“Uh...hey.” She attempted reaching the small of her back. “I was just trying to see the sunrise over the ocean.”
“You’re technically trespassing.” Dallas folded his arms across his fit chest. “You’re on my half of the dividing line.”
“Right. I’ll just... I’ll just be going.” Allie tried to stop stretching for the impossible itch, but she couldn’t.
“You need some help?” Dallas quirked his eyebrow, an amused look playing near the corners of his mouth.
“N-n-no, just fine, thanks.” But Dallas was already moving closer to her. She had to fight the urge to flee. “I’m fine... I...”
“You’re not fine.” Dallas reached her in big, easy strides. Allie froze to the spot, as Dallas put his hand on her back. “Let me help you.”
“I...” She was going to turn him down flat, but then he was there, his broad, naked chest staring her in the face, and she couldn’t do anything but stare.
“Turn around,” he commanded.
Her mouth had gone dry, and she’d lost the ability to understand the English language. She blamed it on the ridges of muscle in her face. His chest was amazing. Blinding, even, in its perfectly tanned smoothness. “What?” Her mind felt like mush.
“Turn around,” he prodded again.
Something in the tone of his voice told her she shouldn’t argue. She did as she was told. He put his fingers against her back.
“Is it here?” he asked, giving her a gentle scratch, hitting just left of the powerful itch that only made it worse.
“No, right. Go right.” She squirmed as he moved slowly right, and then, like an explosion of perfection, he hit the spot she couldn’t, washing her in relief.
“Oh,” she moaned in pleasure. “Oh, God. That’s it.” He put both his hands to work, and she nearly melted with joy. “Oh, don’t stop. Please.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” Dallas drawled, teasing, as he increased the frequency of his scratching. She was going to faint, it felt so good. He spread his hands out, moving deliberately all around her back, hitting itches she never thought she had before she’d even felt them. Her sunburn peeled away, but she didn’t care. It just felt too damn good. He had just the right amount of pressure, not too soft, and not too hard. The man was good with his hands.
Allie moaned again.
“You always this vocal when you’re having a scratch?” Dallas’s voice was playful, teasing, even flirty. It made Allie want to scratch a very different kind of itch.
“Dallas?” The hesitant voice of the disheveled woman in Dallas’s kitchen floated to them from the porch. It felt like a bucket of cold water on her head. Allie jumped away from Dallas, not wanting to make his one-night stand jealous. Her face burned beet red as if she’d been caught making out with the man.
“Oh...you have company.” Allie managed to make her voice sound both surprised and disapproving at the same time. She felt she struck the perfect balance.
Dallas, however, didn’t miss a beat. If he was embarrassed to be caught with a one-night stand at five in the morning, he didn’t show it. “Allie, this is Rebecca. Rebecca, Allie.”
The women exchanged a brief nod. Allie would have said, “Nice to meet you,” except it wasn’t, and right then, she just didn’t have it in her to lie.
“Dallas, I think I’m ready to go back to my hotel,” Rebecca said.
“Sure thing,” Dallas said smoothly, leaving her with the sensation of his hands on her back.
* * *
ALLIE DIDN’T LIKE the feelings Dallas churned up in her, or the fact that the man couldn’t seem to keep a shirt on. Everywhere she looked, there was Dallas, unbearably hot and sexy, and despicably inviting. Apparently he’d not gotten the memo that said she’d sworn off men.
There was only one answer to this problem: get Kaimana to sign that damn paper and get the hell off this island before she ended up as one more notch in Dallas’s bedpost.
She’d gotten into the habit of calling Kaimana twice a day and dropping by her house at least once. It had become an early-morning ritual. Allie knocked, and Kaimana either stubbornly refused to answer, or she blared ukulele music until Allie got the message and left. Once, Allie had waited two hours on her back porch, figuring she had to come out sometime, the word welcome on the mat like a sarcastic sneer. The woman tricked her once more, by sneaking out the front door and ducking into a friend’s car, who’d been idling at the end of the drive.
While she stalked Kaimana, she tried to keep herself busy. She indulged in all the little things she’d loved so much as a kid in Hawaii: she found her favorite sticky mango candy, and the sweet pink guava juice she used to have with breakfast every morning. Then, of course, the delectable chocolate-covered macadamia nuts, a treat she’d long forgotten. The local supermarket overflowed with amazing produce: fresh pineapples, giant bunches of yellow bananas, even slices of raw sugar cane, straight from the fields. Every meal she made at Misu’s felt like a trip down memory lane: she cooked rice balls in her grandmother’s kitchen and tried her hand at her famous teriyaki chicken.
Now she sat on Grandma Misu’s porch, slicing herself pieces of fresh mango she’d just picked from her own backyard and marveled at how much that same mango would cost imported to a high-end organic grocery store in Chicago. She had just missed the sunrise, and now she watched the pink-and-orange light play on the clouds above the rising mountain of the volcano in the distance. Honestly, everywhere she looked was a perfect postcard picture, ready to be stamped and mailed home.
Birds chirped happily, and the air was filled with the smell of some tropical flower. She tried to hang on to her anger, but in the warm Hawaiian sun surrounded by lush greenery everywhere, it slowly began to melt. There were worse places to be stuck, and Teri’s part-time offer of work would come in handy when she needed to buy groceries.
Still, Kaimana’s stubborn refusal to even speak to her grated.
“I really am sorry, Miss Osaka,” her grandmother’s lawyer had said on the phone earlier in the week. “There’s really nothing I can do about Miss Kaimana’s unwillingness to talk to you. Have you considered a peace offering? Or, perhaps, you can infer she doesn’t want you to sell the land?”
“But what am I supposed to do with it?”
“Grow coffee?” the lawyer had suggested.
But what did a woman who’d spent the better part of her life on the mainland know about growing coffee? Nothing. Even calls back home to a friend who was a lawyer yielded the same results: if she didn’t get the paper signed, she wouldn’t be able to sell the land.
So she redoubled her efforts to get to Kaimana. This morning, she’d bring a peace offering: flowers and a bottle of wine. Honey draws more bees than vinegar, she thought.
As she stood, ready to make the trek over to Kaimana’s, she saw Dallas—shirtless, of course, the devil—wearing just swim trunks and flip-flops, loading up a bright orange kayak into the bed of his truck. He looked good enough to eat, which sent warning bells straight through her brain.
She watched Dallas’s taillights blink red as he hit the brake at the end of the drive, and then disappear as he turned on to the main highway. She walked to Kaimana’s house and knocked on the door. She held up the wine and flowers in the peephole. She heard the shuffle of Kaimana’s slippers against the wooden floor, so she knew the crafty old woman was home.
“I’m calling a truce,” she declared to the closed door. “I’ve brought a peace offering.” Allie waited a few minutes, but no bolt was thrown, no door opened.
“I’m leaving it here,” she said, and put the bottle of wine and the flowers down on the brown welcome mat. She trotted down the steps of the porch, when she heard the bolt click behind her and the door sweep open.
Allie froze, shocked, and turned to see Kaimana smiling at her.
“Aloha,” the old woman with the gray-streaked black hair said.
“Good morning,” Allie said, deliberately. “I’m sorry if we got off on the
wrong foot. I really didn’t mean to offend. I just wanted to...”
“I’d prefer gin,” Kaimana said, interrupting her. “I do love a good gin and tonic.”
Now Allie was starting to get angry, what with her looking a gift horse in the mouth, but Kaimana just smiled more broadly to show she was kidding.
“Oh, loosen up, kiddo,” she said. “I’m just teasing. Wine is great. Pele likes gin, too.”
“Pele?” Allie asked, confused as she met Kaimana’s gaze. Kaimana just shrugged one shoulder. Clearly, she’d heard this all before.
“Pele!” Kaimana pointed to the big mountain behind them.
Volcano goddess, Allie remembered. Though it was an active volcano, its smoke wasn’t visible to Allie, at least not from this vantage point.
“Oh.” Allie really had no idea what to say to that. “Do you believe...? I mean...”
Kaimana just stared. Her dark skin looked weathered with age spots and lines, honestly earned with a life in the sun. After a long, pregnant pause, she broke out into a loud laugh. “Oh, I’m just teasing you. I’m a Methodist.”
Kaimana laughed and Allie did, too. Kaimana sank into a rocking chair on the porch and picked up a half-strung lei. She motioned to the chair next to her and Allie sat down in it.
“I know what you want,” Kaimana said, finally. “I know, and I’m here to tell you, I won’t talk about Misu’s land.”
Allie felt panic rise in throat. “But...you have to talk to me about it... You...”
“I wasn’t finished.” Kaimana held up the needle she was using to string a lei. “I was going to say I won’t talk about Misu’s land until after the Kona Coffee Festival. She told me she thought this crop would win top prize.”
“Oh, well, I...” Allie hadn’t even banked on harvesting the crop at all, much less entering it into a festival competition.
“You are going to enter?”
“Well, I hadn’t thought...” Allie’s mind whirled. How was she supposed to get the crop ready for a festival?
“It meant a lot to your grandmother.” Kaimana studied her for a beat longer than was comfortable. “Last year, she made it all the way to second place, but it was first place she wanted. Tell you what, girl. If you win that festival, if you land first place, I’ll sign that document of yours and you can sell to whomever you like.”
“I can?”
“Sure.” Kaimana put down the lei she was working on and stood on creaking knees. She straightened her back, putting both hands on it, and groaned as she swept the silver-black hair from her tanned face. “Oh, age is not pretty,” she muttered as she stretched. Her back creaked and popped under the strain.
She glanced at the still slightly pink hue to Allie’s arms. “You should spend more time at the beach. Brown you right up.” Kaimana said, nodding at her forearms. Tanning, however, was the least of Allie’s worries at the moment. She was still thinking about how she was going to win a coffee competition when she barely even knew how to work a coffee machine, much less roast raw coffee.
“When is the festival?”
“November.”
* * *
NOVEMBER WAS MORE than six months away! Allie felt panicky. She couldn’t wait that long. She had no money! She’d liquidated her savings to get her plane ticket, and she’d been living pretty much on credit cards since she got here. You could always sell the engagement ring, she thought. And maybe she would. If things got bad...she would. She suddenly felt dizzy. She kicked a loose berry she found on the ground and sighed. As she looked up, out at the bright blue water in the distance, it occurred to her she needed a break. She’d spent a week on a beautiful island... And I haven’t even been to the beach.
Kaimana said I needed to go, so fine, I’ll go. I need a break from the endless loop of worry in my head.
CHAPTER SEVEN
ALLIE STARED AT the coffee trees resentfully as she marched back inside her grandmother’s house and then ransacked her suitcase for her tried-and-true one-piece—the no-nonsense suit she usually wore. It was like her: conservative, sturdy and reliable, and those racer-back straps would never come off in the surf.
Behind it, she saw the daring bright yellow string bikini Jason had bought her for their would-be honeymoon. In retrospect, she was surprised that Mr. Whips and Chains hadn’t gotten her a leather one dotted with silver spikes. She’d forgotten she’d tossed it in her bag, not thinking that it would be like one more grenade she’d taken the pin out of, ready to explode her calm.
She glared at the new bikini and was tempted to throw it into the trash. But something stopped her. Now she remembered why she’d kept it. It had been a one-hundred-and-eighty-dollar bikini. Some fancy designer that she’d never in a million years seriously consider buying. Most things in her closet came from the sales rack at a discount store. In a pinch, she could sell it on eBay. That was why she’d kept it.
Now, as she stared at the overpriced bikini, she decided she’d try it on, at least. After wiggling into the barely-there fabric, she stood in front of the full-length mirror, assessing. Her sunburn still beamed brightly up at her like a traffic light, but she could see the beginnings of a new tan. The good news was she’d been hitting the gym like a maniac over the six weeks before her aborted wedding because she’d thought she needed to squeeze into a strapless wedding gown. Now, she could see, all that work had paid off. She wouldn’t have even considered wearing a bikini two years ago, but today...well, maybe she would.
Next, she tried to tackle the yellow flowered sarong that came with the suit. As far as she could tell, it was like one huge scarf. The more she tried to tie it around herself, the more she started to look like a maypole. How do these things even work?
Outside, she heard tires on the gravel driveway and wondered if Dallas was back already. She worked the cotton fabric of her cover-up into some kind of makeshift wrap skirt and thought, This’ll have to do.
As she finished the knot in the sarong, she heard a car horn honk.
If that’s Dallas, I’m going to tell him where he can put that horn.
Angrily, she slipped into flip-flops and trudged out the door, only to see that it wasn’t Dallas’s black pickup sitting in the drive. It was a big white delivery truck. A man hopped out, no older than twenty-five, his dark hair covered with a baseball cap. He held a clipboard.
His eyes went straight to her bare middle, and his eyebrows lifted ever so slightly. “I’m looking for Dallas McCormick?”
“Sorry, he’s gone.”
The man didn’t even register her answer; he was too busy staring at her chest.
“Uh, hello?” Allie waved her hand to draw his attention away from her swimsuit.
“Oh, uh...sorry.” He flushed a little when he realized he’d been caught ogling and raised his eyes to meet hers. “He’s gone? You’re sure? I know he called for a delivery...” He glanced at his clipboard. “Oh, no,” he said, realization dawning as he read the invoice. “It’s my fault. I’m supposed to be here later this afternoon! The shipment came on an earlier ferry, but I didn’t realize. My boss is going to kill me.”
Allie took pity on the young driver.
“I can help. What is it?”
“It’s a new coffee roaster,” he said as he rolled up the back of the truck to show her a massive stainless steel contraption, designed to heat coffee beans. Allie focused on the giant piece of equipment and felt like kicking it. Dallas had ordered something for her side of the property without even telling her.
“Can I see the invoice?” Allie asked sweetly.
The deliveryman scurried to her, eagerly handing her the clipboard. She glanced at the invoice, stopping cold when she saw the amount for the order.
“Twenty-five thousand dollars?” Allie’s throat closed up suddenly. Twenty-five thousand dollars? Dallas had spent this much on some farm equipment?
The driver looked uncertain. “Mr. McCormick ordered the top of the line, and this is it. You won’t be disappointed, it’s...”
Allie couldn’t believe it. Dallas had made a purchase this large for the entire farm without even talking to her first. She wondered how he’d paid for it. She ripped through the back page of the invoice and saw a credit card number. She nearly lost it when she saw the name on the account. It was Misu Osaka.
He’d used her dead grandmother’s credit card? What the hell?
Allie felt a cold shiver run down her spine. Dallas had inherited half her grandmother’s estate, but was he trying to get even more? Why would he charge twenty-five thousand dollars to her grandmother? How did he even do it?
“I’m afraid you’re going to have to take this roaster back,” Allie said, feeling her old anger return. Dallas couldn’t be trusted. Hell, no man could be trusted.
The driver shifted uncertainly from one foot to the other. “It’s more than a hundred dollars if I have to come back. Are you sure...”
“I’m sure.”
“Maybe I should call this contact number here.” The deliveryman pulled out his phone from his back pocket.
Allie bit down her anger and changed tactics. She needed to stop biting people’s heads off. “What’s your name again...?” She smiled sweetly.
“Dave.”
“Dave.” Allie took a step closer to him, and her sarong, which wasn’t all that tightly secured in the first place, threatened to fall down one hip. She caught it, but not before the bright yellow string of her bottoms became visible. She hadn’t planned it, but it worked anyway as a proper distraction.
Dave the driver perked up instantly, his eyes dropping to her exposed skin.
“I’m really sorry to do this to you. I don’t want to get you in trouble, but Dallas didn’t run this by me and he really should have. It’s a big purchase. And we’re co-owners now.”
“Oh, I see,” Dave agreed, trying to pull his attention back to her face.
“So I’m afraid I can’t accept the delivery. You’ll have to send it back. I don’t want to get you into trouble, but it’s really Dallas’s fault.” Allie smiled at the driver to show there were no hard feelings.
Her Hawaiian Homecoming (Mills & Boon Superromance) Page 9