The Comfort of Favorite Things (A Hope Springs Novel) (26 page)

“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.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Photo © 2012 Robyn Arouty

A
lison Kent is the author of more than fifty published works, including her debut novel,
Call Me
, which she sold live on CBS’s
48 Hours
, in an episode called “Isn’t It Romantic?” The first book in her Hope Springs series,
The Second Chance Café
, was a 2014 RITA finalist. Her novels
A Long, Hard Ride
and
Striptease
were both finalists for the
Romantic Times
Reviewers Choice Award, while
The Beach Alibi
was honored by the national Quill Awards and
No Limits
was selected by
Cosmopolitan
as a Red Hot Read. The author of
The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Writing Erotic Romance
, Alison decided long ago that if there’s a better career than writing, she doesn’t want to know about it. She lives in her native Texas with her geologist husband and a passel of pets.