She finished rinsing and turned the knobs, stepping out and wrapping herself in a towel. While shaking out her hair, she heard a phone ping with an incoming message. She reached for the phone on the bathroom sink, thinking it was hers, before she realized she’d left her phone inside on the kitchen counter.
She didn’t intend to snoop. Until she saw the name flash on the screen.
Jennifer.
She read the message without meaning to, as it was short and right there in her face.
R u there?
She put the phone down again on the countertop, wishing she hadn’t seen it. She glanced at the door to the bathroom, but it remained solidly shut, no sign of Dallas’s return. The phone pinged two more times.
Don’t look, she told herself. She had no right to pry, no right to read messages intended for him. And yet...why was Jennifer texting him? After all she’d done to him, why did she reach out now?
Or was this something she did all the time? Allie hadn’t seen Dallas preoccupied with his phone. If anything, he tended to forget it, as he did right at that moment. He wasn’t like Jason, who had guarded his phone with dear life. No wonder, she thought now, consider he was living a double life.
What if it’s something to do with Kayla?
She wondered if she ought to go get Dallas, let him read his messages and find out. She knew on some level that was what she should do, but her curiosity simply couldn’t wait. She reached out and tipped the phone toward her so she could just see the face. She promised all she wanted to do was see if Kayla was all right. The message was sitting there on the pop-up bubble of his home screen. She didn’t even have to open it.
Kayla misses you. She talks about you all the time.
And then...
Times like these make you think about what’s important. I miss you, baby. I wish you’d come home so we can be a family again.
The words burned themselves into her brain. She felt woozy for a second, as if she was about to take a long drop off the top of a tall roller coaster.
Suspicion whirled in Allie’s brain, and immediately she was right back in Jason’s living room, the feel of betrayal hot and sticky at the back of her neck. Was Dallas encouraging this somehow?
The doorknob to the bathroom turned, and Allie almost dropped Dallas’s phone in the toilet. She managed to save it at the last minute, putting it down on the sink and quickly running her fingers through her wet hair as if that was what she’d been doing all along.
“Done already?” Dallas asked, sounding a little disappointed as his eyes took in the white fluffy towel wrapped around her body.
“All done.” Her voice sounded too bright, too brittle. But there was no helping it. She watched as Dallas picked up his phone. He moved away from her, out of the bathroom, his eyes intent on the screen.
“Something wrong?” she asked him, trying to sound nonchalant, as she hurried out in just her towel. Level with me, she thought. Just be honest. Don’t hide it. There’s nothing worse than hiding it.
That’s what Jason would do.
“What?” Dallas looked as if he’d woken up from some kind of dream, distracted and distant. “No. Nothing’s wrong.” He glanced at his phone again and frowned.
Allie felt her stomach sink. She knew exactly what he was reading. If he didn’t have something to hide, why wasn’t he sharing it? Part of her worried that it meant he was considering getting back together with Jennifer Thomas. Her stomach flipped, and she couldn’t help but think, I can’t trust him, just like I couldn’t trust Jason.
* * *
DALLAS FELT THE old fury rising in him at the very sight of Jennifer’s name on his phone. Jennifer was like a bad penny, if that penny was soaked in toxic waste and dipped in cyanide. Honestly, how could she even ask him to get back together?
Why don’t you give me the fifty thousand dollars you owe me, and then you can just go to hell was what he felt like texting back to her, but instead, he just deleted her messages and hoped she’d get the meaning from his silence. For all he knew, she’d taken a financial hit during the tsunami and figured he’d be an easy mark. She could think again. He was glad Kayla was all right, and sorry that the girl missed him, but there was no way on God’s green earth he’d ever consider getting back with that woman. Not in this lifetime.
Besides, he had Allie now, and the longer he spent with her, the more smitten he got. He found himself thinking about the future in ways he never did with Jennifer, despite being engaged to her. He realized now that he’d proposed to the wrong woman. He didn’t feel this way about Jennifer; he never had. It had been a relationship always fraught with problems, and everything about it had been so damn hard. Allie was easy. She just got him, and he got her, and there was something really wonderful about that. He’d agonized over proposing to Jennifer. Should he? Or shouldn’t he? And in the end he had because of responsibility he felt toward Kayla. Allie was completely different. The way she’d been a seamless partner during the harvest, and frankly, how brave and tenacious she had been during the tsunami, told him she was a keeper.
This was someone he wanted to marry, that he wanted to share his life with. He had no doubts.
He watched Allie make her way back inside, holding the towel to her chest, and thought that the only thing stopping him from proposing that afternoon was the fact that she’d probably bolt. He knew a skittish mare when he saw one, and Allie was as easily spooked as they got. Not that he didn’t understand. Her ex had done a number on her head. It was no wonder that settling down would be the last thing on her mind. He had to hope that, just like breaking in a fearful horse, that if he gave her time and patience and lots of care, she’d come around. Too much too soon would scare her off for good. Hell, he’d almost blurted out the damn L-word a dozen times in bed only just stopping himself in the nick of time. He would have to be patient and bide his time.
The last thing she needed was to hear about some crazy, delusional ex offering up insanity via text message. Honestly, had Jennifer lost her mind? What on earth made her think he’d ever want to get back with her?
He glanced once more at his phone, shaking his head in disbelief. Jennifer would just have to leave him alone. Learn to deal with disappointment, he thought. It’s about time you had your share.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
ALLIE WANTED TO scream and shout at Dallas, but part of her was just too devastated, too brokenhearted to do it. She knew she’d have to talk to him, but part of her just didn’t want to. She wasn’t ready for the truth yet. She wasn’t ready for a sledgehammer to her heart when she found out it was all true and far worse than she’d imagined. Jason had taught her just how ugly things could get. She sneaked away from the coffee plantation that day. It was time to see her grandmother at the cemetery.
She’d knocked on Kaimana’s door and asked if she’d go with her. Kaimana obliged happily. Together, they made the long drive to the eastern side of the island. She knew her grandmother and father were buried at the Alae Cemetery near Hilo. It was where Grandma Misu’s father’s family had grown up, and where her parents were buried. The cemetery’s main feature, a huge rain tree, offered a giant canopy of green for many of the Japanese gravestones. The Pacific Ocean glinted in the distance. The cemetery on the eastern shore had been saved from damage from the tsunami, as had Hilo. Flowers bloomed here, and birds sang.
“Misu will be glad you’re here. There was so much she wanted to tell you.” Kaimana glanced over the gravestones, her eyes growing misty. “Come. I’ll take you to her.”
Allie followed Kaimana to the rain tree, stunned by the beautiful edges of it, like an enormous bonsai. The cemetery carried a unique kind of beauty and peace to it, and she had no trouble understanding why her grandmother had wanted her father buried here and why she had chosen to join him. If you had to spend eternity somewhere, might as well be under the shade of a beautiful tree only found in tropical places.
Allie carried a lovely arrangement of Hawaiian flowers: hibiscus, b
ird of paradise and irises, planning to leave them at her father’s and grandmother’s gravestones. When she saw that most of the stones had Japanese characters, she was suddenly glad to be following Kaimana through the neatly arranged plots. She stopped in front of a light granite gravestone that held both Japanese and English carvings.
“You know, she never blamed you.” Kaimana’s voice was so low, Allie almost thought she imagined the words.
“What?”
“For your father’s accident. She never blamed you. She worried about you blaming yourself. She was so sad to lose you after she lost her son. It took her a long time to recover, and I’m not sure if she ever really did. She understood why your mother had to go, why you did, too, but she wished you would come back.”
Allie felt a zing of guilt. “We never had the money for the flight.”
“Misu knew that. It’s why...it’s why she left you the farm. She had so little when she was alive. She just loved you. She always loved you. Wanted you to be happy.”
“I...” Allie wish she’d known that.
“She never abandoned you. Not in here.” Kaimana pointed to her own heart. “They’re both here with you. Now. I’ll give you a minute.”
She nodded knowingly and shuffled off, away back through the cemetery and to the parking lot. Allie glanced down at her grandmother’s name, and next to it, her father’s gravestone. She wanted Kaimana’s words to be true. Was she really not alone?
“I brought this for you, Grandma and Dad,” she said, putting the flowers down, her voice feeling unnaturally loud in this peaceful place. She felt silly for talking out loud but made herself do it anyway.
“I’m working hard to make that winning crop for you, Grandma,” she said and realized she meant it. Somewhere along the way, it had become less about getting Kaimana to sign that paper and more about doing what Grandma Misu wanted. She honestly wanted to win that coffee contest. “And I’ve even made something else with the coffee we can’t use.”
Allie brought forth a small plastic container with a screw top. With some help from Teri and Minnie regarding packaging and labels, she’d made special Kona Coffee Estate spa products, which she was almost sure, if she could send any back to Chicago, her old spa would buy by the box load. She put the small white container at the grave, as if her grandmother and father could see it. She wondered how they’d feel about a spa line. Dallas had been excited by the idea. He joked they ought to open up a gift shop on the property. Maybe even start to give tours like some of the bigger farms on the island.
“I’m sorry, Grandma, for not coming to your funeral. I’m sorry for not coming back at all. I...” Tears welled in her eyes and choked the words. “I’m sorry I didn’t do more for both of you...when you were here.”
She slumped to the ground in front of the gravestones and just cried. After a few minutes, she felt better, lighter. She thought of Kaimana’s words. Just because she couldn’t see and hear her grandmother or father anymore didn’t mean that she couldn’t still love them. It didn’t mean that she couldn’t still choose to feel loved in return. They hadn’t abandoned her.
Had Dallas, though?
She cried, worried about him, worried that her heart might be broken once more.
“I don’t know if I can do this again,” she told her grandmother’s gravestone. “I don’t know if I can be knocked down one more time and get up again.”
She stared at the gravestone, wondering how her grandmother had done it, all those years hanging on to a coffee plantation and barely making ends meet.
“I don’t know if I’m strong enough.” Could she survive the worst news from Dallas? Could she survive another betrayal? She really didn’t know.
The gravestone couldn’t answer her. But as she looked at her father’s, she realized she was strong and resilient. She’d weathered a lot already in her life, and nothing had killed her yet.
She swiped at her eyes and sniffed. Whatever came, she’d face it.
* * *
THE NIGHT OF the luau came quickly. The whole island was abuzz about it. Locals wanted a reason to celebrate. There’d been too much tragedy and loss, and many yearned for a night when they could put the weight of that down, if only to lift up a glass of mai tai and toast what they did have. Dallas and Allie arrived together. Dallas wore linen shorts and a button-down floral shirt. Allie had on a simple white linen dress with a matching white flower pinned in her hair. She wore her black hair up in a messy twist, and tendrils hung down her tanned cheeks, looking breathtaking, Dallas thought.
Dallas parked the truck in the overflow parking lot near the beach, which was already crammed with cars. A huge, oversize billboard of Jennifer Thomas’s grinning face leered down at them from across the street. Her bright blond hair was like a platinum halo, her green eyes perfectly aligned and her man-made cleavage perky and gravity defying in her plunging neckline. Dallas wished someone would spray paint a mustache on her.
He’d tried to convince Allie not to go to the luau, but she’d insisted. She’d drummed up quite a strong feeling for supporting local causes, and there was no dissuading her from this one. She’d been distant recently, preoccupied. Dallas thought it had to do with her visit to the cemetery, but he hadn’t wanted to pry. She didn’t seem to want to talk about it, but something was bothering her, he knew that much.
Allie gazed at the billboard worriedly, even as Dallas pulled her close and laid a delicate kiss on her bare shoulder.
“Have I told you how beautiful you look?” he murmured in her ear. He leaned in to smell her, a wonderful mix of coconut and some tropical flower. She smiled at him weakly. Something was definitely bothering her. “Everything okay?” he asked her.
“Fine,” she murmured, and he didn’t believe her. She wasn’t being honest with him. Something was bothering her. Had she found out that Jennifer was a judge for the coffee festival somehow?
He hadn’t told Allie about her texts or the news that she would be a coffee judge. His plan was simple: get her out of there before the big announcement. He wasn’t sure he could shield her from the news forever, but he didn’t want her to find out at the luau.
Before he could ask more questions, Allie had flipped the handle of the truck door and jumped out. Whatever was bothering her, she didn’t want to talk about it. They walked together to the dramatic Punalu’u Black Sand Beach, one of the many one-of-a-kind beaches on the Big Island. Crushed dark lava rock lay out as far as the eye could see, just as pristine and beautiful as any white sand beach, maybe more so because of the rareness of it. Hawaii had the most black sand beaches of anywhere in the world. His flip-flops sank into the black sand, which felt rougher and a little bit bulkier than on other beaches on the island. The dark sand sparkled in the fading sunlight as crystal-blue water came in waves to the shore. Tables were already set up, as were tiki torches, and a local band played surf guitar music. An impressive crowd assembled, as Kai had clearly gotten the word out. The air filled with sounds of socializing and laughter, and the delicious scent of roasted pig hit Allie’s nose. A torch marked where the pig had been buried: deep in the hot sand to cook all day. The Hawaiian beach was better than any smoker barbecue pit.
Dallas carried the bag holding Grandma Misu’s famous mango salad. He took Allie by the hand and felt immensely proud to have her on his arm. This was the kind of girl a man married, he thought. She bit her lower lip, as if worried.
“Allie?” Dallas saw where she was looking and realized why she was worried: Jennifer stood there mingling with a camera crew, looking buffed and polished. She wore a tightly fitted red dress and wedge sandals, her hair up in an elaborate twist. Dallas put his hand on the small of Allie’s back and felt her stiffen. Jennifer’s presence seemed to be bothering her even more than him. He wondered why. Maybe she did know she was the judge.
They made their way to the food table. Dallas put down Misu’s teak bowl. It was filled to the brim with mangos and onion and tomato, sitting in a special homemade lime-
juice dressing. The fresh ingredients, so plentiful on the island, made the recipe so good.
Teri was there in an instant, removing the saran wrap, and then heaping a big helping on her plate. “This is my all-time favorite,” she said and took a big bite. “Mmm,” she murmured, closing her eyes to enjoy the salad. “You got this just right, Allie. Tastes exactly like Misu’s!”
It wasn’t long before others had dug in, and Allie beamed at the praise. Dallas could feel Jennifer’s eyes on them as they got their own plates of food. Dallas kept a protective hand on Allie, sending a message to Jennifer: I’m with someone else now.
As they worked through the line, he glanced up once and saw Jennifer frowning. She could frown all night for all he cared.
Big drums were played, and two high school football players, dressed in traditional Hawaiian warrior garb, went to the spot of the buried pig. Jennifer excused herself from the camera crew and wandered closer to them. Dallas had no intention of talking to her, here or ever.
“It’s time for the pig!” Dallas said, and directed Allie away from Jennifer to watch the muscled guys unearth the luau’s main course. Dallas had been to a few luaus before, but it never ceased to amaze him. He marveled at how the men removed the pig, first using shovels to remove the sand, then taking off the hot cooking rocks and the banana leaves. Steam wafted up, hitting his nose.
Everyone lined up for their own piece. Dallas and Allie took seats on the beach. They ate and talked and watched the band play. As the sun set, and everyone finished their food, the entertainment began. Dozens of hula dancers from elementary age all the way up through college took turns presenting traditional Hawaiian dances. Dallas applauded each act but kept his eye on the camera crew and Jennifer, who had taken a seat across the performance circle from them, and kept looking in their direction. Dallas couldn’t help but think she was plotting a plan of attack.
Her Hawaiian Homecoming (Mills & Boon Superromance) Page 23