by Alison Kent
“I need to talk to you both about something,” he said, looking up to see Indiana’s face pale as she lowered her fork to her plate. Tennessee just dropped his, then sat back and shook his head.
Arms crossed, he said, “You’re leaving. That’s what this is about. Get the whole family together one final time. Big good-bye. The last supper before you hit the road. Adios, amigo.”
Dakota didn’t react. He’d expected his brother to be angry and bitter, his sister to be confused and hurt. Those emotions and others had simmered beneath the surface for a year now because the three of them hadn’t really talked. They’d exchanged words while walking on eggshells. That was no way to live. No way to stay close.
“But it’s not the whole family, is it?” He sliced the side of his fork into his meatloaf, looking from his sister to his brother while he chewed. “I think that’s pretty much why we’re all in this pickle now.”
“What pickle?” Indiana asked, wiping her napkin over her mouth, then twisting it in her lap, her fingers tight, her legs crossed. “Is Tennessee right? Are we here so you can tell us good-bye?”
He’d get to that in a minute. “Do y’all ever wonder how things would’ve turned out for us if our parents had been around? Or think about how often they weren’t there? How they’re still not? I know Tennessee does.” He gave his brother a nod. “We talked about it the other day. They’ve got a year old granddaughter they haven’t bothered to come back to the states to meet.”
Indiana frowned, and instead of answering his question, asked her own. “So you’re not leaving?”
“You with the one-track mind,” Dakota said, stabbing his fork into his potatoes and taking a bite.
She growled beneath her breath. “Answer me, dammit, before my fork accidentally flies across the table and stabs you in the eye.”
Dakota glanced at Tennessee. “Your influence, no doubt.”
“I don’t recall ever stabbing anyone with a fork. Now a knife is a whole other . . . ball . . . game. Crap.” He cut himself off, shook his head. “Sorry, man. I didn’t mean anything by that.”
“It’s okay. I did what I did and I’ve never been sorry about it. But I am sorry that I didn’t know any other way to deal with what Robby had done. Or later, after everything, how to deal with what I’d done to both of you.” He frowned down at his plate while he cleared his throat of the regrets rising there. “I walked away after prison because it’s the one thing I learned from our folks.”
“What are you talking about?” Indiana asked.
“At the prison that day. When I got out”—whoo, boy—“I knew you were both there but I couldn’t come home. I couldn’t face either of you until I was in a better place mentally.”
“But we could have helped with that,” she said insistently.
He shook his head, aware her sincerity was one hundred proof. “I appreciate you wanting to, but I had to figure things out on my own.”
“Things like what?” she asked, almost in tears.
He pushed a string of onion around on his plate. “What I wanted to do with my life—”
“Besides working construction—” Tennessee interrupted to say.
But Dakota wasn’t finished. “And how to make up for all that I put you through.”
“You didn’t put us through anything—”
“I did,” he said, meeting his sister’s gaze. “I couldn’t live with what Robby had tried to do, or the fact that we’d treated him like one of the family. I should have seen what he was—”
“Why?” Indiana asked, her napkin so snug around her fingers the tips had grown bloodless.
“None of us saw it,” Tennessee said, heading for the fridge and another beer, his voice gruff and sorrowful. “Why should you be the one to take on that burden? Robby deserves the blame for where we are now. It’s his fault.”
“And mine,” Indiana said softly.
That had Dakota frowning. “How is it yours?”
“I led him on—”
Uh-uh, he mused, tossing his fork to his plate. He wasn’t having any of that. “Did you say yes? Did you once say the word yes?”
Indiana shook her head. Her tears ran down her cheeks to her chin. She used her napkin to wipe them away, but finally gave up. They weren’t going to stop.
It took all the self-control Dakota had not to break something. “I brought him into our house—”
“No,” Tennessee said. “I did that. We both knew him. We all hung out. But I brought him home. And I convinced Dad to let him stay with us during that spring-break week.”
“None of this matters.” Taking a deep breath, Indiana waved a hand, then reached for her iced tea. After a long swallow, she put on a brave smile. A survivor’s smile. “Who did what to whom and when is in the past. I’m sure we’ve all suffered remorse. I know I have. But we’re here. We’re happy and healthy. We’re all in good relationships, and don’t tell me you and Thea haven’t hooked up again,” she said, when Dakota started to interrupt.
“That so,” Tennessee said, lifting his longneck to drink and trying to hide a grin.
Dakota made a zipping motion across his lips. He wasn’t talking about Thea until he talked to Thea.
“There’s only one thing left to settle tonight. The rest can be worked out in years of group therapy,” Indiana said teasingly, though her words had Dakota and Tennessee exchanging a terrified glance. “Are you staying?”
Dakota looked at Tennessee, who raised an eyebrow, then looked at Indiana, whose hands were clasped beneath her chin as if in prayer. Then he got up and carried his dishes to the sink, realizing what an amazingly lucky man he was to be here, past and all.
He was looking out the window into the dark night when he said, “I’m staying,” and he’d braced himself against the counter preemptively, so when Indiana launched herself at him with a joyful screech, they both—miraculously—stayed upright instead of crashing in a heap of limbs, laughter, and sibling love to the floor.
“Do you want to do this by yourself?” Dakota asked, his voice drifting softly down to Thea where she stood at his side. The pebbled walk beneath her feet was new, and led from the newly set concrete driveway to the new front steps. Those rose to the new porch wrapping all the way around the house on Dragon Fire Hill. Sturdy steps. A sturdy porch. A sidewalk without cracks. A driveway that wouldn’t turn into mud and wash farther away with the next storm.
Thea had done cartwheels across the porch last night and laughed until she’d nearly made herself sick. Oh, but it had been glorious. No loose boards to unbalance her. No jagged nail heads catching the soles of her shoes. No splinters gouging her palms as she’d tumbled. No fear of crashing through rot to the ground beneath.
The driveway continued on to the back of the house and the new carport. On the other side of the carport was a new sandbox Frank Stumbo had used his own money and his own time to build. He’d given Robert a set of pails and shovels to match the colorful plastic toolbox he’d given James. Then he’d given them both matching trucks.
Frannie hadn’t known what to do with the attention, until Frank brought his wife to visit—with Thea’s permission. Turned out the visit was less about showing a kindness to Frannie and her boys and more about giving Letha Stumbo a reason to bake cookies again.
She hadn’t touched her Mixmaster or baking sheets or food coloring or cookie cutters, he’d told Thea, since their five-year-old grandson had been killed three years earlier by a drunk driver. Frank had made certain the driver wouldn’t ever get behind another wheel.
“Well?” Dakota asked. “Would you rather do this alone? Do you want me to wait out here?”
“Absolutely not,” Thea said, rubbing her hands up and down her bare arms even though it was already in the mid-eighties and she wasn’t the least bit chilled. There was just something about this house and the way the magic had touched othe
rs who’d moved unexpectedly into its sphere.
Frank. Manny Balleza. Lena Mining. Thea wondered who she’d missed. If Dakota might have been caught up in its spell, too. Please, please let him stay. She couldn’t imagine life without him. “I want you here every step of the way. This wouldn’t have happened without you.”
“Without Keller Construction, I’ll give you,” he said, his arms crossed as he canted his head to the side to take her in. “But I didn’t have much of anything to do with it.”
“I refuse to believe you being at Bread and Bean wasn’t directly responsible somehow.” But she wasn’t going to push him more than that. Not about her benefactor. Not about the rest. Please, please let him stay. She’d done all she could; if he was leaving, then she’d move on without him, as devastated as doing so would leave her. As lonely. Though not alone.
A shudder ran through her at the thought. She shook it off and changed the subject, pressing both hands to her cheeks. The new coat of dove-gray paint, the black shutters, the white porch columns, the matching rockers scattered along it. Those had not been part of the renovations but a gift from Kaylie, Indiana, and Luna. “Oh, Dakota. It’s absolutely gorgeous.”
“Gorgeous owner deserves a gorgeous house.”
She rolled her eyes because he tickled her so with his purposefully provocative remarks. “There you go, being all sexist again.”
“Hey, gorgeous dudes deserve gorgeous houses, too.
“Uh-huh.”
It was all she said before grabbing his hand and pulling him down the sidewalk and up the stairs to the porch. The flower beds could use some work, she realized, casting a glance along the front of the house. The yard, too, eventually, but Keller Construction didn’t have a landscaping arm.
She wondered if they’d thought about adding one, what with the bedroom communities on the outskirts of Hope Springs expanding. She wondered if that was something Dakota might have an interest in. Please, please let him stay. He was so good at bringing what laid dormant to life.
When she reached for the door, Dakota stopped her, doing the honors himself with a gentlemanly bow that had her giggling as she scampered by. Once inside, she spun circles through the living room, inhaling the scents of fresh paint and wood and varnish, all of it new, all of it clean. Every bit of it hers. It didn’t even matter that the furniture was secondhand. Or that even now the room was dim, the lamps dark where they sat on their tables as always.
Her greatest wish was that one day soon, once Bread and Bean was open, and with the possible added Butters Bakery income, they wouldn’t have to keep the lights off. That they could afford the bump in the power bill that came with running the A/C more than a few hours a day.
For now, all she wanted was to celebrate. The porch, and the living room, and oh, the kitchen. The hardwood floor gleamed nearly as brightly as the glass-fronted cabinets. The countertops went on forever. Ellie was going to have so much room for baking. And the oven . . .
Thea had never seen anything like it outside of a commercial kitchen. She ran her fingertips along the edge of the stainless steel and turned to look at Dakota. “This cost a fortune, you know. This oven. Did Keller pick this out or was this our guardian angel’s doing?”
Dakota pressed his lips together and mimed zipping them, the corners of his eyes crinkling, his dimples like sideways smiles in the scruff covering his cheeks.
Beautiful, beautiful man, she mused, her heart in her throat making it hard to speak. Please, please let him stay. “You’re really not going to tell me.”
“I don’t make promises I can’t keep, Clark,” he said, and she hoped he wasn’t giving her a warning. “I figured that would be a mark in my favor.”
“Are we keeping a tally now?” she asked, strangely excited that he would care what she thought, though still wary. This was a new Dakota. As if a weight had been lifted. A decision made. She found herself holding her breath.
“You want to look at the rest? Or just stand here and ogle your oven?”
She nodded toward the back door and the new laundry room. “Let’s go.”
The appliances were a glossy onyx and top of the line, and there were almost as many cabinets in here as there were in the kitchen. “You know you went overboard with some of this.”
Dakota held up both hands, a gesture of surrender. “Don’t look at me. I had nothing to do with what went on around here. This was Tennessee’s baby. Tennessee’s crew. Which was why he could do in a month what I haven’t yet finished in almost two.”
“Right,” she said, because she didn’t believe him, but she couldn’t prove otherwise.
He tapped the top of the dryer with one hand. “You think Frannie’s going to want to keep hanging the sheets? Or will she actually use this?”
“She hangs them because she likes the smell. Though our old dryer did have to run through two cycles to do even a small load.”
From the laundry room they climbed the back staircase. It spilled out onto the second floor hallway in the corner near Thea’s room. She pushed open the door and stopped, looking from the interior to Dakota and back.
She’d expected to see her unmade bed in the center of the room, her bedside lamp and the art from her walls still in boxes, drop cloths covering everything while the paint dried. But that wasn’t what she found at all.
The room looked exactly as it had the last time it had been put together. The navy curtains and sheets were in place, along with the frolicking dolphin comforter that fell to pieces a bit more with each wash. The white-cane ceiling fan whirred overhead, and the side table she’d painted herself held her lamp and the book she’d last been reading.
The only thing different about the decor was a circular throw rug of braided rags in shades of complementary blue. “This wasn’t here before,” she said, kicking off her sandals and flexing her toes into the fabric. “It matches perfectly. I love it. Do you know where it came from?”
“Dolly helped me pick it out,” he said, dropping the bomb as if she should’ve known he’d been the one to buy her such a perfect housewarming gift.
She swallowed to clear away the swelling in her throat. Please, please let him stay. “You bought this?”
Hands stuffed in his pockets, he nodded, still standing in the doorway, still watching her.
“Why?” she asked, the rest of the house suddenly unimportant. She needed answers. She loved him. She had to know where they were going from here.
He shrugged. “I thought you might like it.”
“I love it.” Take it slow, Clark. Take it slow. “But why are you buying me gifts?”
Rather than answer, he asked, “Are you going to keep using this room?”
She adored this room. She’d done so much work on it before moving in, and it looked almost the same, only better. “Why wouldn’t I?”
“You don’t like the one in the attic?” he asked with a glance skyward.
Good grief. Could the man not respond to her questions? “Well, sure. But I was thinking it would be a lot more practical for someone like Frannie. For as long as she’s here. And should anyone else with little ones need to stay a while.”
“I get that,” he said, frowning as he looked down at the floor. “But it is your house. And since you’re staying, and since I’m staying, I thought maybe the attic could be our room.”
“Our room?” The words tumbled out but she was clueless as to how. Her mouth was dry, her ears ringing with what he’d said, her mind whirring. And then the rest of it hit her.
He was staying. He was staying.
She pressed the fingers of one hand to her heart, trying to keep it in her chest.
“If you want me to move in, that is.” He lifted his gaze, his expression searching, frightened. Vulnerable.
Oh, but she loved this man. Tears threatened, and she blinked them away, pushing her next words past a ball of
choking emotion. “You did say our room, didn’t you? As in you and me, sharing a room, living in the same house, together?”
He nodded. “I did.”
“Aren’t there a couple of steps missing here?” she asked, the question creaking out because her heart was slamming all the air from her lungs.
“Such as?”
She curled her toes into the rug again. “You love me?”
“C’mon, Clark. You know I do.” He shrugged, a sheepish grin on his face. “I always have.”
“I don’t know anything of the sort,” she said, her palms sweating, her nape sweating, the skin between her breasts growing damp. Her voice felt shaky, which she supposed was as close as it could get to perspiring. “Not once in my life, present or past, have you said anything to me—”
He crossed the room and grabbed her to him, staring down into her eyes and brushing her bangs to the side with one hand as if to get a better view. “I love you, Thea Clark. This me. Here. This you. Now. I love you. I live you. I breathe you. I will for all time. Until I’m gone.”
“But not gone like leaving,” she said once she found her voice.
He laughed at that. God it felt good to hear him laugh. “Not gone like leaving.”
“You’re going to be here. In Hope Springs. Forever.” She had to be sure.
“Forever. Or as long as you’re here anyway. You make me happy, Clark,” he said, his voice breaking. “You’re my favorite person in the entire world. Why would I want to be anywhere but where you are?”
“I can’t think of a single reason,” she said, grabbing handfuls of his T-shirt and pulling him down onto her bed, kissing him, loving him, wrapping herself up in him.
It was the most comfortable place she’d ever known.
It was exactly where she wanted to spend the rest of her life.
In love with her very best friend.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
A book is made so much better with the perfect editorial eye. A big thank you to Charlotte Herscher for seeing things so clearly, and another to JoVon Sotak for the hook-up.
