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Five
Connie
“Grandma,you need to explain to me why you’ve let a stranger use our bathroom. Who is he?” I ask for the hundredth time as I watch her make a pot of tea, even though it’s eighty-two degrees outside. Tea is her answer to every problem, that and avoiding awkward questions, it would seem.
“I’ll make some sandwiches too,” she responds, placing the teapot on the table and opening the fridge pulling out ham, cheese and lettuce.
“Grandma, answer me!”
“Enough, Connie. Let me just get my bearings. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen him,” she berates me, placing the items on the counter as she begins to make up some sandwiches.
“But whoishe?” I repeat, feeling more and more frustrated at her refusal to tell me anything. “How does he know you? How does he know mum? And why the hell did you offer to give him Grandpa’s clothes to wear?”
Finally, she turns around to face me and looks at me as though I’m an imbecile. “Because if it hadn’t escaped your notice, he isn’t wearing all that much.”
I almost say that of course it hadn’t escaped my notice, given he’s built like a god and is about the most beautiful man I’d ever laid eyes on, but I don’t. I get the feeling that remark would go down like a lead balloon.
“You’re being infuriating. I just want to know who he is…”
But, really, I want to know why my heart won’t stop beating like it’s finally got a reason to be happy. I want to know why one look from this man is enough to set my skin on fire. I want to know why he knew how to get to our house, and why in the five minutes it took us to reach here he didn’t say one single, solitary, word to me. But more than that, I want to know why he called me Annabelle and looked at me like I was both his reason for living and the cause of all the pain in his eyes.
“He swam to shore from a boat you say?”
“Yes. A schooner. It’s anchored in the cove right now. But that’s irrelevant. Him, here in our home, using our things, dressing in Grandpa’s clothes isn’t. Who. Is. He?”
“I’m an old friend of your parents. Ma Silva and I know each other well,” a deep voice responds. A voice that instantly makes my skin prickle and my breathing halt.
Turning in my seat, I face the man who is clearly more than just a stranger. Well, to Grandma at least. He walks into our kitchen as though he knows this house as well as we do and when Grandma opens her arms and pulls him in for a hug, my mouth hangs open in bewilderment. The hug only lasts a few seconds. Grandma senses his discomfort as much as I can see it, but she covers the awkwardness with a smile, the laughter lines about her eyes creasing with mirth.
“Well, you truly are a sight for sore eyes!” she exclaims with a gentle laugh, and a familiarity that confuses me given I’ve never met him before. “Those old clothes really don’t fit you all that well.”
She’s right, they don’t. The white short-sleeved shirt he’s wearing is pulled taught against hard muscle and only seems to highlight his dark tribal tattoos that peak out from beneath the sleeves. Grandpa John wasn’t a small man, but clearly of a different build to this stranger. At least the shorts fit around his waist, if a little too short given he must be well over six foot. I can’t help but trace my gaze over every inch of him. Unable to tear my eyes away.
“Thank you for lending them to me. I need to see if I can get my boat towed into the harbour and walking around half naked probably isn’t the best idea.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Grandma jokes, her eyes sparkling. “You’ve grown up to be quite the handsome young man.”
I groan internally. Is sheflirtingwith him? He smiles a little, humouring her I’m sure.
“Won’t you take a seat and have some lunch, Kai? Let us talk some.”
“Kai?”
“Malakai, but we all called you Kai,” Grandma Silva says, her gaze far away, lost somewhere in the past.
“Malakai?” I look between them both. Isn’t that the name I heard Lola say when I helped her at the café?
“That’s right. I’m Malakai Azaiah Dunbar,” he replies, pulling a chair out opposite me, before finally resting his gaze on mine for the first time since stepping into the room. The second our eyes meet I feel my skin burn with a dangerous heat that licks over every inch of me. I drop my gaze, choosing to concentrate on the open collar of his shirt and the dark ink that swirls there. “And you are?”
“You know who I am,” I retort sharply, forgetting my manners. Forgetting how to breathe, actually.
“I know who youare, but I don’t know yourname. Want to tell me?” he insists, his voice lowering in a growl that would be considered rude had I not been so inexplicably attracted to him.
“It’s Connie Silva. Dad took Mum’s name when they married, said he preferred the sound of it to his own. ‘Beaumont isn’t very exciting’, he used to say,” I explain, rambling a little.
“Connie,” he repeats, as though testing out the sound of my name on his tongue. He nods, the dark forest-green of his eyes flashing with understanding when I chance a look at him again. “Makes sense.”
“Makes sense?” I query, drawn into a strange vortex where only he and I exist. I’m barely aware of Grandma in the room.
