Chapter1
Cobalt blue water rolled in huge undulating waves through the Pacific Ocean, traveling from one distant shore to another in their own time, and far above them, thirty-six thousand feet above them, in a seemingly endless expanse of fluffy white clouds drifting between the earth and the heavens, a plane cut through the atmosphere like a whetted knife.
There were almost two hundred and fifty people on the flight, and most of them were sleeping. Some of them were up and walking the aisles in an attempt to stretch their legs on the long flight. A few of them were staring out of their windows at the world going by beneath them, but only one of those was staring with an unhappy face.
Hers was a face set with deep thought and considerable consternation. Her elbow was planted on the armrest, while her hand cupped her chin, her fingers covering her full lips. The woman’s dark eyes were taking in all that was passing her outside of the craft, but she wasn’t seeing any of it.
Nicole Hamilton appeared as well put together as any other woman on the plane, even more so. She was dressed in a pinstripe suit jacket and skirt set, with a thin silk blouse beneath the jacket. Her long dark legs were crossed, with a pair of black high heeled shoes at one end of them and well curved hips at the other end. Her waist was narrow and toned, a result of her regular workouts, and though her generous breasts were covered, there was no mistaking their shape beneath the material. Her skin, though the color of dark chocolate, had a pretty honeyed glow to it that was gifted to her from the California sunshine. She was leaving that California sun behind her for even more sun and a lot more sea in the beautiful state of Hawaii.
Her long black hair, which normally reached to the middle of her back when it was down, was pulled up into a twist at the back of her head, and in her ears were diamond earrings that matched the pretty diamond pendant she wore on a thin golden chain around her neck. The high cheekbones beneath her mahogany eyes were almost wide set, giving her beautiful face an almost exotic look. The elegant, mysterious air about her was nearly a constant, and it made people stop and look at her and even sometimes stare.
“If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were a statue,” came a quiet, deep tenor tone from the man in the seat beside her.
Nicole blinked and turned her head to look at him. He was dressed just as finely as she was, though his attire was slightly more flamboyant in color and cut. His meticulously trimmed dark brown hair was perfectly styled, his fingernails manicured, his face clean shaven. His custom-tailored suit looked more silver than charcoal, and was set with a fuchsia shirt of brushed silk which matched a silk fuchsia handkerchief, folded so that it looked almost like a flower blooming out of the pocket of his jacket. His tie was a light lime green, and at the center of it an emerald tie pin held it fast.
“What’s weighing your mind down, honey?” he gave her a sympathetic look, and it was easy to see that his heart was fully in the question.
She shrugged and gave her head a small, dismissive shake. “It’s nothing. Really. I’m just thinking about the interview.”
The man shook his head. Jeffrey King was her best friend, and he knew her much better than that. “Would you like to try that again?” he asked as the corner of his mouth curled up slightly in a small smile, and his blue green eyes shone with compassion.
Nicole sighed, and her shoulders fell just a little. “I never can get anything past you,” she murmured quietly.
“I don’t even know why you waste time trying,” he replied as his smile grew just a little more. “So, what’s going on in that beautiful head of yours? Because I know it’s not the job interview. You have the job. This interview is a formality. The job is yours, along with all the perks, which is why you’re moving to Hawaii. So, it isn’t the job. What’s really biting at you?”
With a sigh, she lifted her fingers to her forehead and massaged her temple gently. “It isn’t the job or the interview.” She resigned herself to the fact that she was going to have to talk with Jeffrey about it at some point in the near future. She had held the truth inside long enough. “It’s Paul.”
“Now, there’s a surprise.” Jeffrey didn’t look surprised at all. He looked completely unruffled by the fact. “What’s up with him? Is it the move?”
Nicole nodded. “Yeah, it is. We had a fight about it. A bad fight.” Her mind went back to the swift and sudden decisions that had changed her life so profoundly and immediately.
“Tell me,” Jeffrey prodded her a little more, his eyes steady on her as he waited expectantly.
“Well, this whole thing happened so fast. I mean, I got the call from DiaCorp last week, they offered me this amazing job on the contingency that I could start right away, and I had to make a decision. It was either stay in San Francisco and keep doing what I was doing, with no room for advancement in my career path, or take this job and move to Hawaii. It’s the best job I’ve ever gotten, in every aspect. There was no way I could pass it up.” She furrowed her brow somewhat and looked down at her hands as she examined her polished fingernails absent mindedly.
“So, I’m guessing that Paul wasn’t as supportive of this as you had hoped he would be?” Jeffrey asked in concern.
She shook her head and pressed her full lips together in a thin line. “No, he wasn’t. I asked him to move to Hawaii with me, and he drew a line in the sand. He said I stay in San Francisco with him or we break up. He gave me an ultimatum. It boiled down to him or the job. I’ve only been with him for six months. This is the job of a lifetime. I can’t pass it up. So, we broke up.”
Jeffrey’s mouth fell open slightly as his eyes widened. “You’re kidding! You two broke up? I can’t believe he let you go! I thought he was so serious about you that he wasn’t ever going to let you go. I’ll be honest, I thought there would be wedding bells with him. I thought I was going to be helping you pick out china patterns.” A long, low whistle sounded from his lips, and he gave his head a slow shake of disbelief.
Nicole shrugged slightly. “Yeah, well… it ended. He wanted to be the priority in my life, and I guess that we haven’t been together long enough, or we don’t mean enough to each other, that that happened. The job came first, and he didn’t like that, so it’s over.”
“I’m so sorry, honey.” Jeffrey reached for her hand and held it in his, rubbing his thumb over the back of it. “How are you feeling about it?”
She stared straight ahead for a long moment, searching her feelings. She hadn’t let herself stop to think about how she really felt about it. Her mind slowed, her heart opened up a little, and she searched inside of herself to examine what it was that she really was experiencing.
“I… I guess I’m feeling disenchanted. I mean, I thought like you did, that he might be the one. I thought that it might be long term. Really long term. When he handed that ultimatum to me, it was like a slap in the face with reality, and I just wasn’t prepared for it. I was so focused on the job and the move… there were so many other things going through my mind that I didn’t have time to really think about it, but now that you and I are on our way to Hawaii and it’s official, there isn’t much left for me to worry about. It’s all done. Now I can think; now I can process all that’s been happening in the last two weeks.” She searched deeper in herself and was astounded by the truth that she found there.
Jeffrey lowered a brow and tilted his head as he gazed at her. “You feel disenchanted? Not heartbroken? Not devastated?” he asked with a curious tone.
She shook her head as she looked back at him in quiet amazement. “No. I really don’t. Strangely enough, I feel so practical about it, so matter-of-fact.” She paused and gave Jeffrey a thoughtful look. “Is that wrong? Should I be heartbroken?”
Jeffrey gave her hand a squeeze. “Only if it’s natural to be.” He paused for a long moment as he thought. “Your first answer, the first word out of your mouth, was disenchanted. So, that would be like waking up from a dream or an enchantment, something that you thought was one way which wasn’t that way at all.”
Nicole nodded. “That’s exactly it, though. I guess I thought we should be in love, like… so much in love that there wasn’t any other option but to be together, and if we weren’t together, then it should feel like the end of the world, shouldn’t it? I mean, if we were really so important to each other? Shouldn’t it feel like I’m dying inside or something? Because it doesn’t feel like that.”
“What does it feel like?” Jeffrey asked with a gaze so intense that she felt that he might somehow be able to look into her and see for himself just how she felt.
“Like…” She thought carefully as she spoke, “Like the end of a business transaction, to be totally honest. Like… a closed chapter, and I’m off to the next one, and there’s no more connection to the one before. Shouldn’t I be devastated?” She searched his eyes, looking for an answer to the enigmatic puzzle in her mind and heart.
He gave his head a small shake. “No, I don’t think so. I thought that you two were closer than this as well, just like you did, but you just said that you guessed you thought you were probably going to get married, and personally I think that when two people decide they want to get married, it should feel like there is no other choice for them. Their love and devotion and commitment to each other should be so profound that they feel as though they can’t live their lives without one another, and they don’t want to.
You don’t feel like that about him. It sounds like you’re deciding whether you want a five-hundred-dollar cashmere sweater. You’re weighing your options, you know it’s a big commitment, you really like the look of it and the way it feels, but you aren’t so totally dedicated to committing to it that you refuse to give it up. You could take it or leave it, and you’re choosing to leave it.”
She blinked, stunned by the realization of what he was saying. “My god, you’re right. It was take it or leave it, and I left it.”
He nodded. “You left it without even a thought. You chose the job right away, didn’t you? How long did it take you to decide that you were going to accept the job and move from San Francisco to Hawaii?”
Nicole looked up at him. “One night,” she answered without missing a beat. “Actually, I decided right away, and Edward Stein, the partner of the company who hired me, talked with me about it and told me to sleep on it before I gave him my answer. I was ready to say yes when he offered it to me. There was no moment of hesitation.
As soon as he called me and offered me the job, everything in me, and I mean everything in me, was shouting yes. He was the one who said to wait and give it some thought, to sleep on it at least one night and then call him the next day and give him my answer. So, I did. I slept on it one night, and by the time I woke up the next morning, all I could think about was the company, the job, and living in Hawaii. I’ve never made a faster decision about anything big in my life.”
“And in that immediate choice, was Paul ever a factor in the decision-making process? I mean, right at the beginning when you knew right away what it was that you wanted and needed… was Paul part of any of that in your head?” Jeffrey gazed at her and waited for her reply, watching her closely.
She shook her head in silence before answering him. “No, he wasn’t. I didn’t even think about him, not even once, until after I had called Edward back and told him that I was still definitely taking the job. Then, he said I was hired and I’d just have to come in for this official formal interview, but the job was mine, and we hung up.
It wasn’t until that call ended and the reality of the decision hit me that I ever thought of Paul. It was like… it was final. It was done. I’d said yes, and then from out of nowhere… Paul. What am I going to do about Paul? He was a complete afterthought. My whole relationship with him was a complete afterthought. I mean… there I was ready and willing to change my whole life on a dime and then after I’ve done it… only then do I think of the man I’m considering marrying. What kind of a relationship is that?”
“It isn’t one.” Jeffrey shook his head. “It’s a façade. It seems real on the surface, but when you look down into it just a little deeper, it’s got all of the look and none of the reality. Like a knock-off DKNY or something. At a glance, it looks like the real thing, but when you look closely, you know it’s just a fake.”
He frowned sympathetically at her. “I’m sorry, darling. Look at it like this: you had a good time with him, and that’s done now. You have a new life ahead of you, a life that you’ve chosen, and you need to focus all of your energy and time and passion on that. You can’t think of Paul as a failure; just think of him as an experience that’s ended. It’s like you said… there’s a new chapter beginning in your life. You’re ready for it, and you know that because you are reaching out and grasping it with both arms wide open. You jumped at this chance, and that means you needed it.”
He lifted her hand to his mouth and kissed the back of it lightly. “Besides, you aren’t going alone.” He gave her an encouraging smile then, and the sight of it warmed her heart. She smiled back at him and nodded.
“No, I’m not going alone. At least not for a while. Thank you so much for dropping everything and coming with me to get me moved.” She gave him a wide smile. “I’m really grateful for what you’re doing and for your friendship.”
He beamed at her. “I’m happy to do it. Besides, when am I ever going to get a two-month vacation to Hawaii like this again?”
She laughed softly at him. “Anytime you want it. I’ll be living here. I love that you’re coming for the first two months, but if you ever want to stay longer or come out for a long visit, then the door is always open to you.”
“Thank you.” He gave her a wink. “You know I’ll take you up on that. Who knows if two months on Oahu will be enough time for me or not? I haven’t ever been there before. It’s nice to have the option to come back though, and I’d always come to see you more than for any other reason.”
Nicole nodded at him and gave his hand a squeeze. She was lucky to have Jeffrey as her best friend, and she knew it. When she had called him to tell him that she had accepted a job in Hawaii and that she was going to have to move there, he offered to come with her right away to help her get moved in and settled. When he asked her how long she wanted him to be there, she had known then that she was going alone. She had known that it was a selfish thing to ask, but she didn’t want to start a new life completely isolated from her old life. But she had been the one to ask him to come for two months.
She told herself that she should be settled by then, and should have made new friends and have some sort of life figured out by that point. He hadn’t hesitated at all. She had asked him to come for the first two months, and he had accepted immediately. He would be there for her, and he was, right from the airport in San Francisco where they had left the mainland together, and they would be together until he left her two months later.
His interior design consulting company had done so well that taking two months off wasn’t going to hurt him, and he had promised her that his assistant could certainly look after things while he was gone, and whatever the assistant couldn’t do could be handled electronically over the Internet and video calls. She couldn’t have been more grateful to him for the sacrifice that he made for her.
Jeffrey flagged the flight attendant down and ordered two glasses of wine for them. She returned with them right away, and Jeffrey handed one to Nicole. “You know, there’s just one thing I don’t understand about Paul,” he said thoughtfully as he sipped at his wine.
“What’s that?” she asked, tipping her own glass back as well.
With a furrowed brow, Jeffrey turned to face her. “Well, he’s a stock market analyst. He could do that from anywhere. He could do that from Hawaii just as easily as he could do it from San Francisco. Didn’t he think about that? I mean, why the big ultimatum? Weren’t you the most important thing in his life?”
She sighed long and low. “I thought I was, but I guess not. He said I either take the job in Hawaii or I stay and keep him. That was it. He refused to leave his life there. He wasn’t willing to consider anything else. Not even a long-distance relationship. Paul said if he’s going to be in a relationship, then he wants his woman in his bed every night, not some painful, drawn-out, long-distance thing that is more work than pleasure.”
She shrugged. “I guess he’s right, and you’re right, because if we really had meant that much to each other, then we would have found a way, wouldn’t we? But we didn’t. I chose the job and the move clear across the ocean to Hawaii, and he chose to stay in San Francisco. Both of us chose to let go of each other and hold on to other things. That sounds to me like we just didn’t care enough about each other or our future together to try to make it work, even though we probably could have found some way to do that if we had really wanted to.” She gave another slight shrug.
“Then you made the right choice, and you shouldn’t keep running it over in your mind. No good is going to come of that. Just let it go, and when we step off of this airplane, you set your mind on your future and put all of your thoughts and energy and focus into that. You can make it a success here, a big success, but not if your head is tied to anything or anyone back on the mainland, in your past. It’s time for a new chapter. So, look forward to that, and I’ll be there with you every step of the way.” He gave her a warm and tender smile and she returned it to him.
“Thank you, Jeffrey. I love you.” She was relieved to have him there with her, for more reasons than she could count.
For the remainder of the flight, she talked with Jeffrey about other things, and he did his best to keep the subjects of conversation on lighter, happier topics that kept her breakup and new job from her mind.
When the airplane landed, they walked off of the craft and out into the open-air airport, feeling a rush of warm humid air wash over them, smelling of flowers and seeming like silk on their skin. A woman was waiting for them by the luggage carousel with a placard bearing Nicole’s name. Nicole felt a wave of relief wash over her when she saw it. It was nice to be welcomed and to have someone ready and waiting to meet her in her new home.
The young woman, who was in her early twenties, grinned widely at them and reached out to them each with a beautiful fresh flower lei in pinks and golds. When she had placed the leis around their necks, she nodded to them. “Aloha!” she said in welcome.
“Aloha!” they both echoed back to her. Jeffrey was positively beaming.
“I’m Tia,” she told them, reaching her hand out to shake their hands. “I’m your new assistant, Nicole. I’ll be working for you at the office.”
“Oh, great!” Nicole smiled at her brightly. “I’m happy to meet you. Thank you for being here to pick us up!”
Tia helped them with their bags and walked with them out of the airport to the parking garage. “It’s part of my job, but I’m really excited to do it. I couldn’t believe that they got you to work for them. It’s wonderful! What a boon for our office!”
“I was thinking the same thing, though,” Nicole told her happily, “how great it was that such a good company wanted me to work with them. I guess we are a good match.”
“Match made in heaven,” Tia replied, and she pressed the button on a key fob that popped the trunk of a brand-new convertible.
“Nice car!” Nicole admired it appreciatively.
Tia grinned at her. “Thanks! Glad you like it. It’s yours.” She and Jeffrey piled the bags into the trunk, and Tia closed it easily. “This is your company car. We thought since you were coming all the way from the mainland to live here, we might as well spoil you a bit, and by we, I mean Ed and Dane, and I pushed them to do it, but it was done, and that’s great.”
“This is my car?” Nicole stared at the pretty misty light green convertible.
Tia nodded. “Yes, but I’m driving you to your house initially so that you can get a look at the area while I’m driving and figure out where you are before you get behind the wheel. It’s easy. You’ll get it right away.”
They got into the car, with Tia behind the wheel, Nicole in the passenger seat, and Jeffrey in the back seat, and they took off. Tia pulled onto the highway, and Jeffrey leaned forward between the two ladies and spoke loudly enough that they could hear him.
“Can you answer a question for me please?” he asked hopefully.
Tia turned her right ear toward him while she kept her eyes on the road. “Sure! Shoot.”
“If this is an island, then how can there be three interstate highways on it? I mean, by the very definition of the word, an interstate should go between more than one state… interstate. These three highways don’t even go between islands, let alone states. How can there be an interstate highway here?” He had been puzzling over it since he had told Nicole he would go with her and actually took a look at a map of O’ahu, one of the eight Hawaiian Islands. It was the only one of the eight islands to have interstate roads, and the whole thing had been a complete mystery to him.
Tia nodded and laughed. “That’s actually a good question, and it has an easy and good answer,” she replied as she shifted lanes and checked all of her mirrors. “It’s nothing more than funding. See, if Hawaii has an interstate road, then we get federal funding. That’s it. It doesn’t matter that the road doesn’t actually connect to another state; as long as it’s called interstate, then the state gets the funding. That’s all there is to it.”
Jeffrey’s mouth fell open slightly, and he shook his head and leaned back into his seat, marveling at the twists in logic of the government.
They traveled along the highway a short distance until it became a road that wound east along the southern end of the island, and the commercial areas gave way to schools and residential neighborhoods. Tia entered a neighborhood called Hawaii Kai, and she drove up into the foothills of the mountainside there.
Nicole could not believe her eyes; it was so beautiful all around. The sea sparkled in the sunshine, dark blue, sky blue, aquamarine blue, with shades of dark green here and there. The mountains seemed to shoot straight up out of nowhere, and the range was covered in verdant greens, overflowing with flora and fauna.
The clouds that came in off the sea seemed to be caught along the southern mountains, and a few of them hung there and wept their raindrops onto the hillsides, where the sun turned the drops into rainbows. Nicole felt like she had left earth somewhere along the line and somehow found herself in another world, somewhere that was nothing like the earth; it all seemed so perfect and foreign to her.
Tia pulled the car into a driveway of a pretty house that had no fence and seemed to just spread right into the neighbor’s yards on both sides. They stepped out from the car, and all three of them clearly heard the call of an old woman sitting in a wicker chair on the deck of the house next door.
She waved to them and called out again. “Aloha! Come over!”
Nicole and Jeffrey shared a quick glance and a smile, and Tia obediently left the car with Nicole and Jeffrey right behind her as they crossed over the thick green grass and beneath a big flowering Plumeria tree. The blossoms scented the air so incredibly that Nicole almost stopped for a moment just to close her eyes and breathe them in. She thought that if beautiful had a scent, Plumeria blossoms would be it.
They went up onto the porch, and the old woman grinned at them. She was missing a couple of teeth, but her smile was so radiant that she made all of them smile right back at her, feeling her warmth and friendliness right away.
“I’m Aola,” she announced to them. “Who you?”
They all introduced themselves, shaking her hand. The woman might have been old, but she had a firm grasp.
“What you doing here today?” She waved over at the house next door, bright with curiosity and inner happiness.
Tia answered, “Nicole and Jeffrey have just moved here from the mainland. Nicole is my boss. I’m bringing her to her new home here.” She looked at the older woman with a great deal of respect.
“You moving in next door?” Aola asked with piqued interest.
Nicole nodded. “We are! It looks like we’ll be neighbors!” She was glad that she was going to have someone friendly next door.
Aola nodded. “You moving in next door, then you come over all the time and see Auntie. We talk.” She was grinning, giving them a directive. It wasn’t a request, though it was so sweetly put that they all grinned back at her.
“Auntie?” Jeffrey asked curiously.
“You call me Auntie.” She nodded to them.
Tia turned to them with a wink. “On the islands, all older ladies are Aunties, all older men Uncles. If the islanders are about the same age, we call them braddah and sistah. We’re all connected. No strangers here, except the ones who fly in and fly right back out. All the islanders are one.”
Jeffrey’s eyebrows shot up, and he turned to look at Nicole, impressed. “We’re in already! Fabulous!”
Auntie laughed a belly laugh then. “Jeffie, you make Auntie laugh so much! You come over and make me laugh all the time. I feed you.”
Jeffrey grinned. “If you’re going to feed me, I will be over all the time!”
The old woman laughed again. Tia gave her a smile. “I’m going to get them settled in. Good to meet you, Auntie. Aloha!”
Auntie waved at them, and they headed back over to Nicole’s new house. “So, the company leased this for me?” she asked, looking at it and thinking to herself that there was no way that she wasn’t dreaming.
“Yes. They leased it for the year, so it’s yours. I think the owner was willing to give you an option to buy at the end of the lease, if you want it.” She helped them with their luggage and gave them a tour of the home.
There were four bedrooms, a big dining room, a large kitchen, two full bathrooms in the main hall, two private bathrooms in two of the biggest bedrooms, a living room, an office, and in the back, a swimming pool with a view of the ocean that neither she nor Jeffrey could begin to wrap their minds around.
Tia walked out of the kitchen to the back patio where the two friends were standing by the pool taking it all in. In one hand, she had a bottle of champagne, and in the other, three glasses. She popped the cork and poured for them, and they toasted each other with grins on their faces.
“To home sweet home, in paradise,” Nicole spoke out, and the other two echoed her with their cheers.