The Comfort of Favorite Things (A Hope Springs Novel) (15 page)

She was back to choking her bag’s strap again, this time with both hands. “If you know who it is, then tell me, because I can’t think of anyone who’d be that invested in my house.”

It wasn’t about the house as much as its inhabitants, though he couldn’t explain that either. He shook his head. “I can’t. That’s the only string that’s attached.”

“Thanks, but no thanks,” she said. Then she turned to go.

Crap. He needed a convincing argument, a line of reasoning she couldn’t refute. “You know it’s going to cost a small fortune to cool that place this summer without proper insulation. And leaky pipes mean wasted water and wasted cash.”

She stood facing away from him, her head falling back on her shoulders as she huffed and shook it and muttered beneath her breath. “We’ll make it work. It’s what we do.”

“But that’s the thing. You don’t have to.” He raked his hands through his hair, then settled them at his hips. “C’mon, Clark. You and Becca and Ellie are going to be working your asses off here with the coffee and the bread and the cleaning and ordering and organizing, not to mention dealing with all the locals who’ll be hanging out, bending your ear all day.”

“So?” she asked, turning toward him again, her brows arched, her exasperation clear.

He felt like he was reaching now when he knew the hard sell wasn’t going to work with her. She had always needed to make her own way. “Do you really want to go home and flip a coin to see who gets to use the hot water to shower? Or eat cold cuts for dinner because the microwave keeps throwing the breaker? Or wear the same clothes the next day because the dryer’s on the fritz?”

“You’re talking appliances.” She said it as if he was wasting her time. “I can replace appliances. Eventually. And Frannie cooks and does the laundry, so we’re covered there, and what’s wrong with cold cuts?” Then she asked, “Anything else?” and waited.

Maybe softball was a better way to go, he mused, frowning down while he gathered his thoughts. “You don’t have to be a martyr, Thea. Sometimes it’s okay to let people do nice things for you. Not all gifts have strings attached. Not everybody wants something.”

When he looked up again, he found her shaking her head, her eyes watering, her shoulders slumped as if she were about to collapse beneath some unbearable weight. He stayed where he was, wanting more than anything to go to her, to pull her close, to wrap her up in his arms and carry the burden for her. But he knew she would never let him. And so he stayed.

“This is going to cause all kinds of problems.”

Not exactly the reaction he’d expected, but considering his suspicions that the house was more that it appeared to be . . . “You’re not paying for anything. You’re not arranging for anything. What problems besides inconvenience could you possibly have?”

She twisted up her mouth as if the words wouldn’t behave. “I can’t have strange men in and out of the house. Not with the women there.”

“Strange as in men you haven’t yet met? Or strange as in weirdos? Because I can guarantee they’re not going to be any weirder than me.”

“It’s just . . .” She took a deep breath, shuddered it out. “Frannie, especially, isn’t comfortable around men she doesn’t know.”

“We’ll make sure everybody meets everybody before things get started. Trust me, Clark. The men Tennessee hires are good guys,” he said. “If there’s anything in any of their pasts that looks otherwise, it will have a legit reason for being there.”

“Like you and the baseball bat and Indiana?” she asked.

“Yeah. Like that,” he said, grinding down on the words, his jaw aching.

“I don’t know. God.” She reached up to rub at the back of her neck. “The whole anonymity thing. It makes me twitchy. And the money. You haven’t even seen the house. No one has seen the house save for Lena who works at Bliss next door. How could anyone know what they’re getting into? We’re talking a small fortune here. A large fortune, if you get right down to it.”

“I know,” Dakota said, though the work wouldn’t require but a fraction of what Lena had offered. Hell, with that kind of money they could raze the place and rebuild from the ground up. But he and his brother had talked after she’d left and agreed to pinch every penny. They wouldn’t take advantage of her generosity. And the business would absorb the cost of the labor. “Just like you know you’d be a fool to turn this down.”

She nodded. “Let me talk to everyone first. See what they have to say.”

Now he was the one feeling twitchy. “It’s your house, isn’t it?”

“It is,” she said, backing into the kitchen’s swinging door. “But it’s not just my life.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

B
ringing the subject of the home repairs to the table wasn’t as easy as that of Butters Bakery. Buying the bakery would benefit everyone living at the house on Dragon Fire Hill. So would having Keller Construction do the renovations to the structure that wasn’t quite falling apart around them but was close.

The problem was the bakery wouldn’t require a bunch of strangers to tramp around the house. The renovations couldn’t be done any other way. Dakota trusted Tennessee’s judgment and Tennessee trusted his employees. That didn’t make Thea feel a whole lot better. And she wasn’t feeling good at all about the anonymous benefactor thing.

It was going to come back and bite her in the butt. She just knew it. Yet how could she turn down the chance to give the women living with her now, and others who might come later, a place worth calling home for as long as they were there? Yes, a home could be as simple as four walls and a roof overhead, but did that roof have to leak, as theirs had been doing since a storm in February sent an icy tree branch crashing down?

The hardwood floors were serviceable but they were scuffed and pitted, and mopping did nothing but dull them more. She would kill for a new kitchen sink, stainless steel to replace the chipped porcelain, and a new faucet with a spray head that worked. And though the appliances were perfectly fine, even if the fridge motor was a bit loud, they weren’t the least bit energy efficient. Same with the central air and heat.

She’d spent the biggest chunk of her initial budget on safety concerns, the doors, the windows, the equipment for the security monitoring. Though she hadn’t been a homeowner before, she was savvy enough to research maintenance and repair costs. She’d known what she was facing buying the place as is. Then she’d had to prioritize. Cosmetics could wait. Saving money couldn’t . . . and that had driven her decision.

She would bring the subject of the home repairs to the table, but she’d already called Tennessee on her drive home to accept the Keller Construction—and her guardian angel’s—offer. Whatever the price she had to pay down the road, she’d deal with it then. In the meantime, the women in her care would be comfortable.

Because of her hour at the shop with Dakota, she’d been later than usual getting home, and Becca and Ellie had a big pot of spaghetti ready to eat. James was helping Frannie set the table. Robert was asleep on one of the chairs in the corner of the big room. Thea nodded toward him. “Is he feeling okay?”

Frannie glanced over, a concerned frown on her face. “I think so. He’s not feverish, so I don’t think he’s coming down with anything. He woke up way too early this morning, and it threw off his day. He exhausted himself playing. He needs to eat, but I’m not sure I want to wake him.”

Thea knew zero about being a mother, but it sounded like Frannie had things under control. She ruffled James’s hair as she headed to the counter for the pitcher of sun tea, then returned to the freezer to fill glasses with ice. Becca carried the spaghetti to the table. Ellie followed with a loaf of fresh, crusty Italian bread.

It was one of Thea’s favorite meals. Becca’s one-pot spaghetti recipe was so simple and absolutely stellar. Scooped up with Ellie’s bread . . .
mmm-mmm-mmm
. Usually, Thea had seconds. Tonight, she was having a hard time getting through the first bowl she’d dished up, and an equal amount of trouble paying attention to the conversation.

Ellie was the one who noticed. “Goodness, Ms. Clark. What’s going on with you? I’ve never seen you not eat spaghetti the way you’re not eating it tonight. The crust on the bread’s not quite the right texture, and I’m sorry for that, but it still tastes good.”

“Yeah,” Becca said, tearing a chunk from the loaf and mopping the sauce from the bottom of her bowl with exaggerated savagery. “I’m going to get a complex over here. Me and Ellie both. Not to mention the sun. You haven’t even touched your tea.”

Thea grinned. She loved these girls. Adored them. It wasn’t fair for her to keep secrets. She smiled at both, smiled at Frannie, picked up her tea and drank. Then she wound her fork through her spaghetti, her eyes on her food as she said, “We’re going to have some people in and out of the house the next few days. A couple of weeks at the outside, and probably not that.”

Frannie pulled in a sharp breath, looking from James, as he shoveled spaghetti from his bowl to his mouth, to Robert where he slept, his cheeks red, his blond curls damp against his head. She got up and crossed the room. “What people? Why?”

Becca snorted. “Great. People. We all know how much I love people.”

Ellie just frowned and studied the hunk of bread she held in both hands.

“I don’t want any of you to panic,” Thea said, though judging by the reception of her audience, it was probably too late. “You don’t have anything to worry about, or to fear. There’s just some work that needs to be done on the house, and a local contractor is going to take care of it.”

“Last I heard, we were going to have to live with the work needing to be done because we didn’t have the money to take care of it,” Becca said, tossing the last bite of her bread into her bowl, then changing her mind, frowning, and grabbing it up.

“We don’t,” Thea said. “But it seems we have a guardian angel who wants to make sure we have toilets that flush, and sinks that drain, and a roof that doesn’t sprout a new leak with every storm, and flooring that doesn’t curl up at the corners.”

“Goodness,” Ellie said, her voice shaky. “That’s some guardian angel.”

Thea couldn’t argue with that.

“You don’t know who it is?” Becca asked. “Who’s footing the bill?”

Thea shook her head. “Not a clue.”

“What about strings?”

The question came from Frannie, catching Thea by surprise. Frannie’s concerns usually
pertained to her boys. To see her taking an interest in the house was encouraging. “There are none.”

“Not now, maybe,” Frannie said, hefting a sleeping Robert onto her shoulder and returning to her seat. “But what about later?”

“I’m not exactly comfortable with this secret-squirrel thing either,” Becca said. “But if the contractor is getting paid, I’m having a hard time seeing a downside. It’s not like he’s going to come take out the new toilets and bring back the old. I’m assuming it’s Keller Construction?”

Thea gave Becca a nod, then turned to Frannie. “What do you think might happen?”

“I don’t know,” Frannie said, reaching over to brush James’s hair from his forehead. He was more intent on his food than the conversation. Robert, whom she held on her lap, had yet to wake fully, his feathery lashes drifting down over his sleepy eyes. “It just makes me uncomfortable. It’s like the thing with the bakery—”

“Do you think it might be Bobby?” Ellie asked out of the blue, the bread she’d been holding completely shredded, the circles beneath her eyes the same color as the periwinkle barrettes clipped at her temples. “The guardian angel? Could Bobby be doing this? To try to get to me?”

“Don’t think that. Just don’t,” Becca said, her voice harsh and insistent as she reached over and squeezed Ellie’s hand. “No one is going to get to you. I won’t let that happen.”

Ellie bobbed her head as she inhaled, then wrapped an arm around Becca’s neck and pulled her close. Becca patted Ellie’s shoulder, used to her demonstrative nature as they all were, until Ellie let her go. She dabbed her napkin beneath her eyes.

“I don’t know what I’d do without you. Without any of you,” Ellie said, looking around the table, her gaze landing on Thea. “It’s safe? You promise?”

Thea crossed every body part she could that she wasn’t screwing up these women’s lives. “Dakota promised me the money is not coming from anyone any of us have a history with.”

“And you believe him?” Frannie asked, dropping a kiss to Robert’s head.

“I believe him absolutely. I know what he’s capable of, and what he’s not. I don’t think I’ve ever known a better man in my life,” she said, realizing as she glanced around the table, as she met the concerned and frightened and determined gazes of the women depending on her, that the truth was she hardly knew this Dakota Keller at all.

Cradling a cup of hot tea in both hands, Ellie crossed her legs beneath her in one of the kitchen’s cushy, plaid club chairs, brought out of her midnight musings by Thea walking into the room. Ellie had a library copy of
The Hunger Games
open on one thigh, but she hadn’t made it very far into the book. She liked it. She could see why Lena liked it. She and Katniss were strong and capable. They could deal with the unexpected.

Ellie could not.

Thea flopped down in the chair beside her, tucking her heels to her hips and pulling her sleeping shirt over her knees until she looked like she was sitting in a tent. A big white tent with tiny little penguins sliding around the background as if on a slope of snow. They were black, and wore red and blue scarves and hats, and had bright yellow beaks. They looked happy. Ellie did her best to be one of them and smiled.

“Can’t sleep?” Thea asked.

Ellie shrugged. She hadn’t really tried.

“That was really nice of Lena to bring all that food. I think there may be enough left that we can make another meal out of it. The cheese, at least. We’ll have to open a couple cans of our own if we want more soup.”

“It
was
nice,” Ellie said, bringing her cup to her mouth to sip. The tea was chamomile, which she usually enjoyed, but tonight it tasted like pale boiled water. “
She’s
nice. But I think I messed things up.”

Thea curled her hands around her bare toes and frowned. “What things?”

It was so stupid, and she knew better, but this happened every time anyway. When was she going to learn
not
to do what came so easy to her? When was she going to learn that not everyone appreciated the fact that she wore her heart on her sleeve? That she cried and laughed and touched, hugging and kissing and holding hands . . .

She shook her head, sighed. “You know how I get all touchy-feely and emotional, and she was
so
amazing talking to little James, and it just made me so happy for him to have that attention. I mean it’s not like Frannie ever mistreats him, but he’s so curious, and she’s so cautious, which is totally understandable—”

“Ellie. What do you think you messed up?”

“James had asked Lena about the rings in her eyebrow so she took them out for him to see. This was all before you got there. Anyway, I showed her to the bathroom so she could use the mirror to put them back in.” Ellie closed her eyes and swallowed. “And I kissed her.”

“You kissed her.” Thea repeated the words, not judging or anything, but as if she wanted to be clear.

“It wasn’t a come-on or whatever,” Ellie hurried to say. “I only meant it as a thank-you.”

Holding her gaze, Thea said, “But you think she took it to mean you’re interested in her.”

“I don’t know how she took it.” Ellie dropped her head back against the cushion and closed her eyes. “She didn’t move. She didn’t say anything. She didn’t react at all.”

Several long seconds passed before Thea asked softly, “Are you? Interested in her?”

“I am,” Ellie said, her hands tightening around her cup. “I really, really am.”

“For what it’s worth, I don’t think you messed up anything. She seemed to have a great time at dinner.”

Ellie lifted her head, pushing her glasses up her nose. “She didn’t seem uncomfortable? Like she wanted to run as far away from me as she could?”

Thea smiled. “She must’ve really left you rattled if you didn’t even notice how much fun she was having.”

“Was she?” Ellie wanted nothing more than to believe that, but oh, it was hard. “I’m so glad. She seems . . . I don’t know. Lonely, maybe?”

“What do you know about her?”

“Besides that she works at Bliss?” she asked, and Thea nodded. “She lived with her mother in Kyle until recently. Her mother is a midwife. She’s taking some college accounting classes. That’s about it. Oh. She likes tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches for dinner as much as I do. And she brought all the right cheeses. Did you notice that?”

“That’s what good friends do. They pay attention. Kinda like I know how you’re pretending to like that chamomile tea.”

“You can tell?” she asked, looking down at the weak liquid.

Thea nodded toward Ellie’s drink. “You were frowning into your cup when I came in. And you had your mouth all twisted up like you were drinking cat piss. And really. Is there much difference between the two?”

“Ew, Thea.” Ellie shuddered at the thought. “But you’re right. Not about the cat thing, but that I was pretending. I’ve never liked chamomile tea.”

“Then why do you drink it?”

“Because Bobby did. She swore by the benefits of its calming effects,” Ellie said, holding Thea’s gaze as the irony bubbled up inside her and they burst into laughter at the same time.

“You sure she wasn’t sweetening it with something out of a flask?” Thea asked.

“She probably used it to put out her cigarettes. Then drank the ashes. It would explain a lot,” Ellie said, catching herself rubbing at the scars on her arm and sobering. “Are you positive she’s not the mysterious benefactor? Those messages she used to leave on my phone, about finding me no matter where I was, about making me pay . . .”