Page 1 of Big Island Weddings
1
Lani
Lani’s heart pounded as she strode across the parking lot.
It was a ridiculous, immature reaction, and she had no idea where she was going. But she couldn’t help herself. Fear had flooded her body the moment she saw Lorenzo’s face.
She wanted to run, to sprint across the gravel lot and home to her daughter, but she kept her pace to a rapid walk. Just enough to put some distance between herself and the man who had suddenly reappeared in her life. She needed a moment to collect herself.
It wasn’t helping.
Her whole nervous system vibrated with the need to bolt.
It didn’t help that she could hear him behind her, gravel crunching beneath his shoes.
She got as far as the green shade at the edge of the parking lot before she forced herself to pause.
There was no running from this. It was absurd to try.
“Lani?” Lorenzo’s voice was full of concern. “Are you well?”
“Yes.” She forced herself to turn and look at him.
She had only met Lorenzo once, back in her crazy cruise ship days, but she knew his face as well as she knew her own. She saw it every day in the angle of Rory’s eyes, in the shape of her chin and the lines of her smile. The coloring that she and Rory shared… Lorenzo looked the same. Pitch-black hair, glass-brown irises.
His eyes were filled with kindness, and a fresh guilt sliced through her.
She should be overjoyed to see him.
Life was handing her an opportunity to do right by her daughter, to make up for the drunken mistake of giving her a father whose last name she had never even asked for.
Rory deserved to meet him; she deserved to know where she came from. Sooner or later, she would want to know.
In that moment, though, her primary emotion was fear.
Their life was finally so good. Rory was safe and happy and thriving. What would this mean for her?
What would it mean for Lani and Tenn?
With effort, Lani pushed her fears down and nodded at Lorenzo. His presence here was a huge surprise and a major disruption, but that wasn’t his fault.
He had a daughter, and she had never told him.
She opened her mouth to reassure him, but what came out was, “How did you find me?”
His grin was as bright as a little boy who had just won a scavenger hunt – or, in his case,la caccia al tesoro. Bits of Italian and Greek floated through her head, half-forgotten memories from those years working on a cruise ship in the Mediterranean.
“I will tell you. And you will tell me of our daughter?” Lorenzo’s Italian accent was strong, but his English was muchbetter than it had been six years before, when they had met at a bar in Greece.
He seemed perfectly lovely, exuding the same genuine warmth that had attracted her to him the night they met. The panic in her chest relented, curling around the lead weight of the guilt that she had carried for years.
“Maybe we sit down?” Lorenzo gestured across the street. “There is a cafe–”
“No!” Lani interrupted him. The thought of walking into Tenn’s cafe with Lorenzo made her head spin. She sucked in a breath and spoke in a calmer voice. “No, let’s just sit down here.”
Gravel crunched beneath her shoes as she led him back across the parking lot. She chose a picnic table in the shade. It was on the far side of the building, away from the tables full of tourists and the window where Juniper was covering for her.
“I saw Paola in Livorno,” he began, sliding onto the bench across from her.
