Blooming in the Wild Page 0,4

was one of the people in charge of making that happen.

She’d do it too, even if it meant spending most of her time here wearing high heels, carrying a briefcase and ducking from one air-conditioned space to the next. At least on this portion of her trip, she’d be outdoors, on the forested slopes of Pele’s volcanoes.

The other expedition members filed onto the boat. The redhead was next, holding her phone in one hand, carrying an enormous bag that matched her hotpink shorts. A tiny white tank revealed a flowered bikini top that barely contained her full breasts. Bella squared her shoulders, rejecting her urge to hunch. So what if her own breasts were small? She was a grown-up, and she was happy with her body. It was toned and fit and did all the things she wanted it to do.

The blonde model wore a low-cut halter dress and Roman sandals that climbed her willowy ankles. She smiled as she passed Bella, revealing perfect white teeth. The male model close behind her smiled too, and Bella blinked. Whoa, with his Hawaiian good looks, he’d be perfect for a photo shoot at one of the resorts. He wore his hair long, like her cousin Zane, and it was the same deep coffee hue, although the resemblance ended there. This man didn’t have the Ho’omalu jaw, or their eyes, dark as ebony and surrounded with thick, black lashes and slashing brows.

She now knew she had Ho’omalu eyes too. She’d spent years plucking her brows to keep them under control and watching her friends learn mascara and eyeliner, things she hadn’t really needed, feeling the odd girl out even though they groaned about how lucky she was. She wore makeup at work as part of her polished, professional look, but on her days off, she rarely bothered. And now that she’d met her father and his extended family on her last visit to the Big Island, she knew at last where she’d gotten her ebony brows and lashes, her mane of coffee-dark hair, her golden skin.

The night before Melia’s wedding, Bella’s mother had confessed that Bella’s father, a holiday fling twentyfive years before, was Daro Kai, a cousin of the Ho’omalus. Since they were a very large family, it was not as big a coincidence as it seemed that Bella’s best friend was marrying into that very family.

DelRay had hired this Hawaiian model as an extra for the group photos, but for this shoot, intended to showcase their new line of tropical camping gear and clothing, the big sporting goods tester, Joel What’s-his-name, was the star. So she guessed she had to be nice to him—although any more smart-ass remarks and he might end up modeling a vine wrapped around his thick neck.

And after her dream, she was half afraid she could do it. But that was ridiculous—as if she could command vegetation to harm someone. Last night’s dream had been the wildest in an ever more vivid string, but still, just a dream that had ended nightmarishly.

Although her father seemed to think it was more than that. When she’d called him in the wee hours of the morning, Daro had wanted to fly to Maui and bring her straight to the Ho’omalus here on the Big Island to talk with them, to delay her arrival in the forest until she had, as he put it, “more understanding of what might be at stake for her”.

She had thanked him but refused. Knowing she had someone nearby who was willing to drop everything and come to her if she needed him had steadied her, reassured her, chased away the chill of her dream’s nightmarish ending, and given her the strength to remember that she was here on business. Work came first, before childish fears.

And maybe, just maybe, if she stayed busy enough, she could put off possible revelations that her dreams might be true.

Chapter Two

To Do: Remember, job on this trip is to act as a tour director. Bring this diverse group together in congenial harmony.

Bella took a steadying breath and blew it out. Sure, the Ho’omalu family had gifts that stemmed from the island, but that was different. That was them, not her. She was just ordinary Bella Moran, hapa-haole, half-Caucasian mainlander.

And right now she was in charge of making sure all her charges worked well together.

If she was lucky, she wouldn’t actually have that much to do with the television hero. She would mainly work with the woman climbing onto the boat,