The Comfort of Favorite Things (A Hope Springs Novel) (21 page)

Aw, hell.

“Long time no see,” he said as she reached the steps.

“I had lunch with your sister today,” she said in way of greeting.

He didn’t know why that came as a surprise. “And lunch took all afternoon?”

“Kaylie was there,” she said. “And Luna.”

“That would explain it,” he said, adding as casually as he could, “Nice hair, by the way.”

“Thanks.” She crossed her arms on the porch steps handrail. “I decided a lunch date deserved a little effort.”

He lifted his bottle and drank, then backhanded his wrist over his mouth. “I see where I rate.”

“You are not a lunch date. You’re the hired help.”

“Right.”

She sighed, then propped her chin on top of her arms. “Do you ever feel as if the universe is trying to tell you something?”

“How so?”

“Every time I turn around it seems like someone is telling me to stop worrying about the past and pay attention to the present, yet the past is so much a part of my present, I don’t think I can.”

“Want a beer?” he asked because he didn’t want to comment on her observation. It cut a little too close to home.

She shook her head, pushed off the handrail, and came closer. “No thanks.”

“I’ve got tequila inside,” he said, jerking his chin that way.

“I don’t drink anymore.”

Well. This was interesting. “Because of the ex?”

“Because I like having a clear head.”

“To think about the past?”

She shot him a look, then climbed the steps and sat beside him. “How was your day?”

“This is what we’re doing now? Sharing the events of our days?”

“Why not? We’re friends.”

Friends. “I thought that was a couple’s thing. Man comes home after a hard day at the office, listens to the little woman tell him her woes.”

“That has to be the most sexist thing I’ve ever heard,” she said, smacking him on the shoulder before leaning back on her elbows and lifting her face to what was left of the sun.

Dakota chuckled, staring at the steps between his feet instead of at the length of her neck. But it was her neck that he saw. Her neck that he couldn’t get out of his mind. Her neck, and the way her hair fell to drag against the porch, and the smooth skin of her chest above her shirt’s neckline, and her breasts beneath the fabric . . .

Aw, hell.

He leaned away from her to set his bottle on the porch, and then he leaned toward her because he couldn’t help himself any longer. He’d been thinking about kissing her for weeks now. He probably thought about it a dozen times every day. It was hard not to when she was within reach again and he’d known her so well way back when.

Before she could open her eyes, he slid his forearm beneath her neck, bracing himself as he hovered over her. Her lips parted as if to speak, and then she looked at him, there above her. She blinked, her lashes fluttering, as if trying to clear him from her sight. He waited. He didn’t want to scare her, or make her uncomfortable.

Finally she rested her head on his arm and reached up with one hand, raking her fingers into his hair and along his skull. Her wrist scraped over his cheek, and he rubbed against her, then turned enough for his lips to find the heel of her palm. He kissed her there, nipping lightly at the muscle as he lowered his gaze from hers to her mouth.

Still he waited, wanting to get this right. Her nostrils flared briefly, and her chest rose with her quick, rapid breaths, and then the tiniest sound escaped her mouth. A moan, a sad one, as if she were giving up instead of giving in, and he hesitated, lifting his head just enough to signal his intent to put a stop to what had never really started.

He was not going to screw this up. He was not going to give her a single regret.

“Stay.” She whispered the word, and it wasn’t the least bit sad.

“Only if you’re sure.”

“I am,” she said, nodding as she did. “It’s been so long. Years. Forever. My whole life.”

It seemed that way to him, too. But the second his lips touched hers he forgot all the time he’d waited and fell into the moment, all of it so familiar and yet completely new. Her lips were soft, and she took no time parting them; her tongue had found his within moments.

He didn’t press, keeping things on an even keel, one he could deal with without losing his mind, though he feared he was looking at a lost cause. This was Thea, not one of the other women he’d had the pleasure to know during the years he’d been unable to face home.

She slid her tongue along his, then pulled away to tug at his lower lip and breathe. His heart had swelled until his chest hurt with it, and the pounding had reached the base of his skull. He wanted to blame the beer. Damn, he wanted to blame the beer. But he couldn’t.

It had been this way with them every time. And the fact that nothing had changed left him feeling punched. He hurt with what she made him feel as her lips played over his, her teeth catching him lightly, her tongue hot and wet and wistful as she swept it through his mouth.

He pushed harder against her because it was what he had to do. He’d never thought he’d have her again. Not this way. Not outside of the past he remembered as if it were yesterday, not when they hadn’t been teenagers and life hadn’t gone to hell. They weren’t teenagers now.

Thea loved him with her mouth as if he mattered, as if nothing else did, and he loved her back the same, telling her with his hand sliding down to her hip what it was like to know her again, with his fingers at her cheek and her jaw how much he’d missed her, how he’d wanted for so long to open the door and find her there. With his mouth, how he hadn’t realized any of this until just this very moment. He sighed then, and lifted his head. Trouble. They were in so very much.

“What was that?” she finally asked him, having spent the seconds since their parting blowing out long, slow breaths.

“It’s been a while since I’ve done it, but I’m pretty sure it was a kiss,” he said.

“That wasn’t any kiss I’ve ever known.”

“I hope that’s a good thing.”

She didn’t respond to that, saying instead, “It’s only good if we’re not heading into a relationship. I don’t think either one of us is ready for that.”

Yeah. He’d pretty much known that when he’d started. “You’re getting a little deep on me, Clark. I was just having fun.”

“And you’re forgetting how well I know you. You don’t do anything for fun. Not anymore.”

The thing of it was, she was right. About both. The fun part wasn’t a big deal; he could live with it. Having Thea Clark knowing him as well as she did . . .

Aw, hell.

CHAPTER TWENTY

B
aking bread with Ellie Brass turned out to be a great way to spend a Saturday. Lena learned things about the science of food she’d never even imagined. Ellie knew everything. How different ingredients reacted when barely whisked together. How they reacted when heartily stirred. How baking soda and baking powder were not the same thing. How salt that wasn’t even noticeable made things taste so much better.

Frannie and her boys were in and out as she did laundry and other chores. James helped as much as he could, and when Ellie had downtime waiting for loaves to rise, she scoured the kitchen. Lena helped, though it bothered Ellie for some reason that she did. Ellie said Lena was a guest and guests didn’t need to clean. Lena insisted she was a friend and friends pitched in whenever and where ever they could.

It seemed a foreign concept to Ellie, which had Lena wondering yet again what the other woman had been through that had left her so insecure, and so fearful that she wasn’t doing enough. As if her own needs weren’t important, but she was responsible for meeting those of everyone around her. Something had gone very wrong in her life. Something Lena wondered if she’d ever be able to work her way past.

“When did you start baking? How did you figure out how to do all of this?” she asked with a wave of her arm, encompassing the cooling loaves and those that were rising and the table loaded down with oats and seeds and honey and a half dozen types of flour. “Because I am so totally impressed.”

“I worked in a bakery after losing my teaching job,” Ellie said with a shrug. “It’s not a big deal. Lots of people bake. But I don’t know anyone who can make candy.”

“I don’t make the candy,” Lena reminded her. “That’s all Callum.”

“Still, you know how it’s done.” Ellie tossed the long braid of her hair over her shoulder before bending to tap a wooden spoon on the top of a loaf ready to come out of the oven. “You could probably wing it if you had to.”

Leaning against the counter in front of the sink, Lena laughed. “Not a chance. What Callum does is art. Just like what you do is art. And I’m dying for a slice of that art, all buttery and warm.”

Ellie closed the oven door and gestured toward the table with the spoon she still held. “The honey wheat is cool enough to slice. Is that okay?”

“I’ll be happy with anything. Trust me. And it’s even better knowing you made it.”

Avoiding Lena’s gaze, Ellie set down the spoon and dug for a serrated bread knife in a drawer. Her smile was weak and nervous. “You don’t have to say that.”

“I know I don’t have to,” Lena said, hating how hard it was for Ellie to accept a compliment, and wondering again how such an accomplished woman had been stripped of her confidence. It was bullshit, whatever had been done to her. “I want to because I mean it.”

“You’re just being sweet—”

“No, Ellie,” Lena said, frustrated, and reaching for the other woman’s wrist. “I’m serious. I think it’s incredible—”

And then she stopped because Ellie had dropped the knife and was doing her best to pull down her sleeve and cover her forearm where Lena still held her. Lena looked down, her gaze drawn to Ellie’s burn scars she’d noticed the day they’d met.

She took Ellie’s other hand in hers to stop her. “I’m sorry that happened to you. I’m sorry you were hurt.”

“I didn’t want you to see.” The words came out on a whisper, Ellie’s eyes red and watery and sad. “It’s a souvenir of a relationship I’m never going to get rid of. The souvenir, I mean, though sometimes I wonder if the relationship won’t haunt me for the rest of my life.”

“It won’t if you don’t let it,” Lena said, then added because she needed to be one hundred percent certain: “Shitty boyfriends suck.”

Ellie took a long moment to respond, holding Lena’s gaze, her own searching and nervous as she said, “So do shitty girlfriends.”

And now she was. Certain. Lena swallowed. “Yeah. A lot of people don’t get that.”

“Right?” Ellie said, shaking now, her breathing ragged. “Like one woman can’t beat the crap out of another. One she swears she loves while she’s still holding the flashlight responsible for the blood dripping from the other’s forehead.”

“Ellie. Crap. Let me see,” Lena said, reaching up to brush aside Ellie’s bangs. “Oh, man. Oh, baby.” Swallowing so much hurt she thought she would choke from it, Lena outlined the V-shaped gouge of a scar with her finger, a touch so light she could barely feel Ellie’s skin.

Ellie shivered, and the tears in her eyes fell silently, streaking her cheeks. “I’m sorry you didn’t know me before all of this. I was so much more fun then.”

Lena thought she might explode with the rage burning through her like a lit rocket. “What’re you talking about? There’s nothing wrong with this you. Nothing at all.”

“Besides the fact that I can’t walk without bumping into people because I’m looking over my shoulder? Or that I can’t live on my own because I can’t afford windows with bulletproof glass? I can’t get a job that pays enough for cheese to go with my bread because I need the protection of Thea’s network in case I need to run?”

“Why would you need to run?” Lena asked, frowning as she absorbed all that Ellie had just told her, truths Lena couldn’t imagine anyone outsid
e of this house knowing.

Ellie shook her head, her braid falling forward. “You don’t want to know.”

“Yeah. I do.” That was one thing she needed Ellie to understand. “But you don’t have to tell me. I can respect needing to keep some things to yourself.”

“Do you have them? Things you don’t want anyone else finding out?”

Lena looked down at her hands still holding Ellie’s, at the scar at the base of her thumb. Most of her scars ran deeper, but this one was easier to talk about. “My mother did this to me,” she said, pulling one hand free to point. “It’s my reminder of how someone you’ve known all your life can turn out to be someone you didn’t know at all.”

“I guess I misunderstood,” Ellie said, frowning. “I thought you and your mother were close.”

“We are close.”

“But if she did this—”

“It was an accident. She was trying to save me from my father. Save us both, really.”

“Your father was abusive?”

Abusive wasn’t a strong enough word. “My father was a monster. My mother didn’t know it when she married him. She didn’t know it when they had me. I didn’t know it the years she worked and he stayed home and cooked me breakfast and got me to school. Not for the first few anyway.”

“Maybe he wasn’t a monster then. Did something happen?”

Lena shrugged, remembering things she didn’t want to remember. “He lost his job. His industry was in the toilet and he couldn’t get another one. He started drinking with dinner. Then drinking with lunch. Then drinking his first shot of the day with his morning coffee.”

“Oh, Lena,” Ellie said, her voice breaking.

“It’s okay, El. I survived. My mother survived. He left us in a pretty comfortable way, the insurance and all, which a part of me thinks he would’ve hated.”

“Why would he have hated it? He was the one who took out the policy right?”

Nodding, Lena said, “He liked to threaten my mother with it. He would tell her if she didn’t do this or that when he ordered her to, he would cancel it. So when he told her to jump she did. If it wasn’t high enough she did it again. I guess he finally forgot about it. Or was never sober long enough to follow through.”

“What a horrible way for you to grow up.”

“It was a lot worse on my mom than it was on me, but yeah. I hated that she had to put up with that bullshit.

“I can imagine. I was really lucky. I had an all-American childhood. It was later when things went to crap.”

“You can say shit you know. It’s okay with me.”

Ellie laughed at that. Then she grew somber, rubbing at the mark on
Lena’s thumb. “Strange that of all things we should have scars in common.”

“I’m sure we have more than that,” Lena said, hope like bread dough rising. “It will just take time to find out.”

We are all our past.

The thought had stuck with Thea since leaving Two Owls Café and had been the reason she’d gone to Dakota’s last evening instead of home to the house on Dragon Fire Hill. And what a big mistake that had been, though Dakota had started it, and Dakota had been the one behind a few beers, not her.

That didn’t absolve her of participating, or wanting to erase everything Todd from her life and everything prison from Dakota’s, or wishing they could start over as two brand new people sans baggage.

We are all our past.

She hated to say it but she was almost glad Dakota had decided to leave. Their not living in the same small town would make her life so much easier. She wouldn’t find herself drawn into his drama. She had enough of her own to last a lifetime; how could she take on his, too?

Yet how could she not? How could she separate wanting him as the man he was from having wanted him, having had him, when what they’d known about life had been contained in their own small spheres?

We are all our past
.

Life was so unfair,
so
unfair, taking him away from her when she’d needed him the most, bringing him back when she couldn’t have him.
She could not have him
. She was up to her eyeballs with paying back what she owed, and doing what she could to pay forward. He would consume her, and she was helpless.

Funny how she’d gone all these years unaware of how much she’d missed him until he’d been a daily fixture in her life once again. And speaking of the very devil walking in when she least expected him.

“I didn’t think I’d find you here on a Saturday.”

“I hadn’t planned to be, but the house isn’t conducive to anything requiring concentration these days.” She didn’t ask him what he was doing here. She didn’t want to hear him say he’d come looking for her just as much as she didn’t want to hear him say he hadn’t. Right. That kiss hadn’t screwed her up or anything.

He came closer and glanced down at her paperwork. “What’re you up to?”

“Looking at some numbers I got from Peggy Butters and her attorney. Trying to decide if I, if the
co-op
, can afford to buy her bakery.”

“Huh. I didn’t know she was selling,” he said, and moved to the coffee pot. “Is that what all the cake eating and watching the traffic flow was about?”

The coffee was fresh. She hadn’t even had her first cup. “I don’t think it’s common knowledge. And, yes. It was.”

He looked over while his mug filled. “So the
co-op
has enough money to do that?”

“Not that it’s any of your business,” she said, more irritated than she’d realized and for no reason that made sense, “but no. I would provide the initial investment.”

“Just like you did here?”

She shook her head, ignoring the fit of his T-shirt and the hair at his nape caught in the neckband. She squeezed her pencil tighter. “Bread and Bean is mine. Ellie and Becca and Frannie are my employees.”

“The bakery would be different?”

She nodded. “We would set up a partnership. But there’s a lot more involved than money.”

“Like whether or not they’re going to stick around,” he said, lifting his cup, blowing across the surface, his mouth drawing her gaze and taking her back to their kiss.

Why was he here?
Why?
“I wouldn’t put it that way, but yeah. I mean, I’m staying. I bought the house. I’m opening the business. But the others . . .”

He took a sip of the coffee, his gaze still holding hers. “They’re only living with you while they get back on their feet.”

Now he was just being nosy. “Something like that.”

“And they may not want to call Hope Springs home once they do.”

She tossed her pen to the table and sat back in her chair. She was done with him prying into this part of her life. “I guess that would depend on how happy they are living here.”

Dakota grinned, his gaze on his coffee now, dimples pulling deep into the scruff covering his cheeks. “Point to Clark,” he said, then changed the subject. “You told me about the beans. But why coffee? And bread?”

Fine. Memory Lane was better than an ongoing Q&A. She got up and found her mug, pumping it full from the carafe and breathing in the heady steam. “I went to Spain one summer with my ex. While he was off doing his extreme-sports things, I explored the cities we were in. One of my favorite spots was a tiny coffee shop. It was open-air, with tables outside under an awning. The owners also sold bread and pastries. We stayed there nearly a month.

“I didn’t know there were that many extreme things to do in Spain, but between the surfing, the rafting, the hiking, my ex stayed busy, and I studied that little shop like I’d be given a test and my life depended on it. I paid attention to what the regulars ordered, what the tourists ordered. Which breads sold the best. Which were offered on which days. Which had customers lining up before the shop opened.” She looked down into her cup, smiled at the memory. “You can’t begin to imagine the smells. I could’ve lived there. I got to know the owners well enough to get a look at the kitchen. I don’t think I’ve ever been as happy anywhere as I was that month. It felt like home.”