by Alison Kent
And, wow. What was up with her and snobbery today?
“All righty, then. Y’all ready to order?”
Oliver didn’t hesitate, saying, “I’ll have biscuits and gravy with a side of sausage and two scrambled eggs,” holding Indiana’s gaze as he did.
An unexpected blip in her pulse had her swallowing, then telling their waitress, “I’ll have what he’s having.” Once the woman left, promising to be back in five minutes with their food, she said, “You’re welcome to tour the farm anytime.”
“I’d like that,” he said, wrapping his cup in both of his hands, a small vee appearing between his brows as he asked, “Why expand into Hope Springs instead of building your annex in Buda?”
She brought her cup to her mouth, wondering whether his question was a simple query, or as loaded as it seemed. Because wasn’t that subtext, real or imagined, the very reason they were here?
“Because of Dakota,” she said before she sipped, setting her cup back in its saucer. “Well, Dakota and Tennessee. Tennessee’s business is based here. Kaylie is here. If I find Dakota, I’m hoping he’ll come back, maybe settle here, too, and make my dream of a big happy family come true.”
Oliver studied her over the rim of his cup as he drank, obviously gathering his thoughts. She’d noticed that about him. How he didn’t blurt or blab the way she seemed unable to stop herself from doing. She should probably take a lesson and think.
“Is that your dream?” he finally asked. “Having a big happy family?”
“It’s complicated,” she said, taking her own advice and weighing responses ranging from the full truth to just pieces. “My parents are still in the area, though they’re gone a lot. We grew up in Round Rock. So I do have a family, though it’s not particularly big. And I’m not sure where we would fall on the happy scale.”
“You’re not close?”
“We’re not even in touch, really. They stay busy with whatever current cause demands their time. They always did. Never was much left for them to, you know, parent,” she said, trying to be flip, but the words tasting bitter and raw. “But I guess it was easier that way.”
Oliver toyed with his cup, his gaze cast down, and asked, “How so?”
She sipped again, then shrugged, then sipped once more as if doing so would keep her from saying things she shouldn’t and sounding resentful. It didn’t. “Baby seals didn’t talk back. Melting glaciers just went away and left them alone. Climate change affects billions, while the changes in their daughter’s attitude were simply phases to get through. Mine. Not theirs.”
She cut herself off before she ended up going to that place she refused to visit, much less while in the company of a man who had her thinking there might be something missing in her life. Something she’d diligently prevented herself from considering before.
Something she wasn’t sure she could ever trust.
“I can’t tell if that’s resentment or sarcasm.”
“I’m over the resentment. But I’ll never get over being sarcastic,” she said, though her reach for levity wasn’t quite long enough, and the joke fell flat.
“Tell me Dakota’s story,” he said, sitting back as their food was set in front of them.
She’d brought him here for this—not the biscuits and gravy and sausage and eggs that smelled like all the best bad-for-her things about food, but to tell him why finding her brother mattered so much. And as the thought crossed her mind, she wondered if Dakota, more than Robby, was the reason she’d chosen to live her life alone.
Or if it was, as she’d thought all this time, her own actions and considerable regrets.
There was something she didn’t want to tell him, or something she didn’t want him to know, and that made Oliver more curious than he would’ve been otherwise. He wasn’t one to push, but Indiana had talked around the subject of her brother all morning. And that after asking if he wanted to know why she was eager to find the man.
Oliver had lived in Hope Springs long enough to have heard rumors of the Keller brother who’d spent time in the Huntsville state prison. Assault with a deadly weapon. He’d learned at some point the weapon had been a baseball bat, and Dakota Keller eighteen at the time.
Dakota had also been his baseball team’s star slugger. Added to the fact that he premeditatedly went after the boy he’d beaten, well, he’d been lucky to have served just three years. Those things were easily discovered with a Google search of news articles from a decade ago. He’d done that late last night when he couldn’t sleep and she’d been on his mind.
What Oliver couldn’t discover were the things Indiana was keeping secret, had no doubt been keeping secret for years. And her skating around the reason for this meal left him wondering if someone else might be better equipped to handle her confession. Someone like a therapist. Or a priest.
“You probably know, or maybe you don’t, that Dakota spent time in prison,” she finally said, unwrapping her silverware and picking up her fork. “I think that’s as much common knowledge as Tennessee hiring parolees because of our brother’s prison time.”
Having worked with Ten Keller at the Caffey-Gatlin Academy, Oliver had learned about the other man’s hiring practices. And about Will Bowman spending time behind bars.
“I did,” he said, cutting into his biscuit with the side of his fork, and waiting for her to go on. His opinion of Will didn’t matter, though why he had an opinion at all . . .
“Dakota went to prison because of me.”
At that, Oliver’s head came up, his fork stilled, and he frowned. He knew what he’d heard. She’d been very clear: her words, her tone, her expression as her gaze held his. She’d said what she’d said expecting a reaction. He’d yet to give her much of one, and she was still waiting.
He had a feeling she hadn’t made that statement to many other people, and he forked up the bite of biscuit, saying, “That can’t be all there is.”
She heaved out a sigh, shoved her eggs around on her plate. “In a nutshell.”
“So crack it open. Pull it apart. Show me what’s inside.” When she filled her mouth with eggs instead of answering, he pressed. “Or were you hoping to scare me off with that declaration?”
Of course, the idea that she was hoping to scare him off came with all sorts of implications he hadn’t meant to make, but rather than retract his question, he let her stew. And finished off his biscuit while she finished off her eggs.
Once she’d swallowed the rest of her tea, she rushed forward. “When I was fifteen, a friend of Dakota’s and Tennessee’s attacked me,” she said, then added, “assaulted me,” then finally told him the truth. “He tried to rape me.”
That didn’t scare him off, but he was horrified. No fifteen-year-old girl should have that experience. No girl of any age. No woman ever. “I’m sorry. That had to have been terrifying.”
A curious look passed over her face, as if she’d never had anyone ask about her fear. “It was, but I played volleyball and probably had more upper-body strength than he did. And I had my brothers. He wasn’t a very big guy.”
She’d fought off the bastard. Good for her. “Apparently he thought so.”
“What he thought . . .” She shook her head, and when she reached for her empty tea, her hand was shaking, too. “We had a bit of a history. Nothing too carnal, but enough of one that it wasn’t hard for him to assume his attention was invited.”
Without thinking, Oliver covered her hand with his own, feeling the ice of her fingers as he gestured to their waitress for two more cups of tea. When he looked back, Indiana’s face had paled to the color of her bloodless fingertips, and it was all he could do not to move beside her and offer her his warmth.
Instead, he released her, and after a moment she put both her hands in her lap, waiting silently for their drink refills. Once they arrived, and as he dunked his tea bag into his water, he said, “Sex
isn’t about assumptions. It’s about the mutual decision to share that particular pleasure. Whatever had happened between you and this boy prior to the assault is moot.”
For a strangely long moment, she held his gaze, studying his eyes as if surprised he would make such an observation. He couldn’t imagine why she would be; it was an obvious one to make. But then she finally said, “Thank you,” and he wondered if no one else had ever put the same two and two together, letting her off the hook for a wrongly placed self-blame.
Then, because he knew enough of the history, he prodded her on by asking, “I’m assuming your brother went after him?”
“He did,” she said, adding sugar to her tea. “With a baseball bat. And after Robby had already left the house.”
Making Dakota’s actions premeditated, and the bat a deadly weapon. “Was there a trial?”
“There was supposed to be, but his lawyer made a deal because it’s what Dakota wanted.”
Huh. “And Robby got off with nothing?”
Nodding, she brought her cup to her mouth, holding it with hands that had steadied. “Dakota didn’t want to put me through testifying. I told him I would. His lawyer told him my doing so would most likely help reduce his sentence. But he said no.”
“So the deal was Dakota’s call.”
She sipped, swallowed, then held his gaze as she said, “He didn’t want me to have to spend two more years in school as the girl Robby Hunt had tried to rape.”
And to make sure it didn’t happen, her brother had chosen to do three years in the state pen. This part Oliver hadn’t known. This part had him wondering about Dakota Keller, the man he was now, and why, after the sacrifice he’d made for his sister, he’d disappeared from her life.
“When’s the last time you saw him?”
“I saw him the day of his release, except I didn’t know it was him.” She set down her cup and returned to her breakfast. “He’d changed so much. He’d gone in at eighteen, and was almost twenty-two when he came out. He wasn’t any taller, but he’d filled out so much that it seemed like he was. Tennessee and I were waiting for him, and he got into a cab before we knew he was the man with the crew cut and big buff body. I’m pretty sure he knew we were there. I’d written him that we would be. But I guess he’d already decided to take off on his own.”
Interesting. “Did you visit him? While he was incarcerated?”
Another nod. “Not as often as I wanted to. Huntsville’s a bit of a drive, and the first year, Tennessee and I were both in school. Weekends were the only times we could get away, and sometimes we had tournaments or games.”
“And your parents?”
“Honestly, I don’t know,” she said, her voice tinged with what he wanted to call contempt. “They were out of town so often. I’m sure they visited when they could.”
Or when it wasn’t inconvenient, Oliver mused, never having met the Kellers but having no trouble drawing a mental picture based on what he’d learned. “Did he write back?”
“He did.”
“But no clue that he wasn’t coming home?”
“Not a one. He and Tennessee had planned to go into business together once they were both out of school.”
“Construction,” he said, though he knew.
“It’s nothing I would’ve expected from either of them; they were both such jocks. Managing a sports bar, or a gym, yeah. But Tennessee loves it.” Her fork stilled, and she smiled softly. “I like to think Dakota found a way to do what he wanted to do, too.”
Oliver spent a moment with his food, wondering if Indiana was prepared should this search not go her way. “If he came back, do you think he’d go into business with Ten?”
Her smile faded. “I don’t even know who he is now, or what he might like. It’s been ten years. He could’ve gone back to school, become a doctor, left the states to work in Darfur.”
“Do you ever wonder if that’s on purpose? That he doesn’t want you to know where he is, what he’s doing, rather than just having moved on?”
“I wonder about it all the time, but I don’t care. I need to know for me. And I need to apologize.”
That had Oliver frowning. “I don’t think he’d want an apology.”
“Why do you say that?” she asked, frowning, too, and wary.
“What do you have to apologize for?”
“The assault—”
“The assault wasn’t your fault.”
“I know, but—”
“I don’t think you do know. You want to take blame for what this friend of your brothers’ did. To apologize for being a part of it.” And listen to him, talking about blame, and brothers. As if he weren’t weighed down with the same. “But you were a victim. And I’m sure Dakota knows that. Apologizing . . . It might be a better idea to thank him instead. Make sure he knows how much you appreciate what he did. Especially with what it cost him.”
“That’s assuming I’m able to find him,” she said, when he’d feared she would tell him to stop butting in. “And that Tennessee and I don’t have a big falling out over the whole thing.”
“I’m going to guess Ten’s lack of support isn’t just about his doing things his way. That maybe he’s got more than a little bit of guilt of his own.”
“Kaylie told me that he regretted letting Dakota go after Robby. That he didn’t do it himself. He was younger, and Dakota was known for his swing . . .”
“Under the circumstances, the premeditation, Ten could easily have been tried as an adult.”
She nodded. “He’s got a lot of resentment toward our parents, too. They were taken in by Robby’s tales of a hard home life.”
“He didn’t have one?”
“He had parents who disciplined him, who set curfews and rules. Who expected him to do chores. Our parents didn’t do any of the above. And he liked that. A lot.”
That, as well as access to a young girl with, no doubt, a healthy curiosity. And with that thought it was time to change the subject. He sliced up his sausage, then asked, “What’s next with the house? And the property?”
“I don’t even know anymore. Tennessee thinks it’s ridiculous for me to consider moving to Hope Springs when my farm is in Buda. Even though, how many people drive from here into Austin every day? That’s another fifteen miles. And since I’ll be busy getting the annex up and running, I might only need to make the trip three times a week.”
Sounded reasonable. “Did you tell him that?”
“Not yet, but I will. And I’ve promised Kaylie I’ll tell him about hiring the PI.” She placed her used napkin in the center of her plate. “I was just thinking. Life wasn’t so complicated before Kaylie moved back to Hope Springs.”
“How’s that?”
“She hired Tennessee to do the renovations to the house and the conversion for the café. And when she decided to put in a garden, Tennessee called me.” She reached for her wallet and began sorting through bills. “That’s what brought him back into my life. And I don’t think a day’s gone by since then that we haven’t argued about something, most of it stupid.”
Life might not’ve been so complicated, he mused, pulling cash from his pocket to cover both of their meals and the tip, shaking his head when she offered to pay her share, but he was quite sure the real truth was that she wouldn’t change a thing.
This he knew because he’d gladly give a limb to have Oscar whole again.
CHAPTER FIVE
You want to gut the whole thing?”
Three days after his initial visit to Indy’s new digs, Will was standing beside her in the tiny front room of the cottage that, even empty, smelled of the man who’d lived here at least a half century: mothballs, of course, because Hiram Glass had been of the age where chemical pesticides were all the rage.
But the sickly sweet scent of naphthalene hung beneath others: cigar smoke, strong
coffee, licorice, Old Spice. Musty books bound in aging leather. Onions and grease from ground beef. Bourbon. Beer. The twenty-pound tomcat who’d sprawled at the end of the driveway and twitched his tail at passersby, though he had spent enough time inside to leave his mark.
Funny to think of a man being defined by his odors, which had Will wanting to lift an arm to sniff his pit.
Indy caught him with his elbow up and frowned. “Can you give me one good reason not to?”
Since he’d already been thinking about handing her a match . . . He shoved both hands in his pockets, his shoulders hunched. “Depends what your plans are for the building. Storage? Office space? A caretaker’s cottage? A rental for income? Unless you’re going to be the one living here.”
“Maybe,” she said, her mouth pursed sideways. “Eventually.”
Women and their prerogative. “What does that mean?” he asked, and she gave him a withering look.
“It means maybe. Eventually.”
Right. How like him to miss the obvious. “You’re thinking of moving to Hope Springs?”
Rather than answer, she went on walking through the rooms. Kitchen to bathroom to bedrooms, and then again in reverse. He stayed near the front door because the layout of the house kept her in his sight.
He supposed he could see her living here; she was just one person, and didn’t seem the type to need a lot of room for a lot of things. He liked that about her. It rather reminded him of himself. Doing away with all but the necessities. Knowing the differences between need and want. Getting by simply, austerely, free of clutter and other burdens.
Didn’t remind him at all of the woman who’d put his life in storage while he was on hold behind bars. The woman he’d thought for a while he’d like to spend the rest of his years with.
Until he hadn’t.
“Why would you move?” he asked, because it was a lot easier to talk about Indiana’s screwed-up life than to think about his own. “To be closer to Kaylie and Ten?”
