The Secret of the Villa Mimosa (25 page)

21

B
rad’s plane, a sleek Gulfstream IV, was waiting on the tarmac at San Francisco International with its engines already warmed up. Phyl was the only passenger, and there was a crew of four to welcome her on board.

“Mr. Kane sends his regrets that he couldn’t be here, ma’am,” the steward said. “He enjoys piloting the aircraft himself, but today there were just too many business meetings.”

The plane was spacious with comfortable chairs set around small tables. There was a smaller cabin at the rear with seats that converted into a full-size bed and a small but perfectly equipped bathroom. The steward presented Phyl with all the latest magazines and a selection of the newest novels. He offered her a glass of champagne and told her their flying time to Honolulu would be five hours. “I hope you will find it a comfortable trip, ma’am,” he said, smiling. Phyl was sure she would.

In Honolulu, a Kanoi Ranch helicopter was waiting to take her to Brad’s home. They flew low along Waikiki Beach, then soared up over the towering cliffs, giving her a breathtaking view of the black rocks and
the pounding foam-flecked emerald ocean. They circled exclusive Diamond Head and came down low over the house. Phyl stared at it in amazement. She was only just starting to realize how seriously rich Brad was. The Kane mansion looked enormous from the sky, sprawling across acres of lush green palm-filled gardens to the very edge of the great cliffs.

Brad was waiting on the lawn. He broke into a run as the helicopter landed. His handsome face lit up with a thankful smile as he swept her into his arms.

“God, I’ve missed you,” he said, crushing her to him.

“This is it,” he said with a proud wave of his arm, and she turned to look at the long, low house, a series of Hawaiian-style pavilions linked by lanais and covered walkways. “It’s not that much different from Grandfather Archer’s day,” Brad said, “except I guess it grew a bit.”

They walked up the steps to the lanai, out of the hot sun and into the cool, shady rooms. The house was simply decorated in pale shades of cucumber and peppermint with simple floating white drapes and pale marble floors. Dark antique Hawaiian chests and massive tables mingled with the contemporary furnishings and bright abstract paintings.

The servants were Chinese; they wore white jackets and soft black slippers that made no noise on the marble floors, but as Brad escorted her through the house, Phyl noticed they did not smile, and they averted their eyes when they served the drinks.

Brad took her first to see his three Hockneys, his pride and joy, then to the huge Rothkos in the long gallery and the delicate Monet water lilies in the sitting room. There were Edward Hoppers and O’Keeffes and many more modern painters she did not recognize. Finally Brad took her into the formal dining room and showed her the family portraits.

“This is Archer,” he said, stopping in front of a portrait
of a very handsome man with yellow blond hair and hard blue eyes. He was sitting tall and very straight in a high-backed leather chair with his hands clasped tightly in front of him, and Phyl thought the portrait seemed to crackle with his tension.

“And this is Chantal, my grandmother,” he said.

Phyl stared at the portrait. She said, “I haven’t heard about her.”

“Chantal O’Higgins,” Brad said bitterly. “Half French, half Irish. And you will.”

Phyl thought Chantal was beautiful, a silver blonde with a sulky mouth and a dissatisfied look in her eyes.

“Here’s Jack, my father,” Brad said.

Jack’s was not a formal portrait like the others. He sat astride a powerful-looking black stallion. With a jaunty smile on his very handsome face, he was the perfect picture of a rich, arrogant young rancher.

“He wouldn’t sit for the portrait,” Brad explained. “The artist had to catch him on the move. That was his favorite horse, Volcano. The stallion lived up to his name. It killed at least one man I know about.”

“Killed him?”

“Yeah. Threw him off. There was a party, and the guy was boasting he could ride anything, so Jack put him on Volcano.” Brad laughed carelessly. “I guess he learned his lesson the hard way.”

Phyl shuddered, wondering what kind of man Jack was to have done such a thing, knowing the horse was dangerous.

“And here’s my mother,” Brad said softly. “Rebecca.”

It was a full-length portrait, and Rebecca was as lovely as he had described: a smooth, oval face, blue almond-shaped eyes, and rippling black hair. She wore a fetching smile and a clinging Nile green chiffon gown with satin ribbons tied, Empire-style, under her generously displayed breasts. She was holding a spray of cream lilies in one hand, and the other rested gracefully
on the back of a brocade chair. There was something opulent and overwhelmingly sensual about Rebecca’s portrait: the rich textures of chiffon, satin, brocade; the gleam of emeralds and diamonds; the very luster of her skin. It was as though the artist had known her too well, as though he were having a love affair with her.

“She’s very beautiful,” Phyl said.

Brad shrugged and turned away. “Well, that’s it. The whole family.”

“What? No brothers and sisters?” she asked, teasing.

He frowned. “None that counted,” he said abruptly, walking out into the sunshine.

The temperature was soaring and the humidity was high and Phyl said she thought she was going to melt, so they went for a swim.

The swimming pool was sixty feet long and a deep marine blue, and it seemed to spill into infinity, over the edge of the cliff. She dived in and swam to what seemed the very edge of space, then floated on her back, staring at the clouds puffing up in the blue sky.

“Those are storm clouds,” Brad said, frowning. “I hope it’s fine tomorrow. I’d planned to take you to see the ranch.”

He was right about the storm; by six o’clock lightning was flashing over the sea, and the rain was battering the island. They lay entwined on the huge four-poster bed that had been carved from the magnificent glossy Hawaiian koa wood for his mother more than forty years before. The linen sheets felt sexily smooth against Phyl’s cool skin, and Brad’s mouth felt even sexier as he began to kiss her. The scent of frangipani and jungly green plants drifted in through the open window, and rain drummed insistently on the roofs. It seemed so peaceful. Yet this time, when they made love, she felt the same crackle of tension she had seen in his father’s portrait. And she wondered why.

The next morning they arose with the dawn to
cloudless blue skies. Brad piloted the small Cessna himself on the short flight to the Big Island while Phyl, enthralled by the vista below, sat next to him. The Pacific was a rippling patchwork of emerald and aquamarine with paler turquoise over the sandbanks.

Then they were flying over the peak of the volcano at the center of the island, swooping low over deep forests and canyons and over endless miles of flat plains, where Phyl could see paniolos, cowboys, riding alongside the long, slow-moving columns of prime Hereford cattle—more than sixty thousand of them, Brad told her proudly. They skimmed grassy meadows and the flat shore, ringed with black lava rock and studded with bright green banana trees and lofty coconut palms and sprawling kiawes, on over the emerald golf courses and pink resort hotels.

Phyl thought that it was not gentle scenery: There was a brutality about the foaming sea that hurled itself on the jagged black rocks, then surged and sucked and swirled away again into unknown depths. The rugged peaks and deep, darkly forested ravines looked forbidding, and the miles of flat, empty black volcanic rocks inhospitable. But this was Brad’s home, his inheritance, his love.

Brad brought the tiny aircraft in to land, and as they taxied down the short runway, he turned to look at her. “Welcome to the Kanoi Ranch,” he said, smiling proudly.

A Jeep drew up alongside the aircraft as they stepped out, and a Hawaiian wearing a large white Stetson called out, “Welcome back, Mr. Kane.”

“Thank you, Charlie.” Brad shook hands with him. “Dr. Forster, this is Charlie Kalapaani. He runs the ranch. I’m giving Dr. Forster the tour, Charlie,” he said, climbing into the Jeep.

They drove from the airstrip along a straight road for ten minutes, then turned into a long avenue lined with huge old banyan trees. “Planted by my grandfather
sixty years ago,” Brad told her as they sped toward the simple wooden ranch house. It was painted white and surrounded by covered verandas. Inside, it was dark with polished koa wood beams and a treasure trove of the history of the Kanoi Ranch, with the original hand-hewn furnishings and artifacts and dozens of photographs of the ranch and its workers in the early days.

“Archer started out with fifty of the worst acres, full of gulches where his cattle could get lost, and within three years he owned three thousand prime acres,” Brad told her proudly. “He increased his acreage every year, and so did my father, until the ranch is now more than three hundred thousand acres. And that’s not counting the spreads in Texas and Wyoming.”

Phyl studied the map he showed her and said, “No more acres left for you to buy then.”

“Oh, I guess I did my share of adding to the Kane heritage, though maybe not in quite the same way. But those hotels and golf courses along the shore are on Kanoi land, and I expect tourism to add a lot of new revenue to the Kane family coffers.”

She smiled teasingly at him. “So you’re not just a pretty face then.”

“You would be a fool if you thought that,” he said, suddenly cold. “My work is my life.”

He walked outside and stood, shading his eyes, looking out at the fenced corrals. “Can you ride a horse?” he asked.

Phyl laughed at the thought. “Brad, I’m a city girl. There were no horses on the streets of Chicago. Except police horses.”

He grinned. “Then we’ll take the Jeep.”

His good mood returned as they jolted along dusty lanes and he told her there were more than a thousand horses, Morgans and quarter horses and Arabians, in two hundred paddocks and corrals. There were hundreds of miles of pipes feeding water into the many
tanks and water troughs, and the lower ranges were planted with special grasses and legumes while the upper, more rainy slopes were naturally lush with clovers and a mixture of nutritious grasses.

They watched the endless line of cattle being driven up the slopes toward fresh pastures while Brad explained how he regularly left land to “rest” and rejuvenate itself and that Kanoi had some of the finest beef cattle in the country because of his system.

Brad introduced her to some of his hundreds of employees, the ranch hands and the cowboys. “But I’m the man in charge,” he said firmly. “And I make sure nobody ever forgets that.”

Phyl told him it sounded like something his grandfather might have said.

“Of course he did. And my father. ‘You are the boss,’ my father told me. ‘And you had better remind them of it every day. You have to let every man know, from the lowest ranch hand to the highest manager, that this land belongs to you. If a man steps out of line, he is out of a job.’”

It was late afternoon when they took off again, and Brad’s spirits seemed to soar with the plane as they skimmed over the beaches and across the ocean.

The sun was setting in a fiery orange glow when Kalani appeared, its twin volcanic peaks silhouetted against the horizon and its shore fringed with tall coconut palms.

A Chinese servant waited in an open-top Jeep, and as they drove to the lodge, Brad proudly showed her his beloved island.

He took her to see the immaculate white-railed paddocks with the fine Arabian horses he bred, and the prize cattle roaming his meadows, and the perfectly tended lush tropical gardens surrounding the lodge. And Phyl marveled at the beauty and perfection of what she saw. She finally understood Brad’s passion for Kalani. It was a true paradise.

The lodge itself was a simple sprawling structure that had obviously just grown over the years. The floors were of smooth dark wood; the walls were plain white. It was simply furnished with antiques from the islands and comfortable sofas covered in sand-colored linen.

Brad’s room was as plain as a monk’s cell, without even a rug on its polished wooden floor. His big bed with the barley-twist posts was made from koa wood and draped with mosquito netting. The only other furniture was a Chinese wooden chair and a low ebony chest, with a framed black-and-white photograph of Rebecca staring haughtily into the camera. Her long, sleek hair was caught up at the back with a flower in it, and she was wearing a black velvet evening dress.