Page 1 of Paradise Found
Pinched by an obnoxiously loud Hawaiian shirt too small to accommodate his bulging biceps, Axel Talstad tried to find regret over the last ten hours.
Surprisingly, regret was nowhere to be found.
That might have something to do with a couple of champagne bottles consumed during the transcontinental flight in the first-class cabin. Or maybe Pacific Ocean breezes had mind-altering power.
How else to explain the impulse to buy a shirt covered in tropical flowers?
Goodbye Henley pullover and dark jeans, hello swim shorts and flip-flops. And he hadn’t even left the Honolulu airport.
Or—and this was the most likely—avoiding the avid fans, nosy friends, and concerned family members in Sweden while the professional hockey player considered the possibility of surgery felt too damn good to regret. Because instead of heading to Stockholm, his original travel itinerary from Minneapolis, Axel bought the first and farthest ticket westward he could find.
Regret was nowhere to be found in this uncharacteristicallyspontaneous decision.
The star defenseman was ready for a vacation where no one cared about professional hockey or bugged him about fitness training. He needed a break from the constant reminder that he was nobody without the one thing he was good at: his hockey career. Axel was ready for a vacation from himself.
“Just a minute, Mr. Talstad,” the nervous young man muttered while searching for hotel vacancies. “It’s conference season for Waikiki, but I have a few other places I can check.”
“Take your time,” Axel droned casually. “Any room with a beach view will do.”
This was an island. How complicated could that be?
Unfortunately, fifteen minutes of him standing by the “Welcome to Hawaii” station at the airport yielded no room at all.
“I’m so sorry!” the man gushed while calling over his supervisor, a woman wearing a long Hawaiian dress. Gotta love a place where the manager wore flowers around her neck and in her hair.
“It doesn’t matter how much it costs,” Axel stated, hoping to move things along.
“Mr. Talstad, I’m afraid everything on Waikiki beach is completely booked. I’ve been on the phone with clients all morning. There’s an agronomy conference and a modern languages seminar and an adult film festival.”
She listed the excuses as if reasons made a difference. He stopped listening after she saidcompletely booked.
Regret, dependable after all, reared its ugly head.
“Would you be willing to try something off the beaten path?” she prompted.
He responded with narrowed eyes and automatic suspicion. “How far off the beaten path, exactly?” Before she could answer, he shook off his reservations.
He was currently wearing a hibiscus-covered shirt and flip-flops. He had given up his right to be suspicious.
“You know what? Sure, I’m game.”
***
A minivan picked him up. A fucking maroon minivan from the nineties rolled up to the airport curb. The highest-paid defenseman in the central league was getting shuttled around Oahu like he was heading to kindergarten.
“Axel, what kinda name is that?” Greg, the middle-aged driver with a shirt even louder than Axel’s, asked incredulously.
“Mine,” was the gruff answer.
He had been away from a bed for over twenty-four hours if you counted the long day before heading to the airport. Axel needed to get his lower back pain under control.
Instead of being insulted, the driver snickered. “Bruh, you backed up?”
“Backed up?”
“Yeah. You got something pluggin’ you up, or what?”
Axel could not remember the last time somebody said something so rude to him. When he turned to the driver, however, the man had a wide grin as if they exchanged an inside joke. Axel shook his head and held his tongue.
