Page 2 of Rough Ride

He turned on the shower and waited for the water to heat. He told Joe when they built the house they should have put in those heated pipes, but the man had said Eli needed time to contemplate his problems. Waiting for the shower to heat was a good way of doing that according to Joe.

The thought had Eli’s lips curving—although it hurt. It was hard to think Eli would never have another conversation with Joe...that he would never get to argue about unimportant things or sit and watch the sun set over the land.

He shook himself out of his funk and decided to get on with it. He needed to keep his wits about him when dealing with Joe’s relatives. He knew they weren’t going to be happy—especially his brother Sam. Man wasn’t going to be happy when he realized that not one inch of the Big Island ranch was going to be his.

The other part of the family was a mystery. Joe had spent time with his niece and brother-in-law, but they had never come to the Big Island. Joe had always gone to the mainland to see them. The daughter was part Hawaiian and, as far as Eli knew, had never set foot on Hawaiian soil.

For haoles it was no big deal. For kama'aina, it was. Joe’s niece was Hawaiian, but not in the truest sense. The local ranching community was even more exclusive. Hell, he’d been there for years and some residents still didn’t accept him. Eli didn’t have any idea how they would take an outsider owning the ranch.

Again, he shook his thoughts away and started to get ready for the day. Joe had entrusted his ranch to him, and Eli wouldn’t let anything happen to it.

* * *

She was in Hawaii. Finally.

From the moment Crysta Miller had smelled the clean fresh Hawaiian air, she felt as if she were walking in a dream. It took them less than half an hour before they were speeding up the two-lane highway. She stared out the window of the rented car and sighed. Huge mountains shot up into the sky as green as a field of clover. The little bit of rain they had hit on the way to the ranch was now just a drizzle with the sun peeking through the clouds. Crysta thought it was perfect when she saw the rainbow. Well, perfect if Joe had been there with them.

She rubbed her hand over her chest and tried to ignore the pain. It was naïve but Crysta had always thought Joe would live forever.

“You know the Kaheaku don’t live long, honey,” her father said. “Actually, Joe lived a pretty long life considering he was a SEAL and then worked on a ranch.”

She glanced at him. For so many years it had always been just the two of them. They both knew each other well enough to guess their train of thought. When she had been a teenager, it had been disturbing but now, in times like this, it was comforting.

“Stop being reasonable. I want to be sad,” she said, returning her gaze to the scenery outside the car.

He chuckled, then sobered. “I wish we would have made it over last year. It would have been better to see the ranch with Joe to give us a tour.”

“Yeah.” She looked at her father. “But, you know we couldn’t come. Joe understood that you were getting treatment.”

The last year and a half had been hard. Her mother had died when Crysta was only five years old. There had always been a void in her life, but there in the void had been her father. He had become her entire world. When he had been diagnosed with cancer, it had shaken her world to its very core. Logically, she knew her father wouldn’t live forever, but she hadn’t been ready to face it last year.

Now, Joe was gone. Her heart ached a little more. She hadn’t been ready to lose the larger than life uncle. When she felt her eyes start to burn again, she forced herself to think about the ranch.

“Do you know anything about this St. John?” she asked.

“Not much, just that Joe had known him for a while.”

“Someone from the military he knew?”

Her father shrugged. “Joe talked of him for years, so I’m assuming. I know he mentioned that St. John was in the military.”

“I hope he takes good care of the ranch.”

“You really think Joe would leave it to him?” her father asked.

“I think he should. From what Joe said, this St. John helped him build the ranch back up. I actually think he saw him as a sort of surrogate son.”

She left it unsaid that neither of them wanted her other uncle to get any part of the one-hundred-acre ranch. They would rather a stranger own and run it than Sam. He was one of the reasons Crysta’s mother had left and never returned to her island home all those years ago. His prejudice against her father for being black and her for being part of him, kept her from knowing her mother’s life before marriage.

“We’ll see,” was all her father would say.

She frowned and looked out the window again. Her father had been vague about his conversations with Joe those last few weeks of his life. She caught him a few times on the phone and her father would abruptly change the subject. She’d tried to get more out of him, but Hammond Miller was a typical SEAL. Damn him. Crysta had been sure the whispered conversations had been about Joe’s illness. Now, her father was still being tight-lipped.

He turned onto a dirt path that lead them to an open gate. He stopped and glanced over at her.

“Ready?”

It seemed that he was asking about more than the emotional drain of the funeral. Even thinking that, she smiled.

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