The Comfort of Favorite Things (A Hope Springs Novel Book 5)

by Alison Kent

  She knew about the worst thing he’d done, and how he’d paid for it. She didn’t know what it had been like for him behind bars—no one did, no one ever would—or what it meant to live as a . . . vagabond, he mused, turning over the word, weighing it. He wasn’t proud of having abandoned his family, though doing so had seemed the only option at the time.

  Later, when he might’ve returned, too much water had passed under the bridge. He could apologize for being absent and out of touch, sure, no problem. But amends and explanations . . .

  He had no obligation to give more than he was comfortable with. It was his life. His business.

  “Do you want to know something totally crazy?”

  He looked up, surprised to find Thea still staring. More surprised to realize he’d drifted away. “About the sex life we did or did not have?”

  “Our sex life, because it was a sex life, was better than any other I’ve had since.”

  He wasn’t even sure he could process what she’d just said. “Come again?”

  “You heard me,” she said, moving closer to his table. She braced her hands on the top and leaned forward, the motion showing off the muscles in her shoulders and giving him pause for the second time. “Not one of the handful of relationships I’ve had since high school was as good as what I had with you. I think you ruined me, Dakota Keller. Absolutely, completely ruined me for anyone else.”

  Even if she’d given him time to answer, he wouldn’t have known what to say; how would any man respond to being told such a thing? But she didn’t.

  She pushed away and headed for the kitchen, ignoring his, “Thea, wait,” and waving him off. The swinging door bounced closed, leaving him torn between following her and giving her space. He picked up his pencil, tossed it down again, picked up his square, and did the same.

  Then the front door opened, making his decision for him. He stayed where he was and watched Becca York walk in. Once she’d shut the door behind her and caught sight of him, she reached up to pull her buds from her ears, then she wrapped the cords around her phone and pocketed them.

  “Mornin’,” he said, nodding while keeping his hands where they were and his voice soft and level.

  “Mornin’,” she said, returning his nod, her Afro, a brown that was tinted almost red, bouncing. She pushed away from the entrance to pace back and forth in front of his table, rolling her next words around on her tongue. “Look. About the other day . . .”

  He started to cut her off, to tell her not to worry about it, but he was curious enough to let her have her say, so he lifted his mug to drink and waited.

  “I’m sorry. I overreacted.” She stopped walking to dig a crushed cigarette box from her other pocket. “I do a lot of that. Leaping before I look. Or at least leaping before I know what exactly it is I’m seeing.”

  “No harm, no foul.” As sins went, it was pretty minor.

  “So you’re okay?” she asked, flipping the box open, flipping it closed. “Your throat?”

  “I’m fine,” he said, and found himself swallowing as if test-driving the equipment. “Not even the hint of a bruise.”

  “Then we’re good? Because both of us being here, both of us working for Thea . . .” She stopped in front of him, much where Thea had been standing earlier. “I don’t want her in the middle of some stupid shit storm.”

  “We’re good,” he said. “No reason for a shit storm.”

  “Okay,” she said, her eyes wide and worried, her dark skin—shoulders, arms, chest—clammy from the heat, and her muscles just as buff as her boss’s. “It’s hard for me . . . I don’t do well . . .” She stopped and rubbed at her forehead. “I’m shit with meeting new people. Complete and utter shit.”

  “That’s okay.” Her floundering caused him to smile. “I’m not much of a people person myself.”

  She shook her head, gave a short huff, then stuffed the cigarette box back into her pocket. “Bet you’ve never tried to crush someone’s windpipe before you even knew their name.”

  No, but he’d done a pretty good job crushing the jaw of a kid he’d thought was a friend. And he’d done it with a baseball bat. At least Becca had used her arm. “I’ve got a few regrets of my own.”

  “I never said I regretted it.”

  Her words took a second to register, and then he laughed out loud, reaching up to scratch at his neck as he did. “I’ll keep that in mind for the future.”

  “No need,” she said, grinning, too. “I’m pretty sure we’re on the same page.”

  He nodded. He liked this one, her sense of humor, her twisted sense of self. “How did you and Thea hook up? And, yeah. I know her story’s not yours to tell,” he added, repeating Thea’s words since they did the job as good as any.

  “But you’re asking me anyway,” she said, walking closer, leaning against the wall beside his table where he’d tacked up his blueprint, her hands behind her, deadly weapons out of sight.

  He tried for casual. “I’m just asking you about your side of things. Tell me that instead.”

  “Why should I?”

  “Might make our working together easier if we understand each other a bit.” Though he wasn’t sure how much of his own story he wanted her to know.

  She seemed to consider his answer longer than it required. “We’re not exactly working together.”

  True enough. “We’re working in the same place. And for the same woman.”

  She thought about that for a while, too, then shifted her weight from one hip to the other. “Thea said you’d been in prison.”

  So that’s how it was. Thea could talk about him, but not vice versa. “Yep.”

  “Because you stood up for your sister.”

  “That’s not exactly how it went down, but”—he shrugged—“close enough.”

  “Thank you,” she said.

  He nodded again, then added, “You’re welcome.”

  It seemed a strange exchange to have with someone who hadn’t been there in the past to know what he’d done and why.

  She dropped her gaze to the floor, shifting again, frowning as out of nowhere she said, “I was raped. More than once. While in the navy.”

  “Becca. Oh, man.” He stopped, his heart thudding, his pulse a drumbeat at his temples. “I’m so sorry. I had no idea.”

  “That’s because Thea’s really good at keeping secrets,” she said, her mouth twisted wryly.

  He filed away the comment, thinking he might need it later. But at the moment all he had room for was the hell of what she’d endured. “That kind of shit should never happen. To any woman.” He was babbling. He had no way to make things better, and everything out of his mouth sounded lame. “But not to be safe when defending your country? That’s just obscene.”

  “Yeah, well,” she said, scuffing the sole of one shoe against the floor. “There’s still a lot of good ol’ boys club members out there who don’t agree.”

  “Becca—”

  “Don’t make me sorry I told you,” she was quick to say, one eyebrow lifting archly.

  Yeah, he mused as he nodded. They were going to be okay. He raised his mug, casually asking, “Is that how you know Thea?”

  Becca cocked her head. “Really? You’re prying into her side of things now?”

  “Just making conversation,” he said, hiding his grin as he drank.

  “If you want to know, ask her sometime,” she said as she shoved away from the wall and headed for the kitchen door. “You two have enough of a past—”

  Crap on a cracker. “She really has been talking to you about me, hasn’t she?”

  “It’s no big thing. That day I tried to choke you she told me you two were old friends.”

  “Right. Friends.”

  “Most people who sleep together regularly are friends, aren’t they?” she asked, then pushed her way into the kitchen, leavi
ng a cauldron of laughter behind.

  Hearing both Dakota and Becca’s voices in the shop, Thea left the kitchen through the back door and made her way around the block to the front. It took her several minutes to get there, which gave her just enough time to stomp off her frustration—With herself? With him? With their past?—and she wondered if this was going to be her thing now, walking out on him because it was easier and so much less painful than staying to face the music like the adult she was.

  Or maybe it was just ingrained. Inherited even. Part of her DNA. She couldn’t speak to her father; she’d never met him, she didn’t even know if his walking out had been his choice. She did know her mother, and walking out had been one of the things Muriel Clark did best. But Thea was not her mother. And Dakota deserved better treatment than what she’d shown him. He was her contractor, but even more than that, he was a human being. And he was her friend. Or he had been anyway.

  Her reasons for moving to Hope Springs were several. It had been time to get on with life on her own. She’d spent a year in the shelter she’d moved to after leaving the safe house that had originally taken her in. During that year there had been no word from Todd, and while she understood the practicality of losing herself in a city like Austin or Dallas, her state of mind required something serene. She couldn’t deal with looking behind her at every new noise and seeing crowds.

  It was when she’d seen Indiana’s engagement announcement in the paper that she’d first considered settling in Hope Springs. She hadn’t kept in touch with Indiana after graduation. She’d been busy trying to make it on her own, and Indiana had her thinking too much of Dakota. She was sure it was why they’d fallen out of contact in the first place. Dakota was what had brought them together. He’d been the foundation of their friendship. The original glue. Then he was gone.

  But the main reason, the true reason she’d chosen Hope Springs was the possibility of seeing him again. She’d known it was a long shot. His brother had set up his business here, she’d learned. His sister had moved here and married. Surely, Thea had rationalized, there was a chance Dakota might show up one day, to visit maybe. Except she’d been so wrapped up in the red tape and paperwork of buying the house and setting up the shelter that she hadn’t kept up with the Keller siblings.

  Dakota had returned to Texas and she hadn’t even known.

  She’d gotten exactly what she wanted, and now she didn’t know what to do with it. Had she thought they could start fresh? Get to know each other as adults without the ball-and-chain of the past dragging behind them and weighing them down? One thing was certain: She would not keep running out on him. She was done being afraid of all the scary places he might take her. The conversations she didn’t want to have with him. The memories she’d locked away sure to bubble to the surface.

  She pulled open the door to the shop, walking in just as he was walking out. “Where are you going?”

  He arched a brow, as if she was one to be asking questions when she’d left him hanging not so long ago. “I need to run to Kern’s Hardware.”

  “Can I hitch a ride?”

  “To where?”

  “Just a ride.” She didn’t have anywhere to go. She just needed to apologize.

  “Truck’s right there,” he said, nodding to the space in front of her shop.

  It was an older model, and still had a bench seat. A lot like the truck he’d driven in high school. Buckets were comfortable, but there’d been something about cuddling in the front of his truck, his arm around her shoulder, their thighs pressed tight, the windows down and her hair whipping into her face . . .

  Not that any of that was going to happen now, she mused, slamming the passenger door and buckling up. Still, the recollection was a nice one, even if it had her revisiting the rest of the things they’d done in his truck’s front seat. Taking a deep breath to dispel the thoughts had her swimming in his scent.

  She was so screwed.

  “You’re going to have to tell me where to let you out, or it’s the hardware store for you.”

  Staring out her window as he drove, she smiled. “Kern’s is fine. I can walk to String Theory from there.”

  She’d pulled the name of the fabric shop out of her hat. It was across the street and two doors down from Kern’s. Still, while she was in the neighborhood . . . “I need to get a couple of patches for the chairs in the kitchen at home. They’ve seen better days. Though that’s pretty typical for hand-me-downs.”

  “You got that right. Take it from someone who’s used a lot of spit and baling wire on other people’s garbage.”

  He’d left home at eighteen. He’d spent the next three years in prison. He’d been on the road for over a decade since, save for the last year when he’d lived first in his brother’s home, then in the cottage that belonged to his sister. Thea supposed he was just as familiar as she with secondhand things, though maybe she’d started first, her crib coming from a garage sale and all.

  And then she blurted out, “I’m sorry,” because she didn’t know how else to get there.

  “For what?” he asked, and snorted. “Me having nothing to my name?”

  “No. I mean, well, yes.” Could she be any clumsier? “I am sorry about that, but the apology was for walking out on you earlier.”

  “What about yesterday? Do I get one for then, too?” he asked, giving her a side-eyed glance. “Or maybe I need to be apologizing to you. I ruined you for other men. I’ve never been a gentleman. Hell, with that résumé, it’s a wonder you trust me to drive you to buy . . . What was it? Patches?”

  “Fine. I don’t really need the patches. I mean, I do”—Frannie’s youngest had found holes in the fabric of two of the kitchen’s chairs and gone to town—“but the chairs aren’t going anywhere, and you were.”

  “And you figured if you were in a moving vehicle it would be harder to walk out if things got tough.”

  Something like that. No. Exactly like that. “What are we doing here, Dakota? And I don’t mean going shopping.”

  “You mean how did two crazy kids from Round Rock end up together in Hope Springs?”

  She knew her story. She just wasn’t ready to tell him that he was a big part of her being here. And she knew his, so . . . “Are you going to be able to do this job, or am I in your way?”

  He slowed at the corner stop sign, glanced over as he put the truck into motion again. “That’s a hell of a loaded question, Clark.”

  Was there anything about their relationship that wasn’t? “It’s all I need to know today. Just the one thing.”

  “I guess it depends. If we stick to our agreement not to talk about the past, to keep to business and the present”—he checked his rearview and both side mirrors, though his truck was the only vehicle on the road—“we should be okay. If not, I can have Tennessee put someone else on the job.”

  “And then you’ll leave?”

  He shrugged his answer. He’d already told her he was thinking about hitting the road, but the idea of his going even sooner because she couldn’t keep her mouth shut . . . He was here. She was here. She had to be satisfied with that. She had to stop looking for answers to questions put to bed long ago.

  What good would it do now to find them? she mused, staring out the window as they passed the insurance office and the art house theater. “I heard the theater was going to be renovated.”

  “Yeah. Tennessee got the job.”

  “That’s great. Wow. You’ve got to be excited.”

  “He’s excited. I won’t be here.”

  “You’re going to leave before it’s done?” she asked and glanced over, watching his pulse tic in the vein at his temple.

  “I’m just the hired help, remember?” he finally said in response.

  And as stupid as it was, she pushed. “Is that all you want to be?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

&nb
sp; “I remember high school. You and Tennessee talking about doing construction together.”

  “We were kids.”

  “So were we,” she said, not sure if she was reminding him or herself of how young they’d been when they’d shared their bodies as well as pieces of their souls.

  He pulled into an angled parking spot in front of Kern’s Hardware, then shut off the truck, but made no move to get out. Instead, he stared at the steering wheel, twisting his hands around it. “You just can’t help yourself, can you? You just can’t let it go. You have to keep bringing it up. You have to keep digging. What is wrong with you, Clark?”

  She stared at her hands where she’d wound her fingers together in her lap, her vision blurry, though she refused to cry. He was right about it all, but she still couldn’t answer his question. All she could do was push out of the truck and head for String Theory, hoping she hadn’t just screwed up the single best friendship she’d ever known.

  Becca spent the rest of the day in the kitchen organizing the supply shelves. Ellie was a genius when it came to baking bread but a complete disaster grouping and classifying her flours and herbs and spices. Who put cinnamon next to sage? That didn’t even make sense. Essential savory herbs were not shelved next to spices. Especially when the cinnamon alone required an entire rack. There was Chinese, Vietnamese, Ceylon, and Indonesian. There were powders and oils and sticks and bark.

  But every time Becca walked into the kitchen to help Ellie wash the mixing bowls and baking pans, or to mop the floor free of spilled flour—which she did, like, five times a day—she found the spelt flour next to the turbinado sugar and that next to the coconut oil. Honestly. The mess of bottles and bags and jars and cans and tubes and droppers had her wanting to pull out her hair. And Ellie’s hair. Which would take forever.

  Then again, Ellie didn’t think of the supplies as simply as Becca did. She was into the medicinal properties of everything as well as the culinary. Sage for respiratory health. Cinnamon for digestive upset. Becca didn’t know how the other woman knew the things she did, or why she came across as such an airhead when she was degreed and anything but. Becca wanted to punch people who made fun of her. Ellie just laughed it off.