by Alison Kent
“You’re pretty intuitive for a boy raised by wolves.”
“Intuition is everything. Animals wouldn’t survive without it.”
“Even human animals?” she asked, wondering again about this one’s crimes. He had that lean, wary look of someone who’d spent time wishing for eyes in the back of his head. Ten didn’t take on hard cases. And Manny didn’t send him anyone but those ready to return to the lives they’d left behind. Lives they’d screwed up with a single mistake—something Luna was too familiar with.
“We let a lot of things get in our way. An animal’s intuition is about survival, not ego.”
“Did ego get you in trouble?” she asked, because she wanted to know. She’d never been as curious about Ten’s other ex-con hires, but this one…
He laughed then, a deep, clear rumble full of things to tempt her. “That, Miss Meadows, is for me to know. And for you to wonder about.”
“Fair enough.” After all, she didn’t want him asking about her secrets. Her stupidity. A condition she still struggled with, it seemed, when out of the blue she next heard herself asking, “Would you like to get coffee later? Or dinner sometime?”
“Do you cook?”
Did he want her to? Did he want her to for him? Did he want to get her alone? What in the world was wrong with her? “Not if I can help it. I’m a big fan of takeout.”
“In Hope Springs?”
Should she tell him? “I live a ways out of town, so it’s an easy drive to New Braunfels.”
“I do.”
“Cook? Or live in Hope Springs?”
“Both. For now, with the living part. Since Manny set me up with Ten. But I’ve always cooked.”
Was he offering to cook for her? Because she really didn’t know where this conversation was going. “Kaylie’s looking for someone for her café.” And why was she telling him that when she wanted the job for Mitch? Unless what Will had said was already at work on her subconscious, making up her mind for her, keeping trouble at bay.
But he shook his head. “Gotta see through this construction gig. And I don’t think I’d like cooking on a large scale. It’s just something I enjoy for fun. And with friends.”
She looked at him, wondering if he’d served time for something as petty as aggravating someone, or not answering questions. “Is that a yes or a no, then? To coffee. Or dinner.”
“It’s my way of asking if you’d let me cook for you.”
“It really is easier if you just come out and say what’s on your mind.”
That laugh again, intimate and melodic. “I may not be good with invitations, but I definitely know not to speak my mind.”
That was novel. Most men had no trouble coming on to her. And that incongruity allowed her a boldness she didn’t often give into. “Do you have a cell?”
“I do,” he said, and gave her his number as she pulled hers from her pocket and typed out a text.
She hit send and his phone beeped seconds later. His eyes on hers, he reached for it, finally dropping his gaze to the screen.
“Saturday would be good for me, too,” he said, looking up as he did. “And now that I have your number, I’ll be in touch.”
“I look forward to it.”
“And maybe you can text and let me know what you decide. About putting your friend in touch with his kid. Because I could be way off base. It’s been known to happen.”
In the past, perhaps, but she had a feeling whatever mistakes in judgment he’d once made were ones he’d remember before making more. “I could text you. Or I could tell you about it while watching you cook. Unless having someone watch makes you nervous.”
“I’ve had someone, many someones, watching my every move the last three years. There’s very little that makes me nervous.” He took her in slowly, his gaze moving from her chin to her nose to her forehead. “Then again, none of them had eyes like yours.”
That made her blush. She’d always thought herself too worldly to blush. She gestured toward her car. “I need to get going.”
“And I need to get to work.”
“Thank you for the advice, boy who was raised by wolves.”
“Thank you for letting me cook for you, moon girl.”
Moon girl. So strange to hear someone besides Mitch use the term of endearment, though considering the origin of her name, it wasn’t surprising Will had gone there. “Until Saturday, then,” she said, reaching to open her door.
He beat her to it, lifting the handle, so tall beside her, so unlike the men in her life and others she’d known. None of them had been the wolf this one was. None of them had made her want to share all the things she kept close. None, save for another who could never be hers because of the things she hadn’t been brave enough to tell him.
Will stood in the road behind her as she drove away, his black jeans and black shirt and black hair filling her rearview mirror, and leaving her wishing she’d had a night free before Saturday. She wanted to see him sooner, to talk to him in greater depth. She thought he might have a lot of interesting things to say—though she needed to decide what to do about Mitch and Kaylie before she spent time getting to know a wolf.
CHAPTER NINE
By Wednesday, Ten had submitted paperwork for all the building permits needed for Kaylie’s renovations. Hope Springs had very little in the way of bureaucratic red tape, but enough to foul up his mood. Kaylie had settled on the commercial flooring, but that was it. There were fixtures and cabinets and countertops to decide on, not to mention appliances. And that only took care of the kitchen.
But since that room would take his crew of two the longest to rewire and replumb, it was the room he wanted to tackle first. And with Kaylie’s mind set on a Memorial Day opening, he thought he’d run by her place and give her a status update. Yeah, he could do the same thing with a phone call, but he wanted to see her even more than he needed to talk to her, and since he was already out…
It had been a long time since he’d found a woman intriguing. Granted, he didn’t get out much these days, so he saw mostly women he knew. Wives of other men. Female friends. When he needed more than conversation, he had a favorite bar outside of Austin and a waitress there who knew what he liked.
Kaylie Flynn intrigued him in ways few women did. He couldn’t figure her out, and that made him want to try that much harder. It also frustrated him because whether he figured her out or not didn’t matter. She was a customer and, for now, off-limits. He knew better than to mix business with pleasure. He couldn’t risk losing a job and failing the men he employed. Dakota had found his own way, but these men…Ten had been charged with their futures, with providing them stability as they returned to society. That responsibility outweighed any desire he might have for a woman’s—for Kaylie’s—company.
At the ring of his phone through his truck’s cab, he activated the hands-free button on his steering wheel and said simply, “Keller.”
“Ten. It’s Manny. Thought I’d check in with you on the Bowman kid.”
Will Bowman was hardly a kid. “It hasn’t even been a week. You expecting that much trouble out of him that you can’t even give me a week?”
Manny snorted. “Someone take a piss in your oatmeal this morning?”
Ten huffed. “Just dealing with a new client who I’m pretty sure is gonna cause me a lot of grief.” No need to expound on the type of grief, or that it was his response to said client at fault. Kaylie couldn’t be blamed for making him want her.
There. He’d admitted it. He was attracted to her and off his game because of it.
“That might not be the best environment for Bowman. Tension like that.” Manny paused, and Ten could hear computer keys clicking in the background. “Maybe you’ve got another job he could work? Though I’m only assuming you’ve got him on this one due to timing and all. Set my mind at ease, Keller, would you?”
What was going on here? “You’re kidding me, right? I can’t remember you ever sending me someone as laid-back as Will.”
>
Manny laughed. “Don’t let the boy fool you. And don’t let him take up with anyone he might meet on the job.”
Now the other man was out of line. Working for Keller Construction wasn’t an anonymous program with steps best taken alone. If Will wanted to date, that was on him. “I’m not his daddy. Or a therapist. Or a nanny. His personal time’s his business. And if it’s not, that’s between the two of you.”
For a long moment Manny went silent; then he cleared his throat and said, “Maybe we should have this conversation tomorrow. Over a plate of breakfast tacos at Malina’s.”
“We can,” Ten said, pulling to a stop behind Kaylie’s Jeep in her driveway, shifting into park and watching her toss a ball across the yard for Magoo. “Eight good for you?”
“Make it seven. I’ve got an appointment in Austin at nine thirty.”
“Seven it is. See you then.” Ten disconnected the call, shut off his truck, and climbed from the cab as Kaylie walked toward him. He’d been wrong about her hair. Unless it was the shade from the yard’s trees turning it more red than blonde. She wore her boots and her jeans, but today’s top was thigh-length and sleeveless. A cool white number that made him think of summer, and the flowers he’d smelled that first day on her skin.
“Checking up on us again?” she asked as she reached him, then leaned down to pick up the ball Magoo had dropped at her feet. She scratched his head, said, “Good dog,” and threw it.
Ten watched it sail across the yard, watched the dog race after it. “That’s some kind of arm you’ve got there.”
She laughed. “I was a total jock in school.”
“Really.”
“Does that surprise you?”
He knew so little about her that everything he learned came as one. “Jock’s not the first thing I’d think about you, but that’s probably because I had a sister who was and spent more time wearing jerseys and kneepads than anything else. That’s the association my mind makes. Not boots and jeans.”
“You have a sister.” It wasn’t a question, but a statement, as if she was turning the information over in her mind.
“And a brother.” Though he didn’t know why he’d brought them up. He wasn’t in touch with either. His fault, at least when it came to Indiana. And to his parents. Unlike Dakota, they still lived close.
“That must’ve been fun. Growing up. Having them around.”
Because she’d been in foster care, away from what family she’d had. “Do you have siblings? Or is that something you might not know, growing up like you did? And maybe I should just shut up now. Sorry.”
She shook her head, tucking back strands of hair that fell forward. “It’s okay. I don’t mind you asking.”
“It’s not my business.”
She reached out, touched his wrist. “It’s fine, Ten. Really. I don’t know if I have siblings, no. I was my mother’s only child, at least at the time. When I was taken away from her, I was only five. I never saw her again.”
He didn’t know a lot about foster care, but that seemed strange. “Did the court deny her visitation or something?”
“It’s a long story,” she said as Magoo returned, having abandoned his ball to sniff the trail of something more interesting than rubber. “Want to walk? I need to fetch this one’s ball, since he forgot that’s his job.”
“Sure,” he said, stuffing his hands in his pockets because he didn’t trust himself not to return her touch. The pressure from her fingertips still lingered on his wrist like trouble he didn’t need.
He was beginning to think this might’ve been a mistake, taking on a job for a woman who stirred him the way this one did. He couldn’t risk the involvement, risk things not working out, risk losing this job when Will was depending on it. But he was here, and he was human, and he wanted to know why she’d had to learn to wield a wicked knife. She baked brownies for a living—she didn’t skin wild game.
“Listen. Kaylie. I didn’t come here to dig into your personal life. Or to check up on you. I just wanted to let you know I’ll have the permits next week, and I’ll get the kitchen started before dealing with the other walls.”
She bent for a stick while walking, swiped it through the tall grass at her side. “You could’ve called to tell me that.”
“I was in the neighborhood…” He was such a bad liar, and shrugged, thinking of his earlier conversation with Manny. “You know how it is. Sometimes a phone call goes places best explored in person. Questions come up. That sort of thing.”
She slowed her steps, raising a hand to shade her eyes as she watched Magoo chase after a squirrel. “Then to answer your question, the court didn’t have to deny my mother visitation. I mean, I guess they did, officially, but since she went to prison, it really didn’t matter.”
“Prison?” He’d assumed unfit parent, but he hadn’t assumed criminal.
“Child endangerment. Possession with intent to distribute. She was coming down off a crystal-meth high and bleeding on the floor when they took me from her.”
Without thinking, he pulled his hand from his pocket and reached for her, but checked himself before taking hold of her arm. “Kaylie?”
She stopped walking but continued to chop at the grass with her stick, the smells of the dew and the turned earth heavy in the air. “I love this house, this property. Everything good that I know started here. And I cannot wait to open my café. But I came back here, to Hope Springs, because of my parents.”
“They’re here?”
“I have no idea where they are,” she said, looking at Magoo as he ran toward her. “Either of them. I came back here so I could find out.”
Now he was really confused. And worried. If her mother had been sent to prison, how was Kaylie going to feel about Will being an ex-con? “You don’t know where they are, but you came back here to find them?”
“It’s not about where they are. It’s about me needing to be here.” She turned then, her attention on the house shaded by the trees, the blue darker than Ten would’ve chosen, but one that for some reason fit Kaylie to a T. “I can’t even tell you what it was like to come here after all the places I’d been before.”
“You were moved a lot?”
“I was. I don’t know why. The system, I guess. Too many kids and not enough parents, good parents, anyway, to foster. I don’t think I was that much trouble.” She stopped to laugh, to ruffle a hand through Magoo’s thick coat before he bolted away. “Coming here saved me. I wouldn’t be who I am today had it not been for May and Winton. Here I can do anything. Open a café. Start over. Face the past. Sleep. And I have no idea why I’m telling you all this. You didn’t come here for my life story.”
Start over. Face the past. Sleep. With a knife at her side? He thought back to her telling him she’d lived in heinous conditions. “Do you not sleep now?”
“Not well,” she said, kicking into the grass and dislodging Magoo’s ball. “I’ve been running on empty most of my life. Early on, it was not knowing if I was going to wake up the next day and find someone packing my things.”
“Even once you were here?”
“It got worse once I was here.” She bent for the ball, her back arching and drawing Ten’s gaze. “I wasn’t attached to the previous families I’d lived with, so leaving was more uncertainty than anything. Here I was afraid because I never wanted to leave and feared I’d have to. It got better over time, but then there was school and sports and all the things that keep teens from getting enough sleep. Then college and three a.m. doughnuts for the bakery where I worked. Then my own doughnuts, my own bakery. And now my house and my café.”
Amazing, a life laid out in a matter of words. “I’d say you need a vacation, but if you’re anything like me, getting away wouldn’t make it any better. You’d still be calling back to check on things.”
“Why do we do this to ourselves?” she asked, the shake of her head acknowledging the trait they shared. “I really hope I can find a cook who I can rely on as a manager, too, but
I doubt my control-freak nature would let me take full advantage.”
“When does your ad come out?”
“Next week. Oh, while I was at the Courant’s office, I ran into a girl I used to go to school with. Jessa Little. Jessa Breeze now. She said she was going to tell her mother-in-law about the position, that she was an amazing cook. Do you know her? Dolly Breeze?”
Perfect, he mused with a snort. “I do. And I’d really rather you not hire her.”
She looked up at him, frowning. “Why’s that?”
“She works for me.”
“Oh, that’s right. Luna told me.” Her eyes went wide as if he’d truly surprised her, and she loved the jolt of being surprised. And then she was laughing, the burst of sound spilling over him, infectious. “I’m so sorry,” she finally managed to say. “I guess this is one of those let-the-best-man-win situations or something.”
He hoped not, because he didn’t stand a chance. “Or a sign that I should be the one putting an ad in the paper.”
“Wouldn’t that be jumping the gun? Such an easy admission of defeat?”
She was laughing again. Ten could only shake his head. “I know for a fact Dolly would rather spend her time in a kitchen or behind a sewing machine than at a desk making sense of my paperwork.”
She cocked her head, the bow of her mouth so very tempting. “You’re not doing yourself any favors here, you know.”
“I know a lost cause when I trip over one.”
“Then I look forward to meeting her. And I appreciate the recommendation, though I hope I have several applicants to consider. That’s actually why Luna stopped by yesterday. She wanted to know about the position for a friend of hers.”
“How’d she hear about it?”
“At a craft show over the weekend.”
Figured. “No doubt from Dolly, if Jessa told her.”
“I have a feeling Jessa was dialing before I’d pulled away from the building,” Kaylie said with a grin that had Ten nodding.
“That sounds about right.”
