Page 8 of Intrigued By Love

“Kiana, you’re like a dog with a bone. How the hell Ani puts up with you is beyond me. She probably broke down and married you so you would stop nagging her.”

“But I nag so well,” Kiana retorted. “If I recall, it was with your help that Ani arranged the proposal and elopement.”

“After I couldn’t convince her to drop your ass, I decided she was a keeper and the only way to make sure she never left was to get her to marry you.” I shot Kiana a smirk over my shoulder. “Despite your laundry list of irritating habits.”

I adored my sister-in-law Ani. She had a way of grounding Kiana and put up with her crazy ways. I really wished she could have been here for our spa day, but she was in the middle of finals for the classes she taught at the University of Hawaii and she couldn’t leave until all exams were taken, graded, and reported.

“You think you’re so funny.” The pout on Kiana’s face reminded me of when we were kids and I’d get on her nerves with something she had no comeback to.

“All right, children.” Lina laughed and gestured toward a group of spa attendants who approached us. “It’s time for our facials. You can fight afterward.”

“I’m not giving up hope that you bang Jax while he’s here.”

I shoved my sister toward the doors leading into the spa. “Keep hoping. Sex with Jax is not an option.”

Lina smirked and said, “Famous last words.”

Chapter Five

Jax

A little before sunset, I sat down on a secluded spot on the beach to clear my head, to figure out a way to get Kai to talk to me and stop treating me like some random guest at her resort. I was on a fucking timeline and I couldn’t lose this battle.

An hour earlier, I’d gotten word from my parents they’d be flying in a few days before the wedding and wanted to speak to me about my inheritance.

I’d ignored the message.

I neither wanted their money nor needed it. Besides, Hollywood wasn’t where I saw my future. It was my parents’ world, not mine.

I’d gone out on my own and with a few lucky breaks managed to build an investment portfolio that would rival the Lykaioses, who owned the resort we were at. Hell, my friendship with one of them, the middle brother Pierce Lykaios, was what had given me the push to break free of my controlling father and mother. Pierce had a sordid family history that made it necessary to take risks and occasionally work with the unsavory element of life to succeed.

Taking his cues, I’d searched out any investment with high risk and even higher yield, mostly in international property development. Most of my business partners in the beginning were what one would call members of “organized families.” They needed a way to enter legitimate business opportunities, and I provided the means to achieve this goal. After I’d amassed enough capital, I’d switched gears and moved into an industry that had been my love since childhood.

Yachting.

Well, more shipbuilding. From the time I was a kid, I would spend nearly every summer with my grandfather refurbishing old yachts that he’d bought for a bargain.

Pop, as I called him, had said manual labor helped him remember he’d come from a long line of men who worked with their hands. Pop had grown up working in the shipyards of Maine, helping with all aspects of ship building.

Pops would have probably remained in Maine, if he hadn’t fallen for a Hollywood yacht owner’s daughter who was vacationing there. Instead of my great-grandfather trying to keep my grandmother away from a lowly dock worker, he’d taken Pops under his wing and brought him to California and taught him the financing business of films.

Pops’s love for the water had never waned in all the years he lived in California, and he’d moved back with Gran to Maine when he’d retired and passed the reins of Burton Productions to my father. Almost as soon as he settled, he hired a crew of five and started building small sailing vessels that he’d only sell if the mood struck him. I was lucky enough to inherit the last boat we worked on together before he passed away.

I’d started Burton Builders two years before I’d met Kai as a way to pay tribute to Pops and the home he and Gram had given me while my parents lived their movie-star lifestyles.

Today, the company was one of the premier custom yacht builders in the world. The ship I had docked off the coast of this island was the pinnacle example of the product.

“You’re going to have to stop watching my sister like a man starved, or I’m going to have to punch you,” Kevin said as he sat beside me on the sand.

“Fuck off, Alexander. I came here to be alone.”

“It’s just gross. The last thing a man wants to know is that one of his friends has seen and wants to see his sister in the biblical sense.”

“You’re such an asshole.” I shook my head and grabbed the beer he handed me, taking a deep drink. “Besides, aren’t you the one who’s helping me build a house here for her to live in?”

Kevin had a lot of contacts, some of them in French Polynesia, who knew all the ins and outs of building in the area. Without him, I would never have gotten even the permission to buy the land, let alone permits to build. Kevin and I had grown close over the years and he’d actually been at my apartment the day I discovered Kai had left me with that stupid fucking note on the kitchen island. He’d flown to Vegas to help with the proposal I’d planned; instead, he’d helped me see past the end of the bottle and kept me from drowning my pain in liquor.

“Just for the record, she watches you too. Kai just doesn’t make it as obvious as you do though.”

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