Where or When: A Pearl Harbor Romance Read online

  Acclaim for the novels of

  Barbara Bretton

  “Bretton’s characters are always real and their conflicts believable.”

  — Chicago Sun-Times

  “Soul warming... A powerful relationship drama [for] anyone who enjoys a passionate look inside the hearts and souls of the prime players.”

  — Midwest Book Review

  “[Bretton] excels in her portrayal of the sometimes sweet, sometimes stifling ties of a small community. The town’s tight network of loving, eccentric friends and family infuses the tale with a gently comic note that perfectly balances the darker dramas of the romance.”

  — Publishers Weekly

  “A tender love story about two people who, when they find something special, will go to any length to keep it.”

  — Booklist

  “Honest, witty... absolutely unforgettable.”

  — Rendezvous

  “A classic adult fairy tale.”

  — Affaire de Coeur

  “Dialogue flows easily and characters spring quickly to life.”

  — Rocky Mountain News

  Copyright 2015 by Barbara Bretton

  Smashwords Edition 2015

  All rights reserved. No part of this book, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews, may be reproduced in any form by any means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without prior written permission from the author.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, business establishments, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  The scanning, uploading, and distributing of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the copyright owner is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  Chapter One

  Pearl Harbor – October 1941

  She was as beautiful as her name, as beautiful as the place some called paradise on earth. Her hair was the copper of autumn leaves, fired with golden lights, and it drifted over her tanned shoulders and fell to a waist narrow as the span of his hands. She wore a brightly patterned sarong-type dress that bared her shoulders and hinted at the swell of her breasts. Her laughter was full-bodied, more a woman's laugh than a girl's, and it drew the naval officers, young and old, to her side like honeybees to the plumeria that perfumed the air.

  He hated her on sight.

  Rick Byrne stood in the archway to the ballroom of the Royal Hawaiian Hotel and watched as Eden Forrester flirted with every guy in uniform dumb enough to fall under her spell. And there were a lot of them. Not including the officers dancing attendance right now, Rick knew of six smitten sailors who'd each signed on to be her driver, only to fall by the wayside within days.

  "Hell on wheels," the third guy had said. "I'd rather cuddle up to a porcupine than that Forrester dame.” Of course, the guy had made a fatal mistake--he'd made a pass at the little princess and she'd squashed him under her pretty foot.

  Rick knew her type, all right. Enlisted men were good enough to flirt with when you needed the house painted or your Oldsmobile tuned up but the flirting screeched to a halt the minute the poor schnook started talking dinner and a movie. She was class-conscious and proud of it.

  Not that Rick gave a damn. When you were an enlisted man in the navy, you didn't have a lot to say about what you did or for whom you did it. Once you signed on the dotted line and took that oath, Uncle Sam did your thinking for you. This was one of those rare moments when a sailor actually had a chance to influence his future. Her father Owen Forrester had taken a shine to him a few months ago, not long after Rick showed up at Pearl Harbor with the stink of south side Chicago streets still clinging to him like a grey film.

  "You're ambitious," Forrester had said, sizing him up. "Keep your nose clean and I'll see what I can do for you.” True to his word, Forrester had assigned Rick to perform routine office duties, then moved him up to coordinate Forrester's personal and official schedules, and now the toughest duty of all: his daughter.

  "Drink, sir?” A waiter, bearing a tray of martinis, appeared at his side. The look he gave Rick was part curiosity, part distaste.

  Rick eyed the martinis with suspicion. The olives looked like green eyeballs bobbing around in the fine-stemmed glasses. "Got any beer?"

  The waiter drew himself up to his full five feet. "Certainly not, sir. This is an elegant party. We serve only the finest."

  "That's what I thought."

  The waiter narrowed his watery blue eyes. "And we only serve those who have an invitation."

  Almost six thousand miles away from home and there he was again, on the wrong side of the tracks. Back home in Chicago he would have hauled off and landed one right on the guy's smug face, but the navy had taught him a few things and self-control was among them. "Don't worry," he said after a moment. He nodded toward Eden Forrester who was still surrounded by a knot of eager Annapolis types. "I'm not a guest, I'm her driver."

  The waiter looked as if he'd stuck his face in Limberger cheese. "Drivers wait outside, sir.” Rick didn't miss the emphasis on the last word. "With their autos."

  How great it would be to lift the self-serving bastard off his feet with a good right hook. Great and suicidal. Keep your yap shut, Byrne, an inner voice cautioned. Turn around and get the hell out of here. He didn't wait around to see the look of satisfaction on the waiter's face, because if he did he might lose all of his convictions and blow his best shot for success all to hell. It wasn't everyday an officer's spoiled brat daughter broke her pretty leg waterskiing and you were her daddy's last chance at keeping her out of his hair.

  The orchestra launched into an Hawaiian-flavored version of Glenn Miller's latest as Rick turned to leave. The brass and their ladies were performing a sedate lindy hop on the fringes of the dance floor, while some of the younger types were really cutting a rug right in front of the rhythm section.

  Against his better judgment, he shot a look over at the Forrester girl. She was still sitting there with her broken leg propped up on a chair, looking petulant and spoiled and beautiful. He hated the fact that she was beautiful. He didn't know why he'd hate an act of nature, but there it was. Those turquoise eyes, that shiny hair tumbling over her tanned shoulders. Yeah, the girl was trouble in capital letters.

  She must have sensed him watching her because she turned away from the ensign to her left and her glance drifted across the dance floor, bored, searching, until it found a target. Her gaze was frankly measuring and he stared back, expressionless, until faint patches of red colored her cheekbones. He had to hand it to her, though, because she didn't look away.

  If there was one thing Rick knew, it was that he could look as threatening as the next guy. Hell, given half a chance he could stare down an admiral. But not little miss nose-in-the-air. She lifted her chin perceptibly and lowered her lids to half-mast, her thick lashes casting shadows he could see from across the room. And yet she didn't break the connection between them.

  Ten seconds or ten minutes. He wasn't sure how long he stood there in the archway. The faintest glimmer of a smile danced across her heart-shaped face then disappeared before his brain could sort out the mixed messages. Everything about her, from her glossy hair to her painted toenails, screamed privilege. She was out of his league, beyond his reach, as unattainable as some fairy-tale princess. For one powerful instant, he felt he could walk barefoot acros
s hot coals for the chance to hold her in his arms.

  A tall, ramrod-straight second looey in full dress uniform approached her and, with obvious reluctance, she turned from Rick. The sound of her laughter lifted in the perfumed air and floated with the music, sweet and high. Rick knew the sound of that laughter. Movie stars laughed like that and rich little girls whose daddies made certain their delicate daughters were coddled from cradle to grave. He sure as hell had never heard laughter like that back home in Chicago. He knew the sounds of anguish, the wail of a police car and the roar of a fire engine racing to another tenement blaze, but laughter? No, that was only in the movies.

  Back home, women worked as hard as their men. His father had put in thirty years stoking furnaces and hauling trash while his mother scrubbed floors for rich bitches whose living rooms windows looked out over Lake Michigan. He still remembered the sound of his mother's knees creaking each time she climbed the stairs to their flat and the way her hands looked like an old lady's even though she was only forty-one. Leaning against the pillar, he tried to imagine Eden Forrester mopping up a kitchen floor but he came up blank. She'd never have to worry about things like dirty linoleum, not in a million years.

  She couldn’t dance with that broken leg, yet judging by the crowd surrounding her, it didn't matter. The sight of all those eager young officers sniffing around her made Rick's blood boil. He wanted to storm over there, sweep her up into his arms, and claim her as his for the whole world to see. The primitive male need to possess the female came close to driving what common sense he had left straight out of his head.

  Mix business with pleasure and you were headed for disaster. He knew that like he knew his own name. That spoiled brat of a girl was his ticket to bigger and better things, but only if he stayed on the straight and narrow. He was looking for a boost up the ladder, not romance. Eden Forrester might specialize in breaking hearts but it didn't matter to him because his heart was under lock and key and there it was going to stay.

  What the hell was so special about Eden Forrester anyway? Sure, she was beautiful, but so were a lot of other girls and he'd be smart if he kept that thought uppermost in his mind. It wasn't like female companionship was hard to come by. Young, old, or in-between, a man didn't have to be lonely in Honolulu unless that was his choice. Everyone knew about the cuties over in Pearl City who knew how to soothe a man's ego for the price of a steak dinner. Your wallet might get picked but your heart would stay safe and sound.

  The martini waiter with the suck-eggs expression appeared in front of Rick again. "Sir, I must ask you to leave."

  Rick's dark brows lifted. "Says who?"

  "The management. You will please wait outside with the other drivers or I'll be forced to notify hotel security."

  He took one last look at daddy's darling and found her staring right back at him with a wicked gleam in her eye. Smiling, she lifted her drink in salute then turned back to her buddies with a shrug of her delicate shoulders.

  Turning, he made his way through the gleaming lobby, and pushed his way into the night air. He'd left the big white Oldsmobile at the outer curve of the driveway, behind two black limousines and a score of foreign automobiles. He'd never driven a car like that before, never even dreamed of sitting in one. His nostrils still twitched from the heady scent of soft leather and sleek chrome. You could smell Cuban cigars and French perfume and the unmistakable scent of money.

  It was almost worth putting up with Forrester's daughter if it meant getting a taste of the good life that would one day be his.

  Eden Forrester had driven six grown men crazy with her demands. Drive me here. Drive me there. From Pearl to Waikiki to every stupid dress shop and teahouse on the island. The last driver had thrown in the towel a few hours ago after depositing the pampered little princess here at the Royal Hawaiian for the party. "I don't care if her old man has me court-martialed," Billy Walters had declared, storming into the barracks in a rage. "The firing squad's better than listening to her."

  Rick, clad in underwear, had been sitting on the edge of his cot and shining his shoes when opportunity hit him square in the face. Without a word he got up, dressed, then headed back to Forrester's office.

  "I'll pick her up after the party," Rick had said to her father after listening to Forrester lambast both his daughter and the hapless sailor who'd thrown in the towel.

  "You heard Billy," said Forrester with a shake of his greying head. "Eden can be a handful."

  "Don't worry about it, sir. I'll see she gets home safely."

  Forrester pushed back his desk chair and rose to his feet. "You might find yourself with a permanent job," he said, clapping the younger man on the back. "The cast doesn't come off for another few weeks."

  "That's fine, sir. After tonight, you won't need to look for another driver."

  Forrester's hearty laugh had boomed out. "You might want to reconsider your words, Byrne. No one else has been able to put in a full tour with my daughter."

  "I will, sir. You have my word."

  She was a means to an end. His ticket to a better future. He didn't care if she had him dancing through hoops. He could take anything she dished out and more if it meant getting Forrester to promote him for officer's training.

  It was a big and dangerous world out there. London was going up in smoke. Poland had fallen to Nazi domination. The Japanese were coming closer and closer to making a strike against the United States. Rick had heard the rumors flying thick and fast while he sorted papers just beyond Forrester's office door. No matter how you looked at it, the United States was headed for war. This was his time, his chance to better himself. He had the brains and the drive to make the best damned officer the navy had ever seen. What he needed was some luck and little miss nose-in-the-air holding court on the other side of the ballroom was about to provide that final ingredient.

  Enjoy yourself while you can, sweetheart, he thought as he headed toward the Olds to wait, because you're about to meet your match.

  Chapter Two

  Bored, thought Eden Forrester. I'm so bored I could scream. For three hours she had endured the attentions of a quartet of Annapolis graduates who had been waxing eloquent with nonsense about the Japanese threat until she thought she would go mad. She wished she'd stayed home with her canvas and paints rather than spend another evening pretending to have a good time with people who bored her to tears.

  "Good grief," she said, twirling the paper parasol in her cocktail glass. "Can't we talk about something else besides war? We're Americans. We don't have to get involved in any of this.” War talk made her nervous. She didn't want to hear about the Luftwaffe bombing London or the little children who'd been sent far from home in search of safety. It called to mind harsh images that had no place in her world at the paradise they called Hawaii.

  The young ensign on her right flashed her his best smile, courtesy of the Naval Academy, and she suppressed an urge to kick him in the shin with her cast. "Bet you just saw Gone With the Wind, didn't you, Miss Forrester? 'War, war, war,'" he said, mimicking Vivian Leigh as the redoubtable Scarlett O'Hara while his cronies laughed.

  Eden, however, wasn't in the mood to see the humor in the situation. She'd spent the past four weeks with her leg encased in a plaster cast and humor was no longer in her vocabulary. "For your information, I hated Gone With the Wind." She paused a beat. "Almost as much as I hate this conversation."

  "Don't you worry," said a red-haired lieutenant named Harry. "You'll be out of that cast before you know it and we'll be tearing up the dance floor with the rest of 'em."

  In a pig's eye, she thought. If she never saw these dullards again, it would be too soon.

  She wished her best friend Melanie was still around to help her through miserable moments like this. She supposed it wasn't Melanie's fault that she'd married a naval officer who had been reassigned to Washington, D.C. and had wanted his wife with him, but it seemed to Eden that a real best friend would have stayed around until the cast was off her pal's le
g.

  That was the trouble with living on a naval base. Everyone was always on the way to somewhere else. And these days it seemed as if marriage was sending her friends to the four corners of the globe. First it was Eileen who'd found her prince charming. Then Angie. Then Marcie, Phyllis, and finally Melanie. Each and every one of them had found the man of her dreams and promised to love, honor, and obey. Eden had five bridesmaid dresses hanging in her bedroom closet gathering dust and not a wedding gown of her own in sight.

  Melanie had sent her a bubbly letter written aboard the S.S. Lurline on her honeymoon en route to the mainland. "I met the most wonderful man at dinner last night...he's with the State Department in Washington...he's simply divine and he'll be in Honolulu next month...I told him to give you a call...."

  The letter was also filled with gushy descriptions of how adorable her brand new husband was and elaborate plans for life in the nation's capitol. Melanie wasn't half as pretty or talented as Eden was and yet Melanie had managed to fall in love and marry and take that first giant step into the future while Eden somehow kept life an arm's length away.

  "You're a good technician," her last art teacher had told her, "but you'll never be great if you don't learn how to paint from the heart."

  "I don't understand," she had said, smarting under the unexpected criticism. "You know I'm the best in the class...you've said so yourself."

  "And you are, Eden, but you're using only a fraction of the gifts God gave you."

  "But if I'm the best, isn't that good enough?" she had persisted, her teacher's obvious disappointment stinging her pride. "How can you be better than best?"