know me better,” she called from her room. “It’s sort of a tradition here in the islands. To the children, close family friends are called Aunty.” She chuckled. “You want to be an uncle?”
“That’s not necessary,” he said. “Mr. Marco is better than Mr. Smith, though.” He groaned, rubbing his face as though trying to wake from a bad dream. “Are you seriously trying to convince me that I was using a phony name when I was here before?”
“Yes, Marco. We all knew you as Marco Smith, and probably no one over twelve bought it for a minute. But that’s the way things are here. If you wanted to be a Smith, everyone was okay with that. We’re easy.”
He grunted. “It must be confusing to a little guy like Eddie,” he noted more to himself than to her.
“Maybe.” She sighed. “Poor Leila—their mom. She’s having a hard time of it since her husband went missing. And Jilly has pretty much become the nanny for the babies.”
“There are more of them?” he said, then winced at the horror he’d allowed to show in his tone.
“Besides Jilly and Eddie?” she responded. “Two more. Jamu is eight months and Ali is about ten.” She poked her head out and grinned at him. “Here in the islands, we consider children a blessing, not a burden. It does change your outlook.”
“I suppose so,” he murmured, but he wasn’t really listening. Memories of another little boy came tumbling back into his heart and he turned away, fighting it. A little boy named Carlo who had been the child of a woman he was pretty seriously dating at one time. When she’d decided to move on to other relationships, he’d lost his connection to the boy, and it had hurt more than he’d ever thought possible. That was a painful chapter in his past, a chapter he didn’t want to revisit. If he had to lose a period of his life to amnesia, why couldn’t it have been that one?
He glanced at Shayna as she came out of the bedroom. She didn’t know about little Carlo, of course. No matter how close they had become before, he knew he wouldn’t have told her about Carlo. Setting his jaw, he pushed thoughts of the little boy he’d cared so much about away and turned his mind to the woman in front of him.
She’d changed into denim capris and a bright Hawaiian shirt and he had a moment of regret that the naked stomach was gone. But she’d pulled her hair back into a ponytail and she looked downright adorable anyway. Good enough to kiss. Only she didn’t have that “Hey, why don’t you kiss me?” look in her eyes that a man liked to see before he made that move. So he let the moment pass.
“I’ll bet you were a tomboy,” he remarked, looking her over. “All you lack are the freckles on the nose.” His eyebrows rose as he surveyed her feet. “But I hope you’re not planning on hiking or climbing any trees today,” he said.
She lifted her chin. “Why not?”
“Flip-flops?” he said, looking askance. “You really want to drive around on your Vespa in those?”
He glanced pointedly at her feet and she flashed her sandals proudly.
“You call them flip-flops. Some people call them thongs. Here in the islands, we call them zoris and everybody wears them.”
“Not me,” he said stoutly.
She grinned. “Not yet,” she amended for him.
He couldn’t resist grinning back, then shook his head. There was so much about her he didn’t know. “Where are you from, Shayna?”
Something flashed in the depths of her blue eyes. He sharpened his own gaze, trying harder to read them, but whatever it was he’d noticed for just those few seconds proved elusive.
“What makes you think I wasn’t born right here on this island?” she challenged, her gaze clear as glass.
He shook his head slowly, taking in her various assets one by one. “I don’t buy it. You give off cosmopolitan vibes. You’ve been around. Haven’t you?”
“Have I?” she shot back, though a veil seemed to draw a shadow over her eyes. “That’s pure speculation and a pretty subjective evaluation.”
He shrugged. “It’s mine and I’m sticking to it.” He turned as she walked around him, as though keeping her pinned with his steely gaze and planning to reel her in eventually. “The question is, where?”
She sighed, avoiding him.
“The U.S., I’d say. East Coast. Maybe even New York. Hmm. Let me think…”
A look close to alarm swept across her face and she glanced up, pressed her lips together, and then shrugged in a sort of mini-surrender. “Okay. You’re right. I wasn’t born here.” She flashed him a stern look and grabbed her keys before she started out the door. “But I mean to die here. And that’s what counts.”
He followed, frowning. He didn’t get her at all. Why was she still avoiding every personal issue? “Just hold off on that for a while, okay?” he said wryly. “At least until we find my plans.”
“Don’t worry,” she said back over her shoulder. “You’ve got me for the duration.”
He didn’t bother to react. Anything he might have said would gain him nothing but scorn from her and he knew it. Still, he had to chuckle, deep inside. He had her, did he? Funny, it didn’t feel that way. It seemed more likely that she had him—over a barrel.
Fifteen minutes later, they were cruising down a winding road that threaded a trail between two junglelike thickets of tall, slender trees and opened out onto an endless white sand beach, rimmed with multiple coconut palms. The trees looked as though they would be reaching for the sky if it weren’t for those darned old trade winds bending them toward the ground.
“This is Tanachi Beach,” she told him as he dismounted from the scooter. “What do you think?”
He didn’t say anything for a moment. Slowly, he turned, taking it all in—the gleaming sand, the black rock formations, the crystal blue sea, the white foam of the waves pounding out on the reef.
“Wow,” he said softly, shaking his head.
She came up beside him, pleased with his reaction.
“We came here, you know. The second day you were on the island. We set a blanket down right over there and had a picnic lunch we’d brought from home.”
“Really.” He turned to look at her, bemused. “Why didn’t we bring along a picnic lunch this time?”
She met his gaze with a touch of defiance and decided to tell him the truth. “Because we’re not playing around with the idea of beginning a romance today,” she said firmly.
That set him back on his heels for a second, but he didn’t waver. “We aren’t?” he countered with a gleam of humor in his eyes. “Speak for yourself.”
She managed a simple glare before starting off toward the rocks. He followed her through the sand, and then they stood side by side and watched the water lap against the shore.
“So you’re telling me we did play around with that very idea when I was here before, aren’t you?”
