a composed person, almost too in control of himself. It felt good to rattle him.
“What were you doing out here, anyway?”
“My job.”
“Try again. It rained last night, there was no need to water this cheese plant. Which, I assume, doesn’t actually produce cheese no matter how much you water it.”
His lips quirked. “It’s a cheesewood, and no, it doesn’t. I was hanging around to make sure your kids got out of sight okay. In case they didn’t, I had a plan.”
“What plan?”
“I was going to pretend they were my kids and that they were playing hide and seek, for which they were going to be grounded.” He freed a strand of her hair and showed it to her in triumph. “One down.”
“Ugh, do you have some garden shears? Just cut it all off.”
“Never!” He sounded appalled at the very thought. “You have…nice hair.”
The compliment hung between them like an undetonated grenade.
“Besides, I gave my shears to your sister to prove I wasn’t out to do them harm.”
“Hm.” She appreciated that. Good thinking. Although the thought of Mia given free rein with a pair of garden shears… “We should find them.”
He raised his voice. “All clear!” he called. A moment later, they heard the sound of the sliding doors being opened, and the pitter-pat of her siblings racing across the floor.
Eddie stuck his head out the still-dripping window. “We hid so the bad guy couldn’t find us!” he crowed. “But I poked my hand on those big scissors.” He thrust out his right arm to show off the drop of blood on his hand.
Mia pulled him back inside the hale before they caught anyone else’s attention, and closed the window. Good girl.
But…bad guy?
She looked again at the man so carefully and meticulously working on her hair. “You think he was a bad guy? A robber or something?”
“I tend to assume the worst and occasionally I get pleasantly surprised.” Another lock of hair floated free.
She turned her head and realized she was mostly liberated from this damn shrub.
Good enough. She gestured for him to step back, wrapped a fist around her hair and pulled the rest of it loose from the bush.
“Free at last!” She thrust her arms into the air and did a little dance. “But we need to talk about your very sad philosophy of life.”
“Excuse me?” He had stepped back and was watching her with a look of bemusement.
“You assume the worst? I understand being careful, although I don’t always manage it myself. But assuming the worst is a little extreme, don’t you think?”
“I do not.”
His jaw flexed, and it occurred to her that maybe he’d had some trauma in his life that had led him to this point.
Maybe he was one of the many burnouts who wound up in Hawaii in pursuit of a less stressful life, only to discover that the cost of living was ridiculously high since everything was shipped in.
“I’m sorry,” she said softly, touching him on the arm. His muscles felt strong and defined under his rough work shirt, and it was surprisingly hard to pull her hand away. “You must have had some bad experiences in the past to make you so pessimistic.”
He recoiled, his dark eyebrows drawing together. “That’s idiotic.”
His arrogant response brought out the mischief-maker in her. And when that part of her came out, all bets were off.
“It might go all the way back to childhood. Those old emotional scars can still cause pain even as an adult. I completely understand. We all have them.”
“I’m. Fine.”
She buried the word “denial” in a light cough. “If you ever want to speak your truth, I’m here, Jim. Well, I’ll be at the concierge desk, not in these shrubs. But seriously, there is lots of help available for people dealing with trauma.”
“I have no trauma.” That muscle in his jaw was working overtime. “Unless you count this conversation right now.”
“Aw. I know this kind of convo can be triggering to someone like you,” She kept a straight face, even though she knew she was getting under his skin.
“I…You…” His expression shifted as he realized she was teasing him. “You’re a very aggravating person. Have you ever gotten help for that?”
“No, but I guarantee my younger siblings would save their allowances to pay for it.” She winked at him.
She never minded when people teased her.
From an early age, possibly the first time her father went to prison, she’d decided not to care what people thought of her.
It was wasted energy, in her opinion. “Anyway, thanks for letting me know about the mystery intruder, and thanks for the hair rescue.”
She shook out her hair and dragged her fingers through the last of the tangles. As she walked past him, twisting her hair back into its concierge-appropriate knot, she could have sworn she saw him take a whiff—probably bowled over by her supersized Costco shampoo.