Page 71 of A Little Luck

Scooting closer in the bed, I rest my cheek against his chest and wrap my arm around his waist. He shifts to allow me to hold him, and my stomach is tense. I want to know about his time away, but I don’t want him to leave me again.

What else can I do to prove myself?His last words haunted me every night he was gone. Only one thing is left.

“Ryan said you were flying people back and forth to the mainland.”

“Mostly, I just took them to the big island and back. It was part of an outreach for needy families.”

My heart squeezes. He’s so good. “How did you find out about that?”

“Max’s great aunt was one of the coordinators.” The impatience leaves his tone, and he grows more thoughtful. “She was a neat old lady. Totally blind and very wise.”

“She was blind?”

“Yeah, but you’d never know it from the way she marched all over the place. She lived near the top of a cliff.”

“It sounds beautiful.Did you surf much?” I remember watching him on the water, riding the waves.

He made it look so easy, and he was always so focused and beautiful doing it.

“I went out with Max a few times, usually in the evening after work. I would sit on the board and watch the sun set. The colors were amber and gold and green. It reminded me of your eyes.”

Tucking my chin, I reach down for the hem of his shirt and slide my hand under it, so I can trace my fingers over his warm skin. His hand moves from my hair down to my waist.

“Flying the plane into Moloka’i, the curve of the islands rising out of the water was like the curve of your hip in my bed.” His palm slides to my hip. His face is against the top of my head, and he inhales. “The scent of plumeria isn’t quite the same as honeysuckle, but it’s similar.”

“All of Hawaii reminded you of me?” My voice is quiet. “When you never texted, I thought you’d decided to forget me.”

“I went away to try. I thought I would leave this place and put you out of my head, but I should have known the truth. Everything beautiful in the world reminds me of you. I see your face whenever I close my eyes.”

Tears fill my eyes, and an ache is in my throat. “Adam…”

My tears dampen his shirt, and he lifts my chin with his fingers. “I didn’t mean to make you cry. I wanted you to know the truth.”

I don’t have words, so I stretch higher in the bed and press my mouth to his. He rolls me onto my back, and our lips part. Our tongues slide together, and I open my body to him. We might not be talking about the future, but it’s coming.

CHAPTER16

ADAM

“If she was on the run with a child, wouldn’t she need food?” I grunt, lifting a box of peanut butter out of the back of the van. “There might be a record of her here.”

“Not a chance.” Marshall stands back watching me unload donations at the food bank behind the church.

Today he’s not wearing his usual trench coat—only slacks and a blazer over a rumpled white shirt. As usual, I’m in jeans and a tee. It rained overnight, but the air is still humid and warm. Fall weather on the coast is completely unpredictable. One day it’s cool and crisp, the next it’s hot and sticky.

“You send their applications for food to the government?” He motions to the clipboards hanging on the wall at the pickup line.

“Only if they have Medicaid or emergency assistance. We get reimbursed for those.”

I pass the cardboard box to a college kid helping us restock the shelves. The last Wednesday of every month, we get huge donations from local supermarkets. They clear out items past the “sell by” date, but almost everything will last another month. Produce, not so much.

“That would be too risky.” He rolls a small cigar in his fingers, and I pull out a flat of collard greens.

“Tell Mrs. Andrews she’ll need to hand all these out by Friday,” I say to the kid who takes it from me. “They won’t last through the weekend.”

She nods, placing the dark green, leafy vegetables in a shopping cart and wheeling them through the back door.

“How long you been doing this kind of thing?” Marshall nods at the white Chevy cargo van stacked full of boxes.

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