Page 12 of Fast Fury

She shook away the mental image of her licking Kai’s muscular chest. “No. But I keep obsessively checking my phone to make sure I didn’t miss a call or message.” She took another sip of wine. “You were born in Maui, right? So that makes you a native Hawaiian?”

“Born there, yes, but I’m only half Hawaiian. Other half’s a mix of Samoan and a bit of Scottish, but there’s bound to be some Tahitian mixed in there as well.”

“Scottish? Really?” He looked all Pacific Islander to her.

He lifted a broad shoulder. “That’s what I’m told.”

“And you were raised by your grandma, I think you told me once?”

“Since I was three. Never knew my dad. He was a rugby player who came to the Islands. He and my mom hooked up during a music festival in Honolulu. Took off when I was a couple months old, never contacted her again.”

“Oh.” How had she never known this about him? “And so your mom raised you until you were three, and then…?”

“She left for the mainland.” He went back to the grill and flipped the steaks. “She always hated living on the island. Felt caged there. So she moved to Cali to look for a better job and sent money home to us. In my junior year of high school, she met a guy and remarried, moved to Nevada. I still see her once or twice a year, but I’m way closer with my grandma.”

“Oh. Sorry, I didn’t mean to be nosey.”

“You’re not.” He shrugged those broad shoulders, but she sensed an undercurrent of tension beneath the casual façade. “I’m what we call ahanaichild in my culture. In the old days, and even now, it’s not uncommon for a child to be raised by someone other than his or her biological parents. Usually a grandparent.” He shifted the steaks to a cooler part of the grill. “My grandma raised two of us, me and my cousin Hani. He’s eighteen months younger than me, so we were like brothers.”

That made her smile. “I’ve never heard you talk about him before.”

His expression closed up a bit. “Yeah, well, we…aren’t in contact anymore.”

She wanted to ask what had happened, but held back. She’d pried enough already.

He set down his grill tongs and resumed his spot by the railing, studying her. “You still see your parents? I know they divorced when you were in high school.”

Abby sighed. It was a freaking family mystery how they’d ever gotten together in the first place, let alone made it that far together. Looking back, her pattern of tolerating unhealthy relationships had begun with them and their example, then born of her need to avoid conflict.

“It’s complicated, I guess you could say. I still see them both, but not much, and I’m a bit closer with my dad. I had to live with my mom right after they split, until I left for college. Neither of us were happy. They’re both remarried, with step kids. We’re on a rotating holiday schedule. Gets kind of messy sometimes, but it is what it is, right?”

One corner of his mouth tipped up. “Yeah, true. And what about you? You said you’re not seeing anyone right now.”

The abrupt change in topic threw her for a moment. “Um, no, not right now. You?” Although how could he be, he’d just broken up with Shelley a few weeks ago and then been away for work most of that time.

“No.”

Why had he asked her? “You’re not ready to put yourself out there again anyway.”

He gave her an enigmatic smile that made her insides curl. “I might be. Depends.”

“On what?”

“On whether the right woman was interested.”

He can’t mean me.But the way he was looking at her made her think that maybe he did.

Unsure how to respond, she averted her gaze and tried to laugh it off. “I know you don’t mean me. We’d be a total disaster.”

“Why?”

Why? She forced herself to meet his gaze again, her heart beating faster. Part of her was elated that he might be interested in her that way, but the other… Would she risk starting something and maybe lose his friendship if things didn’t work out? Because based on their dating histories, the odds weren’t in their favor. And she didn’t want to get even more attached to him than she already was, only to have her heart broken later.

“Oh, come on,” she said with a laugh. “With our track records? Please. Neither one of us would know what a healthy relationship looked like if it hit us between the freaking eyes. And you just got out of a not so awesome long-term one. You need time to get over that before you get involved with anyone else.”

“No, I don’t. We’ve been officially split up for a while now, but for me it ended a long time before that day you saw me take my key back from her.”

Well, still. “You don’t think it would be a bad idea to jump into a new relationship right after getting out of a bad one?”

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