Kona Winds

by Janet Dailey

  "That's what I want." But Julie knew it was impossible. She would never forget about Ruel. He was embedded too deeply in her mind—and heart.

  Frank scooped up some sand and sifted it through his fingers. "One of my buddies is having a luau tonight." He shifted his position to sit cross-legged on the ground. "It's going to be a big bash, with roast pig and everything. It should be fun."

  "It sounds like it. Are you going?" Julie deliberately phrased it to exclude herself.

  "I'm supposed to work tonight."

  "Too bad," she murmured in indifferent sympathy.

  "I hadn't planned to go," Frank paused. "But I could always call in sick at work. What I'm trying to say is . . . I'd like to take you to the luau with me."

  "I don't think it would be a good idea," she refused.

  "It will be fun, you'll see," he coaxed. "We'll have a good time."

  "No, Frank."

  "You'll change your mind before the day is over." He wouldn't accept her answer. "Once you get into the spirit of things, we'll have a ball. We can spend the day together swimming and playing in the sand."

  He grabbed a handful of sand and held it over her stomach, letting it trickle from his fist into her belly button. Julie wasn't amused. She impatiently brushed the grains off her stomach.

  "Will you stop it?" she demanded.

  A looming shadow darkened her skin. In the same second, Frank was being hauled to his feet, his tanned face mottled with outrage

  "Who do you think you are, pushing people around like that?" Frank was having difficulty getting his balance, like a young, inexperienced bull trying to charge his adversary and unable to get his feet to work.

  Ruel's look dismissed the challenge as being of little significance and he turned grim faced to Julie. "You're coming with me," he ordered.

  "No, she's not!" Frank shouted, and attempted to throw himself between them.

  In a fluid move Ruel pivoted and swung, casually ridding himself of an annoying pest. Frank's forward impetus carried him right into the hooking fist. It all happened before Julie could break the paralysis of surprise and do something to stop it.

  "No!" she protested too late. The blow knocked Frank backward onto the beach. Fearing he was hurt, Julie wanted to go to his aid. "Frank—"

  Her intention went no farther than calling his name and making a move toward him before Ruel had a steel grip on her arm and was pulling her away. She tried to tug free.

  "I said you're coming with me." Ignoring her useless struggles, Ruel reached down and scooped up her beach bag and towel.

  "Let me go! He's hurt!" She pried at the steel trap of his fingers. Frank lay gasping on the ground, unable to move.

  "He isn't hurt." Ruel flicked a merciless glance at his victim and began pulling Julie away from the scene. "Except for a bruised jaw."

  His long strides were eating up the ground, while Julie continued to balk at being dragged along. His arrogant and callous behavior incensed her.

  "If you don't let me go, I'll scream," she threatened, her voice trembling in fury.

  Ruel stopped and pulled her around to face him. The ruthless set of his features matched the ominous glint of his narrowed blue eyes. He held her fast, his fingers digging into the soft flesh of her arm.

  "If you open your mouth one more time, I'll club you over the head and drag you off by your hair," he told her, the words growling out through clenched teeth.

  "You wouldn't dare!" Julie breathed, but she almost believed he would.

  Turning her around, he gave her a shove forward. "Get in the car."

  The black sports car was directly in front of her. His shove had sent her stumbling toward it. She recovered her balance the last couple of steps to walk stiff-necked to the passenger door. Ruel was there to unlock it and toss her things behind the seat. When Julie was inside, he shut the door and walked around to the driver's side.

  His anger was almost a tangible thing, but Julie's was a match for his. She remembered the release he had used the last time to vent his wrath.

  "Is this going to be another one of your high-speed rides?" she challenged.

  He sliced a quelling glance to her and started the car. Like a caged beast, the car prowled onto the highway at a restrained pace. The power of the motor was never called upon to exert its thrust as they traveled sedately over the road. The towering grass of sugar cane closed around them, the red dirt road tunneling a path through the field. At a wide spot, Ruel drove the car to one side and stopped. A touch of a button sent the electric windows rolling down to let the tradewinds blow fresh air through the car.

  When he turned off the motor, Julie could hear the wind swishing through the tall leaves of the sugar cane, swaying the mauve tassels on top. Ruel leaned an elbow on the steering wheel and rubbed his mouth, staring resolutely ahead.

  "That was completely uncalled for." Julie broke the silence, unable to hold back all the things she wanted to say any longer. "You didn't have to hit Frank."

  His hand slammed itself against the steering wheel. "What did you expect me to do?" he exploded, turning the harsh glitter of his gaze on her. "You knew I wanted to see you! I left you a note asking you to come riding with me this morning. And don't tell me you didn't get it, because I slipped it under your door last night. This morning it was on your dressing table. I found it myself when I went looking for you."

  "You had no right to be in my room," she snapped since she couldn't say that she hadn't seen the note.

  "We'll discuss what my rights are where you're concerned later on," Ruel promised in an ominous tone. "When I didn't find you in your room, I went looking for you. How do you think I felt when I saw you lying half-naked on the beach with that damned love-starved surfer mooning over you!"

  "I don't see why that should upset you," Julie retorted with a haughty tilt of her chin.

  "You crazy little wahine!" With the swiftness of an uncoiling spring, he seized her shoulders and shook her hard. "It upsets me because I love you!" he declared viciously. At the shocked look that spread over her face, the swayed grimness left his face. The strength in his features was gentled. "I love you," he repeated.

  He sought her lips with unerring accuracy, crushing their sweetness against her teeth. All her doubt evaporated under the demanding possession of his mouth. The knowledge seared through her like a golden flame. Somehow her arms found their way around his neck as she arched her body to him. The steering wheel kept interfering with their efforts to be close.

  "Damn!" he cursed it as he sought the hollow of her throat.

  Frustration welled within Julie, too, at the unsatisfactory embrace. She longed to mould her body to his hard shape, to feel the driving pressure of his thighs grinding against hers. Her breasts swelled under his cupping hand, but she arched from the incompleteness. Finally Ruel lifted his head and tucked her shoulder under his arm, groaning softly as he kissed the corner of her eye.

  "I never guessed . . ." Julie twisted sideways, tipping her head back to see his face and sliding her fingers inside the buttoned front of his shirt to feel his hair-roughened skin and the pounding beat of his heart. "I didn't know you loved me," she told him.

  The invitation of her parted lips was one he couldn't resist. His kiss was hard and brief, keeping the fires of passion burning, but not letting them blaze out of control.

  "I told you I did yesterday." His glowing look seemed to radiate over her. "Don't you remember?"

  "No." She wouldn't have forgotten something as important as that, not even in the deafening heat of the moment. "Unless—you said something in Hawaiian."

  "Aloha auia oe. I love you," he translated. "Ku'uipo, my sweetheart, my lover."

  He brushed his mouth over her lips. His hand fitted itself to the curve of her neck, his thumb rubbing the hollow under her ear in a sensual caress. Julie quivered under the spell of his potent charm.

  "I would have made sure you understood me yesterday," Ruel told her. "Unfortunately Em walked in." His jaw tightene
d in remembrance. "It tore my guts out to see you in that ball of misery and shamed embarrassment. I knew how humiliating it was for you. That's why I was so harsh with Em, and myself. I wanted to comfort you, to convince you that it would be all right. But as long as Em was there I knew you wouldn't listen to anything I said. She wouldn't leave for fear I would revert to my lusting ways. And I had that damned appointment. I was caught between a rock and a hard pole."

  "It all worked out, though," she reassured him, reaching out to trace the outline of that formidable mouth with her fingertips. The clean, male smell of him was an aphrodisiac to her senses.

  "But it was hell in the meantime." He exhaled a long shuddering breath.

  "It's heaven now." It had been a remarkable and swift transition from the depths to the heights.

  Her head was tipped far back on his shoulder. With a grown, Ruel covered her lips. His hand slipped across her bare stomach to grasp her rib cage and attempt to turn her into his arms, but the hard curve of the steering wheel blocked them again.

  "Dammit, Julie," he muttered against her cheek, "why didn't you wait up for me last night? We could have had this whole thing straightened out by now and in more comfortable quarters. I broke every record getting back, only to find you'd gone to bed I would have awakened you, but Em would have taken the cane to me. But this morning—why didn't you meet me this morning?"

  "Because I didn't think I could face you, so I ran," she admitted. "I didn't run very far from you. I didn't want to, not until I'd made up my mind."

  "About what?" He molded his hand to her breast and seemed enchanted with its shape. His erotic touch was building the flames again, the heat spreading to other areas.

  "Until I'd made up my mind whether I could handle it when you became bored with me."

  "Bored with you!" Ruel leaned his head back against the seat and laughed at the ceiling. "That's been the problem since the beginning. I've never been bored with you. Not from the moment you came down the stairs that first morning, looking as if you owned the place. You walked across the room to me, as bold as you pleased, and looked me right straight in the eye."

  "You'd been talking about the Kona winds." Julie remembered it as vividly as he obviously did that precious first meeting. "And you knew who I was immediately."

  "You weren't a bit impressed with my deductive prowess," Ruel accused. "In fact, you prodded me into telling you who I was, blithely admitted you were lost and asked directions. You were the most fascinating and intelligent creature I'd met in years."

  "Was I?" she marveled.

  "As if you didn't know," he mocked. "Running around with flowers in your hair, chasing after fires, and dangling your surfer under my nose."

  "I didn't do that," Julie denied the last.

  "Whether it was deliberate or not, you succeeded in first arousing my envy and finally my jealousy." A light lurking in the depths of his eyes warned Julie not to do it again.

  "Were you really jealous of Frank?" She knew he had never had any reason to be.

  "A lot of females get turned on by those young, muscled bodies balanced on a surfboard," Ruel answered.

  Her hand spread over the solid muscles of his chest to the firmness of his stomach. "I haven't found anything wrong with your body. It's tanned and hard and warm."

  "Damn you, Julie!" He closed his fingers over her hand. "You keep that up and you'll find out just how warm and hard it is. This car isn't designed for making love."

  "No?" She felt a sense of power in being able to arouse him and exercised a little of it now.

  "No," he repeated firmly, but his gaze wandered down to the swelling curves of her breasts, exposed by the cut of her bikini top. Julie felt the shallowness of his breathing. "I want to make my intimate discoveries of you at a more leisurely pace and in a more comfortable place. So don't you wave temptation in my face."

  "No?" Provocatively Julie peered at him through her lashes.

  Roughly he twined his fingers into her hair, holding her head still while he punished her lips. The hard, shattering kiss went of control. Ruel was parting her lips, deeply exploring and engulfing her mouth.

  A horn honked, loudly, as a truck rumbled to a squealing halt. It honked again in blaring demand as Ruel surfaced with shuddering effort. Shaken, Julie could only lean weakly against him.

  "Hey, boss! It mo' betta if you move dat car!" a male voice shouted in local pidgin. "We gonna fire dis field wikiwiki."

  With a saluting wave of his hand, Ruel acknowledged the advice and information. He set Julie completely in her own seat and reached behind it for her beach bag.

  "Here." He put it in her lap. "Get some clothes on before you lose those you've got."

  The cane truck squeezed past them as Ruel started the car. Fighting the cramped quarters of the front seat, Julie managed to pull her jeans on and shrug into her blouse. When the truck was behind them. Ruel reversed the car and maneuvered it back the way they had come.

  "Was this where we were going to come when we went riding?" Julie asked as they emerged from the dirt road to the drive. "Here to watch the cane field burn?"

  "Probably." He slowed the car to a crawl. "I just wanted to get you away from the house where we could talk. Which reminds me. . . ." He reached out to take her hand.

  "What does?" Julie asked.

  Ruel turned to study her. "I've been the one who's done all the talking."

  "And?" She was puzzled by the intensity of his gaze.

  "And I think it's about time you did some talking," he challenged.

  "About what?" she frowned.

  A truck rumbled up behind them, its horn blaring. There wasn't enough room for it to pass. Ruel swore under his breath and waved his arm out the window for the truck to wait.

  "Hey, boss! Have you gone pupule? You can't park dat car in da road." It was the same driver as before.

  "Dammit, Al!" Ruel leaned his head out the window to shout at the man. "I'm not moving until this woman admits she loves me! So lay off that damned horn!" Impatience was in his expression when he looked at her. "Well?"

  That was what he had been waiting for her to say. Julie laughed in delight. She thought she had told him a hundred times—a thousand times.

  "I love you, Ruel Chandler," she declared in a buoyant voice.

  "It's about time you said it." His gruffness was the most beautiful sound she had ever heard, as his hand cupped the back of her head to draw her mouth to his.

  In the truck behind them, the driver laid on the horn, announcing to the world the answer she had given. It became the second most beautiful sound she'd heard.

  All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 1979 by Janet Dailey

  Cover design by Open Road Integrated Media

  ISBN 978-1-4976-1844-2

  This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

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