Jade Star (Star Quartet 4)

This was her fifth stop to admire flowers. He’d had lectures from Jules on all the flora on Maui over the three months he’d known her. He was hot, tired, and wanted to go swimming, so he stopped her.

“Enough about the graceful hibiscus. Let’s get into the water and you can show me some blackspot sergeants.”

To his surprise, she ducked her head down, and a small “No” barely reached his ears.

“But you always want to go into the water,” he said, patting her shoulder.

She raised her face for just a moment, and he was startled at the strange look in her eyes.

“Jules,” Saint had said finally, giving her his full attention. “What’s all this about? You’ve been acting strangely, I can’t get you to go swimming with me, all you’ve wanted to do is prattle on about flowers. Now, what’s going on?”

To his further surprise, a scarlet flush mounted her cheeks. He waited patiently, watching her pleat her cotton skirt with nervous fingers.

At last he said again, “If you’re not going to talk to me, we might as well get me out of my misery and go swimming. What do you say? Want to change your mind? I’ll make sure you don’t get too much sun. Where is your sarong?”

Her head shot up and she blurted out, “I can’t!”

He stared down at her thin, intense face, surrounded with the riotous red curls. She looked as though she wanted to sink into the soft grass beneath her feet. He frowned, curbing his impatience with her; then understanding hit him, and he wanted to laugh. But he said quite gently, taking her hand in his large one, “Come over here and let’s sit down a minute. It’s a great view, don’t you think?”

He felt her hand trembling, felt her pulling back, but paid her no heed. So it was her monthly flow, he thought. Perhaps he should simply ignore it and leave her on the beach while he swam. But she looked so strange; perhaps she wasn’t feeling well. Once they were seated on a flat volcanic rock, he said matter-of factly, “I’m your friend, and more than that, I’m a doctor. Your doctor. Now, talk to me.”

She wouldn’t look at him. “I’m dying,” she said simply, her girl’s voice high and thin and resigned.

He blinked, looking at her profile sharply. “What the hell does that mean?” Even as he spoke, he realized suddenly that this must be her first time. She was thirteen, and he hadn’t realized, hadn’t considered that she . . . He felt a fool, a big bungling one.

“Jules, you’re not dying,” he said. “You’re bleeding, aren’t you, for the first time?”

She looked at him, aghast, and her tongue flicked over her lower lip. “Yes,” she whispered.

In that moment he wished he could see that wilting, pallid mother of hers and shake her until her teeth rattled for being such a damned prude. He proceeded in a calm, practical voice to explain to her the process of becoming a woman. “Do you understand now, Jules?” he finished. “There’s nothing to be worried about, I promise. You’re just fine. It’s all very natural.”

“You mean I’m going to do this forever?”

He bit his lip at her horrified tone. “Well, not forever, but for quite a few more years.”

“But I want to go swimming!” she wailed, very much the thwarted child again.

He laughed and ruffled her hair. “You’re just going to have to watch me for a couple more days. You don’t hurt at all in your belly, do you?”

“Yes, but I don’t care. I don’t like this, not at all! It’s not fair!”

He hadn’t thought about it in that way. “No,” he said thoughtfully, “I guess it’s not. But then again, Jules, I can’t have babies. Do you think that’s fair?”

He’d watched her playing with one of the native women’s infants the previous afternoon, and enjoyed her maternal display. But she didn’t take the bait, and repeated stubbornly, “It still isn’t fair. You can still be a father, and that’s almost the same thing. And you can swim all the time, all year around.”

So much for that argument, he thought. Thank God, she at least knew where babies came from, at least had a general notion. He supposed he should tell her that she could swim, but he could just imagine what she’d say to that.

Saint turned in his sleep, suddenly uncomfortable, then awakened with a start. There was a soft, pliable body pressed against him, a slender leg, knee bent, flung over his belly. Saint blinked away the dream. It was dawn, dull morning light filtering through the bedroom window. Slowly he raised a hand and smoothed her tangled hair away from his face. She wasn’t a child anymore, hating what her body had done to her because it kept her from being a mermaid for five days. Why had that ridiculous dream come to him anyway? Because it was sexual in nature, he realized, even though at the time he’d merely been a good friend talking reassuringly to a young girl. Nothing more.

Saint suddenly realized that he was hard again, his manhood pressing against her thigh. Damned randy goat. He had to get away from her, get things back into proper perspective. As he slowly eased out of her hold, he wondered if she still remembered that long-ago afternoon, and her girl’s embarrassed confession, and her outrage at the unfairness of it.

She slept on, murmuring a bit, but not stirring.

Perhaps, his thinking continued as he bathed and shaved in the small bedroom down the hall, he’d had that dream as a guide. Yes, that was it. If she remembered her wild behavior of the previous night, he would simply treat it as naturally as he’d treated her young girl’s first monthly flow. He was still her friend, and her doctor. Nothing more.

She slept on even after his housekeeper, Lydia Mullens, arrived. He joined Lydia in the small kitchen, telling her about their guest over a cup of scalding black coffee. He told her what had happened the previous night, omitting only what had ha

ppened after he’d brought her here. He also mentioned that he’d known Jules when he’d lived in Lahaina.