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The eyes, Ellie realized. The carvings at the Cultural Center didn’t have such wide awake eyes…eyes with a glint of mischief in them staring right back at her.
Ellie shook her head. Get real, woman!
She was just overtired. Overstimulated.
After working with no letup for the past couple of years, being around so many laughing partying people was tiring—even these gregarious Hawaiians, whose pleasure in the moment seemed to waft as naturally as the light tropical breeze.
Perhaps sensing this, Georgie, her young dancing partner, had brought her to this relatively secluded spot before leaving to fetch her a soft drink.
Dismissing the carving from her thoughts, Ellie found herself a seat on a low wall bordering the garden to await the child’s return.
Lush tropical blossoms perfumed the night, and she closed her eyes the better to enjoy their scent and the music and laughter from the party just beyond. She smiled to herself when she heard her brother’s full-bodied laugh.
And just like that, a dark smothering wave of loneliness washed over her.
On a sharp breath Ellie fought it back. This had happened a lot lately, and she was having none of it. She loved her life. She loved her job.
Okay, she needed this vacation. She was tired. Being alone, however, was a choice, not a tragedy.
Prickles shimmied up the back of her neck…. With a small gasp, Ellie’s eyes flew open.
Someone stared at her! She could feel their intense gaze. She also felt conspicuous and embarrassed at being observed in what she thought was a private moment.
Scanning the crowd, ready to coolly outstare whoever found her introspection so interesting, she could find no one looking her way, however.
Yet someone’s knowing observation kept her awareness on full alert.
Slowly, cautiously, Ellie turned her head…and came nose to nose with the crimson orifice of a hibiscus blossom, its golden pistil thrust forward in the flower version of a raspberry.
Startled, she drew back, only to laugh softly at her own paranoia. The rude hibiscus would pay for its impudence, though. Snapping it from its stem, Ellie hooked it over one ear, her fingers brushing one of her flower-shaped earrings in the process.
No sarong, Grammie, she thought, but I feel a hula coming on.
Still smiling, and about to turn away, she again started violently, this time with a small muffled shriek. Nestled among the blossoms and thick foliage, the tiki stared back at her, its carved face a study of violence, its eyes infinitely sad and lonely.
She leaped to her feet.
“Here’s your soda, Miss Ellie.”
Georgie stood beside her, offering an aluminum can, his face one big beam of gap-toothed smile.
“What? Oh. Uh, thanks, sweetie.”
Ellie took the soda gratefully and downed a healthy swig. From the corner of her eye, she checked out the carving.
The thing hadn’t moved a muscle, its wooden head still angled toward the spot where she’d been sitting. Only, she wasn’t sitting there anymore. The statue’s gaze wasn’t following her at all.
Time to leave. She’d be a certified basket case if she didn’t get back to Chad’s apartment and get some rest. Three days of back-to-back workshops at the convention in Honolulu and a busy day since her arrival at her brother’s apartment this morning made for one pooped, overimaginative tourist.
After dumping her luggage in his spare bedroom, Chad immediately whisked her off for a long drive to loop the island. When they returned, she’d played baseball with the kids next door and been invited by them and their grandmother to this party.
Now her busy day—heck, her busy week, busy year, busy decade—had caught up with her. She needed her bed.
When Georgie ran off to play with the other children, Ellie searched for her brother to tell him she was leaving. Chad was never difficult to locate. With his easygoing, always friendly personality, all she had to do was find the group with the most laughter.
Then she looked for her hosts, Janie and Tom Kamehana, to make her goodbyes, and finally went to Nona, the children’s grandmother who had invited her to the luau in the first place.
“You’re leaving us,” Nona said before Ellie could speak. The old woman took Ellie’s hand in her own brown one, the clasp warm and strong. “You’re tired,” she added.
Ellie smiled. “Yes. But I’ve had a wonderful time. Thank you for inviting me.”
“And your brother. All this time living right next door and I didn’t realize,” Nona said. She tilted her head, smiling wryly. “Careless of me.”
There wasn’t much Ellie could say to that. The old woman still held her hand.
“How did you like my garden ornament?”
Ellie strove for diplomacy. “Well, it was, uh—”
“Interesting, yes? I saw you looking at it.”
“Is it a tiki god?” Ellie asked cautiously, unsure of the manners involved with the direction the conversation had taken.
“I’m not sure,” the old woman replied. “A few years ago one of the children found the carving washed up on the beach of the cove and brought it home. I placed it in the garden. But it’s different from the usual, wouldn’t you say?”
Feeling completely out of her depth, Ellie smiled. Nona still held her hand. “Everything in Hawaii seems different from the usual to me,” she answered apologetically. “I’m from Texas.”
Nona nodded her head. “San Antonio.”
Ellie didn’t remember telling her that, but she supposed she had. Or perhaps Chad did.
Finally Nona let go her hand. “You might enjoy a walk on the beach, child. Such a beautiful evening. The moon will be lovely on the water.”
“Perhaps I’ll do that,” Ellie replied politely, having no intention of doing any such thing. All she wanted was her bed and the opportunity to forget about wooden carvings with sad lonely eyes. “Good night.”
Nona 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.
Chapter Two
“Oomph!”
Ellie hit the sand, with her assailant landing on top of her. But she hadn’t spent two nights a week and a small fortune on self-defense classes for nothing.
As she landed she rolled, and before he could get a grip on her, she lifted her knee and made a dent in the man’s chances for future children.
