Maddie lay curled on her side with her cheek in the wet sand. The surf had carried her the rest of the way in and she had lain coughing and vomiting seawater for what felt like eternity. A shadow now fell across the sand in front of her and she felt a warmth flowing towards her. As she looked up, squinting into the western sun, she heard his voice,
“Aloha! Lady, you O.K?” He set down his surfboard and hunkered down closer to her, peering up into her face. Maddie wanted to hold out her hands towards him to warm them; she felt her body starting to shake as she opened her mouth to answer and then clamped it shut again as her teeth started chattering. She looked up at the strange man feeling utterly helpless. He was tall and lean and as he bent and gathered her shaking body into his arms his face turned towards the sun and she was able to see his golden skin, high cheekbones and deep, black eyes. Maddie was too spent to do anything but close her eyes, let her head flop against his shoulder, and soak up the seemingly supernatural warmth that emanated from his torso and his long muscular arms. Where his bare hands touched the top of her thigh and the curve of her ribcage she felt as her skin might have been scorched were it not for the fabric of her tan suit between them.
As her shaking began to subside, Maddie opened her eyes and her head lolled back onto the neoprene-sheathed arm of the man who was picking his way carefully over the dunes, his forehead creased with concern. She saw that they had reached a road where a battered black pick-up truck sat on the shoulder of the road. He glanced down at her and, seeing that her eyes were open, his forehead smoothed out a bit. She saw him smile and she tried to smile back. Feeling suddenly self-conscious she thought, ‘I must look really awful’.
“Lady, you think you can sit here for a minute while I get you a blanket and some water?”
“Yes,” Maddie rasped, her throat sore from as much from the screaming as from the salt water that had gone down and come back up.
He crouched down and settled her back against the front passenger side tire of the truck and went around to the driver’s side, opened the door and began rummaging behind the seat. Maddie sat in the waning sunlight and tried to gather her thoughts, what should she do now?
The man came back around the front of the car and knelt down beside her, tilting her torso forward towards his chest and throwing a huge beach towel around her shoulders before leaning her back against the truck.
“Here, take small sips otherwise you might get sick again” he said, offering a plastic bottle of water. Maddie wanted to drink it all but she heeded his advice and took only a mouthful, washing it across her tongue slowly and letting it trickle down her painfully sore throat.
“Thank you,” she croaked, managing another sip and gazing at his profile, a straight but prominent nose over full lips that reminded her of a statue of the Buddha
that she’d seen at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco. The man now sat cross-legged and was busy peeling the speckled, golden skin from a mango. He held out a bit of the sticky orange fruit on the edge of his pocket knife; she pulled it from the steel blade into her mouth with her teeth, relishing its bright sweetness as it burst across her tongue. Maddie closed her eyes, leaning her head back against the warm steel of the truck.
“So what happened?” His voice was casual and conversational as if he scooped up half-drowned women in business suits off the beach every day and was only vaguely curious as to her particular story.
It was the question that she’d been dreading and, without opening her eyes,she answered with the only plausible scenario that she’d thought of in the last 15 minutes.
“I was walking on the beach. Couldn’t resist such beautiful water,” she tried an exhausted half-smile here hoping that would encourage him to listen more with sympathy than with reason. “Rip-current,” she finished, opening her eyes to see what his reaction had been. He was busy cutting another bit of mango and she saw that his gaze stopped at her feet, and then again at the damaged wrist that rested in her lap before rising to meet hers as he proffered the orange-gold fruit.
‘Damn! She thought, I still have my flippers on,’ her saleswoman’s brain went into overdrive as she looked into the dark, unreadable depths of his eyes. She noticed that they were a perfect almond-shape and tilted up slightly over the high ridge of his cheek bones. Smiling apologetically as she took the second bite of mango, she chewed it slowly and wiggled her feet a bit in acknowledgement of her odd apparel.
“Just bought these yesterday and thought I’d break them in before I went on a long dive.” She held up her damaged hand, happy to see that she could still move it and continued, “I had a bag with my shoes in it wrapped around my wrist, I guess those are lost for good now.” Maddie was pleased that both of these statements were true. She was a lousy liar but like any good salesperson she was a genius at only saying what was needed to make the sale and nothing more. His face was a hard one to read, he looked neither convinced nor incredulous, just interested.
“That looks pretty bad,” he said, taking her injured hand in his. “I should probably take you to the hospital, or do you want me to take you to a phone so you can call your husband?”
Maddie didn’t quite make sense of the last sentence; she wasn’t married. Again she noticed how unbelievably warm his hands were. Maybe it was just that hers were so cold but the aching soreness began to ebb from her wrist as he turned her hand gently in his.
“You all right?” he asked, his brow creasing again with concern as she hadn’t responded to his question. Maddie had been lost looking at his long tapered fingers as they stroked the slender pallid ones on her injured hand and started out of her reverie with a little gasp as she noticed what he must have seen, a slender gold band around the ring finger of her left hand. She was supposed to be meeting Kirk at the restaurant, maybe right now. They were, in his elaborate game plan, husband and wife having an anniversary dinner while on vacation in Kaua’i.
“What time is it?” she asked jerking upright.
“ Close to sunset,” he answered laconically, his eyes narrowing slightly, his head cocked to one side as he released her hand. Maddie immediately missed the warmth of his touch, sensed that she was about to lose his credulity and, looking at this incredibly attractive man, she found herself feeling terribly sorry to be wearing a fake wedding ring.
“I’m sorry, really I feel okay now thanks to your help” she said, taking a deep breath and launching into her first lie, “I’m in a panic because I promised to meet my husband for our anniversary dinner at The Beach House at seven-thirty; he must be terribly worried by now!” Maddie raised her clear blue eyes with an expression that she hoped looked sufficiently helpless; cursing the need to be dishonest with the man who had just saved her from dying alone on the beach from shock and exhaustion.
“Nice place,” he said “Should I take you straight there? I think you have time to change clothes.” He smiled at her, his beautifully shaped lips curving up to show brilliantly white teeth. Maddie looked down at her suit now crusted with white salt.
“I think you’d better take me to my hotel first. I’m staying at Waimea Plantation.”
“You might want to eat the rest of this first,” he said handing her the knife and the mango.
Maddie hungrily cut off chunks of the delicious fruit, eating almost as fast as she could cut, the juice unavoidably running over her fingers and her chin. She noticed that her left hand felt much better, the fingers moved easily and the blood had stopped oozing from the torn skin just below the heel of her thumb. Giving up any semblance of propriety, she sucked the last of the fruit off the furry seed of the mango, licking the juice from her fingers. Now she looked up at the man and asked, “You don’t by chance have a napkin do you?”
He laughed, it was a sound like water falling over big round rocks, “this is not quite The Beach House but I think I can manage to come up with something.” He walked around the front of the truck and came back with a roll of paper towels. She wrapped up the seed in one and dampened one of the others with some water from the bottle to wipe her face and hands, taking a deep swallow from the bottle when she was done.
“I’m afraid I have to ask for a hand standing up,” Maddie said; glancing up into his dark eyes again, glad to see that they’d regained the relaxed, open look they’d had earlier. He reached leaned down and instead of offering a hand as she thought he would, he put both of his arms under hers’ and lifted her up. Then, holding her firmly against his chest with one arm he stepped back, opened the passenger side door of the truck, and lifted her into the seat before releasing her. Maddie’s heart raced as he reached across to fasten her seatbelt, brushing her left breast with the top of his arm. This close she noticed that he smelled smoky and sweet, like fire and vanilla.
He stepped back and closed the passenger side door, walked around the front of the truck and settled in behind the wheel. It took a few tries for the motor to turn over but when it finally did he shifted into first gear and reached to release the parking break she reached out and put her slender hand on his shoulder, “I haven’t even said thank you or asked your name.”
“Lohiau,” he replied turning to her with a smile that gave off light, “Aloha.”
Spontaneously, Maddie smiled back with genuine warmth, “Aloha.”
