Sunset Point: A Shelter Bay Novel by Joann Ross

cutlery and put it on the table along with some paper napkins he’d brought with him. “No one ever questions a two-hundred-dollar bottle of Scotch coming in a screw-cap bottle.”
    When the timer dinged, he plated the dinner and together they set it onto the table. Which felt oddly domestic but nice, Tess decided. “I still have to work tonight,” she reminded them both.
    “Don’t worry, I won’t stay late. The D.A.’s office seems to keep you prosecutors busy.”
    “It’s the bad guys who do that,” she said, surprised yet again when he pulled out her own kitchen chair for her. Someone had taught this Marine manners. “If they’d stop committing crimes, I’d work a lot less hours.”
    “And what would you do with all that extra time?”
    “Sleep. For maybe a year. Then possibly go away where there isn’t any email or cell phones.”
    “I have just the place. Ever hear of Orchid Island?”
    “That’s where Alexis is going on her honeymoon. Donovan Quinn, who worked with me on the Kagan trials, brought her a brochure.”
    “See, there’s another connection we share. Donovan happens to be an old friend of mine. We met when he was a patrolman and I did a citizen drive-along with him while researching a book. He even escaped Oregon’s winter rain one year for a week at my house and met my family. We’re descended from one of the first nonnative settlers who landed on the island after a mutiny at sea and found the living so easy, they decided to stay.”
    “Like Pitcairn Island? Where mutineers from The Bounty ended up?”
    “Exactly like that. But since they didn’t get a movie made about them, the island isn’t as well known. Also, Pitcairn’s pretty much out there in the ocean by itself and dependent on New Zealand.
    “Orchid Island is a principality. Being just a short boat ride from Kauai, its original settlers are thought to be Polynesians. When King Kamehameha began conquering the Hawaiian islands in the 1700s, Kaumualii, the king of Kuari, peacefully surrendered to avoid the terrible bloodshed the other islands had suffered. Which left Orchid Island as the last in Kamehameha’s sights.
    “But then a kahuna, which is Hawaiian for shaman, told the king that he’d had a dream vision and that if he attacked the island, it would bring bad luck down and he’d lose his kingdom. Which would also prevent his heirs from ever ruling. And, since, in Hawaii, family is a big deal, and he’d already defeated his cousin in the earlier civil war, which cost a lot of lives, the king wasn’t about to risk his own lineage’s legacy.
    “Now, there are some who’d like to point out that all this was happening about the same time the mutineers arrived with a lot of gold and silver. There’s also a belief that perhaps the kahuna ended up with some of that bounty, which might have influenced his advice to the king.
    “Whatever, they stayed independent, although Captain Cook, who was also sailing around Oceana at the time, named the island the Anglicized name everyone uses today.”
    “That’s a lot of history.”
    “It is, indeed,” he agreed.
    “The mutineers brought diseases, as happened everywhere in the New World where Europeans landed, but along with being a peaceful people, Orchid Islanders are tough. Enough survived to marry with the mutineers and subsequent immigrants. We hosted a U.S. Navy base back in World War II, which brought in a lot of Americans who fell in love with the place and came back after the war was over. Our most recent invasion was Starbucks.”
    Tess laughed as he’d meant her to. “Do you still have family there?”
    “A bunch. My folks, grandmother, and sister, Lani, who’s the island librarian and local handyman, or handywoman, if you want to be gender correct—”
    “That’s an eclectic mix of career choices.”
    “There’s only funding for the library to be open three days a week. So, since she likes working with her hands, it seems to work well for her. And the