After the Fall: Destination, Love, #2

By Alexandra Haughton

Pack your bags for Destination, Love…
Sunscreen, swimsuits, and sunsets in Hawaii? Check.
Being on your best behavior at the family condo? Wait…
A vacation fling that's impossible to resist? Check. Plus.

Paradise lost…
Joss McAllister worked hard to earn the title of family wild child. Her crowning achievement? An epic meltdown at her sister's wedding five years ago. She's just now back in her family's good graces, so when she goes to their condo—the first time since The Wedding Mistake—Joss is on her best behavior. That means no drinking, no drama, and definitely no in flagrante delicto. But when Andrew Reynolds stumbles into her life one hot Hawaiian evening, she is one stone-cold sober sexcapade from making another mistake.

Paradise found…
Drew is a damaged soul. After his distinguished career as a photojournalist goes down in flames, he's at loose ends. A chance encounter with Joss brings a peace he's been searching for, tempting him to forget life's many complications. But when their clandestine affair threatens everything they hold dear, will they walk out of Paradise together?

After the Fall, a stand-alone contemporary romance, first appeared in the One Week in Hawaii anthology.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Alexandra Haughton
• Release date: Jan 4, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386446699

Book preview

Chapter 1

The thin blue line of the cursor was a mocking bitch.

Blinking. Blinking. The carefully constructed words that preceded it blurred.

And there, at the end, an arrow. A command she could follow: send.

Hit send. Just hit it.

Ugh. She wanted to hit send. As much as she wanted her heartbeat to slow down. Maybe even match that lazy blinking blue line’s smooth pulse. But as long as she stared at the words she’d typed, there was no hope for her heart.

Hey. I’m on your island. Call me, please? You know this is… too complicated for a text.

Blink. Blink. Blink.

Something like satisfaction washed over Joss when, with a few taps of her finger, the blue line blinked in a sea of nothingness. The dull thump of her cell landing on the coffee table next to her bag was less satisfying. If only she could erase the situation as easily as she’d erased the text.

There would be no pleas tonight—and certainly no plaintive prose. No hurtling herself back into a time before the island was labeled yours/mine, as if in a custody arrangement. They were past that now. Everything strictly business.

There would be no calling up old flames, however dimly they’d burned. Joss McAllister was here for a week of forced family fun, and any unfinished business could be conducted away from the resort. Mom would flip out over Leo’s sudden reappearance anyway. And Liza? Well, shoot, her sister was reason enough to fill her pockets with lava rocks and walk into the rising tide.

That’s not melodramatic or anything.

She gave a moody-teenager-worthy sigh and reached out for a clump of fries. Dipped them in the trough of truffle aioli. She was in Hawaii again. Nothing would help.

Although these twice-cooked French fries weren’t doing a bad job.

This whole situation was ridiculous. Not even on vacation for a full hour, and one cream-colored piece of paper threatened her carefully constructed calm. Mocked her. Joss was letting her mother win and she hadn’t even laid eyes on her.

Oh, but Mom’s voice rang out loud and clear from the serpentine swirls of ink on paper. Perfect penmanship. Perfect everything where her mother was concerned.

Joss fished the note out of the side of her tote, chuckling to herself like an insane person when she noted that her greasy fingerprints marred the resort’s monogram. Why was she torturing herself by reading it again, a nasty greeting on such exquisite stationery? Oh sure, it seemed gracious, but Joss knew the message. Shots fired. Direct hit.

We couldn’t push the reservation back any longer. And you must be tired from your day of travel. The kitchen is stocked, or make use of the resort credit, of course.

Of course. Everything would be so much easier for her family without her there.

And as much as she would’ve loved to make use of that open line of room credit at one of the three friendly bars, really shake up her mother’s hot-glue and glittery composure with a hefty bar tab, she didn’t. She wouldn’t. For Dad.

And for herself. Because she’d come a long way from the girls she once was.

But Joss would be damned if she was going to cook or make a sandwich while the rest of her family was off at an extravagant luau. Without her.

Sure, she could’ve eaten at one of the resort restaurants, but after a day of flying halfway across the country and part of the Pacific Ocean, Joss had found the prospect of changing clothes and dining alone in one of the fancy restaurants on property more than she could bear. So she’d crumpled her mother’s note in her sweaty palm and sent her luggage off with the porter and started straight away for the casual bistro on site. Only to be directed to this random patch of outdoor seating because of a private event.

God, she hated it here. Oh, it was pretty enough. Paradisal, if you got down to it. Even with the sun setting on the other side of the island, the sky bathed the ocean in orange hellfire. Fitting. But she didn’t want to be tucked into a secret spot overlooking the stupid ocean with the stupid breeze making her stomach turn with the oppressive scent of plumeria and salt.

At least the gourmet fries were a damned sight better than the soggy ones she remembered they used to serve poolside along with an assortment indifferent chicken fingers and mini burgers.

Her cell chimed, and, for a heart-stopping moment, Joss wondered if her truffle-fried fingers had slipped earlier and texted Leo after all. Relief came in the form of Kate, her neighbor-slash-dogsitter, texting a picture of fluffball Fred snuggled up with Kate’s newest Italian greyhound foster.

Joss rattled off a quick response and held the picture to her chest.

She’d left home that morning to a chorus of you’re-so-lucky and a-week-in-paradise-how-perfect. For weeks, that was all Kate had wanted to talk about. What was the condo like? Was it really eighty degrees and amazing all the time in Hawaii? Did it ever rain? Could she see the lava flow? Had she ever flown over the eye of the volcano?

Not only had Joss flown over the eye of the volcano, she’d once been dropped down in it. Blistered, burned, and left to die.

The memory clawed at her stomach, and Joss let her head fall back on the plush chair.

Of course Kate didn’t know that. Her Austin friends, none of them, knew about the family drama; she’d worked damn hard to reinvent herself professionally and personally. Hell, even her friends from growing up didn’t know the worst, how the mere whiff of coconut oil left Joss faintly nauseated.

So lucky, indeed.

He couldn’t draw enough breath into his lungs. They burned even though he heaved in moist, fragrant air. Like everything beautiful in his life, it turned to ash at his touch.

Bracing his hands on the iron balcony before him, and gripping tight, Drew forced his muscles to relax, one by one. But his eyelid was still twitching.

His little sister had noticed, teasing him about it, how difficult it must be for him to give her away in a few days. The stress is getting to you, big brother, she’d said. All the while her eyes burned into his. Don’t ruin everything, Andrew Reynolds.

Yeah, that wasn’t likely.

And so he’d run, leaving behind the informal cocktail hour—the joy, the chatter, the new beginnings. His family, strangers.

He needed a drink. And he needed food, something more substantial than the tiny passed appetizers. Who the hell thought food belonged in shot glasses?

There was table service here, a kindly waitress in the ubiquitous resort floral print informed him, but it was still too close to the party. Why, anyone could walk out—just as he had—and bombard him with well-meaning questions. Mild rebukes about how long it had been. Smarmy eyebrow waggles above eyes that only thought they saw more than they did.

He prowled down the length of the railing, noting clever little tableaux. Seating areas for small and medium parties, separated by fucking ever-present foliage, made it seem like each grouping of chairs, sofas, was the only group on the island. Maybe even the entire planet.

Drew supposed some decorator had deemed it charming. Just made him feel like a peeping Tom every eight steps. Taken, taken. Empty but not far enough away from the door. Come-hither giggles from girls who probably needed their IDs checked, no thank you. Lovers, you should probably take it inside.

Maybe he’d just go back to his suite and order in. But that, too, was a minefield. And then he spied it. He had thought he was at the end of the path, but no—

There was a little enclave here at the end. Perfect.

The greens were less manicured. Rough. Wild. He half expected to see a NO TRESPASSING sign and a path that led to the kitchen. Or the beach. Or some hidden tropical oasis, wild and unspoiled. For the first time in a long while, he found himself wishing for the weight of his Leica slung across his chest.

He brushed that thought aside as he brushed aside the greenery. He just wanted a place to hide out and be alone for a while.

But he wouldn’t be alone here. His eyelid stopped twitching, but its asynchronous beat took up time in the hole in his chest.

It was like Adam discovering Eve, walking into this secluded spot. Seeing her.

Head tilted back, delicate tendons in her neck in relief. It was too much, too intimate. A moment only a lover should see. Here, vulnerable in the shadows, a lacy patch of sunset peach and pink staining her skin. Burnishing her hair into sheaves of gold.

A living embodiment of everything pure and feminine.

And everything he couldn’t have.

She was stunning.

But she wasn’t peaceful in her repose. There was a tension in her body—she was holding her breath? He felt an answering ache in his side that had nothing to do with missing ribs but everything to do with recognizing misery.

Drew should back away. Needed to back away. Should make good on his half-formed plan to order a grass-fed Hawaiian burger in his room and pretend he’d sleep if only he kept the TV on. Pretend everything was okay. Pretend that he wasn’t imagining what it would be like if she sat with him on the big chair on his balcony. Her head a sweet weight on his chest. Her skin warm where he drew lazy circles on her shoulder, encouraging her to breathe. Reassuring her that everything would be fine.

But he couldn’t promise that. And he wasn’t good at pretending anymore.

All his interior warning signals flashed. Back up, man, get the hell out of here.

He was about to follow his command when she moved and he lost the