by Alison Kent
“That’s not why I do this.”
“Sure it is. You didn’t go after Robby. Dakota did, and ended up behind bars. The guilt’s still eating you alive. You’ve gotta let it go. You did what you could for your brother. I know you would’ve served his time, too, but the system doesn’t work that way. And I need to know I’m sending my guys into a working situation that’s not going to mess with their already messed-up psyches.”
Ten didn’t like having his head examined. Especially by a parole officer. “I’m fine. Will’s fine. If you’ve got someone else you need put to work, send him along and he’ll be fine.”
“Fine.”
“Fine. Now can we eat? You’ve got to get on the road. And I’ve got a job to get to.”
“Sure,” Manny said, taking the coffee from their waitress’s hand before she could set the cup on the table. “Tell me about it.”
“Because you’re interested as a friend? Or because you want to know what Bowman’s up to?”
“Can it be a little bit of both?” he asked, then smiled as he brought his coffee to his mouth.
“If it’ll get me out of here faster, sure,” Ten said, grinning as well, then giving his order to their waitress before she left.
Manny held up two fingers to signal he’d take the same. “C’mon. Tell me. You said something about an old Victorian. Wait. Do you mean Bob Coleman’s place?”
“Yep. That’s the one.”
Work out of the way, Manny sat back, relaxed. “Wow. If I recall correctly, you were looking to buy that monster.”
Ten nodded. He’d driven Manny by the house a couple of times, made the other man listen to him wax poetic about all he could do with the place. “I wanted it, but didn’t think the Colemans would sell. I hadn’t been watching for it to be listed.”
“Who beat you to it?”
Ten hesitated, not wanting to share Kaylie’s business, then realized it was all public record and nothing she was trying to hide. “One of the kids who used to live there with Winton and May Wise. Name’s Kaylie Flynn.”
“Huh. No kidding. I hadn’t thought about the Wises for a long time. They’ve both passed on, I believe.”
“They have. Kaylie had been keeping an eye on the place.”
“Guess she wanted it more than you did.”
“She’s got a connection to it that I don’t.” He reached for the first of his three breakfast tacos the minute his plate hit the table. “She’s converting the first floor into a café. I’ve got Will taking down the shutters, checking all the windows for damage.”
“What’s the tension you’re throwing him into?”
“It’s nothing that’s going to be a problem for him, or, by extension, you.”
Manny thought for a moment. Then gave a snort that had Ten rolling his eyes. “That leaves you. And her. And confirmed bachelor that you are, you don’t know what to do with the idea of a woman you want living in a house you want without you living there, too.”
No matter how good a friend Ten considered Manny, he was not talking about any of this until he’d figured it out for himself. “I’m pretty sure that doesn’t even deserve a response. So I’m not going to give you one.”
“You don’t have to, man. I’ve known you a lotta years. You haven’t said more than two words in all that time about the personal lives of any of your clients. You’ve only mentioned one or two by name. And you haven’t dated anyone seriously since I’ve known you.”
“I’m not dating Kaylie.”
“Yet.”
Ten was not having this conversation. “We’re doing nothing but talking about her house.” Mostly. “It’s not a personal relationship. I’ve got too many obligations, and a lot of them thanks to you, to take time for a personal relationship.”
Manny finished off his first taco and picked up his second. “More than anyone I know, you need to take time. Stop beating yourself up, or thinking you don’t deserve anything good in your life. If Dakota knew you’ve been carrying this guilt all this time…”
Since neither one of them had seen Dakota in years, it was hard to say what he’d do. And Ten got Manny’s concern. That’s what friends were for. But in this case, the concern butted up a little too close to meddling. Good-natured meddling, but still. “So, what? You’re moonlighting as a shrink now?”
“Could be you need one,” Manny said, and when Ten lifted a hand to object, the other man continued. “Or at least a friend willing to tell you the truth from this side of that wall of yours.”
“Oh, so now I’ve got a wall.”
“Jericho-sized. Lots of hardheaded bricks. With a moat.”
Ten grunted and dug back into his food. If his head was hard, it was his business. And if he’d put up walls, he had his reasons. Manny might think he knew the way of things, but he hadn’t been standing in Ten’s shoes when Dakota had swung that bat.
“Letting someone in,” Manny went on, “say, this Kaylie…wouldn’t be a bad thing. Man wasn’t meant to live alone.”
“I do just fine living alone. And I told you. Kaylie’s business. I don’t mix my work with my downtime.”
“Can’t say I’ve known you to take any downtime.”
Ten thought about Kaylie’s mouth, her laugh, the bow of her lip, her freckles, her eyes that said so much while appearing so sad. “Since you don’t see me but every couple of weeks, there’s a lot of what I do that you don’t know.”
“There’s a lot of what you do that I don’t want to know. But as much as you think I’m up in your business because of mine—”
“Which you are—”
“—I’m your friend and am pretty fed up with you taking the blame for everything that went down with your family. It’s time to let it go, Ten. You were sixteen years old, Dakota was an adult, and your parents should’ve paid more attention to what the kids under their roof were doing.”
And about that, Manny was right. “Enough. I came here for breakfast, and to assure you I’m not dropping Will Bowman into hot water. What I didn’t come here for is an intervention, or whatever the hell this is.”
“This is a friend talking to a friend. But if you say enough, then enough.” Manny reached for his coffee. “I can talk about soccer instead.”
Another smile pulled at Ten’s mouth. “That’s okay. You know how I don’t feel about soccer.”
“And that I’ve never understood.”
It was on Ten’s drive from Malina’s back to the shop when Manny’s words truly sank in. Ten didn’t like thinking about his high school years, the events that had sent Dakota to prison. No matter what Manny said, it was Ten’s fault. He never should’ve asked their parents if Robby Hunt could stay with them during spring break…
Robby and Ten had grown up together, been close friends since they’d played shortstop and second base in Little League. The other boy had come from what teenage Ten had thought to be an overly strict family. Robby wasn’t permitted to do half of what Ten’s parents allowed. He’d had a curfew. Ten hadn’t. He’d had a restriction on how much TV he could watch each day, what music he could listen to, what movies he could see, where he could go and with whom. Ten had been a free agent, making his own decisions.
Looking back, it was easy to see whose parents had been more involved in their kids’ lives. It hadn’t been Drew and Tiffany Keller, that was for sure. It was a wonder Ten’s sister, Indiana, hadn’t given them a grandchild before her fifteenth birthday, as little instruction as they’d provided her in the ways of the world and of men.
And if not for Dakota and his baseball bat, that very well might’ve happened against her will.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Thursday morning found Kaylie sitting cross-legged on the kitchen counter, her coffee on the window ledge, a sketch pad in her lap. Magoo lay stretched out in the middle of the floor, snoring, a sputtering nasal sound punctuated with an occasional whine and whiffle. Kaylie shook her head, smiling. As excited as she was to get started making over the house, she woul
d miss these quiet—or mostly quiet—mornings with only her fur baby for company.
Her love of spending the early hours in silence was one of many things she owed to May Wise. How many times had she come down to breakfast before the rest of the kids to find May packing lunches, humming softly as she slathered slices of homemade bread with thick layers of jam, loaded others with wedges of cheese? May had always known Kaylie was there, but had done no more than smile to herself, letting Kaylie be the one to speak first.
Sometimes she had, asking if it was okay to pour a bowl of cereal rather than wait for everyone else and pancakes or French toast. But sometimes it had been Winton, or Cindy or Tim, joining them and starting the conversations it took the entire morning to finish, and that Kaylie, wide-eyed, had soaked up. So, yes, she loved her quiet time, but she couldn’t wait to fill this house with voices again, words tumbling over one another to be heard.
She’d missed that, living alone. The chatter at school had been too chaotic, that at work about work. But during the eight years she’d lived in this house, there’d been a constant flow of words that mattered. Winton reading aloud, May teaching her to bake, Cindy and Tim and later Joelle playing Monopoly or Scrabble. Then there were the warm spring days the family spent on the spot Winton cleared for softball, and the cheering, the screaming, the distracting cries of batter, batter, swing!
She’d woken up thinking about seasonal themes for the dining rooms, and had been playing with the idea since. After talking to Ten on Saturday, she’d decided she wanted to add a fourth room to the connected eating spaces, and was waiting for him to get here so they could discuss whether it was best to add the solarium or the parlor to the maze.
The parlor was her first choice, as it would expand the dining area toward the front of the house, keeping the rooms at the rear hers and private. Plus, she loved the solarium. Almost as much as the kitchen. She’d spent so much time in there doing homework or reading or napping, or staring out at the trees, lost in thought. And yet these days she was hardly ever alone, and the thoughts she would’ve once kept to herself she was sharing with Luna and Ten.
There had to be some reason she felt so free to disclose the details of her life to these people she’d just met. Talking about her past was not part of her plan. She wasn’t a talker, a sharer. She never had been, but especially not when it came to her feelings. May had tried in that way she’d had, kind and subtle and making it seem as if she wasn’t prompting at all, to get Kaylie to open up.
But that part of her had closed down the day her mother had left their apartment bandaged and handcuffed in an ambulance, and social services had taken Kaylie out of Ernest Flynn’s arms. She knew she came across at times as cold, as aloof, as distant, but keeping her feelings to herself was how she’d survived. So why was she opening up now? Was it the magic of the house? Was it the people coming into her life?
Or was she in a better personal place, finally ready to shed the protective cocoon of isolation she’d spent so much time burrowed inside?
She was just reaching for her coffee when she heard the slam of a truck door. Finally. Magoo heard it, too, rousing and trotting to the mudroom. She glanced out the window at her right in time to see a man in black Dockers and a white dress shirt with cuffed sleeves step down from a truck much like Ten’s.
His hair was buzzed short, and he wore a goatee, both the honest salt-and-pepper of his age, though he moved like a man much younger and she realized he was built like a younger man as well. She watched as he made his way up the driveway, slowing as he studied the house and the grounds.
She hopped down and stretched—she’d been sitting hunched over way too long—and tossed her pencil and paper to the counter behind her, making her way to the door. Giving Magoo the signal to stay at her side, she walked out and raised a hand in greeting. “Hello.”
The man’s head came up sharply, and he stopped in his tracks as if startled, shoving his hands into his pockets as he stared at her and frowned. She obviously wasn’t who he’d been expecting, because his frown deepened and then he swallowed, his throat working as he raised a hand to scratch at one side of his jaw.
“Can I help you?” she asked. Guard dog Magoo sensed no threat and sat, his wagging tail stirring up driveway dust.
“I’m sorry,” the man said, holding up a finger. “Give me one second.” He returned to his truck, opened the door, rubbing at his forehead, then at his eyes, as he leaned to reach for something in the cab.
Kaylie waited, wondering if he was here to meet Ten, maybe checking to see if he had the right time or right address. Will Bowman was due later to get back to work on the shutters, but the internal construction wasn’t scheduled yet. She was expecting Ten later, too.
She started to call out and tell her visitor just that, but he closed his truck door and came toward her, lifting a tentative hand.
“Hi. Sorry about that. I just…I’m looking for the owner.”
“You’ve found her. I’m Kaylie Flynn.”
“Flynn?” he asked, and gave a huff before a smile pulled at one side of his mouth.
Something tingled at the base of her spine. “Is there a problem?”
He shook his head. “No. Nothing. It’s just that I once had a friend with that last name. Haven’t thought of him for years.”
Ah. The surprise of nostalgia. “You are?”
“Mitch Pepper,” he said. “Luna Meadows told me you were looking for a cook. Told me I should come talk to you.”
“It’s nice to meet you, Mitch,” Kaylie said, offering her hand. “And there’s no need to apologize.”
He laughed again, his handshake brisk and brief. “Oh, I beg to differ, but that’s on me.”
Strange thing to say, that. “Luna said she used to work with you, I think?”
“Sor—” He held up a hand to stop himself, came closer and started again. “I cook at the Gristmill over in Gruene. She waited tables there in high school. I got her the job, actually.”
“You’ve known her a long time, then.”
“I have. Her dad, Harry, he’s one of my oldest friends. We were in the service together, and he talked me into settling here after my discharge.”
He looked to be about the right age to have been deployed during the first Gulf War, maybe just this side of fifty. “Would you like a cup of coffee, Mitch? I just brewed a pot.”
“Sure. That would be great,” he said, as she turned for the house. “This is some place.”
“It is, isn’t it? I don’t know if Luna told you, but I used to live here, years ago. I loved it so much that I had to buy it when it came on the market.” She pulled open the screen door into the kitchen. Magoo bounded through but Mitch waited, gesturing for her to go ahead. She did, smiling to herself at the show of chivalry that had her thinking again of Ten. He was similarly kind, thoughtful. She wondered what he’d think of Mitch, frowned as she wondered why his opinion mattered.
“I guess it’ll be a while before you open for business?” Mitch asked, the door bouncing shut behind him. “It looks like you just got the keys to the place.”
“About a week ago, yes.” She reached for a mug where they sat in a row on the countertop, filled it and handed it to him, then gestured to the raffia-handled shopping bag she was using for storage since the cabinets would be coming down soon. “I’ve got sugar and sweetener, and cream in the fridge.”
“Black is fine, thanks,” he said, and blew across the mug’s surface before sipping. “When do you plan to be up and running?”
“Memorial Day weekend,” she said, topping off her own mug.
“So you’ve got a building contractor lined up?”
“I do. He came with great references. Even Luna approved.”
“Luna’s got good taste. And a good sense about people.”
“She seemed anxious that I consider you for the cook’s position.”
He gave a huff of breath as if tickled. “I got the same pressure.”
“And here
you are.”
“Here I am.”
“Even though you already have a job.”
“I explained that to her. She wouldn’t take no for an answer.”
Kaylie canted her head, considered him. “So is there any point to our talking about the position?”
“I wouldn’t have come otherwise. My time’s too valuable to waste. I imagine yours is, too.”
Honesty. Integrity. Respect. “If you worked with Luna when she was in high school, you must’ve been cooking at the Gristmill for, what? A dozen years?”
“Closer to fifteen. It’s been quite a long haul.”
“You know this isn’t full-time, yes? Luna explained that?”
He nodded, holding her gaze, his fashionable black glasses framing eyes as green as her own. “She did. If this turns out to be something I’m interested in, I’d cut back on my hours in Gruene. Can’t be in two places at one time.”
Something he was interested in. Not something she thought he was right for. Not something she might want him for, or offer him. Interesting perspective. She liked that he spoke his mind. “Since Luna told you how things will work, why don’t you ask me any questions you have. We’ll start there.”
“I’ve only got one right now.”
“Which is?”
“Can I see where you’ll be building out for the café?”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Mitch didn’t care about seeing any of the house, only that she loved it and it meant something to her. Her. Kaylie. His daughter. His girl.
God, but she was beautiful. So sweet and so smart and her teeth so straight. He still carried a picture of her, one where she was all smiles, the big gap between her baby teeth making him wonder how her permanent ones would come in.
He’d told himself he wasn’t going to come here. What he’d said to Luna was the truth. He’d lost his baby years ago. This woman was someone else. But he’d known from the moment he’d heard the news that he’d make the trip, if just to see her. He’d been looking for her more than half of his life.