Blame It on Paradise (7 page)

“You’re a natural sailor, Jack.” Lina reclined on a chaise behind the captain’s wheel. She had changed into a black bikini made of little more than string and sinful wishes, and Jack had a little trouble minding his coordinates.

“I’ve always liked the water.” He spoke into the wind, breathing deeply of the salty air. “I grew up in South Boston, so I was always close to the harbor. I never got to sail boats like these back then, but I got out every chance I could with my overprivileged college pals.”

“That was then.” Lina propped herself up on her elbows and watched Jack’s back. “What about now?”

His shoulders sank a little. “I’m thirty-three years old and I have a corner office at a multibillion-dollar corporation. I’m on track to retire at forty-five and the first thing I intend to do is buy a small fleet of boats and start my own sailing school. Or maybe I’ll just buy a yacht and sail the world. Just me, the sea, and some good wood under my feet.”

The wistful longing in his voice did not fool Lina. “It sounds like a lonely life.”

“There hasn’t been much room for relationships in my line of work. The company comes first. Always.”

“No.”

Jack looked over his shoulder. “No what?”

Lina swung her long legs over the edge of the chaise and sat upright. “No,
you
should come first. Never place a company before yourself or the people you care about. A company can’t make you happy.”

He turned back to the water before him. “No, but it’s making me rich. Trust me, that’ll make me happy.”

“That’s all you people have ever cared about,” she muttered, her disdain obvious. “Even in this day and age, you people come to Darwin not to enjoy its beauty, but to try to claim resources you imagine can make you wealthy.”

A flush of guilty color traveled across Jack’s cheeks.

“This is precisely why no one likes white people, and why you’re so worried that the rest of us are going to do to you what you’ve done to us for centuries.”

“What are you talking about?” Jack squawked.

“You go where you’re not wanted and muck everything up,” Lina declared. “How many island people have gone to
your
lands throughout history and stolen
your
natural resources and enslaved the population?”

“I’ve never enslaved anyone!” Jack cried in alarm, completely caught off guard by her argument.

“You know what I mean,” Lina charged calmly. “
Your
people—”

“
Your
people,” he interrupted, “should have fought against intruders.”

“That’s always the answer, isn’t it? Fighting to establish not what’s right but who’s got the greater might.”

“You can’t fault European explorers for wanting to know more about the world,” Jack argued.

“They weren’t seeking knowledge,” Lina pointed out. “They wanted fortunes. White men risked life and limb traveling to the islands not with open hands to explore but to grab whatever they could to take back with them.”

“All those exploited islanders you’re referring to could have left to do the same thing,” Jack argued.

“They didn’t want to. They were happy right where they were. Perhaps if
your
people had come to the islands searching for happiness instead of wealth, the world wouldn’t be in such sorry straits now!”

“Stop with the ‘your people’ stuff, will you?” Jack said. “They’re
your
people, too, or haven’t you looked in a mirror lately? Your eyes…” All the fight drained from him as he contemplated the turbulent beauty of her sparkling eyes.

“Are you implying that I have white eyes?” she accused.

“You have beautiful eyes,” Jack sighed. “Not white. Not black. Just yours.” His gaze wandered over the rest of her. “And your skin…I love how it looks against mine, and the way it feels.” His tone softened, his words melting into the breeze. “I’m guilty, Lina. I came here to conquer this island, to find a fortune, just like you said. Instead…” he faltered, unsure if he wanted to confess anything further.

The gleaming blond hardwood of the deck kept its quiet as Lina moved to stand behind him. She slipped her arms around him and secretly delighted in the way he relaxed into her embrace. “My island has conquered you,” she finished for him.

“Something like that,” Jack admitted.

“This fortune you seek, Jack,” Lina started, “will it greet you with kisses every morning when you wake up on your ’round-the-world yacht? Will it caress you as you watch the sun sink into tropic seas? Will your riches give you a son with your golden hair, or a daughter with your lovely hazel eyes? No matter how much of it you acquire, your money won’t buy a thing that matters, Jack.”

He took his hand off the throttle to cover both of hers, which were clasped at his abdomen, atop the waistband of his new black surfer shorts. She was right. He admitted it, if only to himself. He wanted all of the things she’d mentioned, right down to the children. Only he wanted it all with someone truly special. Someone like…“Lina?”

She leaned around him, to face him. “Hmm?”

“How is it that some smart man hasn’t put a ring on your finger?”

She shrugged one shoulder. “Just lucky, I guess.”

“Are you against marriage?”

“Only to the men who’ve proposed to me.”

He tried not to imagine the number of hopeful paramours who would have wanted to bind her to them forever.

“I’ve seen too many lives ruined when men like you come to my island and marry women like me.”

“I think I should be offended.”

“Don’t be. It’s an inescapable fact that you and I are different.”

“You’re black and I’m white. So what? Underneath it all, we’re all the same.”

She scoffed. “You and I couldn’t be more different, Jack,” she said stubbornly. “Our differences run deeper than skin.”

“Lina, you don’t know me well enough to make judgments about who or what I am.”

“Do you love me, Jack?”

His heart skipped a long, hard beat in response to the unexpected question. His experience as a lawyer made it very easy for him to evade a wholly honest answer. “I don’t know you, Lina,” he offered.

“Do you respect me?”

“Of course.”

“Well, that’s all we need, isn’t it? Respect for one another. That alone will stop us falling into the same trap that so many other tourist-native partnerships tumble into.”

Confused by his need to argue on the side of love, Jack fine-tuned his argument. “What about Levora and her husband? She came here to research a thesis but fell in love, and she stayed.”

Her arms still around him, Lina positioned herself between Jack and the dashboard. “Errol and Levora are different. They’re the exception, not the rule. Levora had to come to the other side of the world to find the person she was meant to spend the rest of her life with. She hadn’t planned on it or even wished for it. It just happened. It was that easy. Most of us aren’t that lucky. Most of us waste far too much time hoping to find someone merely good enough. I won’t ever settle for just good enough. I want perfect. I want true love.”

A hot blush warmed her cheeks. Fearing that she’d said too much, she ducked beneath Jack’s left arm and went to the opening in the brass railing surrounding the deck. She stood on one of the swim steps for a moment, a hand braced on either side of the rail, before she dove cleanly into the water. Long, graceful strokes carried her away from the yacht, and she rolled and turned in the water as a creature truly borne to it.

Jack watched her tumble, float and twirl, and then climb back on board. Envy clogged his chest as he watched the sea trickle over her skin, tracing every curve and hollow. The breeze subtly altered the landscape of her body, raising goose pimples and hardening soft peaks. She reclined on her chaise, her arms over her head, and the sun licked droplets of seawater from her. Nature made love to her the way Jack wanted to, and helped him see how plainly she had no need of a husband, or any other man. Especially one who would go back to his own side of the world, leaving her with no more than his respect.

He inhaled a deep, pensive breath through his nose and stepped closer to the dashboard. Lina’s questions had affected him strangely; he felt as if his skull had suddenly turned transparent and she’d picked through his brain to find his innermost desires.

The oddly affecting moment on the boat didn’t stall their afternoon, but it certainly changed its tone and timbre. Lina maintained a quiet, perhaps even cautious distance. At sunset, as she walked him back to his homestay with mango-flavored shaved ices in hand, she seemed lost in her own thoughts.

“Would you have dinner with me?” Jack asked once they were standing on the road in front of his cottage. “I could take you to The Crab and Nickel.” He took a step closer to her. “Or we could stay in. I have no idea what my hosts have on the menu, but everything served so far has been excellent.”

She absently hooked her fingers over the waistband of his trunks, but then quickly snatched them away. “I’m sorry,” she said through a raging blush, “I shouldn’t have done that.”

Jack laughed softly. There’s something more dangerous about sunlight than moonlight, he reasoned. At night, there had been no secrets, no inhibitions between them. Never had he questioned his motives, intents or desires. Everything actually made sense. Daylight made the rest of the world more apparent, made it too easy to recognize how different their lives were, and even easier to see that eventually…soon…he would leave. Daylight provided clarity, with each brush of skin and each glance eliciting a pinprick of uncertainty. Jack suspected that the unobscured view forced Lina to question exactly what they were doing.

That thought saddened him in a way he had never experienced.

“I can’t join you for dinner tonight, Jack. I have plans. It’s a birthday party. I have to be there since the whole thing was my—”

“You don’t have to explain,” he said, cutting short the sudden awkwardness between them. He took a few steps back, toward the door of the cottage.

Lina flipped a heavy lock of her damp hair from her face. She felt the need to explain anyway. “It’s for a good friend. I can’t miss it.”

“I understand. Have a good time.”

She peered at him, mildly concerned by his diffident tone. A peculiar feeling rose within her. Confusion? Alarm? Regret? Spending the day with Jack had been too comfortable. Too pleasant. It had illustrated just how hard it would be to do the inevitable—to say goodbye to him for good. If the difficulty of this parting was any indication of how painful it would be to say goodbye to him when he left Darwin, perhaps it was best to end things, for good and for all, right now.

“Will I see you later?” Jack hoped that he didn’t sound as eager as he felt.

She hedged her answer. “The party might run late. It’s a beach thing, and they get out of hand sometimes. I should go now.”
Even though I don’t want to.
“To get ready,” she added, buying herself another two seconds of his company.

Jack stared at his sandals. “Goodnight, Lina.”

She hesitated, then quietly said, “Goodbye, Jack.”

He winced at the finality of her words.

She turned and started down the palm-lined road, and Jack stood on his front pathway watching her, hoping that she would at least look back.

CHAPTER 6

Lina hurried away from Jack’s homestay, chanting under her breath, the hem of her sheer black cover-up tickling her knees as she went. “Don’t look back, don’t you
dare
look back,” she whispered. She picked up her speed and practically raced around a turn, and only then did she halt and spin around. Her view of Jack’s place was hidden by dense foliage and a cluster of giant rocks, one of which she slumped against.

She pressed her fingers to her lips as if she could re-seal her goodbye to Jack behind them. It had been such a simple thing, and in the moment, so easy. But now, only seconds later, her soul smarted at the thought of never seeing him again. How could she enjoy a party when all she wanted to do was sprint back to Jack’s homestay, throw open the door and fling herself into his arms?

Dropping the half-melted slush of her shaved ice, she spun to hammer both fists against the unyielding boulder. “How could I have been so stupid?” she asked between gritted teeth. She’d always prided herself on being too smart, too sensible, to fall for visitors to the island. Tall, handsome foreigners were good for one thing only, and to be fair, Jack was better at that than any of the other men she’d dallied with. Not that she had a large basis for comparison, but Jack truly was a rare sort. Spending the day with him had been as stimulating and enjoyable as their nights had been, and that more than anything else had scared her into bidding him goodbye.

Even if he were on Darwin for more than a few days, there was no way their relationship could survive. Jack was an outsider, one born and bred to the hurry and noise of an American city. He was no more capable of transplanting his life to Darwin than a shark could adjust to life in a tree. The rational part of her brain understood that what she and Jack had been enjoying was the taste of the unknown, and with it the freedom to indulge physical desires made more delicious by the knowledge that it was all temporary. That there would be a clean break at the end with no penalties to pay, no genuine emotion to bog down the experience.

But when she closed her eyes and pictured Jack, Lina knew that it was already too late. In trying so hard to give him nothing meaningful, she’d already given him too much. “Just like a silly island girl,” she admonished herself, topping it with a kick to the rock that would surely raise a bruise on her big toe. But in all fairness, not all the native-foreigner couplings had resulted in heartache. All she had to do was look around the crowded town center to see the results of the intermarriages between the Japanese, Africans, South Americans and Europeans who had settled on Darwin throughout its history.

But Jack hadn’t come to find love, and Lina doubted that he’d stay, even if he’d stumbled upon it by accident. He’d come to Darwin to find fortune. He hadn’t explained how, and Lina had an aversion to mixing business and pleasure, so she hadn’t inquired further. But she hadn’t missed Jack’s message that money meant more to him than anything else. That fact alone was enough to forge a gap between them that Lina wouldn’t be willing to bridge.

She shook her head, as if she could so easily clear Jack from it, and started back down the road. “I’ve got a party to prepare for,” she told herself. “That’ll be just the thing to get my head right again.” She picked up her ice cup to dispose of it properly. “If I can get through tonight without Jack, I’m sure I’ll be able to let him go.”
Without letting him take the biggest part of my heart with him.

* * *

“A beach thing,” Jack indignantly huffed as he loosely tucked in the white linen shirt Lina had helped him pick out earlier on Main Street. “The whole damn island is beach.”

He slipped his wallet into the rear pocket of the formless cotton trousers he’d acquired along with the shirt. He also wore his new hiking sandals, another one of Lina’s selections, when he left the cottage, presumably for an evening stroll.

An evening stroll along the beach, of course.

Following his clumsy parting with Lina, he’d tried to dull his loneliness by throwing himself back into work, his reason for being on Darwin in the first place and always a reliable point of retreat. There were always e-mails to answer, voice mail to retrieve—surely from Reginald Wexler—and most important, a battle plan to strategize before his Monday meeting with J.T. Marchand. The endless river of job-related obligations had gotten him through his breakups with Clio and Erica, but this time, as he’d sat on the patio staring at the uncovered dinner platter his hosts had delivered to him, his work had seemed as bland and unappealing as watching saw grass grow. He hadn’t even mustered enough interest to turn his cell phone back on.

He’d left both his appetite and his cell phone on the patio and gone inside to take a long hot shower. Memories of what he’d done with Lina the last time he’d been in the shower led to a longer, colder dousing that convinced him that he needed to get out of the cottage.

He’d quickly dressed, musing on the prank-playing nature of Fate. He’d left a particularly nasty New England snowstorm with no clue that he’d fly into the arms of an island goddess who’d seduce him in both body and mind. Boston was mean, chaotic, gray and cold beside the tranquil blues, greens and warmth of Darwin.

The thought of going back to Boston made Jack’s neck stiffen, so he shoved it away as he exited his homestay and started along the dirt road in the direction that Lina had taken earlier.

His hands in his pockets, Jack strolled in no special hurry with no idea where the torch-lit road would take him or if Lina would be at the end of it. Instead of enjoying the wind-hewn beauty of the bracken surrounding him, he used his observation skills on the foot traffic around him. The people walking on the right side of the road, toward the town center, moved at a leisured pace, the same one Jack had developed in the course of his day with Lina.

An older couple walking in the opposite direction raised their hands in greeting as they approached Jack. His response was delayed, but he eventually nodded back. The blue-black spirals and dots of the older gentleman’s striking Maori facial tattoos, the
ta moko
Jack had read of briefly, had initially caught him off guard.

Five young men sharing the left side of the road with Jack hurried past him, laughing and joking. But for their thick Aussie accents, they reminded Jack of himself and his football teammates on spring break twelve years ago, when all they had to worry about was finding the next party. “S’cuse us, mate,” one of them said cheerfully when a corner of a red cooler carried by two of them grazed Jack’s leg. “Sorry, sir,” said the other one.

“No problem,” Jack said offhandedly, the younger man’s use of the word “sir” making him feel like an old man. Jack wasn’t so old that he couldn’t read certain clues. Whether it was Cape Cod, Daytona Beach or Darwin Island, Jack recognized the key piece of equipment needed for a beach party. He picked up his pace and followed the red cooler. It wasn’t until he heard distant laughter and music that he broke into an easy run and sped past his unwitting guides.

* * *

“Mr. Coyle-Wexler Representative,” said a voice behind Jack’s right shoulder. “It’s good to see you getting out and enjoying the island instead of chasing down J.T. Marchand.”

Jack had been watching the festivities from a reasonable distance, within the cover of a stand of nikau palms. He stepped into the open at the greeting from Marchand’s receptionist. “Good evening, Miss…?” He felt the slightest twitch of shame that he’d never gotten her name despite his interactions with her.

“Kiri,” she said with a coquettish tilt of her head. It was a practiced move that allowed her long black hair, which she wore loose, to fall from one shoulder, revealing a narrow floral bandeau top that barely contained the ampleness of her bosom. “And do you have a name other than Coyle-Wexler Representative?”

“You can call me Jack.”

“Now that we’re finally on a first name basis, Jack, let’s enjoy the party.” She looped her arm through his and pulled him toward the buffet tables. Jack’s appetite roared to life at the sight of the strange and colorful foods before him. He had sampled exotic cuisine before; it was one of the perks of work-related travel. But he recognized none of the foods displayed before him. He was grateful for Kiri’s patience in introducing him to the new fruits and vegetables.

She plucked a few black-purple orbs from their arrangement upon a sheet of paperbark. “These are Illawarra plums.” She offered to feed one to him, but he took it from her and fed himself. The sweet flesh was firm, and a rich berry flavor exploded in his mouth. Kiri pointed to each fruit as she described it. “The pale lemon ones are aspen fruit, and these yellow-green fruits are Kakadu plums.”

Jack glanced at an arrangement of halved kiwifruits. He was very familiar with the green ones; his mouth began to water in memory of his introduction to the gold variety. He grabbed a couple of bunya bunya nuts, examined them closely, and then popped one into his mouth. After chewing it for a moment, he said, “They look like a cross between hazelnuts and macadamias, but they taste like chestnuts.” He took a few more with him as Kiri led him farther down the long table.

He sampled the native raspberries, which were smaller, fuzzier and juicier than the variety he knew from home, and the velvet succulence of the sweet flesh reminded him that he’d gone in search of Lina. He bided his time with Kiri, hoping for an opening to bring her up.

The fruits gave way to a raw bar complete with oyster shuckers. One of the nut-brown young men shook back a head full of long, wavy black hair before addressing Jack. “You’re the bloke at the Te Taniki homestay,” he said in an accent that made Jack think of the Australian sitting behind him on his flight from Sydney to Christchurch.

Since he was slurping down one of Darwin’s famous sweet rock oysters, Jack could only nod.

“Well, that’s al’right!” the shucker said merrily.

Jack discarded his empty shell in the bin provided. “This is some hootenanny,” he remarked, taking up another oyster and scanning the crowd for Lina. “Looks like the whole island turned out.”

“ ‘Hootenanny?’ ” The oyster shucker nudged his co-worker with an elbow. “Did ya hear that, mate? ‘Hootenanny!’ ” He turned back to Jack. “You Yanks sure got an odd turn or two of phrase.” He laughed as he wiped his hands on the front of his apron before he untied it and balled it up. “Good to see you Kiri, doll. It’s off to the shed with a get in behind to the dog. The girls need milking, so it’s into my gummies and I’ll catch you later.” With a final nod and smile at Jack, the young man leaped over the table and trotted away.

“Could you translate that?” Jack asked Kiri under his breath.

“He said goodbye.”

“You Darwinians sure have an odd turn of phrase or two,” Jack muttered.

“I’m Fijian,” Kiri told him. “And oyster boy Derek was born in Tasmania. Darwin seduces, Jack. It becomes home, no matter where you were born.” She began heaping a plate with lobster, scallops, eel, crayfish and
paua
—abalone, in Jack’s part of the world. “The local seafood, our
kaimoana
, is unrivaled,” she assured him. She offered her plate to him, and lifted a tiny red crustacean to his mouth.

“You eat baby lobsters here?” Jack wondered, politely refusing the dainty creature. “That’s illegal where I come from.”

“This is a yabby. A freshwater crayfish. It has a beautiful, toasty flavor.”

Deciding to stick with what looked most familiar, Jack opted to sample an Australian scallop served on its pearly purple half shell.

“Who’s the host of this party?” he asked.

Kiri’s full lips drew into a smirk. “J.T. Marchand.”

Jack’s eyebrows rose. “Who’s it for?”

“Sally Huatare. She’s head housekeeper at Marchand Manor.”

Jack scanned the crowd with as much feigned disinterest as he could muster with Kiri tugging at him and speaking nonstop at his elbow. There were plenty of men around, but none who fit the image Jack had formed of the Stanford-educated attorney and demagogue of a small island kingdom. Most of the men on the beach were too young, buff and undressed, or too old, relaxed and tattooed to be J.T. Marchand. Jack’s brow wrinkled in frustration as he tried to reconcile the reclusive man of power he’d researched with the generous employer who would throw an extravagant beach party for a servant. Jack decided to bide his time and wait for a suitable opening in which he could ask Kiri to point out Marchand.

She led him farther along the buffet. Barbequed meats and vegetables flavored with cinnamon, cumin, ginger, saffron and even vanilla assailed his senses before he encountered the sweet brilliance of the dessert table.

“This is passion fruit tart,” Kiri told Jack as she tried to slip a thin wedge between his lips. He took it from her, all the while eyeing the other desserts arranged among fragrant and colorful blossoms set upon beds of ice. “Levora Solomon’s rose petal ice cream,” Kiri said, pointing to a pale pink confection before introducing the rest of the desserts. “Pineapple sorbet, cinnamon ice cream with poached pears and raspberry vacherin.” Kiri selected the last dessert for herself. “The vacherin is my favorite. It’s a meringue shell filled with fruit salad and topped with raspberry sorbet.” She spooned a luscious dollop of whipped cream onto the plate beside the meringue shell. “It’s paradise on a plate, Jack.”

Male and female servers, some topless and in native dress and others in traditional Western beachwear, chatted amiably with the party guests. The line between worker and guest blurred with the servers leaping over tables to join the group dancing in the sand apart from the buffet.

“There are so many people here,” Jack mentioned casually. “Sally must be pretty popular.”

“Sally is friend or kin to just about everyone here.” Kiri leaned closer to Jack and used her spoon to point out a short, dark-haired woman who appeared to be about Levora’s age. “I grew up with her oldest daughter. She’s in America now, living in California. She went to school there. J.T. paid her way through college.”

Jack leaped, inwardly thanking Kiri for the perfect opening. “Is J.T. Marchand still here? You don’t have to introduce me. If you could just point—”