Her Hawaiian Homecoming (Mills & Boon Superromance) (10 page)

“I’m fine standing,” Allie quickly assured him. She preferred it actually. The burn on her legs went all the way from her calves to the backs of her thighs. She eyed the wicker chair on the patio as if it was made of barbed wire.

“You sure you won’t be more comfortable sitting?”

“No,” Allie said, turning a little to show him the back of her shoulders. “I won’t.”

“Oh! Ouch!” Dallas literally recoiled from her bright red shoulders. “
Wow
, that looks like it hurts. Is that...everywhere?”

Allie nodded. “My own damn fault. I forgot the sunscreen.”

“Hey, need a ride to the drugstore? They’ve got a whole shelf full of aloe.”

Allie chewed thoughtfully and swallowed. “Oh, I’ve got some, thanks. I’ll be fine.”

Seriously—why was he being so nice?
His fan club was getting restless, eyeing the two of them together. Allie could see a few girls plotting a way in. She had trouble focusing on them, however, when Dallas’s broad, muscular chest was so close to her cheek. All she had to do was lean into him, and she could rest her head there. The urge to do so was actually surprisingly strong. She wondered what it would feel like wrapped up in his arms, his big strong hands leading her in some slow dance, enveloped in his scent.

He’s no good. A liar. Proposed to one woman and slept with another. Keep it together, Allie.

This made her think suddenly of Jason. How long had he been seeing that other girl? Since he proposed to her? Before? The idea made her feel light-headed and sick. Suddenly, she lost her appetite.

“You know, I’m actually full,” Allie said, putting her plate down on the edge of a nearby table already cluttered with discarded beer bottles. “I think I’d better head back.”

Dallas’s face fell, and for a second, Allie thought he might be genuinely disappointed to be losing her company. Then he said, “I know it might not be the best time, but at some point, you and I need to sit down. Talk about the next harvest. The coffee has to be brought in probably by next month, and it’s a big job...”

And then it all clicked together for Allie. He wasn’t being nice to her because he
liked
her; he was being nice because he wanted something. He wanted her help for the harvest. On property she didn’t even want to keep!

It was as if he just skipped right over the entire conversation they’d had where she’d told him to sell and he’d said no, as if his word had been the end of the matter.

Allie felt the muscles around her rib cage harden against him. Teri was right. He was bad news, only out for himself.

“That’s what you wanted to talk to me about?”

“We
have
to discuss it. Half the coffee is on your side of the dividing line. And so is the barn. We have to figure out a way to do this together.”

“Maybe I’ll skip the harvest this year.” The idea of even trying to deal with it made her head spin. She saw her father in her mind’s eye again, working hard to harvest the berries. Something about that memory made coffee harvesting seem like an impossible task. That was why she’d wanted to sell the land and get out—fast. She had no intention of learning how to grow coffee. That would mean staying in one place too long.
Mom had it right
, she thought.
Just keep moving. Bad things can’t happen to you when you keep moving.

“You can’t just let good coffee rot.”

“Why not?” Allie knew she was being difficult, but she couldn’t help it. She didn’t like being brown-nosed, bribed with a plate of barbecue and then blindsided just when she’d started to relax and enjoy his company.

“Because...” Dallas’s face grew red with frustration as he tried to find the right words. “Just
because
.”

“Because
you
said so? Why not just say that?” Allie’s voice rose, and she realized that Dallas’s fan club had taken an even more obvious, and gleeful, interest, now that their conversation had veered a hard right from friendly to downright hostile.

“Conversation looks like it’s getting a bit too serious here. Anyone need a mai tai?” Jesse offered up a full red Solo cup as she appeared by Allie’s shoulder.

“No, thanks, Jesse. I was just leaving.” As soon as Allie moved away from Dallas, a swarm of his admirers surrounded him, closing the gap.

CHAPTER SIX

T
HAT
N
IGHT,
ALLIE
dreamed of the accident. She sat in the backseat, her father driving their compact Toyota down winding coastal highway Route 19 in a torrential storm. Palm trees near the road flapped wildly in the wind. The rush of water from the sheets of rain blurred her view from the back window. Allie clutched her favorite stuffed animal, a blue rabbit named Max, hugging it more tightly with every flash of lightning and rumble of thunder in the sky. She’d forgotten why they were out: a trip to the grocery store? Some kind of errand. It was just a month after her eighth birthday. The storm had come without warning. What she remembered was her dad hitting the brakes suddenly as a dog darted into the road. She dropped Max on the floorboards of the car, and he skidded half under her and the front seat.

“Daddy!” she’d whined, reaching down as far as she could, but the seat belt dug into her shoulder as her hands reached out, too far away to touch her rabbit’s left foot.

“Not right now, Allie,” he’d said. “I’ve got to focus on the road.”

“Daddy! Max!”

“
Allie!
I said
not now
.” Her dad had used his sternest voice. The roads on the Big Island were known to flood in heavy rains. Visibility was near zero. The windshield wipers whipped back and forth furiously, not quite fast enough to keep the rain off the glass.

She met his eyes in the rearview mirror. When he glanced back to the road, she undid her seat belt and slipped down to the floor, grabbing Max’s foot. He was caught on something beneath the seat. She tugged but he wouldn’t budge.

“Allie! Your seat belt! What are you
doing
?”

“I’m getting Max.”

“Get in your seat right
now
!”

“No!”
She’d been defiant. She was going to disobey him, and she’d made the decision to do it. She wanted Max. She didn’t care if it was dangerous, or if it made her father angry. He was always telling her to keep her seat belt on, but she constantly disobeyed him. It was how she tested her limits, and she did it over and over again.

“Get in your seat!” he bellowed.

Then Allie jutted out her chin, her stubborn face.

“Move! Dammit, Allie, this is no game!” Her father’s face was red with anger, with fear, and it all came roaring out as he yelled. Scared and with her feelings hurt, Allie started to cry as she scrambled back in her seat, wailing for Max. Allie snatched her seat belt across her body, sniffling.

“Allie! Quiet!”

But Allie couldn’t stop crying. Might as well try to reason with the water pouring out of an open faucet. Allie saw her father struggle to reach the bunny behind his seat and then heard the click of the seat belt coming undone as he gave himself more freedom to reach.

Her father felt along the floorboards, his attention half on the road, and half on the floor. He grabbed the bunny and yanked, freeing it.

“There,” he said, handing her the bunny, his eyes off the road.

That was when Allie heard the odd squeal of brakes of a hydroplaning car and was blinded by the bright white lights shining through the windshield. At first she thought it was lightning, but then she realized it was the headlights of an oncoming car.

Everything exploded in a crash of glass and metal as the car flipped end over end and landed with a bone-splintering crash. Then came the sound of rushing water, her pink tennis shoes soaked from the blast of dark water pouring in through the mangled door of the car.

Allie woke up panting, cold sweat dribbling down her back and tears streaming down her face. Her cheeks were wet; she’d been crying in her sleep. Furiously, she wiped at her face and instinctively reached over to grab Jason, to tell him she’d had the dream. She clutched at empty sheets.

The heartache of realizing he was gone hit her so hard, she felt as if the wind was knocked out of her. A sob escaped her throat. He might have been awful in the end, but he had comforted her half a dozen times whenever the dream sneaked its way back into her life. She hadn’t had it in at least a year, she realized.

Now that she was back in Hawaii, was it any wonder the dream had followed her back home?

The early light of dawn peeked through her window shades and Allie sat up sniffling and wiping her eyes. It was barely after five, but Allie wouldn’t be able to go back to sleep. Despite being here several days, her body still felt as if it was on Chicago time. She slipped from bed and stooped by her suitcase to dig for clothes. She glanced up at the two white double doors of her grandmother’s closet and knew one of these days she’d have to dig into her grandmother’s things. Decide what to keep and what to give away. Of course, every time she opened her grandmother’s closet she was overcome with memories so thick she felt as if she couldn’t breathe. The dress her grandmother had once worn to play with her on the porch, or the straw hat she always had on at the beach. She found every time she started to go through her things, she’d be stymied by emotion and memories. She always shut the closet door in a hurry and vowed to attack it the next day.

She pulled on a simple tank top and jean cutoffs; all the while her sunburn itched like crazy. She glanced at the oval mirror above her grandmother’s dresser and saw her skin was already beginning to peel.

“Great,” she mused aloud, scratching at the back of her shoulder.

She grabbed some aloe and decided to head out to the porch with it.
No sense in missing a beautiful sunrise in paradise if I’m up this early.

Allie saw the clouds grow pink from the rising sun as she slathered on aloe. From her seat, she couldn’t quite see the water. Dallas was right: she had no ocean view. Curious about the seaside view from his side of the plantation, Allie decided to take a walk. She carried the small bottle of aloe with her as she went, walking down the little path between the coffee trees, the sweet smell of their tropical flowers in the air.
Maybe I can go knock on Kaimana’s door
, she thought. Catch the woman unawares. It sounded like a good plan.

The sound of rustling in the orchard on her left caused her to stop and be still. The low-lying leaves of a coffee tree shuddered. Whatever it was, it sure was bigger than a bird. Bigger than a squirrel even.

Allie felt her heart launch into her throat. She wasn’t used to wild critters on the streets of Chicago. Was it a skunk? Or, oh, Lord, something worse. Did they have mountain lions on the Big Island? Wild dogs? Allie didn’t know.

The leaves rustled more decidedly, and in another instant, a furry black torpedo launched itself out of the brush.

Allie gave a little screech of surprise and jumped backward before she realized it was just a wild pig. Then she remembered: wild pigs ran loose everywhere on the Big Island. They’d been brought over by settlers and had no natural predators.

This little pig clearly had been stuffing itself on Dallas’s coffee plants, since its snout was bright red from coffee cherry juice. As her heartbeat returned to normal, she waved her arms at the beast.

“Shoo, you,” Allie said, advancing on the pig that didn’t seem the least bit fazed, clearly used to seeing people around the farm. She stomped her feet again, trying to rouse it out of the bushes, but it just snorted, as if laughing at her, and ducked back into the thick row of shrubs. As she walked out of the row of trees, she saw Dallas’s house. She remembered the dwelling from when she was little, a place always in need of new paint, but Dallas had made improvements on the house where old plantations workers used to live. It had a shine of new blue paint trimmed in white, and he’d added a new huge lanai, complete with ceiling fans and a pair of old rocking chairs on the Hawaiian porch deck. Dallas’s cowboy boots sat near the front door. A big black Chevy pickup truck, relatively new by the gleam of the paint, sat under the carport.

As she passed by his house, she heard a peal of woman’s laughter from the open windows, which made Allie think Dallas had company. Had Dallas gone to a bar after she’d left the party and picked up some tourist? Or, had he just picked up one of the many local admirers in Kaimana’s backyard?

She found herself struck by the sudden urge to find out. It wasn’t like Allie to spy, but something drew her to Dallas’s house and to the sound of that laughter. She crept quietly up to his porch, furnished by sturdy bamboo chairs, probably bought locally at one of the nearby markets. She ducked down, peering in through one open window. She saw a sitting room, neatly laid out with a simple couch and a small round red rug on the floorboards in the middle.

She didn’t see anyone moving about inside, so she went to the next window and found herself glancing in a bright kitchen with new appliances and a newly refinished wooden floor. She saw Dallas first, shirtless, back to her, as he poured a cup of steaming coffee. The sight of his defined back muscles made her freeze in place as she watched his shoulders work. He had on jeans, but that was all, as he stood on bare feet on the wooden kitchen floor.
Did he not own enough shirts?
Allie thought but then, as she saw his trim waist tucked into his jeans, decided it would almost be a crime to make him wear one
.
He was singing along to a country song, which was loud in the kitchen, his voice low, but perfectly pitched. He’d missed his calling as a country star.

Allie glanced around and saw a woman standing in the kitchen. She didn’t recognize her from the party. She was pretty despite looking unkempt—her blond hair a tangled mess and dark mascara rings under her eyes. She was distinctly overdressed for five in the morning with her strappy stilettos and some black low-cut halter sundress. The girl was pretty and most certainly a tourist: having bright red sunburn lines, new by the looks of them. As Allie watched, Dallas offered her a mug of coffee and she took it, a grateful look on her face.
One of his tourists
, Allie thought, suddenly feeling embarrassed for witnessing what was clearly the aftermath of one of his legendary one-night stands.