Oops, he’d forgotten his own name tag. He looked around for Keoni. Instead he spotted the registration area, where the hostess stood behind a small table with a rack of bags, leis, and folders filled with the course schedule. She wore a sarong and a tank top with an orange lei strung around her neck. Her silky dark hair and creamy mocha skin suggested a native heritage. “Aloha,” she said, smiling.
“Hi. I’m Max—”
“Sharpe. I know.” She smiled at him. “Welcome back.”
“Yeah. And . . .” He wasn’t sure why, but he leaned over to view her sheet. “Can I pick up Grace Christiansen’s registration packet too?”
“Sure.” She gave him his bag and added another lei around his neck. Then she handed him Grace’s supplies.
Maybe he’d simply take them to her quickly, before they left, so she knew what to expect.
Max took the stairs to the second floor, then jogged to her room. Paused.
What was he doing? She’d made it abundantly clear that she didn’t need him—maybe even didn’t want him. His heart as well as his mouth had decided to check out of the commonsense conversation he’d been trying to have with himself.
Go on your tour, Max. Enjoy yourself. I’ll be fine.
He’d simply leave her registration information at the desk and ask them to call her room. Later. After she’d had more sleep—
Wait. Through the door, he could hear something. Ragged breathing, even . . . crying?
“Grace?” He knocked on the door quietly, gently.
The noise stopped with a quick gasp of breath.
Oh no. “Grace, let me in.”
“No. I’m a mess and I don’t want to wreck your vacation.”
“You won’t wreck my vacation. How am I supposed to have fun when you’re back here crying? Why are you crying?”
“Because I’m so disgusted with myself. I’m—”
Suddenly the door yanked open. Indeed, her eyes were red, her face chapped. Sheesh, she was really crying.
“Because I hate that I’m such a disaster. I don’t want to be the girl who gets so sick on the plane that she grosses out the entire cabin.”
“No one was grossed—”
“Or the girl who is afraid to eat shrimp fried on a stick.”
“Actually, they grill it—”
“I mean, I’m a foodie, for pete’s sake. Or I’m supposed to be, right? I love cooking and this trip is all about food adventuring. It’s just . . .” She took a long breath. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
He braced his hand against the doorframe, leaned down, and met her eyes. “Let me show you around Hawaii. Just for today. If you hate it, you can go home—I’ll drive you to the airport myself.”
“I hate that you are missing your food tour. That you are here babysitting me. I want you to have fun.”
“Who says I’m not having fun?”
She cocked her head at him, shook it. “You might be the nicest person I’ve ever met, Max. No wonder Owen liked you.”
Clearly she didn’t know him that well. And that made her the one person he could hang around with safely. The one person he could relax with, without fear of giving her the wrong impression.
And just in case they both needed that definition . . . “Yep. Owen was like a brother to me.”
In fact, that could be his secret weapon. Because if she started thinking they might have more, he could always tell her exactly how he’d wrecked Owen’s life. Or if he got really desperate, how he had only now, and nothing of a future, to give her. Just these three weeks of fun and relaxation and adventure.
But maybe that was enough.
Grace was going to fall in love with Hawaii if it killed her.
Thankfully, so far the prognosis was a slow, even delicious, demise. Overhead, the sky hung a canopy of brilliance, the clouds thick and spongy, the smell of summer, freedom, and the sea scenting the air as they drove along the shore, lazy and carefree. She wore a sundress, flip-flops, and a pink baseball hat.
Like she might be this kind of girl, a woman who shucked off life in trade for adventure.
Max had taken down the top on his convertible Mustang rental and now tapped his fingers on the steering wheel to some country music station. “‘I wish you’d stay,’” he half hummed, half sang, his baseball hat backward on his head. He glanced at her from behind his mirrored aviators. “Stomach feeling better?”
She nodded, although she could admit to a small curl of something amiss inside.
Had Max not happened by, her entire vacation might have been spent staring at Hawaii from her balcony. In fact, if not for Max, she might have taken a flight home this morning. Or a ship, although that might not have been any better.