The Dare Collection March 2019. Rachael Stewart
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Hell, if they’d met under different circumstances, Jason might have considered them friends. Or decent drinking buddies, anyway.
“He left you fuckers hotels,” Jason pointed out now, warming to the topic he’d been turning over in his head while he tried to exhaust himself. “He left me a whole island. Why should I turn it into a hotel? Why should there even be a house here? Maybe the greatest kindness I could do is give this whole place to the jungle again, like the old man never existed in the first place.”
He had the strangest sensation he wasn’t really talking about the island, but he didn’t care to explore that notion. He found himself rubbing at his chest as if his heart hurt again, but he didn’t like that very much, either.
Lucinda was on a plane somewhere. She’d claimed she felt nothing.
He should have felt nothing himself.
“I don’t really get the drama,” Charlie said after a moment. “You don’t have to run the hotel. You don’t have to do anything. You don’t have to stay there if you don’t want. You can just own it and go about your business.”
“That’s a great idea. And then I can be him in every possible way.”
“Or not.” Charlie shrugged. “Don’t get me wrong. I’m not a fan of the guy. But I’m also not exactly crying a river over my circumstances these days. And I wouldn’t have any of the things I do if it wasn’t for the old man’s will.”
“You’re not the one in danger of turning into Daniel St. George.”
Charlie’s grin was razor-sharp, reminding Jason that this particular half brother had spent most of his life playing outlaw games in the wilds of Texas, surrounded by far more dangerous men than Jason had ever been.
“If you don’t want to turn into the old man, brother,” Charlie said quietly, “it’s real simple. Don’t.”
Jason listened to the business-related part of the call then, but after they hung up, he wandered outside and found himself brooding out at the view. The sky, the sea. And all the impenetrable jungle in between, with chattering birds in the trees and the dance of trade winds over his face.
All this tropical beauty that didn’t go along with all he thought he knew about the man who’d made him. It was too remote here. Too unspoiled. Too perfect.
But then again, the real truth was that he didn’t know Daniel St. George at all. He’d never met the man while he was alive. He’d had to read all the same articles and watch the same videos online that the rest of the word had if he wanted to know anything about the guy. The only thing Jason really knew about his father was how he felt about the man’s absence. The stories he’d told himself as a kid to explain that absence. And the understanding he’d come to over time of what that brief affair had done to his mother.
And yeah, maybe he’d spent a little too much time and energy pushing himself to be the best he could be in everything he was even remotely good at, just to prove something.
Not to his mama, who had adored him since the day he was born. Not to his actual ohana, his mother’s people spread out over the Hawaiian Islands, who had actually been there for him while his mama worked her butt off and tried to keep him fed and clothed and happy.
In his football heyday, interviewers had always asked Jason where he’d gotten the drive to pursue the game the way he had. And he’d always told them some bullshit cobbled together from the kinds of things he thought he ought to feel, always bringing it back to his mother’s sacrifices.
But he knew the truth. And here on this deserted island, with only the pieces of himself Lucinda had left behind, he let himself face it at last.
He’d spent his entire life trying to get his father to notice him.
He’d figured if he got a little famous, if he made a little noise, sooner or later his birth father would show up. Tell him how the desertion had been a mistake, or in Jason’s best interest, or something. Maybe even hit him up for money. One way or another, Jason had figured he’d smoke the asshole out.
But Daniel had never shown up. If he’d been proud of Jason at all, he kept to himself.
The only thing Jason had of his father was his silence.
And if his mother was correct, the dedication to losing himself in disposable pussy because that was a hell of a lot easier than connecting with other people.
In case he had any doubts about that, Lucinda had given him a crash course in what it looked like to experience some crazy, life-altering intimacy and then fall all over herself to pretend it hadn’t been that at all.
Had that been part of it, too? Had he been afraid that if he stopped roaming around the planet, sleeping with everything that moved, he’d lose the only link he had to a father he was pretty sure he wouldn’t even like?
That had the ring of unfortunate, uncomfortable truth inside him.
But the other thing he knew was that when push came to shove, he was far more his mother’s child than his father’s.
And Leilani Kaoki had suffered exactly one fool, one time. Never before and never since. Daniel St. George had been her one mistake, and she’d spent every day since making sure she raised up a son who knew how to see the truth of everyone he encountered—even himself. Eventually.
And Jason knew a little something about excuses, sure. And the way a person could hide right there in his own mirror, if there were enough excuses at hand. How that could go on and on for years, but sooner or later, there was only a reflection in that mirror and too much truth to bear.
Why wouldn’t you build a resort here? Lucinda had asked.
And Jason grinned now, while the breeze teased his face and the sea sighed its way onto the rocks far below.
Because that was an excellent question.
And he knew just how he was going to answer her.
Lucinda rejoiced in her welcome home to England, four miserable travel days later. She’d had to wait longer than she’d liked in Fiji to get on a plane to Los Angeles, there in the sweltering heat. And had been forced to wait in too-sunny California for a seat on a plane back to London, too, for what had seemed like another eternity.
But when she’d finally made it onto a red-eye headed for the UK, Heathrow hunched there when they’d finally landed, gray and wet and green, like a song of homecoming.
She smiled as she surrendered herself to the tender mercies of the Tube that whisked her along beneath the London streets. She told herself she was merry and bright, despite another round of serious exhaustion hanging on her like a cloak, as she walked from the Tube stop back to her flat. She was happy every time she heard a horn, or screeching tires, or the rest of the clattering noise and dismal tumult of London.
Lucinda was sure she’d never been so happy in her life as she was to let herself into her flat, then find her way to the rain-streaked window in her lounge that looked out over a dingy rooftop and a few brick walls.
No assaulting sunshine. No complicated blue sky and sea, stretching on toward forever.
No half-naked man, all temptation and wickedness.
Just London, doing its thing. It made her imagine that all she needed was a good sleep and she’d feel like herself again. How hard could it be to forget about her too-brief time on a fairy-tale island? After a good sleep it would feel like nothing more than a dream, she was certain.
Lucinda staggered off to bed, slept for hours and woke up to treat herself to tea and toast. No platters of dramatic fruit, everything garnished with coconut and soft breezes. Just a proper breakfast on a rainy Thursday morning, like any other.
She thought about taking another day to settle herself but decided against it. Her endless hours of travel had allowed her to play her time on that island over and over again in her head. She’d relived every touch. Every sound she’d