Somewhere on Maui (an Accidental Matchmaker Novel)

  Copyright Notice

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  © Toby Neal 2013

  http://tobyneal.net/

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author / publisher.

  ebook

  ISBN-10: 0989148963

  ISBN-13: 978-0-9891489-6-2

  “Heartfelt, rich, inspiring—Neal’s fans will instantly fall in love with the charming cast of Somewhere on Maui!” -Christine Nolfi, author of the award-winning Treasure Me

  Somewhere on Maui

  An Accidental Matchmaker Novel

  By

  Toby Neal

  Chapter 1

  Best not to lie in the physical department. Those lies would be discovered first.

  Zoe rolled a bit of hair between her fingers, brushing it against her cheek, a habit she’d had since she was a child. She stared at the little boxes of the online dating profile and moved the mouse to fill in the first one. Physical: Five-six, curvy-fit brunette, green eyes.

  Her journalist’s fingers flew—she could still type more than a hundred words a minute—but that didn’t help when she wasn’t sure of what to say. She halted again at the About Me summary box. She’d pre-sold this story on Internet dating to Ladies’ Home Journal, and at the time she’d pitched the article to her editor, she’d been heady with rage at her ex, a little over caffeinated, and excited about pulling up stakes to move to Maui and “live her dream.” Dating via the Internet had seemed like a great way to move on quickly.

  That had all changed in the intervening weeks, but now she was stuck with a deadline and badly needed the money. The freelancer lifestyle was often feast or famine, and she was definitely in a lean period.

  About Me. Should she tell the truth or invent something?

  Invent something. Journalistic principles or not, she just couldn’t handle putting herself out there right now. Bad enough that she had to go out on a date at all and write about it.

  Peripatetic foodie, adventurous Gemini, inveterate dog lover seeks relationship possibilities in her new home on Maui, she typed. Nothing in that sentence was true but that she loved dogs, and she hoped the fancy words would signal her education level.

  She glanced down. Sylvester gazed up. The little silky terrier had the prettiest coat, a platinum gray that turned to bronze at the tips, and expressive brown eyes. Right now he was parked on top of Zoe’s feet, monitoring his mistress’s mood.

  “Well, if I’m a foodie, maybe I can wrangle some free gourmet dinners out of all this,” Zoe said to Sylvester. “Now, pictures.”

  She opened her pictures file and winced. She hadn’t been in that file since the divorce six months ago. She scrolled through: her and Rex in front of the Christmas tree, her and Rex at dinner, her and Rex at his parents’ house. Finally she found one of herself—not the best, but a decent profile shot—showing her holding Sylvester. Anyone meeting her would soon be meeting her dog.

  Zoe’s brunette hair, windblown and wavy, contrasted nicely with the terrier’s silver coat. She’d been happy that day, walking the beach with her best friend, Michelle, who’d taken the picture. Michelle’s teasing had made her green eyes sparkle and brought out her smile, and she still had good skin, belying her thirty-six years, due to staying indoors at her former magazine job.

  She cropped her face next to Sylvester’s as her profile picture, but the rest of it showed in the sidebar, showcasing a trim yet busty figure.

  A lush body that made promises it had never fulfilled. Zoe bit her lip, hating her body for its betrayal. Hating having to do this article. She persevered, filling in imaginary answers.

  About music: Love jazz, instrumental and blues guitar, and movies: “Enjoy foreign films and Broadway remakes! She actually liked funny action flicks and classic rock. This mysterious Zoe was also a gourmet cook and food critic who collected exotic spices. Zoe grinned as she added that mythic detail. She liked her food, all right, but gourmet cook? Dream on.

  Next she went on to fill in a questionnaire:

  Help us find your match. What’s your sign?

  Is smoking a turn-on or turn-off?

  Skydiving or scuba diving?

  Cat person or dog person, or both?

  More idiocy and wacky questions to answer from an imaginary alter ego, until her eyes were practically bleeding. Some of the questions made her wince—did people really answer these? She’d have to read more profiles to see, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to.

  Do you like it frontside or backside?

  Rim shot or sixty-nine?

  Role plays or cosplays in the bedroom?

  There were some things that should just stay private. She skipped those and made a note for her article on the bizarre and revealing nature of the questions.

  Finally done, she hit Save—and saw that someone had messaged her. Hi. We seem compatible. I’m a Cancer.

  She was not a Gemini as she’d claimed, nor was she into astrology, but even she’d heard Cancers could be clingy. She clicked on the man’s profile and grimaced. Dreadlocks and beads didn’t do anything for her, even for research.

  Too bad this article wouldn’t write itself. She wished she could just make it up, but it went against her principles and she knew next to nothing about the topic. It just wouldn’t ring true. Her editor, a seasoned pro, would smell that made-up rat a mile away.

  Zoe checked her phone—there was time for a walk before her therapy appointment. She’d been having a hard time getting out of bed since she’d arrived on Maui. Her best friend, Michelle, had “done an intervention” and made an appointment with the psychologist for her the first time. Maybe this second time, the appointment with Dr. Suzuki would be helpful and not just stir up her misery.

  “When you’re feeling bad, do something for someone else.” Her mom’s voice echoed in her mind. A vibrant woman always doing for others, her mom took an annual vacation somewhere in the world to work with Habitat for Humanity. Zoe wasn’t quite so committed to the do-gooder lifestyle, but she found a spirit-lifting effect in helping. She got up from her desk, stretched up high, working her wrists a little to prevent carpal tunnel.

  Her cottage was tucked under a big old mango tree in what was clearly the former garage of the landlady’s house. Her landlady, a voluble woman of Portuguese extraction, called it an “ohana” unit. It was painted white inside with bamboo flooring. Zoe had spent some of her savings on muslin curtains that lifted in the breeze. Her couch was covered in sheets so Sylvester could jump on it, but decorated with a few throw pillows in ocean tones—turquoise, cobalt, steel blue, and a shadowy green. Simple furnishings had come with the unit, including a rattan coffee table, desk, table and chair set, and a fold-down Murphy bed in one corner. She didn’t remember ever seeing one of those in real life before, but it definitely added to the usability of the room and was surprisingly comfortable.

  “C’mon, Sylvester. Let’s get some air and go for a trash walk.” She clipped the little dog’s leash on and took out a paper bag—Maui had banned plastic due to all the blowing litter that ended up in the ocean, strangling sea life. She and Sy
lvester walked down the residential alley that led onto the busy main street of the little beach town of Paia.

  Zoe walked down the breezy, sunlit street toward the beach park, Sylvester in tow. Paia, like many small, older towns in Hawaii, was a row of Western-style, false-fronted shops along a main street, surrounded by sugarcane fields on one side and the ocean on the other. Coconut palms waved in the ever-present breeze in this, the “windsurf capital of the world,” as a travel brochure on a nearby stand trumpeted. Sure enough, an empty plastic shave ice cone rolled by her feet and she put it in her bag. Every time she picked something up, she felt a little more a part of the community.

  They made their way along the sidewalk and back, and Zoe felt the sun on her face and the energy of the town, with its bustling streets full of vacationing tourists, begin to lift her spirits. She was living her dream. She’d made it happen. She put her head back, taking in the deep blue sky and scudding white clouds.

  If only she weren’t living her dream alone.

  Adam leaned back against a spreading poinciana tree on the site of the mansion he was building, one leg propped against the trunk. He took his hard hat off, shook his head briskly, and ran a hand through his hair. Another hot day on Maui, and the job was running into some snags. He picked up his thermos and drank, tipping his head back to get the last of the lemonade–passion-fruit juice his mom was known for.

  “Ahem.” One of the “snags” had just sneaked up on him. Adam lowered the thermos and arranged his face into respectful attentiveness.

  “Mrs. Lepler. What can I do for you?”

  “Call me Alixia. Please.” The blond woman poked his chest playfully with a crimson-tipped finger, running it down the black tank shirt emblazoned with his company logo, RODRIGUES BUILDS BEST. “I’m wondering what Rodrigues does best besides build.”

  Adam clapped his hard hat back on and moved away from the tree. “What can I do for you, Mrs. Lepler?”

  She put her hands on hips, pushed out her lower lip. “I’m wondering about the framing. It seems a little off.”

  “Show me.” He reached down for his loaded tool belt, picked it up, and slung it around his hips, tightening it with a yank on the buckle. He glanced up and caught her looking where a married woman shouldn’t be looking.

  “Show me the framing,” he said again, and something in his voice made her swivel on a heel and lead him back toward the house, blathering about aesthetics, a meaningless concept at this stage of construction. He bit down on his arguments and accepted the list of “modifications” she handed him on a piece of monogrammed notepaper (her cell phone number at the top) with no outward expression.

  Alixia Lepler minced her way around the bunchy grass that had sprouted around the house’s enormous foundation. He didn’t swear until she’d fired up a convertible Mercedes and pulled away.

  “Damn, A-man!” Teddy Kauahi, his foreman, gazed down from the height of one of the trusses. “What did you do to piss off Boss Lady?”

  “It’s what I didn’t do,” Adam muttered, but it was his personal policy to not bitch out the client to his workers. “No prob, Teddy,” he said. “Just a few additionals. More work for us, right?”

  “Right.” Teddy went back to applying his nail gun, and Adam walked to the little trailer they called HQ and went inside. Fans kept the muggy air moving around, but as usual, the trailer was sweltering. He walked over to the drafting table, where the blueprints were anchored at four corners by various objects—a hammer, a clamp, a bottle of water, and a piece of bluestone lava from the foundation. Adam leaned on the table, staring at the five-thousand-square-foot, two-story mansion, and felt the weight of responsibility bow his shoulders.

  A crew of ten, thousands and thousands of dollars of materials, and side work for friends, family, and others on the island, and his own pivotal role as contractor—was it really all in those manicured hands that seemed to want to handle other parts of him as well? How much was he going to be allowed to reject Alixia Lepler before it impacted his work? Every time he didn’t flirt with her, didn’t play her game, she found a way to punish him—like this latest thing, changing out some hardwood framing material for a slightly different size, a delay that didn’t seem to matter to her but sure would to those counting on beginning their part of the project.

  Adam greatly wished that the ever-absent Mr. Lepler would take a weekend off from the stock exchange and come back to Hawaii and diddle his wife. He set the hard hat aside, sat in his old rolling chair, pulled the phone over, and began calling suppliers.

  Adam was last off the job at the end of the day, locking the gate around the property to keep thieves away from tools and materials and heading to his favorite surf break, Hookipa, for a cool down in the ocean. He pulled his beefed-up tan Tacoma in near the showers and changed out of sweaty work clothes with the aid of a towel. But even the turquoise ocean, the greetings of friends, and the familiar rush of dropping into a wave failed to lift his heavy spirits.

  A sense of loss and loneliness continued to sap the joy out of his days ever since Cherisse had left with her children.

  A nearby surfer kid, ripping it up on the shoulder of the wave ahead of him, reminded him of Diego, his stepson. Cherisse had taken Diego and his little sister, Serena, and gone to her family in Lahaina after one too many fights over her drinking. He hadn’t been able to see the kids for six months.

  Adam hadn’t loved Cherisse in a long time—but he’d put up with a lot to keep her children in his life. They were married when the kids were one and two, and he was the only dad they’d ever known. Now she’d taken them out of his life. He had no legal recourse as their stepfather—he’d already checked.

  Cherisse had known just how to hurt him most.

  Bitterness choked him. On the very next wave, Adam spun and stroked hard, pumping himself through the clear water and “dropping in” on another surfer. He didn’t even turn to look over his shoulder at the shout he heard behind him, calling him out.

  If he did, he might have to answer with his fists. Good thing he had anger management tomorrow.

  Chapter 2

  Zoe toed out of her slip-on sandals outside Dr. Suzuki’s office and set them on the rack outside the door. She still felt a little weird doing it. She didn’t really like the vulnerable feeling of bare feet even though it was the norm for Hawaii, and particularly for Japanese culture, in entering a living area.

  Dr. Suzuki opened the door. She wore a simple cream sheath dress that emphasized the kind of ectomorph build Zoe had always envied. “Come on in, Zoe.”

  Dr. Suzuki gestured into the room. It was simply furnished in cool neutrals with a few red throw pillows. Zoe sat in the peacock-backed rattan chair again. Dr. Suzuki took her usual spot across the room in her leather office chair—even though it was only their second session, a rhythm was being established. “How’s this week going for you?”

  “Okay. Picked up some trash on the street before I came here.” Zoe wished she had something to do with her hands. “I do stuff like that when I’m feeling down, trying to get myself to feel better. Sometimes it even works.” She leaned forward to trace a design in the sand tray on the coffee table. “I have this story to write on getting back into the dating scene after a divorce. It’s about using online dating, with myself as the guinea pig.”

  “Are you ready for that?” Dr. Suzuki had a clipboard and pen for notes, but she appeared to remember what Zoe had told her the week before, a relief.

  “I pitched it to Ladies’ Home Journal before I moved over here. I had a lot of energy and anger then, and I thought I would be ready for it. I’d forgotten all about it and just heard back from the editor that the story’s a go.” Zoe shook the tray of sand, and her design disappeared. “It felt so weird filling out the online profile for the dating site that I made up answers.”

  “Hmm. Doesn’t seem like a good idea to put yourself out there before you’re ready.” Dr. Suzuki had intelligent dark brown eyes, and a tiny crease had appeared
between her well-groomed brows. “Maybe you should defer this piece until you are ready to experience that world.”

  “Not to be crude, but I need the money. It’s a job.” Zoe sat back, leaving the sand tray unmarked. “I left a staff magazine writer position in California to come here, and this freelancer gig is no picnic. I need to be constantly pitching pieces and getting them out there. This is work, and I’m a journalist. I can do it.”

  “With that attitude, I have no doubt of it. Tell me more about the premise of the article. What’s the ‘hook’?”

  Zoe was pleased the therapist was familiar with some of the aspects of her work. “The hook is that I’m a journalist on an investigative job as well as a recent divorcée. How will that impact my ability to have dates? At what point will I disclose to my Internet-generated dates that this is a research article? And what will I learn about dating and relationships in the process?”

  The tiny crease between the psychologist’s brows deepened. “I see a number of concerns here, not just for you but for others. What if you do meet someone you really like? At what point are you going to tell them you are writing an article on Internet dating and they’re just ‘research’?”

  Zoe snorted. “I’m not going to meet anyone I like. Seriously? I couldn’t even put up a truthful bio. I can’t stand for anyone to reject the ‘real me,’ so I made a fake me.” She found herself twisting her fingers in her lap. “This is just a story, and I’ll make it entertaining, but quite frankly, the chances of meeting someone nice…” Zoe found her throat closing. She grabbed a tissue out of the box on the table and pressed it to her eyes.

  “You’re hurting, and that’s okay.” Dr. Suzuki’s voice felt like cool water on a burn. “I would just hate to see you be further hurt, or for you to hurt someone else, by deception. Fake identities have a way of catching up to you.”

  “I can’t be myself right now,” Zoe said from behind the tissues. “I can’t stand being out there for people to critique. It was so hard just to put the bio up.”