Read Paradise Wild (Wild At Heart Book 2) for Free Online

yeah? More winter visitors come after Thanksgiving and Christmas.”
    “Are you from here?”
    “Upcountry.”
    “Where’s Upcountry?”
    The driver pointed left, toward the enormous, distant volcano. “Up there. Up Haleakala.”
    “That’s Haleakala? I thought it would be higher.”
    “Ten thousand feet. Just looks short from far away.”
    “Does it get snow?”
    “Sometimes. They close the roads if there’s ice.” The driver was silent for a while. “You heard about the changes on Maui? We have Target and T.J. Maxx now.”
    Ellie stared at her. “You didn’t have them before?”
    “They’re new. Big grand opening last year. Traffic was crazy.”
    Ellie thought about Bay Area traffic jams and took in the intermittent cars passing them in the opposite direction. Maui must have a different definition of congestion.
    The driver pointed at the wide, red-dirt fields on either side of the highway. “No more sugar cane. This year’s the last harvest. The company’s closing down. No more sugar from Hawaii.”
    Ellie stared at the vast openness, empty except for weeds. “What are they going to use the land for?”
    “Don’t know. It’s, like, thirty-six thousand acres. They say maybe agriculture. Lots of people lost their jobs.” The driver shrugged. “Could be dust storms later. Or maybe they’ll build houses.”
    At the agency’s main office, Ellie gripped Viv’s leash tightly as a different attendant than her driver disappeared to get her car. Viv stalked back and forth along the pavement, antsy since his glimpse of the office fish tank. He stopped and cocked his head at a high-pitched engine squeak from around the corner. Salt-glazed headlights preceded a cracked hood, mottled roof, and dingy tires. Ellie’s eyebrows fell.
    “ This is my car?”
    “Two-thousand ten Nissan Sentra. Yeah.” The attendant gazed at Ellie placidly, seemingly used to a less than ebullient initial reaction.
    Maui sun beat down on white paint that had never seen the gloss of a wax job. She opened the door. The interior looked okay. The dashboard had been recently polished. Viv pushed past her, leapt on the seat, stretched toward the headrest, and began sharpening his claws on the upholstery.
    “No. Bad cat.” Ellie scooped him into her arms.
    “You want an upgrade?” The attendant held up his clipboard.
    Devora’s admonition not to go crazy with the business credit card rang in Ellie’s mind.
    “No. I’m sure it runs fine.” Her eyes shifted from the paint to the wheels. “Right?”
    “Yeah. And if it breaks down, you call us 24/7. We come anywhere on island. Give you a new one.”
    Ellie pulled slowly out of the lot. “Somehow, Viv, his words weren’t exactly reassuring.”
    Viv meowed.
    “Got it. First things first. Food.”
    After a detour to a grocery store that could have come straight out of the Midwest, Ellie set her phone’s GPS for Dr. Lovejoy’s house. Her mood brightened as she cruised at twenty miles an hour past palm trees, open air restaurants, beach parks, barefooted men carrying surfboards across crosswalks, and a sapphire ocean that stretched to the horizon.
    “Welcome to paradise, Viv.”
    She watched the laid-back beach town atmosphere of South Kihei gradually transform into the manicured, high-end hotel atmosphere of Wailea. The road widened. Instead of a straight shot past restaurants, public parks, and condominiums, it wound languidly between golf courses and tall hedges above which peeped grand roofs. The ocean views disappeared behind gated, beachfront properties. Cars were larger and drove faster.
    As their destination grew closer, her heart raced. She pointed at the enormous monkey-pod trees shading the road. “This, Viv, is what money looks like. Tough, I know. But we’ve got to get used to it.”
    The directions pointed her to a narrow road heading toward the beach. Ellie slowed to ten miles an hour, reminding herself that there would never be another first time to drive up to