Page 51 of Big Island Sunrise
“I brought some boar burgers for you and your dad.”
“Mahalo, brah.” He took both bags and walked off, shouting for his dad.
“There’s, ah, food in there for you too.” Tenn grinned at Lani, just making glancing eye contact before turning back to his truck. Washenervous? He reached in through the window and pulled out a bottle of cane juice. “And this.”
“Thank you.” She accepted the drink, at a loss for what else to say.
“You gonna come in or what?” Kekoa shouted from across the yard.
She opened the gate for Tenn and they walked over to the carport, where the family was already tearing into the bags that he’d brought.
“You allpauor is there more work I can help with?”
“There’s always more work,” Kekoa said. “We’re done with the roof on the main house, but the roof blew off the chicken coop.”
“The roof blew off a long time ago,” Lani said, “it wasn’t this little storm. Anyway, the chickens don’t use it.”
“Maybe they would use it if it had a roof,” Tenn said with a grin.
Lani narrowed her eyes at him, but his grin didn’t falter.
“Can I help?”
“I don’t think we even have more roofing to use. Emma‘s been using it to fix the fence.”
“We took all that down,” Kekoa said through a mouthful of kalua pork. “We fixed the fences. All that corrugated tin is in a pile just over there.”
“Great!” Tenn strode through the carport.
“Great,” Lani said flatly. Kekoa laughed at her, and she tossed a french fry at him in passing.
Tenn walked past the pile of metal to go check out the chicken coop. It was in decent shape, lack of a roof notwithstanding. It was newer than any of the other buildings, with special doors on one side where they could reach in and collect eggs. If the chickens ever actually laid there.
It did still have a bit of roofing left, and he was looking it over to see where it attached.
“This should be a quick fix,” he told her. “I’ll just need the stuff that your family was using to fix the main roof.”
Armed with a cordless screwdriver and a box of roof screws, he made quick work of the henhouse. The scrap roofing was rusted through in places, but they overlapped it and managed to patch together a sturdy roof. Lani carried the pieces as Tenn secured them on, telling herself that it was to help him get out of there faster.
“That should do it,” he said as he secured the last piece of roofing. “If we clean it out and put some nice bedding in the nest boxes, you should get at least some of the hens going in there to lay. Better yet, you can put them in there at night to sleep.”
“Do you have chickens?”
“Not anymore, the restaurant keeps me busy enough. But my parents have always kept chickens.”
“How are we supposed to make them sleep in the henhouse? I don’t fancy herding chickens every night.”
“You can actually pick them up while they’re sleeping and move them in. They wake up there and their little dinosaur brains figure it’s their new sleep spot.”
“Worth a try, I guess.”
They walked back around the house and paused, watching Kai and the girls play some elaborate game of tag.
“Will you let me take you to dinner?”
She turned to him in surprise.
The rapid rush of blood in her ears drowned out the stern warnings of her thoughts. She had sworn off men. But this was different.
