Somewhere on Maui (an Accidental Matchmaker Novel) Read Online Free PDF Page A

want to smile.
    “Oh my God,” Zoe said, pulling onto the main road through Kahului and heading for her little cottage in Paia. She told Michelle the details. “This is actually really good stuff for the article. I didn’t get permission to include him in it, though. I lost my focus, what with the videos and his dance moves. I wonder if I can disguise him enough so he can’t tell it’s him…”
    “A two-hundred-pound giant-wave-surfing Brazilian bodybuilder? Seems pretty distinctive.”
    “Well, at least I’ve had my first Internet-generated blind date. Feels like losing my virginity or something, and Lukas was a really nice guy. I just can’t figure out how the computer matched us up.”
    “Don’t forget. You filled out a fake profile. Maybe the Zoe you put up there would have really dug him.”
    “Oh God, you’re right. Now here I am, all dressed up and nowhere to go.”
    “Go have a drink at a bar or something.”
    “Okay.” But in the end, that wasn’t what she did. Instead, she’d pulled in to her little apartment, picked up her dog, drove back to one of the beach parks, and walked Sylvester down the beach, picking up bits of trash along the way.
    The little silky terrier was still getting used to the heady dog freedom of Maui, where he could roam without a leash on some beaches and dig ghost crabs out of their holes. He bounded ahead of her and dug until he began to disappear. Zoe laughed as she watched him, enjoying the feeling of the yellow coral sand between her toes, the evening wind in her hair, and the changing colors of the sunset on the ocean. It felt especially good to pick up the trash as they walked. Every time she bent over, picking up a dented water bottle or bottle cap, she felt like she was doing a little something for her new island home, and even though the waves washed up to erase her footprints, she made new ones with every step.
    Maybe it had taken six months to realize she was really here, becoming a part of this incredible place.

Chapter 4
     
    Adam set his Heineken down and pushed Submit on the final touches of his dating profile. It had been tough to find the words to fill it out, to convey a word and visual picture of himself that felt true and might attract that mythic woman he thought he’d glimpsed for a moment in Dr. Suzuki’s office.
    It was one thing to begin to imagine her, to put into words who he was hoping to someday meet.
    It was another thing entirely to imagine what she might see in a guy like him, with all the baggage he carried.
    “Adam?” His mother came to the door. He quickly closed the window to the dating site and stood up.
    “Hey, Mama.” He embraced her. Kalia Rodrigues was short, came only to his shoulder, and she was wearing her indoor muumuu, the red-and-white-flowered one. She had long hair, threaded with gray like silver ribbons, wound into a shape like a cinnamon bun, and speared with a couple of chopsticks—and when he hugged her, she smelled like cinnamon too.
    She’d set aside her cane, one of those ugly steel ones with a set of prongs on the bottom, and he stabilized her against his side, handing it to her. “Supposed to keep it with you all the time, Ma.”
    “I hate this thing.” She leaned her forehead on his shoulder for a minute, sighed. “I made huli - huli chicken. Come eat.”
    “You didn’t have to.”
    “Yes, I did.”
    He followed her, frowning as she hobbled down the hall of the little plantation-style house his parents had bought in the sixties. He’d restored it, and now the floors, once covered in linoleum, gleamed with teak. The kitchen, the biggest room in the house, had been expanded, and he followed her to the table by the window, which she’d set for three.
    “Who’s coming?” Adam eyed the extra place setting.
    “I made extra. Your cousin Tami, she’s coming.”
    Adam opened his mouth to respond but was interrupted by a loud knock.
    “Auntie? You folks home?”  Tami burst into the room. “Adam!”