Free Sun Kissed by Joann Ross

Nate , she thought with an inward sigh. Even if I had been wanting to fall in love, you couldn’t have sent me a more unlikely candidate.
    “You’ve surprised me, Donovan,” she admitted quietly. She’d never been one to hide her thoughts. Not even when it cost her a lucrative and satisfying career. “More than I would have thought possible.”
    Instead of looking pleased by her admission, Donovan frowned. “Lani—”
    “We’re losing the day,” she said with forced brightness as she pulled away. Nothing about Donovan Quinn was going to be easy. Then again, was there anything really worth having that was? “Come on, Detective. I’m going to get you to unwind if it’s the last thing I do.”
    The hell with Nate and the hell with island time, Donovan decided. Lani Breslin was no longer Nate’s petulant underage sister. She was, as he’d informed her brother, an adult woman.
    An adult, deliciously scantily clad woman he wanted with every awakened atom in his body.
    He ran a slow, insinuating hand up her bare thigh. Hadn’t she told him to go with his impulses? “I can think of better ways to relax than running around playing tourist all day.”
    She backed away so quickly you’d think she’d been zapped by one of his unstable, electrically charged breakaway atoms. “There you go again, city man. Rushing things.” She patted his cheek. “Didn’t anyone ever tell you that anticipation is half the fun? Unless you’re up for skinny-dipping, go put some swim trunks on beneath those jeans, because you’re going snorkeling.”
    Knowing determination when he saw it, Donovan did as instructed and returned to where she was waiting in the great room.
    “Well?” she asked over her shoulder when he hesitated for a glance at the abandoned laptop sitting on the table. “Are you coming or not?”
    Apparently, he considered, as he followed her out the door, not any time soon.

6
    “Sugar is one of Orchid Island’s major industries,” Lani said as she steered the fire-engine-red Jeep through the forest of tasseled sugarcane.
    For all her talk of the pleasures of life in the slow lane, Donovan estimated that she was going at least sixty miles an hour down the pitted dirt road.
    She shifted gears and pressed down on the accelerator, passing an enormous truck loaded with freshly cut sugarcane on the right. Donovan resisted the impulse to close his eyes.
    “Actually,” she said, waving gaily at the truck driver she was fast leaving behind in a cloud of dust, “sugar’s so dependable that it’s almost a religion on the island.”
    “I thought you said that things move more slowly down here,” he said as the sugar cane became a blur.
    “Time,” she corrected. “I don’t remember discussing driving.”
    “Do you think we could take this tour at a pace somewhat less than the speed of sound?”
    She looked somewhat surprised by his ironic tone, but eased up on the accelerator. “That’s the Sleeping Lady.” She pointed toward a rock formation that did indeed resemble a reclining woman. “Kekepania was a giant akua , or goddess, who befriended the Menehune.
    “Little people,” she explained at his questioning look. “They were here even before the first Polynesians arrived. They were two feet tall and did all their work at night. They also had magical powers.”
    “I suppose you believe in them,” Donovan responded, venturing a guess.
    Lani turned her head to give him a knowing grin. “I like to,” she admitted, “although there are those horribly unromantic souls who persist in believing that the Menehune were actually a class of pygmy laborers from Tahiti.”
    “You have to admit it makes more sense than the idea of pixies.”
    Apparently Lani was not prepared to concede any such point. “To some. Those with limited imaginations. However, while historians and anthropologists continue to argue about the Menehune, no one has come up with a logical explanation for all the stone water projects that