Seductive Knight (2 page)

“Oh, yes, I do. And you know who he is. He gave you that turtle.”

“Gawain would never date you. You’re just a friend.”

“Man, you’re one stupid girl. Stop ogling him, boney knees. He’s my boyfriend.” Reina tried to snatch Alex’s new turtle, but Alex was quick to dodge her long fingers painted with red nail polish. “We both went to the store to buy this ugly thing, you know. He said you’re such a child.”

“I
am
a child!”

“Yeah. The kind who would write a letter with a bunch of bad spelling. For your information,
please
is spelled with one
E
, not two. You look surprised. Dumbo, I know about your letter. Gawain told me.” Reina glared before grabbing Alex’s turtle.

Alex fought her, but Reina pulled the stuffed toy hard from her grip. “Give it back!” She quickly scanned the room for her mom, but she was nowhere around.

Laughing Reina just shook her head. “You have a crush on Gawain that you wrote a letter asking him to marry you. What a dumb butt you are. Well, he felt sorry for you. He said you look like a twig with super big eyes like a bush monkey.”

“I don’t care. Give me my turtle.” Everyone was too busy having fun to notice that Reina held her turtle above the punch bowl. “Don’t you dare!”

“Oh, I dare.”

Alex watched in horror as the turtle made a
plunk
sound when it landed inside the bowl. Shocked, she couldn’t say anything while Reina laughed and then walked away.

All of the adults were busy talking, none of them noticed Alex run up to her room with her dripping soggy turtle. Her one and only best friend Maria followed her. Maria suggested they should wring the turtle, but it might ruin the soft material. She didn’t know how long she sat on her bed crying when she heard a familiar irritating laugh.

“That’s the B.I.T.C.H.” Maria huffed. “Let’s go out to the balcony.”

She followed Maria. They looked down the balcony. There, they saw Reina and Gawain holding hands, laughing…kissing. In an instant, before she even thought about what she was doing she aimed her turtle on Reina’s head then wrung it. For a briefest moment, she watched as the orange punch dripped on the B.I.T.C.H’s shoulder.

A wicked scream followed and floated up to where they were. Gawain looked up. He saw them. Alex grinned at him. Hands on his hips, he frowned, then shook his head. She replied by sticking her tongue out at him. He scowled then took Reina’s hand and pulled her away.

She felt victorious against the B.I.T.C.H, but she wasn’t done avenging her turtle. Reina would pay.

While everyone sat at the long table eating the birthday cake, she crawled underneath armed with tubes of paint. When she located Gawain’s foot, which was getting a good rub from Reina’s sandaled feet, she opened a blue tube, then squeezed out the paint all over his shoe. She did the same thing on the other one and even squirted some on Reina’s foot.

When she heard Reina gasp, Alex covered her mouth to stifle her laughter.

Gawain’s head poked from beneath the table. “imp,” he scowled.

She smiled, although she hated it when he scowled at her. While he stared at her, she opened another tube and emptied it on his already ruined shoe.

“What’s your problem, imp?”

She huffed. “Your girlfriend is ugly.”

“Alex, stop.”

“She is.”

“Why are you acting like this?”

“Because of you. You have stupid eyes. You see only ugly girls. Go away. I hate you. I don’t ever want to see you again.”

He disappeared after that, without finishing his cake. She guessed he went somewhere with Reina. She remembered telling herself that she didn’t want to see him again.

She hadn’t for a long time. Eleven years, actually.

Chapter Two

The airport’s waiting area was no longer crowded. Good. Alex didn’t really like the crowd. It was stifling. She couldn’t remember Seattle-Tacoma Airport to be this big. But what did she expect? Airports were supposed to be big.

Her Godfather, Baskerville, was supposed to pick her up. She hoped he’d come soon. She hated waiting.

Alex remained on her seat, her hand on her stomach. God, she was so nervous, she could almost taste bile. She hoped she wouldn’t throw up her last meal from the plane all over the floor.

It seemed so quick. One minute she was saying goodbye to the family she had learned to love, and then suddenly, they were miles and miles apart. She missed Palawan already.

Just a small island in the Philippines, Palawan had been her home for the past eleven years. She’d lived there longer than the time she had spent in United States. To her, she was a tourist here, not a returning resident.

She wished she didn’t have to come back here. She’d made a promise, though, and no way would she ever break it. Sighing, she shifted from her seat. She’d known this time would come, to face her nightmare. Still, she’d failed to prepare himself emotionally. Her brother, Ema, wanted to come to keep her company. Unfortunately, the United States embassy refused to give him a visa because he didn’t have money or properties to show that he would go back to the Philippines and not be able to stay in America illegally. It sucked to be poor.

The one-room house she’d shared with Nanni and Ema, the one that creaked whenever the wind blew from the ocean, swayed when the typhoon whipped the village dancing to its tune, was a haven she and Mom had found when she was just ten. Now, she left its confines to face what Mom had run away from eleven years ago. Would she find a place to watch the stars at night in Orcas Island where she would be staying? Would she find answers to the nagging questions that now filled her head? Was it too late to straighten what had been bent for such a long time?

Eleven years.

It had been that long since she’d left this country with her mother. Now she was back. The reason? To justify her mother’s action and to find answers about what happened that horrible night.

She focused her mind on what she needed to do and what she expected to happen, but her mind was so tired from too much thinking.

Alex slipped her feet off her shoes, then pushed them underneath her seat. Oh, it felt so good to wiggle her toes and feel the cold floor. She’d never been a fan of shoes. On the island, she walked barefoot all the time.

A middle-aged man walked by her. He smiled and she waved.

It seemed everyone had cell phones in hand. She wished she had one, too. An officer with a dog on a leash came close to where she sat.

“Hey, puppy.”

The black and tan dog with ears sticking out looked at her and sniffed her bag. She was about to pet it when the officer pulled him away quickly.

“Sorry.” The officer smiled. “Are you waiting for someone?”

“Yes.”

The officer looked around. “I’ll be here for another hour. If your ride doesn’t show up, let me know. I’m Connor Buchanan.” He reached in his pocket and pulled out a business card.

“Thank you for your offer, Officer Buchanan.”

Officer Buchanan nodded, but he didn’t make a move to leave. He kept on staring until his dog pulled on the leash. Still, while the dog walked ahead of him, he kept looking back. Alex almost laughed aloud when he bumped into a loaded cart.

She thought of her dog, Keeko. He was a mixed breed that Ema had found left alone on one of the islands, skin and bones, weak and not trusting anyone. Alex kept Keeko until the dog learned to trust her and friendship bloomed. Now, he was a healthy and rambunctious dog that would eat anything they put in his coconut bowl. He slept beneath her bed every night and would stay there until she woke up. Keeko, however, wouldn’t go in her room unless she was there. He followed her everywhere like a protector. She would never forget how Keeko jumped into the water to follow the boat she was in when she left the island. Ema had to swim after him. Sweet banana, she missed him.

Alex rubbed her forehead. When she and her mom found out her Dad had died in a plane crash, sadness that she thought would never go away settled in her chest. Then, she lost her mother, too. It took a long time before she could finally wake up in the morning without feeling the pain of losing her. Now, being here felt like she had lost Nanni and Ema, too. And yes, her dog. She didn’t like the feeling. And she didn’t like waiting!

Come on Baskerville. Where are you?

The sooner she talked to Baskerville, the faster she’d be able tie all the loose ends she had left behind. Which meant, the quicker she could go back to the Philippines. Now, if only Baskerville would show up now.

Another announcement that a plane had landed made her sigh heavily.

She would be staying with her godfather, Ben Baskerville. She remembered Baskerville vividly. He looked like Santa Claus with thick white beard and a belly that shook whenever he laughed. His shiny bright eyes seemed able to see if she had been good or bad. As her godfather, he never missed her birthdays. In addition, if she remembered it right, he was also friends with Judge Arthur Knight, who was Gawain’s father.

Nanni had contacted Baskerville a month before she came here. When he replied, surprise was evident in his letter. He asked so many questions in his thick letter, but Nanni gave him just enough information to appease his curiosity. She also told Baskerville to keep Alex’s presence unknown to anyone.

When Mom was alive, she had told Nanni that she could trust Baskerville. He’d been a friend for years and could be trusted with the information about what happened in the years that she was gone. He must wait, however, until Alex arrived in the US. That part must come from her.

Baskerville understood. He instructed her to be careful and never share any information with anyone. No worries there. She had no friends here to talk to anyway. They’d all been gone since she left. What she’d been wondering, though, had been whether Baskerville shared the information about her arrival to Arthur Knight. They were friends, always meeting for lunch and sharing notes about their jobs. That was long time ago, though. Everyone changed.

Staying with Baskerville sounded cool, but she’d rather stay with her friend, Luke. She knew him—well, more than Baskerville. The idea about staying with him, though, didn’t sit well with Nanni. So old-fashioned in many ways, Nanni didn’t think that it was a good idea. A single woman, she said, shouldn’t live—even for a short time—with a single man under one roof. It wasn’t right, she added. Maybe in the olden days, she thought.

She’d met Luke when she was sixteen and he a high school graduate doing his mission for his church. Since then, they’d been friends and he had been the force behind her education, one who badgered her about online classes and demanded that she finish her course and come back to the US with a degree. He also filled the bookshelf in Nanni’s family room with books that didn’t go to waste.

Foreign languages, biography, geography, math, and Etiquette in Society, in Business, in Politics and at Home by Emily Post published in 1922—these had occupied her time on the island. The latter though, fascinated her. What the English thought of as good etiquette rules were foolish to her estimation. They were constricting. Believing that Alex should behave like a young woman should and never do anything that would ruin her name, Nanni had insisted that she follow Post’s teachings. Trust and respect, Nanni said, were easily earned if you showed others that you deserved them. And to do that was to act proper.

For the sake of avoiding arguments, Alex tried to act as proper as she could be. But when Nanni was away, she often let her spirit run free. She frolicked, swam, ran, climbed trees, and flirted with boys a handful of times—until Ema put a stop to it.

Molly wanted you to grow up to be a respectable lady, with education and good background. She didn’t want you to grow up to be like her.
Those were Nanni’s words. Almost like a mantra she had to listen to everyday.

Grow up like her mother? Of course she wanted to be like Mom. Her mom, after all, had been nothing but great. Then of course, she knew why Nanni instilled in her brain that she shouldn’t follow her mother’s footsteps. Mom had traversed a muddy path. People whispered her name with disgust and mockery. She bet Reina’s mother, Mrs. Adams, had been one of those people.

Alex sighed. She would never do anything considered inappropriate. If she had to act and speak like a lady to earn everyone’s high opinion, then she must. Even though her mind rebelled against it. She didn’t want to be anything but herself, living on the island with Ema and Nanni and their friends, frolicking in the water, laughing without care about what other people would think, walking barefoot and without worries, hanging out with her Filipina friends at the beach singing and dancing. Yeah, that would be wonderful if she could live like that.

Holy coconut. She’d been here only an hour and she suffered from homesickness already. Once she was settled, she’d call Luke. She missed him, too.

Ema believed Luke had a
thing
for her. She laughed at that. Mormons were naturally friendly to anyone. And it was nice to know that she had a friend that she could call in this big country. She chewed her lower lip and thought about Baskerville. He must be eager to see her, too.

Alex straightened her back and let out a groan Nanni would call unladylike. Sitting on a cramped seat in the plane had worsened her already tensed back. And her feet! They ached so much. She stood up, imagining she was still in Nanni’s house walking on the smooth bamboo floor and digging her feet on the hot sandy beach. Sadness gripped her heart. She wanted to go home.

Feeling the homesickness envelop her, she sat down and quickly diverted her attention to the family struggling to push their overloaded cart. Whatever they had packed in those travelling bags could fill Nanni’s house! She looked down at her own bag. She’d brought enough clothes for few weeks.

Few weeks. She could handle that. It would be tough, though.

Come on Baskerville. Where are you?