Page 46 of Pallas & Kawehi

She'd bought his lies and let him into her heart.

Given him her body.

Her hopes and her dreams.

And he'd just left her with no word. Not even a kiss off.

She didn't want those doubts to creep up again after she'd managed to silence them. Paul thinking she was beautiful was nice, but there were thousands of beautiful women that Nick must have come in contact with being stationed at KBAY. She wasn't anything special amongst that number of people.

One of the reasons she was enjoying her time with Domenico was that he hadn't descended on her with declarations of love. He'd shown up and put in time to get to know her. She was getting to know him as well.

She wanted to spend more time with him, but he was also cluing her in on what was going on in his life. Something she was realizing that Nick hadn't done with her. He'd always steered conversation back to her.

And while that was flattering when it was happening, after he disappeared, she realized that he'd told her very little about who he was. She didn't even have a clue about the men he worked with. Sure, he'd mentioned ranks and things like that, but he'd never introduced her to anyone he worked with.

Oh. My. God.

She moved back out to the counter and looked Paul in the eye. "He was stationed at the base, right?"

Paul leaned back and gave her a confused look. "I'm sorry, what?"

She tried to regulate the rate of her breaths, but she was struggling. "He told me next to nothing about his work or who he worked with. And he lived with me off base so I'm starting to wonder if he was even a Marine at all."

A startled look crossed his features before he managed a half-hearted smile. "He's a Marine. I can tell you that. He was stationed at the Marine Corps Base."

She leaned against the counter and managed to gather her thoughts. "Okay. Okay. Thank you."

Paul reached for her hand, but stopped and lowered his hand back to the counter. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to upset you."

Kawehi chuckled a little, some self-depreciating humor, she told herself. "I think pretty much everything about Nick upsets me at this point. I just want to serve him with the papers so I can start the process of getting a divorce from him. I want my life back."

"You could start by changing your name."

She shook her head. "Everyone that knows me thinks of me as Kawehi Phillips. It's only on paperwork that I bear his name."

"Kawehi? Order up."

"One sec." She moved to the kitchen door and took the plate in hand.

Her uncle peered into the main room and looked at the corner of the counter where Paul was sitting. "Is he helping you? Or hurting you?"

She gave her uncle a smile. "He's helping."

Her uncle looked at the plate. "If he's hurting you, I can burn that on the grill."

Kawehi moved the plate away from him. "No burning."

Her uncle almost looked disappointed. "Well, das good. I no have to burn your boyfriend's food when he come in next time."

"No," she leaned in and gave him a kiss on the cheek, "no burning Dom's food."

"I settle for burning that asshole haole you wen marry on da grill."

She grinned at him. "Maybe we'll do it huli huli style."

Her uncle gave her a wink that said he might actually be thinking about it, but she knew he was just joking.

Maybe.

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