I'm Kona Love You Forever (Islands of Aloha Mystery Series Book 6) Read Online Free

began flashing in my rearview mirror.
    Steve turned to look out the rear window. “And I’ve got a real bad feeling you’re about to find out exactly how big your chunk’s gonna be.”
    ***
    After the cop wrote me the speeding ticket I carefully pulled back out on the roadway. I used the Bluetooth to call Farrah. I said I’d been caught in a speed trap but I’d be there soon.
    After I hung up Steve said, “Eighty-one in a forty-five doesn’t technically qualify as a ‘speed trap,’ you know.”
    “This hasn’t been my best day,” I said. “How about you pretend I’m a cute guy you’re trying to pick up at the Ball and Chain? Be nice to me. Maybe ask if you could buy me a drink or rub my neck or something. Do anything but rag on me all the way to Hali’imaile.”
    “ Oh, sweetie,” he said. “You had me at ‘pretend.’ You nervous about seeing Farrah?”
    “ Nervous? Why should I be nervous?”
    “Well, she did sort of up and marry your former boyfriend. That’s gotta be a little weird. And they’ve been gone for two months. Who knows what she’ll be like after sixty-some days of lolling around the South Pacific?”
    “I’d like to clarify a couple of things,” I said. “First of all, Ono Kingston was never my boyfriend. He was my friend, that’s all. And second, I doubt there was much in the way of ‘lolling’ going on while they were sailing. Ono’s a real Captain Bligh when it comes to that boat. I bet he had Farrah working like a scullery maid to keep things clean, stocked, and ship-shape tidy.”
    “ Aren’t you just the little Miss Cranky Pants? They were on their honeymoon. I can hardly imagine him tying her to the mast and whipping her for insubordination.” He laughed. “Although, who knows with Farrah? That girl could be totally into the tying and whipping scene.”
    I shivered at the mental image of my friends locked in flagrante dilecto in Ono’s cozy cabin below-decks so I ignored Steve’s final remark. “I’m not being cranky. I’m being realistic. It’s hard work sailing a catamaran for months on end.”
    We pulled up to the house and there were already six cars parked out front. The door was open and thumping music poured out across the porch and down to the quiet street below.
    “We should’ve invited the neighbors,” I said.
    Steve pointed to the houses on either side and the one across the street, “Done, done, and done.”
    “You’re a genius,” I said.
    “Good to see you’re finally admitting it.”
    I gave him a soft punch in the arm and he feigned injury. He looked around and said, “I wonder if anybody saw that? I could sue, you know. You, with the black belt, assaulting a member of a protected class.”
    We went up to the porch and , as I paused at the door, I realized Steve was right; I was nervous. I hadn’t been apart from my childhood friend for this long since I’d met her in the second grade. Even when I was going to college on O’ahu I managed to sneak in a visit to Maui every month or so. Farrah and Ono had been gone for nearly seven weeks as they plied the waters of Tahiti, Bora Bora, and a bunch of tiny South Pacific islands I’d never heard of.
    Farrah was terrified of flying and had barely made it back in one piece when she flew to Honolulu for my college graduation, but she seemed utterly at ease on Ono’s boat. For the past ten years I’d figured she was somewhat agoraphobic because she seldom left the confines of her grocery store and the illegal apartment she occupied above it. But when she met Ono she’d taken to sailing as if she’d been born to ply the oceans blue.
    “Well, it only makes sense I’d like sailing,” she’d told me. “I’m a Pisces, a water sign. Maybe if I was an air sign like you, I’d be cool with climbing inside a tin missile and hurtling through the air with only an engine built by the lowest bidder keeping it from crashing to the ground in a fiery blaze. But I’m the sign of the fish. And