by Alison Kent
“No, it’s fine,” Kaylie said, her hand pressed to her stomach as she shook off whatever cloud had leeched away her light. “I’m happy to tell you everything, but first can I ask why you want to know?” She poured her coffee, offered the pot to Indiana, but she declined. “Is this about Dakota?”
“I want to know he’s okay,” Indiana said with a nod. Having Tennessee back in her life had her missing Dakota desperately. “I don’t want to intrude in his business, or beg him to come back, or berate him for not being in touch. I want to know that he’s living well somewhere. That he’s not hurting. Maybe that he doesn’t hate us . . . me . . .” She left the thought to live or die on its own, and shrugged. “I just need this. For me.”
Kaylie took her time climbing onto the stool opposite Indiana’s. “Are you going to tell Ten?”
Ah, the question of the hour. She loved her brother dearly, but . . . “So he can try to talk me out of it? So he can tell me that if Dakota wanted me to know where he was, he’d reach out?” She shook her head. “This is for me. Not for Tennessee. Not even for Dakota. I just . . . It’s my fault he’s gone—”
“Uh-uh,” Kaylie said, reaching across the island to squeeze Indiana’s wrist. “None of what happened is your fault. Dakota did what he did out of his love for you. Going after the boy who attacked you?” Kaylie shook her head. “He knew what he was doing, and he knew he’d have to pay the price.”
“Is that how Tennessee tells it?” Because she couldn’t imagine she was the only one blaming herself.
“No.” Sitting back, Kaylie brought her mug to her mouth and held it there with both hands but didn’t sip. “That’s how I tell it after listening to Ten. He blames himself for Dakota’s absence.”
“I don’t know why.” Indiana dropped her gaze to the granite island, ran a thumb over the surface, wishing for a similar smoothness to replace the sensation of having swallowed a load of gravel. “We haven’t talked about it, you know. He and I. Since he finally contacted me.” Even though he’d done so because of Kaylie’s garden, and not because Indiana was family. “I thought we would. I thought it would be the first thing we settled. That night. Dakota leaving the house to find Robby and beating him half to death. Then refusing to come home after his release from prison. But it’s still there. A big brick wall that’s too tall for me to climb without his help.”
The timer buzzed, and Kaylie set down her mug to check the brownies again, pulling them from the oven and placing them on the counter to cool. When she returned to the island, she did so with a knowing look, her fingers knitted loosely together as she rested her hands. “You think finding Dakota will help Ten get over the past?”
The reasons she’d given Kaylie were true. But she couldn’t deny wanting more, wanting both of her brothers close. Wanting the three of them to salvage what they hadn’t lost, or maybe find some of what they had.
If anything remained. “Will any of us ever get over the past?”
Kaylie let that sink in, toying with the handle on her mug. Her gaze was downcast when she finally spoke. “You haven’t talked much about what happened either, you know. The assault.”
For more reasons than Indiana cared to admit. “It’s not exactly a topic I like to bring up.”
“Have you discussed it with anyone? Ever?”
“A therapist, you mean? A counselor?”
“Or a friend.”
She thought back to the girls she’d counted as friends while in high school. She hadn’t stayed in touch with any of them, and hadn’t made many in college. She didn’t have many now, her best being employees. None she would’ve encumbered with the story of her past. It was bad enough that Kaylie, a woman she loved dearly, now knew.
“Logically, I know Dakota left for reasons of his own.” She didn’t need a therapist or counselor to tell her that. “That doesn’t mean I don’t blame myself.”
“Something tells me you’ve been doing a very good job of that for a lot of years,” Kaylie said, again lifting her mug.
As right as her favorite sister-in-law-to-be was, Indiana wasn’t ready to talk to Kaylie about the burden she carried. “So we’re on for tonight then? Dinner?”
“Definitely. I don’t care where we eat as long as it’s not here and I’m not the one doing the cooking or the cleaning.” Kaylie crossed to a drawer and tugged it open, coming up with a long, serrated knife. “Brownie?”
Indiana looked at the watch she wasn’t wearing. “I don’t think it’s been thirty minutes.”
“Desperate times call for desperate measures, and I think we’re looking down the barrel of both.”
CHAPTER THREE
As close as Hope Springs was to Austin, Indiana was always taken aback by how few options for dining the town offered. She shouldn’t be, she supposed. She lived in Buda and had equally few choices, but Hope Springs seemed incredibly . . . vibrant, or culturally progressive, for appearing so externally quaint.
Then again, she spent her days at IJK Gardens: in the office, on a tractor, up to her wrists in dirt. It didn’t take a fancy restaurant for her to feel as if she were out for a night on the town. Chili’s, Applebee’s, Macaroni Grill. She was the cheapest date she knew. Even if her brother was the one paying, and date was a nice way to describe being raked over the coals while she ate.
Still, it took a lot to ruin her enjoyment of mashed potatoes and chicken-fried steak. Even Tennessee’s intimidating, big-brother glare fell short.
“You know I’ve been on my own for ten years, right?” she told him. “That I worked my way through college? That I used the money from Grandpa Keller to buy the farm that’s now IJK Gardens? And that I did it all without your permission? Or even your input?”
“I’m not saying you need my permission,” Tennessee finally said, glancing at Kaylie, then back. “Or my input. And actually, no. I didn’t know any of that. At least not at the time. I didn’t stay in touch, remember?”
“I’d ask whose fault that is”—because it was just as much hers for not touching base to tell him—“but I’m pretty sure the hard heads in the family went to the boys.” Indiana smiled as Tennessee snorted and Kaylie chuckled, then added, “But you did know where to find me. So that’s something, I guess. You keeping me on your radar.”
Tennessee laid down his fork, rested both wrists against the table’s edge, and leaned forward. His eyes were bright with emotion both solemn and intense. “You were never off it. Not for a minute. I need you to know that.” Unlike their brother, whom they’d both lost track of, though that was on Dakota. He obviously didn’t want to be found, giving Tennessee the leg up in that argument.
“And here I thought out of sight, out of mind meant just that.”
“Indy—”
“It’s okay.” She hadn’t wanted this evening to turn maudlin. “I didn’t have to wait for you to call. It’s not like I didn’t know where you were, too.”
He huffed at that, and went back to his food. “That’s different. I made it clear when I left home that I needed the distance.”
He had, and she’d done her best to honor his eighteen-year-old self’s desire to be a solitary man. But he’d been on her radar as well, which made them two of the stubbornest people she knew. “And now? Are you still needing the distance?”
He looked up, but instead of meeting her gaze, his attention was all for Kaylie. If Indiana hadn’t been aware of the connection the two shared, she might’ve felt dismissed. As it was, what she felt was envy. To share what Kaylie and Tennessee shared . . . To be so sure, so much a part of another person, so comfortable with publicly displaying that level of emotional intensity . . .
She thought of Will Bowman. Then she thought of Oliver Gatlin. Then she thought of the mess she’d made of both her brothers’ lives, and her mood deflated. How could she ever trust herself not to ruin things with those she let close, when that was exactly what she’d d
one to two of the most important men in her life?
“No,” her brother finally said, his gaze seeking out hers. “But that doesn’t mean you need to take on whatever this new gardening project of yours is just to stay close. I’m not going anywhere.”
Arrogant man, thinking her greenhouse annex had anything to do with him. Even if it did, that was her business, her prerogative. Her albatross to deal with.
“This new project of mine,” she said, mimicking his words, “is something I’ve been thinking about for a while, and the timing was finally right. I’ve got the money. I’ve got a business plan. The property has tons of potential, and was exactly what I was hoping to find. The fact that it’s in Hope Springs, and close to you and Kaylie, is an added bonus. As are the bees.”
“And what about the cottage?” he asked, getting back to his meat, glasses and silverware clinking around them, soft conversations and softer laughter and lights almost too soft to see by setting a deceptively tranquil mood.
Inside, she was an emotionally agitated mess. “What about it?” She forked up a bite of her potatoes, then dragged it through her gravy. “I’ve been living in a rental for a long time. It’s not exactly the best use of my money.”
“And making Hiram’s place livable is?”
“I have to side with Ten on this one, Indy,” Kaylie said. “From what I’ve seen, and the talk I’ve heard, Hiram really let the cottage go after Dorie died.”
“Will said the structure is sound.” Though what he’d said was that he’d have to dig deeper to know whether that was enough to make it worth saving.
“So you’ve got a good shell. What about the wiring? The plumbing? You’ll have to paint,” Tennessee said. “Replace the kitchen cabinets and probably the entire bathroom. You’ll need a new roof.” He reached for his beer. “I don’t get why you’d want to live in Hope Springs anyway when your primary business is in Buda.”
The cottage wasn’t big enough that a new roof would break her. And she’d known the place was going to need a lot of work. But she didn’t like having her choices criticized. Or feeling ganged up on, because that was exactly what seemed to be happening here. “It’s not that far, Tennessee. And I do have a car. You don’t do all your work where you live.”
“Apples to oranges. Being a contractor means going where the job is.”
The man defined aggravation. “And how many professionals living on the east side of Hope Springs commute to Austin?” She glanced toward her brother’s fiancée. “Help me out here, Kaylie.”
“Well, it is at least a thirty-minute drive, meaning an hour’s bite out of your day. But,” she added, turning to Ten, “she is right about Hope Springs being a bedroom community.”
Tennessee huffed and dug back into his food. Indiana did the same, minus the huff, plus a hidden roll of her eyes. Her life. Her business. What about that did her brother have such a hard time with? Then again, she wasn’t the best example of having let go of the past. And Tennessee was obviously still thinking of her as that fifteen-year-old girl he’d found cowering in the kitchen following Robby’s attack.
Yet here she was, a grown woman, looking for the brother who’d dropped out of her life—who’d made no attempt at communication, who most likely didn’t want to be found—while moving nearer to the one she was finally back in touch with, no matter the inconvenience of having her business split between two locations, and her home, once she moved into the cottage, a fair distance from one.
He was right that making the cottage livable was a ridiculous idea when there were so many places better suited, both in Buda and in Hope Springs. But she couldn’t let the cottage go, and hanging on to it made no sense. It had been Hiram’s home, not hers, and any emotional attachment his.
She didn’t know why she found herself drawn to the tiny little house, considering its value, or lack thereof, and the cost of renovations. It would work for one person. And obviously the Glasses had made it work with two for a very long time. They’d even raised their son there, so were she to ever start a family . . .
She laid her fork on the side of her plate, thrown by the sudden shift in her train of thought. Her farm was her baby. Her employees her family. Tennessee and Kaylie, obviously, and Dakota. The occasional postcard her parents sent letting her know they hadn’t fallen off the face of the earth reminded her they were family, too.
But a husband? A child? Children? Why was she even thinking such a thing when the debt she owed her brothers for the rift she’d caused had to be paid before she could think of a future for herself? And if she couldn’t find Dakota . . .
“Excuse me for a minute,” she said, gesturing in the direction of the ladies’ room, then leaving the table before either of her dinner companions could say another word.
This was just crazy, she mused, pushing open the door, then closing herself in a stall. Reuniting with Tennessee, seeing him standing there as she’d rounded the side of Kaylie’s big blue Victorian, his smile broad, his arms welcoming, his voice croaking with the same emotion tangled up in her throat . . .
It had been one of the best days she could remember living. Yet here she now was, feeling at times as if she and her brother were still estranged, and wondering if finding Dakota would make any difference in any of their lives. Or as if she were wishing on a star that didn’t even exist.
She exited the stall just as Kaylie walked into the room, and she stood washing her hands silently, waiting for the other woman to say what she’d come to say. A couple of minutes later, Kaylie joined her at the sink, her expression drawn, as if she feared taking the wrong step.
Indiana met Kaylie’s gaze in the mirror as she dried her hands, and broke the ice. “It’s okay. Just tell me.”
Kaylie’s expression softened. “You know he’s eaten up with guilt, don’t you? That his interference is nothing but the manifestation of that.”
It wasn’t a hard leap to make. Indiana had done so within days of reconnecting with her brother last spring. For some reason she’d assumed his reaching out after a decade apart meant he’d worked through it.
Stupid, really, since she hadn’t taken but baby steps into the overgrown jungle of her own. “You haven’t said anything to him about my looking for Dakota, have you?”
“I told you I wouldn’t,” Kaylie said, tossing her towels into the bin. “But I think you should.”
“I will once things are set in motion. Not that he could stop me . . .”
“You just don’t want to take the chance.”
That had a smile pulling at Indiana’s mouth. “I may have lived with him the first sixteen years of my life, but something tells me you know him a lot better than I ever did.”
Kaylie leaned closer to the mirror and blotted away a smear of mascara from beneath one eye. “Maybe not better. Just a different part of him.”
“Or a different him, period. He’s . . .” Indiana paused, her hands on the vanity as she pulled in a deep breath. “He’s not the brother I remember. Or the brother I knew.”
“He’s thirty years old, Indiana. He left home when he was eighteen and you were sixteen.”
A year after Robby Hunt had tried to rape her.
A year after Dakota had gone to prison for stopping him.
Kaylie went on. “You can’t expect him to be who he was then. You’re not who you were then.”
“I get that.” Really, truly she did. “I knew when I heard his voice, that message he left on my answering machine wanting my advice on your garden, that he wasn’t the Tennessee I’d grown up with. But he is an adult, and I’m an adult, and all I want is for him to respect that. To allow me to make my own decisions, my own mistakes. Not to treat me as if I’m still fifteen and making questionable choices.”
“Which is why you have to tell him about looking for Dakota. And appreciate that he’s going to try to stop you. You said yourself he believes Dakota do
esn’t want to be found. Allow him to be who he is, Indy. To be wrong at times. To disagree with you because he believes he’s doing what he has to do as your brother.”
Kaylie was right. Indiana was asking him to respect her need to look for Dakota while she was unable to respect his need to stop her from making a mistake. She wasn’t sure whether to laugh or to cry. Whether to keep her plans from Tennessee or share them. Whether to move to Hope Springs, or stay in her Buda rental, or find a suitable house in one city or the other to buy, then use the property on Three Wishes Road for her bees and her heirloom garden.
The property across the street from the Caffey-Gatlin Academy.
Where she was likely to run into Oliver Gatlin.
She shook off the thought. Oliver Gatlin did not play into any of her plans. Neither did Will Bowman. Tennessee and Dakota were the only men who did. And if she found Dakota, and he didn’t want to come back to Texas, much less settle in Hope Springs . . .
Because that’s what she was hoping would happen, wasn’t it? That she and her brothers would each live their own lives but share the same happily ever after.
“We should probably get back—”
“I will tell him. I promise,” Indiana said, not wanting Kaylie to question her choices, too. “I just need time to figure out what to say.”
“I don’t think you need time for that.”
“Yeah, well, it feels like I do. He’s not the easiest brother to talk to.”
“And you’re the only sister he has,” Kaylie said, pulling open the door and waiting.
Indiana took a step closer, then a step through. “I guess one of these days we’ll both get our acts together.”
The grin that broke over Kaylie’s mouth spoke of her hope, and her doubt. “I, for one, can’t wait.”
Since joining the board of the Caffey-Gatlin Academy last month, Oliver had dropped by the center once a week. Doing so was more about staying in touch with those working to bring Luna Caffey’s dream to fruition than his duties as a director. He didn’t need to be on-site; he could manage the school’s money from his office at home, or the one he kept in the River Bend Building in downtown Hope Springs.
