Buch lesen: «The Baby Proposal»

One

Showtime.

The rhythmic sound of the drums pounded in the distance. On cue, one spotlight, then another, lit up the stage at the center of the open courtyard. With loud whoops and cries, the Mau Loa Maui dancing troupe took the stage.

Kalani Bishop watched the show begin from the dark corner of the courtyard. Spread out across the lawn of his resort were hundreds of hotel guests. They were mesmerized, as was Kal, by the beautiful movements of the traditional Hawaiian dancers onstage. He had no doubt that he had the finest traditional dancers on the entire island of Maui. He could have nothing less at his hotel.

The Mau Loa Maui had been the brainchild of Kal and his younger brother, Mano. Their family hotel, the original Mau Loa, was located on Waikiki Beach on Oahu. Growing up, they had dreamed of one day not only taking over the Oahu location but expanding the resort chain to other islands. First—Ka’anapali Beach in Maui. Kal had fallen in love with the island the moment he arrived. It was so different from Oahu—so lush and serenely beautiful. Even the women were more sensual, in his opinion, like ripe fruits waiting for him to pick them.

It was without question the most beautiful hotel on the island. The look on his grandparents’ faces when they arrived at the resort the first time was proof enough that they approved of his work. The tourists certainly did. Since they opened, the resort had remained at capacity and had reservations booked solid a year in advance. They made vacation fantasies come true.

Part of the Hawaiian fantasy included attending an authentic luau with the kind of dancing seen in movies. At the Mau Loa Maui, the luau took place three nights a week and included a full dinner of kalua pork, poi, fresh pineapple, mango rice and other traditional Hawaiian foods. The guests sat on pillows around low tables that surrounded the stage.

Kal had worked hard to craft the perfect atmosphere for this hotel. Flames leaped from torches stationed around the wide lawn, lighting the area now that the sun had finally set into the sea beyond the stage. The fire cast shadows that flickered across the faces of the dancers and the musicians who beat drums and chanted along with them.

One of the female dancers took center stage. Kal smiled as his best friend, Lanakila Hale, commanded the attention of every person in the courtyard. Before she even began her solo dance performance, she had captivated the audience with her traditional Hawaiian beauty. She had long, wavy black hair that flowed over her golden brown skin. A crown of Plumeria flowers sat atop her head and circled her wrists and ankles. She was wearing a skirt made of long, green ti leaves that showed the occasional flash of her upper thighs and a bright yellow fabric top that bound her full breasts, leaving her stomach bare to highlight her toned core.

He couldn’t help admiring her figure. They were friends, but it was impossible to ignore that Lana had an amazing dancer’s body. It was hard, sculpted and lean after years and years of professional dance training. While she specialized in traditional Hawaiian dance, she had studied dance at the University of Hawaii and was well versed in almost every style including ballet, modern dance and hip-hop.

As the drums continued to beat faster, Lana kicked her movements into high gear. Her hips gyrated and swayed to the rhythm as her arms moved gracefully to tell the story of that particular hula dance. The hula wasn’t just entertainment for tourists; it was his culture’s ancient storytelling method. She was amazing, even better than she had been the night he first saw her dance in nearby Lahaina and knew he wanted her at his new hotel as the head choreographer.

Lana was the human embodiment of contradiction. She was both an athlete and a lady: strong and feminine, hard and yet with womanly curves in abundance. He couldn’t imagine a more physically perfect specimen of a woman. She was an amazing person, too. Smart, quick-witted, talented and not afraid to call him on his crap, which he needed from time to time.

He turned away to focus on the crowd as he felt his body start to react to her physical display. He didn’t know why he tortured himself by watching the show when he knew what it would lead to. With each beat of the drum and thrust of her hips, his muscles tensed and his pulse sped up.

Kal reached up to loosen his tie and take a deep breath to wish away his attraction to Lana. It happened more often than he’d like where she was concerned, but who could blame him?

She might be his best friend, but she was undeniably his type. She was every red-blooded male’s type, but she specifically checked every one of his boxes. If he had a list, and he didn’t, because Kal didn’t do relationships. Even if it wouldn’t damage their friendship—and it would—there were other issues at play. Namely that he wasn’t interested in the family and the white picket fence, and of course, Lana wanted the whole shebang more than anything. He couldn’t risk sampling the forbidden fruit because she’d want him to buy the whole fruit basket. Giving in to his attraction for her could be a disaster, because if she wanted more and he didn’t, where did that leave them?

Former best friends.

That wasn’t an option, so they were to be friends and nothing more. He just wished he could convince his erection of that. They’d been friends for over three years now and he’d been unsuccessful so far. That meant the occasional cold shower to keep things in check, but he was managing.

The other female dancers joined Lana after her solo to complete the routine. That was a helpful distraction. When they were finished, the male dancers took the stage and the ladies made a quick exit to change into their next dance costume. At the Mau Loa, the show went through the whole history of hula, covering years of styles and dress as it evolved. Kal didn’t just want some cheesy performance to entertain the hotel guests; he wanted them to learn and appreciate his people and their culture.

“Do we meet with your approval, boss man?” a woman’s voice asked from beside him.

Kal didn’t have to turn to recognize Lana’s low, sultry voice. He glanced to his left and found her standing beside him. As the choreographer, she did some dancing and filled in for ill or absent performers, but she didn’t participate in the majority of the numbers herself.

“Some of you do,” he noted, turning away from the show to focus all his attention on her. To be honest, the only dancer who could truly hold his interest was standing right beside him. “Alek is looking a little off tonight.”

Lana’s head snapped around to the stage and she narrowed her gaze at the performers. She watched the male dancer with her ever-critical eye. “I think he’s a little hungover. I heard him talking to one of the other dancers about some wild night in Paia during practice this afternoon. I’ll talk to him in the morning. He knows better than to mess around the night before a performance.”

That was one of the reasons that Kal and Lana were such good friends. They both had a drive for perfection in all they did, Lana even more so than Kal. Kal liked everything to be just so, and he enjoyed his success, but he also enjoyed his play time. Lana was superfocused all the time, and really, she had to be to get to where she had in life. Not everyone could pull themselves up from poverty and turn their life into exactly what they’d wanted. It took drive and she had it in spades.

Sometimes he liked to point out faults just to watch her head spin like a top. Her cheeks would flush red, her nostrils would flare and her breasts would heave against her tight little tops in anger. It didn’t help lessen his attraction to her, but it certainly made things more interesting.

“Everyone else looks great, though,” he added to soothe her. “Good job tonight.”

Lana crossed her arms over her chest and bumped her shoulder into his. She wasn’t the most physically affectionate kind of person, never one to hang on other people. A bounce off the shoulder or a fist bump was about all she was comfortable with unless she was upset. When something was bothering her, all she wanted was a hug from Kal. He’d happily hold her until she felt better, enjoying what little affection she was willing to share.

The rest of the time, Lana was a no-nonsense kind of woman. He was actually kind of glad he wasn’t one of her dancers. He’d seen her drill them in rehearsals, accepting nothing less than the perfection she herself was willing to give.

He was pretty sure that friends or no, if he ever got fresh he’d earn a stinging slap across the face. He liked that about her. Most of the local women he encountered on Maui knew exactly who he was. That meant they also knew exactly what he was worth. Like flies to honey, they’d do whatever he wanted to get close to him. He liked Lana with her tart vinegar to break up the sweetness from time to time.

The stage went dark and silent for a moment, catching both their attention. When the lights came back on, the men were gone and the ladies were returning to the stage in their long grass skirts, coconut bras and large headdresses. Kal lovingly referred to this routine as “the bootie shaker.” He had no idea how the women moved as quickly as they did.

“There’s a good crowd tonight,” Lana noted.

“We always sell out on Sunday nights. Everyone knows this is the best luau in Maui.”

Lana’s dark gaze flicked over him and returned to the stage. Kal was bored with the dancing and instead focused on her. A light breeze carried the fragrance of her Plumeria flowers along with the sweet smell of her cocoa butter lotion to his nose. He drew it into his lungs, enjoying the scent that reminded him so much of nights laughing on the couch and sharing platters of sushi.

They spent a lot of their free time together. Kal dated periodically, as did Lana, but it never went anywhere. Him, by choice. Lana, because she had horrible taste in men. He loved her, but she was a loser magnet. She’d never get the husband and family she wanted with the kind of men she spent her time dating. That meant they spent a lot of time together. Kal’s family was all on Oahu. Lana’s family just wasn’t worth the effort. Occasionally she would go visit her sister, Mele, and baby niece, Akela, but she always came back to the resort in a surly mood.

Thinking of family and free time jogged his memory. “Do you have plans for Christmas?” he asked. It was less than a month away, but the time would go by quickly.

“Not really,” Lana answered. “You know it’s so busy around here at Christmas. I’ve got the musicians working on some Christmas songs to do caroling, and we’re adding a new holiday dance medley to the luau next week, which means extra rehearsals. I wouldn’t ever presume to ask for time off around the holidays. What about you?”

Kal chuckled. “I’ll be here, of course, helping guests celebrate Christmas at their tropical home away from home. Shall we carry on our annual holiday tradition of Christmas Eve sushi by my new fireplace while we exchange gifts?”

Lana nodded. “Sounds like a plan.”

Kal was relieved. He didn’t know what he would do if Lana ever found the man of her dreams. If she were to fall in love, start a family and build a life outside the Mau Loa, he would be all by himself. She’d been at his side since they broke ground on the hotel and he’d gotten used to her always being there.

Finding out his brother was engaged and expecting a baby with his fiancée made the worry crop up in his mind lately. His brother, Mano, had been fairly dedicated to not getting seriously involved with a woman, and yet Paige had gotten under his skin. Before he knew what hit him, he was in love. Kal didn’t expect anything like that to ever happen to him—he was too stubborn to let anyone get that close.

But Lana...she deserved more than sushi with him on Christmas Eve. She deserved the life and family she wanted. He knew her childhood sucked. She wouldn’t say as much, but he knew that having a family of her own was her way of building what she’d never had. He’d just have to find an outlet for his loneliness and jealousy when she was gone.

He glanced over and noticed Lana was leaning against the wall. She looked tired. “Are you okay?” he asked.

“Yeah,” she said as she stared intently at the stage. “It’s just been a long day. I’m going to go back to my room and change. Are you up for a late dinner after the show?”

“I am.” Kal nodded in agreement. He actually couldn’t remember when he’d eaten last. He could lose himself in work so easily.

“I’ll meet you at the bar in half an hour. Let me know how the show goes.”

“You’ve got it.”

* * *

Lanakila made her way upstairs to her suite in the farthest corner of the hotel. It was, for all intents and purposes, her home. Kal had recently completed the construction of his private residence on the other side of the Mau Loa golf course. The sprawling home had taken quite a while to complete with its four bedrooms, large gourmet kitchen, three-car garage and tropical pool oasis in the backyard. Prior to that, he’d been living in a suite in the hotel so he could oversee every detail of operations.

Once he moved out into his new home, he’d opted to let Lana stay in his suite instead of remodeling it for a hotel room. She used to keep a small studio apartment up the coast in Kahakuloa, but she gave it up and sold all her furniture when she moved into the hotel. She stayed late most nights at the resort and was usually too exhausted to bother with the long drive home, so it was perfect.

It was actually bigger than her studio apartment had been anyway, and had a view of the ocean. She opened the door with her key card and slipped inside. Lana turned on the light in the tiny kitchenette before continuing through the living room into the bedroom. There, she slipped out of her costume and put her regular clothes back on.

She didn’t like wandering around the hotel in her dance clothes. It made her feel like a character in a Hawaiian theme park or something. Besides that, she could tell it made Kal uncomfortable when she wasn’t fully dressed. He averted his eyes and shifted nervously, something he never did when she was in street clothes.

Lana supposed that if Kal walked around in the men’s dance costume all the time, it would make her uncomfortable, too, although for different reasons. The men danced in little more than a skirt of ti leaves. She had a hard enough time focusing on Kal’s words when he was fully dressed in one of his designer suits. They covered every inch of his tanned skin, but they fit him like a glove and left little to the imagination.

Kalani Bishop was the most amazing specimen of male she’d ever laid her eyes on, and she’d gone to dance school, so that was saying something. And yet that was all she’d say on the subject. Longing for Kal was like longing for a pet tiger. It was beautiful and, if handled properly, could be a loving companion. But it was always wild. No matter what, you could never domesticate it. As much as she liked to live dangerously from time to time, she knew Kal was a beast well out of her league.

Clad in a pair of jeans and a tank top, she returned to the living room and picked up her phone where she’d left it during the performance. She noticed a message on her screen showing a missed call and a voice mail message from the Maui Police Department. Her stomach sank. Not again.

With her evermore violent father and her older sister, Mele, always getting into trouble, a call from the police station was not as rare as she’d like it to be.

Her mother had died when Lana was still a toddler. Their father, at least so she was told, had been a good man before that, but lost it when she died. He struggled after that, both in caring for his two young daughters and in coping with the loss. He turned to the bottle, a habit that released his temper. He’d never hit Lana or Mele, but he would shout the house down. He was also prone to getting in fights at the bar and getting arrested.

Lana had done everything right in an attempt to keep her father happy. That was how she got into dancing. Despite everything, her father was a proud Hawaiian man who believed they should honor their culture. Lana started taking hula as a child and continued into high school. Her father had never looked at her with as much pride as he did when he watched her dance.

Mele hadn’t been as concerned. In her mind, she was going to be in trouble no matter what, so she might as well have some fun. That included dating every boy she could find except for the native Hawaiian ones whom their father would’ve approved of. When she finally did start dating a Hawaiian, he was nothing to get excited about. Tua Keawe was a criminal in the making. Mele met him while he was hustling tourists, and he only escalated his illegal activities from there. Lana stopped visiting her sister when she was home from college because Mele was always high or drunk.

Last year, Mele had found out she was pregnant and she really seemed to clean up her act. Lana’s niece, Akela, was born free of addiction or side effects from fetal alcohol syndrome. She was a perfect, beautiful bundle that Lana adored more than anything. She’d always wanted a daughter of her own. Sometimes she wished the little girl was hers and not Mele’s, if just for Akela’s sake. Mele’s model behavior hadn’t lasted long past her delivery. She slipped back into her old habits, but there wasn’t much Lana could do about it without risking Child Services taking the baby away.

One thing Lana had never confided in Kal about was her sister and her criminal lifestyle. He knew about her father, and that her sister was prone to get in trouble, but she tried to keep Mele’s arrests under wraps. It was embarrassing, for one thing, to tell him. She knew he would understand and not judge her for their actions, but he was part of such an important and well-respected family. She was...not. Lana tried to pretend that she wasn’t from poor trash most of the time, but her family always saw fit to remind her.

Lana also avoided the topic because she was always hoping that Mele would grow up and start acting like the older, responsible sister she was supposed to be. So far her hopes for a big sister she could rely on instead of keep an eye on hadn’t materialized. Instead she leaned on Kal to be her responsible older sibling. She could go to him for advice and he would help her in any way he could.

Glancing at the screen, Lana worried that this time would be the one that her family had gotten into a mess that even Kal couldn’t help her clean up. It was coming sooner or later. She finally worked up the nerve to hit the button on her phone and listen to the message.

“Lana, this is Mele. Tua and I got arrested. I need you to come get us out of here. This whole thing is just a load of crap. It was entrapment!” she shouted. “Entrapment!” she repeated, most likely to the officer nearby.

The line went dead and Lana sighed. It sounded like she was going to spend another night waiting to pay her sister’s bail. Before she drove over there in the middle of the night, however, she was going to call the station. It had been a couple hours since her sister’s message and she wanted to make sure she was still there.

She pressed the key to call back the police station. The switchboard operator answered.

“Yes, this is Lana Hale. I received a call from my sister, Mele Hale, about bail.”

There was a moment of silence as the woman looked something up in the computer. “Yes, ma’am, please hold while I transfer you to the officer at the holding desk.”

“This is Officer Wood,” a man answered after a few moments.

“This is Lana Hale,” she repeated. “I got a call from my sister about coming to bail her out. I wanted to check before I came down there so late.”

The officer made a thoughtful noise before he answered. “Yes, your sister and her boyfriend were arrested today for possession of narcotics with intent to distribute. Apparently they attempted to sell heroin to an undercover police officer.”

Lana bit back a groan. This was worse than she thought. She hadn’t realized her sister had moved up from pot and LSD to a higher class of drug felony. “How much is her bail?” she asked.

“Actually your sister was misinformed when she called. There’s no bail set for either of them. They’re being held until tomorrow. Miss Hale will be meeting with a court-appointed attorney Monday morning prior to going before the judge.”

That wasn’t good. It sounded like their constant run-ins with the police were catching up with them. “Which judge?”

“I believe they’re scheduled to see Judge Kona.”

This time, the groan escaped Lana’s lips before she could stop it. Judge Kona was known for being a hard nut. He was superconservative, supertraditional and he didn’t tolerate any kind of crap in his courtroom. It wouldn’t be Mele’s first time before Judge Kona, and that wasn’t good news. He didn’t take kindly to repeat offenders.

A sudden thought popped into Lana’s mind, making her heart stop in her throat. “What about their daughter?” Her niece, Akela, was only six months old. Hopefully they hadn’t left her sleeping in her crib while they ran out to make a few bucks. It certainly wouldn’t surprise Lana if they had.

“The baby was in the car, asleep in her car seat, when the drug deal went down. She’s been taken by Child Protective Services.”

Panic made Lana’s chest tight even though she knew her niece was technically safe. “No!” she insisted. “What can I do? I’ll take her. She doesn’t need to go to be with strangers.”

“I understand how you feel,” Officer Wood said, “but I’m afraid you’ll have to wait and petition the judge for temporary guardianship while the legal guardians are incarcerated. In the meantime, the child will be placed in foster care. I assure you the baby will be well looked after. Perhaps more so than she was with her own parents.”

Lana’s knees gave out from under her and she sank down onto the couch. The rest of the call went quickly and before she knew it, the officer had hung up and she was staring blankly at her black phone screen.

She turned it back on to look at the time. It was late on a Sunday night. She’d have to wait to contact an attorney. Akela would be in foster care overnight no matter what, but if Lana had anything to say about it, she’d be with her by Monday afternoon.

It was a scary thought to leap unexpectedly into motherhood—she was completely unprepared—and yet she would do it gladly. Mele could be going to jail for months or years. Lana wouldn’t be watching Akela overnight or for a weekend this time. She would be her guardian for however long it took for Mele to serve her debt to society.

She would need help to pull this off. Lana didn’t want to do it, but she knew she had to tell Kal about what happened. Maybe he knew an attorney who would be better for Mele than the public defender or at the very least help her get guardianship of Akela.

Getting up from the couch, she slipped her phone into her back pocket and headed out to the bar to meet Kal. If anyone could help her out of this mess, it was him.