Island Promises: Hawaiian Holiday / Hawaiian Reunion / Hawaiian Retreat

“Not lately,” he answered.

“I had a voice mail from him when we landed. He’s coming to the wedding, after all. He’ll be here tomorrow and he’s bringing...wait for it...wife number five. Sherri or Sharon or something like that. The message was a little garbled, but I figured out they were married last weekend in Reno. Isn’t that great?”

He listened to her listless tone and wanted to punch something. Trust Hal Russell to do whatever he could to screw things up if at all possible. He didn’t know how to answer her and had to take a few deep breaths to keep from spewing anger that had absolutely nothing to do with her.

“Oh, Cara.”

“Mom is arriving tomorrow, too. She’s going to flip when she finds out.”

“She can deal,” he answered sharply, determined to make sure of it. “Don’t worry, kid. This day is about you and Nick, not about Dad and his wedding du jour or Mom and her drama. I won’t let either of them ruin your big day.”

“Do you really think you can stop them?” she asked.

“I’ll figure something out, even if I have to handcuff them in their cabanas.”

She laughed at that. “I would love to see that.”

He smiled. “Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that. I only brought one pair, though I could probably round up a zip tie somewhere. Don’t worry, I’ll talk to both of them, make sure everybody keeps things civil.”

Their parents despised each other, which had certainly made for an interesting childhood.

Cara leaned her head against his shoulder. “I love you, Shane. Have I told you that lately?”

He threw an arm around her, wishing, as always, that he could do more to make things easier for her. Though four years younger, Cara had been about the only stable thing in his tumultuous childhood. By necessity, they’d clung together to survive the storm-tossed seas of divorce, remarriages, custody battles, family court hearings.

“Love you back, kid.”

They sat that way for a few moments while the sea whispered against the sand. Finally Cara sat up, looking up the beach toward a few of the other cabanas.

“Oh, look. Megan’s taking the girls swimming.”

He followed her gaze and found Megan wearing a hip-skimming, pink swimsuit cover-up, carrying Grace on her back. Sarah skipped along beside them holding a basket full of beach toys.

The late-afternoon sunlight glowed in her burnished hair. A few feet above the wet sand mark, Sarah threw out a towel and Megan carefully lowered Grace onto it.

The scene touched a soft chord inside him, for reasons he couldn’t have explained.

“She’s pretty awesome, isn’t she?” Cara murmured.

“I just met her,” he lied. “She seems to be.” He spoke in a guarded tone, not liking the note of insecurity in his sister’s voice.

“I’m not jealous of her, I promise. You can get that worried look out of your eyes. I like her too much. I know both she and Nick tried hard to make their marriage work. They care about each other, but I don’t think they were ever really in love. The marriage was shaky from the beginning, and just never recovered from the stress of the girls being so sick at birth. It’s just...I want to be a good stepmother, and I’m not sure where to start, especially when she’s so great with the girls. Why would they need me?”

“They strike me as pretty easy girls to love. That’s about all they need from you, isn’t it?”

She sighed. “I hope that’s enough. I’m going to be a stepmother. I’m suddenly feeling bad for the rotten way I treated wives two, three and four. I can’t feel guilty about Sherri or Sharon or whatever her name is, since I haven’t met her yet.”

“You have nothing to be guilty about. None of them wanted to be bothered with us. You, on the other hand, already care about Grace and Sarah, and they like you.” He’d figured out that much, hearing them talk about the wedding. “Don’t worry, you’ll be fine.”

She leaned her head on his shoulder again for just a moment before rising to her feet. “In the interest of saving my sanity and my nerves, I’m going to choose to believe you about that. I love Nick too much to back out now. Thank you. A bunch of us are going to dinner later, if you’re interested. Around eight.”

“I might be. I’ll let you know.”

After she left, he took another drink from his beer, listening to the light music of the girls’ laughter on the trade winds.

They were having the time of their lives playing in the waves, and he suddenly wanted to be out there with them.

So why wasn’t he?

He battled indecision for another minute before he hurried into the cabana for his board shorts.

* * *

“IT’S SO WARM!” Sarah exclaimed, trailing fingers through sea water. “Remember how cold Lake Michigan was last summer?”

Megan shivered at the memory, which seemed a distant lifetime ago. “Yes. I think my teeth only stopped chattering last week.”

Sarah giggled, bouncing a little on a wave that rolled past them. They were in only about eighteen inches of water, barely to the girls’ chests when they were sitting on the sandy bottom.

“What about you, Gracie?” she asked.

“I love it,” she declared, beaming and wiggling her legs. In the water, Grace enjoyed a freedom of movement she didn’t have elsewhere. She had more control over her muscles, somehow able to countermand the disrupted neural pathways created by the hypoxic brain bleed that had caused her cerebral palsy shortly after birth.

“I think a fish just nibbled my toe!” Sarah exclaimed.

She flopped onto her stomach and stuck her face straight into the water, emerging a moment later with wide-eyed delight on her dripping features.

“It did! I saw four little fish! They’re silver and orange. Can you see, Grace? Can you?”

Grace might have been able to move better in the water, but she’d never mastered her fear of submerging her face.

She peered a few inches above the softly rippling water, straining hard to see into the depths. “I can’t see anything but water,” she complained.

“They’re right there. Try harder.”

“What are we looking at?” a male voice called out and Megan jerked up from her own scrutiny of the depths to discover Shane wading toward them, a pair of board shorts hanging low on his hips.

His shoulders were broad and muscled, and her toes suddenly tingled as if a whole school had started nipping them.

“There are fish down there,” Grace announced, with all the wide-eyed glee of someone declaring the clouds had suddenly turned rainbow colors.

He smiled down at her with a soft tenderness, and Megan’s stomach fluttered. “Is that so?”

“Yes. Sarah felt one bite her toe. They didn’t bite mine, though.”

“Lucky.”

“I wanted one to bite me. I don’t like to put my face in the water, so I can’t see them, but Sarah said they’re there.”