Meet Me in Hawaii by Georgia Toffolo (novels for beginners txt) 📕

night—but Zoe had always thought it was simply that he was kind. The deep down type of kind. To all of them. Especially Lily, to whom he’d become a mentor, almost like a father, after giving her a job in his hotel kitchen when she was sixteen.

Zoe may not have had much to do with him but the memories she had were good ones. ‘Hey,’ she said, suddenly overwhelmed by nostalgia, ‘remember how he always let us get away with sneaking onto his private beach for our night-time barbecues, pretending he never knew we were doing it?’

‘Yes!’ Victoria agreed, smiling mistily. ‘And how he sent that case of his finest champagne to me and Oliver to celebrate our engagement? He was so happy to be hosting our wedding at the Hawkesbury estate.’ And her smile dropped as the tears came to her too. ‘And now he won’t even be there.’

Silence, except for Lily, Malie and Victoria weeping.

And then Malie blew her nose. ‘Right. What do you need?’

Lily heaved in a shuddery breath, then let it out, making a visible effort to get back to her normal self. ‘I need you to go to that surfing competition and win it for Blake.’ Another heaved in breath. ‘And Zoe, I need you to stay where you are and write me something poignant to say at the funeral. And Victoria—’

‘Save your breath,’ Victoria said, cutting her off. ‘I’m coming to Hawke’s Cove tomorrow and it’s not to discuss wedding plans.’

Lily gave a choked sob. ‘Of course you’re coming. Of course you are, and I need you to come.’ Another hitching sob. ‘But right now, I’m going to get into bed and cry my eyes out.’

Lily rang off, leaving Malie, Victoria and Zoe staring at each other.

‘Will she be okay?’ Zoe asked.

Mali blew a corkscrew curl out of her eyes. ‘She’ll pretend she is, anyway.’

‘Maybe I should come over for the funeral…?’ Zoe said, tentative.

‘Maybe you shouldn’t,’ Victoria said. ‘You think we don’t know how much you hated coming back for Christmas?’

‘Yes, but—’

‘But nothing. I’m not taking the risk that another visit so soon will have you vowing to stay away forever when I need you at my wedding in June.’

‘Not to mention my wedding when the time comes so don’t let the Cove outstay its welcome. Or do I mean you outstay your welcome? Whatever, just don’t pretend you don’t loathe Hawke’s Cove with a passion and would rather swim with the piranha in the Zambezi than come home.’

‘I think you mean the Amazon—’

‘Details, details!’

‘—but okay!’ Zoe huffed out a short-lived laugh. ‘Hey, do you think Henry might finally turn up?’

Malie rolled her eyes. ‘Who knows?’

‘Who cares?’ Victoria said, and then grimaced. ‘Sorry, I don’t mean that, I take it back. Henry may have been a spoilt brat—’

‘Not may have been, he was a spoilt brat, and probably still is a spoilt brat!’ Malie threw in.

‘—but, if you’ll shut up, Malie, for a few seconds, I think he suffered as much as the rest of us. Not physically, obviously, but emotionally. I mean yes it was an accident, but Claudia died, right next to him in that car. How do you even start to deal with that?’

‘Claudia’s parents still blame him,’ Zoe said, and then she sighed. ‘And so do mine.’ Another sigh. ‘Talking about my parents, if I don’t email them within the next ten minutes they’ll declare a state of emergency. So that’s me, signing off.’

‘Measurements!’ Victoria called out. ‘Remember, I need your measurements if I’m going to make your bridesmaid’s dress not look like a sack on you!’

‘They’ll be the same as they were at Christmas—and incidentally I’m wearing that divine pink dress you made me to a cocktail party tonight—but yep, fine. Measurements. As soon as I locate a tape measure.’

Zoe disconnected and returned to the email from her parents, rescanning the words and heaving another sigh.

She was going to have to refer to Blake Hawkesbury’s death and she really hoped that didn’t have them harking back to the accident. She’d used up a lot of energy over the years putting that night behind her, leaving Hawke’s Cove behind.

Lately, though, fate seemed to be conspiring against her.

The Christmas visit.

Victoria’s wedding, coming up in a few months.

Now Blake.

And of course, Malie’s decision to move back there and reopen her family’s surf school in the near future, taking her entrepreneur fiancé with her—not that it was so much taking him with her as it was him being willing to follow her to the ends of the earth.

And on the subject of Malie, damn her for bringing up Finn Doherty during that visit to Hawaii in February, because ever since he’d been popping into her head at inopportune times. Damn her for all her talk about how Finn used to look at Zoe like he wanted to strip her naked.

Damn her…but God, how Zoe loved her.

How she loved them all. They were her anchor and her safe harbour.

But they were also the tide, pulling her back to where she didn’t want to go.

You hate Hawke’s Cove. Lily.

You think we don’t know how much you hated coming back for Christmas? Victoria.

Don’t pretend you don’t loathe Hawke’s Cove with a passion. Malie.

She’d tried so hard to escape, she had escaped…but because of the precious friendships she’d forged there she was scared she’d never truly leave it behind. In fact she felt a terrible, burning certainty that Hawke’s Cove was waiting for her to return, to face a past she wanted to forget—a feeling that had been growing stronger since Christmas.

Maybe it was tiredness getting to her; since December she’d done practically back-to-back trips—Mexico, England, the Caribbean, Hawaii, New Zealand. And yet she’d so easily shelved what she’d thought was a firm plan to chill at home in Sydney for a few months. She should have turned down this job—it was so last minute she hadn’t been able to do her usual meticulous research, plus she really, truly hated junkets—but a nagging discontentedness had had