Sunset Point: A Shelter Bay Novel by Joann Ross Page B

him to read. Or so the story goes.”
    “They must have had a wonderful relationship.”
    “I guess so. They were married seventy years.”
    “They were lucky.”
    “I’ve always thought so. Great-great-grandfather Hani’s family descended from the Kalākaua dynasty. Kalākaua was a king of Kauai who went on to rule all of Hawaii for a time. Kalākaua’s sister was Queen Lili’uokalani, who ended up being deposed by a pro-U.S.-led overthrow of the kingdom in 1893. Hani was some sort of cousin to the queen, and since his was the only dynastic family on Orchid Island, he reluctantly accepted the crown after his father’s death.”
    “So you’re royalty? Seriously?” It hadn’t mentioned anything about that on the author bio at the end of his book or his Wikipedia page.
    He shrugged. “Technically, but it’s not that big a deal on Orchid Island, partly because we escaped all the wars and politics. Though, when Congress passed, and then President Clinton signed an ‘Apology Resolution,’ a hundred years after overthrowing Lili’uokalani, it meant a lot to us, because, like I said, family is everything in the islands…
    “So, now tell me about Lucia.”
    “She was a strong woman, like your ancestor undoubtedly was,” Tess said. “She was a woman of many causes: voting rights for women, access to birth control, fighting to make domestic abuse a crime, and prohibition, although that one, admittedly, didn’t turn out as she and the other advocates of the Nineteenth Amendment had hoped.
    “She met my great-grandfather, who owned a sawmill in the northern part of the state, when he had her arrested.”
    Nate tilted his head to look down at her in surprise. “Seriously?”
    “Seriously. In those days it was illegal to distribute birth-control information. But since Lucia considered it a stupid law, she couldn’t see any reason for obeying it.”
    Tess stopped her story long enough to take a sip of wine. The family might have been absolute failures when it came to love, but they certainly knew the wine-making business.
    “Anyway, she was handing out leaflets instructing workers on their various options when Jeremy Wainwright decided that she was disrupting his employees.”
    “Having her arrested wasn’t a very auspicious beginning for a romance.”
    “From what I’ve been told, no one ever accused any of the Wainwrights of possessing a strong romantic streak,” Tess said. “At any rate, she was charged with tres-passing and distributing obscene material. But he dropped both charges after Lucia agreed to have dinner with him.”
    Her smooth skin glowed in the light from the fire, and Nate’s inventive mind conjured up provocative images of Tess, her dark curls tumbling over bare shoulders, her gypsy eyes wide and luminous in the flickering light, her arms beckoning to him, her naked body so soft, so warm. So inviting.
    “Nate?”
    When he realized Tess was talking to him, he shook his head in a vain attempt to clear it. “Sorry,” he apologized sheepishly. “My mind has a bad habit of wandering.”
    Tess smiled understandably. “Working on a new idea?”
    “An old one,” he mumbled, wondering what it was about Tess that could cause him to suddenly feel like an oversexed, bumbling adolescent. Nate’s feelings for Tess had been intense and discomforting from the beginning. Even discounting Captain MacGrath’s still unexplained meddling, Nate had the feeling that the woman would have been able to distract him without any outside assistance.
    “Speaking of ideas, why on earth would you want to make up such horrible things when the world is already filled with horror?” she asked.
    “Now you sound like all those interviewers who are constantly trying to find a motive for my work. Was I frightened by some horrific incident as a child? Was my potty training particularly distressful? Was my mother frightened by a pack of wild wolves while I was in the womb?”
    “And was she?”
    Nate grinned.