Mele Kalikimaka Read online

  Mele Kalikimaka

  By B.G. Thomas & Noah Willoughby

  Being rich has its advantages, but it is also rife with suffocating pressures and family telling Chandler Buckingham how to live his life. When his assistant offers to help him escape the mounting obligations of the holiday season by running away to Hawaii, Chandler jumps at the chance. Only to find nothing is quite as he’d expected.

  Micah Keolu has lived in Hawaii all his life. He has to work two jobs and has little time for a social life, but his loving family and the island beauty around him have given him a heart as big as the ocean. And then one day he rescues a man trapped in an elevator in the building where Micah lives and works maintenance.

  The unexpected happens as they find themselves drawn together, only to learn there is more to each other than meets the eye. Can two men from very different worlds find a way to enrich each other’s lives? Maybe the magic of the holidays just might bring them lasting joy!

  Table of Contents

  Blurb

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  About the Authors

  By B.G. Thomas

  By Noah Willoughby

  Visit Dreamspinner Press

  Copyright

  ONE

  IT WAS the last straw. The very last straw.

  It had already been a bad morning in a bad week in a bad month in a bad year. First Chandler had nearly gotten a ticket for not stopping completely at a red light (it was the Buckingham surname that had gotten him out of that—oh, the startled look on the cop’s face when he’d gotten a look at Chandler’s license). Then some moron spilled coffee on him at the shop downstairs (thankfully it had just splashed his suit jacket and not him—although it was a Z Zegna jacket; his mother would be pissed). And to top it off, the elevator, a cursed elevator, had been acting up. He’d considered walking up the thirty-nine floors but knew that even as good a shape as he was in, it would take forty minutes to an hour, and he didn’t have the time.

  So he clenched his teeth and took the left-hand elevator—the one on the right was the more demonic of the two—and had to listen to “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” Muzak on his way. And Angela from the mailing room was singing along! And people were smiling at her. Bobbing their heads. For one horrifying second, he thought they were going to join in.

  God!

  He would have to see if he could get the piped-in “music” taken out of the elevators. He could do it. Surely he could!

  He was a Buckingham after all, and if you had that name and you didn’t throw it around, you were a moron.

  But after all that, now he had to deal with his mother? In her full form?

  “You’re doing this, Chandler,” she said. “And that’s it. For years your father and I have put up with your… shenanigans. For years.”

  Shenanigans?

  “Your partying—”

  Partying? Chandler almost laughed. If they only knew. He’d skipped far more than he’d ever actually gone to. Drugs had lost their appeal in high school, and the serious stuff available in college interested him even less. He’d seen how it messed up the people around him. No thanks.

  “—getting into trouble—”

  Getting into trouble? When had he ever gotten into trouble? Or at least into any trouble that reflected badly on them? Once in college. And there was the time he’d gotten arrested in high school. He wasn’t sure how his father had kept his name out of the papers, for God’s sake, except that he was rich. And really, that was all that was needed. To this day he wasn’t even sure his mother knew about that incident.

  “—your… carnal pursuits.”

  Carnal pursuits? Really? It wasn’t like his arrest had been for public sex in a bathroom! And while he was sure his mother would be horrified to find out how many men he’d slept with—he knew she was a virgin on her wedding night; the whole family knew it—it wasn’t like he was a total slut. Compared to most gay men he knew, he was practically a virgin. Sex parties had never been his thing. Not that he minded getting personal with strangers. Hell no. He preferred anonymity.

  Why couldn’t his mother be happy that he kept what he did in the bedroom private? Just because he invited men there instead of a potential future wife didn’t mean what he did was carnal.

  “And did we say anything? Did we condemn you when you told us you were gay? Did we kick you out? Disown you like the Chesterfields turned their backs on their daughter? The way that Oral Roberts rejected his son—who wound up killing himself?”

  Had they said anything? They’d said plenty, if more in the tones of their voices—dripping with disgust—than in words. The real reason for their so-called acceptance was that he was their only son and the one to carry on the “famous” Buckingham name.

  Oh yeah, his parents had always had plenty to say about anything and everything.

  But in the end, he held the trump card. He was that only son. The Buckingham heir. The one who would one day rule the family empire. So every time they told him what he would do, he’d do some adamant pushing back of his own.

  They wanted him to go to Harvard and major in business. He said he’d get the business degree but insisted on going to Stanford. That took him to California and away from their constantly watchful eyes, and it cost a lot more too. Why not stick it to them? Plus he minored in film and media studies, which drove them nearly insane.

  That same drive to get away from them earlier made him insist they allow him to be a foreign exchange student in England for a year when he was in high school. His father broke down and allowed that because Buckingham Industries did a lot of business in the United Kingdom and having a son with personal experience of the country might be useful one day. “Knowing those British firsthand,” he’d said.

  Of course it was their disapproval of anything that would make him stand out that had motivated him to get his ears pierced in more than one place. Sometimes he had to do things that would set them only inches from a stroke. It was his only way to get any say in his life.

  But now that his father was gone—a heart attack six months ago—his mother (who should be grieving, for God’s sake) had found the energy to rise phoenix-like from the ashes and lord it over him and his sister even more than before.

  And today she was in full swing.

  What made it worse was that she was having this “discussion” with him in his office. His glass-walled office. Where dozens of people could watch. Surely were watching.

  Chandler’s mother drew herself to her full five foot five—hands on her hips, shoulders squared, chin thrust out—and hit him with the intense ferocity those eyes of hers were capable of. Eyes that had near terrified both him and Chelsey growing up.

  No more!

  “You will do this. You will do your duty. You will sit at the head table, you will give a speech, and you will be accompanied by a lady. You are a Buckingham. The Buckingham.”

  As if his sister didn’t count. But in his mother’s eyes, she didn’t. She couldn’t pass on the name!

  “The annual Buckingham-Hicks-Woodgate Charity Christmas Gala is one of the social events of the entire year. And it is our year to be in charge of it. With your father gone, you are the head of the family. Whether you like it or not, and as a Buckingham�
�the Buckingham—you will do your duty!”

  Again, forgetting his sister….

  “You will give the speech and dance the first dance.”

  “I will, I will, I will?” he asked (yelled at) Timothy Armbruster—his personal assistant and best friend—later. “I’m twenty-nine, Tim. What makes her think she can make me do anything?”

  Tim flinched slightly and then said (quietly), “Well, she does hold controlling interest of Buckingham Industries. That kind of gives her the power.”

  “By 2 percent!” Chandler shouted, and to hell with the people outside his office. At least he had the blinds drawn now. And that 2 percent had surely been on purpose. Just slightly more than he and his sister held so she could lord it over them. Oh, how his father must be laughing from hell, or wherever he’d wound up.

  Tim adjusted his big round glasses with the thin red rims and shifted from one foot to the other.

  “Oh, sit down,” Chandler growled and ran a hand through his thick short wavy strawberry blond hair.

  Tim sat.

  “I am so pissed I can hardly stand it, Tim.”

  Tim nodded but didn’t say anything. Of course not. That was Tim. Timothy. Although, God, it was hard for Chandler to think of the man who he’d so thoroughly bedded their freshman year as Timothy, even though that is what he preferred to be called these days. It was more businesslike, he’d insisted.

  And he really did need to try to call his friend—his best friend (his only friend?)—that. But when you’d had someone sit on your cock and whimper and look at you with puppy-dog eyes through big round glasses, it was difficult to think of him as “Timothy.” Hell, his friend should be glad Chandler didn’t call him Timmy, which was what he’d preferred in that bygone time. They’d long since stopped having sex and become best friends. Even though Timothy was now Chandler’s personal assistant and totally, completely, systematically indispensable in that role. Chandler wouldn’t know how to pick out a tie without his help.

  “What am I going to do?” Chandler asked when it appeared Tim wasn’t going to say anything.

  Tim looked up, adjusted those very large glasses again—an affectation—and said, “Go to the ball? Sit at the head table? Give the speech? Dance with the lady?”

  Chandler’s mouth fell open. “What?”

  Tim shook his head. “Is it really that big a deal, Chandler? One evening?”

  Chandler all but jumped up from his big leather chair. “Tim! It’s the principle of the thing!”

  Tim sighed and gave him a hopeless look. “Principle? What principle, Chandler? What principle?”

  Chandler ground his teeth—his own affectation.

  “Well how about the fact that I’m gay and I’ve never hid it and it’s the twenty-first century and Kansas City won’t fall into a pit or be swept off to Oz if I show up with a man!” He ground his teeth again. “No. That isn’t it. It’s this whole damned thing. Christmas gala!” He rolled his eyes. “My family is about as Christian as Kim Jong-il. None of this has anything to do with Christmas. And geez! I don’t know where the money being raised goes to this year. Do you know?”

  Of course he knew. Tim opened his mouth to tell him, and Chandler knew the list was coming. But he held up a hand and stopped his friend from speaking, “I don’t care, Tim! I don’t. Give. A. Shit!”

  Tim winced. “Chandler.”

  Chandler could see the disapproval on his face, hear it in his voice. He looked away. Chandler hated it when Tim disapproved of him. At least in matters like this.

  “I know you don’t mean that,” Tim added.

  “I do,” Chandler huffed.

  “You don’t.”

  Chandler tried to glare at Tim, but God there was that puppy-dog face again, and he found he couldn’t.

  “There’s money going for the LGBT community this year,” Tim said. “Remember? We pushed for it.”

  They had? Chandler thought about it. No. Not they. Tim. Tim had pushed for it. And since Chandler knew it would drive his father crazy, he’d poked and prodded at his father until the old shit had agreed to send a percent—although paltry—to a number of very needy organizations. Threatening to actually show up at one of the planning meetings for the gala and raise the issue had helped—that was what had made his father fold. The last thing the Old Man wanted was for his faggot son to cause anything that could even remotely be called a scene. And although the percentage of money was small, it would make some committees sit up with wide eyes when they got their checks. Chandler figured it would be more than they’d gotten in donations in the whole last year combined. Maybe even the last decade.

  Chandler stood up and walked to the windows that overlooked the downtown city streets. He crossed his arms and shook. “Can’t you understand, Tim?” His shoulders slumped, and goddammit, he suddenly wanted to cry. And he would not cry!

  He wouldn’t give his mother that satisfaction.

  “Chandler?”

  He jumped when he felt a hand on his shoulder, and he turned and found Tim so close they could kiss. He stepped back, bumping the huge window with its scenic view.

  “I try to understand.”

  And his expression revealed implicitly that he did. If there was anyone on this earth who truly understood him, it was Tim.

  “I can’t really, though, you know, Chandler? My parents never tried to control me. They don’t hold anything over me. They don’t tell me what I will and won’t do. They hardly batted an eye when I came out. I don’t really understand what you’re going through. But I am here for you. Like always. Tell me what you want. And if I can make it happen, I will.”

  Naturally he would. That is what Tim did. It was why he was not only Chandler’s best friend—

  (only?)

  —but his personal assistant as well.

  “I don’t want to do it,” he said. “That fucking gala! I don’t want to do anything she tells me I will do. I don’t want to go, and I don’t want to give a fucking fake speech about shit the Buckinghams don’t give a shit about except for how it affects their taxes, and I don’t want to dance with a woman at that ball.” Then, without thinking: “I want to go away. I want to disappear. I want to go somewhere where I am not a Buckingham. I want to vanish. Someplace far away. Far from my family and Kansas City and frigging snow. That is what I want!”

  There was a seemingly infinite pause.

  Then Tim nodded.

  “Then that’s what you’ll get.”

  TWO

  “CLOSING TIME!”

  Micah Keolu and the other chefs let out a mutual sigh of relief. Some managed a quiet “Hurray” that lacked energy, but the feeling was the same. It had been an exhausting night, and finally they could sit, relax, and “talk story” (or “shoot the breeze” as it was said on the mainland).

  Auntie’s Kitchen was a local Hawaiian diner plopped in the heart of Waikiki, serving all the traditional fare of any other diner in the country—burgers, chicken, pasta, soups—but also including some local dishes that seemed pretty exotic to the recent influx of tourists visiting from other parts of the US. It took customers longer to order because the waiters had to explain what those dishes were: that saimin was a type of noodle soup and laulau was cooked pork wrapped in a taro leaf.

  “It’s raw fish?” a customer might ask in surprise upon learning what poke was—usually after pronouncing it like the English word “poke” and not “poh-kay” as it should be.

  With that might come a flood of special dietary requests and substitutions that threw everyone off their game.

  Other tourists weren’t as interested in the food as they were in trying to find the best surf spots or the bridge to the other islands.

  “I told him there’s no bridge,” said Marlon, one of the waiters. “I can kinda understand a question like that. But somebody asked where the ocean was, and I just looked at him like he was an idiot. It was all I could do not to say, ‘It’s all around you, brah. It’s an island.’”

  “Why
so many tourists?” Fred, the new busboy from the mainland, asked. It was an honest enough question. Being in Waikiki, they always got lots of tourists, but tonight was beyond the norm.

  “The holidays,” said Kenny, the big Samoan waiter. “They coming from all ovah. Wanna get away from da cold. Some nevah been here and asking all kine question ’bout Hawaii. I wanna be friendly, but I got no time anssah question.”

  “One haole guy asked me if he can use a credit card here,” Marlon chimed in. “I say he can, and then he asked where he could go to exchange for Hawaiian money. And I’m thinking, ‘You know Hawaii is part of America, right?’ Dumb haole.” Marlon looked at Micah. “Sorry, brah.”

  Micah waved it off. Micah was hapa haole—half-white—specifically, Irish on his mother’s side. The Native Hawaiian and Portuguese blood came from his father. God rest his soul.

  During cleanup, Micah collected some of the leftover food that went uneaten, packed it into a to-go container, and cinched it up in a plastic bag. With the doors closed and locked, the restaurant crew went their separate ways. Micah took his bike out of the receiving area out back and started on his way home.

  He opted for a quiet ride along the Ala Wai Canal, a flat stretch of water that ran parallel to the northern boundary of Waikiki, which was mainly small apartment buildings and hotels on one side and a nice calming channel on the other. The moon reflecting off the water’s surface made for a particularly beautiful scene.

  At about the halfway point of the waterway, Micah stopped his bike by a park bench where he saw the man he’d been looking for, an older local guy with a fuzzy gray beard and long stringy hair covering most of his face. He was hunched over with his hands clasped together as if he were in prayer. Next to him sat a dog, medium-sized with sandy-brown fur that was graying around the muzzle. The dog was kind of listless, not paying too much attention to Micah. He didn’t know the dog’s actual name, but Micah had nicknamed him Poi because he was a poi dog (mixed-breed).

  “Hey, Uncle,” Micah greeted. “How are you doing?”