Blame It on Paradise (24 page)

Lina vigorously shook her head. “It’s perfect. I love it. I love you!”

Jack took her in his arms and kissed her, and Lina pulled him onto the hammock. Her dress was soon lost to Jack’s demonstrations of just how much he’d missed her, and his wet clothing soon followed. Wearing only her long, silky hair, a rapturous smile and the sparkling engagement ring, Lina welcomed the love of her life to the new life they would share on Darwin.

Epilogue

“You have to give us the password!” squealed a chorus of gleeful voices. The faces they belonged to lined up in an uneven row along the railing surrounding the treehouse that had become less Lina’s office and more of a command center for an army of Darwin’s feral children.

Jack, hands on the hips of his low-slung cotton trousers, worked his face into an exaggerated scowl of impatience. “Louisemawk!” he shouted up.

An eight-year-old, dressed in the short grass kilt worn by Maori warriors, peered over the railing. Blue-black spirals and dots meant to represent a warrior’s facial tattooing sloppily covered the nut-brown skin of his face. Clearly the leader of the youthful marauders, the little boy shouted, “That’s the old password. You have to give us the new one!”

Grinning, Jack stared into hazel eyes exactly like his own, and the child grinned back, shaking his long honey-blond hair from his face. “If you didn’t change the password every ten minutes, I’d have a better chance of remembering it.”

“It’s wicked easy, Daddy!” chimed the sweetest voice Jack had ever heard, that belonging to a six-year-old girl who was too short to peer over the top of the railing, but whose sun-bronzed belly poked against the posts.

She pushed her forehead against a post, and long tendrils of her golden-brown hair floated on the warm breeze. Where the boy had his mother’s jumbled dialect, the little girl had more of her father’s Boston accent, which was refreshed every June, July, August and December, when she visited her grandparents, aunt, uncles and cousins in Nahant.

“Would you give me a hint, Thérèse?” Jack pleaded with the little hazel-eyed girl.

“It’s in Maori, Daddy, and—”

“Don’t tell him any more!” the eight-year-old warrior commanded, emphasizing the order by clapping a hand over Thérèse’s smile.

“Jason, you know my Maori is weak,” Jack complained. “Couldn’t you pick something in Italian?”

Thérèse peeled off her brother’s hand and pointed through the posts to something just beyond Jack. “Mommy’s coming! She’ll guess the password.”

Jack turned to see Lina strolling down the nikau-lined path, a ginger-eyed toddler with a mass of maple curls propped on her left hip. The nattering of the children high above him faded into empty noise as he watched her approach, and each step she took toward him carried him back to his favorite moment at the treehouse.

He’d just arrived on Darwin after a whirlwind week spent transferring his worldly goods to his parents and brothers. With nothing in hand other than the clothes he’d purchased with Lina and a one-way ticket to Darwin, he’d fled New England, and he’d stopped only when he found himself standing at the top of the treehouse stairs.

They had spent the next few days making up for all the kisses they owed each other. Now, eight years and four children later, as Lina stepped up to him to transfer their curly-haired son into Jack’s arms, Lina kissed him, and Jack figured that they were just about caught up.

“Harry and Beth are back from their swim at Tuanui Bay,” Lina said. “They’re changing back at Marchand Manor. Your parents and Anderson are already in town, so we can walk in together to meet them at the Taiko Café.” She frowned slightly at Jack’s disheveled appearance. “I thought you were going to change and dress the children.”

He tipped his head toward the treehouse. “I don’t know the password so I couldn’t get up to collect them.”

Lina looked up, counting heads and bellies. Jason and Thérèse were accounted for, as were their cousins, eight-year-old Harry Jr. and his five-year-old twin sisters, Constance and Corinne. With 18-month-old Heath in his father’s arms, Lina was one child short. “Where’s your sister?” she asked Jason.

“Charis is up here with us, Auntie Lina,” Constance said. She drew away from the railing for a second and returned pulling a three-year-old along with her.

“Charis,” Lina said, “why are you naked?”

“She’s always naked,” Harry Jr. laughed, himself one grass kilt short of copying Charis.

“Come on down, guys,” Jack said sternly, “so we can go to the house and get cleaned up and dressed to meet Grandma and Grandpa.”

As one, the children protested, stomping their feet and banging their makeshift weaponry against the railing.

“Have it your way, then.” Lina stepped over to the bottom of the staircase and keyed in a series of buttons on the electronic console embedded in one of the posts. The treehouse that had once been her primary residence had become her office after she married Jack and moved back into Marchand Manor. She’d tried to use the treehouse for an office, but as her tribe increased in number, so had its dominance of the treehouse. It was now the children’s favorite play area.

When she returned to Jack’s side and slipped an arm around him, she rather loudly said, “I suppose it’s just you, Heath and me meeting Grandma and Grandpa for ice cream this afternoon.” As she and Jack started away from the treehouse, Lina turned to wave at the warriors. “Jason, see to your little sisters and your cousins, darling.”

“We want ice cream, too!” the children clamored, Jason loudest of all. “Mom! Dad! We can’t get down, the gate won’t open!”

“I know.” Lina smiled up at the children, and as he watched her face, Jack felt his chest inflate with love for her.

“Let us down, Mommy,” Thérèse pleaded, her stern tone an exact imitation of Jack’s.

“Sure,” Lina said with a sly glance at Jack. “If you tell me the password.”

“What language is it?” Harry Jr. called down, his young face the spit and image of his father’s.

“English,” Lina answered, her eyes still on Jack. “I’ll give you a hint. It’s a boy or a girl.”

“How can a password be a boy or a girl?” Jason wondered aloud.

Jack wondered the same thing, at least until Lina lovingly ran a hand over her abdomen. Jack’s mouth fell open with a soft pop. Lina leaned around Heath to kiss one corner of Jack’s mouth.

“Bullseye?” Jack laughed weakly. “Again?”

Smiling broadly, Lina wrapped her arms around Jack’s waist and rested her head on his shoulder. “What did you expect?” she teased softly. “You run around half naked on this damned rock of ours, just waiting to seduce your unsuspecting wife, knowing full well that something like this could happen…”

Jack knew the rest of that speech, so he cut her off by touching his fingers to her jaw, and bringing her mouth to his. With their son, daughters, nieces and nephew chanting “Bullseye!” high above them, Jack and Lina kissed, sealing anew their devotion to each other and their growing family.

About the Author

Crystal Hubbard
is the author of the Winters Sisters series, which is comprised of
Suddenly You, Only You, and Always
You
and the Love Spectrum title
Crush.
She is also an award-winning children’s book author. The mother of four, Crystal resides in St. Louis, MO., where she enjoys cooking, tennis, fishing, yoga and mixed martial arts. Visit her online at
www.crystalhubbard.com
or e-mail her at
[email protected]
.