Paradise for a Sinner Page 21

  “I was very foolish to listen to Sammy and want to apologize. I know our parents should have asked you about resuming our engagement. I told them they must.”

  Adam felt a tightening in his loins. She was a beautiful woman after all and standing very, very close. He stepped back. “Thank you for the apology. I appreciate it. You should go now. I need to get ready to catch my flight.”

  Pala stepped near again. “I came to offer myself to you. Our wedding is only a few months away. What does it matter? Sammy kept saying that to me, and I would not have him. Maybe I sensed what he did with other women. Maybe I did drive him to it just as my turning from you forced you into the arms of the first palagi woman who came along. I know that you used this Winnie only to defy your mother and show her you are a man who makes his own decisions. We can still have all we were meant to have on our own terms.” She unknotted her lava-lava and let it drop to the floor, but her use of Winnie’s name broke the spell.

  Adam backed toward the bathroom. “Pala, you are delusional. Don’t make me drop kick you naked into the hallway. Now, I am going in here, locking the door, and when I come out ready to leave the islands, I want you gone. Understand me? We are over. In fact, I think we never were in any real sense. No love, no affection, no trust in each other, just a physical attraction on my side and a desire for status on yours. Love, affection, trust, I have that with Winnie. Go, I don’t want to lay hands on you.”

  He did as he said, clicked the lock, and braced his back against the door for a moment. Close call, very close call as if the spirits of the island were trying to lure him back again. Adam turned on the shower and waited for the steam to rise. He got in and washed Pala’s touch off his body.

  ****

  Wanting very much to break something, Pala stood still naked in the center of the suite. She stalked over to the breakfast table intending to fling the vase of flowers against window with the ocean view, possibly breaking both. She would trash the room and see that her auntie reported the damage done by the self-centered American football player. Then, she noticed something else sitting among the dirty dishes—a folder containing airline tickets for Adam and the palagi woman.

  Pala withdrew Adam’s ticket and ripped it into tiny pieces. He needed to stay. Winnie Green needed to go. Simple as that. With her rival out of the way, Adam would accept her offering of her greatest gift, her virginity. She would no longer be humiliated and scorned, but soon become the wife of a famous man who might become a matai or even serve in the national fono to govern the islands. Let him have other women back in the States. She would stay here and pave the way with gifts for his new career when he retired from sports.

  Now, how to go about driving the palagi woman away? If she found Adam in bed with her, that would work, but he’d been very clear about not wanting to see her when he returned from the shower. Pala recalled the old wedding custom that had fallen into disuse, of the bride and groom going into an enclosure during the ceremony and having intercourse to prove the virginity of the bride with blood spilled upon a clean, white sheet. She would have passed that test and been proud of it! Her mother told her some women bled more, some less, and a bit of chicken blood often came in handy. She swiped her finger through a scrim of ketchup on the edge of Adam’s plate and stared at it thoughtfully.

  Leaving her lava-lava where it lay, Pala kicked off her sandals and went to the unmade bed. She sniffed. It smelled of a man and woman together and still had a damp spot in the center. Centering herself just above that dampness, she smeared the ketchup on the sheet and drew the top sheet up between her breasts, but left both them and her legs exposed. She only had to wait and hope Winnie Green returned shortly. After some time, the shower stopped blasting and the roar of the hairdryer replaced that noise. Pala nearly missed the faint click of the key card in the lock, but when Winnie entered the room, she was fully prepared.

  ****

  Winnie smiled at the sound of the hairdryer, that curly mane of his, his single vanity. “Adam, stop primping. I know I took too long, but the cab is waiting and our suitcases are in it. You need to finish dressing, grab our tickets, and go.”

  A low seductive voice spoke from the bed across the room. “He is not going with you. I offered myself to him. He took my virginity, and now we will marry as planned because Adam Malala is a man of honor. He tore up his ticket, you see. Yours is still on the table.”

  Pala dropped the sheet from her body and flung it back to expose a russet stain between her legs in the exact spot where Winnie and Adam had sex that morning. The lush body of the young woman adorned only with the ropes of tattoos on her thighs lay there naked as a Samoan goddess, the very spirit of the islands incarnate, summoning Adam back to his village and his way of life.

  “Yes, I thought Adam was a man of his word. Evidently, a woman can be wrong about men more than once.”

  Pala inclined her head as if agreeing with this statement entirely. “I win. You lose. Go home, palagi woman.”

  Winnie experienced the same numbness she’d had when Doug announced his decision to leave her for another woman. Only her feelings for her ex-husband had atrophied by then from his lack of interest, her fatigue working long hours. Her love for Adam was so fresh and new, so easily bruised and damaged by this revelation. Of course, she came in second best compared to that lush creature in the bed.

  Did he expect her to get into a cat fight with Pala over him? Or had he planned to come down to the desk, meet her, explain, and hand her the ticket to get home? He might have perfect timing on the football field, but it failed him now. Winnie took her ticket, went to the cab, and left Adam’s baggage behind.

  Chapter Thirty

  Adam emerged naked from the bathroom in a small cloud of steam like one of the old gods, hair wild, his tattoos showing courage and manhood. Wrapped in a bed sheet, Pala stood near the balcony doors and held out her arms to him. “Take me. Your other woman is gone.”

  “What the hell, Pala! I told you to get dressed and get out of here. Where are my clothes, my ticket? Where is Winnie?”

  “All gone. I have a sheet here with your semen on it and the stain I showed her marking the loss of my virginity before she left.”

  Adam tore the sheet away from her body and examined the smudge. “Are you so crazy you cut yourself? I mean football groupies do some loony things, but this tops it.” He wet a finger, ran it across the patch of red, and popped it into his mouth. “Yeah, I thought so, ketchup.”

  “We can make it real now.” Pala held out her arms again.

  “That will not happen. Just tell me where my clothes are.”

  “Out there.” She pointed a finger to the balcony.

  Adam shrugged into the hotel robe, always too tight and too short on him, doubled the stained sheet over and wrapped it around him lava-lava style because no way was he going to leave it with Pala and whatever she might try next. He went to reclaim from the landscaping the clothes he’d laid out for his trip. His khakis and a red Sinners shirt hung on some bushes halfway down the cliff. He found his black boxer briefs tenting a vivid red ti plant and one of his athletic shoes in the driveway. Finally giving up, he pounded up to the desk and simply asked the clerk for help.

  “Oh, Miss Green left your suitcase with us.”

  “Thank God for small favors.”

  “Will you be staying on with us?’

  “No. Call a taxi. I’ll need it as soon as I change my clothes which I’d like to do down here if you have a private space.”

  “Is there a problem with your room?”

  “Yes, pest infested.”

  The clerk’s eyes widened in horror. “Not bed bugs!”

  “No, only someone crazy as they are. I need a young woman removed and sent on her way.”

  “So sorry about this. One of your fans?”

  “Not anymore.”

  He dressed quickly in the manager’s office, even packed the damned sheet, but the cab came in Samoan time at a very leisurely pace. At the air
port, he explained that his ticket had been lost. The very flustered woman behind the counter repeated Winnie’s words. “Miss Green said you decided to stay and would not be in need your ticket. I am so sorry, but we gave it to the first standby passenger, and they have already boarded. We can put you on tomorrow’s flight.”

  “How about removing that standby’s ass from my seat because I need it?”

  “Oh, oh, we can’t do that. The door is closed on the aircraft. I am so sorry about this misunderstanding.”

  “Yeah, so am I.” No sense in taking out his frustration on a woman just doing her job.

  Adam moved to the window overlooking the runway and watched Winnie’s plane taxi away from the gate. He wondered if she could see him standing there through those tiny windows. Not wanting to see Samoa again, she probably had her shade drawn against the burning tropical sun and any view of him.

  ****

  Having no desire to watch Tutuila island shrink into the vast Pacific, Winnie drew down the window shade. At least, she traveled home in style with a spacious seat that would recline into a comfy bed for sleeping on the long journey—if only the man sitting next to her would simply shut up and leave her alone. He’d already asked her name, pressed his business card into her hand, and expressed his happiness at securing a last minute seat and such a lovely woman to sit next to him. Lovely, a word Adam used so often when describing her. She had no desire to hear it on this man’s lips, this Dexter Sykes, photographer.

  Shorter than she and going soft through the middle, Sykes wore his thinning brown hair combed back over a small bald spot and regarded her with round, brown eyes that except for being bloodshot held some puppy dog appeal. Nana would have used the term “hound dog” eyes. You stay away from those hound dog kind of men, you hear me Winnie? Time to start listening to Nana again.

  Still, Sykes examined her rather shrewdly. “Yes, I just completed a big swimsuit assignment on Ta’u Island. Great beaches, beautiful babes, but, oh brother, all that rain delayed my departure by days. Missed my flight from the ends of the earth. Really deserted over there. You ever do any modeling? You look familiar.”

  “No, I’m only a nurse. I was visiting with a friend and helped out at a clinic for a few days. Now I’m on my way back to New Orleans.” Enough said.

  “Me, too! I have a studio there. You got the bones for modeling. Good hair and eyes, kind of an exotic look about you. Exotic sells. You ever want a portfolio taken, I’m your man.”

  “I don’t think so, thanks.” Winnie immersed herself in the flight magazine crossword.

  A couple hours into the journey, the attendants served a hot meal in first class. Winnie selected the fish. Sykes dug into a very small steak and seemed compelled to engage in dinner conversation.

  “Poor suckers back there in tourist class only get sandwiches, dry ones. I’ve gone that route often enough, but I’m doing real well financially. Why, you ask?”

  Winnie hadn’t asked. She held up her cup for a refill of white wine.

  “Because I got luck. I’m always in the right place at the right time. I mean the gig to go to Samoa and do a photo shoot paid, but when I get stranded in Pago Pago on my way back, the Adam Malala business boils up, one of the Sinners players accused of murder. Hot damn! I had time to kill so I staked out the courthouse and got the money shot of him coming out the door with some island honey. You follow football?”

  “Not much.” Winnie concentrated on her meal and hoped with her hair held back by a colorful scarf and wearing white slacks and a tailored blouse she bore no resemblance to the frizzy-headed “honey” in the soiled lava-lava.

  “You gotta know Adam Malala. He has all that hair. Wish I did.”

  “Yes, he’s done some commercials.”

  “Right! For a coconut cream rinse and shampoo. You think he was really guilty? I mean that story about death by coconut is pretty thin.”

  “I understand such things happen. I do believe he is innocent.”

  “Remember the Connor Riley/Stevie Dowd business back a few years? I took that shot right after he sacked her on the football field. Those two really moved my career along. Confidentially, I slept with Stevie before Connor came along. We used to be partners.”

  “Really?” The Stevie Riley she’d met long ago at Mintay’s wedding now had two cute little children and a handsome ex-Sinner husband—who would probably like to rip this guy’s head off and run it in for a touchdown for saying those words. Or, Stevie might do it herself, she had that kind of attitude, one Winnie lacked.

  Winnie’s eyes must have registered her disbelief because he quickly added, “I had more hair then and wasn’t quite so wide around the middle. How about you, Winnie? You with anyone?’

  “Not anymore. Divorced, I mean.”

  “Nothing wrong with that. How about I buy you breakfast or lunch or whatever when we get to Honolulu? Though, if you are sitting here in first class, nurses must be making some pretty good change these days.”

  “My friend paid for the ticket. Look, in Honolulu I have to arrange the rest of my trip back to New Orleans. This fare only takes me to Hawaii. I guess we were going to stay over a few days, but I want to go directly home. I don’t have time for fancy dining.”

  “Not fancy, just breakfast, maybe in the terminal. I figure I’m sitting in this friend’s seat. You break up with some undeserving guy?” The hound dog had picked up the scent.

  “Let’s just say he went back to his old girlfriend and leave it at that.”

  “Vacation breakups are the pits,” he said, deeply sympathetic.

  The steward came to take their trays and hand out headsets for a movie. Winnie took the offer gladly and after that accepted a blanket and pillow to curl into with her face turned toward the window. The next thing she knew, hot facial towels to refresh her after the long flight were being handed around. After landing, she managed to outdistance Dexter Sykes with her longer legs, but he came up behind her in the ticket line.

  “What do you say I treat us to first class all the way back to New Orleans?”

  “I’m sorry, I can’t accept that.”

  “Okay, for the pleasure of your company I’ll ride in the back with the rest of the cattle.”

  “Please don’t do that.”

  “Come on, you can tell me all your troubles. How about some eggs and bacon? I can tell you I am tired of corned beef and taro.”

  Because Dex would only follow, she submitted to a breakfast where the eggs came with little purple orchids as garnish and tall glasses of pineapple juice filled in for orange. He insisted on buying her a lei, prepackaged, inspected, and sealed to take out of the country to cheer her up.

  “Was your breakup bad, honey?”

  “No, just sudden, unexpected. I really do not want to talk about it.”

  They caught their late flight to L.A., another overnighter, then a layover in that city where the photographer asked her to pose with her lei on by a clump of small palms outside the hotel where they stayed overnight. No harm in that. She left the lei for the maid after he tried to talk himself into her room that evening. Oh God, another three hours of Sykes tomorrow before she got to New Orleans. She placed a call to her sister and asked for a ride to her house. If anyone could scare off a pesky photographer, that would be the Rev.

  Sykes dogged her all the way to the luggage pickup at Louis Armstrong International Airport where the Rev waited, black and as mountainous as the place where Moses wrote the Ten Commandments. His clerical collar dug into his neck like a choke chain on a pit bull holding him back from violence, but he said in his deep, ministerial voice, “Are you following my sister-in-law?”

  Dex snapped his fingers. “I know you! Rev Bullock. I used to do some sports photography at the Sinners’ games.”

  “And I know you, Mr. Sykes. You are the man who took immoral pictures of my friend, Stevie Dowd, and had them published.” His big eyes rolled toward Sykes’ camera bag.

  “No immoral pictures in here. No, sir
. Simply a pleasure to have Miss Winnie’s company as we traveled. Got some calls to make. Have to run.” With a cell phone plastered against his ear, Dexter Sykes trotted off so fast his rolling luggage tipped over in his haste. He dragged it several feet before pausing to settle it on its wheels again.

  Winnie exhaled. “Thank you for getting rid of him.”

  “Oh, baby sis, I don’t think we did you any favors. Now Dex knows you are related to us. I figure he is adding up all the numbers right now in his head, and they aren’t going to come out in our favor,” Mintay said.

  “Let’s get on home.” The Rev seized both her bags and led their group to the black Escalade with the cross on the rear. He did not ask about Adam for quite a few miles, just let her babble about her big adventure, how she bought souvenirs for everyone, and had probably put on ten pounds eating Samoan cuisine.

  “No, you look wonderful, all tan and healthy,” Mintay claimed, obviously pretending not to notice the signs of stress. She’d chosen to sit in the backseat with Winnie and let her husband be their chauffeur.

  The question had to be asked. “Exactly why did Adam let you travel all this way alone when lowdown dawgs like Dexter Sykes could get after you?” the Rev asked. “Your face was all over the internet when you came out of the courthouse with him. The least he could do is see you home and protect you from paparazzi.”

  “Oh, he did protect me in Samoa. It’s just that he decided to stay and marry his virgin. Well, I guess she isn’t anymore. I found her in his bed. I mean who wouldn’t prefer a beautiful young woman like that over me? Second best again. Please don’t tell anyone I’m back yet, not Nell or Joe. I need a few days to get over this.” More like forever, she thought.

  Then the tears came. The three of them could have floated all the rest of the way to Versailles, the gated community where the Rev and Mintay lived in a substantial home beside the golf course fairway. Her brother-in-law stopped at the guardhouse and rolled down the window.