Meet Me in Hawaii by Georgia Toffolo (best affordable ebook reader TXT) 📗

hank of her hair behind her ear. She’d looked into his too-blue eyes that day and seen more than a colour. She’d seen, so clearly, that Finn was mysteriously older than his eighteen years. His life had been nothing like her pampered existence—and yet he’d believed, he really had, that she was as strong as he was, capable of fighting for what she wanted, ready to do whatever she set her heart on.

What would he think of all those compromises she’d made to get where she was? Would he see her as a victor or would he say she was…

‘Lost,’ she said, and closed her eyes, trying to unblock the memory of the very last time she’d seen him.

Impossible.

As usual, only a snippet or two resurfaced, just enough to tell her it had been traumatic; the rest stayed safely buried.

She opened her eyes, stared out at the horizon, and saw again his eyes, the same colour as the French Polynesian sky.

She may not have the full memory of that night but she knew one thing: however Finn Doherty may have looked at her during that Crab Shack year, his opinion had gone through a dramatic metamorphosis in the two years that followed.

And it didn’t matter. It really, truly didn’t.

She hadn’t seen him for ten years and she’d never see him again.

Which was just fine with her.

Because she had an article to finish, a party to go to, and a life to live.

Chapter 2

FINN DOHERTY WALKED SLOWLY around the hotel ballroom with Aiata, the resort’s PR manager, looking for flaws to be corrected before the guests arrived.

But there were no flaws. Everything was perfect.

No, not perfect.

He hated the word ‘perfect’.

‘Magnificent’ was a better descriptor. He’d go with that.

Yesterday this had been a moderate-sized room running the length of the fare pote—the communal house—which was comprised of an airy lobby, Tāma’a restaurant, the Manuia bar, a quiet library room, and a ruthlessly modern but hidden commercial kitchen. Elegant, certainly, with richly-brown teak flooring, fairy lights strung across the ceiling, and full-length glass doors replacing walls on three sides and opening onto a wrap-around deck. The doors offered uninhibited views onto a grass clearing that was ideal for small soirees. The clearing was bordered by stunning gardens landscaped to merge with the island’s natural rainforest beyond. Objectively speaking, it wasn’t vastly different from any other expertly-designed, well-positioned hotel ballroom.

Now, however, the roof had been retracted, the glass doors concertinaed all the way back, and teak extensions had been attached to the deck, stretching across the grass clearing so that the gardens became the walls—and the result was enchanting. A secret bower nestled within a rainforest, accessible only via a broad teak ramp that led through a natural opening between two coconut palms and circled back to the communal house.

Nothing was needed to beautify the space except for subtle lighting spiked among the plants. There were no bars set up, no food stations; instead, wait staff would circulate continuously, bringing refreshments through the swinging doors from the kitchen servery. No plinths with flowers anywhere either—just a few high tables scattered with hibiscus petals for those wanting to put down their glass or napkin. And even those hibiscus petals worked some strange magic, looking as though they’d drifted in from the riot of colourfully bold hibiscus plants dotted throughout the gardens—reds and yellows, oranges and pinks, whites and purples.

Finn moved to the edge of the jut of teak, breathing in. Out. In. Out. Warmth. Tang. Green. He’d have sworn he could isolate the creamy lemony scent radiating from the small white blooms of his favourite flower, the Tahitian gardenia—tiare mā’ohi—the national flower of French Polynesia, the shape of whose seven-petals had inspired the name of the island. Fanciful to think he could smell that among the crowd of other plants that included equally fragrant frangipanis in the usual white, pink and yellow, as well as several ancient tree varieties bursting with rare red and orange flowers, plus, as a dazzling array, orchids, metre-tall spikes of football-sized red torch ginger blooms, and jasmine—which he preferred to call by its local name, pitate, when he was here.

When he was here…which wasn’t as often as he would have liked.

He had other resorts to oversee. At the Great Barrier Reef. In Fiji. Bali. Langkawi. The health retreat in the Maldives. This place, though, was special. The first resort he and Gina—his ex-wife and business partner—hadn’t bought as a going concern. As satisfying as it was to retrofit and refurbish a property nothing compared to building a success from an idea, which is what they’d done with Poerava. His gem at the very centre of the flower that was Tiare Island.

And okay, it was actually too soon to tell if Poerava could be counted a success, but the signs were there. The travel industry buzz, robust forward bookings, media interest. They’d got Poerava into all the key luxury travel brochures he’d personally targeted and anecdotal feedback was that people were clamouring not only for the outrageously popular overwater bungalows but also for the garden suites within the rainforest.

He’d been involved personally in every single part of this development and was proud of it. He’d overseen the design, by his favourite architect; he’d supervised the construction; he’d chosen the décor; he’d even named it, after the exquisite black pearls that Polynesians once-upon-a-time dived for off one of the island’s petal-shaped peninsulas. The only thing he hadn’t seen through from start to finish was tonight’s launch party—not by choice, but because a situation in the Maldives had needed his undivided attention for a full month.

Not that he could have done a better job. In fact, there was only one problem with tonight’s launch, and it had nothing to do with Poerava. It was simply that he no longer had any excuse for stonewalling Doherty & Berne’s next portfolio acquisition, which Gina, as the Berne half of the partnership, had been working on diligently for six months.

Gina had never made