The Comfort of Favorite Things (A Hope Springs Novel) (22 page)

She stopped then, her hands shaking, the surface of her coffee rippling as she raised the drink to her mouth. She sipped, wishing for the first time in years that she hadn’t given up alcohol. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt such a strong urge for a crutch. And she couldn’t figure out why.

The trip to Spain had been the best time she’d had during her years with Todd. She’d been able to deal with the nights in his bed, the mornings after, the long dresses to hide the bruises that shorts would’ve revealed on her thighs. And maybe that was it. Everything she had now, everything she was, had been born during that month.

It was when she’d decided to leave him the next time he left her alone.

“You never have said if you’re happy living here.”

Dakota’s comment brought her back, and she returned to her chair, glad to be faced with the simplicity of construction and business woes. “I’m too busy to be anything but tired. But I’m not unhappy.”

“Why Hope Springs? I mean, I know things weren’t great for you in Round Rock, but why not go back there where things were familiar?”

She drank half of her coffee while deciding what to tell him. She ended up telling him the truth. “I never left Round Rock.”

That had him stopping with his cup halfway to his mouth. “I thought you said you’d been all over.”

“Been. Not lived. Todd’s company was headquartered in Austin. He commuted. I stayed home.” Not that their condo had ever been a home as much as it had been a cell. A cushy cell. With all the amenities. But still a cell.

“How did you meet him?”

Good grief. “Why are you asking me about my past again?”

“Because I want to know.”

She closed her eyes, stretched her arms overhead then side to side. “I was working as a waitress at a club in Austin. He was a regular. That’s all. And don’t look at me like that’s
not
all because you’re not getting anything else.”

He moved to lean against the barista station. “But why come to Hope Springs?”

“Do we have to do this now?” She was exhausted, and she didn’t want to get into something deep, and she certainly didn’t want to bring up the kiss, but it was right there in the front of her mind and . . . and . . . and . . .

She got up from her paperwork and headed for the espresso machine. She needed more caffeine like she needed another hole in her head, but it was either fool with the coffee and the filter basket and the dials or thread her fingers into Dakota’s hair and pull him close.

“Do what?”

“You nearly walked out on me the first day you were here because I brought up the subject of prison. My past with my ex feels like that to me. I did things I’m not proud of when I left that relationship. Things that might not exactly be legal. But I didn’t stop to ask. I needed to get out.”

“Thea—”

“Your kissing me doesn’t change anything.”

“My kissing you?” His eyes widened, then almost immediately narrowed. “What about your kissing me?”

She didn’t want to talk about that. She didn’t want to think about that. It had been a moment of weakness she couldn’t admit to him. It was bad enough she had to admit it to herself. She had to be resolute. There was no room in her life for anything short of absolute strength. She would not kiss him again.

“We can’t do this, Dakota,” she said, spinning on him. “We can’t be anything anymore besides friends. I came here to start over, not to go back.”

“You think I’m asking you to go back? What in the hell makes you think I would ever want to go back?”

The truth was going to hurt. But that’s what truth did. “Maybe because nothing I’ve seen has me believing you’ve done anything about going forward. And I can’t be with you when we’re moving in two different directions.”

Walking into the Back Alley Pub beside Manny Balleza felt as wrong to Becca as it did right. No. It felt more wrong. Completely wrong. In fact, nothing about it felt right at all. Nothing. Zero. Zip.

For one thing, she hated going out in public. She hated being in public. She shouldn’t. There was very little chance of Dez finding her. There was very little chance he was still looking. Knowing him as well as she unfortunately did, there wasn’t a doubt in her mind he’d found someone new to receive his particular brand of love after doing his time for loving her so thoroughly.

But Dez had a lot of friends, and those friends weren’t particularly happy about their good buddy getting jail time for the stripes he’d put on her back. It had been two years ago, sure. Everyone should’ve moved on by now. But Becca had received enough threats after Dez’s sentencing to put the
moving on
in her court.

The domestic abuse counselor she’d been assigned while hospitalized had facilitated her transfer to the women’s shelter when released. That was where she’d met Thea and Ellie. And when Thea had struck out on her own, Becca had come soon after. Ellie had followed a few weeks later, once the windows and doors had been installed in the house on Dragon Fire Hill. Unlike Becca’s ex, Ellie’s had never been prosecuted for the abuse the bitch had inflicted. Becca couldn’t imagine Ellie and Lena going out to dinner at the Back Alley Pub, or anywhere.

Then again, she’d never imagined herself doing so, yet here she was, rights and wrongs and Manny Balleza’s hand hovering in the small of her back as they followed the hostess to their booth.

“Will this table be okay?” the girl asked, her skin the same color as Becca’s, her hair worn natural, too, but cropped close.

“It’s fine,” Becca said without checking with her date. She should have, she supposed, but she was more interested in sliding into the high-backed booth than she was his opinion. Which was why she didn’t make for a very good . . . date. She’d almost said girlfriend, but stopped herself in time.

“Your server tonight will be Carey,” the hostess said, her smile plastic, her gaze moving from Becca to Manny and back. She arched a brow, still fake smiling. “He’ll be right with you.”

“Thanks,” Becca said, again more concerned with sitting than being served, though a part of her wanted to get in the hostess’s face and ask her if she had something she wanted to spit out. Manny hadn’t said a word since they’d walked inside, letting Becca run the show. But now she turned to him and asked, “Which side do you want?”

He rubbed at the fuzz on his chin, which had a whole lot of white hairs mixed in with the black, and looked from her to the booth and back. “I get a choice?”

She came very close to flouncing out. It was his smile hiding behind his hand that stopped her.

But not her sarcasm. “Yes, you get a choice.”

“About what I eat, too?”

The man was asking for it. “Left or right? Choose one, or I’m going to.”

“What if I want to sit next to you?”

She swallowed, her stomach tumbling. “Why would you want to do that?”

But instead of answering he shook his head and scooted into the seat on the right, leaving her the left or the extra room beside him. She chose the left, then opened the menu the hostess had set on the table.

“I don’t bite, you know,” Manny leaned forward to say.

“Actually, I don’t know,” she said. And then, to see how he would react, and for no other reason, she said, “Though biting’s not such a bad thing. When done right.”

“I’ll remember that,” he said, opening his menu without looking at it at all, his gaze having room for only her.

Laid back. Unflappable. Did nothing ever bother the man? Not that she wanted to bring sex into the equation, but his even keel bugged her more than it should have, and she didn’t know why.

Carey came then to take their order. She decided on a nutty brunette brown ale and a bacon-and-blue-cheese burger. Manny listened to her choices then told their server to bring him the same. Once the kid collected their menus and left, Becca said, “They have a whole lot of other things to eat, you know. If you’d looked at your menu, you would’ve seen that.”

“I know what they have. I’ve been here before.” He leaned into the corner, stretched out one arm along the back of the booth. “What you’re having sounded good.”

“If you say so,” she said, reaching for a sugar packet and tapping it against the table.

“You don’t believe me?”

“I don’t know you. I don’t know what I believe. You could be serious. You could be mocking me. You could be scamming me because you want something, the least of which is sex.”

He waited for a long moment, Carey arriving with their beers as if he’d been hovering and waiting for Becca to take a breath before delivering them. Once he’d set the two foaming glasses on their napkins, he left, giving Manny the floor.

“I have no secrets, Becca,” he said and reached for his beer. “And I don’t expect you to tell me yours. Ask me anything. And tell me whatever you want me to know. It’s really not that hard.”

“Fine.” She started where she had no business going, but they couldn’t do this on a regular basis if he didn’t know where she’d come from. “Do you know why we all live on Dragon Fire Hill? Together?”

“I don’t know the particulars,” he said, returning his glass to the table and leaning forward, one arm on the table. “But I’ve seen the doors and the windows, and I can take a guess. And I’m sorry you have to live like that. No woman ever should, no child, no man.”

She nodded. The words sounded nice anyway. “You work with criminal types, don’t you? Like Frank?” she asked, having heard some of Frank’s history from the man’s own mouth. “And Dakota?”

“I’m Frank’s parole officer, yes. And I was Dakota’s years ago. The men I work with, that I send to Keller Construction, are men who’ve done things they shouldn’t have, but for reasons that, quite frankly, are often hard to argue with.”

“Like Dakota protecting his sister.”

“You know Dakota’s story?” Manny asked, and when she nodded, he went on. “Then you probably know that his choice wasn’t the best one he could’ve made.”

“Because it was more about avenging than protecting,” she said, and Manny remained silent as their food was placed in front of them, giving Becca a chance to continue once they were alone. “Sometimes avenging is the only thing you can do.”

He shook his head as he spread his napkin over his lap. “It may feel that way. And it may feel better that way. But answering one act of violence with another is never the only thing you can do.”

Uh-huh. “You work for the system. Of course you’d say that.”

“You’ve got that backward.”

“How so?”

“I work for the system because it’s what I believe.” He lifted his burger. “That there’s no need for violence to beget violence. Encouraging that mind-set only makes things worse,” he said, biting in.

“And I guess you hug trees, too,” she said around a bite of her own.

He shrugged. “I’ve been known to sing to my plants. Or at least sing along while playing them some Boz Scaggs.”

“Who’s Boz Scaggs?”

He set down his burger, reached for his napkin, and pointed as he said, “And that right there is why I’m way too old for you.”

She ignored him to say, “You probably wouldn’t believe that if you’d had a family member victimized, or been a victim yourself. The violence thing. Not the Boz . . . whatever.”

He was slow to respond, taking a long swallow of beer, returning his cup to its napkin coaster, finally letting it go. “I have been a victim. My wife was murdered less than a year after we were married.”

His words sucked the air from her lungs. She didn’t know what to say. She couldn’t even look at him. But neither could she stay where she was and let him think he was alone, think she didn’t care. She might come across as a bitch, and she admitted to cultivating the skin, but that’s all it was, and it was suddenly important for Manny to know the real Becca York.

She scooted off her bench and scooted onto his, moving as close to him as she could without touching him. Then moving another inch as she pulled her plate in front of her. “Manny—”

“I’m okay,” he said before she could get out more than that. “I survived. It was more than a decade ago, and there’s not a day that goes by that I don’t think about her, about Alisha. But I don’t base every move I make on what happened to her.”

Then it hit her, and she had to turn on the booth to face him. “But you do. Because you chose to work with ex-cons because of her. Didn’t you?”

He arched a brow as he looked at her. “You’re not supposed to be that smart.”

“Oh, yeah?” God, but he was really gorgeous this close. “What am I supposed to be?”

“You tell me,” he said as Carey returned with their check. Manny tossed cash on the table to cover it. She waited for him to nod, then she left, heading out the front door to his car.

What was happening to her? This was why she didn’t need to be in a relationship. It was so much smarter, so much safer, so much easier on her nerves to keep things simple and stick to being friends. But she knew even as the words tumbled through her head that being friends was not what was happening here, and it frightened her even more than her past.

“What do you want from me Manny?” she asked, hearing him walk up behind her.

His laugh was a throaty threat. “I’m not sure you want to know.”