Page 25 of Forbidden Hawaiian Nights
The women he had dated in the past, those sophisticated women at whom he suspected Mia secretly sneered, largely abhorred anything to do with outdoor forms of exercise and swimming would have posed an impossible challenge. Their preferred form of exercise involved designer outfits and working out in a gym where they could see themselves in vast mirrors. Being soaked in open water would have sent them running for the hills. Those women seemed like a species from another planet.
Life on the other side of the pond was, what felt like, a million miles away.
The rigid parameters of his life were a million miles away…
He’d never had a break from being a tycoon. He knew that he was feared and respected in equal measure. From the age of twenty-two, he had made himself impregnable because he’d had no choice. To succeed in the hothouse of big business, you had to be tough, and being tough had come easily because he’d already had a head start in that area.
He’d been emotionally tough from the age of ten and he’d learnt how to use that to his advantage.
Now, over a decade later, he was an iron man.
But suddenly, here…
He questioned whether he had become so isolated in his ivory tower and so focused on maintaining control over every aspect of his life, both emotionally and professionally, that he had managed successfully to eliminate every shred of spontaneous experience that didn’t conform to his exacting rules.
Mia surprised and unsettled him. She wasn’t afraid to speak her mind. She resented him helping her and was unimpressed with his money. She constantly pushed against the Keep Out signs and, instead of slamming the barriers down further, he hesitated. He hesitated because he was oddly invigorated by the novelty of having someone question him.
The fact that he fancied her added to the mix.
All told, a little novelty went a long way and he was jaded. Life in the city was lived in fifth gear. He barely noticed the cool luxury of his house in Holland Park, with its marble and glass and soft silk rugs, and Hockney and Lichtenstein pieces interspersed with more unknown originals. He seldom visited his places in Barbados and the Cotswolds, although he did stay at his penthouse in New York, largely because he went there on business a fair amount. He almost certainly wouldn’t spend much time on the family yacht his brother had just bought.
In under a fortnight, he would return to his comfort zone but, for the first time, he wondered if this might not be a chance to step out of the box.
He glanced around him. He’d already half stepped out of the box just by being here. He hadn’t been in a place like this for a long time. Never, when he thought about it.
He didn’t do hanging out in women’s houses but, even if he did, none of the houses would have resembled this one. This was a house filled with its occupant’s personality. Every book on the bookshelf told a story. The two hardbacks under her foot were tomes on the virgin rainforests of Borneo and Gardens that Changed the World, respectively. Her kitchen was a riot of colour, with reminders stuck on the fridge under magnets. The furniture was old, soft and enveloping. There was not a hint of white, marble, chrome or glass anywhere to be seen.
The house reflected Mia.
It was as much a novelty for him as she was. His resolve never to mix business with pleasure began to fray at the edges.
‘Molokai.’
Absorbed in the improbable meandering of his thoughts, Max surfaced to pick up what she had been saying about Izzy’s plans for the hotel. ‘What did you say?’
‘Were you listening to a word I’ve been saying?’
Max muttered something and nothing. He’d been listening but most of what she had been saying had been sidelined by the more pressing business of watching the movement of her mouth and wondering what it might taste like.
Wondering what it might feel like to rebel against his own self-imposed restraints.
What it might feel like to take a walk on the wild side for a week…ten days, max…
‘You were telling me why my ideas for the hotel were flushed down the toilet…’
‘I was telling you that Izzy went to a lot of trouble to come up with what she felt would really work for tourists wanting to immerse themselves in the real feel of Hawaii and the islands.’
‘Carry on. I’m all ears. How is your foot feeling?’
‘Much better.’ A brief hesitation. ‘There’s no need for you to stay here any longer. I can make my way to bed and I’ll be fine in the morning.’
‘Hardly fine enough to trek through the grounds of the hotel so that you can fill me in on all those plans in the making.’
‘No. Maybe not.’
‘Which is why you need to carry on. Fill me in right now on what Izzy had in mind, ease me in gently to the way my vision for the hotel has been roundly discarded…’
‘Well, she did some travelling to the other islands… You know, each island has its own identity. All you’ve seen is this island and you’ve only seen a tiny bit of it, the bit that all the tourists see. You see the beach and the surfers and the restaurants and food trucks, but there’s so much more to Hawaii than all of that, and that’s what your sister was so interested in finding out about.’
