Her Hawaiian Homecoming. Cara Lockwood

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      Allie felt a surge of annoyance and complete embarrassment for making a fool of herself by blubbering on as if Kaimana didn’t understand her, complete with full pantomime. Yet she considered the idea of a near stranger banging down her door and asking to sell the property of her once dearest friend in the world. Okay, maybe she hadn’t been the most tactful there. She still felt like a total idiot. And Dallas got a good laugh out it. At her expense. That was the worst part. She felt her cheeks burn. He’d probably sent her there knowing full well she’d be tricked.

      “You’re still going to have to talk to me about selling,” Allie said. “Even if I can’t get her signature, I’ll find a way.”

      “Maybe you should just get used to growing coffee. At some point, we’ll have to talk about the harvest.”

      Allie felt a flash of anger. The last place on earth she wanted to settle down was Hawaii, the place her father died. And the last man on earth she ever wanted to deal with was Dallas McCormick. He reminded her of Jason, of the kind of man who thought the world owed him everything.

      “I’ll talk about the harvest as soon as you talk about selling.”

      Dallas’s blue eyes grew cold like steel. “Not going to happen,” he told her, shaking his head. She watched as he picked up the toolbox and began walking toward the big metal barn on the property. Her side of the property, she realized.

      “Where do you think you’re going?” she demanded, hands on her hips.

      Dallas stopped and calmly turned. “To see if I can fix the roaster. It has to be working by harvest time. Or we need a new one.”

      “The barn is on my side of the property line. I didn’t say you had permission to fix it.”

      Dallas froze, annoyance flashing across his face. Allie thought, Good. See what it feels like, buddy, when you don’t have the upper hand.

      “Allie...” Dallas’s voice held a warning.

      “You may not want to sell, but as long as this is my property, I can do what I want with it. I can knock down that barn and sell that roaster for parts, if I want to. I don’t need Kaimana’s permission for that. I could even knock down all the coffee trees on my side.”

      Dallas looked stricken. “You wouldn’t.”

      “Try me.”

      Dallas hesitated, as if deciding whether or not to call her bluff. Allie dug her tennis shoe in the ground and dragged it across the dark lava dirt, making a line.

      “That’s your side, and this is mine,” she declared, glaring at him. “You cross this line without my permission and...” Allie walked over to the nearest row of coffee trees on her side. She snapped one of the branches with bright orange coffee cherries on them.

      “No...don’t!” Dallas protested, but he was too late. She dropped the branch in the dirt and stomped on the coffee berries.

      Dallas flinched as if seeing the damaged limb brought him physical pain. He frowned, his blue eyes hard and glinting. “That was one of our oldest trees,” he growled.

      “Good. I’ll start with cutting down that one first.”

      Allie left him standing there, toolbox in hand, as she stalked off to the house, strode up the steps and slammed the door.

       CHAPTER FOUR

      BY THE NEXT MORNING, Allie was beginning to regret her show of temper. Not that she wasn’t still furious with Dallas and didn’t love seeing that smug smile wiped clean off his rugged face, but Allie usually didn’t get so mad, so irrational. She’d known the minute the door slammed behind her she’d been in the wrong. It was childish, and she knew it. She usually was the calm, sensible one in the salon where she’d worked in Chicago, the one who never got ruffled about anything. But ever since Jason, she felt as if she was sitting on a powder keg, and any little thing could set her off.

       Boom.

      She didn’t like this new Allie who flew off the handle at any small provocation. Sure, this was her grandmother’s land, and she’d had plans for the sale, but did that really merit stomping on coffee cherries like a three-year-old? She should’ve handled it better. Maybe she ought to apologize, she thought as she gathered up a change of clothes and headed out to the outdoor bathhouse on her grandmother’s property. She’d take a shower, get dressed and maybe go over and offer to talk things through. They had to come to some agreement, and Allie suspected that Dallas could probably convince Kaimana to sign those papers. She’d mentioned him by name after all. They had to work together...or neither one would get what they wanted. She felt better, more in control, calmer.

      Allie had considered the whole problem as she’d tossed and turned the night before. Misu’s house had no working air-conditioning, and the night had been particularly sticky. Allie had been waiting for the sun to come up, waiting for her chance to sit in a cool shower, wash off the salty layer of sweat.

      Allie thought she was being quite grown-up about it as she walked into the outdoor shower. She double-checked for prehistoric-size bugs and, finding none, plopped her clothes down and went to turn on the hot water.

      Nothing came out.

      This can’t be. She’d been looking forward to a shower for the past three hours of tossing around in the damp sheets of her bed, and now...no water?

      She stared at the dry showerhead. “Don’t do this to me,” she whined.

      She turned the knobs again, opening them all the way, and found...nothing. Not a single drop of water. “No!” This was seriously not happening. All she wanted was a cool shower. Her white tank top stuck to the small of her back; tendrils of hair stuck to her sweaty temple. Even her short plaid pajama bottoms felt too hot.

      Allie wasn’t going to take this lying down. She was going to get a shower, one way or another. She marched outside and saw the big rain-fed water tank sitting a few yards away. She decided to investigate, and as she walked, noticed a deeper line in the black lava dirt. Her toe print had been widened and deepened, probably by Dallas.

      She made it to the huge water tower, and that was when she noticed the line ran straight to the middle of the base of the tank. She walked around the tank on her side of the dividing line and looked up. Half the water was on her side. As far as she could tell, it should be equally split. She crossed over the line to Dallas’s side of the property, and that was when she noticed the kicker: the on-off spigots for the tank were on his side of the dividing line.

      Well, crap.

      God, she hated instant karma.

      “I think you’re on my property, ma’am,” Dallas drawled, strolling up with one thumb hooked casually into the belt loop of his worn jeans. He wore a tight-fitting T-shirt across his muscled chest, and somehow it seemed even more sensual than if he’d been naked. Allie had to force herself to meet the man’s eyes and not just gape at the ridges of his muscled pecs, plainly visible through the thin cotton fabric.

      “Why did you turn my water off?” Allie demanded, hand on her hip, as she stubbornly СКАЧАТЬ