LITMIR.BIZ

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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.

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