Page 1 of A Crush in the Storm
1
KAI
For as long as I can remember, New Year’s Eve is a night of possibilities.
Cities to explore. Parties to attend. Women to meet.
I’ve spent the last five New Year’s Eves in New York, Tokyo, London, Paris, and Rome respectively, which explains why I’m in a foul mood now, stuck on Ceto Island working behind the bar at my family’s resort as we host a wedding.
It sucks.
Though it’s not all bad, as I see Sadie chatting to my younger brother Walker near the dessert table. As the resort’s housekeeper, she isn’t working tonight, but Sadie is a helper. She steps in without being asked, which explains why she’s setting out desserts that Emery, my eldest brother Weston’s new girlfriend, concocted for the evening.
West is going to gain fifty pounds if he stays with Emery. Her food is sublime, one of the few bright spots in this crap night. I stuffed ten of her mini smoked beef rib pies and five tiny mango pavlovas between serving drinks to the thirty guests. My brothers, West, Linc, and Walker, made me swear I’d stay away from the bridesmaids, and any single female guests. They know my reputation. They don’t know it’s worse.
Can I help it if women find me attractive? I know that makes me sound like a douche, but it’s true. Dad used to say the Spade boys had been blessed with our granddad’s genes—bluey-green eyes, loose curls the colour of salted caramel to chocolate, great smiles, broad shoulders—and we make the most of our god-given looks. At least, I do. I’ve done a lot of odd jobs over the years in my travels, but bartending is my go-to, and that means I meet a lot of women.
But as I watch Sadie throw her head back and laugh at something my doofus brother has said, the twang in my chest is solely reserved for her.
She’s the one that got away.
Not that a relationship between us could’ve been sustained even if we had lost our heads and given into temptation ten years ago, but whenever I return to Ceto Island, there’s a frisson ofsomethingbetween us that hasn’t been doused no matter how many miles I put between us.
Sensing my gaze, her head turns towards me and our gazes lock. Her eyebrow arches in a silent challenge I have no hope ofinterpreting, but with five minutes until midnight, I know what I have to do.
Get Sadie alone.
2
SADIE
Ishould’ve refused when Emery asked me to help her serve the food at the wedding tonight. But I’m a people pleaser and find it difficult to say no, which is why I’m in this predicament now.
Kai Spade is striding towards me with a look on his face I dare not decipher.
I’ve seen that look before, the night he kissed me on my seventeenth birthday, the night I said no to more.
And regretted it ever since.
If I’m bad at saying no, I’m good at avoidance. For the three months he returns to Ceto Island every year, I hide, and he never seeks me out. It’s like that night ten years ago never happened, or we’ve entered an unspoken pact to forget.
With him working behind the bar tonight, I thought I’d be safe.
I thought wrong.
“Don’t look now, but my bozo brother is making a beeline for us,” Walker says. “Do you mind if I make a break for it, Sadie? He’ll probably coerce me into serving champagne to the guests, and I’ve got a bridesmaid waiting.”
Of course he has. The Spade brothers have charm in spades, pardon the pun.
“No worries,” I say, the words barely out of my mouth before Walker is striding away, leaving me to deal with the gorgeous guy who still has the power to make my pulse pound.
I’ve had a crush on Kai for as long as I can remember. We grew up together, considering my dad Bob has been the resort’s handyman since I was born. We played hide and seek as kids, paddled in rock pools, fished and swam. In our teens, Kai teased me about my penchant for romantasy novels, and delighted in dunking me underwater at the end of a long day being homeschooled.
When his father and grandfather died in a boating tragedy, he changed, his plans to stay on the island gone. The cyclone that claimed their lives happened the week before my seventeenth birthday, and I knew my life would never be the same, because the boy I’d secretly loved for years intended to leave and I couldn’t.
One woman had already abandoned my dad.
Kai reaches me, and I take a quick breath, willing my erratic heart to subside.
