The Second Chance Café (Hope Springs, #1) (25 page)

That was more like it. “It was a compliment, sweetheart. You’re better than anyone I know at that making-lemonade thing. I just hate having to be the bad guy.”

“Ten, you’re my contractor. You’re not a bad guy—” She stopped herself, then swallowed, then added as if she’d been thinking about it for a while, “Yesterday at the farm proves that, don’t you think?”

He liked that she had yesterday on her mind. It had certainly been on his. And now she’d brought it into the open, into the right time, the right place, and it was growing, heating, taking up space he needed to breathe. The tension in the room rose with the beat of her pulse in her throat, and beneath his skin, his blood raced.

“Say it.” He nearly strangled getting it out.

She shook her head. A brief shudder. “I said it yesterday.”

“Yesterday doesn’t count. Say it now.”

Her breathing as ragged as his, she smoothed a hand over her head to the band holding her ponytail, tugging it
free and shaking out her hair. It wasn’t the practiced sort of move he’d seen from celebrity starlets. It was just Kaylie being Kaylie, finding her balance, taking her time.

Or so he thought until she bit at her lip, and he realized the truth in her intent. She stepped on the paper on her way to him, but her gaze held his, unwavering. He left his hands at his hips; he wasn’t sure he could’ve moved them with a crowbar. He was mesmerized, hypnotized, growing hard.

When she reached him, she wasn’t fast to move, placing her palms against his chest. His heart pounded, and she smiled, and she liked it, and he liked that she did, liked her, too. Slowly, she flexed her fingers, as if testing the play in his muscles, then slid her hands to his shoulders, then behind his neck, then to the base of his skull, then her fingers found their way into his hair.

She lifted her gaze, met his, held it as she pulled him down for her kiss. At the first touch of her lips to his, he wrapped his arms around her waist and brought her into his body, sliding a boot between hers and pressing his thigh to the vee of hers. She wiggled closer, whimpered into his mouth, and he let go of his reserve, slanting his mouth over hers and going in search of her tongue.

She rubbed against him, a cat arching, purring, and played her tongue along his. He thrust, he stroked, he tempted her into his mouth, returned to love her in hers. He wanted her closer, he wanted more, and placed one hand between her shoulder blades, sliding the other lower, to the small of her back, then lower still, past her waistband to her bottom, cupping her, pulling her higher against him.

She squirmed in response, her hands slipping to his shoulders, kneading there, gouging there, digging in to hold him, and then she raised up onto her tiptoes as if she wanted him closer, wanted more, too. Wanted the same things he did, without clothing, without stopping, never coming apart until they both were racked and spent.

It was Magoo’s bark signaling the arrival of visitors that came between them, echoing as it did through the near-empty house, bouncing off the walls and into their kiss like an explosive charge. Kaylie took a step back, stumbled, her eyes wide as she brought both of her hands to her mouth, pressing her fingers there, smiling behind them.

“Wow,” she finally said. “That was nice.”

Nice?
Nice?
Did that mean they were done here? That she’d gotten her kiss and that was it? Except when Magoo barked again he knew they were, at least for now. He also knew what they’d started was headed for a big finish. And with the house a veritable beehive these days, he’d been stupid to think anything about kissing her in the middle of it was right.

“It
was
nice,” he said. “Next time it will be even nicer.”

“If there is a next time,” she replied, her tone and her smile both teasing as she reached for his biceps. Holding him, she pressed her lips quickly to his, then brushed by him and scampered off to answer her dog’s insistent call. All Ten could do was shake his head, and hope they could get to a time and place that worked before the wait killed him.

A
t the sound of yet another truck door slamming, Kaylie decided to buy noise-canceling headphones. Or else sell the house and buy a Caribbean island. Not really, of course. She loved her house. And a Caribbean island would’ve been out of her price range even before she’d had the funds transferred to the Colemans.

A vacation in the Caribbean sounded really good right about now, though. Things would calm down once the construction was finished and Two Owls was open for business. Or at least the slamming doors would mean customers instead of delivery trucks and installers and locals stopping by to introduce themselves. Which she did not mind at all. Most of the time.

But today she was tired. She shouldn’t be. She wasn’t the one wielding power tools, the one hoisting sheets of drywall and buckets of paint up the driveway and through the house. She was making a lot of decisions, a lot of trips up and down the stairs. She was visiting the clearing at the back of her lot where her garden would go. She was the one throwing the ball for Magoo, at least until he lost interest and left it for her to retrieve, but that was about it.

Still, the last few weeks of very little sleep were catching up with her, and today was the first day since moving to Hope Springs she felt she could take time for a nap. She wanted to close her eyes and dream about yesterday’s kiss with Ten. But the knock on the back door followed by the squeaky opening of the screen meant she’d have to put both on hold. She needed to see who’d come a-callin’.

Uh, yeah. Full-on sleep deprivation here.

“Hello?”

Hmm, she mused, rubbing at one eye. That sounded like Mitch Pepper. “In here,” she said, raising a hand and waving over the top of the wingback chair.

“Kaylie? Am I interrupting?”

“Nothing but a nap.” When Mitch came into her field of vision, she gestured toward the other chair. Ten’s chair. “Sit, please.”

“I didn’t mean to wake you,” he said, perching on the edge of the seat.

“I wasn’t really asleep. Just…daydreaming.”

“Ah, fake napping. I do it a lot. Usually to Doyle Bramhall’s
Jellycream
album. Then it’s back to business.”

“I might have to try that. Though I can’t imagine anything called jelly cream being good for me.”

He thought a minute, his mouth twisted. “Give Neko Case a try.
Middle Cyclone.
I think it would be a good fit. Or Amos Lee’s
Mission Bell
.”

“Thanks. I will.” She curled her legs to the side in the chair. “It was good to see you this weekend. I’m sorry we didn’t have more time to talk.”

“And I’m sorry I don’t have more time today. I’ve got to get to work. But I was wondering…” He stopped, looked down at his laced hands.

“Yes?”

“If you haven’t hired anyone yet, and are still taking applications, I’d like to throw my name in the hat for the cook’s position. I haven’t talked to the Gristmill yet about reducing my hours there, but if you want me, I imagine I can work something out.”

For several days now she’d been turning over an idea in her mind, and now that he was here…“How would you feel about sharing the kitchen duties?”

“Sharing?” He blinked, scratching the back of his head. “The cooking or the cleaning? All of it?”

“All of it,” she said, hoping Dolly would agree, because she really thought this could work. “Whatever the two of you think best.”

“I’m always up for a division of labor. Tell me more.”

Kaylie sat straighter, leaned toward him. “The woman I’ve been most interested in doesn’t have professional experience, but comes with amazing personal references. Everyone I talked to said they’d been begging her for years to open a restaurant or start a catering business.”

Mitch squared one leg over the opposite knee. “What’s she doing now?”

“She actually works for Ten Keller. My contractor. In his front office. And it turns out I went to school with her son. Their last name is Breeze, and at the time mine was Bridges, so we were always lined up together.”

Mitch looked back at his hands. “She’s a friend of yours, then.”

“I didn’t remember her until I saw her again, but then that’s not a surprise.”

“Why not?”

She didn’t want to get into the reasons why, but…“I’ve forgotten a lot of things about my time here. Not in the house, or with my foster family. But other things. Kids I went to school with.”

“You remembered getting a stuffed animal for Christmas when you were a kid,” he said, his voice so soft she almost couldn’t hear.

“I know. And that surprised me.” Probably as much as she’d surprised him sharing the memory. “Dolly, that’s the woman’s name, Dolly Breeze, she had to remind me about a school play I was in with her son.”

“Oh yeah?”

Something in the way he asked, as if he wasn’t making conversation but truly wanted to know, had her saying more. Again. “It was seventh grade. Our drama class put on a production of
A Christmas Carol.
Now that I
have
remembered it, I can say it was pretty bad.”

“Hey, it was seventh grade. I don’t think much about the seventh-grade experience is good for anyone.”

“That’s probably true. But I really think you’d like Dolly.”

“If she keeps your contractor on his toes, then you’re probably right,” he said, his mouth pulling into a smirk.

What was it with these two men? “Will you think about it?”

“I don’t need to think about it.” He slapped both palms to his thighs. “I’m in.”

“Great,” she said, more excited than ever to get the menu settled. “I’ll give her a call and see what she thinks. If
she’s on board, I’ll see about setting up a time for all three of us to get together.”

“Sounds like a plan,” he said, getting to his feet.

“I’ll be in touch, then,” she said from her chair, offering him her hand.

He gave it a quick shake, held it for a second longer, and then let go and offered her a single slicing wave in parting. Kaylie listened as his steps carried him through the kitchen, listened to the bang of the screen door as it slammed. She closed her eyes, waiting for the next interruption, and was still waiting when she fell fast asleep.

“W
here would I find your newspaper archives? I’m looking specifically for the
Austin American-Statesman
from twenty-three years ago?” There, Kaylie mused. She’d said it. Put into words the reality of what she’d returned to Hope Springs to do. The only thing left to figure out was why irritation rather than anticipation had hopped onboard for the ride.

For some inexplicable reason, she’d made up her mind after yesterday’s nap that today was the day to visit the small town’s even smaller library. Whether due to the remains of a fleeting dream, or having Dolly remind her of seventh grade, or the conversation with Mitch where she’d remembered a childhood Christmas, she’d decided it was time—even if she’d lost what had once been a keen interest in her life’s missing parts.

As bits and pieces of those years had continued to return, she’d found the pull to look into the past diminished. Her present was wonderful. Her future promising. Turning around and walking in the other direction seemed such a wrong path to take. For so long she’d thought learning about her parents would give her strength to close the door on her old life and open the one into the new. But she was finding that wasn’t the case at all.

She rarely thought of them these days. Rarely wondered where her mother had ended up, where her father had gone, if either of them had been curious about her, had ever tried to find her. Had even cared what had happened to her after the state had taken her away. If everything was as perfect as it felt, what good would it do her to dredge up these things? She was happy.
She was happy.
She didn’t need to know; why had she ever thought otherwise?

The librarian was saying something, leading her to a quiet corner near the rear of the small room, but all Kaylie could hear was May Wise’s voice.
Don’t look to where you’ve come from. Look to where you’re going.
Clinging desperately to those words, she swiped at the hair sticking damply to her forehead, and focused on the woman in front of her, giving Kaylie directions as they walked.

“…on microfilm. The spools are in the cabinet next to the table, and the instructions for loading them into the viewer are on the poster above it. It’s fairly self-explanatory, but if you need any help at all, I’ll be at the desk. Just give a wave. I’m not exactly overwhelmed, as you can see.”

“Thanks very much. I think I can manage, but I’ll let you know if it turns out otherwise.”

“Not a problem,” said the other woman, leaving Kaylie alone with her past. She did not want to be here. She wanted to be at Two Owls, seeing how the repairs to the plumbing were going. She wanted to be talking casseroles with Dolly and Mitch. She wanted to be walking through her yard with Ten, throwing the ball for Magoo. But more than anything in this moment she wanted May Wise at her side.

Since that was the one thing she couldn’t have, however, and since she was already here, she pulled out the chair
and sat. Finding the spool with the right range of dates, she loaded it and rolled it forward, advancing from page to page, scanning the headlines, smiling at the ads for sunglasses, cringing at the models’ hair, rolling her eyes at the poster for
Young Guns II
. Boy, had those guys changed.

She spent at least an hour getting nowhere, or reading too much about the year she’d turned five. And then she stopped reading and stared at the image in front of her taking up a quarter page of the local news. The crime-scene photo…Why did it look so familiar? Frowning, she leaned closer, reading the print beneath the headline, knowing she’d seen it before…or someone had shown it to her before. This wasn’t new. It was…

Dear God.
The story! It was
her
story!
Her
life. The headline, the copy, the image showing the yellow tape—grainy in old black and white—across the door to the apartment where she’d lived. This was her past, her mother being wheeled out on a gurney, one bandaged wrist handcuffed to the metal frame. She’d seen this all from another view. From above, on the apartment staircase…
There!
That was her wrapped up in a blanket and sitting in Ernest Flynn’s lap!