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Ellie wanted to pinch herself, just to see if she was dreaming. Her innards may have melted to blissful mush, but something wasn’t right here.
She’d just cried all over Daniel Morgan’s shirt. Where Daniel’s caress had scared her witless on the beach the other night, tonight it somehow liberated her. She felt lighter.
And that kiss! Admittedly she’d been waiting for him to kiss her since that night on the beach. She’d wondered what Daniel’s kiss would be like, even fantasized about it. Tonight she learned it was all that fantasy and more.
But whatever was going on here, it wasn’t going any further. She had her life planned, thank you very much, and it didn’t include danger with a capital Daniel.
Dear Reader,
What does romance mean to you? Sure, it could be sharing a candlelit dinner or strolling hand in hand on a spring day. But to me it’s even the smallest of gestures that tells you the person you think hangs the sun and the moon finds you equally unforgettable. As a lifelong romantic who met her future husband nearly twenty years ago, I’m delighted to be heading up Silhouette Romance. These books remind me that no matter what challenges the day has held, finding true love is one of life’s greatest rewards.
Bestselling author Judy Christenberry kicks off another great month with Finding a Family (SR #1762). In this sweet romance, a down-to-earth cowboy goes “shopping” for the perfect woman for his father but instead finds himself the target of Cupid’s arrow! Watch the sparks fly in Melissa McClone’s Blueprint for a Wedding (SR #1763) when a man who has crafted the perfect blueprint for domestic bliss finds himself attracted to an actress who doesn’t believe in happy endings. This month’s “Cinderella” is a feisty Latina, as Angie Ray continues Silhouette Romance’s commitment to offering modern-day fairy tales in The Millionaire’s Reward (SR #1764). Part of the SOULMATES series, Moonlight Magic (SR #1765) by Doris Rangel features a vacationing nurse who falls for a handsome stranger with a particularly vexing habit of vanishing into thin air.
And be sure to stay tuned for next month’s exciting lineup when reader favorites Raye Morgan and Carol Grace return with two classic romances.
Ann Leslie Tuttle
Associate Senior Editor
Moonlight Magic
Doris Rangel
www.millsandboon.co.uk
For J and A
Who created their own Hawaiian Magic
With love from Mom
and Grammie
Books by Doris Rangel
Silhouette Romance
Marlie’s Mystery Man #1693
Moonlight Magic #1765
Silhouette Special Edition
Mountain Man #1140
Prenuptial Agreement #1224
DORIS RANGEL
loves books—the feel of them, the sight of them, the smell of them. And she loves talking about them. She has collected them, organized them, sold them new and used, written them, worked with others to write them, read them aloud to children and has hopefully imparted the magic of them to the grade school, college and adult students she has taught over the years. History, philosophy, science, satire, Western, mystery…In her home, books are the wallpaper of choice.
Romances hold a special place on her shelves, however. A story that ends with a couple stepping into the future with love and hope may be an ideal, but it is an ideal she wishes in the tomorrows of every living thing in the universe. Love, after all, in whatever form it takes, is all that is.
Contents
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Prologue
Daniel Morgan startled into wakefulness.
But around him quiet reigned in the garden’s somnambulant midafternoon sunshine—as it should with the children in school, Janie and Tom at work, and the old woman in the house probably watching afternoon soaps.
Yet he’d felt someone touch him, brush warm fingers across his chest.
Dreaming again.
Idly, he listened to the breeze rustling quietly through the foliage and watched an insect investigate the heart of a nearby blossom.
Thoughts drifting to other times, other places, he sank again into lethargy…and slept.
If you can’t trust your sweet, old grandmother, who can you trust?
Running the tip of her finger over a silver petal on the earring she held, Ellie frowned. She trusted Grammie. Sure she did.
Most of the time.
The pair of earrings looked ordinary enough. Flower shaped, with a slight dangle from a French hook and attached to an ordinary flat plastic backing stamped, Plumeria, the Flower of Hawaii and Sterling Silver. The backing nestled on ordinary cotton batting in a small ordinary white cardboard box with Made especially for you by Ohana embossed on the lid. Shops used this kind of box by the thousands.
Grammie’s gift was perfectly…well, ordinary. A nice pair of unpretentious earrings, not terribly expensive, their shape the only exotic thing about them.
“Nice.”
Looking up, Ellie found the flight attendant standing beside her admiring the earrings.
“Thanks. They’re a gift from my grandmother,” Ellie told her. And that was an ordinary comment—if one didn’t know her grandmother.
She shivered.
“They’re very pretty. Is this your first trip to the islands?” the woman asked casually, pouring the soda Ellie requested.
“Yes. I’m going for a medical convention, but my brother is a marine stationed there so I’m visiting him, too.”
Inwardly, Ellie grimaced, knowing she’d given the flight attendant far more information than the polite question warranted. She wasn’t usually this chatty, but for some reason she was nervous. The earrings, probably.
“I’m sure you’ll have a wonderful time,” the woman replied, and passed on to the next passenger.
I certainly hope so. Ellie’s dubious gaze dropped again to the silver flower in her hand.
Did Grammie really buy these earrings?
The Simms family had a good-natured saying among themselves: Never trust one of Grammie’s little gifts if she didn’t buy it.
Their grandmother, descended from an Iq’nata shaman, had a stash of seemingly ordinary personal items that, if she decided to give one of them to you, had a way of bringing about all sorts of extraordinary events.
Not bad events, just strange ones.
Over the years the family had learned to politely refuse any items for which Gram hadn’t paid cold, hard cash. Grammie never took it personally. She just laughed, told them they had no sense of adventure and pulled out something obviously store-bought as their gift instead.
Right before leaving to catch her flight, Ellie had declined Grammie’s first “little something for your trip, dear”—a lei of pretty speckled shells her grandmother said she’d found on the beach when she traveled to Hawaii several years before.
Uh-oh.
When Ellie shook her head decisively, Gram smiled, her blue eyes twinkling with mischief.
“Just teasing, darling. But here’s something I know you’ll want,” and she gave Ellie the box containing the earrings. “I searched the shops for days before I discovered them in a little out-of-the-way place outside of Honolulu.”
At Ellie’s narrow-eyed look, the older woman lifted an eyebrow. “Don’t be so suspicious, Ellie. It’s a bad habit of yours.” Tilting the box so the light gleamed off the silver flowers, Gram smiled. “Aren’t they pretty? They’ll look perfect with your sarong.”
“I don’t have a sarong,” Ellie replied.
But she accepted the earrings. They were pretty. So…islandish.
Now, rehooking the earring to the plastic backing, she returned the set to the box and dropped it into her purse, dismissing her suspicions.
Not until she’d maneuvered her way to the exit with the rest of the disembarking passengers did Ellie remember another Simms family saying….
The Great Ones have a weird sense of humor.
Chapter One
From his place among the hibiscus, Daniel watched the party eddy around him. The old woman, bless her, never forgot him on occasions such as this. Several leis, many of them made with plumeria blossoms, hung about his neck.
He loved family get-togethers and already felt a little drunk on the heady scent of flowers mixed with the equally heady odor of barbecue.
Being physically sober as a post, it was an inebriation of the senses only, of course. What he wouldn’t give for a plate heaped high with food and a frosty cup of beer to wash it down.
Unfortunately, he was only a bystander at this luau. Literally. In the midst of jubilation, Daniel stood apart, watching it all.
Though an adult party—Tom had turned forty—children were everywhere, chasing each other, dodging groups of adults, giggling, shouting. At home, children wouldn’t be allowed at a function such as this, Daniel mused, but in Hawaii ohana prevailed. He loved it.
The adults, too, milled about, teasing, laughing, talking, sidestepping children sometimes or absently scooping up a young one to cuddle a moment before sending the child off to play again.
And music flowed through it all, everything from Elvis at his most powerful to Iz at his most fragile.
He’d love to dance again, Daniel thought—jiggle his bones to a jazzy beat, shake his booty and get down to rock ’n’roll, press his undulating body against a woman’s to the breathy croon of a saxophone….
Maybe all of the above, as various couples were doing on the patio.
Two little girls flung each other about madly while four teenagers, three girls and a boy, hip-hopped to the same music. An elderly man and woman showed they still had it, and a younger woman with long silvery-blond hair swayed in ministeps with a seriously intent boy of about five.
Make that six. When the woman said something, the boy looked up at her with a gap-toothed grin, causing her to laugh.
Over the music and the chattering crowd, Daniel couldn’t hear the laugh, but the woman had a killer smile.
Earlier, he’d seen her among the guests and admired her silvery hair that she wore long and loose down her back. Though dressed in a gauzy dress that set off her slim figure, she hadn’t impressed him as being particularly pretty; she was even, perhaps, a little austere.
But that smile! It transformed a plain-vanilla exterior into something fascinating and mysterious, as if he’d opened a shoe box and found a piece of exotically carved antique ivory. When she smiled, the woman became breathtakingly beautiful!
And she was coming his way.
The thing winked at her!
Nah, it couldn’t have.
Ellie eyed the small statue tucked among the flowers. A tiki god, probably, and obviously old, its wood weathered and cracked in places.
She’d seen similar carvings at the Polynesian Cultural Center when the convention arranged a trip there. But they’d been huge. This one stood only about three feet high.
Around its neck hung several leis, she assumed in honor of the party. Yet something else about it seemed different from the others she’d seen.
The eyes, Ellie realized. The carvings at the Cultural Center didn’t have such wide awake eyes…eyes with a glint of mischief in them staring right back at her.
Ellie shook her head. Get real, woman!
She was just overtired. Overstimulated.
After working with no letup for the past couple of years, being around so many laughing partying people was tiring—even these gregarious Hawaiians, whose pleasure in the moment seemed to waft as naturally as the light tropical breeze.
Perhaps sensing this, Georgie, her young dancing partner, had brought her to this relatively secluded spot before leaving to fetch her a soft drink.
Dismissing the carving from her thoughts, Ellie found herself a seat on a low wall bordering the garden to await the child’s return.
Lush tropical blossoms perfumed the night, and she closed her eyes the better to enjoy their scent and the music and laughter from the party just beyond. She smiled to herself when she heard her brother’s full-bodied laugh.
And just like that, a dark smothering wave of loneliness washed over her.
On a sharp breath Ellie fought it back. This had happened a lot lately, and she was having none of it. She loved her life. She loved her job.
Okay, she needed this vacation. She was tired. Being alone, however, was a choice, not a tragedy.
Prickles shimmied up the back of her neck…. With a small gasp, Ellie’s eyes flew open.
Someone stared at her! She could feel their intense gaze. She also felt conspicuous and embarrassed at being observed in what she thought was a private moment.
Scanning the crowd, ready to coolly outstare whoever found her introspection so interesting, she could find no one looking her way, however.
Yet someone’s knowing observation kept her awareness on full alert.
Slowly, cautiously, Ellie turned her head…and came nose to nose with the crimson orifice of a hibiscus blossom, its golden pistil thrust forward in the flower version of a raspberry.
Startled, she drew back, only to laugh softly at her own paranoia. The rude hibiscus would pay for its impudence, though. Snapping it from its stem, Ellie hooked it over one ear, her fingers brushing one of her flower-shaped earrings in the process.
No sarong, Grammie, she thought, but I feel a hula coming on.
Still smiling, and about to turn away, she again started violently, this time with a small muffled shriek. Nestled among the blossoms and thick foliage, the tiki stared back at her, its carved face a study of violence, its eyes infinitely sad and lonely.
She leaped to her feet.
“Here’s your soda, Miss Ellie.”
Georgie stood beside her, offering an aluminum can, his face one big beam of gap-toothed smile.
“What? Oh. Uh, thanks, sweetie.”
Ellie took the soda gratefully and downed a healthy swig. From the corner of her eye, she checked out the carving.
The thing hadn’t moved a muscle, its wooden head still angled toward the spot where she’d been sitting. Only, she wasn’t sitting there anymore. The statue’s gaze wasn’t following her at all.
Time to leave. She’d be a certified basket case if she didn’t get back to Chad’s apartment and get some rest. Three days of back-to-back workshops at the convention in Honolulu and a busy day since her arrival at her brother’s apartment this morning made for one pooped, overimaginative tourist.
After dumping her luggage in his spare bedroom, Chad immediately whisked her off for a long drive to loop the island. When they returned, she’d played baseball with the kids next door and been invited by them and their grandmother to this party.
Now her busy day—heck, her busy week, busy year, busy decade—had caught up with her. She needed her bed.
When Georgie ran off to play with the other children, Ellie searched for her brother to tell him she was leaving. Chad was never difficult to locate. With his easygoing, always friendly personality, all she had to do was find the group with the most laughter.
Then she looked for her hosts, Janie and Tom Kamehana, to make her goodbyes, and finally went to Nona, the children’s grandmother who had invited her to the luau in the first place.
“You’re leaving us,” Nona said before Ellie could speak. The old woman took Ellie’s hand in her own brown one, the clasp warm and strong. “You’re tired,” she added.
Ellie smiled. “Yes. But I’ve had a wonderful time. Thank you for inviting me.”
“And your brother. All this time living right next door and I didn’t realize,” Nona said. She tilted her head, smiling wryly. “Careless of me.”
There wasn’t much Ellie could say to that. The old woman still held her hand.
“How did you like my garden ornament?”
Ellie strove for diplomacy. “Well, it was, uh—”
“Interesting, yes? I saw you looking at it.”
“Is it a tiki god?” Ellie asked cautiously, unsure of the manners involved with the direction the conversation had taken.
“I’m not sure,” the old woman replied. “A few years ago one of the children found the carving washed up on the beach of the cove and brought it home. I placed it in the garden. But it’s different from the usual, wouldn’t you say?”
Feeling completely out of her depth, Ellie smiled. Nona still held her hand. “Everything in Hawaii seems different from the usual to me,” she answered apologetically. “I’m from Texas.”
Nona nodded her head. “San Antonio.”
Ellie didn’t remember telling her that, but she supposed she had. Or perhaps Chad did.
Finally Nona let go her hand. “You might enjoy a walk on the beach, child. Such a beautiful evening. The moon will be lovely on the water.”
“Perhaps I’ll do that,” Ellie replied politely, having no intention of doing any such thing. All she wanted was her bed and the opportunity to forget about wooden carvings with sad lonely eyes. “Good night.”
Nona smiled and picked up the toddler pulling on her skirt and waving a piece of something sticky. “Good night, dear. Those are lovely earrings, by the way. I once had a pair just like them.”
Self-consciously Ellie touched an earring, murmured, “Thank you,” and added another good-night.
See, she thought. Ordinary. Mass produced. As Gram says, I’m too suspicious.
She let herself out the side entrance separating her brother’s apartment from the house next door, her overexposed senses relaxing when the closed gate muted the music and laughter, and intervening trees shut out the colored party lights. A three-quarter moon gilded the night with silver.
It was, indeed, a beautiful evening. Too beautiful to go indoors just yet, even though she was tired, Ellie thought. The moonlight would be lovely on the water, and she remembered a small, secluded cove only a block away.
Chad had shown it to her earlier. Though native Hawaiians often went there, he said, mainlanders seldom used it, probably because other beaches were bigger, sandier, more picturesque. The waters of the cove were known to be dangerous, too. Signs warned against swimming.
No problem. Ellie didn’t plan to swim.
In moments she’d walked down the quiet residential street ending at a stretch of pale sand bordering a moonstruck sea. A dead end leading to paradise.
Only in Hawaii.
Ellie touched one of the silver earrings in her ears and smiled a little as she imagined Grammie’s chuckle in the breeze rustling through the trees behind her.
Slipping off her sandals, she stood at the edge of the water and gazed out at the sea before her, its wavelets liquid pearls lapping at her feet.
Bliss.
Nona watched Ellie slip out the side gate.
Interesting, she thought, her gaze swinging to the small carving ruling its hibiscus kingdom across the way. But hibiscus were merely decorative. They had no power. Plumeria, now…
Taking her time, the toddler still riding her ample hip, Nona strolled over to give the carving a closer inspection. Then, with a low sudden laugh, she whipped the plumeria leis from its neck and placed them around the neck of the child.
There. That ought to do it.
Daniel looked around in disbelief.
The party had disappeared. The music was silent. Heck, the whole back garden was gone. He was…
He was on a beach.
Wait a minute! He was at the cove!
White sand shaped like a crescent moon cupping a bump in the Pacific; the oddly shaped tamarisk tree over there…. He knew this place, all right.
Sure enough, some distance away and picked out by bright moonlight, he saw the sign sticking up from the sand. He didn’t have to be any closer to know exactly what it said.
DANGER NO SWIMMING STAY OUT OF THE WATER.
The damned thing’s too small, he thought bitterly. And damned near worthless. This place needs an electrified fence around it, not a puny little hand-lettered sign. Twenty-four-hour guard dogs ought to patrol the area, trained to drag people away if they came within a hundred feet of the water.
Better yet, some civic-minded citizen should fill it in with cement, pave it over and make it a parking lot. The cove’s very existence invited tragedy.
What if someone couldn’t read that paltry notice—or was too stupid to recognize a warning when they read one?
Scowling at the distant, slightly tilted sign, Daniel angrily forked his fingers through his hair.
And stilled.
Inch by careful inch, he lowered his hand to stare at his fingers, still splayed as they’d been in his hair.
Hair?
Not daring to hope, he reached up again—actually raised his arm and hand—and lightly touched the top of his head. Against his palm he felt the crisp pelt of his…hair.
But as he again stared at his hand in awe, a small movement just beyond caught his attention, and Daniel lifted his head sharply. Someone besides himself was on the beach.
A woman, he realized, sitting on the sand, arms clasping her knees as she stared out over the sea. Her hair, the same color as moonlight, lifted slightly in the breeze. The woman from Tom and Janie’s party.
And she sat within inches of the water.
Ready to warn her, Daniel took a step, only to become aware of what he’d just done. Looking down at himself, his own wonder captivated him again.
He still wore his boxers, he saw. And…he fought an urge to laugh wildly…his money belt! Had anything else about him changed?
His bare chest and flat stomach looked no leaner, no fuller. His legs were as muscled, as much from walking a thousand miles of hospital corridor as from deliberate exercise. Near the small toe of one bare foot ran the thin line of a scar he’d had since he was twelve.
It was his body all right. His arms, his legs, what he assumed was his face. Nothing about it was different. And he had moved!
The thought brought him back to the present with a thump.
The woman! While he’d been checking himself over, she had risen from her seat on the sand and now swished one foot in the tiny wavelets washing the shore.
“Hey! Don’t do that!”
A part of him marveled at the sound of his voice echoing over the beach, but this time Daniel didn’t take time to enjoy it. He headed toward the woman at a dead run.
She turned a startled face in his direction, dropped her sandals and ran, too.
Away from him.
Her action stopped Daniel in his tracks.
Women didn’t used to run from him. Did he not have his same face after all?
But the silly woman continued running down the beach, her moonlit hair streaming behind her—each frantic step splashing in the shallow water of the shoreline, sometimes at its edge, sometimes a little deeper.
Daniel pelted after her again. Whatever hid in the waters of this cove was dangerous. Stay out of the Water the sign said.
An order, not a warning.
The woman ran like a deer, but in the wrong direction.
She was afraid of him, he guessed, and if she’d just aim toward the trees or toward the houses beyond, he’d leave her alone. He had other things to think about.