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She pressed one hand to her mouth as she reread the note, warmth spreading through her like baby breakers reaching the shore.
She couldn’t believe he’d gone to so much trouble on their behalf. She ran her fingers along the smooth curve of the largest board.
If she wasn’t careful, she could be in very grave danger of falling for a man like him.
She’d have to use extreme caution over the next few days. She couldn’t afford to risk her heart, not when she had two girls who depended on her to be strong.
After tucking the note in her pocket with the monitor, she walked barefoot down the steps. The sand was cool and soft between her toes as she walked to the water’s edge, the warm, sweetly scented trade winds rippling the cotton of her dress around her legs.
Shorebirds walked on gawky legs in the froth, and a few more wheeled and called overhead. She headed back to the dry sand and sat down, knees to her chest, to watch them as the sun inched higher and painted the clouds with more vivid color.
She was alone with the birds until she spied somebody jogging in her direction from the far edge of the beach.
She knew who it was even before she could make out his features in the pale light. She recognized the breadth of those shoulders, the brown hair glinting with streaks from the sun. Of course, the faded gray Chicago Police Department T-shirt was a bit of a giveaway.
The instant he spotted her, he changed course and headed in her direction.
“You’re up early this morning,” he said when he was close enough to speak without yelling. “The time change must be messing with you, too.”
“I decided a Hawaiian sunrise was too rare an event in my chilly Chicago life to miss.”
“The girls are still asleep?”
She pulled the monitor from her pocket and held it out for him to see.
“That’s handy.”
“It has a range of a hundred-fifty feet. I can be back in the cabana in a second.”
To her discomfort, he plopped down beside her, all those hard muscles just inches away. Again, she had to force herself not to stare, focusing instead on his kindness to her and the twins.
“Thank you for the boogie boards. That was a lovely thing to do.”
He shrugged, his expression embarrassed in the glowing sunrise slanting over his features. “I only rented them. I figured, what are you going to do with boogie boards back in Chicago?”
“It’s still wonderful.”
“It was a complete whim. I headed into Lihue last night for dinner and there was a surf shop open right next to the restaurant, advertising board rentals. It seemed like fate.”
“The girls will be thrilled. I was tempted to wake them up for a test run the minute I saw them on the porch. Fortunately, I came to my senses in time and decided to enjoy five minutes of quiet.”
His mouth twisted into a smile. “Until I came running along to disturb the peace.”
He definitely disturbed her peace, but not for the reasons he probably thought. She wasn’t about to tell him otherwise, though.
“What are you three planning today?”
She pointed to the water. “Sand, surf, sun. That about covers it.”
His low laugh sent nerves shivering down her spine—which only intensified when he shifted closer to her, stretching out long legs covered in dark hair.
“Are you interested in a drive around the island a little later? I wouldn’t mind playing tour guide. We could go see a couple waterfalls I know, visit some quiet beaches, maybe head up to Kailua.”
The invitation both thrilled and terrified her. Spending a few hours in a car with the man likely wasn’t the best way to protect her heart.
“I don’t know,” she stalled. “Things can be hard with Grace’s chair. She can use the walker most of the time, but we would have to take the wheelchair along in case she gets too tired.”
“I rented a big Jeep. There should be plenty of room for the chair and walker in the back, and I can easily lift her in and out.”
She should say no. The word hovered on her tongue. But the girls would love to see one of the plummeting waterfalls the island was known for and a little more of the island than this stretch of beach outside their cabana.
She supposed she could always arrange for a rental car and venture out on her own, but spending time with him was much more appealing. The twins would certainly love it, given how drawn they were to him.
“That could be fun,” she finally allowed, though she wanted to call the words back the moment she said them.
“Great. Shall we say noon? That’ll give you time to play around in the water for a while. And I know the girls have a hula lesson this morning, too. We can grab lunch on the way somewhere and still be back for the rehearsal dinner tonight.”
Ah, yes. The rehearsal dinner. Nick and Cara wanted the twins in the wedding party. They had to practice their role, which meant Megan wouldn’t be able to manufacture a convenient excuse to skip it.
“Sure. Okay. That would work.”
From the monitor, she heard a little cough that her maternal instinct told her came from Grace. She pulled it out to check and saw that both girls were still sleeping, cough notwithstanding.
“Everything okay?”
“For now. They’re pretty sound sleepers. I think I’m still safe for a few more moments.”
She turned her face back to the sunrise, which exploded with color now above the horizon.
“It must be hard, on your own with twins.”
She flashed him a look and saw his expression was compassionate, not judgmental. “Some things are hard. I won’t lie about that. Two parent-teacher conferences, two sets of homework every night, two girls nagging me in the store to buy them a treat. Most of the time they’re a joy, though. I wouldn’t trade our life for anything.”
“Do you ever wonder if things might have been easier if you had...” His voice trailed off, as if he had suddenly reconsidered what he’d been about to say.
“Stayed married?” she finished for him.
His expression turned rueful. “Sorry. That was a rude question and none of my business.”
She bumped his shoulder with hers. “My ex-husband is marrying your sister in roughly thirty-six hours. I’d say that makes it a little bit your business.”
“There is that.”
She wrapped her arms more tightly around her knees while the breeze lifted strands of hair that had escaped her ponytail. “I care about Nick. I always will. But we’ve both discovered we’re much better as coparents than we ever were as a couple.”
“I can see that. The girls seem very happy.”
“That’s the important thing, as far as I’m concerned.” She glanced over at him. “What about you? Have you ever gone through this?”
“What? Marriage? Not me. On the morning of my mother’s third marriage, when she was stuffing me into yet another tuxedo for another trip down the aisle with her, I decided that when I get hitched, it will be forever. I think this was a year or so after my father’s fourth wedding. I was about thirteen by then.”
She’d guessed something of the sort from what Nick had told her about Cara’s family. Sympathy squeezed her chest. She couldn’t imagine that. Her own parents had been deeply in love until the day they were killed together in a car accident when she was in nursing school.
Sometimes she thought their dying together had been a gift, as neither would have been able to live well without the other. A gift to them, anyway. As an only child who had always had a particularly close relationship with her parents, the loss of them both at the same time had been a devastating blow.
She’d figured out a long time ago that her grief after their deaths was one of the reasons she’d hurried into a relationship with Nick. She’d been lonely and adrift, seeking a connection that had never really been there.
“For the record,” Shane murmured after a long moment, “I like Nick. He makes my sister happy. But I’m beginning to question his sanity to let someone like you slip away.”
Heat seeped through her at his words, and she gazed at him with startled eyes. It seemed natural and perfect—there, alone with the sunrise and the water and the few shorebirds pecking across the sand—when he leaned forward and kissed her.
CHAPTER FIVE
HER BREATH CAUGHT and she froze, his lips warm and delicious on hers. Oh, it had been so long. She had really, really missed kissing, the slide of mouth against mouth, skin against skin, the wild flutter in her stomach.
The breeze swirled around them and the ocean whispered and she didn’t want this lovely moment to ever end.
She kissed him back, her hands curled into the cotton of his T-shirt. Since her divorce, she had focused only on being a good mother, a good nurse. The unleashed heat of Shane’s mouth and tongue and hands reminded her she’d lost something along the way. She had forgotten that, at her core, she was still a woman, with needs and desires she’d worked hard to suppress.
He eased away from her a little, breath ragged and blue eyes glazed with hunger.
“Yeah. Nick is definitely crazy,” he said, his voice gruff. He leaned in for another kiss, his arms around her, pulling her against his hard chest.
They kissed for a long time, while the sun rose higher in the sky. She didn’t want to stop, but a muffled cough from the monitor in her pocket acted like a cold splash of water.
Oh.
What was she doing here, wrapped around Shane Russell like some kind of tropical vine?
This close, she could see his irises, speckled glints of silver in the blue. She could also see a certain light reflected there that looked suspiciously...tender.
An answering emotion flooded through her. Yes. She could fall in love with him very easily. She thought of his help and care on the long flight, and how sweet he was to rent boogie boards for her and her daughters.
He could break her heart like the tide washing over a sand castle.
Hearing a sleepy little huff from the monitor, she gathered all her strength and wrenched away from him, her heart pounding.
“I...need to go,” she said, feeling flustered and off balance, rocked to her core by the kiss. “The girls will be up, and I don’t want them to wonder where I am.”
“Right.” His voice was still rough, his expression dazed. She supposed it was small consolation that he’d been just as affected by their kiss.
“I’ll see you later.”
She fled back to her cabana before he could say anything else.
* * *
SHANE WATCHED MEGAN hurry into her little house as if she were being chased by reef sharks.
His head still swam from the dizzying shift in emotions, but one clear thought rose above the rest.
He shouldn’t have kissed her.
He was intensely attracted to her. Something about those big green eyes, her delicate features, that small, curvy body just did it for him.
Not only that, but he greatly admired her caring and concern for her daughters. She obviously loved them deeply. It showed in everything she did, from her attention to their comfort on the flight over, to her delight last night playing in the water with them, to the video monitor in her pocket this morning.
He couldn’t even imagine the guts she must have needed to drag her twins across the ocean for their father’s wedding to another woman. He couldn’t help but respect that.
Yeah, he liked her—way too much. He gazed out at the endless rows of breakers. Despite his attraction, both physical and emotional, he knew she wasn’t for him.
He’d made a vow a long time ago, after years of seeing the chaos his parents created in his life and Cara’s, that he wouldn’t drag other children through that kind of turmoil. Kids had a rough enough time making their way in the world. They didn’t need new people moving in and out of their lives, the stress of separate visitations, the drama of being forced to adjust to a different family dynamic.
He had a strict no-kids policy and he intended to stick to that.
No matter how difficult it was.
* * *
“TELL ME THE truth. Is this uncomfortable for you?”
Megan glanced over at Cara, stretched out on a beach towel next to her in a cute blue bikini, soaking up sun.
“Uncomfortable? No. Unfair, absolutely. We’re roughly the same age and you look tanned and buff while I look like a pasty-white cream puff.”
“Spray tan is a truly wonderful invention. But you know that’s not what I mean. I’m talking about this whole destination wedding thing. While I was dreaming and making plans, I should have thought things through and realized how difficult it would be for you to haul Grace and Sarah all the way out here.”
“They’re having the time of their lives. Look at them.”
Cara and Megan both shifted to watch Nick haul a giggling Grace around on the boogie board Shane had provided. A few yards away from them, Sarah was busy building a sand castle masterpiece, tongue lodged firmly between her teeth.
Her daughter must have felt them watching her. She looked up briefly. “I’m almost done. See, this is the princess’s bedroom. When the bad guys come to take over her kingdom, she’s going to jump out that window to her horse so she can fight them. And then she’s going to Hawaii to get married.”
Megan blinked a little at the explanation but she couldn’t fault the spirit behind it.
She and Cara grinned at each other as Sarah jumped up to get more water in her bucket.
“I won’t lie,” Megan said as she watched her. “The trip here was hard work, but I would’ve hated for the girls to miss seeing their dad get married. You know I’m happy for you both, right?”
Cara gazed at her, a little teary-eyed, then reached out and squeezed her fingers. “You’re about the most amazing person I’ve ever met, Megan. You know that?”
Megan rolled her eyes, though she couldn’t help being touched. “You should know better than that by now.”
“I’m serious. I can’t believe I’m so lucky to have you and the girls in our lives. Before I met you, I was so afraid you would hate me. My mom has hated every single one of my dad’s subsequent wives, including the one he’s bringing to the wedding. And she hasn’t even met her yet.”
“I don’t hate you, Cara,” Megan assured her. “Nick and the girls both love you, and that’s more than enough for me.”
Cara squeezed her fingers again before flopping over onto her back. “See how lucky I am?”
