Walking in Fire: Hawaiian Heroes, Book 1 (4 page)

The floor of the bay was dotted with rocks and a few fish. But as she approached the reef, she found herself in the midst of swarms of tropical fish. They flitted through the water in bursts of color and pattern. The bright yellow tangs, she remembered from the guide book. They were impossibly brilliant, spots of sunshine flirting through the clear water.

Some fish were black and white in complicated patterns—she’d have to look those up. Another school was silvery, iridescent in the filtered sunlight.

One large, homely faced fish was a rainbow of turquoise and lavender. He looked at her with one small eye and took a bite of coral, the small crunching sound traveling through the water. She hovered, watching with delight.

A school of brown-and-white fish darted by, and she followed them through the reef. Another large school of yellow tangs swirled by, and their black-and-white cousins. Melia stopped trying to name all the fish she saw, just swam and enjoyed. This was like being turned loose in a giant aquarium.

She started violently when something grabbed one of her fins. She turned, her heart pounding, then blew out a huff of relief through her snorkel.

It was Malu, pointing at a polka-dotted shape slithering between the rocks below her. An eel. She watched with delight as it slipped along, a living streamer of ribbon.

Malu dove down for a closer look, his snorkel streaming bubbles. Taking a breath, Melia followed him, kicking hard and stroking with her arms. The eel settled under a chunk of coral with its head protruding, razor-sharp teeth clearly visible.

Malu looked over at her through his mask, then turned and swam away, propelling himself with powerful movements of his long arms and legs. Melia let herself rise back up to the surface. She took another breath and realized too late that her snorkel tube was now partly full of water. Choking, she had to lift her head and tread water while she blew air through the tube to chase the water out. Her mouth was full of the taste of salt, and her sinuses stung. Ugh.

When she put her head back in the water, Malu had moved on, Cherie once again close by his side. Well, so much for their shared moment with the eel. With a mental shrug, she turned the opposite direction and followed Dane, Jimmer and Clay out over the reef. On the other side, the ocean floor was a mixture of sand and lava slabs, sloping off into blue oblivion. She kept a cautious eye out for large predators as she swam along, a little way from the men, enjoying the fish and the different colors of coral. One cluster was a lovely pink, another yellow. Most were white, punctuated by the spiny black of sea urchins.

She kept her hands off the reef, remembering that her touch could damage it and that many denizens either bit or stung.

After a time, she realized with surprise that she was shivering. Although pleasant, the water temperature was still well below that of her body. Turning, she swam back over the little reef and across the open water to the dock.

Frank was waiting on the dock. He took the snorkel and flippers from her, smiling at her as she climbed onto the dock. “See anything?”

“It was great.” She grinned back at him. “I saw a huge fish munching on your reef.”

He pointed at a laminated poster hung on one of the awning supports. “Bet that was a parrot fish. He’s big one, eh?”

Stripping off her wet shirt, Melia walked over to the poster. There was the turquoise-and-lavender parrot fish as well as several others she had seen. She moved back out into the hot sun, enjoying its heat on her chilled skin. The others were out of the water, lying back in the loungers arranged on the beach lanai. She wasn’t surprised to see Malu with his attendants on either side, beer in hand, like a king of old Hawaii. That is, if they’d had harems, she thought with a snicker.

“Fresh water over there, if you want to get the salt off,” Frank said, pointing out the outdoor shower under a palm at the end of the lawn. “Drinks in the big cooler on the beach.”

“Thanks.” Melia was glad to find the shower was lukewarm. She rinsed the salt water from her hair and skin, smoothed on more sunscreen and ran lip gloss over her lips, which felt as puckered as her fingertips after being in the salt water.

As she padded over to the beach lanai, Hawaiian music played softly from a large boom box on a table, two men singing a beautiful duet in Hawaiian. She sighed with pleasure—she could listen to the soft, liquid melodies all day.

She chose the lounger at the far end of the group beside Dane, who smiled at her and then closed his eyes again. Melia lay back with a bottle of cold water. The hot sun soaking into her skin sent her into a lazy torpor. After several moments, she roused herself and set the clock on her phone to make sure she didn’t overdo it. When it chirped, she cooled off with another swim before tying on her sarong and moving her chair into the shade.

She listened to Dane and his friends talking about their favorite resorts among the islands. Clay and Jimmer were cousins, while Cherie and Jacquie shared a condo in Kona. No jobs were mentioned, so Melia gathered the four all came from money. She had the feeling she, Frank and Leilani were the only working people present.

She wasn’t about to ask Malu what he did for a living. Maybe he was a gigolo. She grinned to herself at the image of him suffering the attentions of imperious women.

Chapter Three

Recipe for aggravation—one hot Hawaiian sending mixed signals.

They ate supper there at the beach, the table set with brightly colored plates and napkins, a centerpiece of glossy red anthurium and vines spilling from a hollowed pineapple. Melia slipped into the chair Frank held for her, sighing with pleasure. It was the perfect tropical dinner.

Perfect until Malu sat across from her. If she could have moved without drawing attention, she would have. He’d been very nice to point out the eel for her, but now he was back to Hawaiian Heathcliff mode again, brown and brooding as he took in the thin white tank she’d put on over her swimsuit and sarong. He didn’t look at anyone else that way. It made her edgy and out of sorts, a dark note in her sun-drenched holiday.

Leilani offered tall drinks decorated with spears of pineapple. “You like a mai tai?”

Melia shook her head. “Oh, no, thanks.” She’d tried one at a party and still remembered the overpoweringly sweet taste of sugar and rum.

“Try it,” Malu said. “Leilani makes the best mai tais on the Big Island.”

“Oh, well, all right.” She couldn’t refuse without being rude. Melia accepted the cold, sweating glass and took a cautious sip. She realized with surprise that it tasted of fresh fruit and coconut, with only a hint of rum.

“It’s delicious,” she told Leilani, who smiled broadly.

After several sips, Melia felt pleasantly relaxed, able to pretend Malu was a minor annoyance like the sand in her swimsuit. She shifted in her chair, wrinkling her nose at the abrasion on her tender bottom. She’d have to do a better job in the outdoor shower after her next swim.

Looking up, she saw Malu watching her. His mouth twitched upward at one corner. Her face heated as she realized he was laughing at her. She glared at him and took another drink of mai tai.

“Who wants to go for a hike tomorrow morning?” Dane asked.

“Not me,” chorused Cherie and Jacquie.

“Long as it’s not too early,” said Jimmer, or maybe it was Clay. The other one shook his head.

“Have to go early, bonehead,” Dane said, “or it’s too hot.”

He looked at Malu. “You up for it?”

Malu shook his head, leaning back in his chair. His expression was bland, but her intuition pinged. He knew Dane wanted him.

“I’ll go,” she said brightly. She’d been wanting to see where the path led that wound up from the back corner of the lawn.

“Great. Right after breakfast okay?” Dane asked. He smiled at her, tapping her on the arm with the side of his fist. “How did I know you’d be a hiker?”

She smiled at him, taking another drink of mai tai. And then caught Malu’s hard gaze over her glass. She blinked. Why the heck did he care if she went off with Dane? Malu didn’t want either one of them.

“Just keep an eye on the weather report,” Frank said. “There’s a system off to the south. Probably won’t come our way, but you don’t want to be up on the mountain if it starts to rain. Path gets slippery.”

“We’ll watch it,” Dane said.

“Is it really safe up there?” Melia asked, her stomach tightening. She didn’t mind an adventure, but she didn’t want to wander into danger. Especially on the side of a volcano.

Malu looked at her, his dark brows drawing together. “You fear our volcanoes?” he asked.

“Well, yes,” she admitted, although she felt foolish admitting as much in front of all these virtual strangers. “They’re so volatile and leave such an ugly path of destruction through this beautiful landscape.”

He shook his head, his wide mouth quirking up in a half smile. “City people. You think nature should be all neat and tidy—pretty view here, pretty view there, always the same. Pele in a box, yeah?” He mimed tying up a bow with a flourish.

“What you see as destruction is really just creation, moving on.” He swept his arm out across the view. “All this? Just a blink of our Creator’s eye. How you think these islands were built up in the first place? All Pele’s fire, flowing from her volcanoes.”

“On the other hand, I’m not planning any hikes up on the flanks of your Mt. St. Helens anytime soon,” Jimmer said with a look of mock horror. “Now there’s an explosive volcano. Boom!” He mimed a huge explosion.

Everyone laughed.

“Now, time for dinner,” Frank said. “Caught it for you myself, yesterday morning.”

Leilani served fresh ono, an island favorite, salad made with local lettuce, a rice dish, rolls and more fruit. Big Islanders served pineapple with everything. That was fine with Melia—it was sweet and ripe, dripping with juice.

She ate her dinner, enjoying the textures and flavors, listened to the others chatting and watched the sun sink slowly behind the palms clustered at the mouth of the little bay, the sky an indescribable shade of rosy peach, then fading to lavender and gradually to dark blue.

The dinner would have been perfect, except that she had to listen to Cherie and Jacquie flirt with Malu. He drew her eyes like a big lodestone. The low sun brought out reddish highlights in his dark hair, as if it weren’t truly black, just very dark. His yellow tank, with a silkscreened picture of an erupting volcano, emphasized his broad darkness. She watched in bemusement as one of the wild geckoes that were everywhere climbed onto his outstretched finger and ran up his arm to sit on his bare shoulder, watching him with jewel-bright eyes.

Frank, sitting at one end of the table, chuckled. “Hey, Malu, you better take another swim if you got enough bugs fo’ da
mo’o
, geckos to come after.”

Malu simply smiled. The gecko lingered on his shoulder like a chartreuse ornament. The other girls squealed playfully and urged him to shoo it away, but Melia was unwillingly charmed—the gecko seemed to feel safe on its living perch, as if Malu were one of the gigantic, glossy monstera leaves that spilled over the edges of the lanai. The tiny creature crept across his broad, brown shoulder, over the smooth swell of one pectoral.

Realizing at last that she was staring at his chest, Melia jerked her gaze away, but the image lingered.

Oh God, she was getting turned on sitting at a dinner party. She wanted to squeeze her thighs together and rock to relieve the tension building there. No more mai tais or no more Malu—bad combination. To distract herself and to get away from the source of her agitation, she rose to help clear the supper things and carry them back up to the big kitchen.

“That was a wonderful meal,” she said to Leilani, setting down the empty salad bowl on the work island. “Great seasoning on the fish.”

Leilani eyed her over a pile of dirty plates. “Island rub, made with sea salt, Kona coffee and spices. You like to cook?”

Melia nodded and revealed that she was a chef. She helped Leilani clean up the kitchen, and before she knew it, she’d confided in the other woman about the blog she’d recently started about cooking with fresh ingredients and how much fun she was having with it.

It was the first time she’d really tried to step out and try some innovative cooking. At the restaurant, she cooked with other peoples’ recipes. Those she used on her blog were hers, perfected after hours in the restaurant kitchen.

“Write down the what-you-call-it, the Internet address for me,” Leilani said, slapping a tablet and pen in front of Melia. “Guests want the latest food fad, yeah? They don’t want traditional island plate. Last month, dis woman want strawberry on her fish.” She shook her head, sliding the big dishwasher rack in with a rattle.

Melia laughed. “Fresh fruit salsa. All the rage on the mainland. I’ll post some recipes we’ve used at Greenwood.”

Leilani waved her hand. “You show how to make a good pineapple salsa, you have all da island cooks reading your blog.”

“Who has a blog?” a deep voice asked from the doorway. It was Malu with the cooler of empties.

“Our guest,” Leilani said, indicating Melia. “She a chef, yeah?”

Melia felt her cheeks flush. “You’re a fabulous cook yourself, Leilani.”