Читать онлайн книгу «Moonlight Magic» автора Doris Rangel
Moonlight Magic
Doris Rangel
How the heck had that happened?
Ellie wanted to pinch herself, just to see if she was dreaming. Her innards may have melted to blissful mush, but something wasn’t right here.
She’d just cried all over Daniel Morgan’s shirt. Where Daniel’s caress had scared her witless on the beach the other night, tonight it somehow liberated her. She felt lighter.
And that kiss! Admittedly she’d been waiting for him to kiss her since that night on the beach. She’d wondered what Daniel’s kiss would be like, even fantasized about it. Tonight she learned it was all that fantasy and more.
But whatever was going on here, it wasn’t going any further. She had her life planned, thank you very much, and it didn’t include danger with a capital Daniel.
Dear Reader,
What does romance mean to you? Sure, it could be sharing a candlelit dinner or strolling hand in hand on a spring day. But to me it’s even the smallest of gestures that tells you the person you think hangs the sun and the moon finds you equally unforgettable. As a lifelong romantic who met her future husband nearly twenty years ago, I’m delighted to be heading up Silhouette Romance. These books remind me that no matter what challenges the day has held, finding true love is one of life’s greatest rewards.
Bestselling author Judy Christenberry kicks off another great month with Finding a Family (SR #1762). In this sweet romance, a down-to-earth cowboy goes “shopping” for the perfect woman for his father but instead finds himself the target of Cupid’s arrow! Watch the sparks fly in Melissa McClone’s Blueprint for a Wedding (SR #1763) when a man who has crafted the perfect blueprint for domestic bliss finds himself attracted to an actress who doesn’t believe in happy endings. This month’s “Cinderella” is a feisty Latina, as Angie Ray continues Silhouette Romance’s commitment to offering modern-day fairy tales in The Millionaire’s Reward (SR #1764). Part of the SOULMATES series, Moonlight Magic (SR #1765) by Doris Rangel features a vacationing nurse who falls for a handsome stranger with a particularly vexing habit of vanishing into thin air.
And be sure to stay tuned for next month’s exciting lineup when reader favorites Raye Morgan and Carol Grace return with two classic romances.
Ann Leslie Tuttle
Associate Senior Editor
Moonlight Magic
Doris Rangel
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
For J and A
Who created their own Hawaiian Magic
With love from Mom
and Grammie
Books by Doris Rangel
Silhouette Romance
Marlie’s Mystery Man #1693
Moonlight Magic #1765
Silhouette Special Edition
Mountain Man #1140
Prenuptial Agreement #1224
DORIS RANGEL
loves books—the feel of them, the sight of them, the smell of them. And she loves talking about them. She has collected them, organized them, sold them new and used, written them, worked with others to write them, read them aloud to children and has hopefully imparted the magic of them to the grade school, college and adult students she has taught over the years. History, philosophy, science, satire, Western, mystery…In her home, books are the wallpaper of choice.
Romances hold a special place on her shelves, however. A story that ends with a couple stepping into the future with love and hope may be an ideal, but it is an ideal she wishes in the tomorrows of every living thing in the universe. Love, after all, in whatever form it takes, is all that is.
Contents
Prologue (#u608ec996-0078-55ad-85d1-0b4595c752ae)
Chapter One (#udc1a9acf-269f-5607-a8d9-2b3177293d4a)
Chapter Two (#u243cd140-4ca6-5228-9619-97c7ed543707)
Chapter Three (#u49c96071-21ab-5096-be13-c7b0a8922f8d)
Chapter Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Prologue
Daniel Morgan startled into wakefulness.
But around him quiet reigned in the garden’s somnambulant midafternoon sunshine—as it should with the children in school, Janie and Tom at work, and the old woman in the house probably watching afternoon soaps.
Yet he’d felt someone touch him, brush warm fingers across his chest.
Dreaming again.
Idly, he listened to the breeze rustling quietly through the foliage and watched an insect investigate the heart of a nearby blossom.
Thoughts drifting to other times, other places, he sank again into lethargy…and slept.
If you can’t trust your sweet, old grandmother, who can you trust?
Running the tip of her finger over a silver petal on the earring she held, Ellie frowned. She trusted Grammie. Sure she did.
Most of the time.
The pair of earrings looked ordinary enough. Flower shaped, with a slight dangle from a French hook and attached to an ordinary flat plastic backing stamped, Plumeria, the Flower of Hawaii and Sterling Silver. The backing nestled on ordinary cotton batting in a small ordinary white cardboard box with Made especially for you by Ohana embossed on the lid. Shops used this kind of box by the thousands.
Grammie’s gift was perfectly…well, ordinary. A nice pair of unpretentious earrings, not terribly expensive, their shape the only exotic thing about them.
“Nice.”
Looking up, Ellie found the flight attendant standing beside her admiring the earrings.
“Thanks. They’re a gift from my grandmother,” Ellie told her. And that was an ordinary comment—if one didn’t know her grandmother.
She shivered.
“They’re very pretty. Is this your first trip to the islands?” the woman asked casually, pouring the soda Ellie requested.
“Yes. I’m going for a medical convention, but my brother is a marine stationed there so I’m visiting him, too.”
Inwardly, Ellie grimaced, knowing she’d given the flight attendant far more information than the polite question warranted. She wasn’t usually this chatty, but for some reason she was nervous. The earrings, probably.
“I’m sure you’ll have a wonderful time,” the woman replied, and passed on to the next passenger.
I certainly hope so. Ellie’s dubious gaze dropped again to the silver flower in her hand.
Did Grammie really buy these earrings?
The Simms family had a good-natured saying among themselves: Never trust one of Grammie’s little gifts if she didn’t buy it.
Their grandmother, descended from an Iq’nata shaman, had a stash of seemingly ordinary personal items that, if she decided to give one of them to you, had a way of bringing about all sorts of extraordinary events.
Not bad events, just strange ones.
Over the years the family had learned to politely refuse any items for which Gram hadn’t paid cold, hard cash. Grammie never took it personally. She just laughed, told them they had no sense of adventure and pulled out something obviously store-bought as their gift instead.
Right before leaving to catch her flight, Ellie had declined Grammie’s first “little something for your trip, dear”—a lei of pretty speckled shells her grandmother said she’d found on the beach when she traveled to Hawaii several years before.
Uh-oh.
When Ellie shook her head decisively, Gram smiled, her blue eyes twinkling with mischief.
“Just teasing, darling. But here’s something I know you’ll want,” and she gave Ellie the box containing the earrings. “I searched the shops for days before I discovered them in a little out-of-the-way place outside of Honolulu.”
At Ellie’s narrow-eyed look, the older woman lifted an eyebrow. “Don’t be so suspicious, Ellie. It’s a bad habit of yours.” Tilting the box so the light gleamed off the silver flowers, Gram smiled. “Aren’t they pretty? They’ll look perfect with your sarong.”
“I don’t have a sarong,” Ellie replied.
But she accepted the earrings. They were pretty. So…islandish.
Now, rehooking the earring to the plastic backing, she returned the set to the box and dropped it into her purse, dismissing her suspicions.
Not until she’d maneuvered her way to the exit with the rest of the disembarking passengers did Ellie remember another Simms family saying….
The Great Ones have a weird sense of humor.
Chapter One
From his place among the hibiscus, Daniel watched the party eddy around him. The old woman, bless her, never forgot him on occasions such as this. Several leis, many of them made with plumeria blossoms, hung about his neck.
He loved family get-togethers and already felt a little drunk on the heady scent of flowers mixed with the equally heady odor of barbecue.
Being physically sober as a post, it was an inebriation of the senses only, of course. What he wouldn’t give for a plate heaped high with food and a frosty cup of beer to wash it down.
Unfortunately, he was only a bystander at this luau. Literally. In the midst of jubilation, Daniel stood apart, watching it all.
Though an adult party—Tom had turned forty—children were everywhere, chasing each other, dodging groups of adults, giggling, shouting. At home, children wouldn’t be allowed at a function such as this, Daniel mused, but in Hawaii ohana prevailed. He loved it.
The adults, too, milled about, teasing, laughing, talking, sidestepping children sometimes or absently scooping up a young one to cuddle a moment before sending the child off to play again.
And music flowed through it all, everything from Elvis at his most powerful to Iz at his most fragile.
He’d love to dance again, Daniel thought—jiggle his bones to a jazzy beat, shake his booty and get down to rock ’n’roll, press his undulating body against a woman’s to the breathy croon of a saxophone….
Maybe all of the above, as various couples were doing on the patio.
Two little girls flung each other about madly while four teenagers, three girls and a boy, hip-hopped to the same music. An elderly man and woman showed they still had it, and a younger woman with long silvery-blond hair swayed in ministeps with a seriously intent boy of about five.
Make that six. When the woman said something, the boy looked up at her with a gap-toothed grin, causing her to laugh.
Over the music and the chattering crowd, Daniel couldn’t hear the laugh, but the woman had a killer smile.
Earlier, he’d seen her among the guests and admired her silvery hair that she wore long and loose down her back. Though dressed in a gauzy dress that set off her slim figure, she hadn’t impressed him as being particularly pretty; she was even, perhaps, a little austere.
But that smile! It transformed a plain-vanilla exterior into something fascinating and mysterious, as if he’d opened a shoe box and found a piece of exotically carved antique ivory. When she smiled, the woman became breathtakingly beautiful!
And she was coming his way.
The thing winked at her!
Nah, it couldn’t have.
Ellie eyed the small statue tucked among the flowers. A tiki god, probably, and obviously old, its wood weathered and cracked in places.
She’d seen similar carvings at the Polynesian Cultural Center when the convention arranged a trip there. But they’d been huge. This one stood only about three feet high.
Around its neck hung several leis, she assumed in honor of the party. Yet something else about it seemed different from the others she’d seen.
The eyes, Ellie realized. The carvings at the Cultural Center didn’t have such wide awake eyes…eyes with a glint of mischief in them staring right back at her.
Ellie shook her head. Get real, woman!
She was just overtired. Overstimulated.
After working with no letup for the past couple of years, being around so many laughing partying people was tiring—even these gregarious Hawaiians, whose pleasure in the moment seemed to waft as naturally as the light tropical breeze.
Perhaps sensing this, Georgie, her young dancing partner, had brought her to this relatively secluded spot before leaving to fetch her a soft drink.
Dismissing the carving from her thoughts, Ellie found herself a seat on a low wall bordering the garden to await the child’s return.
Lush tropical blossoms perfumed the night, and she closed her eyes the better to enjoy their scent and the music and laughter from the party just beyond. She smiled to herself when she heard her brother’s full-bodied laugh.
And just like that, a dark smothering wave of loneliness washed over her.
On a sharp breath Ellie fought it back. This had happened a lot lately, and she was having none of it. She loved her life. She loved her job.
Okay, she needed this vacation. She was tired. Being alone, however, was a choice, not a tragedy.
Prickles shimmied up the back of her neck…. With a small gasp, Ellie’s eyes flew open.
Someone stared at her! She could feel their intense gaze. She also felt conspicuous and embarrassed at being observed in what she thought was a private moment.
Scanning the crowd, ready to coolly outstare whoever found her introspection so interesting, she could find no one looking her way, however.
Yet someone’s knowing observation kept her awareness on full alert.
Slowly, cautiously, Ellie turned her head…and came nose to nose with the crimson orifice of a hibiscus blossom, its golden pistil thrust forward in the flower version of a raspberry.
Startled, she drew back, only to laugh softly at her own paranoia. The rude hibiscus would pay for its impudence, though. Snapping it from its stem, Ellie hooked it over one ear, her fingers brushing one of her flower-shaped earrings in the process.
No sarong, Grammie, she thought, but I feel a hula coming on.
Still smiling, and about to turn away, she again started violently, this time with a small muffled shriek. Nestled among the blossoms and thick foliage, the tiki stared back at her, its carved face a study of violence, its eyes infinitely sad and lonely.
She leaped to her feet.
“Here’s your soda, Miss Ellie.”
Georgie stood beside her, offering an aluminum can, his face one big beam of gap-toothed smile.
“What? Oh. Uh, thanks, sweetie.”
Ellie took the soda gratefully and downed a healthy swig. From the corner of her eye, she checked out the carving.
The thing hadn’t moved a muscle, its wooden head still angled toward the spot where she’d been sitting. Only, she wasn’t sitting there anymore. The statue’s gaze wasn’t following her at all.
Time to leave. She’d be a certified basket case if she didn’t get back to Chad’s apartment and get some rest. Three days of back-to-back workshops at the convention in Honolulu and a busy day since her arrival at her brother’s apartment this morning made for one pooped, overimaginative tourist.
After dumping her luggage in his spare bedroom, Chad immediately whisked her off for a long drive to loop the island. When they returned, she’d played baseball with the kids next door and been invited by them and their grandmother to this party.
Now her busy day—heck, her busy week, busy year, busy decade—had caught up with her. She needed her bed.
When Georgie ran off to play with the other children, Ellie searched for her brother to tell him she was leaving. Chad was never difficult to locate. With his easygoing, always friendly personality, all she had to do was find the group with the most laughter.
Then she looked for her hosts, Janie and Tom Kamehana, to make her goodbyes, and finally went to Nona, the children’s grandmother who had invited her to the luau in the first place.
“You’re leaving us,” Nona said before Ellie could speak. The old woman took Ellie’s hand in her own brown one, the clasp warm and strong. “You’re tired,” she added.
Ellie smiled. “Yes. But I’ve had a wonderful time. Thank you for inviting me.”
“And your brother. All this time living right next door and I didn’t realize,” Nona said. She tilted her head, smiling wryly. “Careless of me.”
There wasn’t much Ellie could say to that. The old woman still held her hand.
“How did you like my garden ornament?”
Ellie strove for diplomacy. “Well, it was, uh—”
“Interesting, yes? I saw you looking at it.”
“Is it a tiki god?” Ellie asked cautiously, unsure of the manners involved with the direction the conversation had taken.
“I’m not sure,” the old woman replied. “A few years ago one of the children found the carving washed up on the beach of the cove and brought it home. I placed it in the garden. But it’s different from the usual, wouldn’t you say?”
Feeling completely out of her depth, Ellie smiled. Nona still held her hand. “Everything in Hawaii seems different from the usual to me,” she answered apologetically. “I’m from Texas.”
Nona nodded her head. “San Antonio.”
Ellie didn’t remember telling her that, but she supposed she had. Or perhaps Chad did.
Finally Nona let go her hand. “You might enjoy a walk on the beach, child. Such a beautiful evening. The moon will be lovely on the water.”
“Perhaps I’ll do that,” Ellie replied politely, having no intention of doing any such thing. All she wanted was her bed and the opportunity to forget about wooden carvings with sad lonely eyes. “Good night.”
Nona smiled and picked up the toddler pulling on her skirt and waving a piece of something sticky. “Good night, dear. Those are lovely earrings, by the way. I once had a pair just like them.”
Self-consciously Ellie touched an earring, murmured, “Thank you,” and added another good-night.
See, she thought. Ordinary. Mass produced. As Gram says, I’m too suspicious.
She let herself out the side entrance separating her brother’s apartment from the house next door, her overexposed senses relaxing when the closed gate muted the music and laughter, and intervening trees shut out the colored party lights. A three-quarter moon gilded the night with silver.
It was, indeed, a beautiful evening. Too beautiful to go indoors just yet, even though she was tired, Ellie thought. The moonlight would be lovely on the water, and she remembered a small, secluded cove only a block away.
Chad had shown it to her earlier. Though native Hawaiians often went there, he said, mainlanders seldom used it, probably because other beaches were bigger, sandier, more picturesque. The waters of the cove were known to be dangerous, too. Signs warned against swimming.
No problem. Ellie didn’t plan to swim.
In moments she’d walked down the quiet residential street ending at a stretch of pale sand bordering a moonstruck sea. A dead end leading to paradise.
Only in Hawaii.
Ellie touched one of the silver earrings in her ears and smiled a little as she imagined Grammie’s chuckle in the breeze rustling through the trees behind her.
Slipping off her sandals, she stood at the edge of the water and gazed out at the sea before her, its wavelets liquid pearls lapping at her feet.
Bliss.
Nona watched Ellie slip out the side gate.
Interesting, she thought, her gaze swinging to the small carving ruling its hibiscus kingdom across the way. But hibiscus were merely decorative. They had no power. Plumeria, now…
Taking her time, the toddler still riding her ample hip, Nona strolled over to give the carving a closer inspection. Then, with a low sudden laugh, she whipped the plumeria leis from its neck and placed them around the neck of the child.
There. That ought to do it.
Daniel looked around in disbelief.
The party had disappeared. The music was silent. Heck, the whole back garden was gone. He was…
He was on a beach.
Wait a minute! He was at the cove!
White sand shaped like a crescent moon cupping a bump in the Pacific; the oddly shaped tamarisk tree over there…. He knew this place, all right.
Sure enough, some distance away and picked out by bright moonlight, he saw the sign sticking up from the sand. He didn’t have to be any closer to know exactly what it said.
DANGER NO SWIMMING STAY OUT OF THE WATER.
The damned thing’s too small, he thought bitterly. And damned near worthless. This place needs an electrified fence around it, not a puny little hand-lettered sign. Twenty-four-hour guard dogs ought to patrol the area, trained to drag people away if they came within a hundred feet of the water.
Better yet, some civic-minded citizen should fill it in with cement, pave it over and make it a parking lot. The cove’s very existence invited tragedy.
What if someone couldn’t read that paltry notice—or was too stupid to recognize a warning when they read one?
Scowling at the distant, slightly tilted sign, Daniel angrily forked his fingers through his hair.
And stilled.
Inch by careful inch, he lowered his hand to stare at his fingers, still splayed as they’d been in his hair.
Hair?
Not daring to hope, he reached up again—actually raised his arm and hand—and lightly touched the top of his head. Against his palm he felt the crisp pelt of his…hair.
But as he again stared at his hand in awe, a small movement just beyond caught his attention, and Daniel lifted his head sharply. Someone besides himself was on the beach.
A woman, he realized, sitting on the sand, arms clasping her knees as she stared out over the sea. Her hair, the same color as moonlight, lifted slightly in the breeze. The woman from Tom and Janie’s party.
And she sat within inches of the water.
Ready to warn her, Daniel took a step, only to become aware of what he’d just done. Looking down at himself, his own wonder captivated him again.
He still wore his boxers, he saw. And…he fought an urge to laugh wildly…his money belt! Had anything else about him changed?
His bare chest and flat stomach looked no leaner, no fuller. His legs were as muscled, as much from walking a thousand miles of hospital corridor as from deliberate exercise. Near the small toe of one bare foot ran the thin line of a scar he’d had since he was twelve.
It was his body all right. His arms, his legs, what he assumed was his face. Nothing about it was different. And he had moved!
The thought brought him back to the present with a thump.
The woman! While he’d been checking himself over, she had risen from her seat on the sand and now swished one foot in the tiny wavelets washing the shore.
“Hey! Don’t do that!”
A part of him marveled at the sound of his voice echoing over the beach, but this time Daniel didn’t take time to enjoy it. He headed toward the woman at a dead run.
She turned a startled face in his direction, dropped her sandals and ran, too.
Away from him.
Her action stopped Daniel in his tracks.
Women didn’t used to run from him. Did he not have his same face after all?
But the silly woman continued running down the beach, her moonlit hair streaming behind her—each frantic step splashing in the shallow water of the shoreline, sometimes at its edge, sometimes a little deeper.
Daniel pelted after her again. Whatever hid in the waters of this cove was dangerous. Stay out of the Water the sign said.
An order, not a warning.
The woman ran like a deer, but in the wrong direction.
She was afraid of him, he guessed, and if she’d just aim toward the trees or toward the houses beyond, he’d leave her alone. He had other things to think about.
But in her panic, she raced down the shoreline, her tracks weaving in and out of the shallow, gently breathing water.
So he tackled her.
Chapter Two
“Oomph!”
Ellie hit the sand, with her assailant landing on top of her. But she hadn’t spent two nights a week and a small fortune on self-defense classes for nothing.
As she landed she rolled, and before he could get a grip on her, she lifted her knee and made a dent in the man’s chances for future children.
Her aim was off, but good enough to make him fall away from her with a groan.
Leaping to her feet, she took off again.
“Not that way, you idiot!” she heard the man gasp behind her. “Toward the street! Run to the houses!”
And Ellie finally understood what her attacker was trying to tell her.
He was right. Like the idiot he’d called her, she was running up the beach when escape lay toward the neighborhood just beyond it. Heck, Chad’s apartment was only a block away.
Something didn’t make sense here.
Still running, but slowing a bit, she risked a look over her shoulder.
Her assailant remained where he’d fallen, only now he was sitting up and hugging his knees tightly, his head drooping.
Ellie jogged in place, considering the situation, then turned fully around to stare at the hunched figure from a safe distance.
Other than waving an arm toward the town behind them, he ignored her.
“Are you all right?” she asked, taking a few steps toward him but ready to speed away again at the least hint she hadn’t completely clobbered him.
“Peachy. But at least I know all of me works.” He groaned. “Did work.”
She took a few more steps in his direction, the better to give him the full effect of her glare. “Take it as a warning the next time you attack a woman,” she replied coldly. “Just be glad I didn’t connect as well as I should have.”
“Oh, I’m glad. Trust me.” His bitter laugh checked abruptly. “And I didn’t attack you.”
“No? Guess we don’t read the same dictionary. What do you call chasing a woman so you can knock her down?”
“Ah, you can read.” The man’s forehead still rested on his knees, but his tone matched hers for sarcasm. “So why didn’t you? And I call it trying to save your stupid neck.”
“Why didn’t I what?”
“Read the sign,” he growled.
“I did. Since I wasn’t swimming, I don’t see what the problem is.”
At last the man lifted his head so he could gaze at her, his handsome face a study of disgust.
Handsome? The man was drop-dead gorgeous!
“It doesn’t just say No Swimming,” he bit out. “It says, and this is a direct quote, ‘Danger no swimming stay out of the water.’ No commas, no periods, no question marks.”
“I barely had a foot in it,” Ellie replied coldly, then paused. “Are you saying the water is polluted?”
“Of course not. But the water here is dangerous. The sign says so, and I know so. Yet there you were, ignoring the warning like the mainlander you are.”
Ellie sighed. Talk about overreaction! But the night was far too beautiful to argue. So what the heck.
With opportunities in short supply for rescuing damsels these days, let the guy have his water dragon.
“All right. I should have paid attention,” she conceded, by now standing beside him. “Thanks for your, um, efforts on my behalf. I’m sorry I hurt you.”
His smile did weird things to her knees.
“And I’m sorry I frightened you,” he said, putting out a hand. “Even?”
Her knees might be weak, but Ellie’s brain wasn’t. She eyed the out-thrust hand for a long, cautious moment. Still, judging by the lingering pain in the man’s eyes, he probably wasn’t up to much.
Bending toward him, she, too, extended her hand.
“Even,” she said.
As the warm fingers wrapped around hers, the moon came out from behind a cloud and she saw his face clearly.
And liked what she saw.
Movie-star looks honed by an aristocratic bone structure and fine features. A good strong nose set off by an equally strong jaw and wide mobile mouth. Pale hair washed even paler in the moonlight. Eyes…
His eyes looked familiar.
“Have we met?” she asked, finally remembering to withdraw her hand.
Appearing a little unsettled himself, he released it. “Uh, no. I, er, saw you at the party.”
“The Kamehanas’? I don’t remember seeing you there.” She would have remembered.
“There was quite a crowd. You were dancing with a short charmer with a missing front tooth.”
Ellie chuckled. Here was another charmer, she’d bet. And after that unexpected moment of traitorous loneliness at the party, she was in the mood to be charmed…to prove to herself that she could be, perhaps, but also because the night simply begged for light flirtation.
Who better than this extremely handsome man to practice on?
She sat down on the sand. “That was Georgie,” she told him.
“I know. Another cousin, I hear.”
“Really?”
He grinned. “In this case, really, but not always. To Hawaiians, every guest becomes an honorary cousin and is treated like family.”
“It’s a lovely custom.”
They sat silently a moment, listening to the low murmur of the waves brushing the sand a few feet away and to the distant music coming from the neighborhood behind them, probably from the luau they’d both just left.
“Feeling better?” Ellie asked at last.
“Working on it.”
Actually, Daniel felt pretty damn good but was afraid the woman might leave if he admitted it. Even though he had a lot to do himself with the business of getting home again, he didn’t want to break this up just yet.
After years of silence, just sitting on a beach and talking of nothing much with a pretty girl was a small miracle.
“I know I frightened you,” he said tentatively, “but will you tell me your name?”
“Ellie. Yours?”
“Daniel.”
“Not Dan or Danny?”
“Only when my mother isn’t around.”
“My mom tried to make everyone call me Eliza Ann, but she was outnumbered,” Ellie replied with a light laugh. “I guess your mom carries more clout.”
His answering chuckle delighted his ears. People ought to realize how truly special laughter is to the human race.
“My mother is never outnumbered,” he responded, reveling in this wonderful, meaningless conversation.
Yet for a moment he thought about his mother.
Even the disappearance of her only son probably didn’t throw Catherine Morgan for long. His mother…she’d certainly never been a “mom”…most likely set up search headquarters in the living room, had her senator call in the FBI, gave everyone drinks and hors d’oeuvres, then took it as a personal affront when her son ruined the party by not being found immediately.
“She sounds formidable.”
But Daniel didn’t want to talk about his mother. Or himself. After all, what could he say?
“Are you in Hawaii on vacation?” he asked.
Ellie’s smile glowed out at him.
With her long silvery hair, and with her face turned up to the night sky, the woman could be mistaken for a moon goddess.
Maybe she was. Daniel stilled. He didn’t trust this cove.
But her answer couldn’t have been more normal.
“Yes and no. I came for a pediatrics convention in Honolulu, but I have a brother here with the marines. He’ll be leaving for Japan soon, so I’m taking the opportunity to spend time with him.”
“Pediatrics? You’re an M.D.?”
“Pediatric nurse. How about you?”
“Small world. I’m a doctor. Just finished my residency.”
All true, but how many years ago? Four? He wasn’t sure anymore.
“Oh, were you here for the conference, too?”
“Um, no. So how do you like Hawaii?”
“It’s beautiful, what I’ve seen of it. I haven’t had a chance to be a tourist yet, except for a visit to the cultural center.”
She wiggled her toes in the sand, and Daniel thought he’d never seen anything so lovely as the shine of pale nail polish on the sweetest feet in the islands.
He smothered an inward grin at this new appreciation of feet. If nothing else, the past years had been a lesson in what to appreciate. Things once taken for granted he now considered in a whole new light. He could hardly wait to go home.
But there was something else he’d learned in the Kamehanas’ back garden.
Enjoy the moment.
And at this moment, he was on a beautiful beach—as long as one stayed out of the water—enjoying a beautiful night, talking nothings with a breathtaking woman.
Talking? On a night like this? What was he thinking!
After years of isolation, he wasn’t greedy. But a modest little kiss with a moon goddess wouldn’t be asking too much, would it? Would Ellie be willing?
Sifting sand through her fingers, Ellie idly watched it catch the breeze, very much aware of being observed.
On a deserted beach with a total stranger, she should be afraid. But fear was the farthest thing from her mind. It was all she could do not to stare back.
Something about Daniel attracted her as she hadn’t been attracted in years, though he wasn’t her type at all.
Too handsome, for one thing. She’d never been susceptible to handsome men. Fashion-model looks and muscled physiques might be the stuff of most women’s fantasies but not hers.
The touch of vulnerability she sensed that had her wanting to reach out to him was another thing. Normally she found vulnerability a turnoff in men because she equated the word with “needy.” Her ex-husband sprang to mind.
If you love me, you’ll stay home with me. Let someone else take the extra shift.
Ellie shook the memory away. It wasn’t that kind of vulnerability she sensed in Daniel. Behind the easygoing charm that said he’d been practicing it for years, she sensed strength in him. And sadness.
She shook that thought away, too.
So what was the attraction? The man was just too perfect for her taste.
Handsome, charming and a doctor? Yeah, right. Surely he’d made that last up. What were the odds? Most likely he was the male equivalent to a beach bunny.
Aha! Ellie swallowed the urge to laugh outright. That was the attraction.
On a lovely beach on a moonlit night in Hawaii, she’d met the perfect kind of man for her—a studly beach bum. Here now, gone with the tide.
And she’d bet the ranch this particular stud-muffin wanted to kiss her.
She would let him, too, Ellie thought. What fool ignored perfection? And after a kiss or two, she would put on her sandals and return to Chad’s apartment.
Alone.
If Daniel found her tomorrow or in the days ahead and wanted to continue where they left off, maybe she would.
Maybe she wouldn’t.
It depended on Chad’s duty schedule and how much free time he had. Ellie planned to spend as much time as possible with her brother, but when Chad was busy, Daniel might be fun to hang out with. He apparently knew the island well.
Perfect. A vacation flirtation.
Something to laugh about over coffee with her colleagues when she got home.
“Ellie.”
Even knowing this scene for exactly what it was, and knowing that Daniel was getting ready to exercise his best come-on, when he said her name like that, low and a little bit rough, Ellie shivered.
Make that sizzled.
“Umm?”
“I…” He cleared his throat. “Uh, where are you from?”
Was that shyness she heard? Couldn’t be. Didn’t fit the image.
“Texas,” she said, and slowly turned her head from her study of the sea so that she could look at him.
What she saw made her breath catch. “S-San Antonio,” she added in a husky whisper.
“Ah.” His gaze never left her mouth. “Would you mind if I kissed you?”
He had to ask? “Please,” Ellie managed to breathe. Her eyes fluttered shut.
But it wasn’t Daniel’s lips she felt next.
The stroke of gentle fingers brushing the side of her face took her completely by surprise before their trail down the contours of her jaw lured her into a sensual wonderland.
Warm, firm, but infinitely light, his thumbs traced the slope of her nose and traveled on to outline the fullness of her lower lip.
Her lips parted in a silent plea for more.
“God, you’re beautiful,” Daniel whispered.
Perhaps he whispered.
By now his light caress had Ellie’s senses so adrift she didn’t know if he actually spoke. Only her sense of the tactile still operated, working overtime as her body gave birth to nerve endings born singing beneath this man’s hands.
His fingers whispered that her skull was perfect, her skin flawless, her facial muscles works of art. Ellie knew she was lovely because those fingers said it.
They twined through her hair, combed slowly through it to its ends, and she understood her hair was a silken glory, a perfection of color and texture.
When Daniel’s thumbs traced the curve of her ears, brailing their contours, the geography of their hills and valleys and hiding places, she became aware that he’d found paradise.
Lifting her face to give those magical hands greater access…she felt one of her earrings hit her shoulder.
Shocked, Ellie opened her eyes. Dear God in Heaven! What was she doing?
This was no tropical interlude. The man had her emotions zinging in another way completely.
Daniel, too, looked dazed.
“Are you out of your mind?” she snapped at him, rearing back. “I said you could kiss me. Not—not t-touch me. Look what you’ve done. You made me l-lose my earring.”
Frantically, fighting tears she couldn’t explain and angry at herself for being such a sensual pushover, Ellie searched for the silver flower, using her fingers to lightly brush the sand between them, trying not to disturb it overmuch—and trying not to remember another set of fingers that had also lightly brushed, but disturbed very much indeed.
The hibiscus blossom she’d placed in her hair earlier in the evening dropped to the sand, but she swatted it away.
Why was she crying, dammit?
She couldn’t find the earring.
Had she only imagined it falling? A subconscious warning, perhaps? Reaching up, she touched the lobes of her ears just to make sure it was truly gone. It was. The other was still there, however.
Taking it out of her ear, Ellie dropped it in the pocket of her skirt so she wouldn’t lose it, too, then slowly, carefully stood, trying not to shift any more sand than she must.
As she rose, the lost earring tumbled to the sand.
Snatching it up, she turned to face the man who’d sent her emotions careening out of control.
How dare he presume to…to do what he did! She’d only given him permission for a little nothing kiss between two strangers, a meaningless acknowledgment brought about by a lovely tropical night, not…not something else altogether.
Something that made her want to turn her face into Daniel’s broad chest and weep.
How dare he!
But before Ellie could utter a single heated word, her tirade died from lack of direction.
Daniel wasn’t there.
Like the irresponsible bum he was, when the going got rough, he simply left.
“Handsome is as handsome does,” she muttered darkly, borrowing Gram’s favorite saying.
Gathering her sandals, Ellie stomped through the sand to the street and headed for Chad’s apartment.
Why didn’t I leave when I could? Daniel thought, and groaned silently.
By now the party was dead; only a few “cousins” remained, picking up paper plates and cups, talking and laughing quietly.
Watching them from his usual place among the hibiscus, he would have kicked himself if he could. For whatever reason, freedom was within his grasp and he’d traded it for the company of a pretty girl.
Heck, she wasn’t even that pretty.
Beautiful, though, when she smiled. And tonight she’d smiled just for him.
How long had it been since a beautiful woman smiled for his benefit?
But a thousand pretty women could have smiled at him for years to come if he’d just had the presence of mind to leave the damned cove.
He’d known the place for what it was, but just like the first time, he’d let it seduce him again.
Trap him again.
Daniel sucked in a breath he didn’t actually have.
Ellie!
She’d run through the shallow water when he was chasing her. But she’d done it in all innocence. Surely the waters of the cove wouldn’t punish her for that.
Scanning the garden as far as he could see, Daniel searched for her, wishing he could somehow literally beat the surrounding bushes.
But though he examined every corner of the yard and beneath every shrub and tree within his field of vision, he saw no trace of a woman with hair the color of moonlight and a smile to rival its glow.
He wouldn’t even consider that she might be trapped elsewhere. If the force in the cove was just, it kept its curse only for him.
Yet somehow tonight he’d been released for a while, Daniel thought, a fact offering a glimmer of hope that he would be again.
And if he was…when he was…he was outta here.
In the meantime he had something new to think about. What color, he wondered, were Ellie’s eyes when the moon didn’t wash them to silver?
Chapter Three
On the excuse of checking the coals in the barbecue grill, Ellie let herself out the sliding screen door of her brother’s apartment. A gathering of marines and their significant others could be overwhelming.
But here on the patio it was another of the perfect tropical nights Hawaiians considered a norm. An almost full moon rode low in the sky and, upwind, the light breeze carried the scent of flowers she didn’t know the name of.
The night was perfect, all right, but it reminded her of Daniel.
Deliberately Ellie stepped downwind to the grill to get a good whiff of burning charcoal, her peaceful mood vanishing at the thought of the man on the beach whose touch turned her to flame.
The cad. Okay, it was an old-fashioned word, but a perfect description of the…bounder.
Perfect. That word again. She was sick of it.
Forty-eight hours ago, on a perfect tropical night on a perfect tropical beach, a man with a perfect face and perfect body had made a perfect fool of her. He’d taken her perfect flirtation and turned it into a…a perfect fiasco.
After three years of careful control, Daniel had blind-sided her, making her heart remember things she didn’t want it to remember, making her body feel things she didn’t want it to feel.
And the heck of it was, he hadn’t even kissed her.
When she’d come back to Chad’s apartment after the debacle on the beach, she’d been fiercely glad of that. But it hadn’t stopped her traitorous mind from wondering what the man’s kiss was like.
Still, if she wanted kisses, there were a couple of single marines in the group behind her who would be glad to oblige, she was sure.
Somehow, though, she doubted it would be the same.
Lifting her face to the moon riding a drifting cloud, Ellie knew she’d been out here long enough. After all, her brother had thrown this shindig so she could meet some of his buddies. It was also a sort of last “oo-rah.” Many of them, like her brother, would deploy to Okinawa shortly.
As she turned to reenter the apartment, however, Ellie glimpsed a shadowy figure sitting at a picnic table just beyond the range of light shining through the patio doors behind her.
A tenant from one of the other units, perhaps? But most of them, also marines, were at her brother’s party.
Yet there was something about the vague shape…
Ellie walked toward the picnic table. With at least ten good men in the room behind her, she had no reason to be afraid.
Once close enough to get a look at the seated figure, though, her heart lurched. She halted abruptly.
Daniel!
She narrowed her eyes. “What are you doing here?”
From where he sat, the man had certainly been able to see her when she came outside. But he hadn’t said a word.
Holy grief, was he stalking her?
“There’s a whole platoon of marines in there,” she informed him tightly, nodding toward the low-level noise behind her when he didn’t answer right away. “I suggest you leave while you’re still in one piece.”
“Love to,” he replied, not moving.
“Well, go on.” She made a shooing motion with her hand. “If you don’t leave, I’ll…I’ll—”
“You’ll call in the artillery,” Daniel said, sounding tired. “Go ahead. Maybe that will work.” He stood.
In the moonlight Ellie saw his faint, bitter smile. It was the saddest thing she’d ever seen.
But remembering the man’s effect on her at the beach, she froze her melting heart right back up again.
Still, when Daniel stretched and rolled his shoulders as if he’d been sitting too long, her gaze couldn’t help but follow his rippling muscles.
He wore the same bathing suit he’d had on two nights before, she noticed. Or was it boxers?
A thought that revved her imagination into overdrive.
It was definitely time for this man to hit the road.
“Look,” she began with a growl….
“Hey, El. Who you got there?”
Chad had come up behind her and now put out his hand like the friendly Texan he was. “Chad Simms, Ellie’s brother,” he said.
“Daniel Morgan,” Daniel replied.
The two shook hands congenially.
Men, Ellie thought. Did they never stop the good-ol’boy routine long enough to ask questions?
“Daniel was just leaving,” she said.
But she should have known. Her brother had Texas hospitality bred to the bone.
“Why don’t you join us?” he invited. “We’ve got plenty of chow and cold beer, and you’d be welcome.”
For a split second Ellie saw a look of such raw longing on Daniel’s face that her heart stopped. But the look disappeared when he smiled easily.
“Sorry, but thanks, anyway. I’m, uh, missing my party threads. My clothes were…stolen and…” He shrugged.
“That’s been happening on the beaches a lot lately,” Chad said. “But hell, buddy, we’re about the same size. I’ll loan you somethin’. C’mon in.”
And that was all it took for Daniel to join their party.
Chad found him a change of clothes, even a pair of shoes. Using the bathroom, Daniel showered, then joined the rest of them, wearing a pair of her brother’s khakis and a blue golf shirt, a color that intensified the aquamarine of his eyes.
Several of the other women noticed how well the shirt suited him, too, Ellie saw.
But the man was clearly a survivor. In a room full of burly marines, he wasn’t about to show interest in one of their wives or girlfriends.
Oh, no. He kept his interest for an intent perusal of Chad’s CD collection. And no woman there claimed the same attention as the sports page of a week-old edition of the Honolulu Times lying on an end table. He even studied the snack platter as if it were a painting by Michelangelo and he an admiring critic.
Daniel’s fascination with the mundane was, well, fascinating. And Ellie was fascinated.
Unobtrusively she watched him pick up a potato chip and examine its wavy shape as if the chip were an architectural wonder. Slowly he brought it to his mouth.
His lips opened…the chip entered. And when it touched his tongue, his eyes fluttered shut. He began to chew—carefully, as if each crunch might detonate an explosion.
Ellie watched, mesmerized by the slow, rhythmic movement of Daniel’s jaw, the infinitesimal stretch and compression of skin over his cheeks, the tiny arcing purse of his mouth. When at last he swallowed, so did she.
Or tried to. Her throat was dry.
Then her brother handed him a can of beer. “Here you go, Dan. Sorry about your gear getting ripped off. Bummer.”
Daniel looked uncomfortable, but lifted the can and nodded toward Chad in a small salute. “Thanks.”
When he’d first joined the party and was pressed, Daniel told them his things hadn’t been stolen at the beach, as Chad assumed, but at his hotel.
Ellie knew in her bones the man was lying. There were holes in the story big enough to drive a semi through. But her easygoing little brother had no trouble swallowing the tale.
“Don’t worry about the threads,” he said now. “I’m getting ready to deploy. Weeding out things, you know. You’ll be doing me a favor if you keep them. I’ve got more you can have, too.”
“Appreciate it.”
Daniel took a swig of beer, and Ellie, feeling like a voyeur, had to turn her head away from the look of absolute pleasure that passed over his features.
Everything the man did became a symphony of the senses, she thought, and felt her face grow warm at the memory of the way he’d touched her on the beach.
When he tasted her potato salad, though, Ellie knew she’d really impressed him.
Chad wanted this party to be an honest-to-goodness, Texas-style barbecue, with beans, potato salad, cole slaw and corn on the cob to go with the steaks, brisket, sausage and chicken he had on the grill.
Everyone who came pitched in, bringing meat, snacks, drinks and side dishes, but Ellie volunteered to make the potato salad, a family recipe and one of her brother’s favorites.
The party migrated outdoors when it came time to eat, and she found herself sitting across from Daniel at the picnic table on the side lawn. They weren’t the only ones at the long table, but they might as well have been.
Daniel sat with a paper plate full of food in front of him, but instead of diving in as the rest were doing, he stared at it.
“Find a bug?” Ellie asked.
He looked up to give her his quirky grin, the one with the infinite sadness behind it. For a man Daniel had a very expressive face.
“Did you ever notice,” he asked, “how perfect the geometry is on an ear of corn?”
“Can’t say that I have.” She didn’t like that word.
“Yeah, guess not.” Picking up his fork, he again examined his plate, studying its contents carefully.
From the look on his face, Ellie supposed whatever food Daniel decided to plunge the fork into first would determine world peace.
He chose her potato salad.
Around them the party noise faded to a low murmur. Ellie held her breath.
The fork entered the small hill of potatoes and came up with a good-size sample. In the creamy heap, she saw touches of the pale-green celery she’d added, the darker green of dill pickles, the red of pimento, flecks of brown peeling, golden egg yolk.
When at last Daniel brought the forkful of salad to his mouth, Ellie’s lips parted in automatic accompaniment.
He closed his eyes. Chewed. Swallowed.
And his face melted into lines of rapt appreciation.
Ellie exhaled a small satisfied sigh.
“Do you always do that?” she asked, after his second bite.
“What?” He forked into the baked beans, but she hadn’t made the beans so his reaction to them wasn’t of much interest.
“Treat everything as if it were created for your sensual pleasure.”
The fork stilled as he gazed back at her. “It’s just been a long time,” he said at last, with a touch of self-consciousness.
As an answer, the words made no sense at all.
But little about Daniel made any sense, Ellie thought. For one thing, nothing about him seemed to match.
On the beach she’d thought him a handsome footloose beach bum, but tonight he’d been a quiet, unassuming, slightly embarrassed guest, who treated everyone as if they were uniquely special and everything as if it were a gift from the gods.
“A long time since what?”
This time his grin was wide and mischievous, unmarred by any kind of melancholy. “Since I’ve had such delicious potato salad. You Texans know how to cook.”
Ellie grunted. Enough, already.
Leaning forward, she pinned him with her steeliest nurse’s look, the one that said, “Don’t mess with me, buster!”
“So tell me what you’re really doing here, Daniel Morgan, and don’t crank out any more fairy tales about robberies, either.”
But when Daniel lowered his fork without even tasting the beans, she felt as if she’d just told a kid his cookie was full of broccoli bits.
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” he said quietly.
“Try me.”
Daniel eyed the woman across from him and knew by her steady gaze that Ellie wasn’t going to let this go. Yet what could he say that she would believe? Certainly not the truth.
But he gave it to her, anyway.
“The truth is, I can’t leave.”
And God knew he’d tried.
At first he hadn’t known where he was when he found himself again released from Tom and Janie’s back garden. He only knew he wasn’t back at the cove.
Tonight, though, he appeared to be in someone else’s yard, on a lawn surrounding a huge rambling house. Still, the nearby fence looked familiar, and he gazed at it for a long moment in puzzlement, wondering where he’d seen it before.
Then he knew. He’d been looking at it for years, but from the other side.
Hell, he’d gone no further than the house next door!
But he was free! Free!
Remembering what his hesitation cost him last time, he immediately sprinted toward the street that he could see through the trees, as cars passed by with their lights on…and slammed into something that sent him sprawling.
Seeing nothing in his way, he figured he’d tripped, so he gathered himself up and set off again.
This time he took no more than a couple of steps before smashing into something—something he still couldn’t see but was solid enough to send him crashing to the ground.
Lying in the grass, he studied the empty yard in front of him, watched a car speed by on the street, its headlights arcing through the overhead branches of the trees.
Next time he took the precaution of keeping his arms outstretched.
One step. Two. Three. Fou—Whap! Something stopped him in his tracks.
No matter how much he sidestepped or backed up, as soon as he started forward an invisible wall appeared, though not always in exactly the same place. It seemed to fluctuate a few feet on some whim of its own, but nevertheless prevented him from getting to the street.
But if the whatever wouldn’t let him move in that direction, then he’d leave by the back alley.
A plan that worked like a charm until he neared the Dumpsters. Whap! There it was again.
It took a while and a few ignominious falls for him to finally realize that no matter what direction he took, he could go so far and no farther.
The one direction he refused to try, however, was through Janie and Tom’s fence. Better this yard, with its limited freedom, than theirs where he had no freedom at all.
Defeated, he’d finally sat down at the picnic table to look over the house he must belong to now. Country-western music filtered from it out into the night, and through the double patio doors he saw a party of some sort going on.
A barbecue barrel near the patio filled the night air with the smell of charcoal and good times.
As Daniel watched, the door slid open and a woman with hair the color of moonlight stepped out.
Ellie!
She didn’t see him sitting there, and he didn’t call out. For one thing, he wasn’t sure she could see him. Not knowing what the rules were in his new situation—not that he ever had—he didn’t take anything for granted.
Then Ellie spotted him, had even been angry with him for some reason, but her brother invited him in and Daniel found himself—for the first time in years—actually under a roof. That was when he realized the whatever had now bound him to an apartment house.
Moreover, it actually allowed him to be the normal man he’d once been.
But it wouldn’t release him completely.
When the party followed its collective nose to the cooking meat outdoors, Daniel unobtrusively walked toward the street again.
The wall, now several feet farther out, was still there. But it affected only him.
One of the couples at the party had left early, calling good-nights as they walked over the lawn to their car parked on the street. They had no trouble at all passing through the invisible barrier keeping Daniel in.
And now Ellie wanted to know what Daniel was doing here.
Hell if he knew.
But thankfully one of the marines sitting at the picnic table with them asked her a question, giving Daniel a break from the third-degree he knew was coming.
When Chad joined them moments later, the talk became general, full of jokes and references he didn’t always catch, but he laughed as heartily as the rest of them.
It was a pleasure just to laugh, and he thought he faked normalcy pretty well until he saw Ellie eyeing him, a knowing look on her face.
Damn.
As the evening wore on and the party thinned out, Daniel knew he should leave, too. He just didn’t know how.
So he hung around, gathering debris in the part of the yard allowed to him, picking up cans and napkins in the living room, trying to look like a conscientious guest helping out a little before going home. By then there were only himself and Ellie and Chad left.
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Doris Rangel
How the heck had that happened?
Ellie wanted to pinch herself, just to see if she was dreaming. Her innards may have melted to blissful mush, but something wasn’t right here.
She’d just cried all over Daniel Morgan’s shirt. Where Daniel’s caress had scared her witless on the beach the other night, tonight it somehow liberated her. She felt lighter.
And that kiss! Admittedly she’d been waiting for him to kiss her since that night on the beach. She’d wondered what Daniel’s kiss would be like, even fantasized about it. Tonight she learned it was all that fantasy and more.
But whatever was going on here, it wasn’t going any further. She had her life planned, thank you very much, and it didn’t include danger with a capital Daniel.
Dear Reader,
What does romance mean to you? Sure, it could be sharing a candlelit dinner or strolling hand in hand on a spring day. But to me it’s even the smallest of gestures that tells you the person you think hangs the sun and the moon finds you equally unforgettable. As a lifelong romantic who met her future husband nearly twenty years ago, I’m delighted to be heading up Silhouette Romance. These books remind me that no matter what challenges the day has held, finding true love is one of life’s greatest rewards.
Bestselling author Judy Christenberry kicks off another great month with Finding a Family (SR #1762). In this sweet romance, a down-to-earth cowboy goes “shopping” for the perfect woman for his father but instead finds himself the target of Cupid’s arrow! Watch the sparks fly in Melissa McClone’s Blueprint for a Wedding (SR #1763) when a man who has crafted the perfect blueprint for domestic bliss finds himself attracted to an actress who doesn’t believe in happy endings. This month’s “Cinderella” is a feisty Latina, as Angie Ray continues Silhouette Romance’s commitment to offering modern-day fairy tales in The Millionaire’s Reward (SR #1764). Part of the SOULMATES series, Moonlight Magic (SR #1765) by Doris Rangel features a vacationing nurse who falls for a handsome stranger with a particularly vexing habit of vanishing into thin air.
And be sure to stay tuned for next month’s exciting lineup when reader favorites Raye Morgan and Carol Grace return with two classic romances.
Ann Leslie Tuttle
Associate Senior Editor
Moonlight Magic
Doris Rangel
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
For J and A
Who created their own Hawaiian Magic
With love from Mom
and Grammie
Books by Doris Rangel
Silhouette Romance
Marlie’s Mystery Man #1693
Moonlight Magic #1765
Silhouette Special Edition
Mountain Man #1140
Prenuptial Agreement #1224
DORIS RANGEL
loves books—the feel of them, the sight of them, the smell of them. And she loves talking about them. She has collected them, organized them, sold them new and used, written them, worked with others to write them, read them aloud to children and has hopefully imparted the magic of them to the grade school, college and adult students she has taught over the years. History, philosophy, science, satire, Western, mystery…In her home, books are the wallpaper of choice.
Romances hold a special place on her shelves, however. A story that ends with a couple stepping into the future with love and hope may be an ideal, but it is an ideal she wishes in the tomorrows of every living thing in the universe. Love, after all, in whatever form it takes, is all that is.
Contents
Prologue (#u608ec996-0078-55ad-85d1-0b4595c752ae)
Chapter One (#udc1a9acf-269f-5607-a8d9-2b3177293d4a)
Chapter Two (#u243cd140-4ca6-5228-9619-97c7ed543707)
Chapter Three (#u49c96071-21ab-5096-be13-c7b0a8922f8d)
Chapter Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Prologue
Daniel Morgan startled into wakefulness.
But around him quiet reigned in the garden’s somnambulant midafternoon sunshine—as it should with the children in school, Janie and Tom at work, and the old woman in the house probably watching afternoon soaps.
Yet he’d felt someone touch him, brush warm fingers across his chest.
Dreaming again.
Idly, he listened to the breeze rustling quietly through the foliage and watched an insect investigate the heart of a nearby blossom.
Thoughts drifting to other times, other places, he sank again into lethargy…and slept.
If you can’t trust your sweet, old grandmother, who can you trust?
Running the tip of her finger over a silver petal on the earring she held, Ellie frowned. She trusted Grammie. Sure she did.
Most of the time.
The pair of earrings looked ordinary enough. Flower shaped, with a slight dangle from a French hook and attached to an ordinary flat plastic backing stamped, Plumeria, the Flower of Hawaii and Sterling Silver. The backing nestled on ordinary cotton batting in a small ordinary white cardboard box with Made especially for you by Ohana embossed on the lid. Shops used this kind of box by the thousands.
Grammie’s gift was perfectly…well, ordinary. A nice pair of unpretentious earrings, not terribly expensive, their shape the only exotic thing about them.
“Nice.”
Looking up, Ellie found the flight attendant standing beside her admiring the earrings.
“Thanks. They’re a gift from my grandmother,” Ellie told her. And that was an ordinary comment—if one didn’t know her grandmother.
She shivered.
“They’re very pretty. Is this your first trip to the islands?” the woman asked casually, pouring the soda Ellie requested.
“Yes. I’m going for a medical convention, but my brother is a marine stationed there so I’m visiting him, too.”
Inwardly, Ellie grimaced, knowing she’d given the flight attendant far more information than the polite question warranted. She wasn’t usually this chatty, but for some reason she was nervous. The earrings, probably.
“I’m sure you’ll have a wonderful time,” the woman replied, and passed on to the next passenger.
I certainly hope so. Ellie’s dubious gaze dropped again to the silver flower in her hand.
Did Grammie really buy these earrings?
The Simms family had a good-natured saying among themselves: Never trust one of Grammie’s little gifts if she didn’t buy it.
Their grandmother, descended from an Iq’nata shaman, had a stash of seemingly ordinary personal items that, if she decided to give one of them to you, had a way of bringing about all sorts of extraordinary events.
Not bad events, just strange ones.
Over the years the family had learned to politely refuse any items for which Gram hadn’t paid cold, hard cash. Grammie never took it personally. She just laughed, told them they had no sense of adventure and pulled out something obviously store-bought as their gift instead.
Right before leaving to catch her flight, Ellie had declined Grammie’s first “little something for your trip, dear”—a lei of pretty speckled shells her grandmother said she’d found on the beach when she traveled to Hawaii several years before.
Uh-oh.
When Ellie shook her head decisively, Gram smiled, her blue eyes twinkling with mischief.
“Just teasing, darling. But here’s something I know you’ll want,” and she gave Ellie the box containing the earrings. “I searched the shops for days before I discovered them in a little out-of-the-way place outside of Honolulu.”
At Ellie’s narrow-eyed look, the older woman lifted an eyebrow. “Don’t be so suspicious, Ellie. It’s a bad habit of yours.” Tilting the box so the light gleamed off the silver flowers, Gram smiled. “Aren’t they pretty? They’ll look perfect with your sarong.”
“I don’t have a sarong,” Ellie replied.
But she accepted the earrings. They were pretty. So…islandish.
Now, rehooking the earring to the plastic backing, she returned the set to the box and dropped it into her purse, dismissing her suspicions.
Not until she’d maneuvered her way to the exit with the rest of the disembarking passengers did Ellie remember another Simms family saying….
The Great Ones have a weird sense of humor.
Chapter One
From his place among the hibiscus, Daniel watched the party eddy around him. The old woman, bless her, never forgot him on occasions such as this. Several leis, many of them made with plumeria blossoms, hung about his neck.
He loved family get-togethers and already felt a little drunk on the heady scent of flowers mixed with the equally heady odor of barbecue.
Being physically sober as a post, it was an inebriation of the senses only, of course. What he wouldn’t give for a plate heaped high with food and a frosty cup of beer to wash it down.
Unfortunately, he was only a bystander at this luau. Literally. In the midst of jubilation, Daniel stood apart, watching it all.
Though an adult party—Tom had turned forty—children were everywhere, chasing each other, dodging groups of adults, giggling, shouting. At home, children wouldn’t be allowed at a function such as this, Daniel mused, but in Hawaii ohana prevailed. He loved it.
The adults, too, milled about, teasing, laughing, talking, sidestepping children sometimes or absently scooping up a young one to cuddle a moment before sending the child off to play again.
And music flowed through it all, everything from Elvis at his most powerful to Iz at his most fragile.
He’d love to dance again, Daniel thought—jiggle his bones to a jazzy beat, shake his booty and get down to rock ’n’roll, press his undulating body against a woman’s to the breathy croon of a saxophone….
Maybe all of the above, as various couples were doing on the patio.
Two little girls flung each other about madly while four teenagers, three girls and a boy, hip-hopped to the same music. An elderly man and woman showed they still had it, and a younger woman with long silvery-blond hair swayed in ministeps with a seriously intent boy of about five.
Make that six. When the woman said something, the boy looked up at her with a gap-toothed grin, causing her to laugh.
Over the music and the chattering crowd, Daniel couldn’t hear the laugh, but the woman had a killer smile.
Earlier, he’d seen her among the guests and admired her silvery hair that she wore long and loose down her back. Though dressed in a gauzy dress that set off her slim figure, she hadn’t impressed him as being particularly pretty; she was even, perhaps, a little austere.
But that smile! It transformed a plain-vanilla exterior into something fascinating and mysterious, as if he’d opened a shoe box and found a piece of exotically carved antique ivory. When she smiled, the woman became breathtakingly beautiful!
And she was coming his way.
The thing winked at her!
Nah, it couldn’t have.
Ellie eyed the small statue tucked among the flowers. A tiki god, probably, and obviously old, its wood weathered and cracked in places.
She’d seen similar carvings at the Polynesian Cultural Center when the convention arranged a trip there. But they’d been huge. This one stood only about three feet high.
Around its neck hung several leis, she assumed in honor of the party. Yet something else about it seemed different from the others she’d seen.
The eyes, Ellie realized. The carvings at the Cultural Center didn’t have such wide awake eyes…eyes with a glint of mischief in them staring right back at her.
Ellie shook her head. Get real, woman!
She was just overtired. Overstimulated.
After working with no letup for the past couple of years, being around so many laughing partying people was tiring—even these gregarious Hawaiians, whose pleasure in the moment seemed to waft as naturally as the light tropical breeze.
Perhaps sensing this, Georgie, her young dancing partner, had brought her to this relatively secluded spot before leaving to fetch her a soft drink.
Dismissing the carving from her thoughts, Ellie found herself a seat on a low wall bordering the garden to await the child’s return.
Lush tropical blossoms perfumed the night, and she closed her eyes the better to enjoy their scent and the music and laughter from the party just beyond. She smiled to herself when she heard her brother’s full-bodied laugh.
And just like that, a dark smothering wave of loneliness washed over her.
On a sharp breath Ellie fought it back. This had happened a lot lately, and she was having none of it. She loved her life. She loved her job.
Okay, she needed this vacation. She was tired. Being alone, however, was a choice, not a tragedy.
Prickles shimmied up the back of her neck…. With a small gasp, Ellie’s eyes flew open.
Someone stared at her! She could feel their intense gaze. She also felt conspicuous and embarrassed at being observed in what she thought was a private moment.
Scanning the crowd, ready to coolly outstare whoever found her introspection so interesting, she could find no one looking her way, however.
Yet someone’s knowing observation kept her awareness on full alert.
Slowly, cautiously, Ellie turned her head…and came nose to nose with the crimson orifice of a hibiscus blossom, its golden pistil thrust forward in the flower version of a raspberry.
Startled, she drew back, only to laugh softly at her own paranoia. The rude hibiscus would pay for its impudence, though. Snapping it from its stem, Ellie hooked it over one ear, her fingers brushing one of her flower-shaped earrings in the process.
No sarong, Grammie, she thought, but I feel a hula coming on.
Still smiling, and about to turn away, she again started violently, this time with a small muffled shriek. Nestled among the blossoms and thick foliage, the tiki stared back at her, its carved face a study of violence, its eyes infinitely sad and lonely.
She leaped to her feet.
“Here’s your soda, Miss Ellie.”
Georgie stood beside her, offering an aluminum can, his face one big beam of gap-toothed smile.
“What? Oh. Uh, thanks, sweetie.”
Ellie took the soda gratefully and downed a healthy swig. From the corner of her eye, she checked out the carving.
The thing hadn’t moved a muscle, its wooden head still angled toward the spot where she’d been sitting. Only, she wasn’t sitting there anymore. The statue’s gaze wasn’t following her at all.
Time to leave. She’d be a certified basket case if she didn’t get back to Chad’s apartment and get some rest. Three days of back-to-back workshops at the convention in Honolulu and a busy day since her arrival at her brother’s apartment this morning made for one pooped, overimaginative tourist.
After dumping her luggage in his spare bedroom, Chad immediately whisked her off for a long drive to loop the island. When they returned, she’d played baseball with the kids next door and been invited by them and their grandmother to this party.
Now her busy day—heck, her busy week, busy year, busy decade—had caught up with her. She needed her bed.
When Georgie ran off to play with the other children, Ellie searched for her brother to tell him she was leaving. Chad was never difficult to locate. With his easygoing, always friendly personality, all she had to do was find the group with the most laughter.
Then she looked for her hosts, Janie and Tom Kamehana, to make her goodbyes, and finally went to Nona, the children’s grandmother who had invited her to the luau in the first place.
“You’re leaving us,” Nona said before Ellie could speak. The old woman took Ellie’s hand in her own brown one, the clasp warm and strong. “You’re tired,” she added.
Ellie smiled. “Yes. But I’ve had a wonderful time. Thank you for inviting me.”
“And your brother. All this time living right next door and I didn’t realize,” Nona said. She tilted her head, smiling wryly. “Careless of me.”
There wasn’t much Ellie could say to that. The old woman still held her hand.
“How did you like my garden ornament?”
Ellie strove for diplomacy. “Well, it was, uh—”
“Interesting, yes? I saw you looking at it.”
“Is it a tiki god?” Ellie asked cautiously, unsure of the manners involved with the direction the conversation had taken.
“I’m not sure,” the old woman replied. “A few years ago one of the children found the carving washed up on the beach of the cove and brought it home. I placed it in the garden. But it’s different from the usual, wouldn’t you say?”
Feeling completely out of her depth, Ellie smiled. Nona still held her hand. “Everything in Hawaii seems different from the usual to me,” she answered apologetically. “I’m from Texas.”
Nona nodded her head. “San Antonio.”
Ellie didn’t remember telling her that, but she supposed she had. Or perhaps Chad did.
Finally Nona let go her hand. “You might enjoy a walk on the beach, child. Such a beautiful evening. The moon will be lovely on the water.”
“Perhaps I’ll do that,” Ellie replied politely, having no intention of doing any such thing. All she wanted was her bed and the opportunity to forget about wooden carvings with sad lonely eyes. “Good night.”
Nona smiled and picked up the toddler pulling on her skirt and waving a piece of something sticky. “Good night, dear. Those are lovely earrings, by the way. I once had a pair just like them.”
Self-consciously Ellie touched an earring, murmured, “Thank you,” and added another good-night.
See, she thought. Ordinary. Mass produced. As Gram says, I’m too suspicious.
She let herself out the side entrance separating her brother’s apartment from the house next door, her overexposed senses relaxing when the closed gate muted the music and laughter, and intervening trees shut out the colored party lights. A three-quarter moon gilded the night with silver.
It was, indeed, a beautiful evening. Too beautiful to go indoors just yet, even though she was tired, Ellie thought. The moonlight would be lovely on the water, and she remembered a small, secluded cove only a block away.
Chad had shown it to her earlier. Though native Hawaiians often went there, he said, mainlanders seldom used it, probably because other beaches were bigger, sandier, more picturesque. The waters of the cove were known to be dangerous, too. Signs warned against swimming.
No problem. Ellie didn’t plan to swim.
In moments she’d walked down the quiet residential street ending at a stretch of pale sand bordering a moonstruck sea. A dead end leading to paradise.
Only in Hawaii.
Ellie touched one of the silver earrings in her ears and smiled a little as she imagined Grammie’s chuckle in the breeze rustling through the trees behind her.
Slipping off her sandals, she stood at the edge of the water and gazed out at the sea before her, its wavelets liquid pearls lapping at her feet.
Bliss.
Nona watched Ellie slip out the side gate.
Interesting, she thought, her gaze swinging to the small carving ruling its hibiscus kingdom across the way. But hibiscus were merely decorative. They had no power. Plumeria, now…
Taking her time, the toddler still riding her ample hip, Nona strolled over to give the carving a closer inspection. Then, with a low sudden laugh, she whipped the plumeria leis from its neck and placed them around the neck of the child.
There. That ought to do it.
Daniel looked around in disbelief.
The party had disappeared. The music was silent. Heck, the whole back garden was gone. He was…
He was on a beach.
Wait a minute! He was at the cove!
White sand shaped like a crescent moon cupping a bump in the Pacific; the oddly shaped tamarisk tree over there…. He knew this place, all right.
Sure enough, some distance away and picked out by bright moonlight, he saw the sign sticking up from the sand. He didn’t have to be any closer to know exactly what it said.
DANGER NO SWIMMING STAY OUT OF THE WATER.
The damned thing’s too small, he thought bitterly. And damned near worthless. This place needs an electrified fence around it, not a puny little hand-lettered sign. Twenty-four-hour guard dogs ought to patrol the area, trained to drag people away if they came within a hundred feet of the water.
Better yet, some civic-minded citizen should fill it in with cement, pave it over and make it a parking lot. The cove’s very existence invited tragedy.
What if someone couldn’t read that paltry notice—or was too stupid to recognize a warning when they read one?
Scowling at the distant, slightly tilted sign, Daniel angrily forked his fingers through his hair.
And stilled.
Inch by careful inch, he lowered his hand to stare at his fingers, still splayed as they’d been in his hair.
Hair?
Not daring to hope, he reached up again—actually raised his arm and hand—and lightly touched the top of his head. Against his palm he felt the crisp pelt of his…hair.
But as he again stared at his hand in awe, a small movement just beyond caught his attention, and Daniel lifted his head sharply. Someone besides himself was on the beach.
A woman, he realized, sitting on the sand, arms clasping her knees as she stared out over the sea. Her hair, the same color as moonlight, lifted slightly in the breeze. The woman from Tom and Janie’s party.
And she sat within inches of the water.
Ready to warn her, Daniel took a step, only to become aware of what he’d just done. Looking down at himself, his own wonder captivated him again.
He still wore his boxers, he saw. And…he fought an urge to laugh wildly…his money belt! Had anything else about him changed?
His bare chest and flat stomach looked no leaner, no fuller. His legs were as muscled, as much from walking a thousand miles of hospital corridor as from deliberate exercise. Near the small toe of one bare foot ran the thin line of a scar he’d had since he was twelve.
It was his body all right. His arms, his legs, what he assumed was his face. Nothing about it was different. And he had moved!
The thought brought him back to the present with a thump.
The woman! While he’d been checking himself over, she had risen from her seat on the sand and now swished one foot in the tiny wavelets washing the shore.
“Hey! Don’t do that!”
A part of him marveled at the sound of his voice echoing over the beach, but this time Daniel didn’t take time to enjoy it. He headed toward the woman at a dead run.
She turned a startled face in his direction, dropped her sandals and ran, too.
Away from him.
Her action stopped Daniel in his tracks.
Women didn’t used to run from him. Did he not have his same face after all?
But the silly woman continued running down the beach, her moonlit hair streaming behind her—each frantic step splashing in the shallow water of the shoreline, sometimes at its edge, sometimes a little deeper.
Daniel pelted after her again. Whatever hid in the waters of this cove was dangerous. Stay out of the Water the sign said.
An order, not a warning.
The woman ran like a deer, but in the wrong direction.
She was afraid of him, he guessed, and if she’d just aim toward the trees or toward the houses beyond, he’d leave her alone. He had other things to think about.
But in her panic, she raced down the shoreline, her tracks weaving in and out of the shallow, gently breathing water.
So he tackled her.
Chapter Two
“Oomph!”
Ellie hit the sand, with her assailant landing on top of her. But she hadn’t spent two nights a week and a small fortune on self-defense classes for nothing.
As she landed she rolled, and before he could get a grip on her, she lifted her knee and made a dent in the man’s chances for future children.
Her aim was off, but good enough to make him fall away from her with a groan.
Leaping to her feet, she took off again.
“Not that way, you idiot!” she heard the man gasp behind her. “Toward the street! Run to the houses!”
And Ellie finally understood what her attacker was trying to tell her.
He was right. Like the idiot he’d called her, she was running up the beach when escape lay toward the neighborhood just beyond it. Heck, Chad’s apartment was only a block away.
Something didn’t make sense here.
Still running, but slowing a bit, she risked a look over her shoulder.
Her assailant remained where he’d fallen, only now he was sitting up and hugging his knees tightly, his head drooping.
Ellie jogged in place, considering the situation, then turned fully around to stare at the hunched figure from a safe distance.
Other than waving an arm toward the town behind them, he ignored her.
“Are you all right?” she asked, taking a few steps toward him but ready to speed away again at the least hint she hadn’t completely clobbered him.
“Peachy. But at least I know all of me works.” He groaned. “Did work.”
She took a few more steps in his direction, the better to give him the full effect of her glare. “Take it as a warning the next time you attack a woman,” she replied coldly. “Just be glad I didn’t connect as well as I should have.”
“Oh, I’m glad. Trust me.” His bitter laugh checked abruptly. “And I didn’t attack you.”
“No? Guess we don’t read the same dictionary. What do you call chasing a woman so you can knock her down?”
“Ah, you can read.” The man’s forehead still rested on his knees, but his tone matched hers for sarcasm. “So why didn’t you? And I call it trying to save your stupid neck.”
“Why didn’t I what?”
“Read the sign,” he growled.
“I did. Since I wasn’t swimming, I don’t see what the problem is.”
At last the man lifted his head so he could gaze at her, his handsome face a study of disgust.
Handsome? The man was drop-dead gorgeous!
“It doesn’t just say No Swimming,” he bit out. “It says, and this is a direct quote, ‘Danger no swimming stay out of the water.’ No commas, no periods, no question marks.”
“I barely had a foot in it,” Ellie replied coldly, then paused. “Are you saying the water is polluted?”
“Of course not. But the water here is dangerous. The sign says so, and I know so. Yet there you were, ignoring the warning like the mainlander you are.”
Ellie sighed. Talk about overreaction! But the night was far too beautiful to argue. So what the heck.
With opportunities in short supply for rescuing damsels these days, let the guy have his water dragon.
“All right. I should have paid attention,” she conceded, by now standing beside him. “Thanks for your, um, efforts on my behalf. I’m sorry I hurt you.”
His smile did weird things to her knees.
“And I’m sorry I frightened you,” he said, putting out a hand. “Even?”
Her knees might be weak, but Ellie’s brain wasn’t. She eyed the out-thrust hand for a long, cautious moment. Still, judging by the lingering pain in the man’s eyes, he probably wasn’t up to much.
Bending toward him, she, too, extended her hand.
“Even,” she said.
As the warm fingers wrapped around hers, the moon came out from behind a cloud and she saw his face clearly.
And liked what she saw.
Movie-star looks honed by an aristocratic bone structure and fine features. A good strong nose set off by an equally strong jaw and wide mobile mouth. Pale hair washed even paler in the moonlight. Eyes…
His eyes looked familiar.
“Have we met?” she asked, finally remembering to withdraw her hand.
Appearing a little unsettled himself, he released it. “Uh, no. I, er, saw you at the party.”
“The Kamehanas’? I don’t remember seeing you there.” She would have remembered.
“There was quite a crowd. You were dancing with a short charmer with a missing front tooth.”
Ellie chuckled. Here was another charmer, she’d bet. And after that unexpected moment of traitorous loneliness at the party, she was in the mood to be charmed…to prove to herself that she could be, perhaps, but also because the night simply begged for light flirtation.
Who better than this extremely handsome man to practice on?
She sat down on the sand. “That was Georgie,” she told him.
“I know. Another cousin, I hear.”
“Really?”
He grinned. “In this case, really, but not always. To Hawaiians, every guest becomes an honorary cousin and is treated like family.”
“It’s a lovely custom.”
They sat silently a moment, listening to the low murmur of the waves brushing the sand a few feet away and to the distant music coming from the neighborhood behind them, probably from the luau they’d both just left.
“Feeling better?” Ellie asked at last.
“Working on it.”
Actually, Daniel felt pretty damn good but was afraid the woman might leave if he admitted it. Even though he had a lot to do himself with the business of getting home again, he didn’t want to break this up just yet.
After years of silence, just sitting on a beach and talking of nothing much with a pretty girl was a small miracle.
“I know I frightened you,” he said tentatively, “but will you tell me your name?”
“Ellie. Yours?”
“Daniel.”
“Not Dan or Danny?”
“Only when my mother isn’t around.”
“My mom tried to make everyone call me Eliza Ann, but she was outnumbered,” Ellie replied with a light laugh. “I guess your mom carries more clout.”
His answering chuckle delighted his ears. People ought to realize how truly special laughter is to the human race.
“My mother is never outnumbered,” he responded, reveling in this wonderful, meaningless conversation.
Yet for a moment he thought about his mother.
Even the disappearance of her only son probably didn’t throw Catherine Morgan for long. His mother…she’d certainly never been a “mom”…most likely set up search headquarters in the living room, had her senator call in the FBI, gave everyone drinks and hors d’oeuvres, then took it as a personal affront when her son ruined the party by not being found immediately.
“She sounds formidable.”
But Daniel didn’t want to talk about his mother. Or himself. After all, what could he say?
“Are you in Hawaii on vacation?” he asked.
Ellie’s smile glowed out at him.
With her long silvery hair, and with her face turned up to the night sky, the woman could be mistaken for a moon goddess.
Maybe she was. Daniel stilled. He didn’t trust this cove.
But her answer couldn’t have been more normal.
“Yes and no. I came for a pediatrics convention in Honolulu, but I have a brother here with the marines. He’ll be leaving for Japan soon, so I’m taking the opportunity to spend time with him.”
“Pediatrics? You’re an M.D.?”
“Pediatric nurse. How about you?”
“Small world. I’m a doctor. Just finished my residency.”
All true, but how many years ago? Four? He wasn’t sure anymore.
“Oh, were you here for the conference, too?”
“Um, no. So how do you like Hawaii?”
“It’s beautiful, what I’ve seen of it. I haven’t had a chance to be a tourist yet, except for a visit to the cultural center.”
She wiggled her toes in the sand, and Daniel thought he’d never seen anything so lovely as the shine of pale nail polish on the sweetest feet in the islands.
He smothered an inward grin at this new appreciation of feet. If nothing else, the past years had been a lesson in what to appreciate. Things once taken for granted he now considered in a whole new light. He could hardly wait to go home.
But there was something else he’d learned in the Kamehanas’ back garden.
Enjoy the moment.
And at this moment, he was on a beautiful beach—as long as one stayed out of the water—enjoying a beautiful night, talking nothings with a breathtaking woman.
Talking? On a night like this? What was he thinking!
After years of isolation, he wasn’t greedy. But a modest little kiss with a moon goddess wouldn’t be asking too much, would it? Would Ellie be willing?
Sifting sand through her fingers, Ellie idly watched it catch the breeze, very much aware of being observed.
On a deserted beach with a total stranger, she should be afraid. But fear was the farthest thing from her mind. It was all she could do not to stare back.
Something about Daniel attracted her as she hadn’t been attracted in years, though he wasn’t her type at all.
Too handsome, for one thing. She’d never been susceptible to handsome men. Fashion-model looks and muscled physiques might be the stuff of most women’s fantasies but not hers.
The touch of vulnerability she sensed that had her wanting to reach out to him was another thing. Normally she found vulnerability a turnoff in men because she equated the word with “needy.” Her ex-husband sprang to mind.
If you love me, you’ll stay home with me. Let someone else take the extra shift.
Ellie shook the memory away. It wasn’t that kind of vulnerability she sensed in Daniel. Behind the easygoing charm that said he’d been practicing it for years, she sensed strength in him. And sadness.
She shook that thought away, too.
So what was the attraction? The man was just too perfect for her taste.
Handsome, charming and a doctor? Yeah, right. Surely he’d made that last up. What were the odds? Most likely he was the male equivalent to a beach bunny.
Aha! Ellie swallowed the urge to laugh outright. That was the attraction.
On a lovely beach on a moonlit night in Hawaii, she’d met the perfect kind of man for her—a studly beach bum. Here now, gone with the tide.
And she’d bet the ranch this particular stud-muffin wanted to kiss her.
She would let him, too, Ellie thought. What fool ignored perfection? And after a kiss or two, she would put on her sandals and return to Chad’s apartment.
Alone.
If Daniel found her tomorrow or in the days ahead and wanted to continue where they left off, maybe she would.
Maybe she wouldn’t.
It depended on Chad’s duty schedule and how much free time he had. Ellie planned to spend as much time as possible with her brother, but when Chad was busy, Daniel might be fun to hang out with. He apparently knew the island well.
Perfect. A vacation flirtation.
Something to laugh about over coffee with her colleagues when she got home.
“Ellie.”
Even knowing this scene for exactly what it was, and knowing that Daniel was getting ready to exercise his best come-on, when he said her name like that, low and a little bit rough, Ellie shivered.
Make that sizzled.
“Umm?”
“I…” He cleared his throat. “Uh, where are you from?”
Was that shyness she heard? Couldn’t be. Didn’t fit the image.
“Texas,” she said, and slowly turned her head from her study of the sea so that she could look at him.
What she saw made her breath catch. “S-San Antonio,” she added in a husky whisper.
“Ah.” His gaze never left her mouth. “Would you mind if I kissed you?”
He had to ask? “Please,” Ellie managed to breathe. Her eyes fluttered shut.
But it wasn’t Daniel’s lips she felt next.
The stroke of gentle fingers brushing the side of her face took her completely by surprise before their trail down the contours of her jaw lured her into a sensual wonderland.
Warm, firm, but infinitely light, his thumbs traced the slope of her nose and traveled on to outline the fullness of her lower lip.
Her lips parted in a silent plea for more.
“God, you’re beautiful,” Daniel whispered.
Perhaps he whispered.
By now his light caress had Ellie’s senses so adrift she didn’t know if he actually spoke. Only her sense of the tactile still operated, working overtime as her body gave birth to nerve endings born singing beneath this man’s hands.
His fingers whispered that her skull was perfect, her skin flawless, her facial muscles works of art. Ellie knew she was lovely because those fingers said it.
They twined through her hair, combed slowly through it to its ends, and she understood her hair was a silken glory, a perfection of color and texture.
When Daniel’s thumbs traced the curve of her ears, brailing their contours, the geography of their hills and valleys and hiding places, she became aware that he’d found paradise.
Lifting her face to give those magical hands greater access…she felt one of her earrings hit her shoulder.
Shocked, Ellie opened her eyes. Dear God in Heaven! What was she doing?
This was no tropical interlude. The man had her emotions zinging in another way completely.
Daniel, too, looked dazed.
“Are you out of your mind?” she snapped at him, rearing back. “I said you could kiss me. Not—not t-touch me. Look what you’ve done. You made me l-lose my earring.”
Frantically, fighting tears she couldn’t explain and angry at herself for being such a sensual pushover, Ellie searched for the silver flower, using her fingers to lightly brush the sand between them, trying not to disturb it overmuch—and trying not to remember another set of fingers that had also lightly brushed, but disturbed very much indeed.
The hibiscus blossom she’d placed in her hair earlier in the evening dropped to the sand, but she swatted it away.
Why was she crying, dammit?
She couldn’t find the earring.
Had she only imagined it falling? A subconscious warning, perhaps? Reaching up, she touched the lobes of her ears just to make sure it was truly gone. It was. The other was still there, however.
Taking it out of her ear, Ellie dropped it in the pocket of her skirt so she wouldn’t lose it, too, then slowly, carefully stood, trying not to shift any more sand than she must.
As she rose, the lost earring tumbled to the sand.
Snatching it up, she turned to face the man who’d sent her emotions careening out of control.
How dare he presume to…to do what he did! She’d only given him permission for a little nothing kiss between two strangers, a meaningless acknowledgment brought about by a lovely tropical night, not…not something else altogether.
Something that made her want to turn her face into Daniel’s broad chest and weep.
How dare he!
But before Ellie could utter a single heated word, her tirade died from lack of direction.
Daniel wasn’t there.
Like the irresponsible bum he was, when the going got rough, he simply left.
“Handsome is as handsome does,” she muttered darkly, borrowing Gram’s favorite saying.
Gathering her sandals, Ellie stomped through the sand to the street and headed for Chad’s apartment.
Why didn’t I leave when I could? Daniel thought, and groaned silently.
By now the party was dead; only a few “cousins” remained, picking up paper plates and cups, talking and laughing quietly.
Watching them from his usual place among the hibiscus, he would have kicked himself if he could. For whatever reason, freedom was within his grasp and he’d traded it for the company of a pretty girl.
Heck, she wasn’t even that pretty.
Beautiful, though, when she smiled. And tonight she’d smiled just for him.
How long had it been since a beautiful woman smiled for his benefit?
But a thousand pretty women could have smiled at him for years to come if he’d just had the presence of mind to leave the damned cove.
He’d known the place for what it was, but just like the first time, he’d let it seduce him again.
Trap him again.
Daniel sucked in a breath he didn’t actually have.
Ellie!
She’d run through the shallow water when he was chasing her. But she’d done it in all innocence. Surely the waters of the cove wouldn’t punish her for that.
Scanning the garden as far as he could see, Daniel searched for her, wishing he could somehow literally beat the surrounding bushes.
But though he examined every corner of the yard and beneath every shrub and tree within his field of vision, he saw no trace of a woman with hair the color of moonlight and a smile to rival its glow.
He wouldn’t even consider that she might be trapped elsewhere. If the force in the cove was just, it kept its curse only for him.
Yet somehow tonight he’d been released for a while, Daniel thought, a fact offering a glimmer of hope that he would be again.
And if he was…when he was…he was outta here.
In the meantime he had something new to think about. What color, he wondered, were Ellie’s eyes when the moon didn’t wash them to silver?
Chapter Three
On the excuse of checking the coals in the barbecue grill, Ellie let herself out the sliding screen door of her brother’s apartment. A gathering of marines and their significant others could be overwhelming.
But here on the patio it was another of the perfect tropical nights Hawaiians considered a norm. An almost full moon rode low in the sky and, upwind, the light breeze carried the scent of flowers she didn’t know the name of.
The night was perfect, all right, but it reminded her of Daniel.
Deliberately Ellie stepped downwind to the grill to get a good whiff of burning charcoal, her peaceful mood vanishing at the thought of the man on the beach whose touch turned her to flame.
The cad. Okay, it was an old-fashioned word, but a perfect description of the…bounder.
Perfect. That word again. She was sick of it.
Forty-eight hours ago, on a perfect tropical night on a perfect tropical beach, a man with a perfect face and perfect body had made a perfect fool of her. He’d taken her perfect flirtation and turned it into a…a perfect fiasco.
After three years of careful control, Daniel had blind-sided her, making her heart remember things she didn’t want it to remember, making her body feel things she didn’t want it to feel.
And the heck of it was, he hadn’t even kissed her.
When she’d come back to Chad’s apartment after the debacle on the beach, she’d been fiercely glad of that. But it hadn’t stopped her traitorous mind from wondering what the man’s kiss was like.
Still, if she wanted kisses, there were a couple of single marines in the group behind her who would be glad to oblige, she was sure.
Somehow, though, she doubted it would be the same.
Lifting her face to the moon riding a drifting cloud, Ellie knew she’d been out here long enough. After all, her brother had thrown this shindig so she could meet some of his buddies. It was also a sort of last “oo-rah.” Many of them, like her brother, would deploy to Okinawa shortly.
As she turned to reenter the apartment, however, Ellie glimpsed a shadowy figure sitting at a picnic table just beyond the range of light shining through the patio doors behind her.
A tenant from one of the other units, perhaps? But most of them, also marines, were at her brother’s party.
Yet there was something about the vague shape…
Ellie walked toward the picnic table. With at least ten good men in the room behind her, she had no reason to be afraid.
Once close enough to get a look at the seated figure, though, her heart lurched. She halted abruptly.
Daniel!
She narrowed her eyes. “What are you doing here?”
From where he sat, the man had certainly been able to see her when she came outside. But he hadn’t said a word.
Holy grief, was he stalking her?
“There’s a whole platoon of marines in there,” she informed him tightly, nodding toward the low-level noise behind her when he didn’t answer right away. “I suggest you leave while you’re still in one piece.”
“Love to,” he replied, not moving.
“Well, go on.” She made a shooing motion with her hand. “If you don’t leave, I’ll…I’ll—”
“You’ll call in the artillery,” Daniel said, sounding tired. “Go ahead. Maybe that will work.” He stood.
In the moonlight Ellie saw his faint, bitter smile. It was the saddest thing she’d ever seen.
But remembering the man’s effect on her at the beach, she froze her melting heart right back up again.
Still, when Daniel stretched and rolled his shoulders as if he’d been sitting too long, her gaze couldn’t help but follow his rippling muscles.
He wore the same bathing suit he’d had on two nights before, she noticed. Or was it boxers?
A thought that revved her imagination into overdrive.
It was definitely time for this man to hit the road.
“Look,” she began with a growl….
“Hey, El. Who you got there?”
Chad had come up behind her and now put out his hand like the friendly Texan he was. “Chad Simms, Ellie’s brother,” he said.
“Daniel Morgan,” Daniel replied.
The two shook hands congenially.
Men, Ellie thought. Did they never stop the good-ol’boy routine long enough to ask questions?
“Daniel was just leaving,” she said.
But she should have known. Her brother had Texas hospitality bred to the bone.
“Why don’t you join us?” he invited. “We’ve got plenty of chow and cold beer, and you’d be welcome.”
For a split second Ellie saw a look of such raw longing on Daniel’s face that her heart stopped. But the look disappeared when he smiled easily.
“Sorry, but thanks, anyway. I’m, uh, missing my party threads. My clothes were…stolen and…” He shrugged.
“That’s been happening on the beaches a lot lately,” Chad said. “But hell, buddy, we’re about the same size. I’ll loan you somethin’. C’mon in.”
And that was all it took for Daniel to join their party.
Chad found him a change of clothes, even a pair of shoes. Using the bathroom, Daniel showered, then joined the rest of them, wearing a pair of her brother’s khakis and a blue golf shirt, a color that intensified the aquamarine of his eyes.
Several of the other women noticed how well the shirt suited him, too, Ellie saw.
But the man was clearly a survivor. In a room full of burly marines, he wasn’t about to show interest in one of their wives or girlfriends.
Oh, no. He kept his interest for an intent perusal of Chad’s CD collection. And no woman there claimed the same attention as the sports page of a week-old edition of the Honolulu Times lying on an end table. He even studied the snack platter as if it were a painting by Michelangelo and he an admiring critic.
Daniel’s fascination with the mundane was, well, fascinating. And Ellie was fascinated.
Unobtrusively she watched him pick up a potato chip and examine its wavy shape as if the chip were an architectural wonder. Slowly he brought it to his mouth.
His lips opened…the chip entered. And when it touched his tongue, his eyes fluttered shut. He began to chew—carefully, as if each crunch might detonate an explosion.
Ellie watched, mesmerized by the slow, rhythmic movement of Daniel’s jaw, the infinitesimal stretch and compression of skin over his cheeks, the tiny arcing purse of his mouth. When at last he swallowed, so did she.
Or tried to. Her throat was dry.
Then her brother handed him a can of beer. “Here you go, Dan. Sorry about your gear getting ripped off. Bummer.”
Daniel looked uncomfortable, but lifted the can and nodded toward Chad in a small salute. “Thanks.”
When he’d first joined the party and was pressed, Daniel told them his things hadn’t been stolen at the beach, as Chad assumed, but at his hotel.
Ellie knew in her bones the man was lying. There were holes in the story big enough to drive a semi through. But her easygoing little brother had no trouble swallowing the tale.
“Don’t worry about the threads,” he said now. “I’m getting ready to deploy. Weeding out things, you know. You’ll be doing me a favor if you keep them. I’ve got more you can have, too.”
“Appreciate it.”
Daniel took a swig of beer, and Ellie, feeling like a voyeur, had to turn her head away from the look of absolute pleasure that passed over his features.
Everything the man did became a symphony of the senses, she thought, and felt her face grow warm at the memory of the way he’d touched her on the beach.
When he tasted her potato salad, though, Ellie knew she’d really impressed him.
Chad wanted this party to be an honest-to-goodness, Texas-style barbecue, with beans, potato salad, cole slaw and corn on the cob to go with the steaks, brisket, sausage and chicken he had on the grill.
Everyone who came pitched in, bringing meat, snacks, drinks and side dishes, but Ellie volunteered to make the potato salad, a family recipe and one of her brother’s favorites.
The party migrated outdoors when it came time to eat, and she found herself sitting across from Daniel at the picnic table on the side lawn. They weren’t the only ones at the long table, but they might as well have been.
Daniel sat with a paper plate full of food in front of him, but instead of diving in as the rest were doing, he stared at it.
“Find a bug?” Ellie asked.
He looked up to give her his quirky grin, the one with the infinite sadness behind it. For a man Daniel had a very expressive face.
“Did you ever notice,” he asked, “how perfect the geometry is on an ear of corn?”
“Can’t say that I have.” She didn’t like that word.
“Yeah, guess not.” Picking up his fork, he again examined his plate, studying its contents carefully.
From the look on his face, Ellie supposed whatever food Daniel decided to plunge the fork into first would determine world peace.
He chose her potato salad.
Around them the party noise faded to a low murmur. Ellie held her breath.
The fork entered the small hill of potatoes and came up with a good-size sample. In the creamy heap, she saw touches of the pale-green celery she’d added, the darker green of dill pickles, the red of pimento, flecks of brown peeling, golden egg yolk.
When at last Daniel brought the forkful of salad to his mouth, Ellie’s lips parted in automatic accompaniment.
He closed his eyes. Chewed. Swallowed.
And his face melted into lines of rapt appreciation.
Ellie exhaled a small satisfied sigh.
“Do you always do that?” she asked, after his second bite.
“What?” He forked into the baked beans, but she hadn’t made the beans so his reaction to them wasn’t of much interest.
“Treat everything as if it were created for your sensual pleasure.”
The fork stilled as he gazed back at her. “It’s just been a long time,” he said at last, with a touch of self-consciousness.
As an answer, the words made no sense at all.
But little about Daniel made any sense, Ellie thought. For one thing, nothing about him seemed to match.
On the beach she’d thought him a handsome footloose beach bum, but tonight he’d been a quiet, unassuming, slightly embarrassed guest, who treated everyone as if they were uniquely special and everything as if it were a gift from the gods.
“A long time since what?”
This time his grin was wide and mischievous, unmarred by any kind of melancholy. “Since I’ve had such delicious potato salad. You Texans know how to cook.”
Ellie grunted. Enough, already.
Leaning forward, she pinned him with her steeliest nurse’s look, the one that said, “Don’t mess with me, buster!”
“So tell me what you’re really doing here, Daniel Morgan, and don’t crank out any more fairy tales about robberies, either.”
But when Daniel lowered his fork without even tasting the beans, she felt as if she’d just told a kid his cookie was full of broccoli bits.
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” he said quietly.
“Try me.”
Daniel eyed the woman across from him and knew by her steady gaze that Ellie wasn’t going to let this go. Yet what could he say that she would believe? Certainly not the truth.
But he gave it to her, anyway.
“The truth is, I can’t leave.”
And God knew he’d tried.
At first he hadn’t known where he was when he found himself again released from Tom and Janie’s back garden. He only knew he wasn’t back at the cove.
Tonight, though, he appeared to be in someone else’s yard, on a lawn surrounding a huge rambling house. Still, the nearby fence looked familiar, and he gazed at it for a long moment in puzzlement, wondering where he’d seen it before.
Then he knew. He’d been looking at it for years, but from the other side.
Hell, he’d gone no further than the house next door!
But he was free! Free!
Remembering what his hesitation cost him last time, he immediately sprinted toward the street that he could see through the trees, as cars passed by with their lights on…and slammed into something that sent him sprawling.
Seeing nothing in his way, he figured he’d tripped, so he gathered himself up and set off again.
This time he took no more than a couple of steps before smashing into something—something he still couldn’t see but was solid enough to send him crashing to the ground.
Lying in the grass, he studied the empty yard in front of him, watched a car speed by on the street, its headlights arcing through the overhead branches of the trees.
Next time he took the precaution of keeping his arms outstretched.
One step. Two. Three. Fou—Whap! Something stopped him in his tracks.
No matter how much he sidestepped or backed up, as soon as he started forward an invisible wall appeared, though not always in exactly the same place. It seemed to fluctuate a few feet on some whim of its own, but nevertheless prevented him from getting to the street.
But if the whatever wouldn’t let him move in that direction, then he’d leave by the back alley.
A plan that worked like a charm until he neared the Dumpsters. Whap! There it was again.
It took a while and a few ignominious falls for him to finally realize that no matter what direction he took, he could go so far and no farther.
The one direction he refused to try, however, was through Janie and Tom’s fence. Better this yard, with its limited freedom, than theirs where he had no freedom at all.
Defeated, he’d finally sat down at the picnic table to look over the house he must belong to now. Country-western music filtered from it out into the night, and through the double patio doors he saw a party of some sort going on.
A barbecue barrel near the patio filled the night air with the smell of charcoal and good times.
As Daniel watched, the door slid open and a woman with hair the color of moonlight stepped out.
Ellie!
She didn’t see him sitting there, and he didn’t call out. For one thing, he wasn’t sure she could see him. Not knowing what the rules were in his new situation—not that he ever had—he didn’t take anything for granted.
Then Ellie spotted him, had even been angry with him for some reason, but her brother invited him in and Daniel found himself—for the first time in years—actually under a roof. That was when he realized the whatever had now bound him to an apartment house.
Moreover, it actually allowed him to be the normal man he’d once been.
But it wouldn’t release him completely.
When the party followed its collective nose to the cooking meat outdoors, Daniel unobtrusively walked toward the street again.
The wall, now several feet farther out, was still there. But it affected only him.
One of the couples at the party had left early, calling good-nights as they walked over the lawn to their car parked on the street. They had no trouble at all passing through the invisible barrier keeping Daniel in.
And now Ellie wanted to know what Daniel was doing here.
Hell if he knew.
But thankfully one of the marines sitting at the picnic table with them asked her a question, giving Daniel a break from the third-degree he knew was coming.
When Chad joined them moments later, the talk became general, full of jokes and references he didn’t always catch, but he laughed as heartily as the rest of them.
It was a pleasure just to laugh, and he thought he faked normalcy pretty well until he saw Ellie eyeing him, a knowing look on her face.
Damn.
As the evening wore on and the party thinned out, Daniel knew he should leave, too. He just didn’t know how.
So he hung around, gathering debris in the part of the yard allowed to him, picking up cans and napkins in the living room, trying to look like a conscientious guest helping out a little before going home. By then there were only himself and Ellie and Chad left.
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