Chapter 1
A dripping, red-faced, blond-haired tourist in a green Hawaiian shirt stormed through the lobby like a crusader.
Bill Steele saw him coming, and interrupted his conversation with his resort manager, Eric Monte, to head off the angry tourist before he could reach the front desk.
“Aloha. May I help you with something?” Bill asked.
“Yes. My wife and our sons just came back from the beach covered in sand and salt water. When we got back to our room and turned on the shower, the water was shit brown, and smelled like it, too. My wife would be down here screaming at you, but she’s covered in shit-water and crying in the tub.”
A phone rang in the background, and Bill heard Sean, the day clerk, answer it. “Aloha! Koa Kai Resort, front desk speaking. How can I help you? ... You want to cancel your reservation? No, no charge. What name is it under? Uh-huh. Yep, I’ve got it. All... Wait! Before you go, I’m supposed to ask why you want to cancel your stay with us... Ah, right, I get you... uh huh.”
“Hello!” Angry Tourist waved his hand in front of Bill’s face, drawing his attention away from Sean’s bumbling phone call. “Are you even listening to me?”
Bill blinked and nodded. “Of course, sir. I am very sorry for your inconvenience.”
“Inconvenience!” Angry Tourist thundered. His cheeks bulged, and his sunburned face turned an even deeper shade of red.
Bill struggled to remember the man’s name, but there wasn’t enough space in his addled brain to remember all of his guests’ names. “I assure you we’re working as fast as we can to resolve the problem. In the meantime, I’ll have bottled water sent up to your room that your wife can use to bathe.”
“That’s a good start,” the man grunted. “But not good enough. I want a full refund for today and every day that we have to spend without water. Do you understand me?”
Bill smiled tightly. “I’ll speak to the manager and see what we can do for you, sir.”
“The manager?” A squiggly vein popped out on Angry Tourist’s forehead. “You’re not the manager? Then who the hell am I speaking with?”
“The owner.”
“And you can’t authorize a refund for your own hotel?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“So what’s the problem?”
“No problem, sir.”
“My name is James! James Lucas! Not sir!”
“Of course, Mr. Lucas. I promise we’ll have the water back soon, and ameliorative measures will be taken to compensate you for your trouble.”
“Yeah, you’d better compensate the hell out of me. You don’t want to see what kind of review you’re going to get if you don’t.”
“I understand your frustration, Mr. Lucas. Please return to your room, and I’ll send someone up with three gallons of clean, bottled water for your wife.”
“What about me? And our kids?”
“Five gallons. I’m afraid that’s the best I can do.”
James Lucas nodded once, his eyes dark and promising mayhem. “Fine, the kids and I will shower in the pool. Hope you like it sandy.”
With that, he turned and marched toward the elevators, tracking sand through the lobby, his sandals squelching as he went.
Bill let out a tension-filled breath, but before he could even fill his lungs with another, one of the elevators dinged open, and a family of five came marching out. The wife was wearing designer sunglasses. She took the lead, aiming straight for him and the front desk.
Bill turned and fled behind the desk. He found Eric on one of the phone lines to the no-show plumbers, and Sean on the other line—hopefully not with another cancellation.
With both of them occupied, he was the resort’s only line of defense. Bill turned back around and smiled, bracing for another round of complaints. This was not what he’d had in mind when he’d decided to trade his car dealership and the hustle and bustle of LA for the slower pace of a tropical island paradise. It was supposed to have been an endless vacation, sipping cocktails on the beach while his manager took care of the resort.
Sean lowered the receiver to his shoulder and caught Bill’s eye with a wave. “Mr. Steele?”
Bill faced his day-clerk, a square-jawed, blonde and tanned version of Michelangelo’s David who spent all his free hours watching the sunset from a surfboard. He would have fit in perfectly in LA, minus the lack of ambition and self-direction which seemed to plague all of Bill’s employees.
“Yes, Sean?”
“It’s Mr. Kalani from Kauai High.”
“Principal Kalani?” Bill echoed.
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, what is it?”
“It’s your daughter. She got into a fight at school. She’s been suspended.”
Bill blinked. “What do you mean she got in a fight? You mean like a fist fight?”
Sean shrugged. “I guess. They need you to pick her up.”
Bill resisted the urge to scream. “Tell him I’ll be right there.”
“Yes, sir.”
Someone harrumphed, and Bill faced the front desk to see the elevator woman with the designer sunglasses—a tall, rail-thin specimen in a pure white dress that contrasted sharply with her short black hair, but blended perfectly with her flawless milk-white skin. That complexion told him she’d only come here to indulge her family while she spent her days at the spa. Her husband and three kids hung back in their swimming trunks and sandals, wearing beach towels for shirts.
“May I help you, ma’am?” Bill tried.
“No wonder this resort is falling apart. You can’t even manage your own family.”
“I apologize for any inconvenience you’ve suffered due to the current lack of running water, ma’am, but my family is not a subject for discussion, and frankly, I’m surprised to hear a mother of three talk that way: businesses are managed, but families are raised.” The woman’s jaw dropped, and a small smile sprang to her husband’s face. “Please feel free to address any concerns you may have with my manager—” Bill turned to find the man in question standing behind him.
“I’ve got this,” Eric said while straightening his glasses. “Go get Beth.”
“Thank you,” Bill replied. He ran around the reception desk—
And almost knocked over a porter pushing a luggage cart full of bottled water. “Sorry,” he mouthed and slowed to a brisk walk, heading for the sliding glass doors at the entrance of the lobby. Just before he reached the doors, the elevator dinged and a pair of Chinese tourists came out of the elevator, pulling luggage behind them.
“Hey, hold up,” he said, but neither of them turned at the sound of his voice, so he switched to Mandarin. “Wait. Where you go?” he said. Before buying the Koa Kai, he’d taken Mandarin classes for a year to prep for joining an old college friend as co-owner of a hotel in Shanghai, but that hadn’t panned out, and now all he was left with was the experience.
The tourist stopped and glanced over his shoulder, his eyebrows elevating in surprise. He replied in the same language just as Bill caught up to him at the front doors.
“We go to Marriot next door. Water working at Marriot.”
“Stay. Water back soon!” Bill replied, pushing his rudimentary grasp of the language to the limit.
“No stay. Wife not happy,” the man replied, shaking his head. “Sorry.” With that, he continued on his way, striding out the doors and through the parking lot to catch up with his wife. She was already waiting by the trunk of their car. Attracting the world’s rich upper crust had its drawbacks. They expected a flawless experience, not showers belching mud, and toilets that wouldn’t flush.
With a sigh, Bill stepped out into the hot summer air, fragrant with the smell of baking sand and salty ocean. Palm trees rustled and children squealed distantly, waves swished to shore...
Bill sucked in a deep breath, trying to remember how he’d felt the first time he’d come to this resort—like a heavy weight had left his chest, and he could actually breathe for the first time in years. Bill’s lips quirked into a bitter smile. It hadn’t taken long to return to breathlessness.
* * *
Warm air honeyed with Hawaiian blossoms billowed through the open windows of Bill’s Cadillac XTS. Sunlight gleamed like diamonds in the gaps between the dense greenery on either side of the road, and the wind of the car’s passing echoed off the vegetation, stirring long grass to life with a persistent swishing sound that drowned out the quiet whisper of the Caddy’s hybrid engine. Route 50, or Kaumualii Highway, as the locals called it, was a scenic three-lane road that hardly merited being called a highway. For starters, three lanes didn’t make sense no matter where you were from, much less to Bill’s LA-branded brain.
All of his friends had warned him that island life would take some getting used to, but he hadn’t been in the mood to listen to them after his divorce left him homeless and broken-hearted. In an unexpected coup, he’d gotten to keep custody of his daughter. She’d chosen to move with him to Kauai after her mother decided to remarry just two months after the divorce. Beth obviously held that against her mother, or else she really didn’t like her stepfather, Colton. Either way, Bill should have thought twice about letting her join him here. She’d always been closer to her mother. He’d just been the workaholic stranger who paid all the bills—the guy smiling like an idiot in all the photos pinned to the fridge. Raising a teenage daughter by himself at the same time as owning and managing a four-star vacation resort was proving more complicated than he’d ever imagined possible.
Bill let out a long, slow breath. Managing. That shouldn’t have been his job. Eric Monte had given Bill a false sense of security with his glasses, middle-aged spread, and pasty white skin, all of which told Bill that he’d never set foot (let alone belly) on a surfboard in his entire life. At the time Eric had seemed like a good choice for the Koa Kai’s third replacement head manager, but stiff competition, high running costs, and rising vacancy rates throughout the islands had left him on a tight budget. A more experienced manager would have cost more but would have also remembered to get the plumbers back in the slow season after they’d done their temporary patch job on that burst pipe in February. Now the repair job was twice as big, there was sediment in all the water feeds, and they had ninety rooms full of angry guests all plotting to write bad reviews that would scare off future clientele. It didn’t help that the Marriot was right next door with a better beach, more rooms, better pools, bigger grounds, and the same nightly rates. Add to all of that his wild teenage daughter who seemed to think that life consisted of surfing and partying on the beach with boys, and it was no wonder he was buying Pepto-Bismol buy the case.
The drive went by in a blur of lush greenery and blue skies. Twenty minutes later he pulled into the parking lot at Kauai High. Inside, he asked the receptionist about his daughter. She smiled sympathetically and escorted him down the hall to the nurse’s office. He opened the door to see Beth lying on an examination table, her left eye bruised and swollen.
Bill’s anger vanished under a rug of parental concern, and he rushed to his daughter’s side. “Are you okay?” he asked.
Beth sat up with a wince, and gingerly pressed a pack of ice to her eye. “I’m fine.” She tucked a feathery lock of brown hair behind one ear to keep it out of the way.
“What happened?” Realizing something was missing, Bill spun in a quick circle. “Where’s the other girl?”
“It wasn’t a girl,” Beth said quietly.
Horror stabbed through Bill. “You mean a boy did this?”
The school nurse sidled up to them. “I’m afraid so.”
“What happened? Where is he!” Bill roared.
“Please calm down, Mr. Steele. He’s in the hospital. Beth broke his nose.”
Bill rounded on her. “You did what?”
Beth’s lips twitched, but she said nothing.
“How did this happen?” Bill demanded of the nurse.
“I don’t have all the details, but I do know that your daughter started it. The principal wants to see you both before you leave the campus.”
Bill rounded on Beth, blinking furiously. “Well? Are you going to explain yourself, or do I have to assume the worst?”
“Matt told Toby that he saw me kissing another boy at the bonfire last night, which was a total lie, and—”
“Wait.” Bill held up a hand and massaged a sudden headache away from his eyeballs with the other. “This is about a boy? Please tell me you’re joking. You have a new boyfriend every other week!”
Beth’s lower jaw zigzagged as she ground her teeth, and her brown eyes blazed like hot coals—a look her mother had patented ages ago. “Toby and I have been together since the beginning of the year!”
Bill waved his hand at her. “I don’t want to hear it.”
“You never want to hear anything! You never listen!”
“Let’s go, Beth.” Bill snapped his fingers. “Now.”
Beth scowled at him as she swung her legs over the side of the table and hopped down.
The nurse glanced at Bill. “The principal’s office is down the hall and to the—”
“I know the way,” Bill replied, taking Beth by the arm and dragging her out of the nurse’s office at a brisk pace.
* * *
“Ouch, you’re hurting me!” Beth said.
Her dad blew out a sigh and released her arm as they strode down the hall to the principal’s office. As soon as they arrived, the secretary escorted them in.
“Please sit,” Principal Kalani said, gesturing to the chairs in front of his big desk with a massive arm and comically small, thick-fingered hand. Kalani was a blob—so fat he made his desk look small, with no neck, a round face, and deep-set black eyes that reminded Beth of raisins.
Kalani regarded them in silence for a long moment, a deeply-disappointed look etched onto his taut, tanned face.
“According to witnesses,” Kalani began, looking at Bill, “Your daughter, Beth, and Matt Cole were seen arguing outside the cafeteria just after lunch. Beth then kicked Matt Cole in the groin, and after he recovered, he punched her in the face. At that point she jumped on his back, using her nails to scratch at his face and eyes while she screamed obscenities in his ear, calling into focus his alleged sexual orientation.” Kalani stopped to glare at Beth with his raisin eyes.
“Is that true, Beth?” Bill asked.
“He’s in love with his best friend!” she blurted out.
Bill sighed. “Please go on, Mr. Kalani.”
“They fell down together, and Matt broke his nose on the pavement. Beth claims that it was an accident, but Matt says she deliberately smashed his face into the ground. Fortunately for your daughter, witness accounts are conflicting, so she won’t be expelled. She is, however, suspended until next week.”
“Aren’t they doing midterms this week?” Bill asked. “She can’t afford to miss those.”
“She should have thought of that before assaulting a fellow student. I’m sorry, but Beth started it, and I have to tell Matt’s parents something. The other students need to see that there are consequences. Beth is very lucky she’s not being expelled.”
“What about him? He punched my daughter in the face!”
“After she provoked him,” Mr. Kalani said.
Bill stood up, his face turning red. “So instead of kicking her out, you’re going to make her fail the tenth grade? How is that any better?”
“She still has plenty of time to make up her grades, and some of her teachers may be willing to provide make-up tests.”
“She’s skating by as it is!”
“Expulsion is still an option, Mr. Steele. If you believe that would be a more suitable outcome...”
Bill smiled thinly at the principal. “No, thank you. Now if you’ll excuse us, I have another crisis to deal with back at the resort.”
Mr. Kalani smiled tightly back and gestured to the door with one of his small, fat-rounded hands. “Good luck.”
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