Better Off Dead. Meryl Sawyer

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СКАЧАТЬ food while hula girls and fire eaters performed. Family luaus usually didn’t have hula dancing. For entertainment someone might pick up a ukulele and start playing after having a few too many Primo beers. Keke’s husband Paul was sure to bring out his slack key guitar as soon as he’d had dessert.

      For Hawaiians a luau was a chance to get together with their extended family and “talk story” while they feasted and celebrated a birthday or special occasion. Talking story was their way of passing on island lore and traditions to the young.

      It was also a way of handing down family tales. Talking story meant telling the same tales over and over, but Hawaiians didn’t mind. It was customary to listen intently as if hearing the story for the first time.

      His sister Keke came over and sat down beside him. “You’re awfully quiet. What’s up?”

      Keke and Chad were closer than he was to his other two sisters because they had been born fourteen months apart. With his father away constantly managing the Turtle Bay Resort, their mother had been so overwhelmed that it had been another three years before the twins, Nola and Hana had arrived.

      “Come on.” Keke poked him in the ribs. “Tell me.”

      “I met a woman.”

      “About time!” The blue eyes he saw every morning when he shaved sparkled with mischief, and Keke laughed. “Tell me about her.”

      He didn’t know what to tell Keke. As much as he was attracted to Devon, something about her made him wary. It wasn’t anything tangible. It was a gut feeling, a holdover from his Special Ops days with Delta Force, when he’d learned to rely on his instincts.

      “Her name is Devon Summers. She’s going to be the new wedding coordinator for Eddie.”

      Around her finger, Keke twisted a strand of dark hair wet from swimming with her kids. “Remind her that I’m on the list if she needs extra help.”

      Keke sometimes worked Eddie’s parties to make extra money. She was exceptional at tending bar for a large number of guests and could do the work of two bartenders.

      “I’m sure Eddie will tell her.”

      “You can’t have known her very long. Malaea told me yesterday morning that Eddie was still interviewing.”

      Keke was very close to Eddie’s wife. Once Chad would never have believed it could happen. Eddie and Keke had dated steadily throughout high school. After Eddie left the North Shore for Honolulu, he’d met Malaea.

      Chad had been overseas with the Delta Force fighting Desert Storm. Nola and Hana had sent him a barrage of e-mails to tell him how upset Keke was. The first chance he’d gotten, Chad had called Eddie and found out his calabash cousin was in love but not with his sister.

      A little more than a year passed and Keke met Paul Nakamura. They married and had children. With young children so close in age and being thrown together at family gatherings, the women had the opportunity to get to know each other and become friends.

      “Eddie must have just hired her.”

      “This afternoon.”

      “So what’s the problem?”

      Chad watched his sisters’ brood splashing in the surf glazed golden by the setting sun and thought how perceptive Keke was. “I think the woman took an instant dislike to me.”

      “No way.”

      “Yes. Way. I was trying to talk to her and she walked off.”

      “You didn’t come on too strong, did you?”

      Chad shrugged one shoulder. “She walked in and—wham—a guy would have to be dead not to stare at her.”

      “I might have guessed. Big tits.”

      “No, not centerfold material. She’s hot, though. Slim, long legs, blond hair.”

      Keke tsked. “Looks aren’t everything. Beautiful women are often conceited and looking for a rich husband. Better watch out. Playing hard-to-get is the oldest trick in the book.”

      “Mommie! Mommie!” screeched Keke’s youngest. “Watch!”

      “I’m watching.”

      The three-year-old leaped over an incoming wave that was six inches high at most.

      Keke clapped, and yelled, “Very good.”

      “Way to go,” Chad shouted.

      He waited until he had Keke’s attention again. “I don’t think Devon is playing a game. I usually have a sixth sense about women from living all those years with you three.”

      Keke giggled. “Well, you should. Remember the time you had Eddie and the guys to the house for a sleepover? We put all our panties and bras in your room so the guys would think you were gay or a pervert.”

      “You’re lucky I didn’t strangle you.”

      “Mom stopped you. Otherwise I wouldn’t be here today.”

      They both were silent for a moment. Chad was positive his sister was thinking the same thing he was. Their parents should be here today, celebrating their granddaughter’s birthday, but they both had died, his father in an auto accident and his mother two years later of ovarian cancer.

      “About this Devon person. Think of hyenas.”

      Chad groaned. Keke adored animals. Every time she could, she made a point with an example from the animal kingdom.

      “Despite what people think about the law of the jungle, male hyenas who are too aggressive and try to dominate the females, don’t father as many pups as those who make friends before mating.”

      “I guess I do come on too strong sometimes, but it always seems to work.”

      “And we sisters—the fab three—have always warned you that some women don’t like it, especially if she’s had a bad experience with a man.”

      The stupidity of allowing a brief encounter with a stranger to bug him like this made him groan inwardly. Aw, hell, he didn’t know what to think. Since his first sexual experience at fourteen, he’d called the shots in his relationships with women.

      Sure, a few had blown him off. It hadn’t bothered him, but Devon had managed to get to him, Chad realized, perplexing emotions coursing through him.

      Why her?

      SHELBY SOMETHING—an unpronounceable Hawaiian last name that Devon couldn’t say let alone remember—gushed wedding trivia nonstop from the office to the posh residential area near Diamondhead.

      “Why do brides wear something blue?” Shelby had asked, then immediately answered her own question. “It symbolizes faithfulness.”

      “Who, like, thought of wedding cakes? They began in England in the Middle Ages. People would bring small cakes to weddings. They would, like, pile them up high. Soon people frosted them, like together. Get it? The tiered wedding cake.”

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