The Sweetness of Honey (A Hope Springs Novel)

by Alison Kent

  “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.

  “Why aren’t you at work?”

  “Hello to you, too, Ms. Keller,” Will said, leaning against the loft’s elevator frame as Indiana tugged open the recalcitrant accordion gate.

  He was up and dressed, save for his steel-toed boots. He’d had coffee for breakfast and again for lunch. But he hadn’t gone looking for his truck keys, which he’d need in order to leave, and wasn’t sure he had looking—or leaving—in him today.

  Ennui, he supposed it was, though he’d be more inclined to call it self-indulgence, perhaps even self-pity. Except he wasn’t really feeling sorry for himself. He wasn’t feeling much of anything at all.

  That was the problem with closing off one’s emotions in order to survive. Because now that he was a free man, he felt just as imprisoned as he had behind bars. And he wasn’t quite sure how to fix that. Or if he wanted to.

  He’d been thinking a lot about leaving town, but there was the issue of his parole. He could talk to Manny, see what—if anything—could be worked out to keep him on the straight and narrow elsewhere, because he was just this close to being done with, well, giving a crap about getting back to real life.

  He worked for a company based here. He owned property in a building that had been here longer than he’d been alive. He got along with the circle of people in Hope Springs he called friends. Whether they really were . . . What did he know about friends? What did he know about anything anymore?

  Did he keep working for Ten at a job he did well? Did he return to school to finish his master’s? Did he get his car out of storage where it had been for three years, now almost four, and go some place else? Anyplace else? Anywhere at all?

  The woman standing in front of him would be the only one he would miss. He couldn’t tell her how much. Neither could he tell her that he hadn’t meant to kiss her. Or that he was sorry for letting his own regrets muck up Halloween.

  He had meant to kiss her. He’d meant to for days, for weeks, for months. Since the first day they’d met. And he wasn’t sorry about Halloween. Only that no matter what move he made, his king was going to get checkmated by Oliver Gatlin.

  He’d have to chalk up whatever wasn’t going to happen between them to bad timing: his finally gett
ing out of prison, her finally reconnecting with Ten, Oliver Gatlin growing out of his years as a dick. Finally.

  “Come in,” he said, pushing himself out of the way as he realized she was standing there waiting.

  She did, crossing the threshold of his very large and largely unfurnished loft for the very first time. “Why aren’t you at work?” she repeated, hands at her hips as she turned to face him, frowning. “And why don’t you have any furniture?”

  “I have furniture.” He walked past her into the center of the space, gestured grandly toward the bar stools, the futon, the side table, and the lamp. “Please. Take a seat. Can I get you something to drink?”

  Shaking her head as if dodging one of the bees she valued so much, she held up a hand, putting a stop to the mundanities. “I don’t want to sit. And, thank you, but I don’t want anything to drink. I want to know why you aren’t at work.”

  He didn’t have an answer for that. Unless he wanted to voice a repeat of his recent thoughts. “At work for Ten? Or at work for you?”

  “At work. Period.” Her frown deepened. “Are you not feeling well? Because you look terrible.”

  That made him smile. “I feel fine. The terrible just comes with the territory.”

  “And what territory is that?” she asked, crossing to his long wall of windows, then turning. “Are you going to start playing the part of woe-is-me ex-con?”

  This was what he liked most about Indiana Keller. There was no using past crimes as excuses for present ones. Whatever she’d been through to cause her longtime estrangement from Ten, she didn’t stand on it like a platform, and she didn’t put up with anyone else trying it with their sins.

  “I’m just tired,” he said, plopping down on the futon and squaring one leg over the other.

  Again with the shake of her head. Again with the hands at her hips. “Tired of what? Working for a living?”

  That was something he didn’t have to do, but she didn’t know that. No one in Hope Springs knew that. He shrugged. “Bored, then. I’m just bored.”

  This time she swung her arms wide to the side. “With what? Work? Life? Not having furniture? Shopping for furniture? Because your history with prison aside, you’ve got one of the cushiest lives of anyone I know.”

  Cushy. Was that what this was? “Did Ten send you after me?”

  “Tennessee would come after you himself if he was that worried,” she said, looking out the window again.

  That was probably true. “Then why are you asking me about work?”

  “Because Tennessee needs to be spending his time at the arts center, and my cottage isn’t going to remodel itself. Plus, I’d really like the annex finished so I can start planning for next year’s schedule.”

  “I thought that was the point of a greenhouse,” he said, stretching his arms along the futon’s cushion. “No need for a schedule. Year-round temperature control.”

  “Not the growing schedule. My schedule.” She came back to where he was sitting and perched her hip on the futon’s corner, not too close, but not too far away. “Why are you being so . . . I don’t know, contrary? After dinner the other night, I thought—”

  “That I would be at your constant beck and call?” Because he needed to rid that idea from both their minds. His especially.

  “No. Good grief. Why would you say that?” She held his gaze, a long moment of frowning, then looked down at her hands where her fingers were twined in her lap. “I don’t understand you, is all. I thought after dinner I might. I mean, we talked for hours, and yet everything about you is still . . .”

  “Still what?” he asked, when she dropped the sentence.

  She took her time responding, as if weighing what she wanted to say, what would be safe to say, what he probably most needed to hear. In the end, she simply told him, “You, Will Bowman, are a mystery.”

  It really was a shame the chemistry between them was so one-sided. He was going to miss her when he was gone. “You didn’t need to make a special trip to tell me that.”

  “I didn’t,” she said, bopping him on the knee. “I came to ask you about work. But if something’s going on . . . Or if you need to talk . . .”

  He didn’t, he never would, but he still hated how perceptive she was. During dinner, he’d done such a good job keeping the conversation impersonal. He’d gone down his list: pop culture, politics, science and money and art.

  Yet somehow his carefully manufactured coping mechanism had gone awry. And he wasn’t sure he’d got it all put back together again, à la Humpty Dumpty.

  He reached over and chucked her on the chin. “Let’s talk about what’s going on in your life. Something besides the annex and the cottage, which, yeah . . . I need to get back to work on.”

  “Ah, you’re assuming that like you, I have all the time in the world to chat. I do not,” she said, and got to her feet, seeming to bounce with excitement. “But I do have a bit of exciting news.”

  “Hit me,” he said, as he stood.

  “I’ve hired a PI. Well, Tennessee and I have hired a PI. We want to see if we can find Dakota.”

  “Dakota. He’s the other brother. The one who was in prison.”

  She nodded as she headed for the door. “We haven’t seen him or heard from him since he got out, and now that I’ve reconnected with Tennessee . . .” Her hand on the elevator grate, she turned, smiled softly, shrugged. “I shouldn’t have waited so long to look. He’s family.”

  Yeah, well, that didn’t necessarily mean anything, though he wasn’t going to be the one to burst her bubble. Best if her brother was the one to do that. Meaning Dakota Keller would need to be found.

  If nothing else, that was one thing Will could do.

  CHAPTER TEN

  A week later, having seen Will once at the cottage, and having talked briefly to Oliver in the middle of Three Wishes Road, both in their cars heading in opposite directions, Indiana was standing behind her desk in her IJK Gardens office, frowning down at a vendor invoice, when she realized she wasn’t alone. She looked up, expecting one of her employees, or a fertilizer sales rep, or another vendor with an invoice that didn’t look quite right.

  Instead, the woman waiting just over the threshold . . . Well, she didn’t belong on a farm. It was the first thing that came to mind. IJK Gardens was no place for pearls. Or pumps. Or a handbag with a designer label even Indiana recognized.

  The whole package hit her like a punch to the gut. Something had to be wrong. She set down the invoice, reaching for her stapler to use as a paperweight, and asked, “May I help you?”

  “I’m looking for an Indiana Keller.”

  An Indiana Keller? This was either going to be very good, or very, very bad. “I’m Indiana Keller. What can I do for you, Mrs. . . .”

  “Gatlin.” It was all she said. It was enough.

  And it was bad. Definitely bad. Indiana stopped herself from reaching for the invoice again to have something to do with her hands. “You must be Oliver’s mother.”

  “I am,” the woman said, walking several steps into the room, looking around the office, disapproving of the mess. And of everything.

  Indiana disapproved, too. She just never had time to straighten or clean or replace the broken guest chairs. Either one of them. “Well, then. I can’t imagine you’re here about anything to do with gardening. So this must be something about Oliver.”

  “What exactly are you doing with my son?” Merrilee Gatlin asked, her chin high, her nose higher, turning to look down at Indiana as if from a physical throne instead of the one in her mind.

  “Doing with him? I’m not sure what you mean. We’re friends. That’s all.” No need to explain about the kiss, or the . . . orgasm, or the bond over lost siblings they had in common that seemed to be drawing them close.

  Oliver’s mother took her in as if examining polygraph results. “You’re saying
you didn’t ask him to hire a private investigator on your behalf?”

  Indiana heard the words, but they took several long seconds to register. She had hired her own PI. Oliver knew that. Knew, too, that she’d turned down his offer to help her with her search for Dakota. Had he gone behind her back? Really?

  Chest tight, she released the breath she’d been holding, filled her lungs with another, and said, “I did not, and if he did, this is the first I’m hearing of it.”

  But of course Merrilee couldn’t take Indiana at her word and leave. Her handbag hung from her elbow and bounced against her hip as she crossed to the office’s windows. They looked out at the farm’s equipment-repair shop and warehouse storage building, at the greenhouses and small market building where she sold her extra inventory, and stocked jellies and relishes and pickled produce from local artisans.

  To Indiana, the sight was the most impressive thing ever. She’d built her farm from the ground up, and her reputation had followed. The operation was small, but successful. She provided jobs, and quality organic produce, and made a comfortable enough living that she’d been able to buy the property in Hope Springs and expand.

  Looking out the windows always had her saying, “I made this,” but something told her Oliver’s mother couldn’t have cared less.

  “He did. That’s why I’m here. That’s the only reason I’m here.”

  Of course it was. “As I said, I can’t speak to what Oliver might have done—”

  “There is no might have. I heard him speaking to our family’s investigator.”

  Heard? Or overheard? “Then he’s the one who’ll have to answer your questions.” She could’ve said more, but no need to add ammunition to this woman’s arsenal. And as to Oliver painting this target on her forehead . . .

  What had he been thinking? She’d told him she didn’t need his help, though maybe she should’ve used those exact words, because there had obviously been an incredible disconnect.

  “How do you know Oliver?” His mother switched her handbag from one arm to the other, a silver cuff bracelet circling her wrist catching the light. “I can’t imagine him coming all this way to buy produce.”