The Mammoth Book of Paranormal Romance

retrospect, I suppose I should have suspected something when Grandmother shipped me off to boarding school the week after our big kiss.” She paused. “Good grief, we were thirteen and fourteen. What did she think we’d do? Elope?” She managed a shaky laugh.
    But Dillon wasn’t laughing.
    She reached up to smooth the frown lines from his forehead. “I have a favour to ask?”
    “What’s that?” His voice sounded hoarse.
    “Kiss me?” Because sixteen years was a long time, and maybe her memory was flawed. Dillon’s kiss had seemed pretty special when she was thirteen, but she was more experienced now. More experienced and less impressionable.
    Or then again, maybe her memory was right on the money, she decided a few seconds later when Dillon’s lips met hers. Heat sizzled along her nerves. Pleasure flooded her body. “Wow,” she said when he finally released her.
    Breathing hard, Dillon propped his forehead against hers. “I see your ‘wow’ and raise you a ‘hot damn’. But just to be absolutely certain we aren’t overreacting, maybe we should put it to the test one more time.”
    “Try the kissing again, you mean?”
    “Exactly.” His smile turned her insides to mush.
    “Why not?” Noelani spoke with a nonchalance she was far from feeling.
    Dillon framed her face with his hands and pressed his lips to hers in a kiss, first soft and sensuous, then hard and demanding. He tasted of coffee and cinnamon, hot and sweet, wickedly delicious. Noelani let herself go, floating on a sea of sensation -boneless, mindless.
    But when Dillon started to lower her to the threadbare rug, she pulled away. “This isn’t a good idea. Not here. Not now.”
    He gave her a quizzical look. “But isn’t that why . . .?”
    “Why what?”
    “Why you hired me in the first place.”
    She stared at him in disbelief.
    He laughed. “You didn’t think I bought that Lily-tricked-me excuse, did you?”
    “Why not? It’s the truth.”
    “Is it?”
    The cockiness of Dillon’s smile put her hackles up. “How was I to know private investigator Dillon Makua and Marshal, my teenage crush, were one and the same?”
    “If you didn’t know,” he said, “then how would Lily have known?”
    “I’m not sure. Maybe Grandmother told her, and ...” She let her voice trail off, uncomfortably aware of just how implausible her explanation sounded.
    “OK. If you say so. I just thought—”
    “What?” she asked. “What did you think? That this so-called case was merely the spoiled little rich girl’s ill-disguised ruse to get you into bed?”
    “I’m not sure I’d word it quite that way, but yeah, something like that,” he agreed.
    “You egotistical jerk!”
    “Jerk?” His eyes narrowed. “Me? I wrote you every day for a whole year. You’re the one who didn’t write back.”
    “Because I never saw your letters, not until now.”
    “Really?” He lifted one eyebrow in a sceptical look.
    A chill wrapped itself around her heart. He didn’t believe her.
    “Let me be sure I have this straight. First, I’m a schemer, and now I’m a liar?”
    “Don’t forget a spoiled little rich girl,” he said.
    “Fine.” Ice-cold fury stiffened her backbone. “If that’s what you think, go. I don’t need your help.”
    “I suspected as much.” Dillon’s smirk made her want to smack him, but she managed to maintain her dignity until he left the attic.
    Then she promptly burst into tears.
    Dillon paused halfway down the narrow staircase. Noelani’s sobs pricked at his conscience. “You’re a real jerk, Makua,” he muttered under his breath. He should go and make sure she was all right.
    Unless the waterworks were a deliberate ploy, a bid for sympathy.
    Could Noelani cry on demand? How good an actress was she?
    Not that good, he decided and was just about to head back up when he heard the first of several loud thuds, punctuated by some very creative profanity. Apparently, she’d progressed beyond the hurt feelings stage into the desire-to-cause-bodily-harm stage. Not the best time to apologize. He headed downstairs instead.
    But the minute he stepped onto the moonlit verandah, he realized leaving wasn’t an option either. Their only transportation was the four-wheel-drive Jeep Cherokee they’d rented at the Hilo Airport, and if he took off, Noelani would be stranded here alone until Lily Yamaguchi showed up tomorrow. If Lily Yamaguchi showed up tomorrow. Considering tomorrow was Sunday, that was a pretty big