Total Package (13 page)

She hurried back to the large bedroom. The vanity was beautiful and simple and when she sat on the stool, her reflection looked back at her. She was flushed and soft and her eyes were filled with dreams. “Is this how you see me?” she asked in a whisper when Danya came to stand behind her.

His answer was unsteady. “Not always. Sometimes I see more.”

His hands rested on her shoulders and Sidney lifted them in front of her, studying the large callused palms, those long capable fingers. On impulse, she kissed the center of his palm and then the other and nuzzled her face into them. “It’s lovely. I’ve never owned a piece of furniture in my lifetime. But I can’t take it.”

Danya slid his hands from hers. “Whatever you want,” he murmured unsteadily. “I sure don’t want you to be burdened with something you don’t want.”

Then he walked away into the large living room and the woman in the mirror started to crumble and then to cry.

That muffled sob stopped Danya like a brick wall. He could either walk out the door, or return to face the image of
Sidney crying. The latter won and Danya held his breath as he crouched beside her.

“I never cry,” she whispered unevenly between her hands. “I hate feeling drippy and soggy.”

“So do I,” he said in an attempt to lighten the uncertain emotional moment between them. Danya took her hands away from her face and found that her lashes were damp and spiked and her eyes shimmered with tears. Danya held both her hands in his while he gently wiped away her tears with his thumb, then he kissed her palms.

“I hate being emotional, too,” Sidney admitted unevenly.

“Me, too. So are you going to ask me for that date or not?” he asked as he stood and lifted her into his arms.

When Danya sat on the stool, Sidney looked at their reflections. “You’re too big to be sitting here, Stepanov. I think I’m starting to like you too much. That just complicates everything.”

“How so?”

“We’re having a nice time now, but eventually, you’d want more. You should have more. You’d be short-changed because I’m not geared for a permanent relationship. I’d let you down. Or hurt you, like I did just now. I’d fail you somehow. I just now decided that was why Ben suited me so, because he didn’t have any big ideas before Fluffy got him. He wasn’t pushy at all. You are.”

“You’re making decisions for the both of us, right? I’m not going to have any input?” He fought that lash of irritation; Sidney was an unusual woman and one who was terrified of relationships. Why? Because Ben had hurt her? Or was there some other reason?

Sidney frowned and pushed away to stand in front of him. “End of story,” she repeated firmly as she turned to walk out of the house.

“Not quite,” Danya murmured quietly as he watched her from a window. “Not quite.”

D

Two almost six feet tall, very fit women, wearing tank tops, fishing vests, and long, tight jeans that ended in work boots entered the Seagull’s Perch where Danya was tending bar. The mid-July tourist season had added customers, and as part-owner with his brother, Danya sometimes filled in. With Sidney holed up at the Amoteh Resort for two days and avoiding him, his nights were long and endless. When he hadn’t been home, she’d come back and had placed the earrings on his cabin table. He’d sat for a long time, holding those dainty garnet and gold earrings, and hurting deep inside.

Sidney’s message was clear: She wanted nothing of Danya, or a life with him.

The women, both wearing very short sun-streaked hair, had Sidney’s large dark eyes, were evidently older than Sidney; they wore the look of the world and of revenge and they seemed to be looking for trouble. Or for him, which was the same thing.

They moved to a side table in the shadows and one flipped a wooden chair around, straddling it, her tanned, fit arms braced across the back. The other sat, leaned her chair back against the wall, crossed her arms over her chest, and placed her boots on the table. They eyed him as Danya wiped the smooth surface of a bar imported from San Francisco’s early riproaring days.

If the Blakelys had come calling, he wasn’t going to refuse a showdown. He poured pitchers of free beer for the men standing at the bar, loaded a tray with three mugs and a filled beer pitcher, and walked to the women’s table.

He poured the mugs full and sat at their table. Both women eyed him coldly, suspiciously, and apparently, it was up to him to make the introductions. Sidney had told him about her sisters: Stretch was an archeologist and Junior was an engineer. “Stretch and Junior, I presume?”

“Stretch,” the woman straddling the chair answered.

“I’m Junior.” The blonde leaning back against the wall folded her arms across her chest.

“Loverboy, I presume?” Stretch asked coolly.

“You’re in trouble, bud. You hurt our little sister,” Junior said.

Danya sipped his beer; he didn’t like someone else pointing out the obvious—he was in trouble because every time he thought about Sidney, he wanted to haul her somewhere and set matters straight between them…or make love to her, which in the current state of affairs wouldn’t solve anything.

Then, too, he resented their charge; the sisters had pegged the wrong person for the injury. Sidney wasn’t exactly innocent. “Don’t you think that’s between us?”

“No,” both women answered adamantly.

“It’s a family package, loverboy,” Stretch stated, watching him.

“Sid is just a kid, and she’s all broken up about some joker who just pulled the same act as you. You knew she was on the rebound, Stepanov, and you did the old wine-and-dine dance with her, gave her flowers, that sort of thing…then you nailed her, right?”

Junior’s evaluation was basically correct and that truth irritated. “Did she tell you that?”

“Sid is tough. She isn’t saying much, but she looks like hell and she’s eating candy bars. Stretch thought she was crying when she called to check in—our family has regular check-in times. Now why would she be upset?” Junior asked. “You just had to take advantage of her, didn’t you? Now you’ve had your fun and you’re done. You probably gave her the old kiss-off routine—”

Their eyes traced someone who had just come into the bar and Danya turned to see a tall older man, graying, with a hard heavily jowled face and wearing an attitude like a—

“Bulldog,” Stretch’s and Junior’s welcomes were more like statements, as if they’d been expecting their father. Stretch’s foot pushed a chair out for him.

Bulldog’s six-foot-six height and three hundred pounds sat heavily and he eyed Danya. “Sid has clammed up and she’s still eating chocolate bars. She’s going to be sick. Is this loverboy?”

This family spent no time getting to the bare bones. “I am Danya Stepanov. You must be Sidney’s father?”

Bulldog ignored Danya’s extended hand. “Her name is Sid.”

Danya attempted to stay pleasant. “Can I offer you a drink?”

“I’m not here for tea and crumpets, mister,” Bulldog growled. “You shouldn’t play light and fast with women, especially my daughter.”

“I admit to the fast part. We started off too fast. But I want to marry Sidney.”

Bulldog’s cold silver eyes narrowed suspiciously. “That’s Sid, I told you. So you’re on the spot, squirming and you’ve come up with plan to put us off, right? Well, I guess there’s one way we can find out—we’ll ask Sid if you’ve said anything about it to her. You probably know that she’s holed up, looks like hell, and she’s sticking some colored thread through some material—weird looking thing. I checked you out—
you’ve got a lot of family around here, but that won’t make any difference. They can’t protect you.”

He glanced at his daughters. “Now, I know my daughters are women, full-grown, but we’re a family and we take care of our own. No fast-talking pretty boy is going to play easy with any one of them without having hell to pay.”

Danya met Bulldog’s eyes. In a blunt-talking family, it was best to speak plainly. “If I have my way, you’re looking at Sid’s future husband and just maybe the father of your grandchildren.”

Bulldog blinked at that and seemed stunned. “My little Sid? She’s little and a scrapper, but a wife and a mother? She’d be bored in no time…she’s like us, ready to travel at a minute’s notice—”

“I’d like your permission to marry your daughter.”

“You bastard. You got her pregnant, didn’t you?” Stretch demanded as she leaned forward to grip Danya’s shirt in her fist.

“No, but I’d like to, if that’s what Sidney wants,” Danya answered honestly.

The door crashed open and the men at the bar stilled and Danya knew immediately who had entered the bar. The steady tramp of the boots approaching their table was familiar. “Hi, sweetheart—”

Sidney’s slender hand reached to grip her sister’s arm. “Let him go, Stretch. I thought you were all going out to dinner.”

Bulldog, Stretch and Junior looked sheepish. “We were planning to order fish and chips somewhere. They’re supposed to be good around here. We just stopped in for a beer—”

“The fish and chips places are closed.” Sidney didn’t buy their excuses and tugged Stretch’s hand from Danya. Her voice was low and dangerous. “I said, ‘let him go.’”

“You can’t be protecting this guy, Sid,” Stretch grumbled, while Danya tried to adjust to a woman defending him. Her fingers had enough pressure on Stretch’s arm to indicate that Sidney meant to back up her order. He added that fact to his There’s a Chance She Loves Me bin.

Sidney jerked it right out again. “He’s still in love with his wife and blames himself for the car wreck that killed her. It wasn’t his fault, but he’s got this thing about honor and he feels that he could have avoided the wreck and didn’t. They say there’s a curse on this place, put there by a Hawaiian chieftain—just maybe we’re both cursed. Maybe I just came by at the wrong time for us both—got it?”

That distracted Stretch, the archeologist; she released Danya, leaned forward, her long body tensed. “Sometimes there’s truth in those old stories. I don’t suppose there are any digs around here? Any work been done on the landscape to see if any artifacts are around, any high-aerial work?”

Danya wasn’t going to be distracted from making his point with Sidney and the Blakelys. “It’s true that I’ll always love my wife in a special way, tucked deep inside my heart, and I’m not looking for a replacement or a substitute. I’ve probably picked the most contrary woman alive to fall in love with, and that would be your sister.”

“Most people like me—” Sidney began hotly in her own defense.

“Sure. They just don’t know you like I do.”

“Ben loved her, too,” Junior stated adamantly. “And look what he did to her.”

“I am damn tired of hearing about Ben,” Danya warned quietly and looked straight at Sidney while he continued talking, “Chief Kamakani was supposed to have been captured and enslaved by whalers, whose ship sunk in a storm off shore. He made it to land, but he never got back to the woman he loved and he placed a curse on this whole area.”

That tidbit played out as he expected: Stretch’s eyes narrowed; her expression resembled a hawk spotting prey. “You don’t say,” she murmured thoughtfully.

Danya dropped in another tidbit, just to up her interest: “Has to do with women knowing their own minds, removing the curse by dancing in front of the grave.”

He met Sidney’s frown, warning him not to tell where they
had first met. He smiled coldly, just to let her know that night was between them. “I go up there sometimes.” If Sidney wanted to elaborate, that was her choice.

“It’s just a grave up on Strawberry Hill, a bunch of rocks,” Sidney answered curtly. Apparently she didn’t want to explain her mistaken jumper theory. “I want you all out of here, now.”

“Sid, you can’t ask me to walk away from information that could lead to a good find—” Stretch began.

Facing down her tall athletic family, Sidney’s body was fiercely taut, her eyes locked to them. She crossed her arms in front of her chest. “I mean it.”

Danya slowly took in the way that posture made her breasts push up in the sports bra she was wearing and then he tilted his head to look down her backside, the nice curve of her bottom, the sleek line of her legs. Sidney glanced at him, blinked and suddenly blushed. “Stop that.”

Bulldog did the huffing, outraged father-thing, sputtering for a moment. Stretch and Junior glared at the man who had victimized their little sister, a silent warning that when Sidney wasn’t around, he was in for unhappy times. “You didn’t let us take care of Ben when he ditched you to marry Fluffy, and now you’re protecting this guy?”

“I’m going to go finish off Ben myself. When I’m ready, I’ll take care of Danya.”

“I’d like that…a nice little sweet conversation with you to clear the air.” Danya smiled tightly at Sidney. “I was just asking your father’s permission to marry you.”

Sidney’s head pivoted to him, her eyes wide. “You what?”

“You heard me.”

For a moment, she was speechless, then her voice quivered with rage. “Hey, bud,
I’m
the one to ask.”

With the sense that he had nothing to lose, Danya asked, “Well, will you?”

“Are you pregnant, Sid?” Bulldog asked uneasily.

“Not that I know of, sir.”

Danya noted the fresh tear trails on her cheek and pride
caused him to fight drawing her down to his lap. “There’s a marriage offer on the table. A long engagement would be fine with me. We’d get to know each other better, and I don’t like the idea of you talking with Ben.”

“Oh, you don’t?” she challenged. Her smirk said that was exactly what she would do.

“How’ve you been, Sidney?” he asked quietly, because her fear of his marriage proposal had been easily noted earlier and Bulldog had been right: Sidney did look like she’d been going through hell.

Her dark brown eyes burned down at him; her fists clenched at her side. “What do you mean by asking Bulldog that?”

She’d made his permission-to-marry sound like an insult and Danya accepted the fact that trouble still brewed between them.

“So you love me, huh?” he asked tightly, fighting his temper as he stood. Danya signaled Sam, who had just entered the bar, that he was leaving. Sam, a full-time bartender who’d had a few hours off to attend his daughter’s evening piano recital, nodded.

While Sidney fought for an answer to question about loving him, Danya reached for her and found her open lips with his own. The kiss wasn’t sweet, but passionately filled with frustration and hunger.

Sidney’s body tensed just for a heartbeat and then she opened herself for the kiss, her body taut against his, her arms locked around her neck. When Danya put her slightly away, her face was flushed, her eyes drowsy. He held her upper arms just that minute while she found her balance, and then he stepped back.

“That about says it, I guess,” he said before turning and walking out of the bar.

Danya lay in bed at two o’clock in the morning. Three nights without Sidney curled against him was long enough, but the Blakelys had circled her protectively. Apparently, they weren’t leaving her to fall victim to his evil desires. He’d have to go through them to get her.

He threw back the sheet and came to his feet; he wasn’t an impulsive man, but Sidney had changed him. With her, he had to act fast, stepping up the pace. “If I have to, I have to.”

A half hour later, he walked through the hushed, luxurious walls of the Amoteh Resort. There was only one way to face the Blakely bunch and that was outright, he thought grimly as he rapped on the door of the Seawind Suite.

When Bulldog opened the door, he was in an undershirt and sweat pants, cut off at the knee. He eyed Danya warily. “Yeah?”

“You like it here?” A nice conversational lead for what he wanted to say, Danya decided.

“Not really. It’s too fancy-foo-foo. Is that what you want, boy? To ask about my comfort?”

“I already asked you the question that matters. I don’t have your answer yet—or hers.” Danya watched Sidney come to stand beside her father, Stretch and Junior loomed close by. Sidney’s dark brown eyes were shimmering in tears, she looked small and wounded, and Danya wanted to hold her. He met Bulldog’s scowl. “We moved too fast, but that doesn’t change the feeling I have for her.”

“Sid is a fast mover, boy. She usually gets what she wants,” Bulldog murmured softly as he put his arm around Sidney, a father gathering his daughter close and tender. “You have to keep up. Don’t feel bad if you can’t. Most men can’t keep up with my girls.”

“I’m just finishing a few things here and then I’m leaving. I’m not marrying you,” Sidney whispered unevenly.

“I’ll take what I can get,” Danya said and because his throat was tight with pride and emotion, he turned and walked away, out into the night.

He returned to his bed and damned himself for wanting a woman who wasn’t like any other—on the other hand, that was exactly why he loved her. The wind chimes tinkled quietly, lonely on his porch and the waves broke endlessly upon the sand as he thought about how they met, up on Strawberry
Hill, and how Sidney had been mourning the loss of Ben. Now, just maybe, she was still in love with him.