smiled and picked up the toddler pulling on her skirt and waving a piece of something sticky. “Good night, dear. Those are lovely earrings, by the way. I once had a pair just like them.”
Self-consciously Ellie touched an earring, murmured, “Thank you,” and added another good-night.
See, she thought. Ordinary. Mass produced. As Gram says, I’m too suspicious.
She let herself out the side entrance separating her brother’s apartment from the house next door, her overexposed senses relaxing when the closed gate muted the music and laughter, and intervening trees shut out the colored party lights. A three-quarter moon gilded the night with silver.
It was, indeed, a beautiful evening. Too beautiful to go indoors just yet, even though she was tired, Ellie thought. The moonlight would be lovely on the water, and she remembered a small, secluded cove only a block away.
Chad had shown it to her earlier. Though native Hawaiians often went there, he said, mainlanders seldom used it, probably because other beaches were bigger, sandier, more picturesque. The waters of the cove were known to be dangerous, too. Signs warned against swimming.
No problem. Ellie didn’t plan to swim.
In moments she’d walked down the quiet residential street ending at a stretch of pale sand bordering a moonstruck sea. A dead end leading to paradise.
Only in Hawaii.
Ellie touched one of the silver earrings in her ears and smiled a little as she imagined Grammie’s chuckle in the breeze rustling through the trees behind her.
Slipping off her sandals, she stood at the edge of the water and gazed out at the sea before her, its wavelets liquid pearls lapping at her feet.
Bliss.
Nona watched Ellie slip out the side gate.
Interesting, she thought, her gaze swinging to the small carving ruling its hibiscus kingdom across the way. But hibiscus were merely decorative. They had no power. Plumeria, now…
Taking her time, the toddler still riding her ample hip, Nona strolled over to give the carving a closer inspection. Then, with a low sudden laugh, she whipped the plumeria leis from its neck and placed them around the neck of the child.
There. That ought to do it.
Daniel looked around in disbelief.
The party had disappeared. The music was silent. Heck, the whole back garden was gone. He was…
He was on a beach.
Wait a minute! He was at the cove!
White sand shaped like a crescent moon cupping a bump in the Pacific; the oddly shaped tamarisk tree over there…. He knew this place, all right.
Sure enough, some distance away and picked out by bright moonlight, he saw the sign sticking up from the sand. He didn’t have to be any closer to know exactly what it said.
DANGER NO SWIMMING STAY OUT OF THE WATER.
The damned thing’s too small, he thought bitterly. And damned near worthless. This place needs an electrified fence around it, not a puny little hand-lettered sign. Twenty-four-hour guard dogs ought to patrol the area, trained to drag people away if they came within a hundred feet of the water.
Better yet, some civic-minded citizen should fill it in with cement, pave it over and make it a parking lot. The cove’s very existence invited tragedy.
What if someone couldn’t read that paltry notice—or was too stupid to recognize a warning when they read one?
Scowling at the distant, slightly tilted sign, Daniel angrily forked his fingers through his hair.
And stilled.
Inch by careful inch, he lowered his hand to stare at his fingers, still splayed as they’d been in his hair.
Hair?
Not daring to hope, he reached up again—actually raised his arm and hand—and lightly touched the top of his head. Against his palm he felt the crisp pelt of his…hair.
But as he again stared at his hand in awe, a small movement just beyond caught his attention, and Daniel lifted his head sharply. Someone besides himself was on the beach.
A woman, he realized, sitting on the sand, arms clasping her knees as she stared out over the sea. Her hair, the same color as moonlight, lifted slightly in the breeze. The woman from Tom and Janie’s party.
And she sat within inches of the water.
Ready to warn her, Daniel took a step, only to become aware of what he’d just done. Looking down at himself, his own wonder captivated him again.
He still wore his boxers, he saw. And…he fought an urge to laugh wildly…his money belt! Had anything else about him changed?
His bare chest and flat stomach looked no leaner, no fuller. His legs were as muscled, as much from walking a thousand miles of hospital corridor as from deliberate exercise. Near the small toe of one bare foot ran the thin line of a scar he’d had since he was twelve.
It was his body all right. His arms, his legs, what he assumed was his face. Nothing about it was different. And he had moved!
The thought brought him back to the present with a thump.
The woman! While he’d been checking himself over, she had risen from her seat on the sand and now swished one foot in the tiny wavelets washing the shore.
“Hey! Don’t do that!”
A part of him marveled at the sound of his voice echoing over the beach, but this time Daniel didn’t take time to enjoy it. He headed toward the woman at a dead run.
She turned a startled face in his direction, dropped her sandals and ran, too.
Away from him.
Her action stopped Daniel in his tracks.
Women didn’t used to run from him. Did he not have his same face after all?
But the silly woman continued running down the beach, her moonlit hair streaming behind her—each frantic step splashing in the shallow water of the shoreline, sometimes at its edge, sometimes a little deeper.
Daniel pelted after her again. Whatever hid in the waters of this cove was dangerous. Stay out of the Water the sign said.
An order, not a warning.
The woman ran like a deer, but in the wrong direction.
She was afraid of him, he guessed, and if she’d just aim toward the trees or toward the houses beyond, he’d leave her alone. He had other things to think about.
But in her panic, she raced down the shoreline, her tracks weaving in and out of the shallow, gently breathing water.
So he tackled her.
