The Comfort of Favorite Things (A Hope Springs Novel) (14 page)

Checking the directions on her Mini Cooper’s dashboard GPS, Lena made the turn onto Grath Avenue and headed for the barn at the end of the road. Since it was the only building around, she assumed it housed Keller Construction. The company website hadn’t said anything about the hours they were open. She didn’t even know if they had a regular office; Grath Avenue was pretty much out in the sticks.

Probably stupid to come all this way when she could’ve talked to the dude working at Bread and Bean. She just didn’t want anyone there to hear what she had to say. Since Bliss hadn’t been busy this afternoon, Callum hadn’t minded her cutting out an hour early. Especially since she’d finished her end-of-the-day cleanup before the day had come to an end. He’d do the mopping once the doors were locked. He always did.

She was probably making a fool of herself, but there was something about seeing how Ellie and the others lived in that house on Dragon Fire Hill that Lena couldn’t get over. It was a big house. There was plenty of room. The women weren’t tripping over each other to get around. But they were tripping over the flooring, and the flashing, and dodging potholes on the way to pee. And they were locking themselves inside that disaster because it was where they were safe.

Ellie covered her scars with her sleeves and her hair. Becca covered hers
with bravado. Frannie hadn’t yet found anything to hide behind but her boys, and that wasn’t going to work. She needed to find her own strength
or she’d be putting them in danger. Lena could tell her. Lena knew.

Thea was a different story. And harder to figure out. She was the pro at camouflaging her emotions. Maybe she’d been out of her personal hell longer than the others. One dinner and a couple of hellos outside their respective shops wasn’t enough time for Lena to get a read, though it was obvious there was something between her and Dakota Keller.

It wasn’t right that they were living in such crap conditions when Lena could so easily do something about it. So they’d hit bad patches in their lives. Lena and her mother could compare stories until the cows came home. Honestly, it was a wonder the two of them were still alive. She thanked her lucky stars every day that her father wasn’t. Cruel? Not a bit. Heartless? Not in her world. Did she miss him? That question was tougher, because it had more than one answer.

Yes, she missed the man who’d sat with her on her bedroom floor and taught her how to play chess, who’d decided she was plenty old enough to choose her own bedtime stories, and had read her Stephen King’s
The Stand
at a time when she’d been too young to understand much of the plot. But that was okay. He’d read to her. She’d heard the words in his voice. She’d cuddled close to his side. She’d loved him.

No, she did not miss the man he’d become after whatever it was had ruined his mind: drugs, depression, drink. A combination of all three. The genetic predisposition to madness. Because that’s the only word her young self had been able to attach to his actions. The violence that came out of nowhere. The zombielike numbness that followed. The flashes of clarity in his eyes that were lost to his inner anarchy.

So . . . yeah. She knew about lives that started out most excellent and crashed in a way that meant there was no going back. She didn’t want to go back, but at least she’d been left a really hefty insurance payment when he finally croaked. Like big time major hefty. Enough that she could go through the rest of her life without working, if that’s what she wanted to do. She didn’t. She wanted to be normal—colored hair or no—not the poor little rich girl with the crazy old man.

She parked her car, snagged her key fob from the ignition, her phone from the passenger seat, and got out. The barn door was open; now that she was closer, she could see it wasn’t the home for cows she’d feared. Dakota was standing inside talking to the dude she assumed was his brother. They looked like family, both tall, both built, both pretty hot in that scruffy, golden-eyed and caramel-brown hair sort of way. She wouldn’t kick either one of them out of bed if she liked men. Oh, wait. The brother was wearing a wedding ring.

She looked from one man to the other, thinking she must’ve walked in on something heavy because there was some major tension going on between them. Dakota was the first one to speak.

“Lena, right?” he asked, pointing at her.

Since they’d exchanged names earlier in the day, big points to him for remembering. “Yep. Lena Mining,” she said, introducing herself to the man she didn’t know.

“Tennessee Keller,” he said, shaking her hand.

“I figured.” When his brows drew together in a deep frown, she added, “It’s Keller Construction. And I know Dakota. You were the only one left.

“Okay,” he said, as if he couldn’t wait to split. “I’ll leave you two to whatever brings you here.”

“What brings me here is a job,” she said, before he’d gone more than a step.

“A job?” Dakota was the one to ask the question as his brother took that same step back.

“What kind of a job?” Tennessee asked.

“Construction.” Duh. “But it’s a little tricky.”

Tennessee didn’t seem concerned. “I imagine we’ve run across whatever you can throw at us.”

“It’s a house. It needs a lot of work. But it’s not mine.” Here came the tricky part. “I want to pay for the renovations, but I don’t want the owner to know where the money came from.”

“I don’t understand,” Tennessee said.

Lena shrugged. “You will when you see the house.”

“No, I mean . . .” He waved a hand as if stirring up words. “I don’t get the anonymous thing.”

Oh. That. “That’s my business.”

“So where is it?” Dakota asked.

“Here,” she said. “In Hope Springs. It’s the house on Dragon Fire Hill.”

“That’s Thea Clark’s place,” Dakota said, frowning and suddenly hooked.

Finally
, Lena mused, and nodded. “But she’s not the only one who lives there.”

“Right. I’ve met a couple of the others.” Dakota shoved his hands in his pockets and looked from her to his brother and back. “I get the feeling it’s some sort of shelter.”

Good to know she wasn’t the only one whose thoughts had headed in that direction. “I doubt she’ll tell you if it is.”

“Makes sense she’d be keeping it off the grid.”

“Hold up a sec,” Tennessee said, raising one hand, his other at his hip. “You two have me at a disadvantage. I know we’re working Thea’s coffee shop—”

Lena corrected him. “Espresso bar—”

He waved off the details. “Whatever. What’s this about a shelter?”

“I don’t know that it is a shelter,” she said. “There are three women living there with Thea. The same three women working with her at Bread and Bean. Or two of them anyway. I’m not sure about the third. She’s got two little boys.”

“They’re not Thea’s family?” Tennessee asked, looking from Lena to Dakota and back.

She’d about had it with the questions. “I’m not even sure they’ve known each other all that long, but that’s not the point. The point is the house needs work.”

“How much work?” Dakota asked, frowning in that way people did when concentrating. “Is it a complete pit?”

Lena shrugged. “Define pit. Holes in the walls. Holes in the floors. It’s probably no worse than a frat house.”

“But those aren’t nineteen-year-old college boys living up there,” Dakota said.

“That’s the thing,” she said. “They pool what money they have to make ends meet. But they can’t afford cheese to go with their bread. They have blankets and sheets and mattresses, but in a couple of rooms, the ones I saw downstairs, those are on the floor.”

Dakota spit out some pretty foul words. “And that’s where Thea lives.”

Lena nodded. She’d been right about him and Thea having a thing. “It’s weird, though,” she found herself admitting. “The doors aren’t going anywhere. Neither are the windows. The house may fall down around them, but no one is getting in.”

“I don’t want to put a damper on things,” Tennessee said after letting that sink in, “but do you know what a construction project like what you’re describing will cost?”

Lena didn’t care. She wouldn’t touch the inheritance she’d received from her grandparents. That she was saving for the animal shelter. But she kinda liked the irony of using the insurance money she’d received from her old man to help abused women. It was just sitting there. Had been for over ten years. Spending it on herself would be too much like forgiving him.

Not even when hell froze over. “Will a million dollars cover it?”

The two men looked at each other, then back at her. Dakota was the one to finally speak. “You’re willing to spend that much on a house that doesn’t belong to you?”

“Is it going to cost that much?”

“God, I hope not.”

“Then no big deal. I have a friend who lives there.”

“She lives there now,” Dakota said. “That doesn’t mean she’ll be living there in five months.”

She’d thought about that. Then she’d thought about two little boys whose father had burned down their home while they looked on, and who had holes in the walls of their bedroom. Even if Ellie did leave, Lena couldn’t imagine Frannie Charles doing so for a while.

And there would always be another Frannie Charles. And another Robert and James. Yeah. This would be a great legacy for her old man to leave behind. Darryl Mining paying for the sins of abusive bastards everywhere. “I imagine Thea will be. She owns it.”

“You know her well, then?” Dakota asked.

Was he prying? Had she read him wrong? “I work next door to her shop, which you know. We’ve talked. I’ve eaten supper at the house. Is that well enough for you?”

“But she’s not the friend you’re doing this for.”

“Does it matter who? Or why? Because I don’t have a bit of trouble offering my cool mil to someone else. The house needs the work. The women living there deserve better than they’ve got. I’ve got the money to make it happen. I mean, it’s not burning a hole in my pocket, but yeah. It’s a good cause and it feels right. And it will make me a lot happier to spend it on someone I know than donating to a charity who’ll waste ninety percent on administrative costs and maybe put a new roof on a house I’ll never see.”

She waited for Dakota to say something. Then waited for Tennessee. Neither did, so it looked like it was still her turn. “What’s it going to be?”

Dakota looked at his brother, watched Tennessee scrub a hand down his face. “We in?”

“It’s a big job. Supplies. Man hours. Money.”

“Check with Manny? See if he has anyone else he can send you?”

“He sends me everyone he can.”

“An ad in the paper then?”

“Manny’s guys will be better vetted,” Tennessee said. “That could be a big deal considering the client.”

Lena had no idea who Manny was, but she wanted an answer. “I didn’t come here for a Ping-Pong match, but it sounds like we’re on the same page. As long as you can figure out a way to get into the house and see what needs doing and let me know. Not sure how easy that’ll be.”

“I’ve got a way in,” Dakota said with a nod. “I just need to talk to her first.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

L
ater that night found Dakota back at Bread and Bean waiting for Thea. His mind was full of his brother and his sister and what Lena Mining had told him and Tennessee about Thea’s living conditions.

What he needed was a beer. Or a long drive with his truck windows down and Axl Rose wailing “Sweet Child o’ Mine.” He wondered what had happened to all of his old cassette tapes. Then he wondered if he was as out of touch with the rest of the world as he felt.

He hadn’t been inside but three years, and he’d been almost twenty-two when released, but he hadn’t played college baseball with his peers, or attended classes with students his own age. He hadn’t gone to clubs hoping to hook up, or concerts to get wasted, or hiking or white-water rafting or parasailing or just goddamn bowling.

Those three years had made a difference. Once he was free, he hadn’t known where to start to catch up with anything . . . music, movies, TV, sports. And he hadn’t much cared. He’d been too busy breathing, eating. Learning what it felt like to walk a full mile without a fence to stop him, or a guard to yell at him that he’d gone too far.

He’d paid attention later, sure, falling into the zeitgeist over the years. It was pretty hard not to. Social media shoved it down his throat. He’d binge-watched
Breaking Bad
and
The Walking Dead
like most of America. Taylor Swift wasn’t his type, but he would’ve been hard-pressed not to follow along as she took over the world.

But most of the time he felt . . . unsettled. As if he didn’t belong. His own fault. He’d walked out of prison and turned his back on everything he’d known. He had no one to belong to. No place. No history. Robby and the bat and the trial meant he couldn’t go back to Round Rock. That had meant leaving Indiana. And Tennessee.

Because as much as he’d tried to convince himself otherwise, they were as big a part of that night as he was. And as long as he continued to see them on a regular basis, he’d never be able to forget.

He wanted more than anything to forget.

A jangle of keys at the front door caught his attention. He stilled and waited, listening as the door opened, as Thea—because he recognized the sound of the key ring as hers—shut the door behind her and pocketed the keys.

“Hey, Clark.”

“Good grief. Dakota. You scared me. What are you still doing here?”

For one thing, he was working, but since he was on his back inside the shell of the barista station, that was pretty obvious. For another, he was avoiding both Indiana and Tennessee, and this was the best place to do that since neither could get in.

Mostly, though, he was waiting for Thea. He knew she stopped by on the nights she wasn’t the one to lock up at the end of the day. He hadn’t seen her since this morning, and Becca had been the last to leave . . . “If you’re going to ask me that every time we run into each other, it’s going to get old. Especially since you’re paying my brother for me to be here.”

“I just mean that it’s late,” she said, standing over him; he could see her from her ankles to her thighs when he glanced at his feet, her baggy knee shorts, her black socks and black shoes, a uniform he hadn’t yet worked out, unless Old Navy gave her a bulk discount or something. “I know
what
you’re doing here.”

He crawled out from beneath the cabinet and rolled up to sit, draping his wrists over his knees, a screwdriver in one hand, a flashlight in the other. “I wasn’t in the mood to go home. I had a burger at the Back Alley Pub. Nothing on TV. I already reached the end of the Internet,” he said, and she snorted. “Thought I might as well work.” He looked her up and down.

She backed into the wall behind her, giving him room. “And why
do I have a hard time believing you keep up with what’s on TV?”

“Because I don’t,” he said. “Unless it’s football season. Or that Victoria’s Secret runway show thing with all the big shoes and big wings and big—”

“Yeah, yeah. I get the picture.” She gave him a look, all judgmental and haughty. “I figured you’d be home making travel plans.”

Home. Was that what the cottage on Three Wishes Road was? Because that was not what it felt like. Neither did Hope Springs. Even after a year. “I’m about to ditch them just to keep Indiana and Tennessee off my case.”

“They love you,” she said, frowning, as if his siblings’ emotions were the yardstick he was supposed to use to plan the rest of his life.

“And I love them,” he said, handing her the flashlight. “But if Indiana
wanted to up and move to, well, Indiana, I’d throw her a party.”

She flicked the flashlight on, flicked it off. “If Indiana were to move, she’d have a reason that made sense.”

He tossed the screwdriver at his toolbox and missed. “Because being unhappy here doesn’t?”

“Actually, no,” she said, holding his gaze as he got to his feet, back to flicking the flashlight on and off, on and off. He grabbed it away from her. “Unhappy is a state of mind. Moving’s not going to help it.”

And now it was amateur shrink hour
. “You know that because you’re a licensed psychologist?”

“It hasn’t helped you yet, has it?” she asked, her question serving as an answer. “All the moving?”

“I never said I was unhappy living elsewhere.” He squatted in front of the toolbox, stowing away the screwdriver and flashlight both, thinking he hadn’t been particularly happy anywhere for a very long time.

“Were you?” she asked because she was Thea and couldn’t let it go.

“I don’t know.” He let the toolbox lid slam shut. Then he shrugged and stood. “I never really thought about it.”

She was still leaning against the wall. And he was almost right in front of her. And it seemed way too close for them to be standing when the idea of kissing her to put a stop to this conversation was rattling around in his mind. Also the idea of kissing her just because that’s what he wanted to do. They never should’ve broken up . . .

She responded with a huff. “So you were just struck with the urge to move.”

Struck was pretty damn accurate. Like a fist to the gut. Or a bolt of lightning. He’d given notice and then he’d gone. Just like that. Every time. He bent for his toolbox, hefted it up like a blockade between them. “New place. New people. New food. Sure. Why not?”

She pushed off the wall and moved to the table where she picked up a loose receipt and slipped it into a folder. “Did you tell me where you worked as a barista?”

“Idaho,” he said, setting the toolbox next to the kitchen door.

“Why did you leave?”

“It was too cold.”

“Where did you go?”

“Montana,” he said, laughing at the irony before she could, though he did catch her smiling.

“Was that the ranch?”

He shoved his hands in his pockets, leaned a shoulder against the jamb. “Yep. Wrangled cattle.”

“Outdoors,” she said, finally looking up from the folder. “In Montana,”
she added, tapping the edge against the table. “Because being a barista in Idaho was too cold.”

He shrugged, wishing this didn’t feel so natural, this back and forth, this sense of things being right and comfortable and normal. “I never said it made sense.”

She dropped the folder into her messenger bag then sat in the table’s folding chair to shut down her laptop. “Did you tell me where you were when the PI found you?”

“Indiana.” He watched her stretch to unplug the cord from the wall, bend to slide the machine into its sleeve in the bag, reach for the pencils she’d left scattered about, the highlighter, the Post-it flags.

“Doing what?”

Another minute and she’d be packed. She’d have no reason to stay. Their conversation would be over. He wasn’t ready for that to happen. Besides, he needed to talk to her about the house. “Some of what I’m doing now. Construction.”

She set her bag in her lap and looked at him. “Did you have friends in all those places?”

“I knew people.”

“Did you date?” she asked, her expression tightening in a way that surprised him.

It made him almost hesitant to answer, but he did. “I saw women.”

“You slept with women.”

He shrugged, shifted his weight to his other hip, ready for a change of subject. “I made them happy. They made me happy.”

“Aha.” She narrowed her eyes, a sort of I told you so, and pointed. “So you haven’t always been unhappy.”

“I’ve never been unhappy when I’m having sex,” he said, but because he didn’t want this to devolve into a never-ending game of twenty questions, or a discourse on his sex life, he moved them back to the original topic. “I don’t know that I’m unhappy really. I’m just not . . . happy. It’s been coming on stronger for a while. And it’s gotten a lot worse since I’ve been in Hope Springs. But it’s been like this for the past decade of my life. Longer, really.”

Neither one of them said anything for a long, tense moment, Dakota wondering what in the hell was wrong with his mouth that all this crap kept pouring out. Knowing it was because of the woman looking at him as if the agreement they’d made to not discuss their pasts had been a ridiculous endeavor from the get-go and they’d been right to give it up.

They
were
each other’s past.

Yes, they’d been teenagers, and prone to exaggerated emotions, but that didn’t mean those feelings had been baseless or false. It just meant they’d been less capable of dealing with them.

Then again, they weren’t doing such a great job now.

“So it’s not my fault,” she said, her tone of voice soft, pensive. “This need you have to leave.”

Where was that coming from? “Why would it be your fault?”

“What I said to you the other day. About you ruining me for other men.” She frowned down at her bag, plucked at a loose bit of stitching on the flap. “I shouldn’t have ever said that.”

Best he recalled, she’d said it after he’d told her he was cutting out, but in light of his current musings, he was curious. He pushed off the doorjamb, moved to stand at the end of the long table, keeping the six feet of office and coffee supplies between them. “Is it true?”

“Not those words. Not . . . ruin.”

Well, that wasn’t much help. “But the sentiment?”

She took a deep breath, slouched over her bag as she blew it out, and sat like that, hunched in on herself but looking at him, vulnerable. “I haven’t been with anyone that I haven’t compared to you in one way or another. Is that what you want to hear?”

He dropped his gaze from hers, crossing his arms and frowning down at the table’s wood-grain surface. “You do remember that I was only seventeen, eighteen back then. A kid.”

She nodded, laughed softly. “Age is just a number.”

The throaty humor in her laugh twisted him up. “Are
you
happy? I mean, from what I’ve seen, your life’s not exactly . . . conventional.”

“I think you have that market cornered.” She got to her feet, setting her bag on the table and checking the closures. “I haven’t been to prison. Nor have I lived in a dozen different places and held down just as many jobs in that many years.”

“Then we’re both unconventional. Just in our own ways.”

“Not sure that makes me feel any better,” she said.

Because it would mean they were meant to be? A perfect match? Two crazy kids who’d survived some rough spots only to find each other again? Man, he did not need his thoughts to go wandering in that direction. “Actually, I’m glad I caught you. I wanted to run something by you.”

“Something more than switching out coffee vendors?”

He’d made the suggestion recently after a particularly bitter pot, but he’d been thinking less about her market research than his own preferences, so he ignored the dig. “The house you’re living in. The one up on Dragon Fire Hill.” As if there were another.

Her head came up slowly. “What about it?”

Here’s the wind-up
. . . “I know from the rumor mill that it had been empty awhile,” he said, choosing his words carefully.

“It had,” she said, going about her business.

The pitch
. . . “I also heard that vagrants had taken advantage. And that it wasn’t in the best of shape.”

“It wasn’t,” she said, then added, “It’s not. It’s up to code, and it passed inspection, though even I have trouble believing that sometimes.”

And swing!
“Then you wouldn’t mind if Keller Construction came in and fixed it up.”

She huffed at that, hooking her bag’s strap over her shoulder. “I don’t have money to have it fixed up.”

“You don’t need to. We have it covered.”

“I’m not going to let you work on my house without getting paid,” she said dismissively, heading for the door behind him. “Charity’s not my thing.”

He turned and leaned against the table. “We will be getting paid. Just not by you.”

That stopped her. “What are you talking about?”

He wasn’t exactly sure what to say, or how to say it. He couldn’t imagine being called a guardian angel would sit well with Lena Mining, but he couldn’t think of a better description. “The costs are being covered by an anonymous benefactor.”

“Uh-uh. No way.” She was shaking her head, loose strands of her topknot flipping back and forth. Her laugh was bitter. Her hand white-
knuckle tight around the strap of her bag. “Besides, that’s still charity, and
I’m not going to make it that easy for someone to get their clutches into us.”

Us? “You mean someone like an ex.”

“Exactly like an ex,” she said, waving her free hand expansively “Ellie’s, in fact, could easily afford to do this, and is exactly the sort of person who would do it, then hold it over Ellie’s head. And Ellie’s
so
easily swayed by random acts of kindness and so
so
susceptible to guilt.”

Ellie wasn’t the one he was interested in. “And your ex?”

She hesitated a moment, as if needing to weigh her words carefully and find a truth that worked. “At one point, yes. Now, I couldn’t say.”

“You don’t need to worry,” he said after that had settled. Sort of. “It’s not anyone’s ex.”