by Alison Kent
Thea’s reaction was less of a laugh than it was a bitter sounding snort. “You got a lifetime?”
Funny she should ask. “Actually, I do.”
CHAPTER TWO
Her name is Becca York,” Thea said, still reeling from having Dakota Keller walk into her shop when she’d been expecting Tennessee. She wasn’t sure she could adequately explain Becca to him with so much of their shared past on her mind. Oh, the things she knew about the man . . .
Yes, she’d learned them years ago when they were both teens, both too young for such intimacies. But their age at the time, and her memories of it, only heightened her adult curiosity. Her perspective had been through the wringer over the years. It was hard not to want to know this Dakota in context.
“And her hands are registered as deadly weapons?” he asked.
Becca. Right. It took Thea a couple of heartbeats to return to the conversation. She was too caught up in the length of his hair, the scruff on his face. His weary eyes that were too bloodshot for this hour. The size of his shoulders. The scars—and the tats—on his hands. The markings, both the ink and the healed wounds, spoke of a harsh life, and knowing where Dakota had spent his final years as a teen, and his first years as a twentysomething . . .
“Believe it or not, they could be,” she said, though she had to stop once to clear her throat. What in the world had he been through to look so broken? So completely fractured? So unbearably worn? Had anyone else noticed? Or was she only seeing the damage because she’d known him so well when he’d been whole?
“She’s had training?” He accompanied her to the espresso maker. Not that either of them needed caffeine after the jolt of Becca York. “Military or something?”
“She has,” she said with a nod. “Though she picked up a lot of what she knows after her service.” Thea frowned at the tamped grounds in the filter. “You’d be amazed at the things you can learn on the Internet.”
“Considering some of the things I’ve used it for . . .”
“Yeah? Such as?” She hit the button, watched the crema rise above the espresso in the mug. She could use a change of subject.
He leaned a shoulder against the wall beside the table and shoved his hands in the pockets of his jeans. “Had to pull a calf one time. I was working on a ranch. Montana.”
That made her grin. “You? Worked on a ranch?”
He nodded. “And before moving to Montana, I worked as a barista for a year, so if you want me to show you where you’re getting it wrong with your wrist, I can.”
“Jerk.” It’s what she’d always called him when he’d pissed her off, and it rolled off her tongue as if it were the most natural thing in the world. Her heart fluttered. This familiarity couldn’t be good. “You let me go on about lattes like you were actually interested.”
“I was interested,” he said, watching as she cleaned the steaming wand after heating the milk. “I am interested.”
“Interested in having the upper hand, you mean.”
“It’s less having the upper hand, and more the best way to play it.” His shrug pulled his T-shirt tight across his shoulders, which she really needed to stop noticing. “Doling out what I know strategically. It’s a life hack I learned a long time ago.”
“Here, then,” she said, holding out the mug and the pitcher, and wondering about a long time ago. If he meant the years he’d lived at home with his mostly absent parents. Or if he was referring to the time he’d spent behind bars. Maybe his life after. “Play your hand. Dole out your own leaf.”
His mouth twisted wryly as he took both from her hands. “It’s been a while since I’ve done this. Not sure my own wrist action is up to par.”
Oh, the things she could say. And would’ve said if she’d been an irresponsible teenager and not a mature adult. Flirting, innuendo, risqué repartee . . . Those belonged in the past, when she hadn’t known any better. Now she did. Todd had taught her well.
She watched Dakota’s focus, his narrowed gaze, the crease in his brow, and followed the motion of his hand as he poured the milk in perfect dollops, lifting up smoothly from one before adding the next, reaching the end of the line then pulling the barest drizzle from the top to the bottom of the row to form the leaf’s spine.
“Not too shabby,” he said, eyeing his creation as he gave back the pitcher. “You going to tell me about Becca while I drink this?”
“Is that what you want?” she asked, dumping the used grounds and repacking the filter to pull a shot for herself. “To talk about Becca?”
She steamed more milk while Dakota sipped, but when she went to pour it into her mug, he said, “Wait,” and set down his drink to reach for hers.
She started to tell him she didn’t want the art. She really didn’t even want the coffee, but the art was an extravagance. She wasn’t a customer. She didn’t need to be impressed.
Special touches were wasted on her.
Those words, always in Todd’s voice . . . How many times had she heard them? Better question: why was she still listening?
Dakota cupped her mug in one big hand, reached for the pitcher of hot milk with the other. His mouth tugged to the side, a smile that was just short of a smirk, as if he was too pleased with whatever was going on in his head.
She was almost afraid to see what he came up with, but she watched anyway as he poured a stream into the inclined cup, filling it, then rotating the pitcher to keep the milk and froth compact as the design took shape. He shook the pitcher as he reached the cup’s lower edge. Another movement or two, and the serpentine twist narrowed to become an elephant’s trunk.
“There ya go,” he said, handing her the mug after he’d used a stir stick to poke two spots in the foam for eyes.
“Very clever.” Smiling, she turned it this way and that. “I think you might just be able to give Becca a run for her money.”
“Guess it’s a good thing I’m not looking for a job.”
“Guess so,” she said, lifting the mug to her mouth for a quick sip. “Speaking of jobs, you want to go over the sketches now? Since that’s supposedly why you’re here?”
He took a long moment to answer, staring into his cup, then using the same stir stick to ruin what was left of the leaf in his mug. “What I really want to know is what you’re doing in Hope Springs,” he said, his gaze rising to challenge her. “And what it has to do with me.”
The look she gave him revealed things he was pretty sure she hadn’t meant to before she got those eyes of hers under control. Because as familiar as he found the view of the top of her head, he would never forget her eyes. They were the same coffee brown as her hair, with gold-colored flecks where her hair had similar highlights.
She didn’t like what he was implying, or inferring, or insinuating. Pick one. He’d never understood which word to use. Most likely because he hadn’t paid a lot of attention in senior English, and then his plans for after graduation, for graduation period, had been cut short. He’d finished high school while in prison, then fast-tracked his bachelor’s in under three years, making the best use he could of his time—studying, working out, lather, rinse, repeat.
But where he’d been, language didn’t matter. And with his background, he hadn’t figured it would matter wherever he ended up. He’d been right. Tennessee didn’t care, as long as he could read a blueprint, which his engineering degree guaranteed. It was a degree that hadn’t done him much good as a barista. Or when wrangling cattle, fishing for salmon, felling trees.
“Why would you think me being here had anything to do with you?”
They’d known each other in Round Rock growing up, and had fallen out of touch over a decade ago. Yet within a year of each other, they’d both ended up in Hope Springs? A town that was no more than a pinpoint on a map?
He didn’t believe in coincidences, and her picking this particular location for her business, out of all the l
ocations in all the towns in all the world, was a big one. But instead of answering her question, he asked another: “Where have you been since high school?”
“Here. There.” She shrugged. “Everywhere.”
“Married?”
Those eyes again. Lying. Or close to it anyway. “A long-term relationship. Very long. Too long.”
Interesting. And a lot more than he’d asked for. “You bought the house after it ended?”
She shook her head. Shook loose wisps of hair she then blew away with a puff of breath. “I bought it more recently. I had . . . things to take care of first. After it ended. Get my head on straight.” She shrugged again, a really bad effort at nonchalance. “Stuff like that.”
As if stuff like that was par for the course, or not worth the words to explain. Then again, he didn’t know anything about getting over relationships. “Sounds like a tough time.”
“Not as tough as prison, I imagine,” she said, and lifted the cup she held cradled in both hands.
“Yeah.” He looked down into his own cup, frowning at the floating remnants of his foam leaf. “It was.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, the words coming slowly as if she didn’t want to choose the wrong ones. And then she did. “I never came to see you. I should’ve come to see you. Especially since we spent the last free night you had making sure you could barely walk out of my room.”
Uh-uh. He didn’t want to think about that night. Not the sex. Not Thea’s body naked. Not the way his heart had nearly torn his chest open with fear. The memory punched hard. “Don’t—”
But she cut him off, determined. “I mean it. Knowing what you’d done for Indiana—”
“Don’t,” he repeated, because he wasn’t interested in what she knew, or what she thought she should’ve done. The past could not be reversed. The past couldn’t even be forgotten. He knew. He’d tried. For nearly half of his life, he’d tried. “Seriously. Don’t.”
“Fine.” She set down her cup, the coffee sloshing to the rim. “I won’t mention again how much I wish I’d come to see you while you were inside because I probably knew you better than anyone else at the time, and I thought the sacrifice you made for your sister was about the most heroic thing ever.”
“I’m nobody’s hero, Clark,” he said, draining his coffee, then placing his cup beside hers and turning to go, her words like an anchor dragging behind him, scraping over the floor to leave a scar.
He didn’t care that he was here on business. Keller business. His brother’s business. Since he’d come back to Texas a year ago, no one had talked to him so bluntly about prison. He didn’t want anyone talking to him about prison at all.
But especially not Thea Clark.
“You’re not leaving, are you?”
It was a challenge rather than a question, and he was pretty sure she’d added on the last part to try to fool him otherwise. “I don’t know,” he said, stopping and shaking his head before looking back. “Are we going to talk business?”
Her arms were crossed, her hip cocked, her jaw tight as if she was ready for battle. As if she needed the armor because standing up to him wasn’t the piece of cake she wanted him to believe. “I thought that’s why you were here.”
He’d thought the same thing. Then he’d thought about looking down at the top of her head. And looking into her eyes. And prison. He glanced at the blueprint that had rolled itself up on the floor.
He could do this. Talk business with the girl who’d been his first, though he wasn’t sure she knew that, or why he’d let the thought creep in.
“It is,” he finally said.
“Okay.”
“But no talking about my past.” That was a deal breaker.
“If that’s what you want.”
“And no talking about yours.”
“I can do that. Or not do that, I guess,” she said.
He nodded and offered his hand.
She dropped her gaze from his to look at it, fighting a smile as she did. “A gentleman’s agreement?”
“We can put it in writing if you want,” he said, still standing there, arm extended, waiting.
“No need,” she said, and placed her hand in his. They shook, and she pulled away, rubbing her fingers into her palm while he shoved his fists in his pockets.
They got down to business after that. He knew from going over the plans with Tennessee that nothing about the build-out was complicated. She needed shelves along the walls for doodads and whatnots, a station for the baristas to work their magic and another for the customers to fine-tune their brew. She would also need a front counter to tempt her clientele into buying the breads that were part of the shop’s name.
Though that had him thinking . . . “Kinda strange to have two bakeries in the same block, isn’t it?”
“It would be if we sold the same things,” she said, standing in front of the windows covered at the moment by brown Kraft paper. “Butters Bakery is desserts. Cookies and cakes and pies.”
“And Bread and Beans is bread. And beans.”
She nodded. “We’ll have some breakfast pastries. And biscuits. Those to satisfy the morning coffee crowd. But our specialty, and our focus, will be the artisanal loaves. I’ve ordered a shelving unit with baskets to go behind the counter. It’s on the way.”
“And the apothecary cabinet?” he asked, gesturing toward the large piece of furniture with multiple small drawers sitting just inside the front door. “Is that just for show? Or is that where you’re keeping your coffee beans?”
“Beans, yes,” she said with a self-effacing grin. “Coffee, no.”
“Come again?”
“Beans for soup. Navy and pinto and black. Lentils. Adzuki. Anasazi. Kidney and fava and garbanzo, and I’ll stop now,” she said, laughing. “Because I’m quite sure that’s enough about beans for one day.”
Actually, he was curious. Especially because of her enthusiasm, which she was using to hide something else. Nervousness, maybe. Though why she’d be nervous about selling beans . . . “Why beans? I mean, I could see if you were selling coffee beans by the pound, this being a coffee shop and all, but soup?”
She rubbed her hands up and down her bare arms, hugging herself tighter. “Soup is filling. Beans are filling and fairly inexpensive. And like I said, enough.”
Yep. Definitely nerves. And he was pretty damn sure the beans were only tangentially related. “You never did finish telling me about Becca.”
“Yeah, well, Becca’s story isn’t really mine to tell.” She walked back to where he stood, then to the table, picking up their dirty mugs. “Just know she has a good reason for reacting the way she does. Even when she’s wrong.”
“Sounds like she’s more to you than an employee,” he said, digging, though he didn’t want to think about the why of his interest. Then again, the woman had tried to crush his windpipe.
She looked at him, frowning, her expression conveying a battle of some sort. “And that sounds like you’re asking me about my past.”
“It was just a question, Clark. No need to get all defensive.”
“I don’t like it when people are nosy.”
“Sorry.” He gave her a nod. “I’m not so good at being a gentleman.”
“You never were,” she said, and turned for the kitchen, pushing through the swinging doors, coffee mugs in hand.
Can’t argue with that, he mused, deserving both the dig and the dismissal.
Simple or not, this job was going to go south if he didn’t stick to the agreement he’d made with Thea, and the rules he’d set for himself: Get in. Get out. No involvement.
Those rules had served him well for a decade now. For longer. But they hadn’t taken Thea Clark into account. He was going to have to rethink the way he’d been living since he’d picked up that baseball bat and nearly ended a life. Because Thea was no lo
nger a distant memory.
She was here.
And in under an hour, with no effort at all, she’d stirred up every bit of the past he’d worked so hard to bury.
Once she heard the front door close behind Dakota, Thea walked through the commercial kitchen and out the back. She found Becca in the alley behind Bread and Bean smoking a cigarette down to the filter.
She was also pacing a trough across the shop’s private parking area. Stress shimmered off her shoulders like heat from asphalt, the smoke barely having time to enter her lungs before she was blowing it out on top of a whole lot of not-so-nice words spoken into the air. It was how she coped, the closet ranting.
Thea felt a catch near her heart. Becca had come so far, and seeing her like this sent Thea’s joy at the other woman’s progress crumbling. But back to the drawing board was how life worked for all of the women living in the house on Dragon Fire Hill, so back they would go.
“I thought you’d quit.”
Becca held up what was left of the filter between two shaking fingers. “I just did. Again.”
Thea watched the butt hit the ground, watched Becca grind it flat then bend to pick it up. It was a ritual with Becca. Smoking. Quitting. Starting again. Quitting one more time. She rarely had more than a single smoke, maybe two, a month. Things had gotten better since she’d come to live with Thea.
Or so Thea had hoped. “You’re going to have to stop doing that, you know. Assuming any man standing close is a threat.”
Becca picked at the edge of the charred paper. “It sounded like you were arguing.”
“We weren’t. But even if we were . . .” She didn’t want to lecture. Becca had been lectured enough in therapy. “It’s okay to argue. It’s even okay to fight as long as it’s a fair one and no one gets hurt.”
“Someone always gets hurt. You know that as well as I do,” Becca said, flipping open the top of the cigarette box she always carried. Sometimes it was empty. Sometimes it held an emergency cig. She dropped the butt inside.