Her Hawaiian Homecoming (Mills & Boon Superromance) (21 page)

Jesse just gently squeezed her arm. “Say a prayer for us, for Kai,” Jesse said.

The woman nodded vigorously. “I will. I promise.” Po yawned, and his mother cradled his head against her shoulder, his long feet dangling by her hips. “I need to get Po home. But if you need anything, you call. My apartment’s not too far. And let me know when Kai wakes up. I want to come thank him myself.”

She exchanged numbers with Jesse.

“Thank you.” The young mother took Po out the door, Po waving over her shoulder. He held up the last piece of mango candy and grinned.

Jesse watched them leave and sighed. Allie could sense the worry in her every breath. She put her arm around her friend and hugged her.

The wait seemed to go on forever. Every time the doors opened and a white-coated or scrub-clad doctor bustled out, every face in the room snapped to attention. For hours, they waited, and each time the doctor came out, she delivered news to someone else. Allie watched as families received the answers to their prayers and rejoiced, and some had all their hopes crushed in a single sentence. The bad news made the air feel heavier, the dread worse, as if tragic endings might be contagious.

After what seemed like a lifetime, a doctor in blue scrubs arrived for Jesse. Allie held her breath, as if that somehow sealed a pact with God:
please, let him be okay.
Allie reached out and grabbed Dallas’s hand. He squeezed her fingers in reassurance.

“Hi, I’m Dr. Bradley and I operated on Kai today. He suffered a complex fracture that nicked a major artery, and he lost a lot of blood, but he’s going to be okay.”

A sob of relief escaped Jesse’s throat, and she pressed her fists to her mouth to stop the tears. Allie felt a wave of gladness roll through her as she hugged Jesse, and Dallas wrapped his big arms around them both.

“Would you like to see him?”

* * *

K
AI
S
HARED
A
room with another man who’d suffered injuries in the tsunami. The room was intended for one patient, but two beds had been pushed in, the whole hospital overcrowded. His family stood around his bed on the other side of a flimsy curtain. Jesse, Allie and Dallas waited at Kai’s bedside. He was groggy and out of it, but managed to kiss his sister on the cheek.

“Don’t you
ever
do that to me again,” Jesse scolded, squeezing him in a hug until he begged for release. “I know you like big waves and publicity, Mr. Surfing Champ, but a
tsunami
?”

Kai chuckled. “I promise I won’t do it again on purpose.” He glanced at Dallas. “Is Po okay?”

“Reunited with his mom and doing fine,” Dallas assured him.

Kai visibly relaxed. “Good, I’m glad.” He locked eyes with Dallas. “Thanks, man. I... Thanks for...”

“No need to thank me,” Dallas cut in, shaking his buddy by the shoulder. “You’ll just never live it down. Usually you’re the one pulling
me
from the water. Last time we went surfing...”

“You dropped into the water like a stone,” Kai said. He glanced at Allie. “This guy surfs like a ninety-year-old woman.”

“Hey, a
spry
ninety-year-old
with style
.”

They all laughed. As the mirth died down, Allie felt a sudden fatigue sweep over her. She yawned without even meaning to, and abruptly covered her face with her hands.

“So sorry,” she murmured, feeling quite tired. The midnight search-and-rescue mission had gone on awhile, and then the surgery had lasted nearly until dawn. Pink sunlight lit the hospital window.

“It’s late—or early, depending,” Dallas said. “We should get going, but we’ll be back later to give you more of a hard time.”

Kai grinned. “Thanks, man.”

Jesse hugged them both. “I’m going to stay with him. Make sure my older brother doesn’t get into any trouble. Once the nurses find out he’s Kai Brady, they’ll be
all
over him. I’m going to make sure they don’t rush him into a Vicodin-induced wedding.”

“Good call,” Dallas agreed.

Everyone paused a second, glad Kai was alive, not wanting to even think of the next step: what his long recovery might be like. When—or if—he’d surf again. She glanced at his leg splint, which was held up by an elaborate set of wires and pulleys above his bed. Kai sighed and leaned back in his bed, looking pale and tired.

“Try to get some rest, Kai,” Allie said, squeezing her friend’s hand. He gave her a nod, and his head fell back on the pillow. Keeping awake and upbeat was a struggle, she could tell. Dallas led her out of the crowded hospital and to his pickup truck. As they both climbed in, her worry for Kai bubbled over.

“Do you think he’s going to be okay?” she asked.

Dallas shook his head. “I don’t know. I really don’t. That leg...”

“You think it will heal all right? Will he be able to surf?”

“I didn’t want to ask,” Dallas said as he steered the truck out of the hospital parking lot. “That’s something Kai will have to talk about with his doctors. I’m just glad he’s alive. For a while there, I had my doubts he’d make it. If we’d found him just a beat later...”

“Don’t think about it.” Allie reached out to touch Dallas. “We got there. That’s what matters.”

Clouds crowded the sky. It looked as though it might rain.
Just what we need, more water,
Allie thought as a big fat raindrop plunked down on the windshield.

Dallas met Allie’s gaze, and his stark blue eyes sent shivers through her. “Thank you.”

“For what?”

“For coming with me. For helping. With Po and Kai. You were...amazing.” The complete admiration in his eyes took her by surprise. He squeezed her hand.

“It was nothing.” More rain fell, big drops, and Dallas flicked on the windshield wipers. Allie felt uneasy, as if the stress of the past several hours was only now reaching her. The rain didn’t help. She hated driving in the rain.

“It was many things, but
nothing
ain’t one of them,” he drawled, bringing her palm up to his mouth and kissing it ever so gently. She felt the feather-like kiss all the way to her toes.

Why does he have this effect on me?
Allie wondered. It wasn’t long before her thoughts wandered back to the pond, about just
what
kind of effect he could have on her. She blushed just thinking about it.

“I’m serious, there aren’t many women like you,” he said.

“Like me what?”

“That think of others first, before themselves. You’re a good person, Allie.” She felt herself cringe at the compliment. She always had a hard time with compliments. She always thought the person giving them wanted something.

The rain poured down in sheets, and Allie felt a strong sense of déjà vu. They weren’t on the same road where her father had the accident, but it
felt
like it. The dark green foliage on the side of the road, the blurring rain on the windshield. Allie felt her chest constrict. She hated driving in the rain, always had since that day, but today, for some reason, the memory felt closer than it had in years. As if it had happened yesterday.

“Allie?”

Her heart rate sped up, and suddenly she felt as if someone was standing on her chest. Why couldn’t she breathe?

“Stop the car,” Allie muttered.

“What?” Dallas asked in confusion. “We’re almost there.”

“
Please
. Stop the car!”

Dallas did as he was told, pulling over on the muddy median. Allie grabbed the handle of the door and opened it, tumbling out. She bent over her knees, trying to suck in air, the heavy raindrops pelting her body, her face, just like they had on that day.
I think I’m having a panic attack.

“Are you sick?” Dallas asked, now worried as he walked over to put an arm around her. The kind gesture undid her. The pressure from her chest lifted, but now the floodgates opened and the tears came. They poured down her cheeks. “I don’t understand.” Dallas furrowed his brow, his blue eyes bewildered. “What’s wrong? Talk to me.”

But Allie couldn’t. All she could do was bury her face in his chest and cry.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

D
ALLAS
C
ALMED
ALLIE
down enough to get her back into the truck. They sat, Allie wearing one of Dallas’s oversize sweatshirts he’d found in his truck cab, her damp hair hanging down past her shoulders in dark clumps. Tropical rain ran down the windshield of the truck, the wipers still going, the headlights beaming out into the rain, spotlighting a huge papaya tree growing alongside the road.

“Just take me home,” Allie said, swiping at her eyes with the back of her hand.

“We need to talk about this.”

“I don’t want to.” Allie’s jaw clamped down, and Dallas realized she had practice keeping people away. But he wasn’t going to take no for an answer.

“We’re not leaving here until you tell me why you were crying.”

“We
can’t
stay here.” Allie’s eyes grew big as she glanced to the side of the road, where the headlights of a car could be seen in the distance. They sat in a little dirt turnaround, but Allie’s face said it all: she didn’t want to just sit.

“If you want to go, then you need to tell me what’s wrong.” Dallas wasn’t above waiting here until she confessed. He took the key out of the ignition to make his point. The lights stayed on; the windshield wipers, however, abruptly stopped.

“Why do you want to know?” The question came out like a squeak. She sat hunched in the front seat of his truck, as if he had just asked her to admit to being a drug dealer, as if she’d done something unpardonable. Dallas wanted to know what it was. He’d known she’d been holding out on him, and now it was time for her to come clean. He couldn’t imagine it was nearly as bad as she thought it was.

“Because I can’t help you fix your problems if you don’t tell me what’s wrong.” Dallas’s tone was matter-of-fact, and that prompted a reluctant smile from Allie. “And if you don’t tell me, I’ll just assume it was something I did, and then you’ll have to deal with that.”

Allie coughed a laugh. She saw the glint of the key in his hand and reached for it. Abruptly, he pulled away, holding it out of her reach. “Give me that!”

“Not until you tell me.”

“Dallas. Drive us out of here.” Allie glanced anxiously out the back window of the truck. “With the rain and the flooding already from the tsunami, we could get washed away or something.”

“We could,” he said. “You’d better start talking, then.”

“Dallas!” Now, she was mad. Good, he thought. Better mad than distraught and crying. He’d take an angry woman over a weeping one any day.

“No.”
He shook his head, holding the ignition key far from her. “Tell me why you were crying.
Then
I’ll start the car.”

“Ugh,” Allie grunted, angrily crossing her arms across her chest.
“Fine.”
She swiped her sopping wet hair from her forehead angrily.

Allie took a big breath as if bracing herself for a fall. “When I was eight, my dad and I were driving in the rain. I had a stuffed animal, my favorite. I dropped it on the floor and undid my seat belt. Dad was mad, and he was turning around to help me get it. He wandered over into oncoming traffic and hit a truck. We overturned and fell into a creek by the side of the road. I got out with hardly a scratch. Dad didn’t. He drowned in that car. I just stood there. Not helping him. Instead, I went to get my stuffed animal. I could’ve helped him, but I got my toy instead. When the ambulance got there, I was the only one left to take to the hospital.”

Dallas felt his heart constrict, thinking about Allie as a little girl, scared and alone by the side of the road, waiting for help. He thought of the day he’d found out his dad had died. He’d been nineteen, and the news had still hit him like a ton of bricks. He couldn’t imagine what it was like for little Allie at eight.

“Were you okay?”

“No,” Allie said, voice small. “I had a concussion. A bad one. They operated on me to relieve the pressure on my brain.”

“Allie, I’m sorry. That’s terrible.”

“It
is
terrible,” Allie agreed, staring dully at the raindrops falling on the windshield. “If it hadn’t been for me, my dad would still be alive.”

Dallas couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “It’s not your fault he died.”

“It
is
. I caused the crash. I didn’t go back for him. I sat and stared at the car. I was...I was
mad
at him for yelling at me. That was the whole problem. The thing was, I didn’t
want
to help him. I was angry at him, so very mad. I sat there, my arms crossed, angry.” Tears pooled in her eyes, the years of guilt and pain obvious as she furiously wiped at her face.

She
really
believed it was her fault. Dallas wanted to shake her by the shoulders, make her see reason. Instead, he reached out and grabbed her hand and held it. He looked into her dark, nearly black eyes. “It’s not your fault. You were just a kid.”

Allie half shrugged, not listening or not caring to
hear
the message. He got the feeling someone else might have told her that before.

“I mean it, Allie. I don’t think you’re hearing me.
You...were...just...a...kid
. You were hurt and scared and way too young to think you were supposed to save the day. So what if you were mad? Kids get mad, Allie. Kids have fits.
They’re kids!
I don’t know how many years you’ve been blaming yourself for it, but it has to stop now.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s
just
not true!” He banged the flat of his palms against the steering wheel for emphasis. “And if it’s one thing I hate most in the world, it’s a lie.”

Allie shook her head.

“Fine, then.” He threw up his hands. “So by your logic, Po is responsible for Kai’s broken leg.”

“What? No, of course not!” Allie sounded almost offended.

“Po wandered off. Kai had to go looking for him, and then because of that, Kai broke his leg. It’s Po’s fault. Let’s go call the police. See if they’ll arrest a three-year-old.”