Love Me Again, Cowboy

They laugh and shake their heads. I turn back and find the girl with the leis standing alone now, waiting for more people to walk up the stairs.

When I approach, she looks over at me and raises her brows as if to say, Yes?

“Hi.” I give her my best smile. “I wanted to introduce myself since you’re new here.”

She tilts her head a little, like she’s waiting. When I don’t say anything, she asks, “Well, are you going to introduce yourself, cowboy? Or am I supposed to guess your name?”

“Oh, right. Sorry.” My name is idiot because that’s what I am right now . . . or moron. Moron works too. “I’m Jaxon Wyle.” And because it must have been a fluke the first time around, I give her my smolder once more.

Her brows scrunch together. “Why do you keep looking at me like that?”

I drop it again, completely shocked that it hasn’t worked twice in a row. How is it not working? Is she even human? “Seriously?” I ask. “Do they not have the come-hither stare where you’re from?”

“The what?”

“You know . . . the smolder.”

She laughs, and it’s the most enticing sound I’ve ever heard. I make a new goal to do everything I can to get her to laugh again, even if it’s at my expense.

“Is that what you were doing?” she asks. “Sorry. It’s just, well, you kinda looked constipated.”

I chuckle in spite of myself. I am miserably failing at flirting here. I need to take it in a new direction. “Constipated? That’s a first. You’re the only beautiful girl the smolder hasn’t worked on.”

“Nice slip of a compliment there,” she says, calling me out.

What is this trickery? It’s like someone has taught her all my moves. “Doesn’t make it any less true,” I add for good measure.

She smirks at that one at least. Then she lowers her voice as if telling me a secret. “Hate to break it to you, brah, but you might need a few lessons on that smolder of yours.”

Ah, now this I can work with. “Are you going to school me?”

I see the teasing in her eyes. She’s enjoying this. “The problem with your smolder is that you direct it as if the girl should be honored that you’re showing her attention. The trick is to make the other person feel as if no one and nothing else is holding you to this earth but their gaze. They are everything in that moment. Make them feel as though you’re honored that they’re looking at you, not the other way around.”

Wow. She’s a genius. I lean in a little closer. “Are you going to show me exactly how to do that?”

“Malia!” a woman shouts at us from the stage area. I see the similarities between the woman and Malia: bronze skin tone, long dark hair, and similar bone structure. She must be Malia’s sister, Ala. Ala wears a long floral dress and has a microphone in her hand. “Quit flirting, Lia-girl. We’re starting.” She motions for Malia to come.

“Watch and learn, cowboy,” Malia says and then trots off to her sister.

I wouldn’t think of doing anything else. I make my way to Brock and Isaac and take a seat on one of the cold stone steps, eager for the show to start.

Malia’s sister, Ala, turns on the mic. It makes a thump sound, and that’s when I notice a PA system is set up with two large speakers pointing to the full audience around me.

Ala speaks into the mic. “Welcome to Aloha in Bisbee. I have a special treat for you. My sister, who has come to us all the way from Hawaii, will be performing a special Tahitian dance. Listen to the drumbeats of the South Pacific while, through dance, the lovely Malia Kalama tells a story of love lost and found again.”

She turns off the mic. Malia, now wearing a magnificent headpiece with shells, tall feathers, and a matching hip band, sashays to the center of the stage. She stops with her head down. A slow drumbeat spills from the speakers. It weaves its way through the air surrounding us in its cadence while Malia sways her hips to the sound in slow, circular motions. Her hands slide up the sides of her body, making turning motions as they do. She raises her head in time with her hands, then follows their path all the way up to the sky before her fingers dance in the air, arching their way back down. She looks as if she has been transported somewhere else, somewhere magical, where ancient lands listen to the story she weaves with her hands and hips.

She flows effortlessly from one move to the next. Turning and spinning, her hair swinging with her. As the drumbeats quicken, so do her hips until it looks as if they are moving completely on their own. And just when I think I’ve seen everything, her gaze locks with mine, and she brings me into her magical world. The depth in her eyes takes my breath away. Just like that, everything else fades away. She’s dancing for me and me alone. The distance between us is both torrential and nonexistent. I lean forward, wanting to be closer to her. The drumbeats speed up, and my heart thunders in my chest with it, increasing in volume and intensity, as does Malia’s hips, a hypnotic, unspoken language. Suddenly the music stops abruptly. Malia ends in an elegant pose, breathing heavily, her powerful gaze still locked on mine. It whispers to my heart, musings of what might be between us.

The crowd erupts in cheers all around me, and I know nothing in my life will ever be the same. It will now always be the time before Malia came into my life and the time after.

Chapter Six

MALIA

Eight Years Earlier, Continued

I can’t seem to take my eyes off the hot cowboy in the stands. My heart pounds in my chest, and it has nothing to do with the dancing. I’m confused and intrigued. And my smolder has seriously improved. I’m both impressed with myself and with his quick learning because at some point in our shared moment he turned the smolder back on me with bewitching force.