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

by Kent, Alison

  “It’s the only time I have to experiment,” he said, and shrugged. “And Addy’s going to be gone. What else am I going to do?”

  “I don’t know,” she said, because she wanted more than anything to have fun with him—Dear Lord, do I want to have fun with him—but since she was leaving she wasn’t sure doing so was a good idea. “Go for a long ride? Move some of your things to your house? Watch a ball game with your dad? Read a book?”

  He seemed to think about her suggestions, then shook his head. “I’d rather make chocolate with you.”

  It was the with you that got to her. The words floated in front of her eyes, dancing there, spinning round and round until she was dizzy with the idea. “I’m not sure I can. The garage is going to take me all day—”

  “Then let me help.”

  “It’s chaos in here. You’ll get filthy.” Oh, how weak that argument sounds.

  “A little dirt never hurt anyone.”

  She gave him a look. “We’re not talking about a little.”

  “You, Brooklyn Harvey”—he leaned close and grinned—“worry too much.”

  He really needed to stop being so persuasive. And so incredibly cute. “What about your work chocolate, as opposed to your play chocolate?”

  “I put in the overnight on Monday and cranked out an extra batch every day this week.” His gaze curious, he walked farther into the garage. “Like I said. I’m good. And I’ve got Lena to let me know when I’m not.”

  Did he ever worry about anything? Of course he did. She knew he did, leaving her to take his word that he wasn’t worried now. “Fine. But don’t blame me when you can’t fill all the orders that come in once everyone finishes what they bought for Valentine’s Day.”

  “No blaming. Promise.” That grin again. That with you still dancing. “Now what do you want me to do?”

  They spent the next hour going through the tools in the garage. Callum knew the purpose for everything he picked up, and for the larger pieces she couldn’t move and didn’t recognize. She told him to take anything she hadn’t offered to Jean’s sons that he thought he might be able to use, but he was reluctant.

  “I’m gonna wait till I get moved, pick up what I need as I need it.”

  If it was a matter of pride, doing things for himself, that was one thing. But if he didn’t want what she had to give because her things had belonged to Artie . . . “I’ve got an entire home improvement store here, and it can be yours for free. Don’t you think it’s kinda dumb to spend the money?”

  “Thanks, but no.” He was shaking his head. “I’ve been making my own way a long time.”

  Still she argued. “Taking what I offer doesn’t obligate you to me. I’m not going to haunt you and exact payment.” But when he cocked his head and looked over, his expression one of finality, she said, “Okay. Craigslist it is.”

  “I’m sure Craig and his list will snap up everything Artie had.”

  So it was about Artie, she mused, trying to decide if that hurt her feelings, or if this was one of those molehill-and-mountain situations she needed to let go. “Jean and I were looking through things earlier, trying to decide what might be worth holding on to, but all I’ve ever used is a hammer and a screwdriver and a pair of pliers. Maybe the stepladder. And the tire pump.”

  This time he started in the back left corner of the garage and walked her through everything she owned. How he’d come to know the workings of machines she couldn’t even identify . . . well, he was a guy, with guy genes, and he had belonged to a motorcycle club.

  Oh, she knew the saws and the drills, and was well versed in using the lawn equipment, but she only had a vague idea of what one might do with a lathe, and couldn’t imagine she would ever need a bench vise, a floor jack, an optical level, or even one of the five tool belts hung with ridiculously specific single-purpose gadgets, even though she did set aside a very cool laser measuring device.

  It was noon when they reached the door that led into the kitchen. And as cool as it was outside, she was sweaty, grimy, and in desperate need of something to eat and to drink. “Would you like some lunch? I make a mean turkey club. Or do you need to get to work?”

  “I’d love a sandwich,” he said, adding, “or three. But yeah. I do need to head to the shop. And check in with my dad. He’s got Addy today.”

  His dad. Not his mother. “Three I can do,” she said. “You can take them with you, though I’m not sure you want to go to work looking like that. I think you’re even filthier than I am. And your T-shirt’s an insult to rats everywhere. That grease is never going to come out.”

  He tucked his chin to his chest and looked down. “One less item to wash. One less item to pack. Though you may have to feed me in the garage.”

  “Just dust off. You’ll be fine. Except maybe your hair. It’s as cobwebby as mine was earlier. C’mere.”

  He moved closer and she reached up, brushing the sticky strands from his temple. They caught on the backs of her fingers, and she reached higher to clear away more of the web, her hand slowing as she realized she was making things worse because she wasn’t paying attention to the spider’s work at all.

  His hair wasn’t the least bit coarse, as the unruly waves led her to believe. It was as soft as hers, though so much thicker; no wonder he wore it knotted on the back of his head. When his eyes sparked, she pulled her hand away to ask, “Why don’t you cut it?”

  “I do. Just not short. It’s been this length as long as I can remember,” he said, raking it back. “Addy loved to play with it when she was a baby, so I left it alone. I’d be holding her, my hair falling in my face, and she’d flail around trying to grab it like she would a mobile. Sometimes I’d actually catch thirty minutes of shuteye before she yanked too hard and tried to pull me bald.”

  The thought brought Brooklyn a tender smile, and she watched as he dug into his pocket for a black elastic, then wound his hair into a knot and secured it. Doing so pulled his shirt up his torso a good six inches, giving her a clear view of the tattoo that seemed to undulate behind the waist of his jeans.

  “It’s a dragon.”

  “What?”

  “The tattoo on your stomach,” she said, nodding down, lingering long enough to read the words there. “And it’s the Bene Gesserit’s litany against fear on the spine.”

  “Yeah. I’ve had that one awhile,” he said, tugging at the shirt’s hem to hide the image—unless he was hiding the words—and leaving it at that.

  She wasn’t going to press. “C’mon. You can wash up in the restroom. See what a mess my garage has made of your face.”

  He followed her into the house, and she showed him down the hall before returning to the kitchen to make lunch. Sub buns—though since she only had three, Callum would have to settle for two—turkey, bacon, tomatoes, lettuce, mayo, and Swiss cheese, because that’s how she liked it.

  She assembled the sandwiches, thinking as she did of fear being a mind-killer, as the tattoo’s text said, and Callum, at some time in his life, needing the reminder not to give in to said fear. Had he been afraid of something specific, or was the danger inherent to the life of a biker involved with drugs enough to require the warning?

  But since she wasn’t going to ask—his pulling down his shirt to cover the ink took the subject off the table—she finished with the food, then went in search of her guest, finding him in the bathroom doorway, towel in hand, facing the bookcases that ran the length of the hall.

  “You read all these?” he asked, catching sight of her.

  “Most of them,” she said with a nod, liking too much that he looked right at home in her house, with her towel, smelling of her bathroom’s soap.

  “No digital editions for you?”

  “Oh, no,” she said, dispelling the notion. “I have a Kindle.” She let her gaze wander the shelves. “With a lot of the same titles loaded on it. Along with, oh, a thousand more?”

  “You’re kidding.”

&nbs
p; “I’m just your average bibliophile,” she said laughingly.

  “Is that the reason behind the story hours?” he asked as he stepped back into the bathroom to hang the towel on its rack.

  “Yes and no. The story hours are for the kids, obviously, but my love of reading, and my belief in the importance of reading, is a part of it.”

  He leaned down, picked up a little steampunk owl that stood three inches high and had gears for eyes and riveted feathers. “You collect owls?”

  “Not really.” Not since Artie.

  He returned the one owl, motioned to the others sitting on adjoining shelves. “The evidence says otherwise.”

  “It started as a joke,” she said. “Before Artie and I were married. One of his coworkers said Artie was the wisest man he knew for marrying me, and it stuck. The first trip we took together, Artie bought me one carved out of marble and no bigger than my thumb. After that, we made it a thing to hunt down a locally crafted owl everywhere we went.”

  “You went to a lot of places,” Callum said after looking over all of the shelves.

  “We did.” And that was all she wanted to say about that. Something he and his dragon tattoo should understand. “C’mon. Food’s ready.” She led him to the kitchen. “You want a glass of wine?”

  “If you don’t have a beer, sure.”

  “I do have a beer. Shiner Bock?”

  “A beermaid after my own heart.” He twisted off the top, then stopped and frowned. “What did I say?”

  “Nothing. Artie. The way you opened the beer . . . I watched him stand there and do that about a thousand times.” Ugh. What was with all her melancholy today? “Ignore me.”

  “It’s okay. We’ve all got our demons,” he said, lifting the bottle to his mouth. “Mine ride in on imaginary Harleys.”

  Oh, good. A change of subject. His memories instead of hers. “You said you’d thought you heard one when I came by Bliss the other night.”

  “It’s no big deal,” he said, except she’d known that night that it was. “I sometimes wonder if Addy’s mother will come looking for her is all.”

  “Even though you have custody? And she told you she didn’t want her?”

  “That was six years ago. I’m not the same person I was then,” he said, taking the plate with his sandwiches to the table. “I figure she’s not, either, though I’m kinda hoping the radio silence means she’s dead.”

  She cringed. Surely he wasn’t serious. “You can’t mean that,” she said, sitting across from him, not quite as hungry as she was a moment ago. “What about Adrianne?”

  “Addy has me.”

  Brooklyn looked down at her food, thinking there had to be more to the story for him to have written off the woman this way. “She’s never asked about not having a mother?”

  “She has friends with two mothers. Friends with two fathers. Friends with one of each. Friends with only one or the other.” He gathered up the first sub bun with two hands to bite in.

  “And she’s okay with that?”

  “I told her she used to have a mother but now it’s just the two of us,” he said, then chewed, swallowed, shrugged, and added, “I don’t know. Maybe it’s all crap. Maybe my mother’s right, and she and my dad could do a better job with her. What the hell do I know about parenting, besides the fact that it’s some scary shit. Honestly. Being solely responsible for seeing to it that little girl turns out to be a decent human being?”

  “You may not always be solely responsible for her,” she said, what remained of her appetite wasting away. “Light at the end of the tunnel and all.”

  He frowned at his sandwich, taking another bite and finishing with it before asking, “Have you dated since then?”

  She’d heard his question, but it surprised her enough that she asked, “What?”

  “Dated. Since your husband died.”

  “No, why?”

  “Why not?”

  Where did she even start? “Because I haven’t met anyone I’ve been interested in.”

  “In two years?”

  She pushed out of her seat to fetch the wine bottle she’d left on the counter. “Hope Springs is a small town. And two years isn’t that long.”

  “It’s not so small that people don’t meet,” he told her. “We met.”

  “I’m your daughter’s teacher. We had a reason to meet,” she said as she returned to the table and poured herself a refill. “And even before you came to class, I’d been in your shop often enough that we should have.”

  “I’m sorry I missed you,” he said, holding her gaze as he brought his beer to his mouth.

  She lifted her wine to hers, her pulse hammering for no reason that made sense. “I’m sorry, too.”

  Several seconds ticked by before he said, “You still haven’t answered me about making chocolate tonight.”

  She’d actually forgotten he’d asked. “In preparation for the field trip?”

  He shook his head. “Because I want you to know.”

  Wanted her to know what? The work he put in? The steps the artisan pieces required? “You’re not making any sense.”

  “Will you come?” he asked, his eyes twinkling.

  She swirled her wine in her glass and shrugged. “If that’s what you want . . .”

  “It is,” he said, and chuckled, a deep, healthy sound that filled her kitchen until she wasn’t sure if it was the man or the wine making her warm. “Though you don’t need to make it sound like I’m sentencing you to hard labor.”

  “I just . . . I don’t date parents of my students. I should probably put that out there.” Even though she didn’t want to. She really, really didn’t want to.

  “That’s good. Because this isn’t a date. Can you bring the wine?”

  This time she was the one to laugh. He made it so easy to do so. “I thought you just said this wasn’t a date.”

  “Wine doesn’t mean dating. We’re going to use it in the chocolate. And maybe drink the rest.”

  MONDAY, JUNE 10, 2013

  Brooklyn tugged the sheet and comforter to her chin and cuddled up to Artie’s side, her head on his shoulder, her thigh draped over his. He wrapped his arm around her, pulled her close. He smelled like sweat and soap and clean sheets and sex.

  “I don’t want you to go.” The words were an understatement. She could stay in bed with him forever, loving the warmth of his skin, his size, feeling vulnerable and yet protected. He was so very strong, yet so very gentle when he touched her.

  “I don’t want to go.” His voice was gravelly with lack of sleep and the wear of grunts and groans. “But we’ve been in bed most of the weekend, and last I knew, there was a bunch of little kids whose futures depend on you putting on clothes.”

  “I don’t want to put on clothes.”

  He rolled on top of her. She grabbed the edges of the comforter and flipped it up over his head, cocooning them both. He wiggled, settling against her, leaning his weight on his forearms on either side of her head, kissing her forehead, then resting his on hers.

  “If you never wore another stitch for the rest of my life, I’d be quite happy.”

  “You’d have to do all the grocery shopping, and pick up your own dry cleaning. Not to mention weed the flower beds and teach my class.”

  “How about I do this instead?” he asked, reaching down and slipping his fingers between her legs while covering her mouth with his.

  Afterward, she fell asleep and dreamed of caterpillars and butterflies, then woke to her alarm, which Artie had obviously set. When she stretched to turn it off, she found a slip of paper on her bedside table. He’d drawn her a heart, adding eyes, a beak, deep brows with a tuft of feathers between, and tiny stick feet.

  Smiling, she slipped the owl beneath the clock and sat up, smelling coffee. This husband of hers, seeing that she was on time to school and that she had coffee waiting when she woke. She lingered with her first cup, then rushed through her morning rout
ine, wondering, with her second, why she was the one lucky enough to win his heart.

  That night after dinner out with a friend, she picked up an Elizabeth Stuart novel from the counter near the kitchen door and opened a bottle of wine. While taking her first sip, the phone rang. Her mind was far away in ancient Britain, and she reached absently for the receiver.

  “Hello?”

  When the voice on the other end began to speak, then said the words she’d feared hearing for twelve years—fire, building collapse, every effort was made to save him, our deepest condolences—her knees gave out and she fell, the room spinning. The glass she’d been holding shattered on the floor as if blown from a window frame.

  And the wine spread over the tiles like blood.

  TWELVE

  “You brought the wine, yes?” Callum tossed the question over his shoulder as Brooklyn set her bag on the counter in Bliss’s kitchen, the door whooshing closed behind her. He’d come in his truck; she’d come in her car. With all the groceries they’d brought, his bike would’ve been too unwieldy for the two of them to ride.

  She pulled out a bottle and handed it to him while looking around the room he thought of as his second home. It was cold. It was sterile. It was his own operating theater. But that was what it was now. Give him five minutes and he’d have the Talking Heads blasting over the speakers. Give him an hour and the air would smell of fruit and alcohol and the best chocolate money could buy.

  “It’s so quiet in here,” she said after several silent seconds had ticked by, both of them caught up in the possibilities.

  “It’s my favorite time to work. I love it when the place is empty. When I don’t have to worry about making noise. If not for wanting to be home with Addy, I’d probably be up here every night till the wee hours,” he said, digging through the sack of foodstuffs he’d brought with him.

  It held peach and pear slices canned by Lena’s mother last summer, and fresh apples and oranges. He’d picked up a new jar of Ceylon cinnamon when in Austin with Addy last week. That he pulled from the cabinet next to the fridge. Then he found a jar of honey from the Gardens on Three Wishes Road and a bottle of brandy. Some butter from the fridge and the chocolate from his bulk storage, and they’d be good to go.