Bliss and the Art of Forever (A Hope Springs Novel Book 4)

by Alison Kent

  That didn’t mean he wasn’t curious. “You and your husband lived here a long time? In Hope Springs?”

  “Eleven years.” She dusted behind the row of fair-trade cocoa powder canisters. “I’ve been here now thirteen. We both lived in Austin when we met. I was finishing up grad school. He worked for the AFD. We moved here the year after we married. He would work a twenty-four-hour shift, then be off for forty-eight. He liked the separation of work and home.”

  “I get that.”

  “You never did tell me how you ended up here,” she said, turning from the shelves and holding a dried cacao pod from a decorative tray of several.

  “I came here for Addy,” he said. She’d asked him on Thursday night in her kitchen, and he’d managed not to answer her then. He wasn’t sure how much he wanted her to know about his past, but he was already feeling exposed, and since she was being honest . . .

  “I’d been bartending in San Francisco, and I crashed with the owner and his wife for a while. Me and Addy both. I used the kitchen in his bar to run my business for about a year, most of that online.”

  “Adrianne must’ve been just a baby then,” she said, facing him, the dust cloth crushed in her hands.

  He nodded. “Straight from the hospital into a crash pad with her old man.”

  “Does Addy know her mother?”

  His ears pricked as he listened again for the distinctive Harley rumble he thought he’d heard. “No, and she never will.”

  “How did you manage that?”

  Oh the tangled webs we weave. “Cheryl didn’t want her.”

  “What?” she asked, the question coming out on a choked breath.

  He slapped the mop against the floor again and shoved it across the tiles. “I cut her out of my life in the hospital when she told me if I didn’t want the kid, she was going to give it to someone who did. And that’s a direct quote. She called our daughter it.”

  “Callum.” Brooklyn stopped. Her eyes tearing. “I’m so terribly sorry.”

  “It happened. It’s done with. I’d like to say I’m over it . . .” He shook his head, surprised he’d said that much. He didn’t talk about Cheryl. Ever. “I’m not, because who calls a newborn infant it, but I don’t dwell on the past. Addy’s mine, and that’s all that matters.”

  “Well, it’s obvious you’re doing an amazing job with her,” she said, adjusting her glasses. “She adores you, but I’m sure you know that. Not all of my students are lucky to have a father as involved as you are, though I suppose that comes with being a single parent.”

  “Right,” he said with a snort. “I’m so involved I’ve missed how many things so far this year?”

  She gave him a lopsided grin. “Fifty cents says you won’t miss anything else.”

  “Fifty cents?” That made him smile. “That’s all the faith you have in me?”

  “I’d bet more but I’m saving all my money for my trip.” She walked the length of the shelves, checking to see what she’d missed. “I want to kick myself for falling out of touch with Artie’s family.”

  He supposed talking about her ex was better than talking about his. “Harvey’s not an Italian name.”

  “His mother moved here from Vernazza when she was nineteen and married an American a year or two later. Artie was in college before he made his first trip to Italy. His mother never went back.”

  “Bad blood?”

  She shook her head as if she didn’t have an answer. “I never met her, but from what he told me, she and his father had pretty much cut themselves off from both of their families before he was born. There was some spousal abuse. Artie did what he could to help his mother, and stay out of his father’s way, but he was young. He couldn’t do much. He only knew about the family he had in Italy because of the letters his grandfather wrote.” She paused, then waved off the rest of what she’d been going to say. “I can’t imagine you want to hear all this.”

  The juxtaposition of his cushy upbringing with that of her husband . . . “Sounds like a rough way to grow up.”

  “He turned out okay, though he had moments he wasn’t proud of, stealing food so he and his mom could eat, stealing money so she could pay bills.” She swallowed, tucked back her hair. “I mean, his reasons were good, but still . . .”

  Yeah. He was putting food on the table. Not stealing to get high. “He did what he had to do. Some of us can’t even manage to do what we should.”

  “You would’ve been at the school for Addy’s parties if you’d known,” she said, tossing the disposable dust cloth into the trash can on the far side of the shelving unit. “I’m quite sure about that.”

  “I would’ve been. But that doesn’t excuse me not being more on the ball. I’ve kinda relied on my parents to the point of letting them take care of things that aren’t their responsibility. Trust me that it’s not going to happen again.” He rolled the mop and bucket back to the hallway door and left it there. “As tied up as I am with the shop, Addy comes first.”

  Frowning, she dropped her gaze to the floor. “If you’re too busy to do the demonstration . . .”

  Because of Bliss? “No. It’s okay. It’ll be fun.”

  “My idea of fun, anyway,” she said, waving an arm toward the front door and heading that way. “And I can help you with whatever prep you need to do so it won’t be so overwhelming.”

  “Do you make that offer to all the places who host your field trips?” he asked as he squatted to unlock the door.

  “Nope,” she said, tugging it open and letting in a blast of cold air. “Only the ones whose owners feed me chocolate. And have tattoos.”

  “You like the ink?”

  “I’m curious about the sayings,” she said, pointing to his neck, letting the door close, and remaining inside.

  “I’ve got Nietzsche, Tolkien, and if you’re more into science fiction than fantasy, I’ve got Frank Herbert. Then there’s Lewis Carroll. Even Harper Lee.”

  She cocked her head, her expression broadcasting her curiosity when she said, “Really?”

  He nodded, wondering if that look meant she was trying to guess what he’d chosen. Dune’s mind-killer passage about dealing with fear was obvious, but only if she knew the book and more about him. And the banter between Alice and the Cheshire Cat about mad people had seemed to fit his life at the time, though she wouldn’t know that.

  The Harper Lee might be harder, but Atticus talking to Jem about courage had stuck with him. He’d chosen the first two lines of Tolkien’s “The Riddle of Strider” for the same reason, finding the sentiment about wandering but not being lost apropos when he’d gotten the ink.

  But none of those tattoos were easily accessible. “How ’bout Tennyson?”

  He pulled up his sleeve to show her the words. They were buried in a design that began just above his inner wrist and circled his forearm, before disappearing beneath his coat.

  She took hold of his hand and read the quote for herself. “ ‘To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.’ ” Then she ran her finger along the words, and onto the visuals around which they’d been wound. “Do these have anything to do with the motorcycle club?”

  “The words or the pictures?” he asked, surprised at how steady his voice sounded, when her touch had him wound up inside.

  “Both. Either.”

  “They did. Some I never had altered. Others were too gruesome, and I didn’t want Addy freaking out.”

  “The wolf is nice,” she said, holding his hand palm up in hers and tracing the animal’s snout where it nudged against his wrist bone.

  “Now it is,” he said, staring at the back of its head, which used to be open, with skulls pouring out as if they’d been scraped of their flesh and humanity and eaten by the beast. He’d covered the wound with a scroll of parchment, then had the Tennyson line—the final one from Ulysses—inked on top.

  But mostly he was staring at his hand in Brooklyn’s. She held him like she would a
baby bird, her palm barely cupped as if squeezing him too tightly might break him because he was fragile, and wild, and too new to his life not to jump away from what frightened him.

  Funny about that, how such a gentle, nonthreatening, understanding touch made him want to leap.

  He was just surprised by the direction he was thinking to go.

  It was close to one a.m. when Brooklyn finally got home, and for the whole of the drive all she’d been able to think about was what in the world had compelled her to go to Bliss in the middle of the night? Okay, it hadn’t really been the middle of the night, but it had been long after hours.

  Calling would’ve been so much easier—and so much warmer—though doing so wouldn’t have made much sense.

  The fact that it had been after hours when she’d been struck with this insane idea made Callum still being at work a long shot. And her idea. Really? A kindergarten class field trip to his shop? Was she that desperate to see him? Apparently so. Midnight hadn’t stopped her.

  She’d gone because . . . did she even know? She could have easily talked to him next week about the field trip idea. Or, by then, she could have easily talked herself out of it. Bliss wasn’t a big shop. Lining up a row of seven children in front of a row of eight at the window would work.

  But the logistics of fitting fifteen five- and six-year-olds into Callum’s confectionery wasn’t the issue. The issue was her grabbing on to any reason to see him. This wasn’t like her, this giving physical attraction more than its due. She refused to believe she was so . . . what? Sexually needy? That she’d invent reasons to see a man with whom she shared only chemistry?

  Except that wasn’t true, not at all. For one thing, they had his daughter in common, her education, her welfare, though the latter wasn’t truly Brooklyn’s purview but that of Adrianne’s father. But more than both caring about the girl’s well-being, well . . . what were their mutual interests?

  Chocolate, obviously, though he was the expert and she was only there to enjoy the fruit of his labors. She’d never been on a motorcycle before riding behind him, and could add that to the list of things they enjoyed. And tattoos, even if she didn’t think she’d ever be brave enough to get one.

  But bigger than all of those things, he made her laugh, which few people did anymore, and in a different way than Artie had. Her sense of humor was, well, stunted if not lacking. Artie had known that and teased laughter from her as often as he could.

  Callum wasn’t a jokester, except at his own expense. He took himself seriously, but only when it mattered, and when it didn’t, he had no problem making light. She liked that about him. She liked it a lot. She liked, too, the way he flirted. And that he included her in the fun. He wasn’t performing. He didn’t need an audience. A subtle thing, but it was there.

  His grin spoke volumes, but his words came layered with so much meaning, requiring she peel back the ones she’d deciphered, and hope she could do the same with the next. She liked that depth. Liked that she couldn’t take what he said at face value because the true gems in his words were buried. Liked a whole lot that he found solace in words, too. Enough so to mark himself permanently as if wearing them as armor against the world.

  But attraction or not, she should not have gone to see him. It was February. She was leaving for Italy in June. Four months barely gave her enough time to get her house ready to list, the sign in the yard, and her possessions either sold or stored. And all her books . . .

  Suddenly, she was extremely exhausted. And left pondering the fact that she was scheduled to leave town after meeting a man worth staying for.

  FRIDAY, MAY 26, 2006

  “Please let me do something,” Brooklyn said. “It’s my anniversary, too, you know.” She was sitting at the table in the kitchen of the Hope Springs house she and Artie shared, watching him very capably pull their dinner together.

  He had already set the table, taken the lasagna he’d worked on all afternoon from the oven to cool, and put the fresh Italian loaf he’d baked earlier in to warm. Their kitchen smelled like a ristorante: onions, tomatoes, oregano, and wine, and Brooklyn was starving. For the food. For her husband.

  He brought two glasses and the bottle he’d just opened to where she sat, and poured hers first. She reached for the stem, looking past it to the dark hair dusting the edge of his hand, his wrist. The tattoo on his forearm. It was new, and still healing. He had it inked to commemorate ten years on the job.

  It was the Austin Fire Department symbol. Above and behind it flew the Texas state flag as well as the stars and stripes. An eagle perched on top, its talons gripping the emblem’s edge, and the word Brotherhood stretched across the center on a banner.

  She lifted her glass to her mouth and sipped, her gaze falling to his belt buckle against his flat stomach. She wanted to take him to bed. The lasagna could wait. But this was the first time in their five-year marriage that his shift hadn’t fallen on their anniversary date. This was his night as much as it was theirs, and she wouldn’t do anything to take away from their celebration.

  “Drink,” he told her. She raised her gaze; his smile was bright in his five o’clock shadow, and his brown eyes flashed. “That’s what I want you to do. Drink and relax and enjoy dinner. Your gift to me.”

  “Five years. You’re supposed to give me wood,” she said, and when he snorted with laughter, she felt the heat of a blush rising. She loved that he could still make her blush. “Something made out of wood, you perv.”

  “You love every pervy bit of me,” he said, heading back to the oven to check on the bread. “Or would that be every pervy inch?”

  He was right. She did. “What I love is your lasagna,” she said, and sipped her wine. The bottle he opened was one of several they brought back from their last trip to Vernazza. They had plans to go again in June.

  He bent at the waist as he reached for the bread, and all she could think about was undressing him, climbing over him, onto him. She drained her wineglass and when she reached for the bottle to pour more, he was there, across from her, handing her a box enclosed in olive-green paper.

  A ribbon of pink wrapped the box in a cross, and the tiny bow at the apex was the same pink sprinkled with glitter. She didn’t want to open it. The package was pretty enough that she wanted to set it on the living room bookcase as a keepsake, but she sensed Artie’s impatience.

  “C’mon. Open it.”

  The box was a rectangle, the size fitting of a fountain pen, but he’d given her a fountain pen before. She wasn’t a jewelry person, though it might very well have held a bracelet. She couldn’t imagine him buying a bracelet.

  What she found inside was a bookmark. The label read “Arte Legno,” whose products, she knew, were made in Italy of olive wood. The top of the bookmark was carved into an owl with big eyes, big ears, a tiny beak, and feathers that could’ve served as flat toothpicks.

  “Oh, Artie,” she said, pressing her fingers to her lips. “I love it. It’s adorable.”

  “And me?” he asked. “Am I adorable?”

  “Absolutely. And I love you, too.”

  “Good,” he said, leaning across the table to kiss her quickly, then sitting back and sobering. “Because I need you to promise me something.”

  He rarely asked her for a promise, and when he did, it was almost always morbid and something she didn’t want to give.

  “It’s our anniversary. Can the promise wait? I don’t want to spoil the mood.” Though his request had very nearly done so already.

  He held up two fingers. “Two years. If I go up in flames—”

  “Artie!” She hated how he talked about the dangers of his job. He tossed off the words so callously, when the picture he painted was her worst nightmare.

  “No keepsakes,” he said. “No mementos. I don’t want to think about you making this house into a shrine. Get rid of my clothes, any books of mine you won’t read, any of the crap in the garage you won’t use. Don’t leave pictures of me
on the bookcase—”

  Why was he saying this? What could have prompted him to be so grim on today of all days? “They’re pictures of us. Artie, what’s going on?”

  But he ignored her. “You know what you look like. You know what I look like. If you have to keep them, put them in an album. Or scan them and store them on a flash drive.”

  She couldn’t bear the thought of losing him, or of his wanting her to put him away. She loved him. He was her life. Emotion rose to choke her, and she put down her foot. “I’m not getting rid of the owls.”

  He glanced down at his plate, his forearms on the table’s edge. A smile played over his face, and he laughed. “The owls you can keep. But two years is more than enough time to get on with living. Even rigorous Catholic customs no longer require a lengthy mourning period. You’re not Queen Victoria, and we’re not living in the old country. Promise me.”

  “I can’t—”

  “Brooklyn. This is important to me.” He reached for his wine and drank. “I want you to scatter my ashes someplace meaningful. Pops’s olive grove and vineyard, or the Guadalupe or the Gulf. Wherever you want.”

  “Oh, my God, Artie.” She fought down a sob, her throat burning, her eyes aching, her chest feeling as if it would burst. “Why are you asking me this now?”

  “Why not now? We’re celebrating our marriage, our love. This . . . magic we have together.” He took hold of her hand, and closed her fingers in his, holding her gaze, his eyes solemn and red. “This is something I need from you because of that. You know I’m not sentimental—”

  “You are the most sentimental person I know.” She picked up the bookmark, ran her thumb over the tiny sticks carved to resemble feathers. “If this isn’t you showing sentiment, I don’t know what it is.”

  “I can show you even more,” he said, his voice growing husky. “But we’ll have to go to the bedroom.”

  “Why?” she asked, because he had her feeling out of sorts, and she was struck with the urge to prove them both so alive that death wouldn’t dare visit. “Why can’t you show me right here?”