LITMIR.BIZ

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old were you when you came here before?” Megan asked, while Sarah and Grace were busy listening for the giant lizard.

      “Around eleven or twelve, I think. Cara would have been eight, maybe. Our dad and his third wife brought us here.”

      “You must have had fun,” she said cautiously.

      His laugh was rough as memories he’d submerged a long time ago shot to the surface like water through that blowhole. “Not really. They didn’t want us along.”

      “I’m sure that’s not true.”

      “It was another of the endless custody battles in the war my parents waged after their divorce. Dad and Gina had already made arrangements to come here by themselves over the holidays. Then Mom reminded him a few weeks before Christmas break that this was his year to have us for Christmas. She’d already made her own plans that didn’t include us, and she wasn’t going to change them.”

      He’d really wanted to like Gina, but it had been tough when she’d made snide comments throughout the trip about having to bring them along.

      He could hear her and his father fighting about it every night of the trip. At least they waited until they thought he and Cara were asleep.

      “It wasn’t the most pleasant vacation of my life. I was old enough to feel the tension between them and to know we weren’t wanted.”

      Her features softened with sympathy. “How terrible for you.”

      “Yeah. Let’s just say I didn’t handle it well. I spent the whole week acting like a little shi— Er, jerk, which didn’t make the situation any easier for anyone. Not one of my prouder moments. I think Gina walked out about two months later. I always felt like that one was a little bit my fault.”

      “That sounds awful. You poor things.”

      He hadn’t wanted her sympathy. Really, he couldn’t imagine why he had told her all that in the first place. Something about her warm expression and gentle compassion managed to draw out things he had no intention of telling anyone.

      “With that sort of history here, I wonder why Cara wanted to have her own wedding on Kauai.”

      “She was a few years younger,” Shane said. “I’m not sure she understood all the nuances, you know?”

      “That makes sense.” Megan paused for a moment.

      “I gather your parents have been around the wedding block a few times.”

      “An understatement. Five for my dad, four for my mom. I’ve got enough ex-stepmoms and -stepdads to make a basketball team, complete with manager and a couple bench warmers. What about you?”

      She gave a wistful sigh. “I was really blessed. My parents had more than two happy decades together. They were older when they had me—my mom was nearly forty and my dad a few years older. I was an only child. All I remember from growing up was how much we laughed together. Our house was always filled with joy. We loved each other.”

      He noted her use of the past tense. “What happened to them?”

      She focused her gaze on her daughters, who weren’t paying any attention to them. “On their twenty-fifth anniversary, they were driving home from dinner when they were T-boned by a drunk driver. Both of them died instantly.”

      “I’m sorry.” On impulse, he reached for her hand and squeezed her fingers.

      She looked down at their joined hands and then up at him with a tremulous smile. “That was about a year before I met Nick. My parents would have been crazy about the girls and I know they would have been fantastic grandparents. I still get sad when I think my daughters will never have the chance to know how wonderful their grandparents were.”

      “They know. I’m sure you tell them. They’ll know your parents through the memories you share with them.”

      Her smile deepened and she squeezed his fingers. “Thank you. You’re right. I think I needed that reminder.”

      “Can we see another waterfall?”

      He shifted his gaze to the girls. “I think that can be arranged. Or if you want, we can visit a cookie factory right here on the island.”

      “Cookies!” Grace said promptly.

      “Yay! Cookies!” Sarah added her vote.

      “I guess that settles it,” he answered, smiling at Megan before he backed out of the viewpoint and they continued on their way.

      CHAPTER SIX

      SPENDING THE DAY with Shane had been a huge mistake.

      That evening, as she dressed carefully for the wedding rehearsal and dinner, Megan wanted to kick herself for ever agreeing to let him give them the tour in the first place.

      The afternoon had been filled with priceless moments. Eating delicious coconut shrimp at picnic tables beside a roadside truck with a million-dollar view of the surf. Having her breath snatched away by the sheer wonder of the steep jagged cliffs of the Na Pali Coast. Watching him tenderly carry Grace on his back down a secluded beach to show the girls a sea turtle—a honu—that had come out of the water to bask in the sun.

      She was falling hard for him.

      She pressed a hand to her chest, already aching at the impending loss. Except for when he’d held her hand for a brief time, he’d been careful to keep things between them casual and light. She sensed invisible barriers and had no idea how to breach them—if she even dared.

      This was ridiculous, she told herself. What did it matter if he maintained distance between them? She couldn’t be falling in love with the man. She barely knew him. She was letting her heart get carried away by the excitement of an exotic location and the break from her usual life. Vacation crazies. That’s what this was.

      She only had to make it through tonight and the sunset wedding the next day. In less than forty-eight hours, she would climb back on an airplane that would take her and her girls home, back to their carefully organized life. She’d be able to clear her head once she was away from the trade winds and the palm trees and the endless, seductive murmur of the sea.

      She hurried to the other room, where the girls were sitting in the new flowered sundresses she’d bought them that afternoon at a little shop in Princeville. They were entranced with a show on TV, which meant they hadn’t had the chance to mess up their clothes yet.

      “I’m finally ready,” she told them. “Sorry about the wait. Should we go?”

      “Yep,” Grace said. “The show got over right this minute.”

      Both of her daughters smiled at her, looking bright and cheerful, and her heart ached with love for them. They were the most important people in her life, she reminded herself. Not a gorgeous police detective with a sweet smile and shoulders big enough for the weight of the world.

      She grabbed a couple of delicately scented plumeria blooms from the bouquet on the table and stuck one behind each girl’s ear. “There. Now you look like proper Hawaiian princesses.”

      “You need a flower, Mommy,” Grace insisted.

      On impulse, she picked another flower from the bouquet and stuck it behind her ear.

      Sarah pushed her sister’s wheelchair as they took the walkway between the cabanas that led to the area of the beach where the wedding would take place the next evening.

      When she arrived, Jean and her daughter, Nick’s sister, immediately seized on the girls, asking them all about their day and the things they’d seen.

      She was aware of him there, speaking with Cara and a handsome, rather distinguished-looking older man she hadn’t met yet. Hanging on the man’s arm was an exquisitely dressed woman who didn’t look much older than Shane.

      She recognized enough similarities between the older

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