The Sweetness of Honey (A Hope Springs Novel) (9 page)

CHAPTER EIGHT

T
hanks, Derek. Call me as soon as you come up with anything, no matter how small.”

“Will do, Ollie. Take care.”

Oliver swiped the “End Call” command on his phone’s screen, then tapped the device to his chin a couple of times before laying it on his desk. It had been a while since he’d spent any time in this room, preferring of late to work in the arts center kitchen.

His mother had set up his home office when he’d come home from Rice, decorating it to match the rest of the house rather than his personality. The desk was an antique, too large for his needs and too dark for his taste and too heavy to move without help. Anyway, doing so would’ve had his mother fearing she hadn’t pleased him.

That had been two years after Oscar’s accident, and Oliver hadn’t been able to tell his mother no, or criticize her efforts, or bring in a decorator to replace the drapes and the art, the furniture and the rug. A decorator who understood space, symmetry, lighting. Color. He hadn’t planned to use the room, so he let it go. And when it became obvious he had no clue what to do with his degree—or his life—having it had come in handy.

It was also handy for making phone calls without being overheard. Especially with the likelihood of Tennessee Keller working today at the Caffey-Gatlin Academy. This thing with Indiana wanting to find her brother . . .

It wasn’t his business, Oliver mused, crossing his hands behind his head and leaning back in his chair. She’d turned down his offer to help. But after last night in his car, he was hard-pressed not to want to see things go her way, and Derek could make that happen.

Oliver didn’t know what he’d been thinking, taking their kiss where he had, seeking an intimacy he doubted their relationship was ready for. He wasn’t even sure this thing between them had been destined to be more than a friendship, and now one he may have screwed up because . . .

Why? He was curious? Impatient? He had no self-control? He hadn’t had sex in months? He swiveled his chair side to side, lost for an answer. He had no idea what he’d been thinking, and no explanation for his behavior other than the obvious: there was an undeniable chemistry between them.

He found Indiana unconventionally attractive. Most of the women he dated, and he used the term in the most casual way, were ones he knew from his mother’s social circle. He didn’t have much of a circle of his own. He worked for himself, keeping only the hours he wanted to, and spent a whole lot of time alone.

He went to the gym alone, though he had buddies he met there for racquetball. He dined alone, though those same buddies were forever trying to talk him into joining them. Occasionally, he did, and there was usually an unattached woman in the group intended to round out the number. Intended, too, to rouse his interest.

It had been a long time since his interest had been roused beyond the superficial. He wasn’t celibate, but the women he took to bed knew the score. He wasn’t looking for anything long-term, and he hated the idea that he’d ruined things with Indiana.

Yes, she’d let him touch her, and he would never have done so if she’d given him the slightest hint of being uncomfortable. Honestly, her receptiveness had surprised him. Especially with her history. He was quite certain she’d surprised herself, too. And that was the thing, that connection. It didn’t happen often. At least not for him.

So pursue it or let it go? He didn’t want to risk their friendship when he had his physical needs covered, though he had to admit he was less interested these days in sex for the sake of sex. Funny thing that, when he still wasn’t ready to commit to something more.

His calling his family’s investigator . . . He didn’t want to think of it as a thank-you for Indiana allowing him so close. And he certainly didn’t want her to think he was paying her for said privilege.

In fact, he couldn’t think of a way to explain his interference without it coming across as an insult. Which meant he’d have to keep his involvement to himself, then later, if things went as he expected them to, share the good news.

Except that didn’t really sit well, either—

“Were you talking to Derek Wilborn?”

“I was,” he said, standing as his mother entered the room and interrupted his unproductive musings. It was a habit instilled early, his standing, that show of respect and good manners. Over time, the respect had lessened, he hated to say, though the habit and manners remained.

“Whatever for?” she asked, fiddling with a paperweight, then his fountain pen, before arranging her slim skirt and sitting in one of the room’s two leather wingback chairs.

His parents had turned to Derek dozens of times over the years—usually in situations they could have taken care of themselves, or that were none of their business, or didn’t matter: Who was buying the house at the end of the street? Where did they come by their money? Who were their friends? Where did they send their children to school? What charities did they donate to? How did they vote? What church did they attend?

His father couldn’t be pulled from his art to dig for the info himself, though Oliver was certain that his father wasn’t the one to care. And his mother didn’t want to get her hands dirty with things that truly mattered, much less the mundane. She had people for that. She had people for everything. He couldn’t remember a time when she hadn’t, and his memory went way back.

“A friend of mine isn’t having much luck with the investigator she hired,” he said, returning to his chair. “I thought Derek might do a better job for her.”

“This friend is a her?”

“Yes, Mother. I do have female friends.”

She looked at him askance, her lips pursed. “Female opportunists, you mean.”

In some cases, he’d have to agree. But not this time. “Trust me. She’s not the least bit interested in the Gatlin name or the Gatlin money.”

“Oh, none of them are.” His mother fluttered a hand, the one where she wore only her wedding band and a silver cuff bracelet, a birthday gift Oscar had given her the last week he’d been truly alive. “Until they realize what you’re actually worth.”

Huh. Turned out he was not in the mood for this. “Indiana has no interest in me at all.” Though what they’d done in his car begged to differ.

“Indiana? What kind of name is Indiana? Do I know her? Who are her parents?”

Her parents were Drew and Tiffany Keller. They lived in Round Rock. They spent their time and money on creatures who swam in the deep, on melting ice, on beetles, now homeless, who’d lived in trees felled for expansion.

He’d discovered those things on his own, after learning what Indiana wanted him to know.

And now, whether or not she’d realized the truth, she was following in their footsteps, saving one brother from himself, another from his vagabond life, herself from being alone, and her bees.

“You wouldn’t know them. Or her,” he said, picking up his phone and clipping it to his belt. “Though maybe you’ve heard of her brother. He’s been a general contractor in Hope Springs for ten years. Tennessee Keller.”

“Oh, Ollie,” she said, crossing her legs. “What business would I have with a general contractor? Tod takes care of whatever the house might need.”

Ah, yes. Her people. “Hmm. Since most of his crew is made up of ex-cons, I thought he might be worthy of some gossip.”

“Ex-cons?” she asked, having recovered from her gasp. “And you’re expecting Derek Wilborn to help these people?”

Did she really think Derek didn’t get his hands dirty working for her? “Not the ex-cons, Mother. The sister of the contractor who hires them.”

“I don’t like it.” She shook her head, not a silver hair out of place. “I don’t like it at all.”

“You don’t have to. This isn’t any of your business.”

“If you took Derek off something he’s doing for me, it certainly is,” she said, her lips mewed in distaste.

“Was there anything else?” He was done discussing Indiana with his mother.

“Yes.” Hands laced in her lap, she sat forward as if finally interested in the conversation. “I wanted to see if you would be bringing a plus-one to Thanksgiving this year.”

Might as well get the bad news out of the way. “Actually, I won’t be home for Thanksgiving this year.”

“Oh.” She paused, taken aback. “I wasn’t aware you were traveling.”

“I’m not,” he said, and crossed his legs, bracing himself for the inevitable battle. “I’ve been invited to dinner at Two Owls.”

“Two Owls?” she asked, and almost looked like an owl herself when she blinked. “What in the world is Two Owls?”

Had she always sounded this condescending, and he just hadn’t noticed? “The café on the corner of Second and Chances. The big blue Victorian.”

She let that sink in, considering him as she did, her wide eyes narrowing, her blinks slowing. “You’re going to eat Thanksgiving dinner at a café?”

The look on her face would’ve had him laughing had she not been his mother. For all her faults, which seemed strangely conspicuous today, he did love her, and hurting her was not something he enjoyed. “Kaylie is serving early afternoon, so I should be able to get back here for at least part of the evening.”

“Oliver. How could you?” She collapsed back into the chair. “You know what Thanksgiving means to me.”

He did, but it didn’t mean the same to him. The holiday had been Oscar’s favorite, not his. It had been years since he’d actually looked forward to the day. Spending it with Indiana Keller and all of her friends . . . Yeah, he was looking forward to that.

“I do,” he said. “But I’m not seeing anyone, so I’d be an extra with no plus-one, and would have very little in common with anyone on your guest list.”

“That is not true. Gordon Harvey and Barry Cohen both work in finance.”

Gordon Harvey and Barry Cohen were bankers long past their prime, with no interest in updating their antiquated ways, or in anything but padding their pockets. “They work with money, not in finance. And I’m down to a single, nonpaying client now.” Though he kept the fact that it was the Caffey-Gatlin Academy to himself.

“Nonpaying? Oliver, you’re a financial adviser. How is it going to look to future clients when you can no longer provide current references?”

He was only a financial adviser because at eighteen he’d been the oldest son bearing the weight of family expectations. And because two years later, his brother’s BMW had tumbled down a ravine. “Finance was your idea, Mother. Not mine.”

She was out of her chair and pacing now, her impatient gestures punctuating her words. “It was also what your counselor recommended based on the proficiency you showed in your aptitude tests. You, more than most, knew that a career in art was no guarantee of a stable living.”

The irony was, he didn’t need to make a living. He never had, and his mother knew it, too. But then none of this was about what he did with his life. She’d lost one son to his art; Oscar had used the excuse of a music workshop to run off with his cellist lover. She didn’t want to lose another. “I’m not Dad. And I’m not Oscar—”

“Oliver!”

“I’ve given a decade of my life to a field that doesn’t interest me in the least,” he said as he got to his feet. It was time she knew the decision he’d come to earlier this month, having learned the truth about Oscar and Sierra and the accident. “I’m not sure what I’m going to do next, but I’m leaving my options open.”

“Is this the influence of your new friends and their . . . arts center?”

“Mother, I’m thirty-two years old. I’m past being influenced by peer pressure, or being pressured by my peers at all.” But he wasn’t past being able to see how happy Tennessee and Kaylie were, working at what they loved. Luna and Angelo, too. And how happy Indiana was, expanding her business, even if it meant catching Tennessee’s grief.

Oliver wanted a piece of that. The happiness as much as the friends who were as close as family. He’d been the dutiful son when his mother had most needed him to be. But he’d put his own life on hold to do so.

No, he wasn’t lying in a bed in a rehab facility where he would never in a million years be rehabilitated in any significant way. But he was wasting away as surely as his brother, and it was time he put such foolishness to a stop.

And then it hit him. Indiana Keller was the first person he’d ever wanted to talk to about what had happened with Oscar. About how he’d failed to protect his brother. About how those failures had cost his brother his life.

CHAPTER NINE

E
arly November kept Indiana as busy as the rest of the year, and for the first time in memory she wished her schedule allowed for more downtime. Or really for any downtime at all. She found herself in the fields as often as in the greenhouses, and in the office more often than she liked.

All of that made it tough getting to the annex in Hope Springs, which meant she couldn’t oversee the daily changes being made to her cottage. She trusted Keller Construction, and Will Bowman specifically, and both he and her brother most likely appreciated her not being around to nitpick their work to death.

And she did miss seeing Will, though in a completely different way than she missed seeing Oliver. Over the last few months, Will had become someone she could trust to give her straight answers, though as with his comment about being safe but never sorry, she was often left having to parse out what he’d meant.

Then there was Oliver, and thinking about him, about Halloween, a
bout the very fortuitous choice she’d made to wear thigh-highs as part of her costume . . . Except doing so reduced what she felt for him to so much less than he deserved. He, too, was honest with her, never soft-pedaling his replies.

They’d talked a couple of times since that night in his car, their schedules conflicting any time one suggested dinner or drinks, and neither had managed to be at their respective places on Three Wishes Road at the same time as the other. But that was okay. In Oliver’s case, absence did make the heart grow fonder, and their conversations allowed her to get to know him better without their physical attraction getting in the way.

But most of all she missed the days when she didn’t have men on her mind. The worrying, the wondering, the what-ifs, the daydreams and imaginings, the fantasies, the recollections. The regrets. It had been that way for weeks now, for months, really, ever since she’d reconnected with Tennessee. Having done so meant she couldn’t stop thinking about the reasons they’d lost touch in the first place. Reason, really, and his name was Robby Hunt.

Thoughts of Robby were the most unpleasant. She’d done a fairly good job over the years of keeping his memory at bay, but lately, as she worked to put her family back together, it wasn’t as easy. And then, connected to Robby and Tennessee was Dakota, and her frustration over not knowing his whereabouts was all tangled up with her guilt and the self-hatred she doubted she’d ever be able to shed. Doing so would mean forgiving herself, and she was a long way from being able to do that.

On top of her issues with her brothers and her past was the kiss she’d shared with Will, and the intimacy she’d shared with Oliver, and what was she supposed to do when a relationship was the last thing she had time for? The last thing she wanted? How could she live in the moment when her choices, her history, the mistakes she’d made lived there, too, and took up so much room? Ha. Those who advocated being aware of the present hadn’t accounted for overcrowding, had they?

Maybe she was just overthinking things. Maybe Luna and Kaylie were right and her past had her hesitant to take risks of a romantic nature, which made perfect sense. Could she really “roll with it” and “see what happens”? When both men made her think about life, and what she wanted, as much as what she didn’t? She loved Will’s bad-boy spontaneity. And she loved that upstanding Oliver Gatlin had his own bad-boy side.

With her background, it might seem strange she would find the trait attractive. Except for the fact that the boy who’d attempted to sexually assault her had been bad in the most unattractive of ways. And she hated thinking she might be looking at Will and Oliver as men worth knowing better simply because they were nothing like Robby Hunt.

One thing was certain, she mused, stepping from the cottage’s hallway into the small eating nook. It was time to come clean with Tennessee about her search for Dakota, and not just because she’d promised Kaylie she would, but because he deserved to know.

And since Tennessee, not Will, was the one working in her kitchen today . . .
No time like the present
.

She took a deep breath and spilled. “I need to tell you something.”

First he grunted. Then he asked, “Something I’m not going to like?”

Really? They were going to start this conversation on the wrong foot? “Why do you assume it’s going to be something you don’t like?”

Leaning over her sink, he shrugged. “Why else announce something instead of just saying it?”

“Fine. Whatever.” She crossed her arms, stood her ground. “I’m going to find Dakota.”

He swiveled slowly, but only his head, his hands holding the wrench he’d just fastened to the ancient faucet. A deep vee marred his forehead between his narrowed eyes. “Come again?”

“I’ve hired a private investigator to find Dakota.”

“You hired a PI. Behind my back.” They weren’t even questions, but accusations.

Indiana did her best not to bristle—he was her brother, after all—but failed. “I hired a PI,” she said, thinking it time to lay things on the line because, estrangement or not, they couldn’t go on like this, his finding fault, her defending her life. “Did I tell you about it? No. I didn’t tell you I bought Hiram’s place either. Or that I used my part of Grandpa Keller’s inheritance to start IJK Gardens. Again. My life. My decisions. My money. As happy as I am that we’re here, together, this isn’t about you.”

Propping the wrench on the hot-water handle, Tennessee straightened, rubbing a frustrated hand over his jaw. “That came out wrong. I wasn’t accusing you of hiding it.”

“That’s what it sounded like,” she said, surprised when she shoved her hands in her skirt pockets to find them shaking. She had been hiding it, but she did not want to argue with her brother. She loved him, and she’d lost so much time with him, and she didn’t want to ever lose any more.

“You should’ve told me.”

“Why? So you could’ve talked me out of it?” A guilty tic popped in his temple, and it made her sad. “That’s what you would’ve done, isn’t it? Or at least tried to do.” Because she wouldn’t have let him. She’d meant what she said. This was what she had to do.

“I don’t know—”

“I do. I’m not you, Tennessee, though really,” she added with a sigh, accepting her share of the blame, “I’m just as bad, aren’t I? I didn’t come to see you. I didn’t call you. I didn’t reach out—”

“Yeah, you did.” He smiled, but it took the coaxing of his memories. “When I came to your high school graduation.”

She’d forgotten about that, Tennessee being the only one there for her, Dakota in prison, their parents who knew where. After the ceremony, he’d taken her out to dinner. A small group of her classmates had begged her to go with them. It was party time. They were free. The beach and the booze were calling.

She would’ve had a whole lot of fun, but she’d had more spending the evening with her brother. It was one of the last times they’d talked before drifting so far apart. “Do you realize how long ago that was? I barely remember that girl.”

“I remember everything about her,” he said, turning to lean against the counter’s edge, his ankles crossed, his arms crossed, too. “Especially how much lasagna and garlic bread she put away.”

“Are you kidding?” Stepping forward, she punched him playfully in the arm. “It had meat in it. And real cheese. And I was starving.”

“I noticed that,” he said, and before she could tease back, he added, “I don’t think I’d ever seen you so thin.”

She’d been thin?

“I didn’t know if Mom and Dad weren’t feeding you,” he went on to say, and shrugged. “Or if maybe you were in a bad place over Robby.”

“It wasn’t an eating disorder,” she assured him. “Just senior year. And my bad place wasn’t about Robby. It was about Dakota.” Though the two would always be connected in her mind.

“Yeah. I wasn’t exactly in a good place myself.”

“I hate that we weren’t able to see him more often,” she said, walking to the refrigerator and pulling it open just to have something to do. “And then to have him disappear like he did.” She closed her eyes, closed the door, leaned her forehead against it, then turned to face her brother again. “I hope I didn’t wait too long to start looking, and that he hasn’t covered his tracks. I just expected him to show back up, you know?”

Tennessee nodded. Then kept nodding as if it helped him think, or jarred loose the things he wanted to say. “I wish there was another way to do this. I can’t stand the idea of you getting hurt all over again.”

There was no
all over again
. She hadn’t stopped being hurt. “If I can’t find him, you mean?”

“Or if what you find, what
we
find, isn’t good.”

She liked hearing him say
we
. She liked it a lot. “I have to know. One way or the other. If things aren’t great, I’ll deal. But if he’s okay, I need him to know how sorry I am. That I love him for what he did, and hate that he felt he had to do it.”

Tennessee pushed away from the counter and walked to the back door. It was open, the screen letting the autumn breeze through, and he turned his head to look at her, his expression sadly resigned. “If he hadn’t, I would have, you know. He just got there first. And he had a better swing.”

She wanted to laugh. She wanted to smile. Instead, tears welled and she had a hard time holding them back as she stepped forward and wrapped him in her arms. “If I recall correctly, you weren’t too shabby yourself.”

“Shabby enough that these days I’m swinging a hammer instead of a bat,” he said, hugging her tightly.

She leaned back far enough to meet his gaze. “You do a whole lot more than swing a hammer.”

“It’s not the same,” he said, heading back to the sink, all business again. “He was supposed to be here. Keller Brothers Construction. We talked about it forever. And now . . . I’m just a man with a wrench.”

They both went silent after that, Tennessee breaking the faucet’s seal and removing it, tossing the aged and useless parts in a barrel he’d brought in for trash. That done, he wedged himself under the cabinet to disconnect whatever it was keeping the sink in place.

There was something about watching him work that set her at ease. He knew what he was doing. Not a move he made was hesitant, or wasted. As if being “just a man with a wrench” was the lid on a bottomless well of knowledge and experience, all the things he’d done for himself that he’d wanted to do with Dakota. And she couldn’t help but wonder how much of who he was now was Kaylie’s influence, or if this was who he’d become on his own.

“So you’re not going to fight me on this?” She needed to get back to Buda, but she wasn’t leaving until she was sure this was settled.

“Why would I fight you?” he asked, tossing out clips and old rubber washer things and nuts and bolts and pipes. “He’s my brother, too. I should’ve gone looking for him a long time before now. I shouldn’t have left it up to you.”

“Because I’m not capable?” she asked, frowning.

His snort echoed from beneath the sink. “No, silly. Because I owe him a huge apology.”

“It can’t be as big as the one I owe him.”

Scooting out from the cabinet, he stopped what he was doing and glanced over. “So we’re going to compare our failings now? Because I’d really rather not.”

If he only knew . . . “No. But maybe we can work together? I’d like that a lot better than you thinking you need to run the show.”

“When have I ever . . . Never mind,” he said as he started gathering up the detritus. “Just tell me what you need from me. And keep me in the loop. Oh, and I will be paying my half of the investigator’s bill.”

Her heart swelled. This is what she’d wanted. The two of them on the same page. “Are you sure?”

“It won’t be a problem.” He grabbed a red shop rag from the counter and wiped it over a wet spot on the floor. “I’ll just allocate what I’m not paying Will.”

That didn’t sound good. “Why aren’t you paying Will?”

He held out his arms as if asking her to look around her. “Do you see him here? He doesn’t work, he doesn’t get paid.”

Come to think of it, there hadn’t been much going on at her cottage since their dinner date in Austin. And that had been before Halloween. “Have you talked to him?”

Her brother gave her another look. “Does he answer his phone?”

That didn’t surprise her. “What about calling Manny?”

But Tennessee shook his head. “I’m not ready to go there.”

“This may be a crazy question,” she said, tendrils of something bothersome and anxious twining tightly along her limbs, “but have you gone by his loft to check on him? Could be he’s sick?”

“I don’t think it’s that. Luna and Oliver saw him yesterday when they were at the warehouse. He seemed to be okay then.”

“Wait.” Had she heard that right? “Luna was there with Oliver? Why?”

“He’s renting out part of her loft for something. You’ll have to ask one of them.”

Luna, maybe. She wasn’t quite ready to see Oliver. Which was ridiculous after how close they’d been, the way he’d touched her, how much she’d enjoyed making out in his car. If what they’d done was even called making out . . .

“Are you blushing?”

“Of course not,” she said, gathering her hair away from her face and moving into the breeze from the back door. “It’s just warm in here.”

Tennessee grunted at that. “It’ll be a whole lot warmer come summer, and you’ll do a whole lot better cooling the place with a small central unit. That thing in the living room window isn’t even safe for rats to nest in.”

A change of subject. Thank goodness. “Believe it or not, I don’t have rats, and I’m guessing that’s because I seem to have a cat.”

“Not Hiram’s old orange tabby.”

She pictured the cat’s black-and-white markings, the tiny feet that looked like they had on socks, and wondered how feral was feral. “No, this one’s a little bowlegged tuxedo. Looks like he, or she, could beat the crap out of an elephant.”

“Then you’ll want to keep her around,” Tennessee said. “Rats are as fond of honey as the next guy.”

Great. That was exactly what she needed to hear.