Paper Wedding, Best-Friend Bride

“He was an American tourist who made all sorts of promises, saying he was going to bring her to the States and marry her. But in the end, he didn’t do anything, except ditch her and the kid.”

“Oh, how awful.” Lizzie’s voice broke a little. “That makes me sad for her, living on a shattered dream, waiting for a man to whisk her away.”

It disturbed Max, too. “She kept in touch with the orphanage for a while, waiting to see if Tokoni ever got a permanent home, but then she caught pneumonia and died. The old lady who operates the place told me the story. It’s a private facility that survives on charity. I already donated a sizable amount to help keep them on track.”

She made a thoughtful expression. “I can write an article about them to drum up more support, if you want.”

“That would be great.” Max appreciated the offer. Lizzie hosted a successful philanthropy blog with tons of noble-hearted followers. “I just wish someone would adopt Tokoni. He’s the coolest kid, so happy all the time.” So different from how Max was as a child. “He’s at the age where he talks about getting adopted and thinks it’s going to happen. He’s been working on this little picture book, with drawings of the mommy and daddy he’s convinced he’s going to have. They’re just stick figures with smiley faces, but to him, they’re real.”

“Oh, my goodness.” She tapped a hand against her heart. “That’s so sweet.”

“He’s a sweet kid. I’ve been wanting to return to the island to see him again. Just to let him know that I haven’t forgotten about him.”

“Then you should plan another trip soon.”

“Yeah, I should.” Max could easily rearrange his schedule to make it happen. “Hey, here’s an idea. Do you want to come to Nulah with me to meet him?” He suspected that Lizzie could manage her time to accommodate a trip, as well. She’d always been a bit of a jet-setter, a spontaneous society girl ready to leave town on a whim. But mostly she traveled for humanitarian causes, so this was right up her alley. “While we’re there, you can interview the woman who operates the orphanage for the feature you’re going to do on your blog.”

“Sure. I can go with you. I’d like to see the orphanage and conduct an in-person interview. But I should probably spend most of my time with her and let you visit with Tokoni on your own. You know how kids never really take to me.”

“You just need to relax around them.” Although Lizzie championed hundreds of children’s charities, she’d never gotten the gist of communicating with kids, especially the younger ones. A side effect from her own youth, he thought, from losing her mom and forcing herself to grow up too fast. “For the record, I think you and Tokoni will hit it off just fine. In fact, I think he’s going to be impressed with you.”

“You do?” She adjusted her lounge chair, moving it to a more upright position. “What makes you say that?”

“In his culture redheads are said to descend from nobility, from a goddess ruler who dances with fire, and your hair is as bright as it gets.” Max sat forward, too, and leaned toward her. “He’ll probably think you’re a princess or something. But you were homecoming queen. So it’s not as if you didn’t have your reign.”

Her response fell flat. “That doesn’t count.”

He remembered going to the football game that night, sitting alone in the bleachers, watching her receive her crown. He’d skipped the homecoming dance. He wouldn’t have been able to blend in there. Getting a date would have been difficult, too. As for Lizzie, she’d attended the dance with the tall, tanned star of the boys’ swim team. “It counted back then.”

“Not to me, not like it should have. It wasn’t fair that my other friends didn’t accept you.”

“Well, I got the last laugh, didn’t I?”

She nodded, even if neither of them was laughing.

Before things got too morose, he reached out and tugged on a strand of her hair. “Don’t fret about being royalty to me. The only redhead that influenced my culture was a woodpecker.”

She sputtered into a laugh and slapped his hand away. “Gee, thanks, for that compelling tidbit.”

He smiled, pleased by her reaction. “It’s one of those old American Indian tales. I told it to Tokoni when he was putting a puzzle together with pictures of birds.” Max stopped smiling. “The original story involves love. But I left off that part when I told Tokoni. I figured he was too young to understand it. Plus, it would have been hypocritical of me to tell it that way.”

She took a ladylike sip of her tea. “Now I’m curious about the original version and just how lovey-dovey it is.”

“It’s pretty typical, I guess.” He went ahead and recited it, even if he preferred it without the romance. “It’s about a hunter who loves a girl from his village, but she’s never even noticed him. He thinks about her all the time. He even has trouble sleeping because he can’t get her off his mind. So he goes to the forest to be alone, where he hears a beautiful song that lulls him to sleep. That night, he dreams about a woodpecker who says, ‘Follow me and I’ll show you how to make this song.’ In the morning, he sees a real woodpecker and follows him. The bird is tapping on a branch and the familiar song is coming from it. Later, the hunter returns home with the branch and tries to make the music by waving it in the air, but it doesn’t work.”

Lizzie removed her hat. By now the sun was shifting in the sky, moving behind the trees and dappling her in scattered light. But mostly what Max noticed was how intense she looked, listening to the silly myth. Or was her intensity coming from the energy that always seemed to dance between them? The sexiness that seeped through their pores?

Ignoring the feeling, he continued by saying, “The hunter has another dream where the woodpecker shows him how to blow on the wood and tap the holes to make the song he’d first heard. Obviously, it’s a flute the bird made. But neither the hunter nor his people had ever seen this type of instrument before.”

She squinted at him. “What happens with the girl?”

“Once she hears the hunter’s beautiful song, she looks into his eyes and falls in love with him, just as he’d always loved her. But like I said, I told it to Tokoni without the romance.”

She was still squinting, intensity still etched on her face. “Where did you first come across this story? Was it in one of the books you used to read?”

“Yes.” When he was in foster care, he’d researched his culture, hoping to find something good in it. “I hated that the only thing my mom ever talked about was the scary stuff. But I’m glad that Tokoni’s mother tried to do right by him.”

“Me, too.” She spoke softly. “Parents are supposed to want what’s best for their children.”

He met her gaze, and she stared back at him, almost like the girl in the hunter’s tale—except that love didn’t appeal to either of them.

But desire did. If Lizzie wasn’t his best friend, if she was someone he could kiss without consequence, he would lock lips with her right now, pulling her as close to him as he possibly could. And with the way she was looking at him, she would probably let him kiss the hell out of her. But that wouldn’t do either of them any good.

“I appreciate you coming to Nulah with me,” he said, trying to shake off the heat of wanting her. “It means a lot to me, having you there.”

“I know it does,” she replied, reaching for his hand.

But it was only the slightest touch. She pulled away quickly. Determined, it seemed, to control her hunger for him, too.

* * *

A myriad of thoughts skittered through Lizzie’s mind. Today she and Max were leaving on their trip, and she should be done packing, as he would be arriving soon to pick her up. Yet she was still sorting haphazardly through her clothes and placing them in her suitcase. Normally Lizzie was far more organized. But for now she couldn’t think clearly.

She hated it when her attraction to Max dragged her under its unwelcome spell, and lately it seemed to be getting worse. But they’d both learned to deal with it, just as she was trying to get a handle on how his attachment to Tokoni was making her feel. Even with his troubled past, being around children was easy for Max. Lizzie was terribly nervous about meeting the boy. Kids didn’t relate to her in the fun-and-free way they did with him. Of course her stodgy behavior in their presence didn’t help. But no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t seem to change that side of herself.

After her mother had drifted into a deathly sleep, she’d compensated for the loss by taking on the characteristics of an adult, long before she should have.

But what choice did she have? Her grieving father had bailed out on parenthood, leaving her with nannies and cooks. He’d immersed himself in his high-powered work and business travels, allowing her to grow up in a big lonely house full of strangers. Lizzie didn’t have any extended family to speak of.

Even after all these years, she and her dad barely communicated. Was it any wonder that she’d gone off to Columbia University searching for a connection to her mom? She’d even taken the same journalism major. She’d walked in her mother’s path, but it hadn’t done a bit of good. She’d returned with the same disjointed feelings.

Her memories of her mom were painfully odd: scattered images of a beautifully fragile blonde who used to stare unblinkingly at herself in the mirror, who used to give lavish parties and tell Lizzie how essential it was for a young lady of her standing to be a good hostess, who used to laugh at the drop of a hat and then cry just as easily. Mama’s biggest ambition was to be awarded the Pulitzer Prize. But mostly she just threw away her writings. Sometimes she even burned them, tossing them into the fireplace and murmuring to herself in French, the language of her ancestors.

Mama was rife with strange emotions, with crazy behaviors, but she was warm and loving, too, cuddling Lizzie at night. Without her sweet, dreamy mother by her side, Elizabeth “Lizzie” McQueen had been crushed, like a bug on a long white limousine’s windshield.

After Mama killed herself, Dad sold their Savannah home, got a new job in Los Angeles and told Lizzie that she was going to be a California kid from then on.

But by that time she’d already gotten used to imitating her mother’s lady-of-the-manor ways, presenting a rich-girl image that made her popular. Nonetheless, she’d lied to her new friends, saying that her socialite mother had suffered a brain aneurysm. Dad told his new workmates the same phony story. Lizzie had been coaxed by him to protect their privacy, and she’d embraced the lie.

Until she met Max.

She’d felt compelled to reveal the truth to him. But he was different from her other peers—a shy, lonely boy, who was as damaged as she was.

The doorbell rang, and Lizzie caught her breath.

She dashed to answer the summons, and there he was: Max Marquez, with his longish black hair shining like a raven’s wing. He wore it parted down the middle and falling past his neck, but not quite to his shoulders. His deeply set eyes were brown, but sometimes they looked as black as his hair. His face was strong and angular, with a bone structure to die for. The gangly teenager he’d once been was gone. He’d grown into a fiercely handsome man.

“Are you ready?” he asked.