Paradise Betrayed

By Alice Sharpe

Fashion designer Nalani Hammond comes home to Maui to find her father dead--the police say suicide. She's a wealthy woman now, but it's soon clear others are interested in the land she inherits including a handsome lawyer who represents a land conservancy. Before she falls in love, however, she must survive the brutal truth of her father's death.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Alice Sharpe
• Release date: Dec 10, 2011
• ISBN: 9781465731210

Alice Sharpe

I was born in Sacramento, California where I launched my writing career by “publishing” a family newspaper. Circulation was dismal. After school, I married the love of my life. We spent years juggling children and pets while living on sailboats. All the while, I read like a crazy woman (devoured Agatha Christie) and wrote stories of my own, eventually selling to magazines and then book publishers. Now, 45 novels later, I’m concentrating on romantic suspense where my true interest lies.

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PARADISE BETRAYED

Alice Sharpe

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2011 by Alice Sharpe

Cover art and design by Patricia Schmitt/Pickyme

All the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in encouraging piracy of copyrighted materials in violation with the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

CHAPTER ONE

THIS WASN’T the way Nalani Hammond had pictured coming home. Since their bitter parting words six months earlier, a reconciliation scene had played and replayed through her mind. He would meet her at the airport wearing one of his reluctant smiles. He would be holding a lei of creamy plumeria blossoms he had strung himself, and as the sweet damp flowers touched the back of her neck, he would lean down and kiss her cheek. He would say he understood her decision, that he respected her determination to live her own life. He would say that like all fathers, what he wanted was for her to be happy.

She hadn’t expected to come home to bury him. She hadn’t expected her father would kill himself right on the eve of her future.

Her gaze strayed to the rattan chair in the corner, the one painted glossy white, and she tried to picture him as George Tanada, her father’s gardener and also his best friend, had found him.

He was slumped in the chair, the one in the corner, George had stated in the police report. His right hand was clutched around the neck of an empty rum bottle and there was one of those brown bottles that hold prescription pills on the table next to him. The lid was off and it had rolled over onto its side and I could see that it was empty too. I called his name, thinking maybe he was asleep. He’d taken to drinking by himself late into the night and I thought he’d just nodded off. It wouldn’t have been the first time. But Duke didn’t answer and then I saw the note, which was there on the table under the pill bottle.

The note.

Nalani shivered as she wrapped her arms around herself. All the evidence of the routine police investigation—the bottles, the fingerprint dust, the damning note—all this was gone. What lingered was the finality of the act itself. Though the ceiling fans twirled lazily overhead, the room felt stuffy and oppressive. She escaped out the open doors onto the deck that circled the house, out under the monkey pod tree, out where her gaze could leap across the road and the trees and find the Pacific ocean. As the warm tradewinds tousled her long dark hair and toyed with the hem of her sarong, Nalani took deep breaths of fragrant air and tried to clear her head.

Suicide. An ugly word that said it all but didn’t say a thing. Her father had killed himself and what was beginning to seep into Nalani’s consciousness was that by taking his own life, he’d gotten in the last, irrevocable word.

She heard the car on the road before she saw it. When it came into view it was exactly what she’d expected: a small late model compact, no doubt a rental. This one white, and seemingly held only a driver. From this distance, she couldn’t tell if that driver was male of female, but she knew when he or she realized the rental company didn’t want their cars on the road up ahead, they would probably pull into the vacant lot across the street. She knew the driver would get out of the car, stretch, admire the beach, glance at her house, return to the car and drive back toward Lahina.

She knew this because it happened dozens of times every day; her father had said it was the price one paid for living at the end of the road on the island of Maui.

Nalani sensed rather than heard someone behind her. For one chilling moment, her imagination went wild, but by the time she’d turned to face the intruder, she’d dismissed the idea of ghosts and spirits and wasn’t surprised to find George Tanada. His weathered hands clutched the brim of a ratty straw hat and his graying hair was combed back as it always was, but for once his round face wasn’t smiling. In fact, long lines running from his mouth down to his chin made his face seem almost oblong. The look in his dark eyes reminded Nalani she wasn’t the only one in mourning.

I knocked, he said from the open doorway.

Nalani spared him a half hearted smile, the best she could muster. He was dressed in khaki pants and shirt, the same uniform he’d worn ever since he’d moved into the house her father rented him—the little one on the beach across the road—twenty years ago. Nalani had been five years old, George’s son, Ross, had been nine. Their mothers had become instant friends. Somehow Liliha Hammond’s shy humor had merged perfectly with Brigid Tanada’s more feisty temperament and for awhile, before Brigid left George and Ross to make a new life for herself on a different island and Liliha was diagnosed with cancer, life at the end of the road had been loud and crazy and fun.

You don’t have to work today, Nalani said. Selfishly, she didn’t want him to work. She didn’t want to catch glimpses of him moving among the banana trees or digging drainage ditches. She knew if he was out there, she would keep expecting to see her father too, and for a second, she remembered vividly the sight of the two of them working side by side, her father so tall, George small and wiry. That memory was only a few months old, she realized with a start, gathered over Christmas break, the last time she’d been home.

We were in the process of widening the path down to the river, George said. Your father wanted to pave it with lava rock from that pile behind the shed. I’d like to continue the project.

Nalani bit at her lip. George, we’re going into town to see Dad’s lawyer this afternoon. Who knows what will become of this house and the land… Her voice trailed off as she recalled her father’s last words to her: If you leave, better be sure you’re leaving for good, Nalani, because I won’t hand over everything to you when I die just because you’re my daughter, I swear I won’t. If you turn your back on what your mother and I worked our whole lives to build for you, then I won’t be responsible for what happens—

I’d still like to finish the path, George was saying. Duke…would have wanted it that way.

If that’s what you want…

George nodded curtly and turned. His small figure disappeared into the shadows of the house, his steps silent on the stairs as he went back down to the first floor. Nalani wondered how anyone could walk so softly. A few seconds later she heard the sound of the outside door closing. Idly, she moved to the railing and followed George as he walked out from under the deck overhang where he was joined by Mango, her father’s black Labrador, who had switched loyalties now that his master was dead. The two of them walked around the house and toward the gardens.

Nalani’s gaze drifted toward the ocean where she saw the white rental car parked in the vacant lot next to George’s house. The house, the vacant lot, as well as several thousand acres in back of and beyond the main house, land that formed gentle slopes so suited to raising the pineapple of the past, land that fell abruptly to the sea, land that curved around one of the least assessable but most beautiful beaches on the island—all this was her father’s land, acquired over years and years of shrewd investing and an influx of capital from her mother. Nalani couldn’t help but wonder if it was her land now or if her father had followed up on his threats and left it all to George or Ross or maybe even the stray cats of the world. Nothing would surprise her.

The white car was empty, as was the beach. Nalani looked toward her own driveway and saw a man standing beneath the African tulip tree. He was tall, slim, and blonde, dressed in faded blue jeans and a washed-out blue shirt. His right hand was shading his eyes against the glare from the morning sun; it also hid the details of his face, but from the direction he was facing and the tilt of his head, Nalani could tell he was looking more or less toward the downstairs windows.

This wasn’t unexpected, either. People were always staring at the house as it was nestled in a small valley with gentle mountains rising up behind and dozens of trees surrounding it. Nalani knew the grounds looked like a tropical botanical garden–thanks to George–and she knew it was tempting to walk up the driveway to admire the bright red ginger and the bird of paradise that flanked one of the lava-rock retaining walls. There were numerous NO TRESSPASSING signs posted and most people were courteous enough to stay off the land.

Annoyed by the intruder, Nalani left the deck and walked through the house’s dark interior. Her feet found the inside stairs and she hurried down, then quickly crossed the tile floors of the kitchen, tore open the outside door and ran across the grass to the retaining wall. She didn’t take the time to move down the slope to the steps, but jumped the three feet to the next level and from there, down to the driveway.

The man was gone. Wondering if she’d scared him off, Nalani walked toward the road; she heard the sound of a car, and a moment later, gravel crunching beneath its wheels, the small white compact drove past. A green sticker in the corner of the window confirmed her earlier suspicion that it was a rented vehicle.

Before the car began ascending the slope toward Lahina, the driver glanced her way. Nalani was left with an impression of a tanned thin face with a high forehead, long nose, and a generous mouth that although set in a determined line, appeared more than capable of leaping into a smile. Perhaps more compelling than his mouth, however, were his eyes. Long after the little car had disappeared around the bend, she could still picture not their shape or size but their color, a deep blue, the color of the ocean out beyond the reefs. Had there been a strange expression in those eyes? She fought to re-create the momentary glance they’d shared and decided there had. Grief? Maybe that was too strong; maybe the right term was mild shock. Had he known her father? She tried to think if she’d met this man somewhere in the past but she doubted it. She didn’t think she’d have forgotten someone who looked like him.

Who was that? a voice called out and Nalani looked up to see George’s son, Ross Tanada, approaching from across the road. He was dressed in khaki pants and shirt like his father, but all similarities between father and son ended right there. Ross had sprouted past both his small-framed parents, calling no doubt on his mother’s Irish genes which for generations had produced tall, strapping young men with blazing eyes. His father’s diminutive Japanese ancestors were overpowered. Ross had widely spaced brown eyes, thick blackish brown hair, beautiful coffee-and-cream-colored skin. He might farm whatever crop he could coax to grow, Nalani often thought, but he looked as though he could put on a three-piece-suit and argue a case in front of the Supreme Court. He smiled at Nalani, his teeth dazzling against his skin.

It was just a tourist, she told him.

I saw him walking up your driveway, so I came over.

It took you long enough, Nalani said, falling easily into the banter that had existed between them since they’d been children. If he’d been a mugger I’d have been mugged.

I was on the phone, Ross said, pocketing his cell.

Not out in the fields communicating with your hybrid bananas?

The foreman is handling that this morning. I’ve got him singing lullabies. Anyway, I’ve moved up in the world, got my own crew and everything. Of course, any kind of farming is chancy right now, but that’s another story and you don’t need my tale of woe, do you?

No, Nalani said, suddenly plunged back into the middle of her grief.

Ross took her arm and said softly, Let me take you back inside.

She put her hand over his hand. It’s okay. It’s all just so…overwhelming.

Of course it is.

But I don’t want you or your father to worry about me, she added. I can take care of myself.

Make me a cup of coffee and tell me about what you’re going to do, Ross said.

I can’t now, I have to get ready to go into Wailuku to see the lawyer. For that matter, so do you.

Nalani noticed the way Ross’s grip tightened before it slipped from her arm. She knew he was wondering what provisions her father had made to keep the land available to Ross; she was wondering about her father’s will too.

Then we’ll talk later, he said.

Sure. Come over for dinner after we all get back from the lawyer’s office. You and your dad.

He smiled again, but this time the smile was intimate. I’d rather be alone with you, he said.

Sure. Come over for dinner after we all get back from the lawyer’s office. You and your dad.

He smiled again, but this time the smile was intimate. I’d rather be alone with you.

Nalani smiled faintly. This was an indication of the new twist in their relationship, one that had begun over the Christmas holidays. For ages they’d been just buddies, but now the air between them seemed charged with some new sort of recognition. At first, Nalani noticed he touched her more often, found more reasons to visit. And then he’d cornered her playfully in the banana orchard and pleaded for a kiss. She’d tried telling him that kissing him would be like kissing a brother, but he’d only stroked her cheek and said she wouldn’t know if she didn’t try. She’d resisted and he let the issue drop until the next day when he searched her out and teased her into giggles and then propositioned her, telling her that no one could make her laugh like that. What confused her was that he was right, no