Han didn't want to keep on checking his phone after his afternoon breakfast. He had better things to do. Like calling the 24K Dragon. He also needed to decode that message from Phantom.
Instead, he closed out of the messaging app and opened the Find My app that he'd turned on before gifting his phone to Jasmine.
She was somewhere in Diamond Head, one of the most expensive neighborhoods in Oahu.
Han's brow scrunched. She'd mentioned in the jeep ride over that she always taught classes at hotel beaches. But according to the map, her dot wasn't anywhere close to a hotel.
So what was she doing there?
10
JAZZ
“You know, we needn’t stop our lessons simply because your sister and nephew are going home,” Faizan told me that afternoon. We were carrying our boards out of the ocean in front of the villa where he and my sister lived and worked.
I grinned up at the guy my nephew Albie had introduced me to earlier in the summer. My sister had landed a job as a caretaker for this wheelchair-bound, crazy rich dude who lived in Diamond Head, and Faizan was his—actually, I wasn’t sure what Faizan did.
He seemed to be his security guard—he was former Pakistani SSG, so he was a vet just like my dad. But he also ran errands and drove my sister around, and he’d somehow appointed himself Albie’s babysitter during the hours Mika was working.
Albie, whose father died when he was just a baby, seemed to love having a guy with a whole bunch of free time to talk to and go swimming with—both in the ocean and in the lanai’s sweet infinity pool. But he couldn’t bear the fact that his new friend couldn’t surf, so he’d begged me to teach him.
It hadn’t taken much arm-twisting. The house that he and my sister lived and worked in was located on a prime piece of beach. The view was gorgeous, and my new student wasn’t hard on the eyes either.
Faizan might have been twice my age with graying hair, but he was easy to talk to and an all-around good guy.
When I told him why I had given up a pro-surfing career to come back to Hawaii, he’d called me a good daughter. He hadn’t made me feel like an idiot for being so loyal to someone who didn’t have that long to live.
We’d been low-key flirting all summer. And up until a few weeks ago, I might’ve squealed like a little girl on the inside at his invitation. But now…
“Oh, I’m sorry,” he said, clocking the hesitant look on my face. He stuck the surfboard I’d loaned him fin side up in the sand. “I thought perhaps there were some growing feelings between you and me. But if you don’t want that…”
Growing feelings. Could his voice be any richer and more melodic? It was like honey poured over chocolate. And I loved the poetic way he said stuff. It made me feel sophisticated. The opposite of a broke surfer who could barely afford wax for her board these days…and who had somehow got herself caught up in a two-year ownership deal.
“No, I’d like to keep on teaching you,” I rushed to tell him, pushing that weird guilty feeling aside. “And you know…maybe see you outside of the ocean.”
Faizan’s face lit up at my suggestion. “I would like that too. Very much.”
His direct and authentic answer made me regret hesitating even for a moment.
“Okay, well, give me your phone then, and I’ll put in my number,” I said, grinning up at him.
Faizan grinned back at me, and he went to fetch his phone from the steps leading up to the house just as Mika and Albie came over to join me. Each of them carried an end of the longboard they’d shared for today’s surfing session, which made for a super cute mother and son picture.
“That was amazing!” Mika said with her usual good cheer on steroids. “Faizan, you’re getting really good!”
“Well, he had an awesome teacher,” I pointed out with a teasing tone.
But instead of co-signing my claim, Faizan frowned down at his phone.
“Everything all right?” I asked, even though I already knew what that particular frowny face meant after a summer of coming over here.
The Broken Billionaire wanted something. I cast my eyes up to the luxurious lanai at the top of the steps. Sure enough, there he was, sitting in his wheelchair on the other side of the pool, watching us like he did whenever we all went down to the ocean.
If he groomed his beard or bothered to comb his tangled black hair or treated my sister a little better, I might have classified him as hot too. But all his attractiveness was pretty much lost under that blanket of torture, and I didn’t like how his eyes followed my sister wherever she went. Like she was his possession and only on loan to me.
