The Comfort of Favorite Things (A Hope Springs Novel) (12 page)

“Right. I’m Lena Mining. I work at Bliss,” she said, gesturing that direction with her thumb.

“Dakota Keller.” He held out his hand. “I work wherever my brother sends me.”

She frowned, as if parsing out his words, but she did shake his hand. “Your brother. So he’s the boss? The one I’d want to talk to about a job?”

“You can talk to me.”

She thought about that for a moment, then asked, “Do you only do commercial work? Like the stuff here for Bread and Bean?”

“Nope,” he said, unlocking his truck box and setting his tape measure inside before retrieving the case for his saw. “We do it all,” he added, hearing the snap of a smartphone camera and turning. “Can I help you with something?”

She turned her phone toward him and showed him the photo of the sign on his door. “Just grabbing your contact info.”

“I think I’ve got a card somewhere if you want it. Probably on the visor. Or the glove box.”

“This I won’t lose, but thanks,” she said, turning away with a frown, then turning back with a quick, “Nice to meet you.”

“You, too,” he said, thinking this job had put him in the path of some of the most interesting women he’d ever run across in his life.

Needing a break from the drama of Dakota Keller, as much as she needed something new to read, Thea had parked in front of Bread and Bean once she’d arrived in town. Instead of going inside, however, she’d started walking. She was hungry and wished Butters Bakery sold more than sweets, but it was either a cookie or a chocolate bonbon from Bliss. She opted for the cookies, one oatmeal raisin and one peanut butter, figuring at least she’d get some fiber and protein with her sugar and fat.

The cookies kept her busy for the several blocks walk to Cat Tales. The new-and-used bookstore was one of her favorite discoveries after moving to Hope Springs. She could understand why the resident tabby found the place the perfect home. Browsing the shelves gave her time to think about the morning’s failed breakfast with Dakota and his sister, and to remember how, during their early teen years, she’d shamelessly used her friend to get to her brother.

She’d loved being around Indiana because she was so . . . normal. Even with weird hippie parents as examples growing up, Indiana had never been brainwashed by their propaganda. She’d always thought for herself, known what she wanted, and gone after it. Thea had envied that. She’d been absolutely without goals—except Dakota.

At first, it had been a conquest thing; every girl she’d known had had a crush on Dakota Keller. Later, she’d wanted him for a grippingly honest reason: never in her life had she had a better friend. She’d been able to talk to him about things she wouldn’t have felt comfortable saying to his sister. She’d told him the truth about her problems at home, her problems at school—all of which she’d hidden behind her bad-girl façade. Not once had she worried he’d use her confessions against her, or throw her admissions into her face.

Then again, he’d been just as forthcoming talking to her.

That had been then.

Now just being in the same room with him was enough to make her want to crawl out of her skin. Or to be less dramatic . . . the comfort was gone. Completely. He made her nervous. He made her sweaty and itchy and jumpy. If he’d been anyone else, she would’ve left him to his work and written a check when it was done.

But Dakota Keller had always been one of her favorite things. And she hadn’t realized how much she’d missed having access to his ear and his shoulder until she’d looked up from her blueprint that first morning and found a grown-up version of the boy she’d known looking down.

Why did things have to change? Why did his choice to go after his sister’s attacker have to screw up everything they’d had? Except she’d been equally at fault, hadn’t she?

She hadn’t gone to see him in prison.

She hadn’t tried to find him after his release.

She hadn’t trusted her instincts when they’d screamed that Todd would never be Dakota, even though they’d shared the same body type, the same coloring, the same dry sense of humor . . . even if the temperament she’d
thought
similar, well . . . Could she possibly have been more wrong?

Yes, Dakota had it in him to be violent. But not like Todd. Never like Todd.

Enough.

The day was paint-by-numbers gorgeous, and the sun tempting, so she veered off the sidewalk and through the entrance to the small city park she’d walked by earlier. She had a new-to-her Megan Chance novel to read, and indulging in a few pages now before having to see Dakota again was just what the doctor ordered.

So what if she was self-medicating?

Heading for the closest bench as she flipped through the book, she looked up just in time to avoid a collision with a woman pushing a stroller. The little girl waving her arms in excitement was probably a year old, though Thea was really bad with ages. The woman—

Thea found herself smiling. “I know you.”

Frowning, the little girl’s mother looked over. “You do?”

“I’m sorry. That was so rude. I’m Thea Clark,” she said, her book closing on one hand as she offered the other. “I’m opening Bread and Bean on Fourth Street.”

“The coffee shop, right?” The woman shook Thea’s hand warmly. “My husband’s firm is doing work for you I think.”

“Right. You’re Kaylie Keller.”

“Yes. Good grief.” Kaylie pressed her fingers to her forehead. “I’m usually much better at introductions. Motherhood has made mush of my brain. I’m so sorry.”

“I started us off on the wrong foot,” Thea said, following Kaylie to the bench where they both sat. “My fault.”

Nodding toward Thea’s book, Kaylie said, “I guess you’ve been to Cat Tales.”

Thea waved it casually. “I needed something to take my mind off the construction.”

Kaylie frowned. “It’s not going well?”

“Oh, no. Everything’s fine.”
Way to go. Stepping without looking again.
The woman’s husband was doing the work, for goodness sake. “I’m just hearing hammering and sawing in my sleep.”

Kaylie laughed, reaching into her daughter’s diaper bag for her chirping phone. “Having gone through a Keller Construction project myself, I can totally relate.”

Tennessee had remodeled Kaylie’s three-story Victorian, turning the bottom floor into Two Owls Café. That was how the couple had met. That was when they’d fallen in love. Thea knew all this from gossip, but there was absolutely no correlation to Dakota building out Thea’s espresso bar.

None at all. “I need to get back, but can I ask you something? Before I go?”

“Sure.” Kaylie scanned the text message, then blanked her phone’s screen and tucked it away. “What is it?”

How best to put this . . . “Do you know why Dakota’s thinking of leaving Hope Springs?”

“What?” Kaylie’s gaze narrowed. “Leaving? Dakota?”

And once more with the big mouth
. “I thought you probably knew. He mentioned having told Tennessee. I just assumed . . . Sorry. I shouldn’t have said anything.”

“I’m glad you did,” Kaylie said, bending at her daughter’s shout to retrieve a toy dangling against the stroller. “Tennessee doesn’t usually keep secrets from me.”

“I’m sure he has a good reason,” Thea said, though she wasn’t sure of anything of the sort.

“Oh, I’m sure he does. Like wanting to deal with it on his own because he doesn’t like to rely on anyone.” Kaylie rubbed at her forehead again. “That seems to be a family trait with the siblings.”

Because they’d had no one else to rely on growing up. “Have you met their parents?”

“Actually, no. They’ve been overseas since Tennessee and I married. I’ve heard plenty of stories, though.”

“Then you probably understand why said siblings tend to think they have to figure things out on their own.”

Kaylie shrugged. “Tennessee and I almost never disagree, you know? We get along so perfectly it’s frightening. But when we do, ninety percent of the time it’s because he doesn’t want to talk about his brother when I ask what’s going on with him or how he’s doing.”

Thea frowned. “You mean with the work?”

“With anything. With everything.” Kaylie glanced over. “It was Indiana
who hired a PI to find him. Not Tennessee. Did you know that?”

Thea shook her head absently, brushing at her bangs the wind had teased into her eyes. “Does Tennessee feel bad about that? Like he should’ve been the one to do it or something?”

“I don’t know. He won’t say.” Kaylie pressed her legs together, her hands laced tightly in her lap. “I imagine on some level he does, though once Indiana told him, he was onboard. He insisted on paying half the expenses.”

“That’s got to be good.”

“It is. And I know he loves him. There’s just something between them that seems to need settling,” she said with a sigh, then shaking her head. “For some reason they can’t get there. I can’t figure out why.”

Thea had a feeling . . . “Is it Indiana’s assault?”

“It’s the only thing that makes sense.”

“I imagine that’s hard for them to deal with. Having been there at the time it happened. Not knowing and unable to stop it.” Her chest tight, Thea glanced toward the playground as a boy James’s age flew giggling off the end of the slide. “And it’s got to be even worse for Indiana, seeing her brothers butting heads over something that happened to her.”

“I think about that all the time,” Kaylie said, shuddering, on the verge
of tears. “It keeps me awake nights, when Tennessee and I have argued.
I
just don’t know how they can do this to their sister. This rift . . . These men . . . They’ve got to repair it before it ruins the rest of their lives.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

D
akota stared at the chalk outline of the barista station he’d drawn on Bread and Bean’s floor, his thoughts split into two columns. One a list of things he needed to say to his sister. The other, twice as long, the explanations he owed Thea. Across the top of the mental page he’d scrawled the question of the day:
What in the hell is wrong with you
?

He wasn’t ready to say that inviting Thea to breakfast had been a mistake. He was glad she and his sister were once again on each other’s radar. If nothing else came of this morning, there was that. What he hated was Thea being caught in the middle of his issues with Indiana. She’d been his sister’s friend, if not as close as some, and yeah, because of him, they’d fallen out of touch.

One more thing to add to the list of wrongs he needed to make up for. It was going to take the rest of his life.

At the sound of the front door opening, he glanced over his shoulder to see Manny walking in. Dakota didn’t even give the door a chance to close or Manny a chance to speak before he jumped. “Please tell me you’ve lined up more help for Tennessee.” Knowing he could leave after this job was probably the only way he’d get through it.

“I’ve got a couple of guys I’ll be able to send him to talk to. If you’re sure about this.”

Dakota stayed where he was, arms crossed, as Manny made his way to the makeshift coffee station, stepping through the chalked lines of Dakota’s visual aid, and helped himself to a cup. “I am,” he said, though even he noticed the hesitation and doubt that had Manny staring at him over the edge of his cup as steam from the coffee rose like a fog between them.

“Not quite sure I heard that right,” Manny said, then blew over the surface and sipped. “Did you say you’re still thinking about it?”

Funny man. “What I’m thinking about is the placement of the barista station you’re standing in the middle of,” he said, nodding toward the sketch he’d made on the floor.

“Didn’t you hash all this out with the owner?” Manny asked, frowning as he glanced from the station’s shell sitting across the room to the chalk dust his feet had stirred up.

“We’re working from the original contractor’s specs, but I’m wondering if Becca might want more room.” He stepped to the other side of the drawing and faced the door. “We could give her another foot without impeding the flow of traffic.”

Manny sipped again, then shrugged. “Works for me, but then I’m just the manpower guy. You want me to have Tennessee talk to these guys now, or are you not ready to hit him with the fact that you’re leaving?”

“He knows,” Dakota said. “Might as well set up the interviews.” Then through the front door’s glass, he caught a glimpse of Thea on the sidewalk. Nothing else mattered after that. “Give me a minute, will ya? There’s a bag with a couple of kolaches in the kitchen if you need something to go with your coffee.”

“Thanks,” Manny said, turning that way as Dakota headed for the door, his heart hammering, his throat tight.

Thea had parked in one of the shop’s angled spaces and was standing in front of her car, her hands in her pockets, her shoulders hunched. She was staring across the street, at what he didn’t know, and though she would’ve heard him come out, she had yet to acknowledge him. He didn’t think that was a very good sign.

“Can we talk about this morning?” he asked as he stopped beside her. Might as well get it out of the way.

“I don’t think so,” she said, doing nothing to hide her sarcasm. “I mean, this morning’s in the past, right? And we don’t talk about that.”

Yeah, okay. He deserved that. “Give me a break, Clark. I’m no better at this getting reacquainted business than you are. And I’m sorry.”

She turned then, her head cocked as she looked at him. “What if we just call off the agreement? If the past comes up in conversation, so be it. Will that make you happy?”

Happy enough to stay? Was that what she was asking? He wasn’t thrilled with her suggestion, but . . . “I don’t want to argue with you. Or fight with you. If the trade-off is the occasional trip down memory lane, I can deal with that.”

“For as long as you’re here, you mean.”

“I’m offering an olive branch. A white flag. Whatever you need it to be.”

He watched her purse her lips, then fight against a grin, though almost
as quickly she grew pensive. “You know what our problem is, don’t you?”

He didn’t, though he was sure she was going to enlighten him.

“Unfinished business.”

“How so?” he asked, frowning.

“We never broke up.”

O . . . kay. “Come again?”

She moved to lean against the front of her car, her hands on the hood at her hips. “We had a crazy night of sex. Or a night of crazy sex. Then you left. I never saw you again, or heard from you again, until a few days ago when I looked up and there you were. We’ve spent more than a decade and many many miles apart without closure. And that after being together constantly for two years. We need that. Closure.”

He stared at her, waiting for more but that seemed to be it. He couldn’t think of anything to ask but the obvious. “So you want to break up now?”

She nodded. “I think we should.”

He was struggling really hard not to laugh as he played along. “You know we weren’t ever officially going out. I didn’t ask you to be my old lady or anything.”

“Doesn’t matter,” she said. “I told everyone that you had.”

“That so?” he asked, unable to keep a straight face. “No wonder Debbie Hollis wouldn’t have anything to do with me.”

“Debbie Hollis?” she asked, scrunching up her nose. “Seriously?”

He shrugged. “Cheerleaders have always been one of my favorite things.”

“Somehow I don’t quite believe you.”

“When have I ever lied to you?” he asked, then immediately wanted to grab back the words.

Thea looked at him with those eyes that saw everything, that gave no quarter. “You told me you’d write me from prison. You never did.”

Well, hell. He hadn’t expected that to come back and bite him. “I was busy. I couldn’t think of anything to say.”

“That’s just dumb.”

“Which part?” Because the second was the absolute truth. “I studied. I worked out. I ate and I slept and got really good at making the right friends.”

“You could’ve told me about that. How you went about it. What you looked for.” She stopped, then she snorted at whatever thought she’d just had. “I could’ve used the help.”

She was talking about her ex. He was certain. But that didn’t change anything about what he’d had to do to survive. “It was another world in there, Clark. Nothing else existed. I couldn’t let it. I had to shut out everything I’d known to get through. It was hard even to see Tennessee and Indiana when they would come, and my parents the few times they did. I needed to be the brother they knew. But I’d left him at the door when I went inside.”

Unexpectedly, she reached for his hand, rubbing her thumb over his knuckles and the remnants of the tattoos there. “What was here? What did it say?”

The tats had been crude, the ink not as deep as it would’ve been if professionally done. He’d had the letters removed with a laser, though had kept the dot beneath each one as a reminder. “It said ‘wait.
’
”

“Like waiting for something?”

He nodded because that was true, too. Waiting to get out. Waiting to see her again. At least until he’d changed his mind and hit the road. “More like not being stupid and rushing into something without thinking about it.”

“Would waiting have made a difference? With Robby and what happened?”

A question with no answer, so he shrugged. “I’m a lot more patient now than I was then. I guess it worked.”

She squeezed his fingers once then let go, pushing off the car with a shudder as if she needed to get away from the time he’d served and all that it meant.

“You okay?” he asked.

She nodded. “I think I’m still hungry.”

He couldn’t help himself. “I hear Malina’s makes a mean egg taco.”

“Gee, thanks. I wouldn’t know.”

And he’d downed enough for both of them. “You should’ve told me you hadn’t eaten. I just sent Manny into the kitchen for the rest of the kolaches.”

She looked at him, one brow arched. “There were some left?”

“I ate mine and Indiana’s. I saved your three for you.”

“Aw,” she said, punching lightly at his shoulder. “That’s so sweet.”

“Then all is forgiven?” He hoped.

But she shook her head. “Not a chance.”

At the sound of the kitchen door opening, Becca looked up expecting Thea, since she was late. Or even Dakota, since he went through more coffee than anyone she’d ever known.

What she got instead was the man who’d told her caffeine would help her breathe. The man responsible for her being unable to. The man who’d asked her questions she’d fallen into answering as if she’d opened a vein.

That wasn’t going to happen today.

He stopped near the kitchen’s front stainless-steel work counter, and hands at his hips, looked around. Usually by this time bread for the house would be rising there, but Ellie hadn’t made it in yet, so Becca had taken advantage of the quiet kitchen to bake.

“Dakota said there might be some leftover kolaches back here,” the man finally said.

“There might be. There might not.” Because two and a half of the three that had been in the sack Dakota had left on said counter were now in her stomach. She finished centering the third cake layer on the other two she’d already iced together before looking up. “Sack’s there at your elbow.”

He frowned into the bag that held the remaining kolache half. Then he shrugged and reached inside. “Beggars can’t be choosers.”

“You’re just full of all sorts of wisdom, aren’t you?” she asked, bending to eyeball the cake. It was as level as it was going to get, so she reached for the bowl of icing, scooping out what she’d need to cover the top before moving on to the sides.

The man with the devil in his eye and the smile that chewed away at her resolve came closer, coffee in one hand, the last remaining bite of the kolache in the other. He ate it while she worked, watching her closely. She didn’t like being watched. Not by anyone.

But she refused to let his attention get to her. She knew what she was doing. She was as comfortable frosting a cake as Ellie was kneading a loaf of bread, as Frannie was caring for her boys, as Thea was running the show.

She spun the cake on its stand and started in frosting the sides.

“That smells really good.”

“I know,” she said, the cinnamon, sugar, and vanilla aromas hard to ignore.

“It looks really good, too,” he said, stepping back to set his empty coffee cup in the sink and toss the ball of the paper sack in the trash.

“I know.”

“Is it for a special occasion?”

“Eating,” she said, getting a perverse pleasure out of the tit for tat, and waiting for him to come right out and ask for a slice.

But he took a different tack instead. “You train professionally? Through some classes or something? Decorating and baking?”

She shook her head and spun the cake another turn, her spatula smoothing the icing layer. “I learned from my father. He started working in a bakery as a dishwasher and by the time I was in high school, he was decorating cakes.”

“From the ground up then. For both of you.”

“You could say that, I guess.”

“So what’s the occasion? Somebody’s birthday or something?”

Besides having a few extra bucks to buy the hummingbird cake’s ingredients? And struck with the urge to splurge after pawning the belt buckle she’d stolen from her cowboy ex?

She didn’t know why she’d held on to it for so long. Maybe it was just enjoying the knowledge that he’d loved it, he’d bragged about it, he’d shown it off everywhere they’d gone, and now he didn’t have it anymore.

Neither did she know what had had her digging it from the bottom of her dresser drawer. But something had finally pushed her to ditch it. Something she couldn’t put a finger on, though that something was in no way related to thoughts she’d had for days now about the man standing in front of her.

She wasn’t that oxygen-deprived. “No occasion. Just in the mood to bake.”

“You going to cut it soon? I mean, if you’re not taking it to a potluck or saving it for any particular reason and it’s just for eating,” he said, and she swore she heard his stomach grumble.

She reached for the bag of shredded coconut and sprinkled a handful over the cake’s top. The recipe called for macadamia nuts, but she couldn’t justify the cost when coconut alone would do. “I thought it would be a nice surprise for after dinner.”

“I think it would make a nice breakfast.”

“It would, wouldn’t it?” She bit down on a grin. “I’ll definitely have a slice tomorrow.”

“I wouldn’t mind having a slice today.” Another, louder growl. “If you need a taste tester—”

“I don’t—”

“Or you just want to feed a hungry man who’s only had half a stale kolache all day. One who can’t remember the last time he had a piece of cake fresh from the oven.”

Now he was just playing on her sympathies. Except she’d lost most of those long before she’d pawned the belt buckle. Which didn’t explain why she was looking at the finished cake and trying to decide the best place to start cutting.