Somewhere in Hawaii: The Statesmen Series

By Kim Deister

Super famous cheating ex-fiancé? Check. Backstabbing best friend? Check. It's been a rough road for Harper Reed. So when the chance to move across the country to tropical Hawaii comes along, she jumps at it. It's a fresh start for a new life in a place where not everyone knows your story. 

 

When Harper meets Kai, it's as if every box was finally checked for her, this time in a good way. He is everything she never knew she wanted. And he loves her like no other.

 

Everything should be perfect.

 

But even in paradise, there can be darkness.

 

Somewhere in Hawaii, there is someone who doesn't want Harper to have her happy ending. But who is it? And why?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kim Deister
• Release date: Jul 1, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393865407

Book preview

Other Books by Kim Deister

The Kissing Frogs series

Kissing Frogs (#1)

One Stormy Night (#.5)

Standalone Books

Eclipsed

Last Call

Last Night

Anthologies

Camouflage Christmas, the 25 Days of Christmas anthology

Sandy Toes, the Wicked Nights of Summer box set

Trust in Chaos, the Unleashed anthology

The Whisper of a Wish, the Our Secret Nook anthology

Loving Luke, the Our Secret Nook II anthology

Tangled Love, A Dark Spring anthology

Coloring Books

Shaded with Love, Vol. 5, a coloring book for a cause

Cooking with Love, Vol. 6, a coloring book for a cause

Copyright © 2020 Kim Deister

All rights reserved.

Published by Caffeinated Words Publishing

Hawaii

Cover Design:  The Cover Collection

In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the author of this book.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return it to the seller and purchase your own copy.

To those who believe in happy endings...

TABLE of CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

EPILOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

––––––––

The icy cold wind snaked its way under every single layer of clothing I wore as I walked toward the parking lot. Cold weather gear, my ass. When the United States Army commissioned the creation of cold weather gear, they clearly hadn’t had northern New York in midwinter in mind. I’d been born and raised some sixty miles up the road, practically in Canada. Didn’t make a damn difference. I should be used to it. But how could anyone be used to temperatures that came with a wind chill in the double digits? What is the point of making myself look like a yeti if I’m gonna freeze my ass off anyway? The cold snap was making me cranky. But it wasn’t exactly like fluffy yeti, especially one dressed from head to toe in camouflage, was high on any guy’s list of hot chick attributes they looked for in a woman.

Bitch, please. The last damn thing I needed was a man. I’d had enough of men to last me for a very long time. Aside from my dad and my brother, most men were high on my shit list. Perhaps unfair, since surely not all men were raging douchenuggets, but my current mantra was better safe than sorry. Better to err on the side of caution. Fuck men. And fuck romance. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

Of course, even if I did want to traipse down the highway to hell, otherwise known as a relationship, it probably wouldn’t make a difference if I marched through post dressed in a bikini and loudly begging for penis. To say I didn’t exactly have a slew of prospects waiting with bated breath for my attention would be an understatement.

The truth hurt.

It was possible that my attitude had something to do with that sad reality. After all, I wasn’t a she-beast. I was smart and funny, if I said so myself. But if I were being honest with myself, which I rarely like to do, I was also a tad bitchy these days. It was an unfortunate side effect of the bullshittery that was my life at the moment. It was possible that my bitchiness was a bit off-putting. Nonetheless, despite the fact that I was currently anti-romance, it was nice to be wanted. It was an essential step in the rebuilding of one’s ego after having it steamrollered. However, the only attention I got these days from the members of the opposite sex came in the form of morbid curiosity. Which sucks whale balls.

I hadn’t even been able to get out of the building without having to walk through a gauntlet of gawkers. A bevy of stage whispers reached my ears as I approached the smoke pit. There was a posse of soldiers huddled under the gazebo roof, slaves to their smoke habits no matter the weather. I glanced over to find six out of the seven of them watching me, eyes darting away when they realized I was looking. Busted, fuckers. The seventh hadn’t been looking at me... only because he’d been bent over double, laughing at something one of them had said. Judging from the guilty looks on the others, I was the source of his mirth. I fucking hate people.

It was like that wherever I went. For someone who hated drama as much as I did, it was disconcerting to suddenly find myself the object of everyone’s idle gossip, the hot topic du jour. And some of these ass clowns were anything but discreet about it. I sure as hell didn’t need them to make me feel any worse than I already did. I did a good enough job of that all on my own without their needling reminders of it twenty-four seven. All it did was make me remember, tear more holes in my heart, and send my thoughts spiraling to dark places. Fuck this shit. I’d spent enough time wallowing. Instead of letting myself fall down the rabbit hole of self-pity, I chose to deal with my stress in a healthy way.

I cursed them out under my breath as I finished the trek to the truck. In four languages. There was something satisfying about that, a sense of superiority at being able to multilingually spew vulgarity. "Jebiesz jeże, dupku" sounded so much better than you fuck hedgehogs, asshole. The Polish had a way with cursing that I appreciated.

The door to the pickup was iced over, but nothing a few well-placed boot strikes couldn’t take care of. It screeched in that metal-on-metal way, loud in the cold, late afternoon air, as I yanked it open. The truck was a beast that had seen its best days at least two decades earlier. The Ford Ranger had once been cherry red but now was the faded, splotchy red of an old weathered barn. But I wasn’t complaining. Beast it may be, but it handled the snow like a friggin’ tank, getting me from A to Z. Thanks, Dad. And it was warm, although warm was a relative term. More like lukewarm at best. But it sheltered me from the elements, and it was heated enough to ensure I didn’t become a human Popsicle on the way home. Which was the best I could hope for these days.

I started it up, the engine rumbling to life with a dull roar. Directing whatever warmth there was to the windshield, I jumped back out with the scraper in hand and shut the door. A couple of inches of snow had accumulated since I’d parked it at eight thirty that morning in the midst of freezing rain. I brushed it away, doing that dance of snow avoidance that all northern New Yorker mastered as soon as they got their learner’s permit. The heat inside the truck had just started to make a dent in the ice underneath, tiny quarter-sized patches on either side of the windshield. Snow started falling more thickly as I scraped at it, becoming more miserable by the second. Thank God, I muttered as I scraped away the last bit of ice. The truck felt positively tropical when I climbed back into the cab and shut the door.

The snow came down harder as I wove through the streets to the shoppette on the way to the front gate. I was in desperate need of the largest and hottest coffee I could get. In reality, after the day I’d had, wine would be better. But as I still had roughly sixty-five miles to drive, coffee would have to do.

Which sucked because I’d earned that wine. Hell, after the last few months, I’d earned gallons of it. And now, today, as of an hour ago, I was officially homeless.

Check yourself, drama queen.

My homelessness wasn’t as dire as it sounded, but I was in that kind of mood. Truth be told, I’d been technically homeless for a week after I’d moved out of my apartment to stay at my parents’ place for a few weeks. My homelessness was actually a good thing, at least in this particular situation. My last task of the day had been my final out appointment, ending my time at Fort Drum, which meant I wouldn’t have to deal with the rumor mill and all the bullshit that came with it anymore. New orders, fresh start. In three weeks, just after the new year, I’d be on my way to a new life. In Hawaii, no less. As places to go, that wasn’t too shabby.

Of course, I had to make it through the next three weeks of leave first without going batshit crazy.

However, first I had to get off-post and put Fort Drum in my rearview mirror without bitch-slapping anyone. With my current mood and level of exasperation, that was a tall order. Especially since the universe seemed intent on shoving assholes into my path.

The parking lot of the shoppette was virtually empty when I pulled in and parked, leaving the truck idling while I went inside in a desperate attempt to maintain whatever warmth there was. But, of course, the sole door was blocked by a clusterfuck of soldiers. Assessing the situation, it quickly became apparent that I was witnessing the downfall of humanity, albeit on a smaller scale. It was a tangled mass of camouflage as they all tried to be the first one through the narrow door, successfully creating an obstacle for anyone else trying to go in or out.

If I have to stand in this weather for one minute more than necessary, I’m going to lose my shit. Not one of them noticed me as I approached, which said a lot about their situational awareness. Army 101, something these idiots learned in the first days of basic training... pay attention to your surroundings; keep an eye out for officers. Hey, dipshits. Officer here. Nope. Not a single salute. Nada. They were too busy attempting to sort themselves out. However, they had the average intelligence of a single-celled organism, which meant they were making exactly squat progress.

Excuse me, I said, my annoyance less than subtle. Nothing. I shifted back and forth from one heavily socked and booted foot to the other, praying they got their shit together before I froze to death. I stomped, half to warm up and half to get their attention. Still nothing. For fuck’s sake. Excuse me. My voice was louder, and yet... still nothing. In about two seconds, it was going to get physical because the longer I stood there, doing my interpretation of the mythical yeti in a useless attempt to stay warm, the more pissed off I got.

The temperature dropped steadily, and so did my mood. But even though I was rapidly becoming more and more pissed off, there was a certain irony about it. Heated anger was bullshit. I was mad as hell and still freezing my fucking ass off while the bumblefucks in front of me couldn’t figure out how to walk through a damn door. There was nothing warming about it.

Hey, I said loudly, just shy of a shout. It was like talking to a bowling ball on a deserted island.

I just wanted my damn coffee so I could go home. Resentment rose until it threatened to choke me, angst not created by these assholes but thoroughly exacerbated by them. If not for my no-good, cheating, sack of crap ex-fiancé Cameron Bryant, I wouldn’t have been standing here in the biting cold a week and a half before Christmas. I wouldn’t need coffee to get me through the long drive through falling snow to my parents’ house and the same damn bed I’d gotten when I started high school. A few months ago, I’d have been tucked into my warm car on the way to my own home.

But those days were over. On so many levels, not the least of which was my car. My pride and joy, my little red Mini Cooper that was now compacted into a rectangle a quarter the size it had once been. Because Cameron had wrapped it around a tree after speeding along the dangerous twists and turns of a back road near our hometown.

But had he done any damage to himself or the bitch that had been in the car with him? Of course not. Because that man lived a charmed life... wreaking havoc, screwing over everyone around him, and taking no responsibility for any of it. Ever.

So much for not going there, you idiot. In a moment of ire that that was just as equally directed at me as it was Cam, I slammed my fist into the ice machine next to me. Even through double layers of gloves, it hurt. It was, however, loud as hell and effective in finally attracting the attention of the clueless bumblefucks in front of me. They whipped around to stare at me, their eyes dropping down and widening as they took in my rank. All of a sudden, it was a mad scramble to stand up straight and salute me. And because they were idiots, one of them slipped on the ice, fell, and took the others with him, creating yet another clusterfuck.

I groaned and silence fell, belatedly realizing that I’d accompanied my groan of frustration with a stomp. Like a damn toddler having a temper tantrum. I felt like an idiot. So I tried to play it off as a heat-seeking move by stomping my other foot, too. However, it came a few seconds late to be a natural progression, which led to me looking like an uncoordinated fool and a nutjob. Awesome. But at least it made them finally get their shit together enough to get through the door, if only to get away from me. Fuck it. I had more important things on my mind than whether or not these guys thought I was warped. Especially these guys; even a door confounded them.

Now thoroughly disgruntled, I was seemingly incapable of avoiding the wallowing I’d been trying to avoid. Like the swift downward turn my life had taken recently. As I pulled the biggest coffee cup from the rack, I thought back to the night that had turned my life inside out and upside down. I’d been sound asleep when the phone rang, barely three in the morning, a couple of hours before my alarm was set to go off. It had taken a few rings to get past the groggy fog of sleep, but when I finally managed to answer it, the disembodied voice on the other end told me what had happened, that Cam had been in an accident. I lost it, more so when I realized I had no way to get to him. His car had been in the shop, so he’d taken mine. I was half hysterical when I called one of my friends on post, begging to borrow a car so I could go to him.

That was all I could focus on, getting to Cam. The drive felt like it took hours, every mile that spun out under the tires an eternity. I’d been in a full-blown panic when I finally pushed through the doors of the ER.

That was when everything really went to hell.

That was when I discovered the truth of what had actually happened. And once I did? I was dangerously close to changing his medical status from stable to critical. As it turned out, Cam hadn’t been alone in the car. Despite the text he’d sent me hours earlier, he hadn’t been out with the boys from high school for one last night on the town before he left for training camp. Instead, he’d been out with some woman, and she’d been in the car with him.

And it wasn’t really just some woman. It was Natalie Baldwin... my best friend. Or rather, I’d been her best friend, but she sure as hell hadn’t been mine. The person I’d loved like a sister since preschool had been screwing my fiancé since high school. It had been an on-and-off thing for a long time. Until three years ago, when it had really become a thing. And I’d been too damn stupid to see it.

I still wasn’t sure which pissed me off more... that Cam had cheated on me or that Nat had been the other woman. Either way, I’d lost my fiancé, my best friend, and my car in one single, heart-wrenching moment. It had been three and a half months, and I still cycled between despair, anger, and hurt. Jesus. I need to get a grip. Neither one of them was worth the crap I put myself through.

Pressing a lid on my coffee, I turned to go the checkout. But the herd of idiots from the door were back in action by the cash registers. Seriously? Apparently, the concept of a line and one at a time were too much for them. They seemed to think that somehow they were all going to be pay simultaneously, which was fundamentally impossible, considering they vastly outnumbered the two cashiers currently on station. I contemplated a variety of violent acts against them, figuring I could use the stress release. But I was not in the mood to be arrested. Nor was I in the mood to be trampled by the stampeded. So I hung back, figuring I’d been figuratively trampled more than enough lately. I didn’t need to do it for real.

Eventually, the herd thinned, leaving both cashiers looking harried by the experience. I paid for my coffee and a small paper bag that held a trio of pepper jack tornadoes. Healthy the taquitos were not; comfort food they were, and necessary for both my mood and the impending drive to my parents’ house.

A blast of cold air slammed into me as I left the warmth of the shoppette. But it meant I could fool myself yet again that the truck was warm, so I’d count it as a win. Another win was that the snow had finally begun to slow.

It took very little to get a tick in the win column these days; I was that desperate.

Reaching for my phone, I sent a quick text to my mom, letting her know I was about to leave post and embark on my journey home. I’d barely managed to buckle my seatbelt when the theme song from Game of Thrones filled the cab.

I smiled as I read it. Okay, sweetie. Be careful on the roads. I bought you a couple of pizzas. I figured you’d probably had that kind of day. Bought you a bottle of wine, too.

My mother knew me so well. After answering her with heartfelt thanks and sincere love, I threw my dad’s truck in reverse and began the long drive home.

CHAPTER TWO

––––––––

I should have bought two. I was still thirty miles short of my parents’ place when I sucked down the last dregs of my coffee. The wind and snow had picked up, making the drive take a shit ton longer than usual. By the time I got to the outskirts of town, I was driving slower than death, and the road was more of a suggestion than a visible reality. I pretty much drove by muscle memory. Even though it was barely six in the evening, it was already as dark as midnight when I finally pulled into the driveway. The house was dark, too, save for the porch light and the glow of the Christmas tree in the living room.

After only falling twice on the way, I trudged up the steps and across the porch. Stomping snow and ice off my boots, I went inside. Instantly, I was attacked and almost driven back outside. It was Jake, my father’s ginormous Old English Sheepdog, currently the love of my life as he was the only male not related that loved me unconditionally. My furry boyfriend danced with excitement, ruffing with joy, until he barreled over me yet again with the strength of his love. The dog was within shouting distance of a hundred pounds, but he was under the misguided notion that he was the size of a chihuahua, like Maleficent, my mother’s spoiled rotten dog. Far more dignified, she sat in the foyer a few feet away, eying Jake with what looked like canine disdain. Jake could give two shits.

It took Herculean effort to get him off me long enough to divest myself of my layers of gear. When I finally did, the two dogs trotted along beside me as I padded through the silent house to the kitchen, heading for the fridge and the promised bottle of wine. My name was spelled out across the freezer. Three rows of Harper in multicolored alphabet magnets above two fish magnets, tails up, side by side. On the fridge door were three shocking pink Post-Its and three neon green ones. The green ones were arrows drawn in bright red marker, posted in an arc so that they pointed at the cluster of pink notes. Because the neon wasn’t enough. Nor were the cluster of NHL-themed arranged in a circle around the entire thing. I’m gonna guess they left me a message.

The first of the pink sticky notes informed me that Max was at the Winter Ball at the high school and wouldn’t be back until the next afternoon. The second one made me giggle. It was in my dad’s writing, unlike the other two. Great minds think alike. Brought home a bottle of wine for you, too. Don’t get too drunk. The last note reminded me that my parents were out, too, at my dad’s office Christmas party. My parents—hell, my little brother—had far more active social lives than I did. Of course, since