Her Hawaiian Homecoming (Mills & Boon Superromance) (31 page)

“Open? So one of your options is to leave the Big Island. To leave me?” Dallas was almost afraid to hear the answer.

Allie hesitated, her gaze flicking back to his. “I don’t know.” The truth of her confusion came through in her voice. But Dallas only felt the pain of it. He’d been left by Jennifer. He’d been hurt, too, and for once he wanted a woman who would just stand by him. He wanted the security of knowing that when he needed someone to lean on, she’d be there to offer her shoulder. It was a basic want, yet nobody had been able to give it to him in his whole life. He was used to being on his own, ever since his parents died, but that didn’t mean he liked it.

“I can’t believe this. Is that why you worked so hard all this time? It wasn’t that you even liked the coffee, was it? It was all about making sure you could get the cash at the end. Is that it?” Dallas glanced up at Misu’s house, where they’d lived together like a real couple for months. He turned away from the sight, his insides a tumble of emotions: anger, frustration, resentment. If she’d planned to sell, why string him along all this time? Why make him believe they had something special?

“Dallas, that’s not what I mean.”

“Sounds like it.”

“I want
you
to have the plantation. If I do sell, I want to sell to you.” She put her hand on his arm, her dark eyes earnest, looking as if this news should somehow make him happy. As if it was a peace offering.

Dallas shook his head, a hoarse laugh escaping his lips. “I can’t buy it, Allie,” he said.

“Don’t you want it?” Allie sounded surprised. The wind off the ocean picked up, whipping her dark hair into her face. She pushed it out.

“Of course I do.”

“Then, what’s the problem?”

Now was the moment of truth. Dallas couldn’t wiggle out of it, and he knew it. He sighed.

“I can’t buy it because Jennifer stole most of my savings,” he said grimly. “She wiped out my bank account when she left.”

Allie blinked fast, trying to process this new bit of information. “She...what?”

“The woman you
thought
I still cared for. She guessed my passwords. She transferred the money into a joint account and then she just drained it. I never went to the police because I didn’t want Kayla’s mother going to jail. And I didn’t say anything to anyone else because I didn’t want Kayla being hurt by the rumors.”

“Dallas...” Allie’s voice trailed off as the enormity of the news sank in. “I’m so sorry.”

“Are you?” Dallas asked her, feeling anger well up in his chest. “Are you really? Because it seems to me that your plan all along was just to leave.”

Thunder rumbled in the distance. A storm was blowing in off the ocean. “That had always been my plan,” she said. “You knew that.”

“Yeah, but...I thought... I guess I thought you’d changed your mind.”

“Dallas...” Pain ripped through Allie’s face. Dallas chose not to see it.

He sighed, frustrated that after all this time, she still wanted to walk away from him, from everything they could be together. “Never mind. If after all this...you
still
want to go... Then nothing I can say even matters.”

“But, Dallas...” Her voice sounded bitter and angry. “This is Jason’s fault. If he hadn’t cheated, I wouldn’t be crazed with jealousy. I’m not normally like this. It’s just...”

Dallas felt frustration well in him. He didn’t know why she was so stubbornly clinging to the past. Why was she looking backward when there was so much potentially ahead of them?

“I’m not Jason.” Dallas glanced at her from the driver’s side of the truck.

“I know.”

Dallas shook his head.

“No, I don’t think you’re hearing me. I’m not Jason. And I’m not going to have you treat me like Jason.”

Allie’s eyes brimmed with tears. He was making her cry, but he couldn’t help it. He needed to reach her somehow.

“Let that go.”

Tears rolled down Allie’s face. “What if I can’t?”

“Then you’ll always be running away from your feelings, and you’ll never be happy.” Dallas shook his head, refusing to look at her. “I thought I could help you, Allie. I really thought I could, but it’s like Jennifer all over again.”

He could see the effect of his words on her, like a slap. He knew he should stop, but he couldn’t help it.

“I couldn’t help her, and I can’t help you, either. You’ve got to do it yourself. I can’t fix these problems for you,” he said. “Go, then, if that’s what you want.” He reached across her and opened the passenger-side door.

“It’s not what I want,” she said, voice thick with tears.

“Then why do you want to sell?”

“I...I...”

The hesitation was enough for Dallas to want to give up. This girl wasn’t in it for the long haul, no matter how hard he tried to convince her to stay. He didn’t want to argue anymore, didn’t want to hear her excuses. How could he trust her when in her mind she always had one foot on a plane? Big drops of rain splashed down on his windshield. The storm had come.

Reluctantly, she slipped out of the cab of the truck, tears glistening on her cheeks. Part of him wanted to wrap her up in his arms, kiss away those tears and tell her it was all going to be okay. But he couldn’t do that. She wanted to leave him, and he had to accept that.

“Are you coming in?” Her voice sounded like a small croak.

“No,” he said. He didn’t want to look at her. The anger and frustration built up inside. He didn’t trust himself to be with her. He’d yell at her or say things he’d regret. He needed to be alone. She shut her door with a defeated-sounding
thunk
.

Dallas turned the ignition and the truck roared to life. He drove blindly in the tropical rainstorm, not even sure where he was going. He found himself on the road by the shoreline, just driving to who knew where. He didn’t care. He still felt blindsided by Allie telling him she planned to sell. He couldn’t understand why she didn’t want to stay put, didn’t want to stay with him, after the connection they had; he just didn’t understand it.
Maybe she doesn’t feel the same way
was all he could think.
Or maybe she’s too scared to realize something like this doesn’t come along every day. She’s too busy hung up on the past; she’s never going to be ready for her future.

Whatever the case, he’d gone and fallen in love with another project, and he was done with fixer-upper women. He should’ve learned his lesson with Jennifer, and yet here he was again, in the exact same spot.
No, not quite the same
, his memory was quick to remind him. Jennifer was an awful and selfish person who did what she wanted when she wanted. Allie was just misguided, too fearful to trust in the happiness that could be hers.

Not that he blamed her. He’d come to think happiness was pretty much a mirage, too. Just when he thought he had it in his grasp, it always seemed to fade away. Through the hard-pouring rain, the streetlight ahead of Dallas turned yellow and then red. He hit the brakes and hydroplaned to an uneasy stop. The water pooled on the narrow road; the torrential rain flowed down the gutter and made little rivers in the ditches along the roadside. He drove aimlessly until he realized he was headed straight for the tree house. Maybe he could clear his head there.

The light turned green, and he pulled through the intersection, his back tires losing a little grip on the slick road until they found traction again.

What can I do to convince Allie to stay? Or should I even bother?
It was up to her now, he knew as he drove through the rain, realizing as he passed a sign that he’d gone halfway around the island already.

Rain poured down from the dark night sky, and his truck’s windshield wipers had trouble keeping up. He passed by a big tourist resort. A bright new red sedan, clearly a rental car, swerved out into the road without looking, and Dallas only just missed him, hitting the gas and accelerating.

Drunk tourist
, he thought, and decided he’d try to get the license plate and call his friend Lyle to see if the car couldn’t be picked up. In his side mirror, he saw the driver throw out an empty beer can. He’d already hit something because the left headlight was cracked and not working. Dallas got a bad feeling then, his heart rate jumping.

The rental sped up, its one headlight bright in Dallas’s rearview mirror. He blinked against the brightness.

What’s that idiot doing?
Dallas thought, even as he moved over to the other lane. The car wove dangerously back and forth across the road, even passing the yellow median marker.
He’s going to kill someone.

The turnoff to the tree house came, and he took it, anxious to get away from the warbling lights. Amazingly, they followed him.

What the hell?

The headlights came to his side mirror again; this time, they were speeding up. Dallas clutched the steering wheel. The drunk driver gained, and Dallas tried to slow down and get out of the way, but the other car sloppily swerved into his lane. The passenger tire of Dallas’s truck caught the edge of the road.

This is going to be bad
, Dallas thought, his heart in his throat as his truck skidded off the highway, veering toward a tall palm tree, and he braced for the inevitable impact.

CHAPTER TWENTY

T
HE
N
EXT
MORNING
, the morning of the first day of the Kona Coffee Festival, Allie woke up feeling sick to her stomach. She put her hand on his side of the bed and felt only a cold emptiness. His side of the comforter hadn’t been touched the entire night. He’d left her in a chilling silence the night before, and he hadn’t come home. Allie hadn’t expected him to. Not after the fight they’d had. She didn’t even understand it herself.

Last night, it had been the jealousy that had taken over. She’d thought she was over Jason. Sure, she still felt angry anytime she thought of him, but wasn’t that just natural? He’d lied to her about everything he’d ever been, and he’d made their whole relationship a lie. It still burned like stomach acid in her throat when she thought about it. But part of her knew Dallas was right. She was holding on to the past, even if it was just by being angry. It was a fatal character flaw, she realized: always looking backward, never forward. She was like a girl in a horror movie, running through the dark woods, stumbling because she was too busy looking backward to find the path ahead.

She glanced at her suitcase in the corner, thinking,
I could pack right now. I could pack up my stuff and head to the airport and get on the first flight out to anywhere.

What was she doing? Thinking about running...again? God, she was tired of running. She was tired of not trusting anyone. She sniffed, wiping her tears angrily from her face. She was tired of crying. She
liked
it here. She liked the people, too.

And she loved Dallas. She wanted to trust him.

But how? The means escaped her. How was she supposed to do it?

Maybe the key to trusting Dallas was just
deciding
to do it. Maybe it was just that simple.

She called Dallas but got his voice mail. No matter. She’d fix this one way or another.

She might not know what the right thing was to do, but she’d at least try to win that contest. They’d worked too hard to give up now. She wasn’t going to let Jennifer take away another one of Dallas’s dreams. Not on her watch.

* * *

T
HE
K
ONA
COFFEE FESTIVAL
banner hung across the main street, which had been blocked off by a police car for pedestrians only. White tents dotted the thoroughfare, and tourists and locals mingled together on the street shaded by huge palm trees. The crowd was big, and Allie knew the locals would be glad. The PR Kai had done with the luau had clearly worked. People on other islands must’ve seen it and hopped puddle jumpers to get there in time for the festival. She saw lots of T-shirts advertising Maui and Oahu restaurants and bars worn in the crowd. The strong smell of rich Kona coffee filled the air. Allie inhaled, loving the scent.

Allie found the judge’s station, a small white tent with a long table. They’d be tallying scores there, but otherwise, they’d be wandering down to each tent, savoring cups of smooth coffee.

Allie just made it to the Kona Coffee Estate tent, which had nothing but a white cover and a table. She hastily set up the coffee machine she’d brought, as well as some bags to sell, and a few jars of her new exfoliating coffee face mask. She put out a sample and a mirror, as well. She’d planned to have a presence here, and hoped Dallas would show up. He’d worked so hard for this, she couldn’t imagine he’d just not come.

Maybe that’s how badly you hurt him
, she thought.
Maybe that’s how mad he still is about hearing you want to leave him.

She watched as the judges, who wore white ribbons, mingled near the judges’ tent at the far end of the street. Jennifer stood near her camera crew, which never seemed to leave her side, overdressed as usual. She wore a tight-fitting white sundress and matching espadrilles. She looked her intimidating best: with her ample cleavage on display and a pound of makeup. She carried an expensive designer bag, and suddenly Allie felt angry. Had she spent Dallas’s money on the bag? On her brand-new shoes?

Or was that something Dallas had made up? She believed him, or at least she wanted to believe him, but a nagging doubt in her mind dogged her. There was only one way to find out for sure: go talk to the woman. Either she’d find out she was secretly having sex with Dallas, or she’d find out Dallas was telling the truth. Either way, she had to know.

She’d never done anything like this, brazenly confronting a near stranger and accusing them of grand theft. She realized, standing there in the middle of the festival, that she’d run away from conflict her whole life: she’d run away from the car accident, run away from facing Grandma Misu, and she’d run away from Dallas, too.

But flight hadn’t worked so well for her in the past. It was time for fight.