Her Hawaiian Homecoming (Mills & Boon Superromance) (27 page)

Dallas looked surprised. Henry did, as well.

“Isn’t that what Grandma Misu wanted?” she amended quickly, finding some bit of lint on her shirt to focus her attention on.

“Yes, it’s true.” Henry nodded. “But we will have at least three rounds of harvest and roasting to get the perfect combination.”

“That’s a lot,” Allie said, just like Kaimana had said. “Why can’t we get them all at once?”

“The beans don’t ripen all at the same time,” Henry said. “That’s why we need to pick them by hand.”

Allie nodded, remembering again her dad standing on a ladder, reaching the cherries at the top of the tree. “When do we start?”

“How about today?” Dallas said as he served up a plate of bacon and eggs. “Eat up. You’ll need the energy.”

* * *

A
LLIE
H
AD 
NEVER
worked so hard in her life, and that included hauling trash from tsunami-wrecked parking lots. The basket she wore around her neck was full of red coffee cherries, her back ached, and her fingers felt raw and sweaty, blisters popping up even through the work gloves she wore. Her neck felt stiff, and sweat dripped down her back. The straw hat she wore kept the sun off her face, but her hair was a matted, damp mess beneath it.

She reached up to grab one last red cherry from one of the low-lying branches and then decided the basket had become too heavy and full, and took it over to Dallas’s waiting pickup truck to add to the collection of full baskets there. Henry and his workers crowded the lines of trees, expertly and efficiently picking berries from the trees. They could pick far more than Allie could in a day. She was still learning how to best twist and pull the small coffee fruit from the vine.

“Tired yet?” Dallas asked, offering her a cool drink of water.

“Exhausted,” Allie admitted, taking a deep dreg.

“Well, you’ll appreciate a good cup of coffee even more now,” he promised.

As the last of the day’s pickers put full bushels of cherries into the back of Dallas’s pickup, he drove them to the pulper at the barn, the big metal machine that took the red skin and pulp off the cherries, revealing the bean, or seed beneath. After pulping, the beans went into a fermentation tank.

“This is where the bright, clear flavor comes from,” Dallas told her as he showed her the wet beans in the huge fermenting bin.

Allie felt intrigued by the whole process, each new step both exhausting and thrilling at the same time. She could also see Dallas come alive throughout the process. She could see the thrill in his eyes, the absolute joy of doing what he loved to do. The joy was infectious, and she felt she could learn to love this, too.

The new roaster was delivered during this time, and Dallas eagerly fired it up, the gleaming piece of equipment everyone’s hope for a winning batch of Kona. Dallas lit the gas burner beneath the huge contraption, and he fed dried beans into the giant metal drum. They popped and cracked, and Allie watched, fascinated as the cherry pits turned into the darkened coffee beans she knew so well. The roasting barn filled with the smell of fresh coffee, and Allie felt the presence of her dad and grandmother nearby, approving of each step. Dallas made clear there was an art to roasting the perfect Kona coffee: it was all about a delicate balance of heat and time, and lots of careful stirring.

“A lot like love,” he said, and gave her a meaningful glance. At the very word, Allie felt a tingle in her toes.
Love
could not be what was happening here, could it? She could not even remotely allow herself to think about the possibility of
love.
That was inviting disaster.

Dallas went about taking out the first batch and then feeding it into the grinder. Allie put the warm, freshly ground coffee into individual bags, each with its own special hula girl label. Allie couldn’t help feel a special kind of pride as the crates of newly packed beans began to stack up in the barn. There was a certain kind of satisfaction from growing something and harvesting it with your own hands. She could see why both her father and grandmother had dedicated their lives to this, and why Dallas did, too.

After grueling work, the roasting and harvest was nearly done. The helpers had all gone home with enthusiastic thanks from Allie. Hula Coffee would be saved the problem of having to find a new house roast, at least in the interim.

“Moment of truth,” Dallas declared, as he took a bag of beans and ground them up, ready to pour into their coffeemaker. Allie waited anxiously, eager to taste the fruits of her first coffee harvest. She watched anxiously as the coffee dripped into the clear glass pitcher, the rich black liquid slowly filling the carafe. Allie inhaled the beautiful smell of 100 percent pure Kona coffee, and realized there wasn’t anything as delicious to her as that smell.

Dallas poured a small mug for himself and for Allie.

“Cheers,” he said, and they clinked glasses. Allie giggled, as she took a sip of the brew. It was rich, yet not bitter. She swallowed her first taste as she watched Dallas take his time with his. He smelled the cup first, a deep inhale, and then gently took the first mouthful, as if he were sipping a fine wine.

He swallowed and then frowned.

“What’s wrong?” Allie asked, immediately sensing something was off.

“It’s good, but not good enough.”

Allie took another sip. Her taste buds weren’t as refined to the nuances of the perfect cup of coffee. It seemed good to her. “It’s not?”

“No.” Dallas put down the cup, frustration on his face. “It won’t win the competition. It’s not as bright as it should be.”

“Bright? I don’t understand.”

Dallas tried to explain the certain zing a winning cup of Kona needed, but to Allie, it felt like trying to understand a foreign language. Then he pulled out a packet of Queen’s Best.

“This farm won last year,” he said. “It’s won five years in a row.”

Dallas set it brewing in a separate coffee machine and, when it was done, handed Allie a small cup. “Taste the difference.”

Allie went about sipping the new cup and the old one. “Ours is more bitter,” she said.

“Exactly,” Dallas exclaimed. “And?”

“More acidic,” Allie said, closing her eyes and letting the full taste of the coffee roll over her tongue.

“Right.” Dallas nodded. “We need to be less of both.”

“How do we do that?” Allie wondered aloud, as she stared at both half-drunk cups, still thinking a bit of magic was involved to make one taste so much better.

“We’ll have to harvest another round of beans, roast them up and hope they’re better,” Dallas said, tossing the dregs of his own coffee cup in the sink of the kitchen. “It’s all in the bean. How it grows, how it’s picked and the way it responds to the roast.”

Allie felt the enormity of the task ahead of them and sighed. “How many more chances do we get?”

“Two more,” Dallas promised.

* * *

T
HE
N
EXT
SEVERAL
months passed in a blur of work. Allie had never gotten so tan, picking coffee cherries in the Hawaiian sun. Dallas divided his time between the harvests and overseeing the rebuild of his house. As each new piece went up, Allie tried not to think about what that meant: one day soon he’d move out. Of course, there’d be the Kona Coffee Festival and competition before that. And if they won, Kaimana would give her what she wanted: the ability to sell her share of the land. Why should she be upset if Dallas planned to move out, if she did, too?

What did she want, she wondered? A grand gesture? A marriage proposal on one knee? Surely, she’d seen enough disappointment in her life to know that none of those things came without a price. She felt herself brimming with uneasiness, waiting for the bubble to pop. It had to soon, didn’t it?

She brewed a fresh pot of amazing Kona coffee in her kitchen, and she looked out the back window and watched Dallas stride purposefully toward the barn. Every morning, he’d gotten up before her. Living together the past few months, she’d learned he was a morning person, rising just after dawn, working hard to get that perfect batch. He’d been obsessed about roasting the best coffee. After the past two rounds, Allie could hardly tell the difference. Her palate had gotten a little better with tasting differences between coffee brews, but they were all so good, she didn’t know why Dallas seemed so sure they’d lose.

She took a sip of the rich coffee and sighed, wondering if there were worse things than losing the contest.
Would staying here be so bad?
she thought as she looked out across the bright green coffee trees, laden with red cherries. She set her coffee cup down on the counter and grabbed a new yogurt from the fridge for breakfast. Unlike Dallas, Allie needed some wake-up time and a little food before she could go charging into the day.

Besides, he’d made sure she hadn’t gotten much sleep. They didn’t do much of that in bed, especially not last night. She thought of his hands on her the night before and felt warm all over.

As she opened the lid of her yogurt, a bit of strawberry pink splashed onto the counter. When she moved to grab a paper towel to wipe up the mess, she knocked over the coffee bag, spilling black Kona grounds into the mess.

“Great,” she muttered, as she went about wiping the spill. Guess that proved she wasn’t quite awake yet. As she wiped the yogurt and coffee grounds together, she got some on her hand, and noticed that it felt like some expensive exfoliate the Chicago spa she used to work for had charged customers hundreds of dollars for.

The caffeine facial had involved high doses of caffeine and vitamin C, designed to brighten skin and erase puffiness. The facial cream had been little more than yogurt and caffeine, which made Allie wonder: Would the coffee grounds work the same way? She glanced at her reflection in the smooth glass of the kitchen window and noticed the puffiness around her eyes.

What the hell
, she thought.
Might as well try it.

She mixed up a bowl of coffee grounds and yogurt, swirling it together, and then she went in the bathroom and lathered it on half of her face. She wanted a before and after effect, and wanted to know if the mask would be as rejuvenating for her skin as she predicted it would be. After a few minutes, she washed the mask off, and instantly noticed a difference: the puffiness was all but gone, and the left side, the side that had the yogurt coffee mask, was brighter, fresher looking.

“I’ll be damned,” she thought, glancing at her reflection. “It worked.”

She lathered up the other side of her face, and just then heard the back door open and slap shut, and Dallas’s boots on the wooden floor. He walked by the open door. “Morning, darlin’,” he murmured, nuzzling the back of her neck. He smelled like hard work and the open air of the coffee fields. He looked at her reflection in the mirror and nearly jumped. “Whoa, what is that?”

“An experiment,” Allie said. “If we can’t use coffee to win a brewing contest, we can use it for an expensive face cream.”

“We can?”

Allie nodded, excited. “I can use some of that batch you decided was too dark to sell.”

“You’re going to used burned coffee?” Dallas shook his head. “Seriously?”

“It might even be better for the scrub. I’m going to experiment.”

Dallas grinned and wrapped his arms around Allie, lifting her off her feet.

“You’re my dream woman, you know that?” He kissed her gently on the lips, and Allie felt the zing right to her toes.

* * *

I
T
H
AD
BEEN
months since the tsunami, but the island was only slowly returning to normal, or the
new normal
, as most Big Island locals were calling it. Life started feeling steady and predictable once more. The debris was gone, and construction was in full swing on rebuilding old homes. Tiki Teri’s and Hula Coffee reopened to huge fanfare. The disaster had brought the locals closer together than ever, which was a good thing, since tourists were still slow to return. The tsunami had made major headlines across the world, and only the disaster seekers came these days, hoping to see carnage. Allie was glad the island disappointed them. Still, the bars and restaurants that survived remained only half full, the lack of tourists clearly noticeable.

The whole island held its breath for the upcoming weeklong Kona Coffee Festival, which drew in its share of tourists. This year, everyone had higher hopes than usual that it would bring in a good crowd.

“It’ll turn around. It has to,” Teri told Allie at the salon one afternoon. Allie had dropped by to give Teri her order of Kona coffee to fill up the coffeepot she kept at her business. Many of the locals didn’t have money to spend on beauty at the moment, too concerned about rebuilding homes or feeding their families.

Tiki Teri’s had new drywall and a fresh coat of paint. Teri had been able to salvage her aluminum salon chairs and most of her decorations, and the fresh paint made everything sparkle. All things considered, the place looked great, and no one would’ve ever guessed that a wave had barreled through it. Still, it was empty—not a single customer. The patent leather seats beamed, shiny and newly recovered, but no one sat in them.

The bell on the front door dinged, and both Allie and Teri looked up, hopeful for a customer, but they saw Jesse walk in, still wearing her Hula Coffee apron.

“Well, don’t look so happy to see me,” Jesse joked. “I just thought you might want to see this guy. Look who’s off the couch!”

Kai limped in behind Jesse on aluminum crutches, a sheepish grin on his face. He’d been out of the hospital for some time, but had largely been a hermit. Rumors abounded that it meant the end of his surfing career, that the break had been too bad and that he’d been laid up on the couch suffering from depression. Jesse, however, said it was largely because he’d been on pain meds that gave him vertigo. She was determinedly upbeat about his prognosis, and that was how Allie would be. Allie knew how the rumor mill had hurt Dallas, and she had about decided not to believe a thing she heard on the island.