Hi to Dani and all the people who make Love Bytes a great place to look for new books to read. Today, I’m featuring my book, Hawai’i Five Uh-oh, another of the Plummet to Soar novels.
My Plummet to Soar books are a series of barely related books, super loosely based around “Plummet To Soar”, a fictional self-help book written by Mackenzie Detweiler, who fell from a tourist helicopter and lived to tell the tale.
Each of the books features some person touched by reading Plummet to Soar, for good or ill, whose life has changed because they were forced to rethink what they have, and what they truly want.
Basically, each book is about the mischief they get up to in the search for an authentic life.
As ZAM, I’m best known for two things. Drama with intriguing family dynamics and a sense of place, as in Family Unit, the St. Nacho’s series, and The Pharaoh’s Concubine. And romantic quasi-suspense, as in The Long Way Home and Drawn Together. These stories have the same ingredients–family, friendships, love in unusual circumstances, hot men, and a battle to be won, but they bake up as very different cakes.
Hawai’i Five Uh-oh is definitely of the romantic-suspense variety. Theo Hsu wants nothing more to find a place in his home of Hawai’i and make amends with the mother he’s been estranged from since his parents divorced, but he’s uncertain how to go about it. Plus, as a beat cop in Waikiki, he has the mostly egregious job of making certain the beachgoers don’t get squirrely, directing people to tourist destinations, and sorting out accidents and drunken fights.
The job works out for him. It’s a refreshing change from the icy winter in Bear Lake, Wisconsin. And being a beat cop suits him. He likes people. He discovers a new joy in being the guy they can turn to for help when things go wrong.
But he’s carried a secret torch for childhood best friend Koa Palapiti, who is a detective now. He watches in bewilderment as Koa turns on the charm one minute and ghosts him the next. If that isn’t bad enough, it seems to Theo like Koa’s getting into some dark—maybe even shady—business with his partner Freddie Ortiz. Theo doesn’t like Freddie at all, and not just because he acts like he owns Koa.
Is there something going on between them? Or worse, are they dirty cops?
Theo’s got to find out, and intervene, before Koa makes an irrevocable mistake, in Hawai’i Five Uh-oh.
Here’s an exclusive mini-excerpt, just for Love Bytes readers. I hope you enjoy!
Breathtaking rays of sun shone through fast-moving clouds, creating a double arc of brilliant color in the deep blue sky. The field was green and lush. Under a light drizzle, Theo took up his batter’s stance. He was a decent athlete, but he wasn’t gonna win any medals. He represented his “community policing team” to the best of his ability. If anyone wanted a better ball player, they could hire one.
“Hey, batter, batter…. suh-wing!” Theo didn’t have to glance at the stands to know that was his mother hollering at him, but he looked anyway. She had on a sun hat that made her look like a doll, but she could shout down a stevedore. Like a carnival barker, his mom. Again, something real and solid and right clicked inside him. She’d vowed to mad-dog both teams equally to avoid favoritism. He’d missed her. It wasn’t until he’d come back….
Well. That was for another time. The ball flew from the pitcher’s hand, spinning toward his bat. He made sloppy, damp contact, which was all he was expected to do, and humped it to first base before the ball got there. Taryn whipped him with her gloved hand. He wished her happy birthday again.
“Fuck you. You bagged my party.” At some point, everyone had cause to regret she played that position.
“I wasn’t feeling awesome, I guess.”
“I know why. Freddie’s been telling everyone how he fucked you up at the gym. Sorry about that.”
“Yeah, well.” He leaned away from the base… stepped out… and had to leap back before Taryn swiped him again. Left-hander from Dispatch had an unexpectedly good move to first. Shit. Theo took a smaller step away from base. He’d already scored twice, once on a little blooper to third because somebody dropped it, and once on a ground rule double on account of a dog. Another hit got him another run. The rest of the game went the same. A wacky struggle, one base at a time. Pitching wasn’t spectacular, and everybody could hit. Games always ran long.
Despite his heroic efforts, his team lost.
At Pizza Hut later, he handed a twenty over to the team manager and made his excuses. “My mom expects me for lunch at her place after the games.”
She was, in fact, waiting outside. That wasn’t the real reason he didn’t stay. He wasn’t ready to be part of the gang. Or maybe it was because Taryn and Calista were there with Koa and Freddie, and he didn’t get what was going on there, nor did he want to be a fifth wheel.
“You’re not staying?” Calista shot him an unhappy grimace. “My God. It’s like you don’t even want to fit in here.”
“Sorry.” He didn’t want a confrontation, so he held up his hand to wave. “It’s family. You’ve got a mother. I’ll see you Monday.”
She waved back. “Go. See if we care.”
He said goodbye to the rest of the group and headed out again, breathing a deep sigh of relief when he saw his mom.
“Ready?” She opened the door and her car chirped as if it’d missed her.
“More than.”
“How come you don’t stay with your friends?” she asked.
“Haven’t made many yet. Anyway, it’s our family lunch thing.”
Bad enough hanging out with everybody at work. He’d never socialized on his last job. He’d put his isolation down to being an outsider in a fairly insular small town. Now he wondered if he didn’t prefer solitude to the shenanigans his colleagues got up to when blowing off steam. There was work-and-people, and then there was home. He could only take so much of one before he needed the other.
She didn’t look at him, but she didn’t have to, to see inside him. “Some friends you had forever. They’re family too.”
“Yeah,” he admitted. “But it’s not that easy. Been twenty years.”
“Kekoa looks different.” She nodded. “But he’s still the boy you know.”
“No, he’s not.” The boy I know would never have come up to the bluffs to cockblock me. Now he’s the boy you know.”
“Okay, yes. I love him too.” She flushed delicately as she started the keyless Mercedes with the push of a button. “He’s my extra boy.”
“And last night you called him to come check out some trespassers on the bluffs.” But we both know you knew it was me. “I was not alone last night.”
“Oh, no, honey.” Eyes wide, she feigned dismay. He wasn’t fooled. She had to press her lips together to keep from laughing. “Did he interrupt something?”
“Nope. Me and my hot stranger had just finished pizza and were about to sing ‘God Be with You Till We Meet Again.’ That’s your favorite, isn’t it?”
“No need to get snippy.” Primly, she put the coupe in reverse and backed up, taking what seemed like hours to perform each task. Gas, brake, put the car in drive, spin the wheel needlessly too far, adjust. She was as deliberate and careful as he was when he answered her questions.
“You know I like hanging out up there. Do you need me to call when I might be on the property?”
“Of course not.” Such a thing would never occur to her, much to her husband’s dismay. “My home is yours.”
Her words made him happy. “So why’d you—oh, no. Mom.”
“What?”
“You can’t arrange things for me and Koa anymore like we’re five.” Was she meddling again? Pushing him at Koa like they were still lonely kids? She didn’t understand how far apart they grown. “Please.”
“His folks are dead now.” Zoom. Foot on the gas, she shot out into traffic more forcefully than necessary or even proper. “He has no one but us. You and me.”
“Cop in the car.” He closed his eyes and focused on breathing evenly. “Friendly reminder.”
“Don’t judge your mother.” Using the car’s engine noises to express her emotions was a time-honored tradition. At least this car would be pretty safe in a wreck. Her voice was even and sweet when she said, “I want you to be friends with Kekoa again. You need each other.”
Sounded like she expected him to start that shit up again unilaterally. “What are you gonna do? Drive fast and swerve around corners until I say yes? You should get a big fat ticket for driving like this.”
“Everybody drives like this.” She had him there. “I can’t believe you still try to divert my attention as if I’m giving you chores.”
A chore. That was about the size of this one.
“Okay, Ma. I promise, I’ll ask Koa to grab a beer or something and we’ll catch up.” If I can separate him from Freddie long enough for him to drink a beer. “But honest to God, we have nothing in common anymore.”
“You have more than you think.” She glanced at him. “He’s been talking about running away to the mainland.”
“Naw.” That couldn’t be, surely? “Why?”
Was Koa getting claustrophobic? Theo couldn’t imagine Koa on the mainland, although surely there was ample opportunity for career advancement there. Except the Kekoa Palapiti he knew could not exist on the mainland. He couldn’t imagine Koa leaving the islands any more than he could picture his mother doing so. Koa must have forgotten all the dreams they’d shared under skies full of stars. That was the last time Theo felt right, and he wanted that feeling back. Didn’t Koa want that too?
With a touch of her finger on the steering wheel, Theo’s mother started music playing. Despite the heat, Theo opened his window to feel the salt-tinged wind on his face. She pulled up beside the mailbox, and he got out and fetched her mail and parcels.
The air smelled of freshly mown grass. Gary never did that. He got back in and asked, “You mowed this morning?”
“Koa came, first light.” She drove up the winding hill to the house, parked in her normal spot, shut off the engine, and turned to him for her purse, which she’d stashed in his footwell.
“I was going to do it after lunch.” He handed the purse over. “I’ve done the lawns since I got home. Just because I moved doesn’t mean I don’t want to help out.”
“He didn’t know. He figured since you moved out—”
“Mom—”
“No, come on. He was trying to be helpful.” She pressed her lips together unhappily.
“I know.” Theo held on to his temper. She wasn’t aware of Koa’s hot-and-cold act or their fiery encounter over Freddie’s behavior at the liquor store. Whatever was between him and Koa, they had to settle it themselves. And they had to do it right because…. He didn’t know why, just then, except his mother wanted it.
She was too important to both of them to leave things tense like this. “He ever talk about his partner, Freddie Ortiz?”
“I don’t listen when he talks about work.” His mother’s noncommittal reply didn’t surprise him. He wasn’t going to get information thirdhand from her.
The driveway was already full of his stepbrothers’ cars—Jared’s minivan and Grayson’s Prius wagon, respectively. Gary opened the door and waited for all of them to walk up the pathway together.
The easy camaraderie between him and his mother evaporated as if he’d imagined it.
I hope you read Hawai’i Five Uh-oh—and don’t forget to review it on your favorite review sites! Reviews really do make a book visible to a wider audience. They help me, my publisher, and gay romance as a genre in general! Many thanks in advance!
ZAM!
Excited to read this one. Got the first in the series from ZAM at GRL 🙂