Bliss and the Art of Forever (A Hope Springs Novel)

by Kent, Alison

  She went to him, straddled him, wrapped her arms around his neck. Then he said “Promise me,” and her heart froze, then jolted, and she said “I promise,” pushing out of his lap and leaving the kitchen, leaving behind the lasagna and the wine and the bread.

  Leaving behind the man she loved more than life itself with the very thing he’d wanted from her: her word that she’d let him go.

  FIVE

  After Brooklyn’s Saturday night visit to Bliss, Callum became obsessed with Italy and Cinque Terre. He’d never been. He’d never planned to go. Hell, he’d never even heard of the place until Brooklyn had mentioned it, then he’d taken to Google the next time he’d had some free time, wanting to see exactly where it was she was going.

  And now, well, her reasons were her own, but he couldn’t stop thinking about walking the Sentiero Azzurro between the villages, eating gelato, drinking wine, looking down into the sea. Carrying Addy on his shoulders so she could see the vineyards and the terraced hills and the olive trees. Piggybacking her when her little legs got too tired to climb.

  The idea of showing his daughter the world, being able to give her every advantage in life, every chance in life, every possible thing she might need to live the most amazing life . . . As much as he’d loved California, he’d had no choice but to move her out of that volatile environment. Coming to Hope Springs had made the best sense at the time.

  Having his parents near allowed him to work the hours he needed. Their generosity, their availability, their delight in having a granddaughter . . . he’d be nowhere without them, or at least traveling a much harder road. As often as he and his mother clashed, and as aggravated as he got with her ignoring his instructions for Addy’s care—giving her cookies she didn’t need to eat, playing TV news she didn’t need to hear—he owed her and his father a magnificent debt.

  But his obsession with Cinque Terre was all such crap, because he was not taking Addy to the Italian Riviera. And even if he did, Brooklyn was going now, not later when he’d be able to, and the trip wouldn’t be half as much fun without her. Though why he was jumping to that conclusion when he’d known her a whole four days . . .

  Four days. And he’d only seen her on two of them: Thursday and Saturday. Friday he’d been elbow deep in chocolates and too busy to think, but Sunday he’d done nothing but crash on the futon and dream of Italy—and Brooklyn—while Addy curled up beside him and watched Reading Rainbow.

  He was totally preoccupied by a woman he wasn’t dating, a woman he hadn’t slept with, a woman he’d done nothing but talk to. They’d talked a lot. And about a lot of things. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d opened his mouth and let so many words spill out. He much preferred no one know where he’d been, what he’d done . . .

  But he couldn’t get Brooklyn Harvey out of his mind.

  On one hand, he liked that she was there, tucking her hair behind her ear, smiling, making sure he was taking care of his girl. On the other . . . it was as if he hadn’t learned a damn thing from his past. Jumping into situations because doing so made him feel good instead of making the best choice.

  Right. Since life was all about feeling good. The years he’d lived with that attitude had messed up so many people’s lives he’d lost count. And created one that left him breathless, that hitched at his heart anytime his thoughts drifted to her. Or when he first heard her voice in the mornings.

  Speaking of which . . . “Adrianne Michelle! Breakfast is getting cold!”

  “You don’t have to yell, Daddy,” she said, skipping her way around the kitchen bar to her stool. “I’m right here with my ears.”

  And there went his heart. Thump, bomp. Thump, bomp.

  She’d slipped her feet into bright pink Crocs, no socks, of course, and pulled on pink leggings to match. Her top was long sleeved and long waisted, purple and black striped with whatever that flippy skirtlike thing attached was called. In the center of the top was a black giraffe with purple spots, its neck wound around that of a purple giraffe with black spots.

  His mother bought a lot of Addy’s clothes, even though he continually reminded her that he was perfectly capable, at which she always rolled her eyes before telling him not to be silly and to allow her to be a grandmother, please, since she’d missed so much of Addy’s life already.

  An exaggeration: Addy had turned six last month. He’d brought her to Hope Springs not long after her first birthday. So, yes. His mother had missed swaddling an infant, but she had years of grandmothering left.

  What he wasn’t perfectly capable of, and didn’t mind admitting because it wasn’t his thing, was dealing with his daughter’s corkscrew hair. Yet he couldn’t bring himself to cut it. The waves were his, unruly and with a mind of their own. Addy got a kick out of them both wearing theirs long.

  The blond hair and blue eyes, and the lashes that brought to mind the thick bristles on a pastry brush, well, he shouldn’t be thinking it, but they were a lot like Brooklyn’s. It was just easier to think of Brooklyn than the truth of where his daughter’s coloring had come from.

  “Well, you and your ears need to eat your eggs,” he said, scooping the scrambled mess from the skillet into a bowl, putting a slice of jam-smeared toast on a saucer to match. “We’ve got places to go and people to see.”

  “Silly Daddy,” she said, clambering up to sit and setting her plush Olaf on the stool beside hers. “Ears can’t eat eggs.”

  “Are you sure?” he asked, scraping the rest of the eggs onto his plate and tossing the skillet into the sink. “I’ve seen food in your hair many times. I thought your ears might have vomited.”

  “That is just yucky,” she said, reaching for her toast with both hands and taking a bite before saying, mouth full, “You forgot my milk.”

  “So I did,” he said, turning to the fridge for the carton and the cabinet for a cup.

  “What people and places are we going and seeing?”

  He smiled. “I have to pick up some supplies for Bliss in Austin.”

  “It takes hours and weeks to get to Austin,” she said as she dug into her eggs, her brows drawn together as if she were calculating drive times. “You should just go shop at HEB. Grammy gets everything at HEB.”

  He chuckled. Little girls. “HEB doesn’t sell what I need. They don’t even sell everything Grammy needs. You know she has to go to Austin sometimes.” Though often it was only so she could drop the name of the specialty store she’d visited and the item she’d purchased that she might use but once in a dish she’d seen Nigella Lawson cook.

  “But you said we could go to the park and to the bookstore and to get ice cream. It will take forever to go to Austin,” she whined. Then whined again. “You might be too tired and forget when we get back.”

  “How can I forget when I have you to remind me?”

  “Sometimes Grammy forgets.”

  “Tell you what,” he said, opening drawers until he found a pencil and a notepad and a roll of Scotch tape. He tore out one sheet and licked the pencil’s lead. “I’m going to write a note this minute, and you can tape it on the dash of the truck. That way we’ll both remember everything we need to do today. Both in Austin and in Hope Springs.”

  She seemed to like that idea, nodding as she picked up her milk. “Most important is ice cream.”

  “Ice cream. Got it,” he said, biting into his toast and holding it with his teeth as he anchored the notepad in place with one hand and wrote with the other. “Do you know what flavor you want?”

  “I want ten scoops of peppermint bubble gum.”

  “I’m not sure Cow Bells has peppermint bubble gum.”

  “Do so. Kelly Webber told me.”

  “Well, if Kelly Webber told you, then it must be true. But only one scoop. Not ten.”

  She gave him a huge huff, as if she were making the ultimate sacrifice. “And going to the park. Write that down.”

  “The park,” he said, having returned his toast to his plate. “
It’s on the list.”

  “Write down the slide and the swings so I don’t play too much on the monkey bars and forget.”

  “I won’t let you forget.”

  “You might, so write it. And write down books. I want ten books.”

  Slide. Swings. Monkey bars. He wrote them all. Then he wrote books, but not ten. “How about three books?”

  She took a moment to frown, then said, “But ten is more.”

  Good for her. “Ten is more but your bookshelves are too crowded already.”

  “I like ten.”

  So he’d noticed. “Tell you what. You can pick out three today,” he said, writing the number beneath the rest of the items on the list, “then choose three from your shelf to give to someone who might need them.”

  “Kelly Webber might need them,” she said matter-of-factly before leaning close to her bowl to scoop another bite of eggs into her mouth. “She doesn’t have enough and Ms. Harvey says we need to read books every day.”

  And there went his heart again, though this time the thump came with a tightening of his gut. “Well if Ms. Harvey said it, it must be true.”

  “Everything Ms. Harvey says is true.”

  “Oh, really,” he said, biting off half a piece of bacon.

  “Duh. She’s a teacher.”

  He’d have fun reminding Addy of that in fifteen years when she was deep into her cultural anthropology studies or whatever. Setting the list aside with the roll of tape, he tossed the pencil back into the drawer. “What’s the best thing you’ve ever learned from Ms. Harvey?”

  Addy set down her milk, her mouth twisted to one side. “About the moon. And the sun. And the shadows on the world. Like clips. With a lamp.”

  “E-clipse. And how the earth rotates on its axis around the sun, making day and night?”

  She nodded as she shoved a whole strip of bacon into her mouth and chewed. “She had a soccer ball and a corn of pepper and then she had a lime with a stixis through it because the pepper was too small to twirl around.”

  He took a minute to translate her six-year-old speak. A lime on a stick representing the earth on its axis. A soccer-ball sun and a peppercorn Earth. Lego bricks for fractions. Portraits of presidents instead of conversation hearts.

  Clever Brooklyn Harvey, using familiar objects to demonstrate the foreign—though for all he knew, having attended absolutely zero school functions, her props were standard in kindergarten instruction.

  He wanted to kick himself for not paying more attention to what Addy was learning in school; blaming his mother for going through the notes from his daughter’s teacher was just lame. He knew better.

  He’d talked to Peggy Butters at Christmas when she was doubling up on her seasonal cookie baking. They’d joked then about mothers ordering goodies for class parties and passing them off as homemade.

  Hell, he’d bought cookies decorated like jack-o’-lanterns himself for Addy to take to school at Halloween. And he’d helped her with her Olaf costume. How many little girls had dressed like Frozen’s Elsa, while his daughter had insisted on being the movie’s snowman?

  This was Addy’s first year of school, and he was going to have to step up his game for the twelve of public education yet to come. If he didn’t, all the rest of his efforts to provide for her wouldn’t mean squat.

  For five years his focus had been on establishing Bliss as the place for artisanal chocolates in the Hill Country. Maintaining his online business had been easier; that was no more than creating the supply to meet the demand that had continued to grow since he’d begun offering his wares in San Francisco.

  The first few months he and Addy had been in Hope Springs, he’d cooked in this very kitchen, packaged boxes for shipment on folding tables lined up beneath the loft’s long wall of windows.

  He’d held interviews for his showroom help in his living room. He’d brought in a branding designer for his logo, an interior designer for the look of the shop. Experts in packaging, labeling, advertising.

  He’d used the money he’d been handed by Duke Randall, the man who’d been his best friend in California. His mentor. His conscience and guide, and though she would never know it, Addy’s uncle. He hadn’t questioned where it had come from; he didn’t want the answer. He’d needed it to give his daughter a good life, a safe life; he didn’t want to know.

  It had been worth it: the lack of sleep, the trial and error, dealing with new vendors and new employees, Lena as well as the occasional temp, and a new relationship with his mom and dad.

  He’d do it all again. He’d do it ten times over.

  Because he was doing it all for the little girl sitting at the bar drinking milk, eating bacon and eggs, and talking to a goofy-looking snowman. The little girl who was his whole life, who was his whole heart.

  Sitting cross-legged in the far back corner of Cat Tales, the best new and used bookstore in the world, Brooklyn reached for a long-out-of-print Penelope Williamson title and read the description on the back. Or she tried to read the description on the back. The words weren’t cooperating, keeping her from remembering if she’d read this one before. Mostly likely she had.

  Still, there was a chance Jean had not. She added it to the stack at her hip on top of a Kathleen Woodiwiss, as if she needed yet another huge trade paperback on her not-even-a-year-old bookcase. She didn’t, and she knew it. She also knew why she was here, and it had nothing to do with books.

  Her visit was about her life turning upside down, first by Bianca’s pleas that she stay in Italy to teach, and now by her attraction to Callum Drake.

  When she worried about upcoming dates—a new school year, an annual checkup, an international flight—or when she needed a distraction—the amount of time she spent thinking about Callum proved she did—she browsed her two favorite bookstores: Cat Tales and Amazon. Her poor Kindle. Her poor credit card. Her poor not-even-a-year-old bookcase.

  She reached for a Michelle Willingham book set in 1305 Scotland, only to find a pair of bright yellow eyes that belonged to the store’s mascot staring at her from the shelf above. No way. Uh-uh. This was not a sign. But the big gray tabby using the row of books as a bed did explain why her eyes were suddenly watering.

  “You’re lying on my Willingham, sir. I hope you don’t think you’re going to get away with that.”

  He answered with a big yawn that seemed to be more about showing off his canines than anything.

  “Oh. Is that so? You’re a fan of mysterious stable boys and maidens and castles with no running water, too?”

  Another teeth-baring yawn, and a long reaching stretch; then the cat eased from the shelf into her lap, curling up and making himself at home in the cradle of her crossed legs.

  “No, no, no. This isn’t happening,” she said, laughing to herself as the cat began to purr, loudly, the rumble against her thighs bringing to mind Callum’s bike. See? This was what she was talking about. Why couldn’t she shake her thoughts of him?

  It was ridiculous, this fascination. It wasn’t like she hadn’t known handsome men before. Artie’s crew could’ve posed for a firefighter calendar and made buckets of cash.

  Of course, her being Artie’s wife meant none of them ever regarded her the way Callum had from her classroom door. Or later, in her kitchen. Thinking of how he’d looked at her after she’d downed the piece of chocolate at Bliss, or when she’d held his hand to get a closer look at his Tennyson tattoo . . .

  How could she possibly be feeling so strongly about a man who’d only come into her life this weekend? And why was she going over this again when she’d told herself not two nights ago that none of the things between them could matter? Hope Springs had been her home for thirteen years, and in four months she’d be leaving for who knew how long? Callum was staying. His business was here, his family was here, his daughter went to school here.

  No doubt one day he’d have a wife, and a passel of little red-headed Irish rogues running riot across an
expanse of lawn as green as his homeland. Not that Ireland was actually his homeland, but she was sitting in the romance section, and dammit, she would give her imagination its due.

  “I’ve been reading about too many knights on horseback crossing miles of rolling hills, cat. Do you see my problem?” The cat’s purr grew louder, and he curled into an even tighter ball, as if settling in for the rest of the day, no matter Brooklyn’s plans. “Good thing I don’t really have anything going on. Unless you want to count paying for these books.”

  And, of course, sorting through the pile of clothes she’d started pulling from her closet yesterday morning and tossed to the bed, the mess requiring her to push the mountain aside to sleep last night.

  She’d become such a pack rat the last two years. At first she blamed the lack of energy that had plagued her for months after Artie’s death. Then she had nothing—or no one—to blame but herself.

  She kept things neat, but she kept things she had no reason to. It seemed easier to move a blouse with a ragged buttonhole to the back of the closet than take it to the cleaners to be repaired.

  And now half of the clothes hanging up were ones she hadn’t worn in years. Some she hadn’t worn but once. The items were perfect for someone handy with a needle and thread. Someone who didn’t mind cuts and colors she was too old to wear. Someone who wouldn’t have the memories of Artie loving how she looked in red . . .

  “You, Brooklyn Harvey, are just plain lazy,” she said, scratching behind the cat’s ears. “Life isn’t lived in books, you know. And it’s not lived sitting on the floor of a bookstore. You’re going to have to give me my legs, cat.”

  “Look, Daddy. It’s Ms. Harvey! And she’s got a cat!”

  Hearing her name spoken with such excitement and in a voice that was part of her daily life, Brooklyn turned, grinning at the sight of Adrianne Drake running down the aisle and squatting next to her.