Running the Numbers (30 page)

“Custom designed just for you.” He opened it to reveal a silver ring, with a princess-cut diamond embedded deep in the band—a ring that wouldn’t get caught on fishing line or snag on a thread inside her work gloves; a ring she could wear all the time. “You’ll never have an excuse to take it off.” He teased, but nerves danced along the edge of his voice.

She looked from the ring to Blake and back. No one had ever put so much thought and effort into a gift for her.
How
was this man single for five years?

His grin widened. “Do you need to think about it? Because I don’t. We can have a lengthy engagement if you’re still not sure. I’ll wait. I’m a patient guy.”

Faces beamed and mooned. Sadie’s heart moved in her chest, like a quarter when it falls perfectly into a coin slot.

Blake licked his lips nervously. His smile faltered. “I-I shouldn’t have put you on the spot, Sadie—”

“Oh, God, shut up.” She grabbed his face and brought his mouth to hers, taking both of their breaths away. She pulled away with a gasp. “Yes. Hell, yes.”

Clapping and cheering followed. Sadie wiped away a tear from the corner of her eye as Blake slid the ring onto her finger and reclaimed his seat beside her, pride practically bursting from him, evident in the smile threatening to crack his face wide open.

Emily applauded fiercely. “Well done, Blake! We’ve got our fourth and final Cobb!”

“The last Cobb!” Jack joined in with his glass raised high.

Blake subdued their celebration with a small shake of his head. “No, actually, I don’t think so. Sadie will probably want to keep her own last name. I think enough women in this family have had mine.” He turned to her questioningly.

She stroked his cheek lovingly. “I’ll show them how it’s done, babe.”

Boston laughed out loud, Jack whistled, and Quinn and Emily swapped approving glances.

Blake’s smile turned teasing and he kissed her. “Well, okay. If you’re prepared to walk into this family with a name like Darling Cobb, I’ve got your back. But don’t say you weren’t warned.”

There was laughter and jokes, none of which bothered Sadie in the least, because the company was well-meaning. Mostly, Quinn and Emily empathized with her, having had the surname Buzzly their entire lives, while Jack and Boston ribbed Blake.

Jack nodded apologetically. “It really does help to have a cool last name, mate.”

Boston raised his glass with an identical expression. “Really does.”

Sadie curled into the crook of Blake’s arm, drawing his attention, as Jack and Boston delved into the deeper meanings of names, and Quinn jumped in with her thoughts on naming characters.

Sadie traced a heart on his knee and spoke low, so only he could hear. “You’re my darling Cobb. I don’t see why I shouldn’t be yours.”

THE END

Keep reading for a special sneak peek of Roxanne Smith’s novel

She likes Hawaii, but she just might love Boston…

Still stinging from her recent divorce, Emily Buzzly heads to majestic Hawaii to soothe her wounds. But once she arrives on Oahu, Emily discovers that a man she assumes is a beach bum is in fact her personal tour guide, hired by her sister. With his long hair and tattoos, Boston Rondibett is everything Emily detests—despite his sun-kissed surfer body. And with her straight-laced, executive persona, Emily is everything Boston rebels against. But both have a lot to learn about making snap judgments…

As it turns out, Boston’s real job, the one he truly cares about, is running his soup kitchen and homeless shelter. Embarrassed by her assumptions, rather than lazy beach days, Emily soon finds herself feeding the hungry, and even involved in the search for an AWOL soldier. And to Boston’s surprise, she’s loving every minute of it—and he’s loving seeing her loosen her chignon and be the admirable, beautiful woman she is. As each works through the challenges of the past, these two very different people just might find their hearts are on the very same page…

Boston rubbed his forehead and let his exasperation show plainly in his tone. “Hani, I don’t have time for this, man.”

Even doubled over with his head stuck inside the cold oven, the overgrown Hawaiian took up most of the space in the dark galley kitchen. The one narrow window set above the porcelain sink had been scrubbed just last week. Boston had watched Akela bring down the threadbare curtains and take a sponge to the glass pane with his own eyes, but the room seemed to stay gloomy.

Boston blamed Hani’s giant body blocking out the sunlight. Or scaring it away.

Hani’s head came out of the oven and cocked to one side in annoyance. Despite it, his clear, dark eyes held only concern. Maybe a hint of fear. “Don’t push me,
haole
. If we don’t get this stove working, we ain’t feeding nobody. Akela’s bringing plates she made from home, but that won’t get us through the day. And if Mama finds out she’s helping here, Bos, it won’t be good.”

Fair point. Hani’s sister did a lot around the shelter, without her family’s consent or knowledge. Since Hani had left home and landed on the streets, they’d had little to do with him. Less so after he took up running The Canopy with Boston. Except Akela, who refused to disown her only brother.

Boston pulled a wad of bills from the side pocket of his maroon cut-off shorts with tired reluctance. The frayed end of his shorts tickled his shins and got caught in his leg hair, but they were his favorite pair.

Probably because Hani hated them. Boston figured he’d picked them out this morning in a subconscious effort to antagonize his business partner.

He held the fat wad of cash aloft to give Hani a better view. “Relax, big guy. See this? It’s my paycheck from the job I picked up last week. Money just came down the wire.”

His friend didn’t appear impressed. Hani had never much cared for money. It was hard to work up a whole lot of concern for something they never had. “Whatcha gonna do, huh? Hand it out? We’re trying to give these poor folks a decent plate of rice, not send them back to the liquor store.”

Boston put zero effort into hiding his impatient groan. “Your brain’s as thick as your barrel chest sometimes. Hell no, I’m not about to sprinkle cash on a bunch of homeless guys. But I bet I’ve got enough right here to pick up an old used oven at the appliance yard downtown. Relax, man. We’re in paradise, remember?” He gave Hani his best cheesy smile, the one he might use on folks if he ever turned to selling cars to make a buck.

The big man stopped fooling with the lost cause of an oven to put a hand over his large belly and laugh lazily.

Like Boston knew he would. If the famous Chef Hani of The Canopy, Honolulu’s poorest and smallest soup kitchen, didn’t have a sense of humor, no one did.

He shook his head, a slight smile on his wide mouth. “You’re funny, Boston. Real funny. You try that paradise talk on the next straggler who finds his way in here. Wait till I can watch, though, ’kay? It’s been too long since I seen you get your ass handed to you. In fact, I think it was Jordan who gave you your last shiner, huh? A girl, even.”

Boston’s insides seized up in his gut like a bad toe cramp. Not the result of nostalgia, loss, or even heartbreak, but fear
.
Happened every damn time Jordan’s name found its way into a conversation. Or into his head. Or he caught a glimpse of the tattoo in his reflection. He absentmindedly rubbed the spot on his ribcage where the ink etched into his skin, barely visible through the threadbare white T-shirt he wore.

A hui hou,
it read
.
Until we meet again
.

So much for that.

Hani must’ve caught his expression. He ran a flat palm over his face as if to wipe away the grin he’d already dropped. “Hey, man. I’m sorry.”

Boston waved him off and forced a smile. “Don’t be. We’ve got bigger problems.”

Hani was back to fiddling with the knobs of the broken oven. “Damn thing.” He sighed. His shoulders drooped. “I like to see the money but hate to see it spent before you even go over the books. Tell me about this new job you got before I call Thompson down here to help me move this thing.” He kicked the bottom of it. “Stupid piece of junk.”

“What about Kale? Did he finally do the right thing?”

Hani grunted. “Whatever
that
is. Like either of us would know.”

They were certain Kale was an AWOL soldier from the army base at the center of Oahu, but neither of them felt any compulsion to turn him in. Boston would be damned before he’d do it.

The Canopy was a soup kitchen/sometimes shelter when weather hit and they brought a few poor souls inside, not a halfway house or rehab facility. They fed people a couple times a day, as many as they had rice for and nothing more. Hot food, no soapbox talk. Guys like Kale and Thompson relied on the place for a safe haven, and Boston relied on them for help maintaining the shelter. Damn hard to make payroll without liquid assets.

Hell, without
any
assets. The building itself wasn’t worth the broken industrial oven they were about to toss on the curbside.

Hani’s thick, black eyebrows drew together in a concerned wrinkle. “I ain’t seen Kale in a while, but something tells me he didn’t turn himself in at the base. His face would be all over the news if he had.”

“How would we know? You see a television in here?”

Hani rolled his eyes. “I may not get out much, but you do. You would’ve seen something, heard something. One of the boys would probably know.”

The boys. That’s what Hani called them even though a few women made their way into The Canopy from time to time. The stragglers, the panhandlers, the bottom-feeders. Sometimes, in his more poetic moods, they were the lost souls or the forgotten.

Boston ran a weary hand through his shoulder-length hair. “Nothing I can do for a street kid on the run from the Army. But I can tell you about the job. About two years ago, when I first started doing the guide thing, this couple came from London on their honeymoon.” He scratched his chin. The lady was American, he recalled. “Or was it California? Can’t remember. Anyway, great couple. Totally laid back.” He snapped his finger. “Jack, that was the husband. Jack and Quinn. If all my clients were as chill as these two, I’d love my job.”

Air blew from Hani’s lips with a rude noise. They called it a raspberry back on the mainland, but there was probably some Hawaiian word for it Boston didn’t know. “Whatever, man. You know you love dragging mainlanders all over the island. Don’t lie.”

Okay, yeah, so he loved it, but what wasn’t to love? Oahu did the work; Boston only had to drive and point. “Well, they called last week. They’re surprising some family member, a cousin or something, with a plane ticket and hired me to meet her at the airport and show her around the island.”

Hani finally gave up on the oven dials with a disappointed, thin-lipped grimace. “You’ll probably have it easy if you liked Jack and Quinn so much, eh?”

Boston sucked in air through his teeth. “Nah, I don’t think so. Quinn booked this lady’s room at the Hilton. Right on Waikiki. She and Jack, they were down for the full experience, you know? They stayed in a little cottage on North Shore that didn’t have air-conditioning or sealed windows. Given that, the lofty hotel reservation gives me the impression their cousin—aunt, sister, whatever—isn’t made of the same stuff. You smell what I’m cookin’?”

“Oh, I smell it, brother. Smells like you got a rough job ahead.” Hani stopped short of whatever he’d been about to say next to give Boston a lingering head-to-toe appraisal. “She’s gonna dig for spare change when she sees you, man. Then, when she finds out who you are, she’s gonna call the lady who hired you and ask her what the hell she was thinking.
Then
she’s gonna go straight to the Hilton Village and hire one of them real guides. The ones who wear the mint green polo shirts and have official stuff like clipboards and name tags.”

Upper crust business rivals. Well, not really rivals. The people who came to Boston were usually the ones intent on avoiding things like client rosters, preplanned lunch menus, and name tags.
Especially
name tags.

Boston ran a critical eye over his shorts, which were doing their job offending Hani. “She’ll get used to me. She’ll have to. If Quinn’s buddy ditches me, I’ll owe her back the deposit. Since I’m about to spend it on an appliance we need to operate this place, I’d better have something up my sleeve, huh?”

An anxious grunt escaped Hani’s lips. “Damn right, you better. Hey, you heard what happened to Ryder, didn’t you?”

Boston nibbled the inside of his cheek and thought hard. Ryder…Ryder, sure…. Or, wait. No, that was Robert. Wasn’t it? He scratched his neck. “Too many, man. Not enough time for me to get to know them all.” At the rate their homeless patrons came and went, who but Hani could keep track? He had the benefit of both working and living at the shelter. Boston’s part was making the money to keep it going. On a good week, he’d get to The Canopy once or twice. During a bad week, he made it daily, but it meant no money coming in. “Remind me.”