Total pages in book: 68
Estimated words: 68735 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 344(@200wpm)___ 275(@250wpm)___ 229(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 68735 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 344(@200wpm)___ 275(@250wpm)___ 229(@300wpm)
“That’s awesome,” Audric said, reaching for the soap. “Your mother can be a lot.”
“Speaking of Mother,” he sighed. “She’s sick as a dog. My big brother is sick. My cousin is sick. And I desperately need your help.”
There was a long moment of silence before Audric said, “I’m not putting on…”
“Please.”
Audric sighed and leaned his head against my shoulder. “What is it you want me to do?”
I’d never thought that I was going to go to a luau with Audric’s dad and the love of his life, but there I was, doing it.
“I’ve never been to one of these, and I’ve lived here for twenty years,” Telly, Audric’s dad’s girl, said. “I feel like an ass for never coming.”
They were absolutely adorable together.
From what little I was able to figure out in the time that we’d been together over the last hour of traversing one of the busiest roads on Oahu, Carter had shown up on Telly’s doorstep and Telly had let him in instantly. She hadn’t made Carter work for it, either.
Which, if I were an honest person, was quite telling of Telly’s personality.
She was a sweet woman and only wanted the best for Carter.
I wasn’t that type of woman.
I’d have made him work hard for it, and I wouldn’t have stopped until I felt like he’d been sufficiently punished for putting me in an impossible situation for how many ever years it’d been.
Even more, he’d have had to perfect the groveling.
No way would he have just walked back into my life without scraping his knees up begging me to take him back.
I bumped her shoulder. “If it makes you feel better, I’m here every other day and I haven’t come to one, either. This will be both of our firsts.”
She flashed me a smile. “You’re here for a couple of hours, most of them sleeping. It’s more than understandable that you would not have time or inclination to leave. You probably also don’t have the hour and a half to fight the traffic to get here.”
I grinned. “So what, exactly, happens now? What…”
A man with a conch shell showed in the middle of the lawn, his smooth, bronzed chest on full display with his flowing fabric covering most of his lower legs, showing just a hint of the boxer briefs he wore underneath as the wind blew.
He blew into the horn, and everyone in the audience stopped talking.
“My friends!” he called out. “Aloha!”
“Aloha!” everyone answered back.
The next ten minutes consisted of the man, who was the host for the evening, talking about friends and Ohana, and what this night was all about.
“Now, let’s talk coconuts,” the man, who I now knew as Audric’s friend since he’d introduced himself as Keanu, drawled. “How do you think that we get these coconuts out of the trees?”
There were lots of answers thrown out through the crowd, but it was Carter’s reaction that had me turning to look at him. “What?”
“You’ll see,” he said cryptically.
Intrigued now, I paid better attention as Keanu explained everything that happened in picking the coconut, as well as what happened once they’d picked it.
“Okay, so a few of you were right,” Keanu said after a few more minutes of coconut discussion. “We’re going to have a little race.”
Carter again chuckled.
“I have a special surprise for you all tonight. My best friend from childhood is in town, and he and I are going to perform a time-honored tradition. Not a day passes when we’re together that we don’t perform this race. Each time he visits from the mainland, we make sure to test his skills. And since he doesn’t have his own coconut trees at home, sometimes I give him a little head start. Tonight will not be one of those times!” Keanu declared loudly, using his enchanting voice to project his feelings toward the back of the crowd.
Carter crossed his arms over his chest, a huge smile on his face, as he turned his head to the side.
I did, too, but there was a huge man in front of me taking up most of the viewing area.
I chose to skirt to the side, squeezing in between Telly and Carter.
Carter shifted to the side to allow me to pass, and suddenly I got my own unencumbered view of the sexiest man alive dressed in his authentic Hawaiian attire.
I realized now that Audric’s skin tone nearly matched his good friend’s. And Audric had just as many tattoos as Keanu did.
Seeing the two of them together…
Wow. There was nothing else I could say to describe it. Words couldn’t be formed to explain their combined beauty.
“You ready, hoaloha?” Keanu asked Audric.
“Ready when you are.” He flashed a grin.
The two went to their separate trees that were surrounded by a crowd of a hundred and shook out their arms.
A different man yelled out, “One, two, GO!”