The Comfort of Favorite Things (A Hope Springs Novel) (5 page)

Sad, really. “Indiana did miss you. A lot. And I’m not so sure she wouldn’t have been happy to have everyone know the truth if it meant Robby going away and you being home.”

He leaned forward, his elbows on his thighs, nearly crushing his cup between his hands. “Didn’t we agree not to talk about the past? Besides, I thought you were here to monitor traffic.”

“We did,” she said, sitting back and leaving her fork on the table. She couldn’t eat another bite, but she would get a carry-out container for what remained of the cake and take the slices home. “And I have been. Do
you
know how many people have come in since we’ve been here?”

“I saw the woman with the kids. And another before that.”

He’d obviously been lost in thought when the older couple came in for coffee cake. And the two teen girls who giggled and whispered while choosing cupcakes. “We’ve been here, what? Thirty minutes? Forty-five? Not counting the children, there were eight customers served, including us.”

“Is that good or bad?”

“For Bread and Bean, for Butters Bakery, it’s slow but steady.”

“But it adds up?”

She nodded. “Plus the phone rang at least five times with people placing orders. The woman working the counter hasn’t had a lull yet.”

“That doesn’t sound like you’re scoping out the traffic as much as the competition,” he said, adding a raised brow.

Not that she believed in jinxes, but she wasn’t ready to talk about her interest in the bakery. She finished off her coffee then got to her feet. “Let me grab a box for the leftovers. Then we can head back.”

“I’ll be right here taking a sugar nap,” he said, waving her on. “Wake me up when you’re done.”

CHAPTER FIVE

Y
our meeting at Bread and Bean go okay?” Tennessee asked once Dakota had climbed from the company truck and made his way into the Keller Construction barn.

That was one of the things that had surprised him most upon his arrival. Not that his brother had gone into the business on his own; Dakota had kept a tab or two on his siblings while away and was well aware of the existence of Keller Construction.

But learning that Tennessee had spent the first few months in business single-handedly converting the barn into an office and woodworking shop that he also used as a warehouse and occasionally for client meetings, well, Dakota couldn’t help but be impressed.

He wished he’d been around to help with the project. And that had been his first clue that returning to Texas might not have been smart. He couldn’t afford to regret what he’d done with his life. He couldn’t long for a past that didn’t exist. Not surprisingly, he was still having a lot of trouble with the present.

He boosted up onto the second stool beside his brother’s drafting table. Tennessee had built an office, but he never used it, preferring the open-air breezeway. His stepmother-in-law, Dolly Pepper, worked for him part time. The office was her domain. “You mean was I shocked to see Thea Clark is the owner?”

“Thea Clark.” Tennessee frowned, spinning his stool to face Dakota before his mouth broke into a grin. “Wait. Not Thea Clark from—”

“High school? And my bed? Yeah,” Dakota said with a nod, shoving a hand through his hair and raking it from his face. “That Thea Clark.”

He hadn’t quite come to terms with what he felt about seeing her. He wasn’t even sure
what
he felt besides the obvious. He hadn’t slept with a woman in a very long time, and he’d never slept with anyone as often as he had with Thea.

They’d been teens, sure, so their encounters hadn’t been the stuff of legend. Or the stuff of two adults who brought more to the table than hormones and curiosity and rebellious natures. At least he guessed Thea had brought some of those things.

He’d been a teenager and horny. He’d only brought one.

It was obvious Tennessee was trying not to laugh. “Dude. I had no idea. Dolly made the appointment after the original contractor bailed halfway through the job.”

That wasn’t much of an explanation. “And she didn’t tell you who the appointment was with?”

Tennessee shook his head, Dakota noticing for the first time a patch of gray at his brother’s temple. “I knew we wouldn’t be working up the specs, that the client had already paid for those and the outfitting of the kitchen, and that we’d only be dealing with the storefront. And I remember the Clark part of her name. Just not the Thea. Maybe I never knew it to remember.”

“Parenthood’s making you old before your time,” Dakota said, thinking if Tennessee was old, he himself was ancient. Then again his bones told him that when he crawled out of bed every day. “Unless that’s just what comes with being married. Like that gut you’re growing over there.”

Tennessee sucked it in as he looked down at his lap and frowned. “The only thing I’m growing around here is the business.”

“Yeah? How so?” Dakota asked, and Tennessee’s head came up.

He lost the frown on the way, a smile to rival the one he’d worn at his daughter’s birth in its place. “That bid I put in on the art house theater downtown? Looks like the job’s ours.”

Not ours
, Dakota wanted to say.
Yours
. “Nice. Very nice. Congratulations.”

“And to you, brother. It’s going to be a hell of a game changer. Something that size? With that much prestige?” Tennessee shook his head, the emotion in the words nearly causing him to stumble over them. He brought his fist to his mouth and cleared his throat.

If Dakota had been a better person, a better brother, he would’ve shared in Tennessee’s joy. It wasn’t the first time he’d had such a thought since returning, but he hadn’t had the thoughts at all until he’d come back. Seems he’d done a better job than he’d realized of shutting down.

It was what he’d had to do. The only way he’d known to survive.

“You ever find out who bought the place?” Dakota asked once his brother had regained his composure.

“Nope. Just dealing with the new owner’s people. Which is fine. Sometimes it’s even easier,” he added, which had Dakota’s mind going to Thea. Like their history wasn’t going to cause him enough grief as it was.

“I like the plans,” Tennessee was saying. “The retro stage. The vintage curtain setup. The seats are probably going to be the biggest headache, but we’ll work it out.”

“It’s a hell of a job.” In more ways than one. “You got the crew to take it on?”

Tennessee nodded. Then shrugged. “I’ll give Manny a call. Even if he doesn’t have anyone to send, he might know of someone looking for work.”

Someone meaning an ex-con. Because that’s what Manny Balleza did. Sent parolees to work for Keller Construction. It was an arrangement Tennessee had made with the other man while Manny was still Dakota’s parole officer, though Manny had pulled the right strings with his people to put Dakota to work away from the scene of his crime. It made things a lot easier, his not having to run into anyone who knew who he was, knew what he’d done.

Tennessee had wanted Dakota to join the business after his release, to turn it into a family gig, to add the word
Brothers
between the
Keller
and
Construction
that adorned the sides of the trucks. It was what they’d talked about doing while still teens. But as soon as he’d been free of the state and able, Dakota had split. Not even Manny had known how to reach him, which was exactly what Dakota had wanted.

Freedom. Anonymity.

Peace.

What he hadn’t wanted then, and didn’t want now, was Tennessee counting on him. For anything. He didn’t want the pressure of living up to any expectations his brother—or his sister—might have. He’d been thinking about that a lot. Thinking what he might have to do about it.

He took a big fat uncomfortable breath. “Good. Because after this job for Thea, I’m thinking about cutting out.”

“Cutting out.” Tennessee’s hands went to his thighs. He stretched out his fingers before drawing them up into fists. His frown deepened between his brows. “You mean leaving? Hope Springs? Texas? What about the business? What about Indiana?”

His brother’s questions flew at him like darts toward a board already full of too many holes to count. “Indiana will be fine whether I’m living here or not. So will your business. You can get any of Manny’s ex-cons to build barista stations in coffee shops.”

“I don’t want any of Manny’s ex-cons.”

“C’mon, Tennessee. It’s not like we’re working together.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Tennessee asked, scowling.

Dakota crossed his arms. “Think about it. This last year. When have we ever crewed a job together? You go one way. I go another. Or I go out to do the manual labor, and you stay in to push pencils.”

Time ticked slowly toward Tennessee’s response. “That’s what you think I do?”

“I think what you do is what you’ve always done,” Dakota said bluntly. “Been the boss. Taken care of the company you built. Seen to the needs of your wife and your daughter. Indiana.”

“You’re talking about family.”

“Yeah.”

“Your family. Not just mine.”

“Yeah,” Dakota said again, the air around the word crackling.

Tennessee swiveled back to his drafting board then shoved off his stool, pacing several steps away before coming back. He was rubbing at his forehead when he did. “Then there’s some kind of disconnect going on here that I don’t get.”

Dakota didn’t expect his brother to get it. Tennessee wasn’t the one who’d spent three years behind bars and the rest of his life since aimless. “How about I work the Bread and Bean job, and we revisit this when it’s done? I won’t go anywhere, or make plans to leave before then.”

It had been the wrong thing to say. “Do you want the answer I’d give another employee, or the one I’d give my brother?”

Dakota’s spine stiffened. His gut knotted. He leaned his head to one side and cracked his neck. “I think you just gave me both.”

“I need the work done right,” Tennessee said, his jaw tight as he ground out the words. “I need to know whoever is doing it is not taking shortcuts. That he’s not rushing through to get done and get gone.”

Because that’s what he assumed Dakota would do. Which spoke to the heart of the matter.

Tennessee wasn’t thinking about Dakota as his brother, much less his partner. He was thinking about him as an ex-con. “You run into that with a lot of the guys Manny sends you?”

“Not until now.”

And . . . stalemate. Tennessee wasn’t going to give an inch, but neither was Dakota. That said, Dakota wasn’t in the mood to fight, to argue, to explain—none of it. He’d been back a year. He wasn’t sure what he’d expected from his homecoming, but knew he needed to figure it out.

He wasn’t going to be of any use to anyone until he did.

He stepped down from the stool and took off, leaving the keys to the truck he’d been driving on the hood and setting off on foot for Indiana’s cottage.

It had only taken Thea one look at Becca’s face to make her decision about Butters Bakery. Well more than one, actually. First there had been the disappointment when Becca had told her about Peggy’s offer; with no capital of her own, buying the business was out of Becca’s reach. Then had come the defensiveness when Thea had co-opted the idea, turning Becca’s
me
into her own.

Becca’s dejection upon learning that Peggy had made the same overture to Lena Mining had broken Thea’s heart. It was like life had chosen Becca to beat up on for some reason, and there was nothing Thea could do to reverse the bad luck that continually blew Becca’s way.

But the look that had made all the difference was the one of hope when Thea had mentioned bringing the idea of buying the bakery to the table. That was how they did things at the house on Dragon Fire Hill. Anything affecting all of them was fodder for discussion over their evening meal.

Yes, it was Thea’s money, but unlike the catalyst driving her to open Bread and Bean, this involved more than just Thea’s life or Thea’s man hours or Thea’s recovery from abuse. The bakery would be a group effort from the get-go, meaning an LLC or some such.

And most of the money for the purchase would be Todd’s, so spending it for the group was sort of karma. She liked the idea of Todd funding the lives of four women who’d been treated abominably. Especially when she was one of them.

She looked from Becca to Ellie to Frannie Charles to Frannie’s two boys, James and Robert. All five of them, six when she included herself in the count, were sitting in the big country kitchen of her house eating supper. Two of the room’s walls were taken up with white cabinets. The upper ones were glass-fronted and sparkling, except where they were covered with cardboard. Out of the dozen—six on the north wall, six on the east—she counted three intact. One was shattered completely. Several were simply cracked.

The appliances were serviceable but secondhand, so the stove was an avocado green and the fridge a complementary harvest gold. Very seventies. Save for the one red-brick wall that on its own was quite lovely, but in the retro context was not. Ellie, once an art teacher, had blessed the pairing’s color scheme, happy to have a working kitchen, like a sandbox, to play in.

The floor was hardwood. Solid. Scarred. In desperate need of refinishing, but Thea loved hearing footsteps falling against it. The Charles boys’ tiny little sneakers slapping. Ellie’s Birkenstocks flapping. Becca’s high-tops squeaking. Her own Keds doing the same. Supper time brought the noises together, a percussive cacophony beneath the clang of pots and pans, the ring of silver on glass.

Tonight’s meal was boxed mac and cheese, green beans from a can, and fish sticks with both tartar sauce and ketchup. There was milk for the boys, and for everyone else a huge pitcher of sun tea that had steeped on the back porch for hours. Frannie had done the cooking, as much cooking as any of the items required, using foodstuffs she’d bought with her monthly benefits from the state.

Frannie had set the big circular table—one Thea had found in a flea market and, with Ellie’s help, restored—with her own grandmother’s china and silverware, and linens she’d embroidered herself. They were done in an “Eat Me” and “Drink Me” theme, black thread against coral and turquoise. She sold them through the same network Thea had used to outfit Bread and Bean.

The dishes and cutlery were among the few family heirlooms Frannie had saved from the house fire that had left her and her sons homeless—the fire her husband had set after his taking pot shots at her with his shotgun hadn’t convinced her to call off the divorce. He was still at large, which was why Frannie, James, and Robert had come to live with Thea.

And why Frannie still flinched at every unexpected sound.

The sounds floating through the kitchen now filled Thea with joy, and Frannie, too, judging by her expression. They were gorgeous sounds. Sounds of living. Every day made succinct in universal ways. Women laughing and little boys giggling and forks clinking against plates and the ketchup bottle blowing out air. The fact that Thea was able to offer Frannie and the others this ordinary moment, this slice of a simple uncomplicated life, thrilled her beyond belief.