by Alison Kent
ALSO BY ALISON KENT
Hope Springs Novels
The Second Chance Café
Beneath the Patchwork Moon
The Sweetness of Honey
Bliss and the Art of Forever
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Text copyright © 2015 Alison Kent
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by Montlake Romance, Seattle
www.apub.com
Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Montlake Romance are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.
ISBN-13: 9781503946033
ISBN-10: 1503946037
Cover design by Regina Wamba of MaeIDesign
CONTENTS
START READING
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
I miss holding your big fluffy paws like best friends do.
I miss rubbing your furry belly, and snipping off your matted dreads.
I miss feeling you climb onto my chest and nudge me for pets, purring.
I miss burying my face in your neck and smelling swamp because you love sleeping in the flower beds.
I miss seeing you peer through the window from the top of the fence, and hearing you announce your arrival.
I miss you walking with me to the mailbox, and running up the driveway to greet me when I come home.
I miss you, my hedge kitty, my Bold. Run wild and run free.
February 5, 2015
CHAPTER ONE
Standing in the center of the space she’d leased on Fourth Street for her espresso bar and bakery, Bread and Bean, Thea Clark imagined how her shop would look two months from now when it opened, how it would smell with coffee brewing, and bread and pastries baking.
How it would sound with customers oohing and aahing over flaky croissants, and delicate baklava, and sweet strudel, the artisanal loaves nestled in their baskets with their unique rustic shapes, their crusts beautifully browned around their airy, flavorful crumb.
Her shop. The words gave Thea such immense pleasure. Even with all the work to be done, she felt like she could float. At the moment, the shop resembled an abandoned storefront, because it was, but even that made her smile. This was her blank canvas, her bolt of fabric, her empty page to fill with words; she couldn’t wait to get started.
A year ago she never would’ve dreamed she’d be weeks away from throwing wide the doors to a business of her own, one that would benefit many and allow her to pay forward as well as pay back. That, more than the challenge of entrepreneurship, was making it a lot easier to get out of bed these days. She had so many people to thank, and so much to be thankful for.
Then again, dreaming was one of the first things she’d dumped from her arsenal of survival tricks. It hadn’t made much sense for her to think of anything beyond the day-to-day when Todd, her ex, was always ready to cut her off at the knees for wasting time on pursuits he disapproved of, to pull the rug out from under her for being so bold as to suggest those pursuits were important to her. To send her crashing to the ground. Literally.
But all of that was behind her now, and would stay behind her forever. Her future was in bread. And in beans. Soup beans and coffee beans. The former sold in bulk. The latter ground and brewed into espresso shots downed straight, or used in cappuccinos and lattes.
She smiled at the thought of customers seeing the latte art for the first time, even if she was a complete failure at drawing anything but leaves. Other patterns required a wrist action she’d never mastered; according to Todd, her wrist action hadn’t been good for much of anything, ever.
That was why she’d be putting Becca York to work in the espresso bar instead of in the kitchen, where the rest of Bread and Bean’s magic happened. Becca had once used dollops of milk foam to draw swimming fish in one cup, and in a second, a three dimensional cat, ready to leap. As much as Thea hated the reason Becca had moved here, she loved having her in the fold.
Flipping on the shop’s lights, she crossed from the kitchen door to the long folding table she was using as a desk. There, she dropped her keys into her messenger bag and dug out her phone. Her contractor was due shortly to go over some changes to the build-out specs, and she wanted to look at the plans one last time. Bread and Bean was her baby. She would be the one dotting her i’s and crossing every last one of her t’s. The women she lived and worked with, Becca and the others, called her a control freak. She laughed at that; she owned the trait gladly.
She’d ordered the shutters for the bottom half of the front windows from Angelo Caffey. He was local and did amazing woodwork. The café curtains that would cover the upper portions were being sewn even now by the very capable Frannie Charles. The fabric Thea—with Ellie Brass’s input—had chosen, was a beautiful combination of browns, rusts, and greens. It was earthy and warm, with less a feel of autumn than that of a desert in bloom.
The latte mugs would be arriving soon. Those Thea had commissioned from a pottery near Bandera. One of the women there threw the most gorgeous designs, and the art Thea had requested from her catalog was a perfect complement for the curtains. The hooked rugs to go beneath the shop’s small café tables, and in front of the groupings of cushy club chairs, would be longer in coming. They were being made to order and would pull together the color scheme.
Yesterday, the baskets for the bread had shipped from a market in Arizona. The owner sold only handmade items and funneled the proceeds back to the women who couldn’t risk putting their name on their work. It was the same with the mugs and the rugs. And while the shutters would bear Angelo Caffey’s logo, the label on the curtains above would say Bread and Bean. No one would ever know Frannie Charles had sewn them.
Now, fingers crossed that pulling the trigger and opening the shop in Hope Springs, Texas, instead of Austin—which was overrun with bakeries and coffee shops—or Round Rock—where Thea had grown up but couldn’t imagine ever returning to—would end up being one of the few right decisions she’d made. Staying with Todd for so long sure hadn’t been, though leaving had probably saved her life, as had buying the house on Dragon Fire Hill.
There never had been a dragon, of course. There had been trash barrels and burning tires and illegal bonfires and campsites. The hill was out of the way, and the house on top, abandoned for a very long time, had been worth little until Thea had saved it. The land had been used—and misused—accordingly by vagrants and drifters and criminal types.
But dragons had teeth. Dragons ha
d scales. Dragons didn’t let anyone close. She liked the idea of living where the mythical beasts were known to—metaphorically—tread. Of being able to see anyone approach. Of having heavy doors with heavier locks and ballistic-resistant windows. It had taken a lot of money to outfit the house, but no one uninvited would ever get in, and Todd would never miss the cash.
The renovations made her feel safe, and better able to keep the women who counted on her safe, too. Because that was all that mattered. Seeing that not one of them ever faced another fist or belt, or the base of a blender, or the wrong end of a shotgun, or a knife blade, or even the sting of hurtful words hurled out of hatred or spite. That none of them ever had to visit an emergency room again for any preventable reason: to get stitches, to have bones set, to be questioned and made to feel at fault for suspicious injuries.
Pushing aside the unsettling thoughts, Thea closed her eyes to center herself and listened. The traffic on the street outside was minimal, though she knew from talking to Callum Drake, who owned Bliss, the confectionery next door, and to Peggy Butters, whose Butters Bakery sat on the other side of Callum’s shop, that weekends were madhouse crazy.
She liked that a lot. Being too busy with work to think of anything else. Her well-laid plans for Bread and Bean were coming together beautifully. Everything had unfolded exactly as she’d intended. She was where she was supposed to be. Finally.
The only thing left to do, she mused, as she unrolled the shop’s blueprint across the floor and dropped to sit in front of it, was hope none of her secrets decided to rear their ugly heads, and pray no one ever found out what had happened to Todd.
There were more things Dakota Keller had forgotten about his teenage years spent in Texas than he would probably ever realize. Self-preservation was like that, and he couldn’t regret what he couldn’t recall.
But one thing he would never forget was the top of Thea Clark’s head. The way at fifteen years old she’d sat on his bedroom floor in a complete split, leaning forward, textbooks spread out in front of her. She would stretch her feet, her toes pointed like a ballerina’s, as if the motion helped her think. She’d hold them there like that, scribbling furiously on her homework, then relax them as she lifted her pencil from the page.
The woman sitting similarly on the floor in front of him now was doing the same thing while running a finger over a blueprint. Her brown hair, streaked or highlighted or whatever the process was called that women paid too much for, wasn’t quite as dark as it had been in high school; Dakota had looked down at it often enough to know. Sometimes when she was studying, the tousled mess sticking this way and that, a cigarette or a joint tucked behind her ear. Other times when she’d been on her knees in front of him, her lips parted, though it was probably best he not go there, he mused, clearing his throat.
“One sec,” she said, thumbing out a note on her phone, then sitting straight, swinging her legs inward, ankles crossed, and scissoring up to stand. It really was something to see, all that flexing, even if the khaki knee shorts she was wearing hid the best parts of her legs, and her toes were covered by black ankle socks and black canvas sneakers.
Her black tank top was just as concealing, not tight or clingy, but almost burlap-sack baggy, and she wore a black sports bra beneath. Thinking of Thea in a bra took his mind back to times and places that were going to make this job hell if he didn’t get a grip.
He really needed to get a grip because Thea was looking at him now, and he felt punched in the gut by her eyes. “Hey Clark,” he said, adding a shrug for good measure.
“Dakota?”
He watched her throat work as she swallowed. Watched her blink as if doing so would clear him from her vision. “I imagine you were expecting Tennessee.”
“Yeah. I was.” Her voice was rough and gravelly, her tone confused as she took him in. Probably wondering how they were going to work together, because that’s exactly what he was wondering, too. She tucked her phone in her pocket and asked, “What are you doing here?”
When did you get back? Where have you been?
Those were the questions he’d been asked repeatedly since he’d returned to Texas after a dozen plus years away and found himself in Hope Springs. Thea’s question was a lot simpler to answer. “I’m here about your build-out.”
“No, I mean, what are you doing in Hope Springs? Last I knew, you were, well, not here.”
Huh. Seemed he was wrong. He thought everyone in town knew he was back. And why. One of the PIs hired to find him hunting him down. His showing up at the hospital in time to say hello to his new baby niece only hours after Georgia May arrived in his brother Tennessee’s life.
“Working with Tennessee,” was his answer.
She reached up a hand, rubbed the backs of her fingers under her chin. Beneath her wrist, her pulse beat at the base of her throat. “So Keller Brothers Construction is finally a thing?”
He wasn’t ready to go into any of that, even if he’d been back a year. “It’s still Keller Construction. I’m just the hired help.”
“Hmm.” It was all she said, and he let it lie. At least until she continued to rub at her chin, to look him over . . . Those eyes of hers, and all the things he saw her thinking . . . He needed distance from those eyes, the way she saw too much of the world around her and too much of him.
Seems that was one of the things about her he hadn’t remembered, and it was dangerous.
“This is going to be something,” he said, walking farther into the space. The layout reminded him a lot of a shop in Idaho where he’d worked as a barista for a year. “Though I still find it hard to believe what people will pay for coffee.”
“It’s not just coffee,” she said from close behind him. He hadn’t heard her move, and he inhaled, wondering if she still smelled like warm sugar. “It’s the ambiance. The lighting and the music. The smells. The beans being ground. The chocolate and the vanilla and the caramel.”
“So I can’t get just a plain cup of coffee?” he asked as he turned. She’d moved near enough that he could’ve reached for her easily. So near he could count the freckles on her nose. But no sugar. A flower, he thought. Maybe lavender. Maybe jasmine.
“Of course you can get just a plain cup of coffee,” she said, crossing her arms, cocking her head. “Though I still find it hard to believe what people will drink when they have so many exotic choices.”
“Exotic.” It was a loaded word. “Because exotic is better than plain?”
“Isn’t it?” she asked, causing him to wonder again what she was doing in Hope Springs. Besides brewing coffee. And making him think about the past he’d spent more than a decade working to forget. He looked over her shoulder to the table set up against the wall, nodding toward the big silver machine sitting there with all its levers and dials.
Pretty penny of an investment. “That thing work?”
She glanced behind her. “The espresso machine? Sure. You want me to make you a drink? Latte? Mocha? Cappuccino?”
But not just a plain cup of coffee. “A latte would be great.”
“Oh, good. I can practice my leaf drawing.”
Yeah, he should probably tell her he knew a little bit about latte art. “A leaf.”
“Yep. Pull the espresso shot, and pour the steamed milk beneath the crema.” She used her hands to talk, another thing he remembered, though she was definitely more expressive now than she’d been then. “You have to heat the milk to just the right temperature, without all the foam you want in a cappuccino. Then it’s all about the wrist. And the imagination. I have the second, but not the first, so I can draw you a beautiful leaf. Or if you’re lucky, a heart.”
“Is that what you mean by exotic?”
“Don’t poop on my parade, Dakota Keller,” she said with a pout. “I’m trying to have fun here.”
He could think of better ways to have fun, but her animation intrigued him; s
he seemed strangely jumpy when she had no reason to be. Or at least not because he was here. “Then by all means. Draw me a leaf. Or a heart. Or a stick-figure pony. Though I’d still be happy with a plain cup—”
“Hey, Thea. You’ll never guess—”
That was all Dakota heard before the small black woman who’d stopped speaking rushed the width of the room like a runaway train. She shoved her way between him and Thea with her shoulders, then lifted the arm closest to him and backed him into the wall with her forearm against his throat. She was maybe five four, five five, but she felt like a Mack Truck.
“I don’t know who you are, Jack—”
“Down, Becca,” Thea said, moving just as swiftly to his side. The other woman held Dakota’s gaze with fierce golden brown eyes, eyes as frosty as they were sizzling, and he didn’t even think about looking away. “I’m good, sweetie.” Thea patted Becca’s lead pipe of a forearm. “I’m fine. This is Dakota Keller. He’s here to do the build-out of the shop. And he’s an old friend.”
Becca didn’t appear convinced; her chest rose and fell, up and down, her pulse thudding at her temple beneath the curls of her loose Afro. Finally, she moved away. “Personal space, man. Learn it. Use it.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, because there wasn’t any need to argue. He understood damage. A thought that had him wondering what this one was doing with Thea.
“Okay, then,” Thea said, brushing at her bangs as if doing so helped further diffuse the situation. “What did you want me to guess?”
But Becca shook her head. “I’ll tell you later.” Then she turned for the kitchen, the soles of her Converse high-tops squeaking on the concrete floor. She pushed through the swinging doors, and moments later, the back door opened and closed.
Only then did Dakota’s breathing return to normal. “You want to explain that?”
Thea sighed. “It’s a long story.”
“I’m in no hurry.” Though his interest wasn’t so much in the woman who’d left the room as what she meant to the one beside him.
